Now that Exhilarating Takedown (ET) is functioning correctly, I’ve been wondering how it stacks up to Confirmed Kill (CK).
In a lot of ways ET seems superior to me based on it’s low barrier to trigger – based on the scoreboard it’s common to see hundreds of headshot kills vs. mere dozens of specialist/elites (bearing in mind melee weakspot kills inflate that number). That and the coveted Toughness Damage Reduction stat has been enough to get me to try it. While I’m collecting personal data, I am curious about community data
Confirmed Kill
PRO:
30% total toughness gain, per Elite/Specialist kill
Staggered toughness regen is really good for firefights and combat
Slaying Elites/Specialists has never felt so good
Exhilarating Takedown
PRO:
Ranged Weakspot kill should be easy to stack up rapidly on pretty much any enemy in any situation.
Toughness Damage Reduction up to 30%
15% instant Toughness gain vs. only 10% from CK
Questions:
Do allies in coherency contribute to either talent’s effect?
Which perk is better for the plasma gun? (I pretty exclusively run plasma, but welcome discussion on other weapons)
Which perk triggers more consistently throughout a mission, and when you need it most?
Thoughts? Why do you run either perk if/when you do?
ranged weakspot kill is easy to get near constantly with most weapons (not plasma though, silly hitbox) so would usually be the better choice since in all likelyhood, your teammates will be eating a lot of the specials up before you.
but if you’re only good enough to lean on plasma, special hunting is probably fine.
Yeah, definitely not as fast as a revolver can be! In general I don’t like fiending for kills of a particular type so definitely a hit in the reliability department (burned by Brain Burst, perhaps). I hadn’t considered the plasma hit box specifically, I do know what you mean though.
This is a much more open ended question than you think.
There are things to consider such as your ranged weapon choice, combat ability (ulty), and general build.
But to answer the question I always have confirmed kill, but only sometimes both of them. Never just ET.
As a veteran you will be the primary elite and special killer unless somethings gone wrong meaning you get far more toughness gen out of CK than ET on a time investment basis. The connector node is also good enough for TDR in teamplay.
The times I do throw it in tandem is when I run an exe stance build with a fast firing weapon. The slowest being HH7 with its 4.3 ish RoF if I recall.
I don’t think its a safe choice for toughness gen on its own unless you run an autogun, and I would still spare the points somewhere for CK personally.
Yes you’re right and I’m not looking for an answer per se – just interested to hear people’s thoughts.
For my part, I’m a plasma gun enjoyer and standard shovel employer. Shout and a focus on elite/specialist/gunner kills.
Yep, up to 33% TDR is nothing to sneeze at and does make up for the ET boost. I’ve also been quite disappointed with Longshot in my testing as it doesn’t seem to help me reach a lot of meaningful breakpoints on full-HP targets.
In a Hi-intensity or Auric Damnation mission, I typically see upwards of 40 Elite/Specialist kills per trigger-happy specialist-killer class.
Granted, they’re not all going to happen at a time when you need the toughness regeneration, but there are times when I’m really thankful for the toughness boost. I don’t run any of the reload perks which seem to be the main competition.
Oh for sure it’s great sometimes, most of the times even, but when you get the drop on a conga line of Shotgunners then chances are you’re still on full shields.
It was more to say that just because you’ve chalked up X amount of kills on the scoreboard doesn’t mean they’re all contributing to useful procs of the talent.
In the difficulties I play in and with my current playstyle (Damnation/Auric basically exclusively at this point), I personally always go down the middle tree largely due to how lack luster Longshot and 5% health is. If ET was located anywhere else in a easier spot to get at I’d probably go for it a LOT more, but it’s deliberately placed to were you end up at least burning a point on Longshot if you want to have it, and if you go down that tree over the middle one you get a pip of health that does nothing for you 98% of the time, verses having a full extra pip of stamina for blocking/pushing/running and the like.
That combined with Close Order Drill just being something that should be near always proced to the max in situations where your fighting groups of enemies just makes me take the middle tree every time. There’s just to much good there without any points wasted, and leaves you just that much more freedom building out the rest of the tree and blossoming it at the end into so many lovely options open to you.
Also helps that if you’re running Executioners Stance, special hunting is your job and you better be doing it or else the heck are you doing, and both the Shout and Invis refresh your toughness on cast, so that tends to make further toughness regen a moot point (with the toughness DR being good, but again Close Order Drill just gives that to you without needing to kill anything first). With Tactical Awarness also always making a Vet want to look for specials that much more to get back to their abilities on repeat, why not get rewarded that much more for doing stuff you already plan to be doing anyway?
I personally swear by Confirmed Kill since i tend to focus on elite/special hunting when i am on my vet.
There is usually always a huge amount of elites/specials on the difficulties i play on so Confirmed Kill has a lot of up time.
Confirmed Kill is also more reliable than ET with the weapons i like to use, and the talent is not limited to ranged kills only which is useful for my personal play style since i tend to quick swap between ranged and melee a lot.
That’s most important point mentioned here, for me:
Confirmed kill triggers on melee kills.
Which just so happens to be a time when getting extra toughness back could come in handy.
Granted, if facing a giant shooter patrol in cover, ET could be really useful, but the vet is often best suited to that anyways. Though ET synergizes nicely with a revolver, which it’s rather hard to miss a head with, and the nearby reload talent gives a reason to go there anyways.
I just wanted to add to the pile of “they’re different”.
I tend to favor builds with AoE, cleave & nades, sometimes even melee. I can’t always rely on my aim to do headshots either, and I love Close Order Drill either stacked with Iron Will, or to compensate for not having IW and putting that point into Demolition Team instead. So CK is almost always my main choice if I can afford it.
Problem is almost every build needs Longshot and many of them don’t need Volley Adept, so it’s usually cheaper to just go for ET instead. ET ofc synergizes with COD and IW both, reaching ridiculous toughness dmg resist as a whole. So obviously, it all depends.
But yeah, CK is usually my top choice. The number of elites I get to kill correlates far better with when I need the toughness, than the number of headshots I score. I’d say ET for me has the opposite correlation since the more dangerous stuff there is, the less time I have to aim for those randomly bobbing and animating heads… I’m far more likely to just magdump and pop nades which don’t really benefit ET at all but makes full use of CK either way.
Eh, they’re both more for topping you up than recovering from a big chunk of lost toughness. Realistically, the deciding factor isn’t what you prefer, it’s the rest of your build. Like, if you’re running a headshot build, ET is clearly the way to go because the entire purpose of the build is weakspot kills. If you’re running something that’s more about body damage or uses weapons that spread, CK is more reliable.
I actually think I’m running both of them on my brauto build…
PRO:
Questions:
Thoughts? Why do you run either perk if/when you do?
