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Setups that work well with Avenger Mastery
spinnytop
Posts: 16,450 Arc User
So over the years I haven't heard much talk about using Avenger Mastery. From what I've heard people consider it some weird niche thing that works good with Archery but nothing else, and this perception is likely born of the fact that most people consider Blasts to only exist to apply resistance debuffs. Recently decided to explore some Avenger Mastery setups.
TK Ranged
Works great thanks to the crit bonus that TK Strike gets from Ego Leech. By the time that third TK Strike hits you are almost guaranteed to have an Avenger Mastery proc, which means this actually becomes more of a rotation than other setups where you have to more actively look for the procs. TK doesn't have its own Blast power that I'm aware of, so I had to borrow one from Telepathy. The great thing here is that Setup from the blast then also buffs TK Lance.
Going from TK Strike x3 > TK Lance
to TK Strike x3 > Ego Blast > TK Lance
Saw a fairly significant increase in dps.
Sorcery
The Sorcery setup is more of the "watch for the procs on your buffs bar" kind of thing. Initially with my Sorcery toon my rotation was a simple Soul Beam/Hex Of Suffering setup.
Then I threw Eldritch Blast in there. A nice big blast with a random chance to apply Mysticism, which incidentally stacks the sorcery Form.
A moderate increase in dps, but an increase nonetheless! Since my Sorcery toon is Int primary it isn't going to crit as much as the Dex-stacking TK toon, so procs don't come quite as often or regularly. But then I thought hey... this setup isn't using Setup from Avenger specs at all, and the Sorcery passive buffs three damage types so lets switch some things around so I can throw a big nuke attack in there that I can use after Eldritch Blast! I went with Defile.
Hey, that's a bit more!
Sorcery has a few ways it can go with this, like Shadow Blast/Ebon Ruin, could use Infernal Blast to keep the poison stacks goin. Some more experimentation might yield even more increases.
NOTE: I didn't slot any Toxic damage mods when I tested this, so that dps increase would probably be better if I had done that!
Munitions
Munitions' main use for Avenger Mastery is aoeing. Its basically just using one aoe power to fire into a crowd, then looking for AM procs and doing Shotgun. My version of this involves Flamethrower, SMG Burst, and Shotgun. At first I spray flamethrower into the crowd, doing shotgun when AM procs - then when everything is hold immune I switch to SMG Burst with wall of bullets, and again shotgun on AM proc. With all the stuns, knockback, and shields, its hard for the mobs to get a word in.
For single target I grabbed Tactical Missiles from Power Armor ( not like they're using it ) and just went to town.
Going from Assault Rifle > Gattling Gun tap
to Assault Rifle > Gattling Gun tap + Tactical Missiles on AM
Was.. disappointing. For whatever reason, even though the munition passive and damage debuff both buff TM's damage, there was zero increase. I tried it with Shotgun as well, but I have that at rank 1 and use utility advantages instead, so that wasn't much better. Maybe Shotgun R3 might do something? Not something I would be using either way.
NOTE: I didn't slot PA damage mods for this, so if I did that there might have actually been an increase since this dex-stacking toon procs AM quite often!
Other Stuff
So those were my experimentations with Avenger Mastery. Anyone else have any Avenger Mastery setups that work good and do the bigger damage? I'm interested to hear about them. I think Gadgeteering might actually have a good setup between PBR and Exp. Blaster and Chest Beam. Might poke around with that at some point.
A few interesting bits about Avenger Mastery:
RIP Tactical Missiles Power Armor build from pre-PA update ;_;
TK Ranged
Works great thanks to the crit bonus that TK Strike gets from Ego Leech. By the time that third TK Strike hits you are almost guaranteed to have an Avenger Mastery proc, which means this actually becomes more of a rotation than other setups where you have to more actively look for the procs. TK doesn't have its own Blast power that I'm aware of, so I had to borrow one from Telepathy. The great thing here is that Setup from the blast then also buffs TK Lance.
Going from TK Strike x3 > TK Lance
to TK Strike x3 > Ego Blast > TK Lance
Saw a fairly significant increase in dps.
