Noble Operative RT: Can I turn her into a damage dealer or tank?

[Kreddi]

Right now I estimate I'm getting close to the end of act 2.

I've built her as a buffer, focusing on turning one of my high-damage companions into servants and buffing them to increase their damage. I also enjoy her high persuasion/commerce/Coercion.

Problem is, it's not that much fun to play. So, can I turn this combination of Noble + Operative into something more combat-oriented, while keeping her high skill checks?

My usual party is:
RT - Buffer
Abelard Or Reinhix - Frontliner
Cassia - Damage and debuffer
Argenta - Burst fire damage dealer
Pasqal - Ranged damage dealer
Flex - Usually Idira, Yrliet or Reinhix

[xuthus]

More likely damage dealer cause Operative lacks Strength and Toughness upgrades as well as does not branch to Vanguard Archetype.

[spammdc]

You can re-spec your PC.

[Black Sheep Wall]

I find that Jae and Cassia are both pretty terrible because they do what the game expects you to do with your RT. They are fine in and of themselves, they just do more of what you're likely to build your first time through, a team captain. If you build your RT different and slot them in to fulfill those functions KNOWING what they do and that you INTENTIONALLY want your RT to NOT be team captain, then it's fine. It's that you have to know ahead of time what your team comp is going to be, instead of the extremely organic RT, Abelard, Idera, Argenta, Pasqal, Heinrix.

I'm gonna take this tack because you're listing your roster, the guys you plan to make your core team. The thing to do then is to go "What do I already have?".

If I were you, I'd build a melee psyker and sit Heinrix down. RT, Abelard, Cassia, Argenta, Pasqual, Idera. Alternatively, build your RT as a long range marksman and sit Idera down. Operative can already do that, and I don't know how exactly you've built an operative to exclusively team buff but NOT hit some powerful long range shots, other than the fact that you've built your RT as the face of the party, which will come out in the wash later anyways when you get enough skill points.

Again, this is a problem with how they expect you to build a RT in the early game. But you can build Cass to do those things instead if that's the team you want.

I do think this is a pretty major problem with the game, the itemization punishes you pretty hard for not diversifying, and probably the core combat too. It's best to fill out a range of roles and functions instead of having lots of people doing the same thing. Unfortunately, without some concession, this usually means your RT is combat support.

You CAN do other things, but the early game is gonna be rougher for it.

Alternatively, you can play through that and then just respec your team to what you want later.

[Aranador]

As an operative, you could grab a high damage rifle, and head on over to Bounty Hunter, who can still offer party benefits, but can use Hot On The Trail to increase how often you will get to shoot per round.

[Revan619]

Operative is a support class. It's primary function is debuff with a little bit of buff and damage.

You can turn it into an assassin to kill off already weakened targets but you won't ever be the primary damage dealer.

Or you can turn it into a bounty hunter where you can use the act 1 sniper gear to stack debuffs and up your attack economy. You won't compete for damage with the other classes but it will be very useful.

The game doesn't quite have tanking as mitigation does not keep up with damage. Warrior is a very good candidate for lower levels and vanguard has a lot of support to add to warrior for it. It is possible to do it as an officer vanguard if you stack lore imperium for the helm, armour and accessory to stack armour. Jae does this well.

Something to keep in mind is the role of companions
Abelard / Heinrix / marazhai / kibellah - frontline
Argenta / ulfar - mid range
Cassia, Jae - buffer support
Pasqal / Yrliet - debuffer support

At the moment your RT is doing the job of Pasqal or Yrliet.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by Revan619:

Operative is a support class. It's primary function is debuff with a little bit of buff and damage.

You can turn it into an assassin to kill off already weakened targets but you won't ever be the primary damage dealer.

Or you can turn it into a bounty hunter where you can use the act 1 sniper gear to stack debuffs and up your attack economy. You won't compete for damage with the other classes but it will be very useful.

The game doesn't quite have tanking as mitigation does not keep up with damage. Warrior is a very good candidate for lower levels and vanguard has a lot of support to add to warrior for it. It is possible to do it as an officer vanguard if you stack lore imperium for the helm, armour and accessory to stack armour. Jae does this well.

Something to keep in mind is the role of companions
Abelard / Heinrix / marazhai / kibellah - frontline
Argenta / ulfar - mid range
Cassia, Jae - buffer support
Pasqal / Yrliet - debuffer support

At the moment your RT is doing the job of Pasqal or Yrliet.

you forgot idira, who seems to mix buffer support w/ giant-ass AoE damage. Like Cassia.

At least that's how I built her, she probably has her pick between buffer and debuffer, lv 1 psyker privilege. (I approve of this, mind you.)

