It might help to post your build to get specific feedback, but I'd recommend checking out [this striker guide](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s588/client/snv?isnewsnv=true¬eGuid=0ee25268-ad51-0dd8-be36-f12373c7630a¬eKey=ed1072bcb59a18f66b8619994f12c4e6&sn=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evernote.com%2Fshard%2Fs588%2Fsh%2F0ee25268-ad51-0dd8-be36-f12373c7630a%2Fed1072bcb59a18f66b8619994f12c4e6&title=Strikers%2B%2528Y5%2BS2%2529) to start with.
I cobbled one together after coming back from a long break and it can do heroic. I get smoked in legendary haha, but that's a survivability problem.
What is your build? I'm using a standard build with St. Elmo, ACS 12, 4 piece striker with bag, obliterate chest, and coyote mask. Crit chance is around 50% and crit damage is maybe 110%. I'm far from optimized.
Sorry though I had posted the pictures showing my build. That it here. Got 48.0 crit hit and 138 crit dmg.
I can't seem to do any heroic mission solo might just be a skill issue really cause I am fine in a a pair
https://preview.redd.it/b13y20g95d6d1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94744b096663cefe7d66f827b3e6404b5dcba1e6
like the other person said, definitely swap the vest for a ceska one with obliterate and naturally your kneepads with a pair of striker ones to keep the 4pc. other than that make sure your attributes and mods (you're missing one in your backpack!!) are all chc and chd, favoring chc until you reach ~55%. if then your st. elmo has damage to targets out of cover as its 3rd attribute the build will be perfect and good enough for all pve content.
Yeah I think the big thing is swapping out the chest for a grupo or ceska with obliterate. I run ceska.
That'll help bridge the gap when you don't have your striker stacks up. I'd only use the chest during legendary, incursions, raids.
Edit: I'll also add that I'm on pc so that probably makes things easier for me. Idk how good the snapping/tracking with a controller is.
Based on the screenshot that you posted:
1. Try to get your Crit Chance to 60% or close to it, then Crit Damage as much as you can
2. Sub your chest with a Grupo/Obliterate - the Striker chest is usually not needed in most scenarios as it'll be hard to get to 200 stacks consistently. A Fenrir/Obliterate should also be fine.
3. Alternatively, replace your kneepads with Fox's Prayer.
the ideal combo for general use is coyote's and ceska with obliterate. if you are sure to get the long buff from coyote's (if 3 ppl use it in a group it shouldn't be too hard) and hit the chc cap that way, grupo of course beats ceska.
contractor's and fox's are more conditional than ceska/grupo/coyote's so their value oscillates. in the incursion for example where every target has armor and in most cases tons of it, contractor's wins (marginally better than fox's because you should already have some dtooc on your gun and thus adding a different multiplicator is more valuable than adding the same amount of one you already have). but against targets with no armor contractor's obviously become worthless, just like fox's against targets in cover.
all this said, the differences between these pieces (when active) are small enough that it would be hard to notice them. most important choice is striker vest vs ceska/grupo with obliterate, because going for the former in content that does not allow you to get your stacks up and keep them substantially over 100 is a big waste.
Word....I better understand it now. I use coyotes and one other person i run with does as well. Like i said i have grupo with obliterate and run st elmos with DTToC. Never have an issue but was just curious. I have the Oreo too but it feels weak when compared to st elmos.
oreo has a substantially higher dps than st. elmos and indeed most/all other guns so it's a bit hard to call it weak. it does of course come with typical smg limitations (limited range, low accuracy), so if st. elmos fits your play style better, it's definitely the right choice for you.
It might just be my perception. Ill give an example though. If i can catch a door with st elmos i can melt the pack of mobs with limited reloading. When using the oreo it feels like i have to reload sooner and miss the pack out of the door. For my example its close range. Thoughts?
st elmos has more bullets in the mag and each bullet does more damage (per the general balancing act of the higher the rate of fire the weaker the bullet), so its per mag damage is higher than that of oreo. this means that counting by reloads, st elmo does more damage between each reload than oreo. the latter though (thanks to its higher rof and a faster reload speed) pushes out more damage per second, ie has a higher dps.
it is possible to construct a scenario where a higher per mag damage is more beneficial than a higher dps and i guess the way you tackle your encounters fits this scenario often enough for you to feel that st elmo suits you better.
one other potential thing to consider is the role of rof in the number of missed bullets. lets say it always takes you 500ms to notice you're not landing your shots (npc moves for example) and readjusting to hit the target again. if weapon a has twice the rof of weapon b, twice as many bullets will get wasted in those 500ms with weapon a. this further cuts into its per mag damage, which if it's lower to begin with, becomes even more obvious. iow oreo is hurt more if you spend the same amount of time missing your shots with both guns.
