[Megathread] The Division 2

[Edge-]

TIL: Hive cooldown is based on the total number of charges, not per-charge.

Got a +4 Stinger mod (I didn't have one, was using 10% range from Tactician instead) and my charges went from 14-18, and the per-charge recharge from 1.6s to 1.3s.

Assuming I get all the stingers off, that's what, like a 28% damage increase from that mod alone? And with no real downside other than a slightly smaller radius? Ain't bad at 'tal.

Edit: Crafting still fucking sucks so god-damned hard. The massive RNG nature of color rolls coupled with the even more RNG nature of how good the rolls will be layered on top of a third layer of talent RNG is awful. And then add in that you can craft a whopping 20ish pieces of a set item and you're left with being largely screwed if you're looking for something that's decent, or even functional.

Trying to swap my Murakami chest out for Wyvern and my Wyvern back out for Hana-U so I can rock 3p Hanna /1p China Light/1p Wyvern and the BTSU gloves and I was able to get a reasonably decent chest, but every single Hana backpack was the hottest of hot garbage. Rainbows for dddaaaayyyyysssss. Curious to how the 5% weapon damage buff could affect my build (the 20% repair from Murakami is useless), but I guess I still get some utility out of the 2P Wyvern for 10% status. Only other thing I can really think of is 2P China for more skill haste.

Target farming is nice at least, but I guess I'm farming the shit outta some Hana to hope I get a drop while scrapping everything for more Hana parts.

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Threw together a probably pretty generic AR build with Emeline's as an off-weapon for regen.

Coyote
2P W&H
1P Fenris
Fox's Prayer
Contractors
Gunner spec with all red nodes (minus an armor regen little blue one)
Garbage MK16 I had that I could toss Strained onto
Revive hive/crusader shield

Stats are firmly meh, but it's working surprisingly well. Shreds solo heroic pretty hard, and still doing respectable damage in a full group (critting upwards of 600k). However I got to thinking...

Future Perfect is a pretty rad talent. And while gunner has some nice perks for AR, Tactician works just fine as well and is +1 Skill Tier for free.

Basically, it's more or less a full weapon damage build as usual, but with Future Perfect, 2 Skill Tier nodes so you're at 6 after a few kills, and you roll with Riot Foam (12+ seconds of CC with 7 shots) and Assault Drone (works both as a pretty solid damage boost and also a distraction for enemies to shoot at instead of you). Would allow you to even swap your armor talent to Spotter, which should absolutely be a nice weapon damage boost over something like Obliterate.

I'm gonna have to do some testing on this tomorrow after I play around with this vanilla build some more.

However, got Merciless and holy shit that talent seems absolutely bananas. Will be testing in place of Emeline's as my off weapon for now.

After testing...Will need to figure out a Merciless build, it's garbage with my base AR build. Whipped up a functional version of the Future Perfect build and...it's not as good as I'd hoped. I need to test more, but I kidna don't like that your active skills dynamically go up/down as you gain/lose charges. Was kinda hoping to be able to abuse it to keep up a Tier 6 Assault Drone for the most part. That and the weapon damage alone isn't quite there to keep the buff up in groups, it's annoying when your own Assault Drone snipes the last hit on a dude and you end up losing your stacks to boot.

[Coldkil]

What does that mean?

AFAIK Grenadiers have always lead player movement. But what's new with snipers?

They had changed grenadier archetype behaviour to be less accurate the more far away you were, and it worked for some time but then they seem reverted to the old behaviour.

It's just annoying. The only times i die is when i either go full derp RAMBO HURR DURR and when an homing grenade from the moon oneshots me. Or the blowing kamikaze but there it's me not paying attention.

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My recommendation is to find a build that you REALLY enjoy playing, and focus on gathering gear for that. Don't worry about what someone else tells you is the "best" gear, because they're only speaking for themselves and not an objective truth.

@Popastique must double down on this. "best" applies only to specific situation. If i had to say anything, the safest build/playstyle you can pick is the "FULL RED" shooter - it works 100% of the time, every time. You can use any weapon you like, and only a single piece changes basically. Negotiator Dilemma set is a great tool especially in solo.

But it's basically due only to game mechanics. Everything in the world at heroic difficulty is super dangerous, so "the best defense is offense": you cannot die if there's no one shooting at you. Group play is generally easier as enemies are beefier but there are more targets so you're actually in less danger.

