Question about High-level Element combos?

[Cyborg-Rox]

So I've been doing some testing in the Simulacrum with my beloved Karak Wraith, trying to figure out what build I want for it with a strong Riven mod. I know that with a good enough Riven mod the Karak Wraith can potentially be Sortie-level material, so I'm wondering what elemental combos would be best at those levels.

What I'm wondering is, if pure Corrosive would be best for Grineer and Infested, and pure Toxic for Corpus. The Karak Wraith is a very good Status machine, specially with a good Multishot Riven, so that's mainly what I'm wondering about.

If the potential damage for that is substantial enough, I might even look at removing Heavy Caliber with the Accuracy penalty, and maybe make room for some Punch-Through.

Thoughts?

[SmashMeat]

Corrosive is your best bet against high leveled Grineer, Corrupted, and Infested. While some Grineer units such as Bombards are damaged more by Radiation, Corrosive has the biggest, best scaling net gain in damage. Pure toxin does seem best for the corpus, as it ignores shields and corpus have very little health.

[Xzorn]

The best Riven for Karak would prolly be %status, %multishot %damage / Bane

For high level Grineer a Pure Corrosive status build is best. Both 60/60 mods and 90% x1 or x2, then Primed Bane.

Each elemental type you add beyond Corrosive will take away from your Corrosive proc weight which in turn means less Corrosive procs and less Damage output. So unless you want Fire or something for CC, avoid from adding other elements.

For Corpus Pure Toxic is best for crit weapons however Karak isn't really a crit weapon. Most likely just Magnetic + Toxic. But you might be able to go pure Toxic if you use both Heavy Caliber and Primed Bane with Primed Fast Hands.

For Infested Blast is actually the best now if you have Primed Cryo Rounds,  at least until the point Viral takes over around lvl 200.

 

[Cyborg-Rox]

12 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

For Infested Blast is actually the best now if you have Primed Cryo Rounds,  at least until the point Viral takes over around lvl 200.

 

...Blast? But that has a penalty against Sinew, and Corrosive has a higher damage bonus against Fossilized, and procs remove the Ancients' armor.

Also, the Riven I plan on getting is simply Damage and Multishot. Having a 3rd stat makes them all significantly weaker, and more Multishot means more Status Chance anyways. And if my math is right, if I get a Riven with up to 150% Multishot, using two 60/60 elements will give me 100% status chance.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Cyborg-Rox

[Xzorn]

10 minutes ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

...Blast? But that has a penalty against Sinew, and Corrosive has a higher damage bonus against Fossilized, and procs remove the Ancients' armor.

 

Only Infested Bosses have Sinew health type. Corrosive has a +75% against Fossilized but Blast has a +50% modifier and the increased damage that Primed Cryo Rounds gives (165% Vs 90%) result in more overall damage to Fossilized in addition to more against the other Infested health types.

Ancient's don't have armor. You don't need much status against Infested in terms of damage. At most you want an early Viral proc when you're fighting lvl 200+ ones or some Slash procs but it's just about always best to go with full front-end damage against Infested over status.

[DatDarkOne]

20 minutes ago, LevitatingNarwhal said:

Corrosive is your best bet against high leveled Grineer, Corrupted, and Infested. While some Grineer units such as Bombards are damaged more by Radiation, Corrosive has the biggest, best scaling net gain in damage. Pure toxin does seem best for the corpus, as it ignores shields and corpus have very little health.

This is what I use myself.  If I have the option to use more than one, then I'll add in fire with the corrosive.  Just for that extra insult (make them stop in place) to my enemies.  It's so nice on High rate of fire weapons.  The Pox on the other hand works great with corrosive and Blast together (to constantly knock them down while corrosive eats them).  It's the only one I use that combo with though. 

[Cyborg-Rox]

9 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

 

Only Infested Bosses have Sinew health type. Corrosive has a +75% against Fossilized but Blast has a +50% modifier and the increased damage that Primed Cryo Rounds gives (165% Vs 90%) result in more overall damage to Fossilized in addition to more against the other Infested health types

You're forgetting that the more Elemental mods you have, the less each of them matter. With 4 mod slots, I can get 300% Corrosive, or 375% Blast, which is only a 25% increase.

300 x 1.75 = 525 and 375 x 1.5 = 5...62.5... Welp, looks like you were still right :/

Hold on, wouldn't Blast AND Corrosive be good?

Edited November 27, 2016 by Cyborg-Rox

[Xzorn]

14 minutes ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

Hold on, wouldn't Blast AND Corrosive be good?

Ideally yea but it depends what Riven you're using. I would use Serration, Split Chamber, Heavy Cal, Primed Bane, Elemental x2. Which leaves 2 mod slots.

I wouldn't want to fight infested with a rifle type weapon without Punch-Through, so I'd go Shred unless the Riven has Punch-through. (Which would also be a decent thing to roll btw) and then there's the 60 round mag and 2s reload, which is really tiny, esp against Infested or if you use Shred. So you might want Primed Fast Hands to bring the reload down to 1.3s. It's not the best use of Primed Fast Hands but I recently reworked my Paracyst cuz I got a multishot / RoF Riven for it and that thing also has a 60 mag with similar RoF and I just had to put Fast Hands on it. It was driving me nuts.

It mostly depends if you're happy with how it handles and what Riven stats you have going on.

[Cyborg-Rox]

16 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Ideally yea but it depends what Riven you're using. I would use Serration, Split Chamber, Heavy Cal, Primed Bane, Elemental x2. Which leaves 2 mod slots.

I wouldn't want to fight infested with a rifle type weapon without Punch-Through, so I'd go Shred unless the Riven has Punch-through. (Which would also be a decent thing to roll btw) and then there's the 60 round mag and 2s reload, which is really tiny, esp against Infested or if you use Shred. So you might want Primed Fast Hands to bring the reload down to 1.3s. It's not the best use of Primed Fast Hands but I recently reworked my Paracyst cuz I got a multishot / RoF Riven for it and that thing also has a 60 mag with similar RoF and I just had to put Fast Hands on it. It was driving me nuts.

It mostly depends if you're happy with how it handles and what Riven stats you have going on.

Well, if I need to use a mod slot for Primed Fast Hands when using Shred, wouldn't just simply using Metal Augr be much better? More Punch-Through, and one extra mod slot.

I did the math, and using a 90% Element instead of Shred + Primed Fast Hands yields almost the exact same DPS. The latter only provides 7% more overall Sustained DPS and 2% overall Burst DPS, at the cost of 30% less Ammo-Efficiency and 40% less Punch-Through compared to Metal Auger.

I think I know what build I want now.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Cyborg-Rox