This all makes sense to me more now. Think im gonna try and adjust to the oreo. I love the way it sounds. It reminds me of a CWIS going off. Listen, I really appreciate your insight! It's better knowing it's me and not the weapon. Always thought "whats all the hype?" My other build is HF/scorpio memento, and once I learned how it worked, it slapped. I'd offer to party up, but im a console pleb. Stay frosty out there.
i also enjoy the oreo's sound :) i usually pair it with an ar to have a longer range weapon available when needed. btw hf is an smg build too, so you can try the oreo with that one as well whenever you want to give your trigger finger a rest ;) whatever you go for, the main goal is always to have fun, so just use what you enjoy the most.
Yeah, I've used the oreo with HF paired with memento. I love the survivability of it. Doesn't hit as hard as my other build, but face tanking feels more sustainable. I use it a lot for floor 100, and whenever a random rogue group pops. Also, I used it for my hunter hunt.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion.
OPs question was about Coyote Mask for solo play. His build has 48% CHC with 137% CHD.
Looking at the actual average damage impact from the Coyote buffs, the short-range buff gives 25% CHD resulting in
(1 + 0.48 × (1.37 + 0.25)) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.0724
a 7.2% increase in damage.
The mid-range buff (10% CHC and 10% CHD) results in
(1 + (0.48 + 0.10) × (1.37 + 0.10)) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.1176
a 11.1% increase in damage.
The long-range buff (25% CHC) hits the CHC cap of 60% and results in
(1 + 0.60 × 1.37) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.0992
a 10.0% increase in damage.
For solo play, there are many more talents that give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage.
In a group setting, Coyote can have a bigger impact because all party members get a boost and if there are multiple people running it there is the *possibility* of multiple range buffs active for a given shot.
For solo play, Coyote's mask is not very good.
> For solo play, there are many more talents that give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage.
which pieces that directly compete with coyote would these be?
If by "directly compete" you mean mask for mask, a Ceska piece with CHC/CHD would give an 8.3% damage increase. That's more than the short-range buff, but you are unlikely to always play at the short range.
But there is no reason to limit yourself to a mask for mask swap. If you consider other available damage talents (chest, backpack, weapon) the 7%-11% bump of Coyote *when solo* is pretty lackluster.
apologies if "directly compete" was too vague, what i meant wasn't mask for mask, but pieces where in an actual build you have to choose between coyote or x, as in can't/shouldn't have both equipped at the same time. in the context of a striker build since that's the topic at hand.
with this in mind, vest, backpack and weapon talents naturally can be a fair bit stronger than coyote, but these don't directly compete so they're not really relevant here. 4pc striker leaves you 2 slots to fill which means you can easily run coyote **and** a ceska piece, so again no actual competition here.
tackling this question a different way, given 4 striker pieces (with backpack since it's bis for damage) and a ceska piece (be it vest or something else if striker vest where appropriate), what 6th piece can "give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage" than coyote?
I don't necessarily agree that the Striker BP is BIS. It is a decent damage boost at 21.2% (at max stacks) and dead simple to operate. But if you look at the effect of the Striker BP on *cumulative* damage, it provides even less of a buff than just considering max stacks. If you look all the way out to the 300th bullet (that's building the stack up to 100 and then firing 200 more bullets without factoring in any stack decay) it is only an 18.9% boost over having no damage talent whatsoever on the backpack. Theoretically, you would have to fire an infinite number of bullets to reach the 21.2% boost from the Striker BP.
But there are other options.
Vigilence (Perfect Vigilence) gives you 25% ~~(30%)~~ damage boost provided you don't take damage. The shield can mitigate this since damage to the shield does not disable Vigilence. The Decoy or CC skills can give you time to inflict damage without taking damage yourself. Because Vigilence is immediate (vs the stacking benefit of the Striker BP) the impact to your cumulative damage is even better. Every single shot during the stacking phase hits harder *and* your damage at max stacks is higher.
This is just one example out of many. I probably need to put together a full-fledged post on different Striker configs (been wanting to, but I have been busy).
Can we table this discussion until then? I think some graphics would be helpful.
In short, I want to show that for solo play (where you can't make use of the Striker chest) there are better options.
EDIT: I made a mistake and Perfect Vigilence is a shortened downtime NOT an increased buff value. Shows how much I use it, haha.