Only real places where you "need" specific builds are Raids and Legendary. There are specific mechanics to counter (especially in Raid), so you need a specific build to make things easier. Example, on second boss of the new raid, i have a 3red/3yellow drone/demolisher firefly with Harmony and Sweet Dreams for the specific task of dealing with 2 exact mobs that spawn and disrupt the fight. Without entering in detail, it's always a purple guy i oneshot with the Sweet Dreams, and a True Sons tank i disaptch easily by blowing his grenade backpack with the Firefly and shooting him dead. It's a peculiar build, not really performing everywhere, but stellar there. I can do the work of 2 people by myself this way, making the whole fight easier.

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-snip-

Dammit you found a way to use Mechanical Animal reliably. Definitely gonna try that tonight. 1 Fenris, Coyote, the rest a mix of Providence and WH&C. I wouldn't really go for the Contractor/Fox as the nerfed stats don't make them as good as they were, especially since the specific weapon damage is useless. I coukd focus on Crit and ditch providence for 1 Ceska and one Grupo Sombra - i have a couple of god rolled ones.

As for talents, Spotter is the way to go since you have free pulse with the Tech underbarrel mod. Dunno what to use as Backpack, as i don't think there are talents that benefit both skills and weapon damage.

DANG i just finished Directive and now i want to farm another build One thing only: Harmony is still an insane buff with that 40% to weapon and skill damage. I'm used to see big damage going, so hopefully we're on par.

EDIT: it's gonna be another solo build. As multiple talents/procs/special effect that trigger on kill, if you're not the one doing the killing blow you're done. This they need to fix asap.

[Popastique]

Thanks for the answers and info, appreciate it !

[SirCowdog]

. Dunno what to use as Backpack, as i don't think there are talents that benefit both skills and weapon damage.

EP backpack talent. Read it carefully.

Requires a way to apply status effects, but is an amplify effect.

[Coldkil]

EP backpack talent. Read it carefully.

Requires a way to apply status effects, but is an amplify effect.

Yeah, that is an idea but you're losing a stat roll and brand bonuses, and as you said you need reliable status effect application. Which can be covered by Riot Foam though (though i'm pretty sure Pulse was counted as status at least before the expansion?).

I was thinking about using it with Directive since you always have bleed on enemies - though i think i'm gonna ditch the backpack and Vile aswell for Anarchist and Contractor and see if the focus on direct weapon damage (which affects both the Pestilence dot and the bleed itself) gives better results. Right now tanks are just a pain. If i get lucky in raid and drop the Regulus, i could try with the pistol.

Tanks and dogs are a pain for everything that's not full red or drone.
EDIT: they should really add some exotic weapon/gear that boost specific skills. Acosta is meh at best, Harmony/Animal are really good additions but we need something more.

[SirCowdog]

Yeah, that is an idea but you're losing a stat roll and brand bonuses, and as you said you need reliable status effect application. Which can be covered by Riot Foam though (though i'm pretty sure Pulse was counted as status at least before the expansion?).

I was thinking about using it with Directive since you always have bleed on enemies - though i think i'm gonna ditch the backpack and Vile aswell for Anarchist and Contractor and see if the focus on direct weapon damage (which affects both the Pestilence dot and the bleed itself) gives better results. Right now tanks are just a pain. If i get lucky in raid and drop the Regulus, i could try with the pistol.

Tanks and dogs are a pain for everything that's not full red or drone.
EDIT: they should really add some exotic weapon/gear that boost specific skills. Acosta is meh at best, Harmony/Animal are really good additions but we need something more.

Yeah, the loss of brand bonuses and an attribute hurts. But the question is if the amplification damage outweighs that brand bonus and lame backpack talent.

[Coldkil]

Yeah, the loss of brand bonuses and an attribute hurts. But the question is if the amplification damage outweighs that brand bonus and lame backpack talent.

Yeah, reason why i'm gonna try it on Directive aswell. I'm not sure it will work since the double bleed damage is pretty strong, and if i wanted to go full on weapon damage, i would use something else instead of the Vile aswell. However i could go with a full skill based setup with 2 Directive, 2 Eclipse, Vile and a Spotter chest. Sticky/Bleed seeker and Harmony rifle. Status on everything and have that roll.

EDIT: on Directive, to use the Eclipse chest i'm gonna also lose Contractor's. Don't think that tradeoff is really worth - until again i drop Vile. I'm gonna farm the mechanical animal build Edge- suggested tonight if i'm not doing the raid. BTW, we finished it, last boss is super fun imho. We gave the first Ravenous to the clan leader, and that gun is so freaking strong it hurts.

