Essence Interrupter Scaling? Other options?

[jorill]

I am currently playing as Ascendant/Streetfighter and trying to understand a few different ranged weapon options. I have hand mortar/kitchen stove on one set and  then switch to another ranged weapon after heating up, but I am having difficulty understanding the real DPS differences between a few options. Blunderbusses don't feel as though they penetrate enough to ramp up focus and it feels faster switching to either Essence Interrupter, Red Hand, Frost Seeker, Spear Caster, or Water Shaper Focus. 

Red Hand is my usual goto when things aren't pierce resistant, but Essence Interrupter feels more fun so I've been messing with it - is there anyway to see how much the bonus %shock damage scales with Metaphysics? With Spear Caster the accuracy scaling you can  see in the character sheet but I just have no idea what's going on with EI. 

So, (1) anyone know how EI scales with metaphysics? (2) Of the ranged dps weapons after blunderbuss/heating up, what has the best dps?

POTD/Upscale/Deadly Deadfire (normal)/Party.

[Wotcha]

Essence Interrupter adds 0.25 percent lash per point of Metaphysics, so at 20 Metaphysics you'll get an extra 5% lash (for a total of 10%).  The scaling is the same regardless of whether you went with the Shock or the Burn lash choice.

That scaling amount (0.25 per point) can be reasonably guessed to be the scaling factor for the vast majority of scales-with-skill enchantments.  For exact numbers, the Gamepedia wiki has exact numbers for pretty much every unique item enchant in the game.

[Boeroer]

Edit: oh wow I totally had a brain fart and got carried away - messing up Helwalker/Ascendant with Streetfighter. Forget what I was rambling about down there. I'll let it sit here because there might be some tips that still are worth reading (like Thunderous Report, switching times, destroying loot with Essence Interrupter and cramping up enemies etc.). Just remove all the Monk talk! Easy! Sorry, it was early and I only had 4 hours of sleep. Jeeeez!

----------weird shyte starts now---------

The best dps will still be with dual mortars. At least if you can hit several enemies at once. INT (and other influences on AoE size) are important here. Duality of Mortal Presence (INT) boosts this a lot. So I'd always take it even if the burning lash of Turning Wheel doesn't apply to ranged weapons in the vanilla game (Community Patch mod corrects this so you can profit from the burning lash).

Once you get Thunderous Blows + Hammering Thoughts PEN shouldn't be an issue. Also because mortars have pierce/slash damage. Fire in the Hole jumps with the AoE (!). And of course you don't lose dps by switching. That's 2.5 seconds of doing 0 damage and 2.5 seconds that get shaved off your "Heating Up" status. Enduring Dance will make sure you don't feel the ACC malus of mortars too much.

Then Stunning Surge has a high chance of critting (again if you can hit several enemies at once). This means you can use it indefinitely with mortars if you can target several weak mobs at once.

So: Pull of Eora and a tank (immune to push/pull effects) are the best friends of a mortar Monk(/something). You can start the encounter with Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights from stealth in order to lure enemies to one spot, then drop Pull of Eora while closing in with the tank (if it's an something/Trickster he can also be the one who uses Dazzling Lights). And then just use Stunning Surge on that crowd. Usually you get full focus right after one or two Surges. Also great that firih the opening shot from stealth will give you -85% reload time which means you can fire two Stunning Surges right away in a row and get ascended asap.

Also try Flagellant's Path with dual mortars. It skips the reload and only has recovery...

Another Blunderbuss that is worth considering - especially for the opening shot - is Kitchen Stove. It has the enchantment "Thunderous Report" which is a very high dmg cone attack (1/encounter). This alone (when placed smartly) can be enough to fill your whole focus and ascend you. 

Of course against single targets the mortars stink a bit. Against single targets Essence Interrupter is decent. One of the best options. BUT: it still destroys the loot if the enemies get turned into a summon on death. That's why I don't use it most of times.

A neat alternative are St. Omaku's Mercy and Veilpiercer - if you tend to crit a lot (Enduring Dance!). You need to pick the enchantment that omits recovery 60% of times on crit. This can lead to great single target dps.

Red Hand is also good.

BUT: my go-to weapon against single enemies as a ranged Monk is the Long Pain. They work with two weapon style as well, have very high ACC and dps and do crush dmg (complements piece/slash just lovely). With decent action speed they even take less time to summon than switching does. 

So I would start with mortars and fire at cramped up enemies. Once only singular enemies are left I'd summon the Long Pain and finish them off. 

----------------

Manmanman... but still: keep the mortars. With Crippling Strike and especially Arterial Strike (+2 PEN) and Toxic Strike they are great! But only if you have good INT. You can make them work better with Aloth's Armor and a ring of overseeing and the ring of the marksman. 

Valid alternatives to Essence Interrupter are still St. Omaku's Mercy/Veilpiercer. Rogue/Cipher has good ACC (especially once Borrowed Instinct is accessible) and ok crit conversion. If you are a Dwarf I also think Amiina's Legacy is very good. Even if you are not one - but then it's even better. 

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Boeroer

[Wormerine]

Thumbs up for ”O Brother, Where Art Thou” meme

[jorill]

Thank you all for responding with so much information, I don't know how I never noticed the specific details on gamepedia - I guess in googling things I usually ended up on fextralife and didn't realize the difference.

