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Suitability of the eight choices for SuperStats for a (gold) ranged solo PvE leveler
p4nj4kr3jn
Posts: 189 Arc User
Brief recap: I play characters from 1 to 40, as soon as I hit 40 I shelve the character and start a new one. I play solo, PvE, ranged and generally do only mission content, no alerts, adventure packs - largely because I prefer to solo and I prefer fun content. I am probably going to be wearing half Armadillo gear (for the damage resist) and half heirloom gear (for the xp). I tend to always take the Regeneration passive, more on that later.
So I am building my fifth or sixth character, having just gotten another character to 40, and it occurred to me to break down in general the suitability to my criteria of choosing each of the eight stats as Primary Super Stat.(PSS). Note: due to the Spec Trees, a stat can fail to be useful to me as a PSS, and yet still be worthwhile as a Secondary one.
The reason I am putting it on the forums instead of keeping it to my self is of course I would like everyone to check my logic, to see if given my objectives and resources, what I am saying makes sense. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
So without further ado, here is as best as I understand it, the utility of each of the eight stats as a PSS for one of my characters.
Strength: I never play melee, always ranged, so… And I solo, so I am never going to be taking a team role. Right off the bat, this seems like a non-starter for me – agreed?
Dexterity: As I understand it, taking this stat is ultimately all about getting more Crits and doing more successful Dodges. In terms of Dodging, let me take a break for a sec to address my thoughts on building a survivable character according to my criteria:
Survivability: When you solo you don’t have a healer healing (apart from yourself) or a tank taking agro for you, or other DPS pulling focus. You are going to be attacked, a lot. So you need to be tough enough to handle sustained attacks and mitigate incoming damage. My last character was a sleep based TP character, which worked fine because being solo, no one interrupted the sleep (and neither did my attacks.)
Other ways to mitigate damage are of course, dodging, using heals, and my favorite, defeating so quickly they have little time to hurt you! My favorite ultimate survivability solution is Regeneration; using Regen you really don’t need any other heal powers, and at Rank 2 or 3, it heals a LOT. Combined with blocking when needed (especially the two blocks that have the option of lingering 8-10 second AFTER you release them), choosing Regen would seem to be the ultimate one stop shop for doing PvE mission content while leveling.
However, choosing Regen mean that you are giving up your Passive slot, meaning you can’t use an Offensive Passive to add damage. That being said, it’s a lot safer to solo in Hybrid mode anyways, and there are so many ways to jack up our damage that the percentage difference between a build with Rank 3 attacks, Concentrationx8, Spec buffs, Active Offenses, AND an Active passive versus a build with “only” Rank 3 attacks, Concentrationx8, Spec buffs and Active Offenses is not even that large – perhaps 5?
So perhaps there are other avenues to being more survivable – rely on Dodge, or a high Constitution, or Active Defenses, or some combination. But each of those choices have downsides too: Dodge requires investing in Dex, and if you have no other reason to get Dex, perhaps another SS would be better and give more benefits. Ditto with investing in Constitution. Active defenses use up power picks and have longish cooldowns, especially pre-30-35. Getting one’s survivability from Regen sees easy, simple, and not costly. If anyone prefers some other defense plan when levelling Pve 0-40, I would love to hear why.
Back to Dexterity – so given the above, I don’t need it for Dodge. And PS, with my travel power of choice, Tunneling, I don’t need stealth either. But wait, you may say, what about using Dex for crits? Turns out if one is chasing Crits in Ranged PvE, the best choice seems to be Ego Primary (with Specs Insight and Sixth Sense) and Dex Secondary. Sixth Sense’s crit boost is so significant that that stacked on top of Dex Secondary get high crit number fast. (Plus Insight lowers the energy costs, too)
So, all in all it would seem a ranged PvE levelling character could afford to skip Dex as Primary as well.
Constitution: As said above, with Regen handling survivability, Con is not needed either.
Intelligence: This is one of my favorite Primary SuperStats. It let’s you see through stealth. It reduces the energy cost of powers, effectively making it seem like you have more energy. And it reduces the recharge time of powers as well. In addition is has Specs that increase Offense, Increase Hold time, Increase DPS via better damage penetration, and magnify the benefits of your secondary superstats. And that’s just for starters. Int is probably one of the stats I consider first for Primary superstat.
