There are two main types of this kind of thing:
Burst damage: damage done in a spike, but then powers need to recharge a bunch.
Sustained damage: constant flow of low damage.
Burst is good in PvP because it doesn't allow the enemy to respond all that much. Sustained damage in those cases allows the enemy to flee or use inspirations or heal themselves.
However, you generally want sustained damage on an AV, because you want to slowly but constantly wear down their health bars.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
To help understand:
My widow has a great sustained damage chain. She has a very strong proc in her lowest damage dealing attack, because it recharges the most often. Over time this equates to better damage than if I had put it in my highest damage attack. I have a 4-attack chain which nets a fluid DPS and works out to be great rotation. On hard enemies like bosses and higher, I move right into the attack chain and repeat the moves until the enemy dies.
On weak enemies like minions, there's no need to do an attack chain. I could start off with minor -> moderate -> minor, but then I'm using several attacks to kill one enemy when I could've just hide-critted with my strongest attack and killed them in one hit. Doing that kills them much faster and I can move onto the next thing. I obviously can't create a chain out of just my strongest attack, but it's great burst damage for dealing with soft targets quickly.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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That makes total sense. Thanks.
Think of two characters, A and B.
A has Build Up Headsplitter, and Disembowel, and can do 1600 points of damage in two shots, in 5... every 45 seconds. (all specific numbers blatantly invented.) Over that 45 seconds they do 9000 points of damage, meaning 200 DPS.
B is a Claws scrapper, so after they doublestack Follow Up (a damage buff they can "perma") they can do 300 DPS, but it takes ten seconds to get Follow Up going, so in the first 5 seconds of the fight they only do 1000 points of damage. In 45 seconds the Claws scrapper will do [say] 13000 points of damage.
The Broadsword scrapper will do a lot more burst damage. In old PVP (issue 4-12 I think) where everyone was running around at 45 miles an hour, you could start one melee attack and maybe queue up another one during the half-second you were in melee range of the other guy, and then they would take off like the Road Runner and never come back. Broadsword/Regen did a LOT better than Claws in PVP.
They've changed everything in PVP now; it's a different game.
There are other times burst damage is a Good Thing. Sappers, Tsoo Sorcerors, anything else where you want to kill them very very fast... yeah, you could hold them but if you drop their HP to zero it's a very effective mez.
On the other hand, I soloed my first AV last month [go me!] and there was no burst damage about it. I was hitting 123242123242123242 for about ten minutes. I figure that a Stalker should be able to solo an AV, because nobody remembers Lee Harvey Oswald for shooting the governor of Texas.
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
And why is it better is some situations (PVP and AV soloing?) than ... what?... "other" damage?