Quarry Elec/Might build. Quarry???

helbjorn

Sounds crazy, right? Who would use Quarry for an Energy-based build? Well I thought that at first, too, but it works - really well.

This build is a revamp of an old PA character. For a long time I used a slightly modified version of Pulsewave's awesome INT/EGO/END ballistic PA/Quarry build, and that served quite well. But my idea of PA is more old-school Iron Man, with durability AND strength. The build had durability, but could barely toss a trash can around. Hybridizing a STR-based Enrage melee/ranged build sacrifices too much on the ranged side, particularly in PA, as switching between melee and ranged with toggles can be rather awkward. My initial solution was to combine Electricity and Might with the Stormbringer passive, which buffs both Electric and Crushing damage. It also offers a decent resistance to both, including Cold, up to 65% or so. This worked well, but conceptually wasn't quite right. It also still sacrificed some durability by losing the Dodge/Avoidance of Quarry. So on a whim I decided to try Quarry and see what happened. The results were surprising. An INT/STR/END Quarry build in ranged mode comes to within 1.25% ranged DPS of an INT/STR/END Stormbringer build, and surpasses it by 1.5% in melee DPS. Plus you get the added benefit of the increased Dodge/Avoidance.

The loss of EGO as a SSS for your ranged damage buff is not as significant as you might believe, considering the diminishing returns of this mechanism. With no investment at all in EGO, Quarry allows you to run with an EGO of 100 virtually all the time, which is a 23% bonus right there. Add in Vindicator Mastery's STR bonus and your ranged damage buff is 35%, pretty much where you'd be with SSS EGO. EGO Surge Rank 1 puts you up to 40%, and its cooldown is quite low with PSS INT.

Clearly, it's still not going to be quite on par DPS-wise with a pure EGO-based ranged energy projector with a dedicated offensive passive, but it appears to be the best option for a hybrid concept character of this type. It still easily steals agro in Alerts and lairs, and can hold its own when that happens. Switch energy projection out to physical ranged damage, and you're right back in min-max territory, all while staying in concept. And did I mention you can toss Colossal weights around like bowling balls?



PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Intelligence (Primary)
Level 10: Strength (Secondary)
Level 15: Endurance (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Devastator
Level 6: Body and Mind
Level 9: Bodybuilder
Level 12: Investigator
Level 15: Paramilitary Training
Level 18: Healthy Mind
Level 21: Physical Conditioning

Powers:
Level 1: Electric Bolt
Level 1: Lightning Arc (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 6: Ionic Reverberation
Level 8: Quarry (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Roomsweeper (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 14: Concentration
Level 17: Force Shield (Force Sheathe)
Level 20: Ball Lightning (Triplicity)
Level 23: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 26: Sparkstorm (Rank 2, Electric Personality)
Level 29: Burning Chi Fist (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 32: Gigabolt (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Ego Surge (Nimble Mind)
Level 38: Masterful Dodge (Unfettered Strikes)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Jet Boots (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Lightning Flash (Rank 2)

Specializations:
Intelligence: Preparation (2/2)
Intelligence: Enlightened (1/3)
Intelligence: Tactician (2/2)
Intelligence: Detect Vulnerability (3/3)
Intelligence: Expertise (2/2)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Locus (2/2)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (3/3)
Vindicator: Mass Destruction (2/3)
Mastery: Vindicator Mastery (1/1)


I typically run in Hybrid role to solo, as I enjoy melee'ing more when alone. Sparkstorm can keep your Concentration stacks up while doing so (see below). When grouping, Ranged role is more appropriate.

Stats are self explanatory. The build really must have PSS INT in order to fuel Concentration. With three stacks of Audacity, my INT is about 400, which puts Concentration's ranged damage bonus per stack at 16%. STR is your next priority; I try to get this over 200 if possible to increase the melee damage bonus and the damage bonus from your one stack of Enraged. END winds up at about 190 or so, which is more than enough. Talent for some CON and REC, adding about 20 additional REC in your secondary gear. The rest can go to Superstats. Alot of your INT spec choices are SSS driven, so you want to make sure you have at least 400 points or so in those.


Power choices are mostly self-explanatory, but here's a bit of reasoning.

