Are shotguns in 18.7 going to be viable, or just a gimmick?

[Litestrider]

I know some of you have looked into this quite closely. I've only really just started poking at the Silverback and PDKP myself, so I figured I'd go and ask you guys what you thought before going too far.

So, does the Silverback, PDKP, and shotguns in general look like it will be a worthwhile venture for agents in 18.7, or will it just be one of those hypothetical gimmick setups with little to no actual practical application?

It looks like just equipping them in the first place is no small task, it looks like it's going to take some serious gear to get them on. And then keeping them out of OE seems to be likely impossible outside of FP:trader, which already seems to put a big damper on the whole situation. Or maybe I've missed something here?

I'll admit that I've always kind of liked the thought of shotguns on agent, and I'd really like for these to be usable, but the reqs just seem too high. If they force me into a crippled loadout that exclusively runs FP:Trader, I'd rather just roll a real trader and be done with it.

[Rockdizzle]

No reason to ever use Silverback or even Greed of the Xan. PDKP can be kept 100% without too much sacrifice while keeping high add dmg and decent crit but it does need FP Trader still otherwise you run around with 2.3k ish AR with them which can miss and lowers dmg.

Making them is harder than equiping them. Its almost not doable when not a neutral (only 10-20 over) and only 40-50 over req for WS when neutral. This includes every known item that gives TSs + trickle.

If you do go with PDKPs and DD gear be prepared to take agg all the time since it can push more than 420k DPM easy, out DDing all profs besides suicide Engis and crats. *the loss of Sabre morph hurts DD a good chuck :/*

Not including Pets it's currently the highest DD setup/prof atm but don't expect to take hits without OSBs on first.

[Litestrider]

In case anyone is wondering about this, I did work out the build require to build them. I never realized this, but Agents have the very worst Weapon Smithing in the game (funny given how they're made out to be obsessive about rifles), and they also get no tradeskill support (again I was surprised given they have a native tradeskill buff and their skills aren't that bad).

So, like Rock said, with literally everything, you're just a scant few points over the requirements. I came up with 25 extra points, with literally everything. That includes being a nanomage, going neutral to equip the profiteer's helper, having a QL 300 tower and contracts, and a few QL 300 items that I don't believe anyone actively hunts or would even pick up if they saw.

Basically, if anyone actually goes through with it, they deserve a medal!

[sultryvoltron]

In case anyone is wondering about this, I did work out the build require to build them. I never realized this, but Agents have the very worst Weapon Smithing in the game (funny given how they're made out to be obsessive about rifles), and they also get no tradeskill support (again I was surprised given they have a native tradeskill buff and their skills aren't that bad).

So, like Rock said, with literally everything, you're just a scant few points over the requirements. I came up with 25 extra points, with literally everything. That includes being a nanomage, going neutral to equip the profiteer's helper, having a QL 300 tower and contracts, and a few QL 300 items that I don't believe anyone actively hunts or would even pick up if they saw.

Basically, if anyone actually goes through with it, they deserve a medal!

Being Neutral and having QL 300 towers sounds impossible... At least it essentially used to be impossible.

[Litestrider]

Being Neutral and having QL 300 towers sounds impossible... At least it essentially used to be impossible.

Possible but unlikely. The more practical solution (and calling this practical illustrates how ridiculous this build would be) is to buy a premium neutral application, put on your neck item, then switch over to whichever side has a ql300 tower field and will agree to let you use their towers/contacts.

[sultryvoltron]

buy a premium neutral application

I'm more blown away by this existing than by the difficulty of tradeskilling this weapon...
Wow, a lot has changed in the last few years.

[Litestrider]

I'm more blown away by this existing than by the difficulty of tradeskilling this weapon...
Wow, a lot has changed in the last few years.

Yes, it's almost like the long dark era of Neutral h8 is slowly coming to an end

Still, got to pay irl $$$ for it, or a ton of credits to someone who did. There's no in-game Neutral app, and even if there were the lockout timer on the side change forms is absurdly long.

[srompu]

I'm starting to think the PDKP is just a good way to ruin an Agent.

The change to sabre morph and fix to MBS means the damage will be lower than originally found.
Moreover, you could make a profession like shade, engi, MP, or crat. You'd have much more survival, comparable damage, and you wouldn't have to trash your IP to be effective. Needing faction changes, IPRs, and subsequent retwinks pushes into the absurd.