Ego: Ego is one of the other main contenders I consider for Primary, because among other things: it directly increase ranged damage, discounts the energy costs of ranged attacks, and it has some very nice crit boosters, to chance *and* severity.
Presence: I took this as a secondary on my last TP/Sleep character. It makes sense for a controller, but even then I did not Primary it. Other than that, not much use for a ranged PvE solo’er, amiright?
Recovery: While I may permanently take this as a Secondary all the time, taking it as primary doesn’t make much sense to me unless you are taking it for the Spec Second Wind to Stack with Int for massive recharge reduction. Even then, you would really need to build toward that trick to make it worthwhile.
Endurance: Again, while this could make a fine secondary superstat, it lacks the oomph I think to be considered a worthwhile Primary.
So if I have thought this out correctly, the best option for a solo ranged leveling PvE’er is Intelligence, or Ego if you specifically want to pursue crits above all else. Nothing else seems to be useful as Primary SuperStat f or such a playstyle.
Agree or disagree?
So I am building my fifth or sixth character, having just gotten another character to 40, and it occurred to me to break down in general the suitability to my criteria of choosing each of the eight stats as Primary Super Stat.(PSS). Note: due to the Spec Trees, a stat can fail to be useful to me as a PSS, and yet still be worthwhile as a Secondary one.
The reason I am putting it on the forums instead of keeping it to my self is of course I would like everyone to check my logic, to see if given my objectives and resources, what I am saying makes sense. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
So without further ado, here is as best as I understand it, the utility of each of the eight stats as a PSS for one of my characters.
Strength: I never play melee, always ranged, so… And I solo, so I am never going to be taking a team role. Right off the bat, this seems like a non-starter for me – agreed?
Dexterity: As I understand it, taking this stat is ultimately all about getting more Crits and doing more successful Dodges. In terms of Dodging, let me take a break for a sec to address my thoughts on building a survivable character according to my criteria:
Survivability: When you solo you don’t have a healer healing (apart from yourself) or a tank taking agro for you, or other DPS pulling focus. You are going to be attacked, a lot. So you need to be tough enough to handle sustained attacks and mitigate incoming damage. My last character was a sleep based TP character, which worked fine because being solo, no one interrupted the sleep (and neither did my attacks.)
Other ways to mitigate damage are of course, dodging, using heals, and my favorite, defeating so quickly they have little time to hurt you! My favorite ultimate survivability solution is Regeneration; using Regen you really don’t need any other heal powers, and at Rank 2 or 3, it heals a LOT. Combined with blocking when needed (especially the two blocks that have the option of lingering 8-10 second AFTER you release them), choosing Regen would seem to be the ultimate one stop shop for doing PvE mission content while leveling.
However, choosing Regen mean that you are giving up your Passive slot, meaning you can’t use an Offensive Passive to add damage. That being said, it’s a lot safer to solo in Hybrid mode anyways, and there are so many ways to jack up our damage that the percentage difference between a build with Rank 3 attacks, Concentrationx8, Spec buffs, Active Offenses, AND an Active passive versus a build with “only” Rank 3 attacks, Concentrationx8, Spec buffs and Active Offenses is not even that large – perhaps 5?
So perhaps there are other avenues to being more survivable – rely on Dodge, or a high Constitution, or Active Defenses, or some combination. But each of those choices have downsides too: Dodge requires investing in Dex, and if you have no other reason to get Dex, perhaps another SS would be better and give more benefits. Ditto with investing in Constitution. Active defenses use up power picks and have longish cooldowns, especially pre-30-35. Getting one’s survivability from Regen sees easy, simple, and not costly. If anyone prefers some other defense plan when levelling Pve 0-40, I would love to hear why.