Roomsweeper was an iconic theme choice. It can give you some breathing room when needed, and if timed properly, can allow you to maintain a single stack of Enraged. This can give multiple stacks, both randomly and when striking multiple opponents. If this occurs, your stacks will fall off immediately, so be careful.

Force Shield with advantage offers the benefit of low-level protection and energy return while attacking, either with ranged or melee. I would have prefered Energy Shield with Phalanx Defense System, but this only functions with PA ranged toggles.

Ball Lightning is optional and can be replaced with an additional heal if energy is not an issue for you. With Triplicity, it's pretty much guaranteed to place Negative Ions on mobs, which will trigger your energy return from Ionic Reverberation. Plus, Negative Ions synergizes with Sparkstorm to knock back melee enemies around you, offering another layer of protection.

Bountiful Chi Resurgence is your only heal, but with your Dodge rating, it's a good one. With PSS INT, you can easily double stack this if you wish, just know that you will double the damage penalty as well. No need to rank this, as a majority of the ticks will be from dodges, which don't benefit from ranking anyway.

Sparkstorm is a nice bit of additional AoE damage, but what I particularly like about it is its ability to build and keep your Audacity and Concentration stacks up without even hitting anything. Make certain to get the advantage to make this a toggle.

Burning Chi Fist is probably the highest DPS single-target melee punch in the game, considering charge and activation times. Plus, no annoying knockback in Alerts. Switch to Hybrid or Melee roles if you prefer getting up close and personal with mobs. If that's the case, you may want to ditch Ball Lightning, as it will have Sparkstorm knocking mobs out of your range.

Ego Surge is quite synergistic with this build when you take Vindicator Mastery. Then you are adding to both ranged and melee damage with your EGO buff. Rank two will net you only 1% extra ranged damage buff, so definitely not worth it unless you want the extra 8% all damage buff (additive, so also probably not worth it). I take just enough extra CON to get the Crit Chance buff of Nimble Mind to 10%. CON of 25 or so is enough.

Masterful Dodge I took Unfettered Strikes for because, well, I didn't need two advantage points anywhere else. Put them where you like.


Spec Tree choices are also fairly self explanatory.

I'm not a huge fan of the +Def/Off from gear choices, as most typically only make a % point or two difference for either one, even with Aggressive Stance and The Best Defense. I believe where the choice must be made, investing in Crit Chance or Severity is better.

Detect Vulnerability is big in this build, as with 400 or so INT with three Audacity stacks, this debuff is about -33%.

Locus I find more useful than Find the Mark as I believe the Defense contribution of the former is significant and the debuff stacks of the latter build rather slowly. If you find yourself fighting Cosmics and Legendaries from a distance more often than not, you may find the latter more helpful.

Vindicator Mastery, as stated previously, is key to this build, especially as we're not SSS-ing EGO.

s3rju

PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Name: Crimson Paladin

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Intelligence (Secondary)
Level 15: Endurance (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Devastator
Level 6: Body and Mind
Level 9: Bodybuilder
Level 12: Investigator
Level 15: Paramilitary Training
Level 18: Healthy Mind
Level 21: Physical Conditioning

Powers:
Level 1: Electric Bolt
Level 1: Lightning Arc (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 6: Ionic Reverberation
Level 8: Quarry (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Roomsweeper (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 14: Concentration
Level 17: Force Shield (Force Sheathe)
Level 20: Ball Lightning (Triplicity)
Level 23: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 26: Sparkstorm (Rank 2, Electric Personality)
Level 29: Burning Chi Fist (Rank 2, Fists of Righteous Flame)
Level 32: Gigabolt (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Ego Surge (Nimble Mind)
Level 38: Masterful Dodge (Unfettered Strikes)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Jet Boots (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Lightning Flash (Rank 2)

Specializations:
Strength: Swole (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Strength: Brutality (2/2)
Strength: Juggernaut (3/3)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: Find the Mark (2/3)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Initiative (2/2)
Vindicator: Modified Gear (1/2)
Vindicator: Offensive Expertise (2/2)
Mastery: Vindicator Mastery (1/1)

more severity, get your crit chance up to 35-40 and you should be good. on a side note quarry is one of the most versatile passives in the game right along with regen AoPM and invul

helbjorn

s3rju wrote: »

more severity, get your crit chance up to 35-40 and you should be good.