[Rockdizzle]

My DPM tests were done at 2740 AR without Sabre aura(110 AAO, 71 dmg) but with the morph, the sabre morph loss is a valid point tho which is why I prolly won't try making it. If michi gives us access to Swiss Cheese tho it might give me a reason to consider it since 2.6k AR without a team is still acceptable tbh.

I'm not saying it's a good overall setup in fact my first post said it needs OSBs or several FPs just to survive. It just benefits from add dmg/crit so much that some might see the appeal of a setup pushing more DD than anything not called Engi or Crat while in all out dd setups. Access to detaunts can help if you think your enf tank is slacking as I doubt a MA tank will hold agg off of you even with 10k/4sec taunts and 300k+ DPM setup.

If the Agent professional can convince Michi to give Agents access to Swiss Cheese and make shotgun as IPable as Pistol/MA/Grenade I could post setups on how to make them and a final setup to make the most out of them.

[srompu]

That's actually pretty clever testing, hehe.
Ya, I hear you. I thought it might have been a nice thing for a PvM-focused person for a bit. :/
I'm not sure he's into that sort of thing, but I'll definitely give it a shot. It would be nice to get some high-dd options for sure.

[Litestrider]

That's actually pretty clever testing, hehe.
Ya, I hear you. I thought it might have been a nice thing for a PvM-focused person for a bit. :/
I'm not sure he's into that sort of thing, but I'll definitely give it a shot. It would be nice to get some high-dd options for sure.

Maybe you could beg him for access to a tradeskill buff, or some tradeskill gear, or maybe just improve our WS a bit as well?

Agent is technically a "secondary tradeskill" profession, we have a tradeskill buff (however niche it is) and access to a tradeskill perkline. I obviously have ulterior motives here but I don't think it's unreasonable to want a little more tradeskill support even if we still won't have the IP to make good use of it.

It also just strikes me as extremely odd how Agent, the profession that is perhaps the most obsessed with a single weapon, fawning over Rifles constantly, absolutely mastering everything about them and possessing a level of skill with them nobody can really approach, is awful at actually building/modifying them. Even worse than the bureaucrats who sit at a desk having their robots and flunkies do all the work, or the nanotechs who prefer raw nanotechnology over a "real" weapon, or meta-physicists who will just create their own damn weapon from the ether.

And of course just the tiniest bump, to catch us with NT or shade, would likely make this twink infinitely more plausible. Even just that much would give us over 100 points of base skill.

In the end I really don't even care much about the PDKPs, what I really want is just more viable weapon options. All the rifles (as well as most of the agent toolset) have this feeling of "lol omg nub why are you using a pvp weapon for pvm?" hanging over them, and I think that's something we really need to be able to get away from. If doing so cripples our PvP viability, that's fine, most other profs who go full PvM damage and/or survivability are trash in PvP as well. PDKPs just seemed like they might fit that role really well, since they gave us fast attacks, fast specials, good crit damage, and sacrificed AS and AR which I'm sure makes them neigh-useless in a PvP setting. Maybe there's something else which could already start to approach that kind of niche now that we can use our perks with any ranged weapon. I'll have to take another look through the database.

[srompu]

We could ask for some support, but I think it'd be a difficult argument to sell.

I think most of us were excited because it was a chance to have non-sucky PvM DD. However, maybe we're trying to shoehorn ourselves into another prof's solution rather than getting our own fix on a rifle.
If you're looking for a good ranged DD setup in the mean time, Chaos of the Xan has a solid crit mod and is relatively easy on the IP. Last I heard some guys like Cuteypie were running 8-9k crits on DB bosses. I haven't played with Greed, but I think Rock mentioned he had some results for it.

[sultryvoltron]

We could ask for some support, but I think it'd be a difficult argument to sell.

I think most of us were excited because it was a chance to have non-sucky PvM DD. However, maybe we're trying to shoehorn ourselves into another prof's solution rather than getting our own fix on a rifle.
If you're looking for a good ranged DD setup in the mean time, Chaos of the Xan has a solid crit mod and is relatively easy on the IP. Last I heard some guys like Cuteypie were running 8-9k crits on DB bosses. I haven't played with Greed, but I think Rock mentioned he had some results for it.