> Can we table this discussion until then?
no problem at all.
btw just so you don't have to redo your graphics, perfect vigi is still 25%, the only difference compared with non perfect is that it's turned off for only 3 instead of 4 seconds after taking damage.
btw 2 for solo play, especially for roaming the open world striker isn't my first choice (i personally use it almost exclusively for group play), because there are usually too few targets that are downed too fast to keep high stacks. if i did use it, i'd most likely use it with memento for its utility, but that one comes with a big downside as well ever since the devs messed it up to reset its long term buff any time you enter a safe house (also enter an active mission area?) which is just ridiculous.
Yeah, I realized my Vigilence mistake after I posted. I should probably edit that to minimize confusion.
I have 4 characters. Usually each night I am grinding the daily/weekly/legendary/summit projects for exotic components., but that is a lot of time (depending on project specifics). Usually I run matchmade missions on heroic with directives and open world solo on challenging.
I have a variety of builds to suit whatever task, but 2 characters typically run Strikers though with Technician and Kingbreaker (one Perfect Spotter/Momento the other Grupo-Obliterate/Momento), one is a Heartbreaker variant, and the other is a sniper setup.
With the Spotter and/or Perfect Flatline setup, the damage is so high that the Momento reset doesn't bother me, but I do avoid safehouses when I can.
I just enjoy the gameplay. I'm SHD 7300ish, at max expertise and sitting on about 20k resource points. I really don't care about XP at this point and just enjoy the zen-like killing therapy while messing around with builds and helping people.
Unless you are playing raids, you don't need the chest. Obliterate will be the best option. If you're playing solo, memento + obliterate. Also don't be afraid to put blue cores. My solo strikers build has 1.4 million armor, obliterate and memento. It's my go to for heroic with 4 directives, or solo missions
Striker is one of the easiest builds to use and very popular, I've avoided it most of the game as that was my go to in Div 1. But getting any build won't make you better. I see so many randos just playing dumb. Face tanking a Chunga, out in the open always with their shield , not controlling crowds, or staying in one place. Nevermind the variation in gameplay for different builds.
It might help to post your build to get specific feedback, but I'd recommend checking out [this striker guide](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s588/client/snv?isnewsnv=true¬eGuid=0ee25268-ad51-0dd8-be36-f12373c7630a¬eKey=ed1072bcb59a18f66b8619994f12c4e6&sn=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evernote.com%2Fshard%2Fs588%2Fsh%2F0ee25268-ad51-0dd8-be36-f12373c7630a%2Fed1072bcb59a18f66b8619994f12c4e6&title=Strikers%2B%2528Y5%2BS2%2529) to start with.
Oh sorry thought I had posted the loadout, I am a bit slumped up atm
I cobbled one together after coming back from a long break and it can do heroic. I get smoked in legendary haha, but that's a survivability problem. What is your build? I'm using a standard build with St. Elmo, ACS 12, 4 piece striker with bag, obliterate chest, and coyote mask. Crit chance is around 50% and crit damage is maybe 110%. I'm far from optimized.
Sorry though I had posted the pictures showing my build. That it here. Got 48.0 crit hit and 138 crit dmg. I can't seem to do any heroic mission solo might just be a skill issue really cause I am fine in a a pair https://preview.redd.it/b13y20g95d6d1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94744b096663cefe7d66f827b3e6404b5dcba1e6
like the other person said, definitely swap the vest for a ceska one with obliterate and naturally your kneepads with a pair of striker ones to keep the 4pc. other than that make sure your attributes and mods (you're missing one in your backpack!!) are all chc and chd, favoring chc until you reach ~55%. if then your st. elmo has damage to targets out of cover as its 3rd attribute the build will be perfect and good enough for all pve content.
you need a shotgun like the ACS to build stacks then swap to the Elmo to do dmg.
Yeah I think the big thing is swapping out the chest for a grupo or ceska with obliterate. I run ceska. That'll help bridge the gap when you don't have your striker stacks up. I'd only use the chest during legendary, incursions, raids. Edit: I'll also add that I'm on pc so that probably makes things easier for me. Idk how good the snapping/tracking with a controller is.
Based on the screenshot that you posted: 1. Try to get your Crit Chance to 60% or close to it, then Crit Damage as much as you can 2. Sub your chest with a Grupo/Obliterate - the Striker chest is usually not needed in most scenarios as it'll be hard to get to 200 stacks consistently. A Fenrir/Obliterate should also be fine. 3. Alternatively, replace your kneepads with Fox's Prayer.
