Viability Of Slash Dash ?

[Col_Helghan]

Fellow Tenno,

 

Has anyone ever managed to make use of this ability especially now with the new mods from Shadow Debt event ?

Namely Body Count and Blood rush. Add Surging Dash augment into the mix.

 

How viable is this combo and to what extent ? I know most Caliburs use either Radial Blind builds and EB, I just want to try something new.

 

Any ideas ?

 

[Autongnosis]

I du use it from time to time, the problem is that as soon as your connection goes down from "ther server/host is in my room atm" levels it starts missing like a mofo.

 

Too unreliable (for me), but the ability in itself is really good for a number of reasons:

- movement

- gives invulnerability on health during movement

- knockdown on enemies hit but not killed

- huge damage for such a cheap skill

- sends waves (with EB active)

- quick way to ramp up combo counter (augment)

 

If your connection is good then yeah, slot the augment and use it to pimp your combo counter.

[Anatolius]

Ive heard that it was a good combo

but for some reason i can never hit things with it..

[Col_Helghan]

Sounds dandy, especially for the invulnerability phase on movement and good damage, so in theory, if I mod calibur for Strength and some Range with some Efficiency so it´s spammable ( I cheat with Zenurik / don´t judge ) ^^.....at what level do you start noticing damage falloff ?

 

I barely used melee, like....ever, so this Combo thing is new to me, the higher the counter, bigger the damage ?

Wouldn´t that make Slash Dash OP ? I´ve never used Slash Dash as an offensive ability before, only as a movement tool.

[Bipp]

I have never found Slash Dash to be a very good ability. It never feels like it really does hit anything, neither have I seen the 'pinballing' effect showcased in the Devstream.

 

Surging Dash coupled with Blood Rush and Body Count is an absolutely excellent combination (anything making good use of the Combo Counter is).

 

But say you're using a really fast melee weapon. You could probably build your combo counter much faster using that rather than with Slash Dash.

[srlhama]

Body count make it a little useless IMO.

Noe you have an enourmous time to keep the combo up, Furious Javelin will make better use of that red crits...

[Col_Helghan]

I am interested in the damage increase with the new mods, since Slash Dash is affected by Combo Counter.

And now that we can keep the counter up for indefinitely, is there a cap to how much damage Slash Dash is going to do.

 

This ability was never known for it´s high damage but now it looks like it can deal massive amounts of damage given the counter is high ?

Or am I missing something ?

[shut]

I haven't played for enormous amounts of time since the update, but from what I've tested, Slash Dash is absolutely fantastic with Body Count if you're going pure non-EB melee.

 

 

- The combo multiplier bonus is huge. Hitting a 3x multiplier from swinging your melee around is pretty typical for any non-Spy mission that takes over five minutes, which gives SD a base damage of 1500, scaling from melee mods, before STR comes into play. (Although keep in mind that many of your melee mods, such as crit mods, won't affect SD.)

 

- It's great as a mobility tool if you're like me and you seldom use it for damage. Just hold right click, aim in a direction, and press 1 to fly in a straight line across the map with perfect accuracy. You can even do aimglide-SDs multiple times in a single jump to turn your Excal into an easier-to-control Zephyr (minus the ability to fly straight up). It's fantastic.

 

- If you target an enemy, it's fantastic as a distance-closing tool that'll give your combo counter an easy refresh if you think it's in danger of running out.

 

- (Slightly off-topic) Even if there are no enemies nearby, you can actually cast Exalted Blade to "pause" the combo counter timer. You can actually smack an enemy, not touch anything for 10 seconds, cast EB and hold it for half an hour (theoretically infinitely if you don't run out of energy), and then deactivate EB to find that your old combo counter is exactly as you left it with 5 seconds remaining. Perfect for keeping your combo between Defense rounds.

To my understanding, Hysteria and Primal Fury can also do this. I like this feature; it gives a reason for players to still use the ults despite having built their melees with mods that don't work on them.

 

 

That's the stuff I like about Excal in general post-18.4.1. But yeah, regarding Slash Dash, the damage is pretty nice but it's the mobility you should care about the most. While it hits like a truck, your melee is going to be so beefed-up from Blood Rush that you're going to end up using that for damage instead of SD anyways.

Edited February 4, 2016 by SortaRandom

[Col_Helghan]

I haven't played for enormous amounts of time since the update, but from what I've tested, Slash Dash is absolutely fantastic with Body Count if you're going pure non-EB melee.