Sorcery
The Sorcery setup is more of the "watch for the procs on your buffs bar" kind of thing. Initially with my Sorcery toon my rotation was a simple Soul Beam/Hex Of Suffering setup.
Then I threw Eldritch Blast in there. A nice big blast with a random chance to apply Mysticism, which incidentally stacks the sorcery Form.
A moderate increase in dps, but an increase nonetheless! Since my Sorcery toon is Int primary it isn't going to crit as much as the Dex-stacking TK toon, so procs don't come quite as often or regularly. But then I thought hey... this setup isn't using Setup from Avenger specs at all, and the Sorcery passive buffs three damage types so lets switch some things around so I can throw a big nuke attack in there that I can use after Eldritch Blast! I went with Defile.
Hey, that's a bit more!
Sorcery has a few ways it can go with this, like Shadow Blast/Ebon Ruin, could use Infernal Blast to keep the poison stacks goin. Some more experimentation might yield even more increases.
NOTE: I didn't slot any Toxic damage mods when I tested this, so that dps increase would probably be better if I had done that!
Munitions
Munitions' main use for Avenger Mastery is aoeing. Its basically just using one aoe power to fire into a crowd, then looking for AM procs and doing Shotgun. My version of this involves Flamethrower, SMG Burst, and Shotgun. At first I spray flamethrower into the crowd, doing shotgun when AM procs - then when everything is hold immune I switch to SMG Burst with wall of bullets, and again shotgun on AM proc. With all the stuns, knockback, and shields, its hard for the mobs to get a word in.
For single target I grabbed Tactical Missiles from Power Armor ( not like they're using it ) and just went to town.
Going from Assault Rifle > Gattling Gun tap
to Assault Rifle > Gattling Gun tap + Tactical Missiles on AM
Was.. disappointing. For whatever reason, even though the munition passive and damage debuff both buff TM's damage, there was zero increase. I tried it with Shotgun as well, but I have that at rank 1 and use utility advantages instead, so that wasn't much better. Maybe Shotgun R3 might do something? Not something I would be using either way.
NOTE: I didn't slot PA damage mods for this, so if I did that there might have actually been an increase since this dex-stacking toon procs AM quite often!
Other Stuff
So those were my experimentations with Avenger Mastery. Anyone else have any Avenger Mastery setups that work good and do the bigger damage? I'm interested to hear about them. I think Gadgeteering might actually have a good setup between PBR and Exp. Blaster and Chest Beam. Might poke around with that at some point.
A few interesting bits about Avenger Mastery:
- It's difficult to get multiple procs on one target, maybe even impossible? I've had crit chains of like 8 crits straight, and only got one proc. AOEing a crowd is the most reliable way to get multiple procs and stack the buff. What's odd is that at time's I've gotten a stack of 2 AM because I switched to a different power, so it seems like a given power can get a stack of AM only once from a given target?
- The chained hits from chain attacks don't count at all, so while at first glance something like Ricochet Throw or Chain Lightning seems like it would work great to proc AM, it really doesn't.
- Blasts themselves can proc AM. Feels pretty good to Shotgun blast a crowd and immediately get a stack of procs.
RIP Tactical Missiles Power Armor build from pre-PA update ;_;
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Comments
Stone Shot is another blast that has an AoE effect, if you want that sort of thing (Tac Missiles has the AoE adv too, though iirc it doesn't scale w/ cast time). There are many possible combos w/ Avenger Mastery, though I suspect many wouldn't yield much of an increase in dps- kinda depends what things you aren't using while hitting the blast and comparing that opportunity cost. My old combo-blaster builds (obv some outdated info there) were fun back in the day, though they weren't good for optimizing dps- it was more about tying two otherwise low-dps class of attacks (combos and blasts) in a ranged/melee mix where they work together for a theme.
Anyways, I think the Tac Missiles parse being a bit low is because the crit rng favored the other parse a bit, but I dunno if you only changed the Mastery or if there were other changes between the parses. I think you also meant Preemptive Strike instead of 'Setup' in the Ego Blast parse, but it's a interesting result either way.
