What Melee Weapon For Valkyr On Super High Armor Sortie Missions?

[LostAlone]

So yesterdays Sortie was stuffed full of armored dudes and that got me to thinking. I run Valkyr for most high level stuff, using Hysteria with Scindo Prime and mostly I do so much damage it really doesn't make much odds. Sure, yesterday was a pretty extreme example of armor that I'm not going to see every day but seeing my trusty blender just bounce off heavies made me want to look harder at my weapon choice. 

 

So my question is this - Which stats from my melee weapon effect Hysteria and which don't?

 

Everywhere I look I see different answers; some people say it's just damage, crit chance and attack speed, other people say reach effects it too, still others say that channeling mods somehow effect hysteria. I'm pretty sure that elemental damage does add to hysteria but I don't know if the elements can apply status procs in hysteria or if status chance is important on my base melee weapon.

 

Secondly; against super-high armor enemies which weapon should I be using and what kind of build? I've got my Scindo Prime, Dragon Nikana, Jatt Kittag and Dual Ichors (that could even easily fit shattering impact too if that actually works) but over the past weeks of sorties it feels like I'm pretty much always doing about the same damage whatever I use. 

 

Any guidance would be great!

[LABAL]

Use finishers.

[Otis.Driftwood]

Sorties are challenging for sure from my experience (short as it may be) it seems that the enemies with the highly advanced armor are just sponges for any type of weapon and are purely there to bring a sembalance of difficulty.

As far as I'm aware  hysteria has a base damage of its own and mods that are on your melee affect it. 

Edited December 24, 2015 by Otis.Driftwood

[Iceheart125]

Anything slash based will help. Otherwise, corrosive and viral, and fast attack speed will help, paralysis plus finisher helps, and worry is a must. Good luck!

[TychusMechanicus]

After the rework the weapon stats no longer affect Hysteria only equipped mods. 

 

I'd pick a melee weapon that uses the same mods as what you would use on a melee weapon with Hysteria's stats:

50% crit chance, 10% status chance, 250 base IPS dmg affected by power str AND melee base dmg mods, built in 5% life steal, 2m attack reach, etc

 

So go nuts, keep in mind, however, that IPS mods don't have a stellar effect on Hysteria as the IPS damage is equally distributed so even a 60% elemental mod will outclass the primed 165% impact damage mod. 

 

Also, in Hysteria you get 64x multiplier for armor ignore finisher damage for promted finishers. So spam Paralysis for crazy damage. I did that yesterday for a whopping 64% damage done in the squad at the end of Sortie 3.

 

EDITS: grammatical corrections + some numbers

Edited December 24, 2015 by TychusMechanicus

[Zeyez]

try 4 corrosive projection...

or Paralysis + finisher

Edited December 24, 2015 by Zeyez

[Acos]

Corrosive/Radiation bypass 75% of armor reduction. Corrosive in particular also does well against the Infested, and doesn't have any giant malus against Corpus units either, so it tends to be a pretty favorable option against everything. 

Beyond that, Corrosive Projection is near mandatory for fighting Grineer. Without it you're looking at somewhere around 97% damage reduction when fighting heavies. Blame the ridiculous armor scaling we never solved with damage 2.0. I tend to keep Corrosive elements on my weapons even when I put on Corrosive Projection if I'm pugging because there's a good chance that the other people are still using things like Steel Charge or Energy Siphon. Otherwise if your team is competently built you want to focus on Viral, Fire, and/or Slashing. 

Finishers are also a good idea. Paralysis makes this super easy for Valkyr, and it should be your first response to heavy units. A level 100 Grineer Bombard has around 44,400 health. Your Finisher damage is entirely based off all of your damage mods; crits, reach, weapon speed, etc have no effect on it. You might consider Finishing Touch and Smite Grineer mods as well. 

Edited December 24, 2015 by Acos

[LostAlone]

After the rework the weapon stats no longer affect Hysteria only equipped mods. 

 

I'd pick a melee weapon that uses the same mods as what you would use on a melee weapon with Hysteria's stats:

50% crit chance, 10% status chance, 250 base IPS dmg affected by power str AND melee base dmg mods, built in 5% life steal, 2m attack reach, etc

 

So go nuts, keep in mind, however, that IPS mods don't have a stellar effect on Hysteria as the IPS damage is equally distributed so even a 60% elemental mod will outclass the primed 165% impact damage mod. 

