Las vs everything else (ranged)

[ChompyRiley]

Are las weapons supposed to be so much better than all the other weapons? Between the dodge reduction (mainly), and the better ammo efficiency (secondarily), what reason is there to use anything else? I think the slug-throwers/bolters have better(?) damage, but that doesn't matter a bit if you can't hit the target. Though Pasqal's ability with plasma weapons is spectacular, I'll admit.

For example: Just after the prologue, you find a longlas sniper rifle that can practically erase anything you point it at. And with Las weapon expert, that's a total of 50% dodge reduction and an additional +15% to-hit chance.

What's the point to the bolters and other slugthrowers other than if you maybe need a backup weapon for a low dodge/high armor boss. Or maybe a flamer if you want some AOE.

[zpc]

Try Soldiers + Arch Militants with burst weapons. They open fire with activating both Devastating Attack (impact attacks knock targets prone) and Rapid Fire (more of everything - damage & prone chances).

Then shoot with your las gun and compare the result :>

Later in the game you won't one-hit everything. But you can prone-almost-everything. Which makes most of the rounds rather "calm". If you bring 3x Soldiers & Arch Militants (MC, Argenta, Ulfar).

But yeah, having one stormtropper with an onvercharged lasgun is fun as well - even if only for RP reasons.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Originally posted by rorek55:

I never saw this. Argenta never, put out, as it were. I tried, I gave her the heavy bolter, I tried a stubber. But Honestly I never saw the damage people talk about. Meanwhile, my sniper MC with Wanderer portent is dealing 200-300 damage a shot, 4 times in a row. Now though I just have him use the Eye of Hecaton, buff resolve, and give him an officer extra turn. Just obliterates 10 targets a turn dealing 500 damage each. And 1k hits on the single priority target. Hell, he is the groups best burst fire user too, his pistols obliterate 300hp targets, like 2-3 a burst.

Are you scaling the burst damage with two officer tacticians spamming Inspire?

Why would I do that? That sounds so dumb. Why not just let my assassin sniper do what she does with 1/4 the amount of support.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Originally posted by rorek55:

I never saw this. Argenta never, put out, as it were. I tried, I gave her the heavy bolter, I tried a stubber. But Honestly I never saw the damage people talk about. Meanwhile, my sniper MC with Wanderer portent is dealing 200-300 damage a shot, 4 times in a row. Now though I just have him use the Eye of Hecaton, buff resolve, and give him an officer extra turn. Just obliterates 10 targets a turn dealing 500 damage each. And 1k hits on the single priority target. Hell, he is the groups best burst fire user too, his pistols obliterate 300hp targets, like 2-3 a burst.

For burst fire weapons it's all about having one or more master tacticians spamming inspire. Within a couple of turns the bonus inspire damage combined with the innate damage bonuses of the adaptability archetype (can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, Arch Militant?) feed off of each other to the point where you are firing 18 shot heavy bolter rapid fires that are doing 1000 damage per shot.

Add any kind of armour penetration on to that and they just delete enemies. I am only on the "no one gets any advantages" difficulty but my Argentina had enough damage to kill the spider mastermind and the forgefiend behind him in one burst by turn 3. And that is with one solo Master Tacticial, it ramps up quicker with 2 (I don't like duplicate roles).

Okay, I see. I never got past turn 2 in most fights playing on hard. So, Meh.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by rorek55:

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Are you scaling the burst damage with two officer tacticians spamming Inspire?

Why would I do that? That sounds so dumb. Why not just let my assassin sniper do what she does with 1/4 the amount of support.

More dakka is always better.

[Jalmari H.]

Las guns have dodge pen which is pretty good if you are not wildfire arch-militant. Especially early in game. But it is handy later in game too some enemies have high dodge.

That said imho solid weapons are way to go for soldier mc. Bolters for Argenta.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Originally posted by rorek55:

Why would I do that? That sounds so dumb. Why not just let my assassin sniper do what she does with 1/4 the amount of support.

Officer Tacticians give your dedicated damage dealer extra attacks AND boost your damage output through Inspire. Your sniper can still benefit from the extra turns, but unlike the burster, sniper does not benefit greatly from small flat damage increments. And it's not stupid, it's utterly OP to the point where it makes the entire combat system look like completely broken garbage (which it is).

My sniper most certianly does benefit from base damage increases. He has around a min of +450% damage after crits and exploits/talents. On his main target he has hit 900%. So, +10 damage becomes +90.

And yeah sure, but its still taking longer to finish the fights than my sniper. Who regularly wins the fight after 1 round.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by Jalmari H.:

Las guns have dodge pen which is pretty good if you are not wildfire arch-militant. Especially early in game. But it is handy later in game too some enemies have high dodge.

That said imho solid weapons are way to go for soldier mc. Bolters for Argenta.

Nothing like a good heavy bolter and Heavy flamer. Just something.... Pure, about it.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Originally posted by rorek55:

My sniper most certianly does benefit from base damage increases. He has around a min of +450% damage after crits and exploits/talents. On his main target he has hit 900%. So, +10 damage becomes +90.

And yeah sure, but its still taking longer to finish the fights than my sniper. Who regularly wins the fight after 1 round.

Flat damage boosts benefit burst fire weapons disproportionally more. And it doesn't take a burst fire weapon longer to clear encounters simply because of AoE bursts that can clear entire enemy clusters in just one attack.

I know, its why Operative is a fun burst weapon user. Since you can stack insane base damage with tactical knowledge. You just lose out on an extra attack. But you are, largely, entirely self sufficient. My point was that snipers do benefit, and in a rather good way. Not -as- good as the 5-10 10 RoF weapon does, but its still great.

