Beam Rifle versus Assault Rifle: AoE Damage
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2012-06-13 23:01 in Blasters
I've played both sets on Corrupters, and they're like night and day.
Beam Rifle has a single target -Res (well, a very narrow cone that hits 3 targets that yopu use as a single target attack), Disintegration, and a lot of good single target attacks.
On a full team, I found I was best used at focussing on the bosses and clipping a few minions with Cutting Beam every now and then.
Disintegration on Cutting Beam gives you about a 30% extra damage, so its still nothing close to two area effects that most sets get, even when perfectly set up.
I found myself happiest with the set when I ignored disintegration spread altogether.
Overcharge is just on a long enough recharge that I worried about wasting it, unlike Full Auto.
So if you like roasting heaps of minions, stick with Assault Rifle. Beam Rifle's OK, but a very different set mechanically.
Yeah, basically, what he said.
Disintegrate spread is a neat idea, but it doesn't really amount to much in practice. The problem with it is that it takes *time* - first you have to disintegrate something, then you have to shoot it a bunch and hope it spreads, and *then* you get to toss cutting beam to take advantage of it. It still adds more damage than you'd otherwise have without it (solo, at least, especially if you've got some way to constrict their movement so that they don't spread out), but it's not anywhere near comparable to just having more AoEs. And on a team, if you take time to try to set up disintegrate spread, all the minions will be dead before you even get to the 'cutting beam' step.
Overcharge is great. It's easy to use, strong enough to wipe the minions, and has a decent chance to stun some of the surviving lieutenants. While it does have three times the recharge of full auto, it's definitely worth noting that it's got more damage, an easier to use target area, a higher target cap, and a mitigation effect. When it's up, it neatly compensates for the rest of the set's AoE weakness. Problem is that it's not going to be up every mob, and when it isn't, disintegration spread just doesn't cut it. When overcharge wasn't ready, I personally found it worked best to just toss out cutting beam immediately (without worrying about disintegrate) to contribute at least a bit of AoE before everything died and then concentrate on burning down whatever bosses were present to save the rest of the team the trouble.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
Thanks for the feedback. I rolled up a BR/Dev Blaster so we'll see how it goes. Aesthetically I really, really want to like the set. I like the sound, I like the graphics and the gun models are a lot nicer than most of the AR ones. I guess we'll see how it goes.
I'm thinking of taking Static Discharge at higher levels to help with the AoE, it'll just depend if I can stand the redraw or not.
No experience with beam rifle, but as down as I generally am on AR it's a terrific AoE set.
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So, I have an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster that I am strongly considering re-rolling as a Beam Rifle/Devices Blaster. While Assault Rifle is ok concept-wise Beam Rifle really fits the theme a whole lot better (and I really like the animations).
The problem I have is that I really, really like the playstyle of Assault Rifle. Having four AoE powers allows me to wipe minions with ease which is a lot of fun and the lack of single target damage doesn't bother me to much.
The question I have is how does the AoE damage of Beam Rifle work out at higher levels? I know that in theory the Disintegrate Spreading mechanic will increase effective AoE damage both by placing DoTs on enemies and increasing the damage from Cutting Beam I'm just not sure by how much? Going from a 60 second T9 to a 180 second is already painful not to mention the loss of the wide arc of Flamethrower. So overall how does the AoE potential of BR compare to AR at high levels?