[Edge-]

Apparently I already swapped the gloves to W&H for the 3 piece, but I'll try out the crit gloves and rotate some crit off my weapon for crit damage. Feel like that will likely be better.

I just need to replace/update some pieces as they're shared between sets so have less good recalibrations that are key for other builds.

@Coldkil Mechanical Animal doesn't work, I totally forgot I tried it last night. It's a short barrel weapon so you can't put the laser on it. Which is really annoying/dumb : /

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...did they break enemy aggression again? Because logging in this morning holy hell does it feel like EVERY fucking enemy is just running straight at me all the time. Not just shotgun rushers and whatnot, but like, machine gun dudes with helmets and medics and everything else.

Legit, it feels like packs are spawning and fighting everywhere, and for the life of me I can barely do a CP without having 2-3 roaming groups (not supply convoys or anything) stumble across them or run into group after group while getting to a CP, all of which aggro from super far away.

Getting kinda annoyed with this because I'm getting constantly fucked from behind.

[Coldkil]

Apparently I already swapped the gloves to W&H for the 3 piece, but I'll try out the crit gloves and rotate some crit off my weapon for crit damage. Feel like that will likely be better.

I just need to replace/update some pieces as they're shared between sets so have less good recalibrations that are key for other builds.

@Coldkil Mechanical Animal doesn't work, I totally forgot I tried it last night. It's a short barrel weapon so you can't put the laser on it. Which is really annoying/dumb : /

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...did they break enemy aggression again? Because logging in this morning holy hell does it feel like EVERY fucking enemy is just running straight at me all the time. Not just shotgun rushers and whatnot, but like, machine gun dudes with helmets and medics and everything else.

Legit, it feels like packs are spawning and fighting everywhere, and for the life of me I can barely do a CP without having 2-3 roaming groups (not supply convoys or anything) stumble across them or run into group after group while getting to a CP, all of which aggro from super far away.

Getting kinda annoyed with this because I'm getting constantly fucked from behind.

damn. well, gonna rock a Spark chest instead (named sombra) and ignore spotter. as for mobs aggression, i had the same impression.

then i started using directive, and eclipse solo (sticky+bleed seeker). they run like chickens and die.

ps: double pressing the button of the sticky makes you fire it immediately where you're aiming and it feels so good. much more reliable than aiming manually

[Edge-]

then i started using directive, and eclipse solo (sticky+bleed seeker). they run like chickens and die.

It's weird. They're either like, hyper aggressive and constantly spawning all around me and ruining my fucking day, or half the group splits off in different directions and just keeps running until they aggro another patrol/event and force me to deal with that nonsense too.

I swear, mob behavior remains one of the worst parts of the game. If they're not annoying aggressive/cowardly, they're having seizures so that you can't freakin line up a headshot.

[Coldkil]

It's weird. They're either like, hyper aggressive and constantly spawning all around me and ruining my fucking day, or half the group splits off in different directions and just keeps running until they aggro another patrol/event and force me to deal with that nonsense too.

I swear, mob behavior remains one of the worst parts of the game. If they're not annoying aggressive/cowardly, they're having seizures so that you can't freakin line up a headshot.

totally agree. you either have kamikaze guys who ignore basically everything and fully unloading an LMG in their face makes them only angrier and shoot harder; or you get those super afraid guys that since can shoot with their smg super precisely from the moon, they just keep turtling back to oblivion.

last but not least the "super sprint". they're all usain bolts and you're unable to hit them. if you do the same, you're dead in 2 shots.

EDIT: well, i managed to record a video - i'm not good at this. Anyway, here's a screen of my Directive build gear, then here's a link for a video of the build in action.


VIDEO

[SirCowdog]

Chem launcher AND sticky?

[Coldkil]

Chem launcher AND sticky?

It's the healing chem. I use sticky only at fight start or for tanks (cause it's really effective) since the special bullets provide the bleeding themselves - also most of the time it's on CD since i use the skill directive.

EDIT: things you don't see in the pic - mods are all skill durations since it makes the fire from sticky to last longer, and also helps a lot with chem. All rolls are WD and status effect, with the Contractor's having armor damage (which is applied to everything, dots included).

[SirCowdog]

EDIT: things you don't see in the pic - mods are all skill durations since it makes the fire from sticky to last longer

Are you sure about that? It was my understanding that Skill Duration only effects things like how long deployables last. Debuffs like fire, blind, bleed, etc, are only increased by Status Effects.

Or did they change that?

