It's not going to make a meaningful difference. It doesn't fire off that often. If you want to boost your damage, spec into munitions and take surveillance.
If you want to solo bosses easily, take both taser and beanbag and kill the bosses at your leisure as they do the drunk walk.
I do have surveillance already (although it really needs to be better slotted) I was just debating the value of turning burst into a random debuff as well.
I've considered respecing to take Taser the problem is that I already have two single target mezzes (Beanbag and Cryo Freeze Ray) which is sufficient for most situations and I consider Cryo Freeze Ray to be more useful overall than Taser (although as you noted the ability to stack with Beanbag is a plus for Taser)
Being able to stack the same mez is key. I think cryo freeze ray is the waste largely because beanbag is all you need if you need a ranged option. Taser doesn't need a lot of slots...just 1 acc in the default with a well slotted beanbag is more than enough to keep a boss stunned.
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Achilles' Heel fires off often enough for it to make a substantial benefit if you actually use the attack reasonably often. The important thing to remember is that, in order to see a decent return, you need to actually use the power reasonably often.|
Originally Posted by Fury_Flechette
It's not going to make a meaningful difference. It doesn't fire off that often. If you want to boost your damage, spec into munitions and take surveillance.
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Surveillance is, of course, the better option simply because it's trading 1.716 seconds every ~20 seconds for a 14% reduction in resistance. AH has the advantage of trading no animation time (because it's a proc) for a chance at a 20% reduction in resistance for 10 seconds. The uptime is then related to how often you actually check it. If you check 4 times every 10 seconds (re: use an average of 4 attacks with an AH proc slotted every 10 seconds), you're going to average 11.81% -res. If you check 6 times, you'll average 14.76%.
The AH proc isn't really all that wonderful when put into an attack that isn't often used but if you put it into an attack that you use almost every other time (which you should be using as often as possible simply because it's your best ST attack), it's a wonderful contributor.
True, I've considered it before I just really like the animation for Cryo Freeze Ray 
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Against stuff that has gobs of hitpoints (elite bosses or better), I will concede that it will make a meaningful contribution. |
Originally Posted by Umbral_NA
Achilles' Heel fires off often enough for it to make a substantial benefit if you actually use the attack reasonably often. The important thing to remember is that, in order to see a decent return, you need to actually use the power reasonably often.
Surveillance is, of course, the better option simply because it's trading 1.716 seconds every ~20 seconds for a 14% reduction in resistance. AH has the advantage of trading no animation time (because it's a proc) for a chance at a 20% reduction in resistance for 10 seconds. The uptime is then related to how often you actually check it. If you check 4 times every 10 seconds (re: use an average of 4 attacks with an AH proc slotted every 10 seconds), you're going to average 11.81% -res. If you check 6 times, you'll average 14.76%. The AH proc isn't really all that wonderful when put into an attack that isn't often used but if you put it into an attack that you use almost every other time (which you should be using as often as possible simply because it's your best ST attack), it's a wonderful contributor. |
Against your standard boss? You might fire off burst maybe four or five times during the fight, with a 20% chance that it fires off with every attack. That's great if it fires off the first or second time you attack, not so great it fires off later.
And we're talking about AR/Dev here. Assuming a straight up fight where you didn't bother to draw the boss into a couple of mines (in which the fight would be over in a few follow up blasts anyway), you have to worry about keeping him at range with web grenade or perhaps keeping him mezzed with your stuns. Unlike a sword scrapper who can spam attacks largely at will, an AR/Dev blaster has to worry about applying web grenade, monitoring his health and perhaps even ducking around a corner to find some breathing room.
Scrappers can put the proc to great use because they can stay toe to toe with the target and apply it consistently. An AR/Dev blaster wouldn't have the same luxury unless the target was mezzed.
Note, I want to clarify that the proc *will* in some cases provide a good damage boost; however, my contention is that in most fights against boss critters, it won't make enough of a difference to notice.
