Damn you Hadron! [shakes fist] OK, OK, calm down, you don’t want to let the demons out…
Right, so I’ve been trying to get a proper Purgatus staff. My initial one had very respectable stats (bar cloud radius?) but then Hadron messed it up with perks AND blessings. Here’s the end result…
This one’s got the highest base stat but then I failed to get any T4 blessings that I wanted (and I don’t have T4 Warp Nexus either).
I feel like the first one is the worst because of the botched perks, and the last one is probably the best due to the proper base damage values. Does that sound about right?
I know the differences are probably miniscule (probably?), but since I chose to “fix” those messed up perks on the first staff I need to make a choice here…
If you use a force sword with Rending Strike (? Think that’s the right name - the one that does rending on hit), then you can get a lot more utility against armour by stacking the burns, then doing a force push to reduce their resistance. Deimos good for example,esp that 2nd heavy.
Really? The first? With the absolutely useless perks? Can you add some detail to your reasoning, please, because it feels like I may be missing something here.
I‘d choose number two as burn and cloud radius are the most important stats and everything else is so similar that it won’t make a noticeable difference.
In fact I‘d say you‘ll be hard pressed to notice any difference between the three during actual combat on mission.
I suspect you’re correct. But I know soulblaze accumulates over the entire mission, so I’m suspecting there might be a notable difference in the total damage by the end. But it’s kind of hard to replicate “the same game” with different weapons, so I’m just theorycrafting.
Second one is probably slightly better than third one, because it has more aoe.
First one has two bad perks, which loses you a lot of damage.
Generally, you want your burn stat to be at least 76%. 76% and higher means, that you have 15 max burn stacks (more is not possible, even with 80%). So best case, you have exactly 76% burn with 15 max stacks. That way you do not waste a single modifier point (with the current crafting system… good luck with that).
Cloud radius should be as high as possible.
Warp resist and quell speed, you want as much as you personally need for the way you use the staff (both are also available as talents, so if you run those talents anyway, you can affort lower stats on the staff).
Damage might not be the most important stat, but since the direct damage of the staff got buffed a few months ago, direct damage is actually a large amount of your overall damage with this staff. If you run with a scoreboard that shows you ranged damage and soulblaze damage separately, you will see.
Now this might be a bit controversial to say, but you should probably reroll your perk and drop the 5% crit chance to get flak dmg.
Crit chance as perk on the purgatus is vastly overhyped.
Reasoning:
A crit deals more direct damage and applies 2 soulblaze stacks instead of 1. Effectively, it is an extra hit (unless you already have the max number of stacks applied to the target).
But 5% crit chance is not as good as you might think
Independent of your current crit chance (as long as it is below 95%) 5% additional crit chance effectively means: when you hit 20 times, you will now crit 1 additional time on average.
By the time you hit an enemy 15 times, you already have max soulblaze stacks applied. There is a 46% probability that the additional 5% cc will not grant you a single additional crit within 15 hits.
If you have more than 0% cc without the perk, which you do, it will take fewer than 15 hits on average to reach max stacks, and the probability of getting an extra crit from the 5% perk before reaching max stacks is even lower.
So even when fighting enemies that live long enough for you to apply full 15 stacks to them, almost half of the time, the perk does nothing.
Not only that, but when the perk does give you an extra crit, that crit only means that 1 less hit is required to apply x stacks. One additional hit would only take ~0.3 seconds to apply.
0.3 seconds.
That is how much time the 5% cc can realistically take off of your time to kill in the optimistic scenario (1 additional crit against the enemy, while stacking up SB).
Against most enemies, it will do absolutely nothing.
I’ll be absolutely honest - I took the crit % only because I’ve heard it applies more soublaze, without ever going deeper into theorycrafting. And since it’s one of those things I can easily try at this point (since it’s already been rolled) I’ll give it a go. [again shakes fist at Hadron and her stupid locks]
On the note of direct damage between the 2nd and 3rd… the 3rd has that damage stat up there making the direct damage go up by 1 point. Not a whole lot, but the Purgatus seems to “live” off of those small numbers and their multiplication, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t that make it better? Despite the lower radius?
Yes it pretty much does, but i would still take the extra cloud radius.
When engaging enemies, you might have the chance to hit them 1 additional time, before they would be in range for the other weapon with lower range.
You might also be able to hit more enemies off to the side, since cloud radius increases the length and the width of your flame.
So i think that the weapon with bigger cloud radius will deal a bit more damage and also be a bit more safe to use.
The difference between the two weapons is pretty small though, so you would probably not notice any difference, if you decided either way.
I’ve not run the numbers, I will say that now. I trust you probably have!
But out of interest: what is the damage boost on a crit? Is it measurable in a consistent way?
Because I’m wondering: if you’re basically getting an extra hits worth of damage in total from a crit, then you’re getting 5% more damage in the game from this ability. Most of the time you’re hosing multiple enemies, so the chance of getting to max stacks is pretty limited and you’re unlikely to cap out short of a monstrosity or boss.