Yeah, based on my conversations with Cuteypie I used a Chaos for a while until I IPR'd for PE. The damage was good. I wasn't getting as high crits as he did (he was pretty heavily OB'd to hit those numbers) but I used to run as Mimic: Trader, fire off some drains, and easily hit 6-7k crits with ~50% crit rate (going off memory here, but it was PVM setup with crit increase stuff). It was also pretty light on the IP and the results were decent. You could still land a handful of perks in PvM, but I hear that's changed now so that you can use any ranged weapon. If that's the case, it would put out very respectable DPM.

[Rockdizzle]

You wont ever hit 9k crits with Greed/Chaos barely even 8ks. My setup I use with PDKPs hits 7.4k crits at 2.75k AR with Greed and mixed add dmg/crit setup on punching bag (0 ACs) so a crit focused setup will hit around 7.2k tops. Less if going for Chaos as it has 50 less Min dmg and 25 less Crit.

I didn't do too much DD tests with Greed as my focus wasn't on using it but the one DPM test I did do for it got I think 340k DPM give or take which makes sense considering loss of procs and burst but still a 60k+ DPM loss which puts it in normal DD setup range heh.

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=199806 for anyone who wanted to look at what I was using on test server.

1 setup I was considering before PDKPs was pistol agent which used Peh'wer + high crit offhand which could still work if anyones interested.

[Litestrider]

I think most of us were excited because it was a chance to have non-sucky PvM DD.

I know I was!

However, maybe we're trying to shoehorn ourselves into another prof's solution rather than getting our own fix on a rifle.

You might be right, but on the other hand we're in a pretty similar scenario to traders, and it could potentially serve as a solution for us as well. Both profession suffer from way too many blue skills with way too little IP, good nanos that are too restrictive to use (traders saw some help here), the ability to use alternative setups but various factors hamstringing them (moreso us, if you assume we want to venture beyond FP:Trader), and being shoehorned into two-handed weapons despite how nice dual wielding would be with our strong procs, as well as specials that are really crappy for PvM (namely AS, fling helps a little but isn't much to write home about on its own).

For traders I think the PDKPs solve several of these. They drop AS, which especially for trader is no big deal in PvM. In exchange they gain dual wielding and capped burst/fling, which means a lot more of those wonderful procs they have, as well as more advantage from stacking +dmg. At the same time the weapons still benefit from all that crit they can muster.

Those are all problems and solutions which are also relevant to agent. Right now our weapons are by nature too slow, the faster the attack speed the more our +dmg and le/sl procs help out. Dumping AS probably hurts us little if we get a good weapon in return. There's always one guy who loves to theorycraft some perfect situation for chain ASes, but in practice there are a ton of situations where it's just not practical and its usefulness plummets.

A complete rework of AS mechanics and single-wielding could save us and still let us use rifles, but honestly I think it would be a lot more realistic to give us a similar weapon and tackle those issues later on (since it affects all profs, lots of them would rather use single weapons and/or AS but can't because the mechanics work against them). If not PDKPs then maybe we could get a similar dual-wieldable weapon, perhaps pistols (despite there being way too many pistol profs already), or maybe one-handed weapons with split rifle/whatever skill (I'm thinking target pistols). Heck maybe Michi could even dream up some weapon which gains a strong and relevant benefit from aimed shot but doesn't actually have the special. If rifle/AS were kept relevant even if we didn't directly use a rifle with AS, it could also make it less of a dichotomy between a PvP and PvM setup since you could keep them maxed and perked.

1 setup I was considering before PDKPs was pistol agent which used Peh'wer + high crit offhand which could still work if anyones interested.

I'm extremely interested in this, actually, I'd love to hear more!

[Rockdizzle]

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=200219 Basic setup for it but I'm still torn on the main hand.
The missile pistol clearly has the best crit but that 10 clip + 1.7 recharge is awful and needs shotgun IPd with 66% check for shotgun and 33% for pistol.
The Freedom G2 has a lower crit but has no MBS cap (besides the hard cap of 3.7k) thus benefits from teaming with crats and keepers closing the dmg gap but also has just a 15 clip and 2 sec recharge and RE req tho only 33% and 66% for pistol. Able to use Wen-Wens without wasting IP.
Could also just throw out the whole max crit idea and focus more on Add dmg and use 2 peh'wers + Sharp Object + Wen-Wen + (if atrox) Da Taunter.

All 3 setups in the right situations should match or beat out greed even just by alittle.