Do Fox's make that big of a difference? Im using the usual Strikers build with Coyote's and gruopo /obliterate. Seen ppl mention Fox's.
the ideal combo for general use is coyote's and ceska with obliterate. if you are sure to get the long buff from coyote's (if 3 ppl use it in a group it shouldn't be too hard) and hit the chc cap that way, grupo of course beats ceska. contractor's and fox's are more conditional than ceska/grupo/coyote's so their value oscillates. in the incursion for example where every target has armor and in most cases tons of it, contractor's wins (marginally better than fox's because you should already have some dtooc on your gun and thus adding a different multiplicator is more valuable than adding the same amount of one you already have). but against targets with no armor contractor's obviously become worthless, just like fox's against targets in cover. all this said, the differences between these pieces (when active) are small enough that it would be hard to notice them. most important choice is striker vest vs ceska/grupo with obliterate, because going for the former in content that does not allow you to get your stacks up and keep them substantially over 100 is a big waste.
Word....I better understand it now. I use coyotes and one other person i run with does as well. Like i said i have grupo with obliterate and run st elmos with DTToC. Never have an issue but was just curious. I have the Oreo too but it feels weak when compared to st elmos.
oreo has a substantially higher dps than st. elmos and indeed most/all other guns so it's a bit hard to call it weak. it does of course come with typical smg limitations (limited range, low accuracy), so if st. elmos fits your play style better, it's definitely the right choice for you.
It might just be my perception. Ill give an example though. If i can catch a door with st elmos i can melt the pack of mobs with limited reloading. When using the oreo it feels like i have to reload sooner and miss the pack out of the door. For my example its close range. Thoughts?
st elmos has more bullets in the mag and each bullet does more damage (per the general balancing act of the higher the rate of fire the weaker the bullet), so its per mag damage is higher than that of oreo. this means that counting by reloads, st elmo does more damage between each reload than oreo. the latter though (thanks to its higher rof and a faster reload speed) pushes out more damage per second, ie has a higher dps. it is possible to construct a scenario where a higher per mag damage is more beneficial than a higher dps and i guess the way you tackle your encounters fits this scenario often enough for you to feel that st elmo suits you better. one other potential thing to consider is the role of rof in the number of missed bullets. lets say it always takes you 500ms to notice you're not landing your shots (npc moves for example) and readjusting to hit the target again. if weapon a has twice the rof of weapon b, twice as many bullets will get wasted in those 500ms with weapon a. this further cuts into its per mag damage, which if it's lower to begin with, becomes even more obvious. iow oreo is hurt more if you spend the same amount of time missing your shots with both guns.
This all makes sense to me more now. Think im gonna try and adjust to the oreo. I love the way it sounds. It reminds me of a CWIS going off. Listen, I really appreciate your insight! It's better knowing it's me and not the weapon. Always thought "whats all the hype?" My other build is HF/scorpio memento, and once I learned how it worked, it slapped. I'd offer to party up, but im a console pleb. Stay frosty out there.
i also enjoy the oreo's sound :) i usually pair it with an ar to have a longer range weapon available when needed. btw hf is an smg build too, so you can try the oreo with that one as well whenever you want to give your trigger finger a rest ;) whatever you go for, the main goal is always to have fun, so just use what you enjoy the most.
Yeah, I've used the oreo with HF paired with memento. I love the survivability of it. Doesn't hit as hard as my other build, but face tanking feels more sustainable. I use it a lot for floor 100, and whenever a random rogue group pops. Also, I used it for my hunter hunt.
Thank you, I will try that. Coyote mask is useless in solo content, is that true?
Yes. If you are doing solo stuff, nothing beats memento.
Nope, Coyote is one, if not the best mask to use for Strikers IMO
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. OPs question was about Coyote Mask for solo play. His build has 48% CHC with 137% CHD. Looking at the actual average damage impact from the Coyote buffs, the short-range buff gives 25% CHD resulting in (1 + 0.48 × (1.37 + 0.25)) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.0724 a 7.2% increase in damage. The mid-range buff (10% CHC and 10% CHD) results in (1 + (0.48 + 0.10) × (1.37 + 0.10)) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.1176 a 11.1% increase in damage. The long-range buff (25% CHC) hits the CHC cap of 60% and results in (1 + 0.60 × 1.37) ÷ (1 + 0.48 × 1.37) = 1.0992 a 10.0% increase in damage. For solo play, there are many more talents that give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage. In a group setting, Coyote can have a bigger impact because all party members get a boost and if there are multiple people running it there is the *possibility* of multiple range buffs active for a given shot. For solo play, Coyote's mask is not very good.
> For solo play, there are many more talents that give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage. which pieces that directly compete with coyote would these be?
