Has anyone ever tried to just run SB BB QS AS as a ST chain on a KM?

I've been trying to crunch the numbers and I just can't find a better chain than this. People seem to love CS due to the perma BU potential, but the animation is so long it seems detrimental to use it at all, from a pure single target damage over time perspective.

Best chain I could make up using CS is BU AS CS SB BB AS SB BB. Assuming a constant +80% damage buff, I'm getting 258 DPS for it.

SB BB QS AS, assuming only one hide proc every 3 AS uses (as the chain itself is 4.752s), does 246 DPS before BU is factored in, and 264 DPS with it (assuming 25s recharge).

Adding Musculature, Reactive and Hybrid would skew the balance further towards the SB BB QS AS chain; lower overall damage buff means getting more from Musc and Hybrid, faster animations means getting more from Reactive and Hybrid.

This is all theorycraft, hence why I'm sharing and looking for input. I don't have a level 50 KM stalker. One big real gameplay advantage I could see on any chain involving CS and permaBU is the substantially better tohit you'd have on average.

I'm ashamed of myself. I completely understood your thread title without thinking about it.

Ricodah has a neat idea of using perma-buildup from CS crits to run a chain including the new i24 Moonbeam. But his latest post suggests he is a bit disappointed in reality meeting the theory.

The chains I've seen usually start BU-CS (out of hide) so that the crit from CS recharges BU before you launch into your chain.

In my proposed chain CS would also recharge BU as AS has the Hide proc.

Starting with BU CS BU would mean you'd have to hold off onto AS until CS is recharged to get the Hide proc going off at the right time as to get CS crits. It also makes it more awkward to fit BU into the rotation... Well, IMHO. If someone has a working chain, I'm all ears.

Even though CS has a longer cast time, it still does have higher DPS than QS, BB and SB. Though a CS miss would slow KM's DPS quite a bit. Musculature would not skew the numbers but Reactive and Hybrid definitely can. More hits = more ticks of damage and/or more damage buffs. Procs will bump up the numbers in the SB-BB-QS-AS as well, more attacks gives more chances to proc. You can proc out QS (maybe BB too) and likely still have it recharge fast enough to run the chain.

Your chain has merit but I think you can improve the numbers by integrating CS though I have not crunched the numbers:

SB-BB-QS-AS-CS-BU-SB-BB-QS-AS

CS should crit 100% in that chain. All attacks except for CS will have the BU buff.

Musc should advantage the chain lacking CS more because it operates a lower damage buff level. Plugging Musc into my spreadsheet, I get:

- 284 DPS for BU AS CS SB BB AS SB BB (+26 from 258, or +10%)
- 300 DPS for SB BB QS AS (+36 from 264, or +14%)

With SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS, I'm only getting 240 DPS (no Musc). While the extra QS guarantees an AS crit, it seems the extra animation time spent on low DPA hurts the chain as a whole.

Removing the second QS, (so, using SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS), I'm getting either 248 DPS if CS doesn't get the BU buff, or 260 DPS if it does. Not sure if it would - SB BB AS SB BB QS AS add up to 8.448s, and BU is 10 - 1.32 = 8.68s.

Edit: admittedly I'm not including the actual chances to get an AS stack per power and that's probably making my numbers fairly inaccurate for the degree of precision needed to compare these different chains. Boo. I thought I could be lazy on that but that's proving to be way off the mark. Likely the best chains involving CS would pull ahead in non-incarnate play due to the 100% chance to get a stack.


Edit 2:

So, I'm getting the following average crit chances for AS:
- 74.25% with SB BB QS
- 85.8% with SB BB CS
- 52.8% with SB BB
- 93.6% with CS SB BB QS

With that mind, recalculating the following chains (no musc) gives me:

- 247 DPS for SB BB QS AS
- 249 DPS for SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS
- 230 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS
- 247 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS if CS is affected by build up; 235 DPS if it isn't

I've been assuming one damage proc in every attack except AS, plus one purple proc in SB, by the way.

With that setup, SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS seems to be the clear winner for non-incarnate play. Highest damage and constant +tohit. *If* CS crits all the time with that chain (11.748s). I'm assuming it would because of your experience with shorter Street Justice chains still managing reliable hide procs, ricohdah.

SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS could come close if the BU buff includes CS.

Adding Musculature:

- 278 DPS for SB BB QS AS
- 276 DPS for SB BB AS CS BU SB BB AS
- 255 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS
- 272 DPS for SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB AS if CS is affected by build up; 260 DPS if it isn't

Not sure how to factor Hybrid or Reactive but it seems pretty clear the shorter chain is going to get more out of these. Question is whether the difference is significant enough to warrant losing on BU's +tohit. My guess is no, but who knows. This is highly subjective anyway. It could have the advantage of avoiding wavy hands for those who dislike CS animation... It could also still be interesting to make a regular build with CS and just swap to the SB BB QS AS chain in situations where tohit isn't needed.


Edit 3: call me stupid but I never noticed you could build up to 4 stacks, which results in keeping 1 after AS is used. So that makes the SB BB QS AS CS BU SB BB QS AS chain slightly better than the above numbers, by about 3 DPS. Still lags a bit behind the rest of the pack, though.

AFAIK they're just removing the interrupt part, aren't they? So Moonbeam should be 1.33s (which is... 1.452s or something with server ticks).

I mean, that is how it worked for AS, so I assume they'd go the same route with snipes. Perhaps I'm reaching, though. Haven't bothered to time anything on Beta yet.

So sad, almost 2 months without a single post in the Stalker forum. I finally got around to trying out the SB-BB-QS-AS attack chain and got 3:25 for 315 DPS. Video is uploading and can be seen here in an hour: http://youtu.be/H1aZOoaJB3U

This is the build I used, with T4 Musculature Radial, T4 Reactive Radial and T4 Ageless Core:

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