Back to Dexterity – so given the above, I don’t need it for Dodge. And PS, with my travel power of choice, Tunneling, I don’t need stealth either. But wait, you may say, what about using Dex for crits? Turns out if one is chasing Crits in Ranged PvE, the best choice seems to be Ego Primary (with Specs Insight and Sixth Sense) and Dex Secondary. Sixth Sense’s crit boost is so significant that that stacked on top of Dex Secondary get high crit number fast. (Plus Insight lowers the energy costs, too)
So, all in all it would seem a ranged PvE levelling character could afford to skip Dex as Primary as well.
Constitution: As said above, with Regen handling survivability, Con is not needed either.
Intelligence: This is one of my favorite Primary SuperStats. It let’s you see through stealth. It reduces the energy cost of powers, effectively making it seem like you have more energy. And it reduces the recharge time of powers as well. In addition is has Specs that increase Offense, Increase Hold time, Increase DPS via better damage penetration, and magnify the benefits of your secondary superstats. And that’s just for starters. Int is probably one of the stats I consider first for Primary superstat.
Ego: Ego is one of the other main contenders I consider for Primary, because among other things: it directly increase ranged damage, discounts the energy costs of ranged attacks, and it has some very nice crit boosters, to chance *and* severity.
Presence: I took this as a secondary on my last TP/Sleep character. It makes sense for a controller, but even then I did not Primary it. Other than that, not much use for a ranged PvE solo’er, amiright?
Recovery: While I may permanently take this as a Secondary all the time, taking it as primary doesn’t make much sense to me unless you are taking it for the Spec Second Wind to Stack with Int for massive recharge reduction. Even then, you would really need to build toward that trick to make it worthwhile.
Endurance: Again, while this could make a fine secondary superstat, it lacks the oomph I think to be considered a worthwhile Primary.
So if I have thought this out correctly, the best option for a solo ranged leveling PvE’er is Intelligence, or Ego if you specifically want to pursue crits above all else. Nothing else seems to be useful as Primary SuperStat f or such a playstyle.
Agree or disagree?
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Comments
Dex PSS's dodge/avoid options are pretty meager (Con PSS 's Deflection gives better return than Dex's for dodge%), and ya give up the best dps options in the tree (EW and DA) for them. Dex PSS is best used as the pure dps option, ranged or melee- and when so its pretty much singularly focused on that.
Con PSS is decent for tanky builds, though Str PSS will typically win out due to Juggernaut + Con SS, and w/ Str offering quite more dps (and higher crits on crit-enabled heals). Adren Rush is decent w/ nice crit, Resilience gives ya knock resist w/o needing to stat Str, and Deflection can make Con PSS nice for dodge-tanks, so the tree still has some merit.
Ego PSS is like Str PSS for Ranged, though w/o the innate knock resist, but potentially a bit more dps (still usually less than Dex PSS, though). Not much else to say about it other than if ya have a ranged dps build, then its a safe pick.
Int PSS is still good and versatile, even w/ the CDR nerf inc. It doesn't have compet dps vs. some of the other tree unless ur hitting targets w/ decent resist, though, and defensively its a bit wanting (though Con SS + Expertise helps there). Best w/ AoPM builds, outside of that its more of an all-rounder tree.
Pres PSS is decent for builds focusing on Support and/or CC, and if ya can roll Vuln it can even be a compet dps option that buffs team dmg. Not as good for solo, but the self-heal boosts can be quite strong and pretty nice sometimes.
End PSS is mostly just for giving ya a huge energy pool w/ and gobs of energy w/ its Mastery. Outside of that niche, I wouldn't normally consider it, esp since its main dps option (Outburst) is only passive/'additive' dmg. May have more utility when leveling, though- to help alleviate energy problems a bit.
Rec PSS: see End PSS, but not quite as niche. It does get some pretty nice cd reduction on top of having a decent dps option (if ya can manage the 90% threshold), as well as alleviating energy issues. I'd prob consider it superior to End PSS for leveling since End Mastery doesn't come till lvl 40.
The diff between a fully decked out dps build using Regen and Hybrid role over an Offensive passive and a fitting dps role is prob going to be in the realm of 35-45%, actually, w/ 20-25% for the dps role outright, and the rest depending on how much passive dmg is stacked vs. its DR curve.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!