i have the ATO in AS and i ALWAYs use it out of hide
my usual chain is BU+CS (from hide when opening a mob)->2 fast rech attacks -> BU+AS (so i have double build up on AS)
doing that it puts me back in hide with the ATO and sets me up for another CS to insta rech BU, i also have placate to help insta rech BU, so i almost constantly have at least 1 stack of BU
since my guy is only lvl 41 right now i dont have the super high rech IO build yet but i figure once i get that ill almost solely use CS and AS with a few attacks thrown in between for the assassins focus
Hey, I'm pretty new to Stalkers, but I rolled one up recently and I'm really enjoying the new Assassin's Strike. However, when I went
into mids to make an IO build and calculate an attack chain, I ran into a bunch of complications, most notably that Kinetic Melee lost
its gimmick of repeatedly landing Assassin's Strike with the ATO to guarantee a crit Concentrated Strike. I've come up with some
'candidate' attack chains to deal with the current version of the ATO, but I'd like some feedback to see what more knowledgeable
people think.
Here are the assumptions I'm working under; call me out if they're wrong. I'm spelling these out because I'm still new to Stalkers and
don't want to miss out on something obvious.
1. Any non-Assassin's Strike attack used while Hidden deals double damage (excluding proc-based damage).
2. Assassin's Strike does around 2.5 times normal damage if used while Hidden, but takes 2.67 seconds to animate (plus Arcanatime).
3. Assassin's Strike has a 33% chance to crit for each stack of Assassin's Focus (if used while not Hidden), causing it to critical for 2.5
times damage as if Hidden.
4. The Stalker's Guile ATO proc activates 100% of the time if slotted in Assassin's Strike or in Concentrated Strike, putting the user
back into Hidden status.
5. The Stalker's Guile ATO proc has a 10.25 second global cooldown that begins when the power it is slotted in ends.
6. Stalker Kinetic Melee recharges Build Up on a Concentrated Strike critical, even if caused by Hidden status rather than the
chance-based critical.
Assuming those aren't wrong, here are the two attack chains I'm considering, chopped into several lines so they aren't so ugly.
Chain 1: (With the ATO in Assassin's Strike)
BU->AS->CS->BB->Placate
BU->AS->CS->
BU->AS->BB->SB->BB->repeat chain sans first BU
The the AS in the second line uses the long animation because of the Placate, which means that AS finishes right after the ATO proc runs out (the attacks inbetween take up 10.292 seconds, over the 10.25s duration of the proc).
The AS in line three is not from Hidden status, which is why the chain of weaker attacks is needed to stall until Placate and AS are up again.
Chain 2: (With the ATO in Concentrated Strike)
BU->CS->BU->AS->
Placate->CS->BU->AS->SB->BB->CS->AS->SB->repeat this line
This chain lands a crit CS and a crit AS every loop and a non-crit of each as well. However, it does not get as many Build Ups as the first chain. It also spends more time using and BB, which implies a lower total DPS.
I don't know how to stack Build Up in mids, and I'm not 100% certain that an attack uses Build Up modifiers for damage if Build Up runs out during the animation of the attack, but assuming my math is accurate, Chain 1 has about 276 DPS in the first loop. After that run, the first Build Up is omitted, bringing the DPS down to 262.
Chain 2's first-run DPS appears to be 308, with the continued chain resulting in 264.
These numbers imply that the "best" attack chain for Stalker KM is the latter one, but I'd be happy to hear otherwise.
This is with Agility Alpha, no Interface/Hybrid slots, and decent damage slotting. I can link the actual build if anyone's interested, but I don't think it's an especially optimal one. Purple proc in Body Blow, since that appears most often in the two chains (excluding AS and CS, which are both six-slotted already).
Note that neither chain's DPS was calculated with Assassin's Focus in mind, or the possibility of random crits (especially on Concentrated Strike). I could try and calculate those in, but it doesn't seem especially fruitful.
That said, the main purpose of this thread was to find out if anyone had any better attack chains than mine - I'm not especially attached to these, but I don't know if it's realistic to have a short, elegant attack chain with the way the Stalker ATO works.
Thanks for reading/commenting.
Edit: I know that with the new Stalker, Placate has fallen out of favor, but I feel like KM in particular benefits from Placate because it allows for the use of slow Assassin's Strikes (which are high DPA but also help stall for the ATO proc to time out) and because it allows on-demand crit Concentrated Strikes for extra Build Ups.
Edit2: I found another chain that I thought was worth testing.
Chain 3: (ATO in AS)
BU->AS->CS->BU->AS->BB->SB->QS->BB->repeat (sans first BU)
Burst DPS: 262
Continued: 281
This chain supposedly has the highest continued DPS of the chains I've used so far (this might be because I have the purple proc in Body Blow). Still, it seems to have LOWER DPS the first time through, possibly because the short version of AS is so much more DPA-efficient than the slow version used the first time around.
Thoughts?