 

 

- The combo multiplier bonus is huge. Hitting a 3x multiplier from swinging your melee around is pretty typical for any non-Spy mission that takes over five minutes, which gives SD a base damage of 1500, scaling from melee mods, before STR comes into play. (Although keep in mind that many of your melee mods, such as crit mods, won't affect SD.)

 

- It's great as a mobility tool if you're like me and you seldom use it for damage. Just hold right click, aim in a direction, and press 1 to fly in a straight line across the map with perfect accuracy. You can even do aimglide-SDs multiple times in a single jump to turn your Excal into an easier-to-control Zephyr (minus the ability to fly straight up). It's fantastic.

 

- If you target an enemy, it's fantastic as a distance-closing tool that'll give your combo counter an easy refresh if you think it's in danger of running out.

 

- (Slightly off-topic) Even if there are no enemies nearby, you can actually cast Exalted Blade to "pause" the combo counter timer. You can actually smack an enemy, not touch anything for 10 seconds, cast EB and hold it for half an hour (theoretically infinitely if you don't run out of energy), and then deactivate EB to find that your old combo counter is exactly as you left it with 5 seconds remaining. Perfect for keeping your combo between Defense rounds.

To my understanding, Hysteria and Primal Fury can also do this. I like this feature; it gives a reason for players to still use the ults despite having built their melees with mods that don't work on them.

 

 

That's the stuff I like about Excal in general post-18.4.1. But yeah, regarding Slash Dash, the damage is pretty nice but it's the mobility you should care about the most. While it hits like a truck, your melee is going to be so beefed-up from Blood Rush that you're going to end up using that for damage instead of SD anyways.

 

I used SD as a mobility tool for Radial Blind build when I had maxed range for open areas. Range on SD was sick, especially when you use it 2 or 3 times in a row. Zephcalibur ^^ Anything new that someone doesn´t know is not off topic :) 

 

First time I hear about this trick with pausing combo counter o.O then again, I didn´t know about canceling Frost´s snow globe either since these things are not mentioned anywhere but you gotta find about it from other players.

 

I see SD as trash killer most of the time (everything but heavies) on later levels.

 

Last question, even with high power strength, add in some elemental damage and combo mods, SD only seems to tickle heavies, or am I modding it wrong ? So far SD only looks good for knocking down heavies and that´s it. Sorry it´s a stupid question.

[OniGanon]

Heavies are dealt with by Radial Blind and a Finisher.

[Col_Helghan]

Heavies are dealt with by Radial Blind and a Finisher.

 

Yes I know that, all this time I played with Radial Blind build and it got boring to me, still doesn´t my answer my question.

How come SD´s damage falls off at later levels only against heavies. Armor scaling or... ? 

[Inugami8]

The attack animation feels too long for me. I use it only as a mobility tool when I'm using my radial blind build. That's about it.

[NyxCrab]

I personally like to use it with Surging Dash, makes it easy to keep a combo going while dealing really good melee damage. Unfortunately it isn't all that good in an Exalted Blade build, but focusing on using whatever melee you brought with you, it's a ton of fun.

[shut]

Last question, even with high power strength, add in some elemental damage and combo mods, SD only seems to tickle heavies, or am I modding it wrong ? So far SD only looks good for knocking down heavies and that´s it. Sorry it´s a stupid question.

 

Even if you mod the crap out of SD and get a super-high combo with Body Count going, I doubt you're going to be able to hop into a stage 2 or 3 Sortie and oneshot all the Grineer heavies with it. I haven't done testing with full-STR builds myself (I prefer utility over STR so much that I don't even have my Blind Rage ranked to a half-decent level for any frame), but I imagine that the best you'll be able to do with such a build is take out a noticeable chunk of health.

 

Armor scaling is out of whack for high-leveled enemies, meaning that you'll need insane DPS and/or innate armor ignore to kill them effectively. Slash Dash, while beastly, has neither-- you'd likely be better off hitting them with Exalted Blade, blinded or not.

(Or, if you're going full Body Count + Blood Rush + Berserker + Organ Shatter, might as well just hit them with your regular melee weapon without activating a Finisher. Since, you know, EB might actually do less damage due to its short combo timer and Finishers will do diddly squat since they don't scale from combos or crits.)

Edited February 5, 2016 by SortaRandom