Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

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Jacke
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Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Jacke »

For soldiers with both Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike (thanks to AWC perks), do they combine to give their grenade and rocket attacks from concealment a 100% chance to crit?
justdont
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by justdont »

Explosives "crit" is not a crit, it's a flat roll for fixed bonus damage. It doesn't stack in any way with normal critical hits.
cerebrawl
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by cerebrawl »

justdont wrote:Explosives "crit" is not a crit, it's a flat roll for fixed bonus damage. It doesn't stack in any way with normal critical hits.
You're wrong.

And the combination of Biggest Booms, Aggression and Bring Em On is spectacular.

EDIT: Sidenote - ALL crit damage is fixed bonus. For example ballistic pistol crit damage is 1. It adds 1 to the damage roll. What Biggest Booms does is turn a weapon without crit into a weapon with crit, with a base chance of 50% and a crit damage bonus of 2(Which is the crit damage of the laser pistol IIRC).
justdont
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by justdont »

cerebrawl wrote:You're wrong.

And the combination of Biggest Booms, Aggression and Bring Em On is spectacular.
Nice to know. Thanks for pointing it out.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

justdont wrote:Explosives "crit" is not a crit, it's a flat roll for fixed bonus damage. It doesn't stack in any way with normal critical hits.
Like the guy above said, this is incorrect.

For one thing, ALL crits are just flat rolls for fixed bonus damage. The fixed damage bonus just changes with weapon tier, is all.

And yes, I've done things like shadow strike/bring'em on with explosives and holy mommaaaaaaaa it's beautiful. Even your dots get buffed. G_G incendiary grenades.
cerebrawl
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by cerebrawl »

trihero wrote:
justdont wrote:Explosives "crit" is not a crit, it's a flat roll for fixed bonus damage. It doesn't stack in any way with normal critical hits.
Like the guy above said, this is incorrect.

For one thing, ALL crits are just flat rolls for fixed bonus damage. The fixed damage bonus just changes with weapon tier, is all.

And yes, I've done things like shadow strike/bring'em on with explosives and holy mommaaaaaaaa it's beautiful. Even your dots get buffed. G_G incendiary grenades.
Yup, it's rather beautiful. It's still not the most abusive combo though.

Most abusive combo is:
Faceoff + Shadowstrike + Bring Em On. Further enhanced by Center Mass, Hunter's Instinct, Aggression, Deadshot and of course in a long mission(or you just wait out the cooldown) you can go for a repeat if you have Conceal or someone with Ghost Grenade.

I just had one of my soldiers annihilate two pods with this, 100% hit chance, 100% crit chance, hitting for about 9-12 or so with the bog standard ballistic pistol. It only gets better the more enemies there are on the screen. With enough luck and patience you could probably wipe most of a swarming mission with it in one fell swoop.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

Eh, it's still not streetsweeper level. Streetsweeper crits for 40 on unarmored targets, and still like 30 or so on armored targets. And that's without bring'em on.
Sir_Dr_D
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Sir_Dr_D »

Okay this is good to know. This makes biggest booms sound more useful then it sounds.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

Sir_Dr_D wrote:Okay this is good to know. This makes biggest booms sound more useful then it sounds.
It's already incredible as is! (for grenadiers). 50% for +2 is on average +1, which is just as good as boosted cores, and it works with your dots (poison, acid, fire). Dunno why anyone would not pick it on grenadiers.
Sir_Dr_D
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Sir_Dr_D »

Because we use grenades for blowing up cover. The damage is always too low to consider using it as damaging weapons. But if it scales with other critical perks that makes it sound more interesting.
cerebrawl
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by cerebrawl »

trihero wrote:Eh, it's still not streetsweeper level. Streetsweeper crits for 40 on unarmored targets, and still like 30 or so on armored targets. And that's without bring'em on.
Can you streetsweeper the whole map? Plasma pistol version of this will crit everything in view for about 20 damage.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

Grenades do very good damage against trashy mobs, it's only against bullet sponges (30+ hp enemies) that they feel like a waste of time.
Can you streetsweeper the whole map? Plasma pistol version of this will crit everything in view for about 20 damage.
Maybe you should try streetsweeper, its range/aoe is very reasonable. There's a pretty big difference between 20 and 40 as well, and yes it's relevant on legend against greater archons/elite mutons, etc.