 

Also, in Hysteria you get 64x multiplier for armor ignore finisher damage for promted finishers. So spam Paralysis for crazy damage. I did that yesterday for a whopping 64% damage done in the squad at the end of Sortie 3.

 

EDITS: grammatical corrections + some numbers

 

So I could in theory get Corrosive procs to reduce armor but I only have 10% base status to work with, correct? 

 

How about Shattering Impact? If I understand correctly it will still have it's effect in hysteria and with beserker and fury I hit extremely fast so it seems possible. I get that it's not really a perfect solution but yesterday it was taking 30+ hits to down a heavy with 2 CPs in the squad (just running with randoms) so it seems reasonable as a way to reliably reduce armor on these specific very high level missions. 

[[DE]Momaw]

Corrosive/Radiation bypass 75% of armor reduction. Corrosive in particular also does well against the Infested, and doesn't have any giant malus against Corpus units either, so it tends to be a pretty favorable option against everything. 

Beyond that, Corrosive Projection is near mandatory for fighting Grineer. Without it you're looking at somewhere around 97% damage reduction when fighting heavies. Blame the ridiculous armor scaling we never solved with damage 2.0. I tend to keep Corrosive elements on my weapons even when I put on Corrosive Projection if I'm pugging because there's a good chance that the other people are still using things like Steel Charge or Energy Siphon. Otherwise if your team is competently built you want to focus on Viral, Fire, and/or Slashing. 

Finishers are also a good idea. Paralysis makes this super easy for Valkyr, and it should be your first response to heavy units. A level 100 Grineer Bombard has around 44,400 health. Your Finisher damage is entirely based off all of your damage mods; crits, reach, weapon speed, etc have no effect on it. You might consider Finishing Touch and Smite Grineer mods as well. 

 

So....

 

* Okay, first of all there are two different kinds of armor.  Ferrite armor is the light grineer and the heavy gunners,  while Alloy armor is the marines, napalms, and bombards.

 

* Corrosion is strong against Ferrite armor,  and Alloy armor doesn't have any modifiers to it.

 

* Radiation is strong against Alloy armor, and Ferrite doesn't have any modifiers to it.

 

* The way armor works means that having the right element is SUPER effective.  With corrosion versus ferrite, not only do you get the raw 75% damage bonus, the target's actual armor rating (i.e. the percentage of your damage they will ignore) is also reduced by 75%.   What this means is that a heavy gunner with an armor rating of 3000 will ignore 91% of, say, electrical damage.   So you hit them with 100 base electrical damage, and end up actually seeing a 9 pop up.  If you hit them with 100 corrosion damage on the other hand, first off you get +75% because the armor is weak to it (175 damage),  and the armor rating is reduced by 75%. So against that damage, their armor will only soak 72%, giving a final value of 31.5 damage inflicted.

 

* Corrosion has a bonus against heavy infested, the light ones don't care.  However since infested don't have the same kind of ludicrous damage reduction mechanics that properly armored enemies do, it's less important.

 

* Corrosion is only 50% effective versus Proto shields (notably, corpus techs).  This is not an ideal element to fight Corpus.

[[DE]Momaw]

So I could in theory get Corrosive procs to reduce armor but I only have 10% base status to work with, correct?

 

Trying to rely on corrosion status to remove enemy armor is a waste of time and ammo in situations where Corrosive Projection is 100% effective and doesn't cost either. So basically:  If CP is going to work, use CP, because it's infinitely better.  It's only when CP isn't going to work (like sortie with +armor modifer), that you need to care about armor.

 

If you really want to try and make corrosion procs a thing, you need a weapon with both high status chance and a high rate of fire.  Grakata is good at this.   Tysis pistol, since it can easily reach 100% status chance on every projectile and is inherently Corrosive, is also effective. (Since you can mod Tysis for corrosion and radiation and viral at the same time, all the things grineer are allergic to, it gets my vote)

Edited December 24, 2015 by Momaw