[TSW] My Scenario Build that Morphed into my Solo Build

So back in the day Issue #8 released and scenarios came with them.  For the 1st few days the scenarios kicked everyone’s butt since they required a different strategy than your typical solo game play, but over time people came up with new builds for them.  I sued a few of the posted builds and they worked pretty well, but I eventually came up with my own also.

Scenario builds require a sort of jack-of-all-trades thinking — you have to have enough defense to survive, a bit of self-healing for when the defenses aren’t enough or simply fail, and then also enough damage to kill the mobs before they kill your “survivors.” and to be able to kill in AE or Single-target equally well.  Solo builds also require a bit of this, though with perhaps a bit more leeway on how much of any of the 3 roles to incorporate into your build, but it still gives quite a bit of overlap, and this is what enabled my scenario build to become my solo build as well.

So… here’s a screenshot of the skills, and then I’ll go into why I use them and how it all comes together:

For those who can recognize the icons, this may seem a bit out of the ordinary.  Typically a solo build will follow the template of

• 1 ST builder
• 1 AE builder
• 1 ST finisher
• 1 AE finisher
• 3 Utility (typically a heal, a gap closer or escape skill, and an Elite impair for interrupts)

However, this build uses:

• 1 AE builder (Suppressing Fire)
• 2 ST finishers (3-Round Burst, Out for a Kill)
• 2 AE finishers (Fire at Will, Riot Act)
• 2 Utility (Turn the Tables, Razor Wire)

Here’s the why — the passives!

The builder is Suppressing Fire from the Assault Rifle weapon line.  This builder is a bit unique in that it’s the only ranged “frenzy” style of attack and it further is a 4-hit channel.  This makes it so that when hitting multiple mobs there’s a very high chance of a penetrating hit simply due to the sheer number of hits the skill puts out each second.  The passives that make use of this are:

• Shoot ‘Em Up — applies an Afflicted state and put a rather high-damage dot on them
• Arterial Pulse — on any penetrating hit sends out a small ae damage pulse to all nearby mobs, which chains and thus results in the number of pulses being equal to the number of mobs squared, so it can put out some surprisingly high numbers
• Sudden Return — on any penetrating hit, does bonus damage to the mob that got pen’d
• Hit and Run — on any mob death sends out a medium damage pulse to all nearby mobs that have shotgun resources on them which also chains and further goes off again if another mob dies
• Gross Anatomy — any time an afflicted state finishes or is renewed, does a high damage hit to the afflicted mob
• Circulation — any time an afflicted state is set, receive a small heal-over time on yourself
• Leeching Frenzy — any time a frenzy ability is used, set a 2% leeching effect on yourself

The 1st 5 are damage passives, the final 2 are for survival.  Some may note that there’s no Iron Maiden in the passives for the increased penetration chance, which is a staple of dps in nearly every build.  It’s not there in this case since I’ve yet to see any builder shot *not* penetrate, even without Iron Maiden, simply due to all the hits that Suppressing Fire throws out.  And I’ve done testing on the dummies with ACT and found that this actually did better damage, so… there ya go.

How it all ties together is this:

Lead into combat with Razor Wire.  This snares the mob(s) and give you more time to use builders without being hit.  and it does a sizeable hit of its own.  Open up with Suppressing Fire.  The 1st hit sets afflicted, puts your 2 heals on yourself, and likely had a penetrating hit or 2 for a lot of bonus damage from Sudden Return and Arterial Pulse.  All future hits do the same as the 1st and also add in the hits from Gross Anatomy due to the afflicted state being refreshed.

If fighting several mobs, hit the AE finishers (usually only need Fire at Will since something will die and set off the Hit and Run passive and blow up the rest of the group too), otherwise use the ST finishers instead.  Turn the Tables can be used in a pinch, but is rarely necessary.  AE mobs won’t get to you, and while an ST mob probably will at least get to you, it will only get to hit you 1 or 2 times before it dies either, so it doesn’t actually hurt much.  In Tokyo, there are a lot more telegraphs and the mobs hit harder, so there you’ll always want to be circle-strafing, but anywhere else you can stand and take it without trouble.

My “true” solo build is very similar to this, just uses a blade instead of an AR, uses Art of War as the elite instead of Razor Wire, but for scenarios I found that I preferred the AR’s range…. and then found that I prefer the range in general too, so…… this build took over.  And in case you wonder, here’s my solo build, as featured on TSWDB.com, so you can see how the scenario build morphed out from it.

Happy gaming out there!

That’s some expensive gas!