Using Adv + engi buffs I was getting 2674 pistol AR selfed with sabre morph and aura. G2 would hover around 2550 AR and missile pistol would be at like 2.4k (lack of shotgun buffs ftw)

[Litestrider]

I like the concept, Rock. The initial pairing seems off, because the missile pistol would definitely benefit from as much +crit as you can possibly give it, while the peh'wer doesn't have the most impressive crit mod but its high base would make a +dmg build fantastic. Dual crit weapons or dual peh'wers would likely be the way to go. The Dreadloch Rapier occurs to me for a +dmg setup but looking at it it seems like the peh'wers are just straight-up better, except maybe apart from the slight advantage of being able to land the Power Up perks.

Actually if we're already talking split AR weapons and unusual setups, I have to wonder if the plain low-recoil DKP might be worth it. While it's got lower min damage, the crits should actually be better than the PDKP. It's got slower cycles, but agent should still be able to cap burst at least. Maybe not so much fling (2500 to cap). I'm thinking agent might actually have the level of +crit needed to overcome its lower-base, higher-crit setting. Has anyone properly tried out dual LRDKPs or an LRDKP with another crit-happy shotgun and/or pistol? The missile-pistol has the same AR profile and what seems to be insta-capped fling. I would mention the onehander but I think bringing it up in a serious context would get be whapped over the head by the PvPers. The Freedom G2 is probably out of the question since Agent IP is super-tight even just going for rifles, let alone pistol/shotgun/multiranged/burst/fling, raising RE in addition would most likely be silly.

[Rockdizzle]

The Low Recoil Diamondine Kick Pistol is certainly the best option for places like APFs where Max dmg means something but you won't get as much use out of it from places in SL or LoX where Bursts cant crit, flings are 11-12 secs and non-crit hits are small.
There's also the problem of AR which was stated by me and a couple others is poor unless you go trader but than you lose out on FP adv morph+aura which is 247 add dmg or around 20% crit worth of dmg if using the 540 crit for calcs.
Crit setups are also known for having lower AR compared to add dmg setups which have weaponskill+add dmg options available.
Using FP Sold for total focus and FP adv for morph/aura your AR will be at about 2.4k ish selfed with both pistol and shotgun maxed, not awful and almost caps the weapon at 2.5k MBS so getting a crat or keep in the same team is a good idea.

You can work around the problem of Burst/fling with a Peh'wer mainhand(no other shotguns with high min and burst) on high AC mobs with the min dmg making up for the lower crit. Swapping to peh'wer requires Riot control and FP trader.
LRDKP+Peh'wer might be the ideal weapon setup that any endgame Agent could pick up and push DD with if they have enough gear to support them without going thru the horrendous TS process for PDKPs.

The Procs for add dmg are amazing for agents and makes me wanna try out the peh'werx2 add dmg setup out and see its DPM output. The 1 min duration is long enough to keep it up 90% of the time while at the same time swapping to another proc to try and get a second one up like the 30% crit.
If you perk Power Up you mainly want the +65 add dmg perk but if you want the 2 perks than IPing RE alone is more than enough to land them on even Beast with Bullseye and using a Wen-Wen aswell adds an extra 1-1.2k dmg every 14 secs.

If I'm in the mood I might quickly make the pistol agent on test later.

[Rockdizzle]

Made the Add dmg Pistol Agent setup and currently testing it, will do several 7min tests and hopefully Damage Parser doesn't mess up and I can get acouple good dmg parses to post. I'll post and edit the post as I do more

Uses stuff Auto can give besides 2 S7 dmg mems I happened to have.
(parsed from 7 minutes, 41 seconds.) 7 min test but if I do a rough calc the real DPM is closer to 430k
1: 3,079,267 : Slysniper : 74.4% | 400,772 | 277-119-849

(parsed from 7 minutes, 56 seconds.) 7min test #2 even more off, still 415-420k DPM atleast
1: 2,995,808 : Slysniper : 72.4% | 377,622 | 272-117-794

(parsed from 7 minutes, 12 seconds.) fumbled with my mouse when trying to stop it but my best dmg parse so far.
1: 3,038,708 : Slysniper : 80.1% | 422,042 | 276-117-785

http://auno.org/ao/equip.php?saveid=200280 What I'm wearing on test, forgot to switch CC chest to DChest but to to keep DPM test consistent I'll keep it on. *derp also forgot about not having berserker symb, corrected*

[Litestrider]

Very cool! Thanks for the followup. I assume this was on the low-AC dummy, and using FP Trader?

Were you mashing all your perks for the whole 23 minutes? That seems pretty monotonous/stressful!