[RavenHeresy]

My argenta was putting out 600 dmg x 18 bullets (so about 10k damage) during the last fight (in the later rounds after having killed much junk). That's per burst. Well the first burst I should say... only 9 bullets for further bursts, so more like 5k. That fight in sort of an outlier, but I almost always got to 200+ dmg per bullet. (on normal difficulty)

Cataclysm, exterminate, fired up, critical velocity... she was getting 4-5 bursts out on her own turn (regular action, wildfire, run and gun, and steady fire, etc.). Steady fire on her first turn is grantee if you chant + inquisition ring. 3 burst out on extra AP turns, 2 out on extra MP turns (wildfire and steady fire). Many of the base stats on the guns do not matter, including damage. You just want Armor Penetration and Rate of Fire. That's it. Everything else is unimportant.

Once you get to low 30s, nothing compares... Most fights don't make it to the second round.

Snipers and psychers had their time in the sun much earlier in my playthrough. Psycher with the 3 target arc lighting was good early. Cassia remained OK throughout with 200+ single target gaze, but that's only 1 kill per attack and only 2 attacks per turn (with the staff), where as a burst generally kills at least 2 enemies and you can put 5 bursts out. Snipers were cool for 3-5 levels just after I got Yrlette, but got old real fast. That's why I phased out Pasqal too... I love plasma guns in WH40K, but in this game, there was no way single attacks could keep up with multiple bursts of full auto fire.

[Neoz]

Originally posted by RavenHeresy:

My argenta was putting out 600 dmg x 18 bullets (so about 10k damage) during the last fight (in the later rounds after having killed much junk). That fight in sort of an outlier, but I almost always got to 200+ dmg per bullet.

Cataclysm, exterminate, critical velocity... she was getting 4-5 bursts out on her own turn (regular action, wildfire, run and gun, and steady fire, etc.). Steady fire on her first turn is grantee if you chant + inquisition ring. 3 burst out on extra AP turns, 2 out on extra MP turns (wildfire and steady fire). The many base stats on the gun do not matter, including damage. You just want Armor Penetration and Rate of Fire. That's it. Everything else is unimportant.

Once you get to low 30s, nothing compares... Most fights don't make it to the second round.

Snipers and psychers had their time in the sun much earlier in my playthrough. Psycher with the 3 target arc lighting was good early. Cassia remained OK throughouyt with 200+ single target gaze, but that's only 1 kill per attack, where as a burst generally kills at least 2 ennemies. Snipers were cool for 3-5 levels just after I got Yrlette, but got old real fast. That's why I phased out Pasqal too... I love plasma guns in WH40K, but in this game, there was no way single attacks could keep up with full auto fire.

I disagree, there is no more satisfying feeling than standing in your spot, and just removing enemies from the map anywhere you want.

And I agree, plasma guns/melta guns got the short end of the stick in this system.

[Zhein]

Originally posted by rorek55:

Why would I do that? That sounds so dumb. Why not just let my assassin sniper do what she does with 1/4 the amount of support.

Because you don't want the opponent to even play once ? Most fights my officer has a free turn, play, buff argenta, argenta play, game over the 50 goons didn't even play.

And I'm not even abusing master tactician buffs. Purely from critical versatility and fired up, without any buff, Argenta deals 150 on a crit... per bolt hit. She's shooting 8 of them per burst. She burst for no AP.

You say "most fights don't go past turn 2", most of my fights don't go past Argenta's turn. Her first turn, that is.

And I'm not even using a MC Hive + calibrated stubber + personalised weapon (or whatever it's called), with Cassia and 2 mercenary officers. I'm sure it would reach some level of absurdity shooting 14 rounds per burst and having the MC clean the map before even the first mob activation 100% of the time.

Edit : 28 with rapid fire. 36 under heroic. That's +72% damage with the trinket.

So, why ? Because I don't have to click 11 times per turn. I just click once and everyone is melted.

[RavenHeresy]

Originally posted by Zhein:

Because you don't want the opponent to even play once ? Most fights my officer has a free turn, play, buff argenta, argenta play, game over the 50 goons didn't even play.

It's hard to explain how OP and broken that setup is to people who haven't played it =) People are like "My dude is awesome, I can snipe 2-3 targets dead during my turn!"... good for them, let them be happy with that. I'm sort of disappointed if Argenta's kill count is under 10 on any of her turns. Same with my MC, who's also a soldier-arch... he's a bit less effective, but if I don't kill at least 6-8 targets, something went wrong =)

[Seswatha]

I mean, there are other setups that allow you to clear the entire map without even going past your seize the initiative turns sometimes, lol.

I don't like the burst weapon carry cause they take several actions to ramp up and the attack animation takes a long time. Also not much range, have to run around sometimes. Though they're very OP too of course.

Argenta is also pretty suboptimal for a heavy gunner build, custom main fortress world psyker kind of blows her out of the water.

[Draken]

Yeah.

I am currently in act 2, level 23 and alternate between Cassia, Idira and Argenta for who gets the Finiest Hour turn to mop up all the remaining enemies before they get their first turn.

Even Idira who is mostly leveled up for buffs can hit for 110 lightning damage per enemy. That's 440 for 2 AP if you find a group of four. Which you often do. And all the overkill hits more enemies. Pretty easy to clean non boss encounters and even some bosses.
Cassia can do the same with [Held in my Gaze], just a bit slower. Same for Argenta with burst fire and a heavy bolter.

And I don't even really use [Inspire] most of the time.

[Polupostage]

Why psyker ?

You guyz are comparing burst weapons and las, of course burst do more damage, but it also has collateral and less range.