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Revisit to the Kinetic Cutting Beam (and omni-directional beams) 2019
nephitis
Member Posts: 456 Arc User
in The Academy
Question:
What do you people think of the viability of the Kinetic Cutting Beam [CritD, DMGx5] and the Omni-directional Antiproton Support Beam [CritDx4, DMG] and a crafted omni-directional antiproton beam [CritDx4, DMG]... together with four regular antiproton beam arrays [CritDx2, DMGx4] and the Kentari Mass-Produced Missile Launcer [CritDx5, DMG]? Would you think I might be better of with a full setup of regular beams?
Details:
So I am currently flying the Vaadwaur Miracle Worker Juggernaut and I am currently experimenting with the aft weaponry like omni-directional beams. I know the Kinetic Cutting Beam only does kinetic damage which is why I went with DMGx5 to get the most out of it, and also because the Juggernaut starship trait does not affect it. As such it only gets my innate critical hit chance.
And the reason why I focused on CritD for the other two omni-directional beams is mainly because they already lose some raw damage because of the [ARC] modifier, but makes up with it thanks to its 360 degree range. It allows them to fire nearly at all times and they can therefore make use of that extra 10% critical hit chance from the starship trait. I know the Support Beam of the Competitive Reputation is not optimal because it has reduced damage, which is also why I gave it [CritDx4, DMG] to compensate. I like being able to re-engineer my weapons.
My current innate CritH is 36.5% and I have yet to complete the CritH tree of the Endeavour system. My hope is to eventually raise that CritH to 43.5%. My innate critical severity is 160%. Note that these are my innate values. I have starship traits that boost both damage, critical hit chance and critical severity by at roughly 40% damage, 4.5% CritH and 20% critical severity.
The reason why I am testing omni-directional beams is not because my ship turns too slow. It is because I generally fly and turn extremely fast with this Juggernaut. It makes it hard to fully utilize a consistent broadside at times. This is a build that combines and emphasizes raw damage, critical damage and ship mobility. If you watch the video below you can see my predicament. I am generally able to keep them in my 10 and 2 a'clock.
So what do you guys think? Keep or replace the omni-directional beams?
This is a very exciting build and I am open to ideas!
Video:
https://youtu.be/rE3e8TP8dBM
What do you people think of the viability of the Kinetic Cutting Beam [CritD, DMGx5] and the Omni-directional Antiproton Support Beam [CritDx4, DMG] and a crafted omni-directional antiproton beam [CritDx4, DMG]... together with four regular antiproton beam arrays [CritDx2, DMGx4] and the Kentari Mass-Produced Missile Launcer [CritDx5, DMG]? Would you think I might be better of with a full setup of regular beams?
Details:
So I am currently flying the Vaadwaur Miracle Worker Juggernaut and I am currently experimenting with the aft weaponry like omni-directional beams. I know the Kinetic Cutting Beam only does kinetic damage which is why I went with DMGx5 to get the most out of it, and also because the Juggernaut starship trait does not affect it. As such it only gets my innate critical hit chance.
And the reason why I focused on CritD for the other two omni-directional beams is mainly because they already lose some raw damage because of the [ARC] modifier, but makes up with it thanks to its 360 degree range. It allows them to fire nearly at all times and they can therefore make use of that extra 10% critical hit chance from the starship trait. I know the Support Beam of the Competitive Reputation is not optimal because it has reduced damage, which is also why I gave it [CritDx4, DMG] to compensate. I like being able to re-engineer my weapons.
My current innate CritH is 36.5% and I have yet to complete the CritH tree of the Endeavour system. My hope is to eventually raise that CritH to 43.5%. My innate critical severity is 160%. Note that these are my innate values. I have starship traits that boost both damage, critical hit chance and critical severity by at roughly 40% damage, 4.5% CritH and 20% critical severity.
The reason why I am testing omni-directional beams is not because my ship turns too slow. It is because I generally fly and turn extremely fast with this Juggernaut. It makes it hard to fully utilize a consistent broadside at times. This is a build that combines and emphasizes raw damage, critical damage and ship mobility. If you watch the video below you can see my predicament. I am generally able to keep them in my 10 and 2 a'clock.
So what do you guys think? Keep or replace the omni-directional beams?
This is a very exciting build and I am open to ideas!
Video:
https://youtu.be/rE3e8TP8dBM 0
Comments
I am not sure I understand the core issue though, are you saying that the ship is too fast to keep things at a broadside angle? From watching your video, you seem to have mobility down, so if that's the case.. then have you considered dual beams up front?