I ain't saying faceoff/ss/boe is bad at all, don't get me wrong. That's one way to turn a lowly specialist into a beast :lol:
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3tamatulg
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by 3tamatulg »

trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

That's pretty convincing, especially when you factor that most targets were in high cover o.O

I wonder if we've been missing out on the shinobi shadowstrike pistolier. I know it's been suggested and tried before, but maybe it's time to make it mainstream? O_O

What kind of ammo syncs best with that? Talons for obvious crit synergy, or maybe some of the +2 damage ammo depending on what targets you consider the most threatening?
Jacke
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:That's pretty convincing, especially when you factor that most targets were in high cover o.O

I wonder if we've been missing out on the shinobi shadowstrike pistolier. I know it's been suggested and tried before, but maybe it's time to make it mainstream? O_O

What kind of ammo syncs best with that? Talons for obvious crit synergy, or maybe some of the +2 damage ammo depending on what targets you consider the most threatening?
That's a rather amazing action. Even for an Assault using Faceoff. That's the Shadowkeeper Pistol, but is it upgraded? So many hits and crits in high cover for 24 or more damage. And if he kills his last target, he's concealed to boot. :)

Okay, I can see how the Aim and Crit chance was so high. But the weakest hit I saw was 21 (and the strongest enemy had 10hp). How so much damage?

And this definitely looks like a multi-pod cracker with Shadowstrike. Definitely a possibility with Talon Rounds on a Shinobi or an Assault with the right AWC perks. And an Assault could at least get the crit chance the same with Run and Gun and Killer Instinct. With enough Aim....

And if backed up by a Holotargeting Sharpshooter with HiDef Holo, Vital Point Targeting, and Multitargeting....
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

For assault it seems ok. I was actually thinking the ranger who has inherent access to both bring'em on and aggression, which are fine picks for a non-OW ranger. If you take bring'em on and aggression on assault, you are really giving up some nice things like extra conditioning and CCS/untouchable.

The damage is believable, plasma pistol min is 5 damage, crit damage is 3, he probably uses talon so another +1, with 20 enemies in sight it's +10 from bring'em on. That's 19 on the low end.

I wonder if it's "worth it" on a shinobi even without supporting AWC perks. That just adds immense burst/aoe damage on a shinobi that can swing the battle instead of always just sitting there watching the battle. Even without bring'em on that's still pretty a respectable 10 damage to everything on the screen without gimmicky high end perks like serial/reaper.
Jacke
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:The damage is believable, plasma pistol min is 5 damage, crit damage is 3, he probably uses talon so another +1, with 20 enemies in sight it's +10 from bring'em on. That's 19 on the low end.
That's the Shadowkeeper Pistol the Assault is firing in the video. Does its damage go up automatically when new Pistol techs are researched? I thought it had its own special upgrade from somewhere?

And you're right, that would be a wicked burst AoE from a Shinobi even without AWC perks to boost it. Or an Assault or a Ranger whether or not their builds had Aggression or Bring 'Em On.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

To be more specific for the sword you have to do stun lancer/archon autopsies to get those upgrades, the boltcaster/pistol are through mag/plasma researches, and the frost bomb can't be upgraded directly (although of course it does get better radius with advanced nade launcher). You find the separate upgrades in the purchase weapons tab.
Jadiel
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Jadiel »

Killer Instinct also gives +50% crit *damage* which with BEO and talon rounds means your crit damage is up to +18 with high level pistols.
trihero
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by trihero »

This is making me itchy to really test faceoff builds, especially without shadowstrike since it's getting harder to farm shadowstrike from the AWC (they added more perks).

Bring'em on with killer instincts sounds....absurd, but you'd have to find a way to compensate for the assault's aim. I'd like to be able to get it to work without shadowstrike, and through high cover, to make it a reliable strategy. I wonder what conditions would optimize this, of course you'd need to have the shadowkeeper's aim, and unfortunately primary weapon mods don't affect the secondary, so that is out.
Jacke
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Re: Biggest Booms and Shadowstrike Together

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:...but you'd have to find a way to compensate for the assault's aim. I'd like to be able to get it to work without shadowstrike, and through high cover, to make it a reliable strategy. I wonder what conditions would optimize this, of course you'd need to have the shadowkeeper's aim, and unfortunately primary weapon mods don't affect the secondary, so that is out.
You could take the highest aim Rookie you can find and make him an Assault through the GTS.

As for putting weapons mods on a pistol, even the mod Customize Secondary Weapons wouldn't help. Unless you modded the LW2 INIs for the Assault soldier class so they could take a Pistol as a secondary weapon. Don't know how that would end up working with LW2 as it is now.
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