[Coldkil]

Are you sure about that? It was my understanding that Skill Duration only effects things like how long deployables last. Debuffs like fire, blind, bleed, etc, are only increased by Status Effects.

Or did they change that?

Didn't know that, may be the case - i just did guesswork. Anyway, 3 skill haste rolls are pretty useless aswell, cannot wait to have free mods so i can just go crit or protection from elites if i want to be tankier in solo. Easily swappable aswell depending on the context.

They really need to revamp the mods. Most of them are useless as hell. Give us less of them, but more interesting and applicable to more skills (like bleed damage, or procs or interactions between skill and shooting).
EDIT: i'd pay a soul and a half for a lifestealing mod for drone. Tuned well, it would make drone more sustainable and still require investment since a lvl 0 drone would have negligible lifesteal.

[Edge-]

Playing my Mantis build again and...man, it just shits all over everything else I've tried. Other builds can be fun, but in terms of effectiveness the Mantis build dominates. Easy to get HH rolling, and after 1 kill I can just take out one dude after another unless they've got a helmet on, then maybe a few hits. Mantis makes headshotting to much easier, and decoy helps give me time to more casually line up shots. It ain't fancy, but it's damn effective.

Played in a group with a CC character that was using riot form (and I think shock trap) and...it legitimately wasn't even fair. Foamed groups as they spawned and just let me lazily pick them all off one by one. I actually felt bad for the other dudes my my group (some kinda skill build and...I don't remember the fourth guy), because by the end I'd racked up almost all the kills due to having functional target dummies to shoot at.

And the dumbest part is that the build absolutely seems to shred harder with Burn Out than my AR build does, and it's got 3P Araldi in it. Part of it's the much higher rate of fire, but that sucker is easily critting for 500K headshots on the regular, and if I reload from empty the 40% weapon handling shreds even harder as I'm getting more headshots. Just wish that buffs like that weapon handling on full reload refreshed, there really seem to be a lot of buffs in the game that fire but won't refresh.

Oh well, more headshots galore shall be in my near future. Guess I should try to pug the raids at some point or something, I do wanna play around with Eagle Bearer and some of the other raid specific gear at some point.

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Didn't know that, may be the case - i just did guesswork. Anyway, 3 skill haste rolls are pretty useless aswell, cannot wait to have free mods so i can just go crit or protection from elites if i want to be tankier in solo. Easily swappable aswell depending on the context.

It's kinda silly how many more ways to gain damage weapon builds to vs. skill builds. I mean.

Weapon damage
Crit damage
Crit chance
Weapon handling (I'll roll all those into one since they're individually less effective)
Damage to health
Damage to armor
Rate of fire

And I'm probably forgetting a few. Skills have...

Skill damage
Skill haste (seems to only affect cooldowns)
Skill duration (I guess also only affects actual skills themselves)

And that's pretty much it.

I mean, I get it that skill builds are also doing weapon damage at the same time, but it's usually such a small/trivial amount. Even with my skill build and a pretty darned good roll on my AR with spotter, it takes the better part of a full mag to kill a red dude in a 4 man group on heroic.

I mean, it's balanced "alright" I suppose, just feels/seems kinda underwhelming.

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Been seeing shotgun players extolling the virtues of Braced on chest as a way to make the guns more effective at range. Honestly, I've never much cared for the weapon handling stats outside of reload, as my opinion has been "I would rather pump damage elsewhere and compensate by aiming better" (for accuracy/stability).

But it got me thinking and I swapped it on my chest for my AR build and swapped to my perfect rolled Burn Out. So that's 45% handling from chest + 40% from my weapon for 10 seconds on full reload. With a weapon that outputs 900RPM and a 50 round magazine. To sum it up

Hi-fucking-larious

Still tinkering with gear a bit and will need to trade a bunch of crit for crit damage if I want to really see how it works, but holy hell does bullet spread basically not become a thing, and with the buff rolling my reload goes from 2.3s down to like .4 seconds or something absolutely disgusting, it barely interrupts my firing.

Need to test it more, but for now I'm feeling minorly validated by swapping something like Obliteration for it.

Trying with my perfect MK17 with boomerang on it and holy shit there literally is no recoil with just braced alone. 1M regular crits.

Trying to figure out what secondary skill to run beyond revive hive though. Tried crusader shield but it's bloody useless at skill tier 0, thinking of trying CC foam as I imagine something like repair drone at 0 would be largely useless and easily nuked.

[SirCowdog]

It's kinda silly how many more ways to gain damage weapon builds to vs. skill builds. I mean.

Skills have...