[q0de]

Cassia support? What are you smoking, she literally breaks the game 2 hours in and makes the rest of the game trivial, even on unfair

[Revan619]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Originally posted by Revan619:

Operative is a support class. It's primary function is debuff with a little bit of buff and damage.

You can turn it into an assassin to kill off already weakened targets but you won't ever be the primary damage dealer.

Or you can turn it into a bounty hunter where you can use the act 1 sniper gear to stack debuffs and up your attack economy. You won't compete for damage with the other classes but it will be very useful.

The game doesn't quite have tanking as mitigation does not keep up with damage. Warrior is a very good candidate for lower levels and vanguard has a lot of support to add to warrior for it. It is possible to do it as an officer vanguard if you stack lore imperium for the helm, armour and accessory to stack armour. Jae does this well.

Something to keep in mind is the role of companions
Abelard / Heinrix / marazhai / kibellah - frontline
Argenta / ulfar - mid range
Cassia, Jae - buffer support
Pasqal / Yrliet - debuffer support

At the moment your RT is doing the job of Pasqal or Yrliet.

you forgot idira, who seems to mix buffer support w/ giant-ass AoE damage. Like Cassia.

At least that's how I built her, she probably has her pick between buffer and debuffer, lv 1 psyker privilege. (I approve of this, mind you.)

Cassia and Idira have relatively low AoE compared to what other classes and they are held back further by low attack economy.

Idira if you play as a bounty hunter with a second BH with spirit drape can loop 7 turns of word of the emperor then do a 40 - 20k rng sanctified staff attacks. Once per round. Backdraft and pain channelling is nice.

But a soldier AM heavy gunner can do a flamer aoe for 1 ap then a burst fire for 1 ap for over 20k with each hit building up due to soldier talents, abilities, arch-militant and exemplar talents. You can also easily do five attacks before heroic actions or bounty hunter turn loops resetting your free attacks.

A warrior can daring breach run around with infinite mp 5k+ smacking everything.

A blade dancer well trained can also leap around clearing the whole battlefield.

This isn't including some of the nutty builds arch-militant, assassin or executioner add to them.

Idira and cassia are still support builds that are better suited to buffing with some debuff, crowd control and some comfortable damage.

Edit
Just by the by. You can dismiss cassia and make a custom navigator. Soldier, blade dancer or whatever you want. Wait till you see navigator powers on executioner or with arch militant boosts. Same with psyker powers, you can out build idira easily with RT or mercenaries.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by Revan619:

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

you forgot idira, who seems to mix buffer support w/ giant-ass AoE damage. Like Cassia.

At least that's how I built her, she probably has her pick between buffer and debuffer, lv 1 psyker privilege. (I approve of this, mind you.)

Cassia and Idira have relatively low AoE compared to what other classes and they are held back further by low attack economy.

Idira if you play as a bounty hunter with a second BH with spirit drape can loop 7 turns of word of the emperor then do a 40 - 20k rng sanctified staff attacks. Once per round. Backdraft and pain channelling is nice.

But a soldier AM heavy gunner can do a flamer aoe for 1 ap then a burst fire for 1 ap for over 20k with each hit building up due to soldier talents, abilities, arch-militant and exemplar talents. You can also easily do five attacks before heroic actions or bounty hunter turn loops resetting your free attacks.

A warrior can daring breach run around with infinite mp 5k+ smacking everything.

A blade dancer well trained can also leap around clearing the whole battlefield.

This isn't including some of the nutty builds arch-militant, assassin or executioner add to them.

Idira and cassia are still support builds that are better suited to buffing with some debuff, crowd control and some comfortable damage.

Gonna go ahead and consider that a Massive Flaw if the local Mage Equivalent isn't leading in DPS. Still, I'm never gonna complain about triple digit damage in one hit to a bunch of things in a decently sized cone. Which is what I've been able to get out of those two, and I haven't really built my martials to compete with that.

[Revan619]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Originally posted by Revan619:

Cassia and Idira have relatively low AoE compared to what other classes and they are held back further by low attack economy.

Idira if you play as a bounty hunter with a second BH with spirit drape can loop 7 turns of word of the emperor then do a 40 - 20k rng sanctified staff attacks. Once per round. Backdraft and pain channelling is nice.

But a soldier AM heavy gunner can do a flamer aoe for 1 ap then a burst fire for 1 ap for over 20k with each hit building up due to soldier talents, abilities, arch-militant and exemplar talents. You can also easily do five attacks before heroic actions or bounty hunter turn loops resetting your free attacks.

