A few Constructor questions

[Metro]

So, I am really enjoying the Constructor class...for the moment. My guy is only lvl 15 and I am sure the honeymoon will be over soon enough, but for now the Gun Platform does ridiculous damage and often kills things nearly off screen before my toon gets a chance to throw any grenades.

Speaking of the gun platform what attributes am I wanting to pump to boost its damage? The first one boosts weapon dmg of all skills and the second one boost minion dmg, but is the gun platform considered a minion?

Also, how the game calculates dmg is sometimes confusing. I gambled what appears to be a huge weapon upgrade. When I mouse over the discharger in my inventory all 3 stats: DPH, Minion HP, and Minion DPS are green. When I equip the discharger and mouse over the gun platform its HP does go up and the melee damage stat skyrockets, but the minigun damage goes down? How can that be? The gun platform never really does melee damage does it? At least for me it's always shooting its gun from range.

[Zeph Sunstrider]

You need to differ between two different damage calculactions: Per Second and Per Hit. If you equip a particularly slow-firing weapon that does ridiculously high damage, you might actually lower your overall DPS, and all skills that calculate in DPS will show a lower value. Anything showing DPH however will get a massive bonus. Overall, on slow-firing skills, DPH is usually better, while alot of other skills are calculated in DPS for good reasons.

Regarding the Gun Platform, it's damage calc seems a bit wonky from the looks of the game files. It does count as a minion, and gets the minion boni, however, certain skills that are meant to target the Platform ONLY are set to have a by-race bonus (Nagyep/gunplatform in this case), which might not reflect other, more general boni.
In addition to that, the gun platform actually consists of several entities with different skills (one entity per skill), which probably wreaks havoc with the regular damage calculactions.

[Metro]

Thanks, Zeph. Typically what type of damage is better for the Gun Platform and the mechanoids - DPH or DPS?

[Zeph Sunstrider]

I'd reckon DPS, since it's just basically DPH*Attackrate. They don't have slow-but-strong-hitting attacks. I'm not particularly familiar with Constructors in details though.

[Metro]

Would you know if Katarina's attack speed bonus for VH would transfer to the minions?

[Zeph Sunstrider]

No, it doesn't. The minions have a separate attack rate that isn't affected by Abraham's attack rate.

[me]

You can test some things with the reset options from the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ since the relevant information is often updated immediately. Some minions require a resummon. Change attributes or skills how you might like it, and hit cancel instead of reset to avoid the cost and the reset.

As far as my testing goes machine warfare, or the one that gives the constructor health, is the best stat. Put all points into it and never look back, unless you really need minion health. It unfortunately seems to scale as well as the minion damage option. Machine synergy from essence might be effective. There might be some variance to where equal investment might get you a bit more but splitting devalues other better options and halves your health. You can then choose the beserk perks, which improves the constructor's damage when at max rage, to give them near 35% more damage when you are at max rage. Crit though does nothing for minions. Spec Katarina for fury to keep full. Think rage on attack, max attack speed, and the chain lightning with max ethereality. Finally minions scale well on bonus elemental damage. Particularly the faster attacking, low weapon damage skills. There might be some scaling to bonus damage but it might depend on AoE vs single target rather than frequency.

[Metro]

Originally posted by Me:

Crit though does nothing for minions.

Seriously? I have intentionally chosen some perks to increase my crit damage thinking that minions would crit.