I don't think you realize how brutal the diminishing returns of Brutality are. Even if you push INT hard as a SSS, you're not going to get much better than 101% total severity out of it. The present build has the stock 75%. In testing, I threw 558 points of secondary stats toward Brutality and couldn't budge it above 26%. A typical character with around 400 in SSS's gets 20%. And that was with three stacks of Audacity on INT, too, pushing it to 368. From pumping INT at the expense of STR, Brutality gave only an average 4.275% boost in Crit damage. At the same time, INT was only giving Concentration 15% ranged damage buff per stack rather than the stock 16%, for a loss of 8% damage.

If you maintain your changes in Vindicator, they equal an overall average loss of DPS of about 3.75% due to lower average Crit rate. This is taking into account the 4.275% gain due to Crit Severity and the 8% loss from Concentration. In practice, those changes are worth 0% bonus damage from Offense (DR), 2% extra damage resistance from Defense (less than 1% in reality), and one second of recharge on your only AO, Ego Surge. Is that significant? YMMV, but I'd rather have the extra crit damage on a DPS character any day.

Even if you don't make those essentially worthless changes in Vindicator, you gain only about 1.8% DPS due to Brutality.

Could you make more gains by pushing INT even higher? Yes, if you could regain 16% damage per stack of Concentration at the cost of more benefit from STR and END (melee damage, Enrage stack damage, power), but you'd still be stuck with the otherwise useless STR Spec tree rather than the arguably more beneficial INT tree. And even then you're looking at a ranged DPS increase of less than 10% overall; significantly less in melee DPS. I could press INT a bit more in the present build and accomplish the same thing.

It's an interesting idea in theory and I thank you for it, but I believe I'll stick with PSS INT.

s3rju

you were only getting that much because you were boosting one SSS over the other instead of both (in which brutality scales off of) and in any case, 101 is better than 75.

while a single 1% less on concentration which is additive won't make a difference, the extra severity will. offense has diminishing returns and hits around 400+

the vindi specs can be changed according to that. you have to also consider the 4% debuff in addition to the extra 5% severity off the tree.

then there's the mastery for your ranged powers, altough it's additive like concentration it adds up nicely.
there's no reason in pushing int beyond 30 per stack for quarry, once you hard cap the audacity stacks that is.


if you hate the STR tree that much you can always switch to dex, you'll get expose weakness and more severity due to the mastery. besides, your useless enrage stacks(due to no STR and massive amounts of int) will fall off anyways so whatever dmg you are getting for the brief moment after your roomsweeper is miniscule.


what i would do? not conflict myself by saying int is bad because brutality is brutal, but int is good because concentration will give me 1% more per stack... and keep int at 400 base (without the stacks), make STR my second priority (or dex) and keep it as primary at around 250 and throw the rest into end.

helbjorn

Okay, this has been bugging me for a couple of days, so I tried the STR PSS approach again and found a way to make it work acceptably.

Pumping SSS INT up to 337 through talent and gear tweaks eeks out 17% damage bonus per Concentration buff with three Audacity stacks. Taking from STR and getting END back up over 150 gives almost enough power and also finally boosts Brutality's Severity to 27%. Surprisingly, it only pushes Severity from 101.3 to 101.8 per the character sheet.

Tweaking the spec choices gives a big boost in melee damage through Overpower. It gives 17.31% higher melee Crit damage over the original build. Ranged Crit damage is 9.2% higher than the original build.

Boosting the original build's INT to get Concentration to 17% per stack drops the STR build's ranged advantage to 6.5%, which is still significant. Melee's advantage drops less, to 15%.

The biggest issue with the build is energy. With more limited END and the loss of Expertise and Preparation from the INT tree, tap-spamming Gigabolt is more limited. The alternative would be to drop more from STR, which sits just over 200 as is. Much less, and thematically you might as well not take it. The build is fairly gear intensive, as these troubles occur with Rank 6 and 7 mods now. You have to remember to hit Force Shield frequently and keep your Ball Lightning out there at all times.