A warrior can daring breach run around with infinite mp 5k+ smacking everything.

A blade dancer well trained can also leap around clearing the whole battlefield.

This isn't including some of the nutty builds arch-militant, assassin or executioner add to them.

Idira and cassia are still support builds that are better suited to buffing with some debuff, crowd control and some comfortable damage.

Gonna go ahead and consider that a Massive Flaw if the local Mage Equivalent isn't leading in DPS. Still, I'm never gonna complain about triple digit damage in one hit to a bunch of things in a decently sized cone. Which is what I've been able to get out of those two, and I haven't really built my martials to compete with that.

I've done a lot of testing for the level progress of 1-55 and top end damage.

Degraded defence with the high attack economy of soldier 1 ap burst fires thanks to artificer power armour previously was the highest.

Then came the dlc where we got warrior assassin chainsaw killing edges that is absolutely insane. Not as strong as executioner chainsaw as that guy can 1 turn max slider a shard with 500 million hp. Each hit just keeps stacking dots and building up damage.

Operative isn't the psyker caster arch type. It is the debuffer / buffer via bounty hunter. You want damage mage you go soldier as revel in slaughter applies to psyker staffs. Then you have all the bonuses of either arch-militant, bounty hunter loops or the huge nukes of master tactician. Fire staff multi shot with with linchpin. Build insane stacks. Then press the advantage for sanctified staff. Vastly out damages anything idira can dream of.

Heinrix as a warrior executioner when using where it hurts can 3x proc ignite or firestorm. As he also has charge with chainsaw he can just get infinite 0 ap charges on kill with all the warrior buffs to charge and executioner buffs to dots.

When people say support classes like Cassia or idira are top damage all they are telling you is, they don't know how to optimise the companions or RT builds.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by Revan619:

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Gonna go ahead and consider that a Massive Flaw if the local Mage Equivalent isn't leading in DPS. Still, I'm never gonna complain about triple digit damage in one hit to a bunch of things in a decently sized cone. Which is what I've been able to get out of those two, and I haven't really built my martials to compete with that.

I've done a lot of testing for the level progress of 1-55 and top end damage.

Degraded defence with the high attack economy of soldier 1 ap burst fires thanks to artificer power armour previously was the highest.

Then came the dlc where we got warrior assassin chainsaw killing edges that is absolutely insane. Not as strong as executioner chainsaw as that guy can 1 turn max slider a shard with 500 million hp. Each hit just keeps stacking dots and building up damage.

Operative isn't the psyker caster arch type. It is the debuffer / buffer via bounty hunter. You want damage mage you go soldier as revel in slaughter applies to psyker staffs. Then you have all the bonuses of either arch-militant, bounty hunter loops or the huge nukes of master tactician. Fire staff multi shot with with linchpin. Build insane stacks. Then press the advantage for sanctified staff. Vastly out damages anything idira can dream of.

Heinrix as a warrior executioner when using where it hurts can 3x proc ignite or firestorm. As he also has charge with chainsaw he can just get infinite 0 ap charges on kill with all the warrior buffs to charge and executioner buffs to dots.

When people say support classes like Cassia or idira are top damage all they are telling you is, they don't know how to optimise the companions or RT builds.

I am well aware that Operative isn't the psyker caster archetype- there ISN'T a single explicity Psyker archetype, Psyker's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Background, you take whatever archetype you want with it, I'm running my RT as a Warrior/Arch Militant Psyker. And I don't really want to get into an optimization argument- optimizers just outright tend to ruin games to me, they got a system I despise the idea of to replace one I found sort of okay if a little sparse in another game, so I'm not interested in being one- yes I do avoid fighting games, what gave you that impression?

I do think it's a large missed opportunity that Psyker Powers seem to operate in an independent vacuum that isn't affected by your non-psyker stuff, though. Makes it a little hard to really spec into something when the support just isn't there. That's a different issue, though.

I'd probably be more interested in using Heinrix if he wasn't, you know, An Inquisitor. I only really kept him around because the inquisition is a useful connection to have, not that I like their existence. Oh, and didn't have direct role overlap w/ both my Rogue Trader and the drukhari dracon I take on Literally Every Outing so he doesn't suffer more than he has to in that isolation chamber, god I wish there was a better way to handle him, can't we give him some blank books and a pen, let him write some slasher fic for the imperium to call "Cringe"?

[Revan619]

Honestly psyker and navigator are hands down the S tier origins for everything.

I tend to only use heinrix when I play female because if you romance he stops being a snitch.

Heinrix post dlc is the highest damage companion and it isn't even close. The gear and executioner support are just ridiculous