Given that’s 5% against any and every enemy; whereas flak is only certain enemies - would you get more utility out of the crit?
I’ll say now that I run 10% Elite rather than flak OR crit (not sure how I arrived there, maybe it was just the default at the time) - I was just wondering.
Low Warp Resistance is actually good for Purge since it makes it easier to stack up Nexus & Warp Rider for the ~+20% dmg & crit, especially if you run it with Vent (since Creeping Flames needs 80%+ peril for the max 6-stack Soulblaze).
How does 10% vs Elites compare with 25% vs Flak I wonder?
Particularly on the purgatus; where you can’t really aim for a body part, does damage automatically centre on the chest? i.e. Flak is bountiful, but are you always hitting the flak part of an enemy? (albeit it’s only the Bruiser there that has the odd armour layout).
Honestly I can’t recommend any of the +10% dmg types outside of really special novelty builds or something you settle for given the RNG. Last I tested them, something about the way the game calculates dmg means that +10% is actually closer to ~7-8% in practice, whereas +25% is still +25%.
Now I admit I haven’t done any extensive testing to see whether +10% weakspot or +10% crit differs from +10% elite etc. And back when I did test those, I wasn’t aware of the x0.85 ranged weakspot modifier on ragers which could’ve been it. But still be it 7% or 10%, the difference is so small you’re unlikely to reach new breakpoints with it for most weapons & builds. The +25% however makes a massive difference that’s easily noticeable. For example Trauma needs ~+20% flak to be able to 1-shot flak trash with a full charge & no talent stacks (and ofc just massively helps with its clearing in general).
You could just as well run higher resistance and lower quell speed and achieve pretty much the same thing.
It would actually make it easier to stay at around 80% peril, since peril will be slower to go up and down.
(To be fair, getting to high peril in the first place, would take a bit longer, but the purgatus is not great for that anyway and i would rather spam the force sword weapon special for that.)
Higher resistance also allows you to use the 10% chance to quell 10% on kill talent more effectively and burn massive hordes without needing to quell at all.
Warp Resistance has minimal scaling, but Quell Speed’s scaling is extreme
Staff quelling is your primary means of controlling peril from any source (ults, blitzes, Force Swords etc). Non-staff tools ofc gain nothing from the staff’s Warp Resist but absolutely benefit from the quelling.
For the reasons I already explained above, high level psyker gameplay is about reaching high peril quickly and then maintaining it. This is especially hard with Purge for being so efficient it takes forever to build up to high peril already. In theory Warp Resist would make maintaining that peril easier, while making reaching it harder. Quell Speed meanwhile would add extreme control on both ends but at the cost of having to stop to quell more often than you would have to with Warp Efficiency. But it doesn’t quite work out that way in practice.
Btw I’ve made mental notes about the differences of these stats for a long time, but haven’t actually explored it in detail. Encouraged by your question I went and bought a few purge staves with comparable stats.
This is what the difference looks like (note how Quell Speed’s value per stat point increases the higher you go, Warp Resist’s does not):
So to answer your question: Warp Efficiency makes so little difference while also not extending to tools outside the staff itself, that Quell Speed is far more important pretty much every single time.
Edit: Naturally the results aren’t 1-1 since I couldn’t get the stat ranges to match exactly. But it still paints a pretty clear picture despite that.
Also regarding your comment about Battle Meditation, I actually tend to avoid that with Purge, especially if I have Vent. Purge is so efficient you don’t need it, but it actually makes things worse imo. Those stacking RNG BM procs often make it harder to keep that peril reliably high and you have to adjust and keep changing your firing & quelling around the RNG. Worst of all is when BM procs just as you fire your Vent and the ult that was supposed to guarantee all hordes in range die, now does little more than pretty lights everywhere. BM is fantastic for many other builds tho!
I don’t think you’re comparing apples with apples there. The weakspot and crit increases are scaled on their own particular multipliers, so any additional benefit is proportional to that.
e.g.
Let’s say a weakspot hit is +20% of your regular damage.
Additional 10% of weakspot damage means = regular damage + (regular damage * 20% * 110%)… or equivalently = damage + (damage * 22%).
So you’re basically changing that bonus damage multiplier from 20% to 22%, which is why most people think it’s poop to slot +crit damage or +weakspot damage.
But the perks that apply to direct damage will be bigger, as they’re applying globally, not just to the much smaller bonus damage component.
So
additional 10% of elite damage means damage * 110% (* armour resistance mitigator constant)
just like
additional 25% to Flak = damage * 125% (* mitigator)
At least that’s my understanding. So the question I think is, is 10% vs Elites more often applied than 25% vs Flak ? For a purgatus staff, where you can’t aim at a body part.
*edit - 1) I’m not asking you to actually test that!, and 2) intuitively flak is more likely around as there are more mobs, so probably the better choice.
Can you add some detail to your reasoning, please, because it feels like I may be missing something here.
BM is fantastic for many other builds tho!