Generally speaking, if you're using single beams up front.. it's best to use them all around. The Jugger should have no problem broadsiding, but if you're using a lot of speed enhancements and flying around maybe you should consider keeping the nose facing your enemy and using dual beams or even cannons/turrets.
The easiest way to fly the ship is going to be 7 beams and an Omni.. probably the Trilithium for the Speed Tweaks. That should give you a nice, easy, broad side build with respectable damage. Now, this is not to say that you can't fly with Singles up front and Omni's in the back.. this is just a question of if that is the most fun for you. If that set up is more enjoyable for you to fly and you're ok with the mild damage trade off from a 'pure broadside' build.. then I always advise going with what you enjoy over pushing for every last damage point.
Watching the Video though, I don't see any issues with mobility.. you seem to be able to zip around and a lot of the time you actually have your opponents in a 90' front arc anyway. You might want to pick up some cheap Dual Beams off the exchange and play with those using your Omni's. While I am not a huge fan of DBB's, they do hit harder then single beams and might be fun to give it a try.
Right now, the Juggernaut with Cannons is the highest DPS build going, but I it's definitely not easy. The biggest argument against DBB's is that it's the same amount of effort as Cannons, just with far less pay off since Cannons greatly outperform beams.
The easiest way to run a beam build on the Juggernaut is definitely a standard broad side build. It won't hit has hard as Cannons or DBB but it should be easy enough to keep on target.
I am still confused as to why Omni's would be used in a Single Beam build. I can't really see any advantage to that at all.
I might give cannons a try though I am not a big fan of being stationary. And if I do I would need to replace Pedal to the Medal with a different starship trait. Perhaps something that would directly boost cannons. I have seen some pretty interesting variations of it with other players flying the Juggernaut and their results seem to have been quite impressive from what I have observed. Would you recommend turrets for cannon build?
Or I may try the DBB solution that you are suggesting. It seems quite doable and would call up the need for omni-directional beams even more.
I don't have much problems with damage output but there might always be a tiny detail that I may have missed. I have reached the point of min-maxing with this ship and appreciate your input. It is always fun to try something new and squeeze out that little extra if it can be identified and explored. Even if it means overhauling my current build. I certainly have some things to explore now!
You can get some ideas from the DPS League suggested builds if that helps, and I will also link my build for my Miracle Worker Battlecruiser. It's not exactly the same as the Juggernaut, but it's similar and you might be able to pull some ideas from it.
I will however say this.. if you're going back and forth between Dual Beam Banks and Cannons.. I would absolutely go cannons. Dual Beam Banks are not in a good place right now, while they do respectable damage, they come with the same draw backs of cannons (narrow front firing arc) but DBB's do far less damage. It ends up playing out that DBBs require the same effort with none of the payout. If you do run it with Cannons though, I definitely recommend you slot the trait Withering Barrage if you have access to it. In an Aux2Bat build, using that trait.. you can keep Scatter Volley up around 96% of the time which is really nice.
Anyways, I changed those stats to CritDx5, DMG and noticed some pretty interesting results. Sure, the weapon does kinetic damage and won't do much damage to shields. With my build the Kinetic Cutting Beam will crit for 2000~ damage against shields and non-critically hit for 700 dmg ish. More or less what regular beams do against shields except that much of their damage goes through to the hull as shield bleedthrough, something which the Kinetic Cutting Beam seems to do much less of if at all.
Now, what I found out with a full CritD Kinetic Cutting Beam is that it does tremendous damage once those shields are down. Significantly more so than what regular beams do which I think is interesting. I could have gotten the numbers wrong but I saw numbers over 10 000 damage against hull with the Kinetic Cutting Beam and no Alpha and Omega buffs etc.
And with 7 other beam arrays that strip shields the Kinetic Cutting Beam gets to shine a little bit. In the past this weapon never caught my eye but I will play around with it some more.
As for it's damage, the KCB has always been capable of pretty respectable spike damage. The reason it's seldom used anymore though is because of the fact that Bridge Officer Powers don't effect it, and the fact that you still get overall DPS gains by replacing it with an Omni that's part of a Set like the Trilithium Omni for example. The desirability of the 2pc bonus isn't as high as it used to be so it's been largely phased out in most higher end builds.
The only way to really see which one has a higher net gain for you is to parse your runs and compare them. If you're not interested in pushing the absolute max DPS and you're happy with the gains you're getting from your currently equipped item, then there is no reason not to continue to use it.