Skill damage
Skill haste (seems to only affect cooldowns)
Skill duration (I guess also only affects actual skills themselves)

And that's pretty much it.

Yeah, but each individual skill also has mods too, similar to how guns have mods. Although those generally aren't significant. 5% radius on chem launcher really doesn't matter.

I hope when they do the overall pass for mods that they look into ways to spice things up. But given how every time Massive changes one thing, they screw up two others....maybe they should just leave it alone. XD

Been seeing shotgun players extolling the virtues of Braced on chest as a way to make the guns more effective at range.

I never even considered that. I guess it could work. But even if weapon handling reduces the spread and stability, it won't do anything for optimal range....which is the real problem with most shotguns.

I guess you could use some mod slots to increase optimal range, but that comes atbthe expense of other options. So now you're in a position where you're giving up a chest talent and weapon mods. When really you could just be using a rifle for better effect at longer range.

It would be interesting to see some video footage of it though. I doubt it would top the Ninjabike Kneepads/Intimidate/Adrenalin Rush build tho.

[Edge-]

I never even considered that. I guess it could work. But even if weapon handling reduces the spread and stability, it won't do anything for optimal range....which is the real problem with most shotguns.

Yeah, that approach doesn't really appeal to me.

With my current setup I'm feeling like my damage is low and getting some better pieces that will let me rotate more from headshot damage to crit damage will help quite a bit. Need to try a heroic solo proper, but played the start of DARPA solo and the build was definitely shredding more like I want it to. Damage just isn't quite there for groups.

Going back and forth between Contractors for the armor damage (since that's what I really need, my health damage is plenty fine) and trying to get a piece of the brand set that gives 15% crit damage as the first bonus to fill out my gear. It's either one of those or 3p W&H (other 3 are Fox's Prayer, Fenrus, and Coyote). But honestly not sure which will give me the most bang for my buck right now.

Edit: OH HELL I CAN TRY BULLET KING AND THAT'LL WORK GRAND WITH CONTRACTORS! So much for sleep, more testing!


Edit 2: Bullet King sucks. HOWEVER MERCILESS BECOMES PRETTY RAD SINCE THE KICK IS ABSOLUTLEY CONTROLLABLE. This is all based on target dummy testing. Getting 800K headshot hits with that with the explosion hitting for 1.2M, will be trying in place of MK17 to see how that rolls.

Finally found a decent Grupo Sombra piece, so now rocking 1P Fenrus, 2P W&H, Fox's Prayer, and 1P GS. With Burn Out -

106.5K Weapon dmg
33% Crit Hit (usually sitting closer to 50-60% due to Coyote)
96% Crit dmg (usually over 100% due to Coyote)
81% HS damage
11% Armor dmg
21% Weapon dmg

Damnit all I need to sleep but I also NEED to test this out now.

Did invaded roosevelt, went far smoother than expected. Damage seems to be better with Burn Out and Merciless is performing admirably. But it..kinda seems like stacks aren't working properly because I should have absolutely had at least 2 explosions laying into a heavy at close range (I couldn't have missed more than 1 shot) and only got 1 and part of another.

Will need to test/tweak more, and especially will need to figure out a secondary skill to use, but so far I'm liking this as a very easy, stupid, straight forward "hold button to kill" build.

[Advent]

I'm amazed the game is still popping. I think I got to level 30 and just stopped because I had no idea what I was doing. The systems, stats and gear were really beyond me, kind of like Warframe was at the start.

[Coldkil]

-snip-

I'm finding the Sticky being the go-to secondary skill. Main one is always the heal chem because it's just way more effective than anything else. Also, if you play with the skill directive, the ress Hive is useless. With the sticky, you can have a little CC tool for named/tanks as usually other guys just drop like leaves.

I definitely want a Carnage to add to my Directive build. Pestilence is really good at dealing with normal enemies since the dot jumps and stacks, becoming pretty nasty in no time. Tanks however are just a pain, and the dot doesn't work well at all - since applying a bleed is automatic with Directive due to the special ammo, the Perfect Saidist is always up (and i can get special ammo also for that if i kill anything that has a status on).

Only things i have issues with are robodogs and such. Pestilence is good cause the dot compensates, but i think i'm gonna pick the EMP sticky since it counts as a status (for the dmg bonus from Survivalist) and it disables such proxies.

EDIT: i think i now want to work with a SMG build. Thinking about a 4red/2blue or such, shield and standard combo with bonus armor and intimidate. I have a well rolled Cold Relations with perfect vindictive and i want to try it.