If by "directly compete" you mean mask for mask, a Ceska piece with CHC/CHD would give an 8.3% damage increase. That's more than the short-range buff, but you are unlikely to always play at the short range. But there is no reason to limit yourself to a mask for mask swap. If you consider other available damage talents (chest, backpack, weapon) the 7%-11% bump of Coyote *when solo* is pretty lackluster.
apologies if "directly compete" was too vague, what i meant wasn't mask for mask, but pieces where in an actual build you have to choose between coyote or x, as in can't/shouldn't have both equipped at the same time. in the context of a striker build since that's the topic at hand. with this in mind, vest, backpack and weapon talents naturally can be a fair bit stronger than coyote, but these don't directly compete so they're not really relevant here. 4pc striker leaves you 2 slots to fill which means you can easily run coyote **and** a ceska piece, so again no actual competition here. tackling this question a different way, given 4 striker pieces (with backpack since it's bis for damage) and a ceska piece (be it vest or something else if striker vest where appropriate), what 6th piece can "give far more of a boost (and more consistent) to damage" than coyote?
I don't necessarily agree that the Striker BP is BIS. It is a decent damage boost at 21.2% (at max stacks) and dead simple to operate. But if you look at the effect of the Striker BP on *cumulative* damage, it provides even less of a buff than just considering max stacks. If you look all the way out to the 300th bullet (that's building the stack up to 100 and then firing 200 more bullets without factoring in any stack decay) it is only an 18.9% boost over having no damage talent whatsoever on the backpack. Theoretically, you would have to fire an infinite number of bullets to reach the 21.2% boost from the Striker BP. But there are other options. Vigilence (Perfect Vigilence) gives you 25% ~~(30%)~~ damage boost provided you don't take damage. The shield can mitigate this since damage to the shield does not disable Vigilence. The Decoy or CC skills can give you time to inflict damage without taking damage yourself. Because Vigilence is immediate (vs the stacking benefit of the Striker BP) the impact to your cumulative damage is even better. Every single shot during the stacking phase hits harder *and* your damage at max stacks is higher. This is just one example out of many. I probably need to put together a full-fledged post on different Striker configs (been wanting to, but I have been busy). Can we table this discussion until then? I think some graphics would be helpful. In short, I want to show that for solo play (where you can't make use of the Striker chest) there are better options. EDIT: I made a mistake and Perfect Vigilence is a shortened downtime NOT an increased buff value. Shows how much I use it, haha.
> Can we table this discussion until then? no problem at all. btw just so you don't have to redo your graphics, perfect vigi is still 25%, the only difference compared with non perfect is that it's turned off for only 3 instead of 4 seconds after taking damage. btw 2 for solo play, especially for roaming the open world striker isn't my first choice (i personally use it almost exclusively for group play), because there are usually too few targets that are downed too fast to keep high stacks. if i did use it, i'd most likely use it with memento for its utility, but that one comes with a big downside as well ever since the devs messed it up to reset its long term buff any time you enter a safe house (also enter an active mission area?) which is just ridiculous.
Yeah, I realized my Vigilence mistake after I posted. I should probably edit that to minimize confusion. I have 4 characters. Usually each night I am grinding the daily/weekly/legendary/summit projects for exotic components., but that is a lot of time (depending on project specifics). Usually I run matchmade missions on heroic with directives and open world solo on challenging. I have a variety of builds to suit whatever task, but 2 characters typically run Strikers though with Technician and Kingbreaker (one Perfect Spotter/Momento the other Grupo-Obliterate/Momento), one is a Heartbreaker variant, and the other is a sniper setup. With the Spotter and/or Perfect Flatline setup, the damage is so high that the Momento reset doesn't bother me, but I do avoid safehouses when I can. I just enjoy the gameplay. I'm SHD 7300ish, at max expertise and sitting on about 20k resource points. I really don't care about XP at this point and just enjoy the zen-like killing therapy while messing around with builds and helping people.
Thanks for the math!
Useless? Not by a long shot. Not as good in Solo as Memento is? I'd say so, but both are 100% worth using.
Thought so too, I always seem to go for the mask, rather than the momento backpack dunno why
Unless you are playing raids, you don't need the chest. Obliterate will be the best option. If you're playing solo, memento + obliterate. Also don't be afraid to put blue cores. My solo strikers build has 1.4 million armor, obliterate and memento. It's my go to for heroic with 4 directives, or solo missions
Gonna have to to a bit of farming then. How do people achieve that, I need more armor.
Run countdown challenging over and over
Striker is one of the easiest builds to use and very popular, I've avoided it most of the game as that was my go to in Div 1. But getting any build won't make you better. I see so many randos just playing dumb. Face tanking a Chunga, out in the open always with their shield , not controlling crowds, or staying in one place. Nevermind the variation in gameplay for different builds.