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You make some very good points. Although I admit I ended up speccing out of Trip Mine |
Originally Posted by Fury_Flechette
Against stuff that has gobs of hitpoints (elite bosses or better), I will concede that it will make a meaningful contribution.
Against your standard boss? You might fire off burst maybe four or five times during the fight, with a 20% chance that it fires off with every attack. That's great if it fires off the first or second time you attack, not so great it fires off later. And we're talking about AR/Dev here. Assuming a straight up fight where you didn't bother to draw the boss into a couple of mines (in which the fight would be over in a few follow up blasts anyway), you have to worry about keeping him at range with web grenade or perhaps keeping him mezzed with your stuns. Unlike a sword scrapper who can spam attacks largely at will, an AR/Dev blaster has to worry about applying web grenade, monitoring his health and perhaps even ducking around a corner to find some breathing room. Scrappers can put the proc to great use because they can stay toe to toe with the target and apply it consistently. An AR/Dev blaster wouldn't have the same luxury unless the target was mezzed. Note, I want to clarify that the proc *will* in some cases provide a good damage boost; however, my contention is that in most fights against boss critters, it won't make enough of a difference to notice. |
. I like the power but given that it's completely useless in groups I ended up dropping it for Caltrops which are more generally useful. I've toyed with the idea of putting it back in (since it is a fun power) but there isn't really anything that I'm willing to drop.
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Originally Posted by Umbral_NA
Achilles' Heel fires off often enough for it to make a substantial benefit if you actually use the attack reasonably often. The important thing to remember is that, in order to see a decent return, you need to actually use the power reasonably often.
Surveillance is, of course, the better option simply because it's trading 1.716 seconds every ~20 seconds for a 14% reduction in resistance. AH has the advantage of trading no animation time (because it's a proc) for a chance at a 20% reduction in resistance for 10 seconds. The uptime is then related to how often you actually check it. If you check 4 times every 10 seconds (re: use an average of 4 attacks with an AH proc slotted every 10 seconds), you're going to average 11.81% -res. If you check 6 times, you'll average 14.76%. The AH proc isn't really all that wonderful when put into an attack that isn't often used but if you put it into an attack that you use almost every other time (which you should be using as often as possible simply because it's your best ST attack), it's a wonderful contributor. |
Its not just how often you use it but where you use it in your attack chain.
On my AR blasters burst and slug are finishers not openers. Burst is likely to be the last attack on a target this limits the value of the proc.
I don't know what the OP's attack chain looks like but mine will be Full (optional mine, caltrops) Auto->Flamethrower-Buckshot-(Slug on any target still up)-(Burst)
Yeah mine looks very similar although I tend to open with Flamethrower to maximize the DoT and work a grenade in there somewhere. I was mostly thinknig of the proc for use on bosses where opening with burst to try and trip the proc is at least mildly useful.
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I wouldn't really consider that an attack string simply because you're not using it cyclically. I would instead consider that an attack string segment or a burst damage attack string.|
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
I don't know what the OP's attack chain looks like but mine will be Full (optional mine, caltrops) Auto->Flamethrower-Buckshot-(Slug on any target still up)-(Burst)
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In an actual cycled attack string, it doesn't really matter where you have Burst simply because you're going to be cycling the attacks over and over again. I will cede that if you're using it as part of an AoE chain/segment and only using it to clean up survivors of the AoE onslaught then it's not really a particularly useful proc (which was part of a huge discussion on the Scrapper boards quite a few months ago), but if you're actually using it as part of a boss-killer attack string (which, I'll also admit isn't even remotely within AR's realm of expertise, much less AR/Dev's), then it's going to be worth it.
What do people think of putting an Achilles' Heel Chance for Resistance Debuff Proc in Burst (from the AR set just in case you don't know)? My AR/Dev blaster has trouble soloing a lot of bosses in part due to the fact that my single target damage is rather weak. Since I tend to spam Burst a lot against bosses anyway I'm thinking that adding a bit of damage resistance debuff would help me there.
-Adeon