The Division 2

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Well im running my skill hybrid build so its 4 of 5 directives on heroic and really the time does not matter to me TBH. Its within 3-5 min per run and I take breaks and shit because it so fucking boring, lol. But still a good farm even though Im only getting 3-4 levels per since my skills pretty much delete everything.
I just ran all 5 directives when I was doing it with Core Str. Pop the drone as soon as you open the first door, then by the time you breach and get into position the turret should be off cooldown. Drone lasts for about 4 minutes with all the bonuses from that set so you never really have to deal with Cool Skills again.
 

mkopec

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I just ran all 5 directives when I was doing it with Core Str. Pop the drone as soon as you open the first door, then by the time you breach and get into position the turret should be off cooldown. Drone lasts for about 4 minutes with all the bonuses from that set so you never really have to deal with Cool Skills again.
Ill try that, thanks.
 

mkopec

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I guess another patch tonight to up the drop rates for the event keys again and nerf protos dropping from chests, was not supposed to happen. They were supposed to be drops on kill only.

Also tried the Heartbreaker build this one here...

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I mean its not 100% optimized like his is, but its close and im not sure I like it. The heartbreaker stacks really fall off fast and you basically starting from scratch every time you even take a 15-20 sec to get to the next shit to kill. Maybe its the chest? IDK. I also dont have the talent on the shotty but I dont think it matters. also another chore is you have to play aggressive to keep this shit going, which is fine, but then you have to drop the hive to keep your shield from imploding. IDK, maybe its just not my style. Ill give it some more play but right now my feeling is its meh... Kind of a bummr because I finally got this together and was excited....

I have a core str build set up like this with memento and chameleon and it plays better imo, more bursty, no stack bs, more armor, like a million more, girthier shield and imo it plays better. oh and no hive to heal your shield. Id rather have revive anyways for those oh shit moments this game throws at you. The gun gives you crit dmg, is more accurate, the shield is still tanky as fuck.... I dont think I hit for a million like his with full heartbreaker stacks, but like I said its hard to get it there and keep it up, this here gives you 700-800K crits all day long with no stacks to keep track of. Youre like so close to the enemies playing aggresive like htis that head shots are a gimme.
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Downhammer

Vyemm Raider
1,744
4,436
One of the issues I've noticed with heartbreaker, memento, and other stacking builds is there's a weird balance to difficulty levels. Challenging or lower and you often just don't get enough bad guys to really roll the stacks, but heroic or legendary it's more risky trying to grab backpack stacks or proximity bonus armor.

The youtube videos always look impressive but they're usually near 100% accuracy headshots and know exactly the spawn points to stagger things before they even raise their weapons. For a scrub like me I've found it just as fast for xp or other farming to go pesti or core skills on challenging. The lesser drop rates are offset by never losing a kill squad or having to run back from a wipe. I know many people like the difficulty where surviving every fight isn't guaranteed but I'm fine riding that 98% success rate.
 
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mkopec

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One of the issues I've noticed with heartbreaker, memento, and other stacking builds is there's a weird balance to difficulty levels. Challenging or lower and you often just don't get enough bad guys to really roll the stacks, but heroic or legendary it's more risky trying to grab backpack stacks or proximity bonus armor.

The youtube videos always look impressive but they're usually near 100% accuracy headshots and know exactly the spawn points to stagger things before they even raise their weapons. For a scrub like me I've found it just as fast for xp or other farming to go pesti or core skills on challenging. The lesser drop rates are offset by never losing a kill squad or having to run back from a wipe. I know many people like the difficulty where surviving every fight isn't guaranteed but I'm fine riding that 98% success rate.
Open world and retaliations I do on challenging, but all instances I do on heroic. Most of those I know by heart now, lol. Only ones I dont know yet are the Manhattan ones, but I stay away from those because of the stupid turrets they have in every mission, also what Ive noticed in Manhattan is they like spawning adds all around you. Its not from a set place or two like old school division 2 and even NY expansion had. Its maximum chaos at every turn. so often times you think youre golden then all of a sudden respawns pop from all around you and youre fucked, lol.

But for the heroic instances I pretty much do mostly the skill/core strength build, which pretty much deletes everything without even trying, and my striker build. All the other builds I dont even try on heroic because I dont know 100% how to play them yet.
 

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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My new motto for Challenging retaliations and Heroic everything else is take whatever good build I feel like playing and shove Turmoil into it. Everything is better and faster, and the split damage really has no effect if you choose your targets well. Just don't try to mix it with Overdogs, because what you want to be doing is targeting the tankiest things in the room and let pretty much everything else die to collateral damage. No need to ever worry about suppressed targets or dudes you can't get LOS on at all, they just die. Dudes putting out turrets? That's a good thing because it has a lot of hp and it's just going to sit there and let you shoot it, killing a couple of his friends in the process. It really is a game changing item for QOL as long as you don't try to take it into the really difficult content.