Also, afaik you only get extra stacks of AvM in multi-target scenarios, though perhaps due to latency and having enough crits from >1 one attack you can get more than one stack vs. single-targets too. I think I've seen it before, but it wasn't very common if so.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Also yes, meant Preemptive Strike.
Odd about the crit% on the munitions tests, but I actually did repeated tests of that and every time it came out about the same dps, so I don't think it was a one-time anomaly that lead to the results. I will note that the munitions test felt the most hectic, between watching for procs and keeping debuffs up. Wonder if the results get better if I switch to 2GM and then do comparisons.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Going by base numbers (no gear or stats, etc), TM has a base dps of about 249 (497/2.0sec), and w/ AvM procs lowering the charge time from 1.5sec to 0.75sec that makes it about 398dps (497/1.25sec), or about 60% more ideally. That's a good bit higher than many maintains baseline (ex. w/ TGM at ~326 dps base), but input lag from canceling the maintain and starting a new attack could lower that potential gap a bit (and maybe you get unlucky w/ the timing and keep interrupting the maintain right before it does another tick, and that may have a small effect on dps too- hard to say).
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Yeah, but I found some that are okay. One that's actually really good. What I'm wondering is if anyone else has bothered looking into this and found any good setups.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I remember you making fun of me for liking avenger mastery... and now you have joined the cult. Bwahaha!
Yeah, I tried out that exact muni setup ( w wrist rockets) on sergeant steel before the most recent muni changes. I also tried adding in sniper rifle for a nuke to play off pre-emptive. I think it was actually a dps loss vs just using guardian with the defense shred from "find the mark". I may just have been misplaying it though... my computer at the time was a tablet.
Force blast does hit decently hard vs bosses. maybe something like quarry or night warrior with munitions maintains into force blast into cascade would be passably effective. You'd have to play around the energy hogginess of cascade tho.
Combo blaster setup could work with our new(ish) ranged combos. So, lash into infernal blast into defile might be fun. Warden can provide the biggest crit chance.. but you lose the crit bonuses from vindicator and some severity... so not worth(?)
I was playing around with an ice passive combo blaster. I tried reapers caress w the CF advantage into ice blast into rimefire. Also tried out will-o-wisp (w ghost fire) into lash into ice blast into rimefire. I also had the chain w red-hot for when wisp was on CD... very ghost rider.
Yeah I dunno what that's about, but a 1% difference wouldn't be caused by that. Like I mentioned above, I did the test several times to make sure it wasn't just a single bad test.
That sounds odd, considering how much I enjoyed my AM PA build... and that was back in 2016 the latest o3o
Sniper rifle just has too much charge time for it. It would take a lot to not make it a dps loss.
I didn't actually try any of the straight blast > nuke setups, since I remember from trying those throughout the years that the damage bonus from PS never made up for the dps loss of tapping the Blast. Maybe it works better if you only ever use a blast when you can full charge it with a AM stack. Hmmm...best bet there would be a Darkness toon using the TK form so it can stack dex...
Wtf is combo blaster. Is that where you use Warden's Slaughter spec to boost ranged combos? Spec says it only works on melee combos u3u if that's a typo/bug then there could be something there.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Yep, that's the combo blaster idea. The specs were made before any ranged combos existed... so I dunno the answer. I just assumed it worked with all combos (｡-_-｡ )
And here is a record of you basically calling me a dweebus for liking this stuffs..
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1211867/buff-blasts
That's mischaracterizing it a bit u3u also everything I said in that thread is still technically correct ~3~ so there ( except that technically they can already be used as a damage spike, kind of.. definitely not on the level of real nukes... but that just means they don't need to be changed to be able to do that, so double there! O3O )
The real issue is that that one spec you mention that buffs Blast damage is actually horribly bugged and has 0% effect if you put more than one point into it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Good to know. The damage boost would be pretty small, even if it did work as intended.
Guardian master seems pretty terrible. Like 9 dodge rating from firing three blasts?! Seems like a relic from before dodge got nerfed.. sometime shortly after the cambrian age, I believe.
I guess avenger mastery has aged pretty well, when compared to some things.