With the Monk stuff, I do have the community patch installed, but never  thoughtfully considered what a ranged cipher/monk would look like now that turning wheel was working again.  So many different weapon/class combinations to try out, I've been really trying to resist constantly restarting or unity console class changes.

Is there a particular encounter or series of close together encounters that are really good for testing builds? I think what I really should do is just get myself somewhere where the mobs are decent spread of damage/resistances so I can get a good feel for how different weapons/builds play out. Where do you guys go to do your testing?

Also, modding question here, if I wanted to change upscaling so that everything (all enemies) always scales up to my level (or within 3 levels or something) - does anyone know where specifically I need to edit? I have deadly deadfire installed which I know moves up enemies 9 levels behind - but I figure I might as well do everything as I would eventually like to 100% the game and I know I'll get bored if its just all faceroll.

[Boeroer]

I simply spawn some different enemies somewhere on the map and try stuff out.

You can spawn anything with the console using

SpawnPrefabAtMouse <prefab name>

Prefab names can be found with

FindPrefab Characters <search string>

. Search string can be "Xaurip" or Skeletal" or whatever the name of the enemy type you wish may contain. You can also spwan NPCs and bosses etc. In case of "Xaurip" you might find "CRE_Xaurip_Champion" and can then spawn it with "spawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Xaurip_Champion".

My first testing is always done with CRE_Dummy. It's a Rhotgast with low defenses but very high health that doesn't move and only does tiny damage. SO you can test stuff out without any worries. See how the mechanics work and so on.

You can give yourself any item with

giveItem <item name>

. Item names can be found with "FindGameData <search string>". Usually the pattern is like this "pistol_U_scordeos_trophy" where the U stands for unique. You can enchant stuff for free if you use

FreeRecipesToggle

. 

To open the console look up which key is assigned to the console (don't know which one it is on US keyboards).

In order to spawn stuff and all that you'll need to type in

iroll20s

first to unlock cheats. This will mark your current run as cheated (no achievements, blessings and so on). But no worries: You can simply save your game before doing cheating/testing, go wild and then simply reload the game afterwards: your playthrough will not be marked as cheated then.
    You can also switch classes and add abilites with

setClassLevel

and

addAbility

. Skills:

skill

, Attributes:

attributeScore

.

You can always use <tab> to let the console guess/complete your command. It's very helpful. You don't need to know the exact names of commands/items/abilites/chars/etc. then, just how they start. 

I know no better way to quickly yet thoroughly test stuff out.   

Edited September 3, 2019 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Red Hand and Aamiina's Legacy (with modal activated) have the highest dps vs single targets. However the Essence Interrupter has less penetration issues.

[Wotcha]

Thanks, Boeroer, for taking the moment to point AddAbility out, because I was being a dumbass and going through a full re-roll and level-up over and over to pick my new/editied abilities as I've been doing my cipher mod testing, which has been a huge waste of time because I could just be hacking each ability onto the test cipher with AddAbilityto test it with instead.  I'm perfectly familiar with using the console for testing, but it had just never occurred to me to use that command instead of rerolling.

[Boeroer]

Red Hand/Aamiina's Legacy:
Depends on the class I'd say. For example I'm pretty sure that a Monk/Ranger, Berserker/Ranger or Cipher/Ranger can have higher dps on average with St. Omaku's Mercy than with Amiina's Legacy. Also depends on the target's defenses. But as a cipher you usually target the weaker enemies for faster focus gain I guess.  

Essence Interrupter is totally out for me because of its issues with the loot (that still persist even after several attempts to fix them).

Red Hand is good, but pierce only can suck. However the modal is great in some cases. Also Double Tab is supergood as soon as vessels are involved. Even works against pierce immune vessels.
But I guess in that case (destroy) you get no focus (?). 

[Boeroer]

3 minutes ago, Wotcha said:

Thanks, Boeroer, for taking the moment to point AddAbility out, because I was being a dumbass and going through a full re-roll and level-up over and over to pick my new/editied abilities as I've been doing my cipher mod testing, which has been a huge waste of time because I could just be hacking each ability onto the test cipher with AddAbilityto test it with instead.  I'm perfectly familiar with using the console for testing, but it had just never occurred to me to use that command instead of rerolling.

Yes, it helps to speed things up

BUT: you can't empower the abilites you added with AddAbility. Don't ask me why...
If you want to test Empower (for example if you want to play around with a Bellower with Sasha's Singing Scimitar) you have to do it like you did (basically a reroll from level x to pick the ability via level-up).

[3x0du5]

what does essence interrupter do to the loot exactly ? its really nice bow that I wanted to try in future since you can get it as soon as you start the game 

[Boeroer]

The loot is just gone. It doesn't happen always. I suspect it happens when the summoned creature has its own loot that overwrites the original one. But I didn't look into it too much. I only tested it several times. Last time after the final patch came out. 

You can try it yourself: for example spawn Nomu the Marauder (drops Charmeleon's Ring) and kill him with Essence Interrupter. Often he will not drop the ring when he got transformed.

[3x0du5]

Guess only way to use it is in playtrough where you abuse console

[Boeroer]

Or only shoot generic mobs with it.