Players who like to play loose with their energy and stay largely at range might prefer the original build. I've settled on the STR build for now, as it hits hard and can do some significant melee damage, even in Ranged mode. I do miss nearly unlimited Giga-spamming, however.

Big thanks to s3rju for the heads up on the "Brutal Quarry" build:


PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Intelligence (Secondary)
Level 15: Endurance (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Devastator
Level 6: Body and Mind
Level 9: Bodybuilder
Level 12: Investigator
Level 15: Healthy Mind
Level 18: Boundless Reserves
Level 21: Paramilitary Training

Powers:
Level 1: Electric Bolt
Level 1: Lightning Arc (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 6: Ionic Reverberation
Level 8: Quarry (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Concentration
Level 14: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 17: Force Shield (Force Sheathe)
Level 20: Sparkstorm (Rank 2, Electric Personality)
Level 23: Roomsweeper (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 26: Ball Lightning (Triplicity)
Level 29: Gigabolt (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 32: Burning Chi Fist (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Masterful Dodge (Unfettered Strikes)
Level 38: Ego Surge (Nimble Mind)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Jet Boots (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Lightning Flash (Rank 2)

Specializations:
Strength: Swole (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Strength: Brutality (2/2)
Strength: Overpower (3/3)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Locus (2/2)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (3/3)
Vindicator: Mass Destruction (2/3)
Mastery: Vindicator Mastery (1/1)

s3rju

get more cost reduction and let INT+audacity stacks take care of the rest. another thing you can try is to actually get rid of end and take rec, since ionic reverb sclaes about equally on both. on top of that, rec will also give you a better mileage out of force sheath.

you can also give overdrive a try...

one thing i noticed, is that you decided to go with r3 on bcf instead of r2+adv. imo going with r2+adv will in a way (thanks to quarry's non physical scaling) allow you to double dip on your roomsweeper for alittle more milage.

helbjorn

Yeah, cost reduction is maxed out. Only so far you can go with percentages.

Normally I favor REC as a SSS, but unfortunately REC won't supply my need for a deep energy pool for Giga-spamming.

Cutting into END has hurt my energy returns from Ionic Reverberation. MSA might be helpful, as I have two really short cooldowns and two 37-second ones. And all get cycled regularly. Overdrive would only work with LA, so not certain if it would be as useful. I could then drop Ball Lightning and pick up something else. I'll have to test this.

I tap-spam BCR, which wouldn't apply the buff. The paltry damage it has a 50% chance of applying would never approach the 20% bonus of R3 anyway.

helbjorn

Here's a PA version of the Brutal Quarry build. The ballistic toggles of PA benefit more from the physical damage buff of Quarry than does Electricity. Again, it won't quite out-DPS Pulsewave's Gyrojet PA build, but you get to play a super-strong PA character with a little more survivability and versatility.


PowerHouse (Link to this build)

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Strength (Primary)
Level 10: Intelligence (Secondary)
Level 15: Endurance (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Devastator
Level 6: Body and Mind
Level 9: Bodybuilder
Level 12: Investigator
Level 15: Healthy Mind
Level 18: Boundless Reserves
Level 21: Paramilitary Training

Powers:
Level 1: Force Bolts
Level 1: Tactical Missiles (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 6: Mini Gun (Rank 2, U-238 Rounds)
Level 8: Quarry (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 11: Concentration
Level 14: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (Resurgent Reiki)
Level 17: Overdrive
Level 20: Micro Munitions (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 23: Energy Shield (Phalanx Defense System)
Level 26: Roomsweeper (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 29: Burning Chi Fist (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 32: Masterful Dodge
Level 35: Electric Sheath (Matter ? Energy Union)
Level 38: Ego Surge (Nimble Mind)

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Jet Boots (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 35: Athletics (Rank 2)

Specializations:
Strength: Swole (3/3)
Strength: Aggression (2/2)
Strength: Brutality (2/2)
Strength: Overpower (3/3)
Guardian: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Guardian: Locus (2/2)
Guardian: Ruthless (2/2)
Guardian: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (3/3)
Vindicator: Mass Destruction (2/3)
Mastery: Vindicator Mastery (1/1)