Dart + singular strike seems very underwhelming.

[Abomination72]

Tried to create a 'big dart' build but it's not doing much unless adding stuff like burst fire and homing strike. Singular strike itself doesn't seem worth it at all.

Anyone had some success with this?

[Draco18s]

"More darts" > "Bigger Darts"
If you turn "additional dart" into +15% damage, +15% size (+15% damage), and +50% (own) damage you lose out on +101% (own) damage.

That is, two darts lodged in a target will do damage*size*2
A single massive dart would do (damage+(.15+.5))*(size+.15)

(All math ignores global damage because it's global)

So 100 damage and 130% size two projectiles (say, twin strike, but not super relevant) gives you 260 damage.
Fusing them with SS gives you 239 damage.

Because with more projectiles you're getting 100% of their damage instead of only 65% (50% of their actual damage and a +15% to the original works out to about 65% overall).

There's some additional calculations to take into account regarding the ignite each dart does, but it gets messy, and depends on exactly how many original projectiles there are, whether those projectiles have the same base damage and size as the main projectile, the rate of diminishing returns, and so forth.

[Abomination72]

Yeah, thought so. Oh well, it was a nice experiment :)

[Botji]

Well I have had some decent games doing it with Charged shot, Antimatter some Twin strike etc and do the Phantom strike + Rancor so you charge a little then just ram the bosses and you do quite good damage.

You also want the Candescence tree(obviously) and the entire Targeting/Homing tree so you get both the 2 side shots that are really homing and enough to kill most small enemies and keep going so its decent wave clear, splinter is also very nice.

Just for science I did a test:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2462488343

With these mods and like 1 second charge before ramming the test dummy does ~5k burn damage ticks for a total of ~48-50k damage before the Dart burn goes away... with 3 Twin strikes the burn ticks goes up to like 15k so it scales decently.

Also tested and Volley tree does not increase damage, you actually lose damage even though you might think that all the extra projectiles will make up for it, nope.

Edit: Forgot to add that I like Essence Sap and these burn builds works really well with it since its not 1 big hit but constant damage.

[Anrita]

Singular Strike is good when you only have one projectile, and synergizes with weapons that perform better with fewer projectiles (Grenades, Vortex) and mods that work well with single, occasional hits (Incendiary Strike, Blitz). Typically, however, if you have multiple projectiles, and can get all of them to hit, it's better to not use Singular Strike, especially with larger numbers of projectiles.

[Draco18s]

Originally posted by Anrita:

Singular Strike is good when you only have one projectile, and synergizes with weapons that perform better with fewer projectiles (Grenades, Vortex) and mods that work well with single, occasional hits (Incendiary Strike, Blitz). Typically, however, if you have multiple projectiles, and can get all of them to hit, it's better to not use Singular Strike, especially with larger numbers of projectiles.

Or even most of them.
And even in the cases where your spread is nonsense and you can't aim, that's still a good way to deal with swarms of smaller things.

And singular strike bundles up the "some projectiles won't hit" with the "...if singular strike does." Because if your SS shot misses, you got nothing, whereas with a decent spread arc at least some shots might have hit.

(And in general I much prefer high frequency inaccurate shots because it can be more consistent; sure a sniper rifle can one-shot but only if your aim and timing is good).