As for Heartbreaker, never really been a fan but I'm slowly changing my mind since picking it up again after getting Lexington. I've tried making that Kingbreaker gun work a few times since I got one that came perfectly rolled from the seasonal track back whenever it was first added. It's just not a good gun, and the extra base damage and laser beam accuracy of Lexington more than makes up for the extra dmg from Perfect Flatline. I've been using the build to try to make progress in escalation and it's the only thing that's worked decently well above tier 1 so far. I really don't like the shotgun in the second slot though. I carry an LMG that also has Flatline for situations where it makes more sense to hang out in cover instead of tanking with the shield. Also using two actual dps weapons of different types is good because the worst thing about every non-Gunner build is suddenly needing to worry about ammo reserves again. That's not just a problem in escalations, I often run out of ammo in escalations between getting jumped twice per block plus the kill squads if I only have an AR. The other pain in the ass with HB is that I've got all sorts of perfectly rolled blue core pieces but still have only ever gotten one piece with high enough CHC to justify swapping it to red and optimizing.

If you have yellow Core Strength items and a Picaro good enough to reroll yellow, you should try out my build that I posted a while back. I think it's about as good as you can get for a hybrid build (definitely more gun than skill, but the skills are still a significant chunk of damage).
 

mkopec

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Maybe thats just it, the kingbreaker just sucks ass. IDK its slow firing, shit for building stacks and hard to wield. I got another lexi today, up to three now, so I will roll flatline on it and see WTF is up, if its any better. Im thinking the chest is overkill too with taking HB to 100 stacks. I dont think I ever saw that while playing with it today. And I was spamming that shotty into many many dudes at certain points. And even if I did they fall off so quickly, because again, the chest, I dont think its ever worth. Maybe on escalation type content where mobs have tons of HP it makes more sense like a chest striker? IDK, more testing is in order. Maybe a perfect obliterate slotted in there as the chest and switch out one of the other pieces. I mean the base is there its now just about refining it into something. I tell you what though, that core strength chameleon shield shit just worked right out the box, didnt even need to refine it and its not even optimized 100% yet. It just feels stronger than heartbreaker build. That core strength stuff is bonkers.

As far as the skill hybrid shit, I think im all set. That build just murders everything. The t6 skills provide a shit ton of dmg and aggro control while I sit back plinking heads and further up the skills dmg. Reading the after dungeon reports it still seems like im doing more than 1/2 the dmg, maybe 60%? Skills do the rest. The seasonal shit makes them 99% uptime too. Without its about 95% uptime. Ive done everything heroic with it no problem. Even when rogues come out to play its really trivial. Bout to try a legendary dungeon or a escalation with it and see how it goes. Its funny to see some mobs even run the fuck away from the drone and turret and just nope the fuck out. In fact its such an EZ and chill build that I already have a set ready for my other character, only thing missing is a Piccaros that rolls with skill haste and dmg. So I can change the core to yellow. But that shit is rare. Oh and I need another ninja back pack too so I dont have to bank the only one I have.
 
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Xenrauk

Trakanon Raider
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The proto nerf is supposedly for the loot crates in escalation missions, not the event cache.

Ronin's will 100% drop a key now, but I'm sure they will nerf the solo exploit to get them by relogging.
 

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Oh and I need another ninja back pack too so I dont have to bank the only one I have.
I really should start using my alts again. I had them all at 30 for some reason I can't remember now, but I think it'd be much better if I split up my builds since it's less hassle than always changing around seasonal mods, having to remember which guns have the +15% on my specs, etc. Also, I'm running out of both loadout slots and stash space, even just keeping stuff from the best brands/sets that rolled high enough to max out with minimal optimization. 450 just isn't enough.

Plus the creator collab projects are per-character and give a ton of exotic mats and named caches. Definitely worth doing 4x.
 

mkopec

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For some reason I have 500 stash, maybe its the Manhattan DLC?. Also the dailes and some of the weekly are per character too, I think?
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
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The proto nerf is supposedly for the loot crates in escalation missions, not the event cache.

Ronin's will 100% drop a key now, but I'm sure they will nerf the solo exploit to get them by relogging.
YEah I was watching the speed runner dude when this patch went live and it was nuts in t10, almost every chest dropped a proto. He was even saying this shit has to be nerfed because they were walking away with like 20 proto per mission.
 

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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For some reason I have 500 stash, maybe its the Manhattan DLC?. Also the dailes and some of the weekly are per character too, I think?
Yeah, pretty sure all projects are. I just never have enough steel to waste on the SHD requisition one and I really don't see myself doing 15 floors of Summit four times. If I need exotic mats that bad I'll sacrifice an alt slot and use it to "farm" Lullaby/Merciless to dismantle.

I've got 450 slots with both DLCs. You must have the Anniversary bundle from last season? That's the only other thing with stash slots included. It's still 1000 credits and all you get now is the Big Al skin and that stash slots. Seems rather steep.

He was even saying this shit has to be nerfed because they were walking away with like 20 proto per mission.
Considering the cost to reroll that seems perfectly reasonable, so obviously it needs to be nerfed.

I wonder what the odds are of them fixing the "login, wait 2 minutes, DELTA-03, login again, now you can actually play" thing.