OVER 1 MILLION!!! Freinds

[Nilxain]

there seem to be more than a few schools of thought on this. thus far i have tried everything that has been suggested, and have come closer to beating it with the volge rifle and a ground pounder, than with my heavy ar and 6.2 crit wolfhound.

i also didnt think volge weapons would be a good choice -- then i noticed i can crit hit him for massive dmg when he is hanging even with the crystal on.

You were probably closer because your group pulled more weight, not because you used the VBR. It all boils down to the math, and the math doesn't support VBR/Volge as the better choice - because anything you can do with those weapons you can do better with a GP or a method 1 list weapon from the guide.

Here is some of what I laid out on this subject explaining this position:

With respect to the Typhoon:

Ok, I think I have some answers:

First let me say what assumptions I made:

I used the weapons I have which are all purple and specifically tuned to do the job that I would be assigning them for here. With this in mind I assume that everyone will do the same thing, and if they are comparing weapons of the same tier (green, blue, purple, orange) then they will probably all scale similar enough to the version that I have to provide these numbers as valid guidelines for what we might be looking at as a lowest armor break time. Fair enough?

It takes my Wolfhound 3 burn phase to equal the damage that my Typhoon would put out if I did 7 burn phases and crit 100% of the time. This means that, as long as the armor is broken by the time 2min and 21sec are left on the clock, my Wolfhound can exceed the total damage output of my Typhoon - in burn phases alone (not even including the damage from my other weapon during the 4 previous burn phase).

2min and 21sec is very late in the fight, and randoms consistently break the armor by at least 3min. With this in mind I think there is enough margin for error there (one full burn phase) to conclude that it is not a good idea to use the Volge weapons (ignoring the thunderer for a min, but I do feel it should not be used either - even though I love that weapon).

It is my current recommendation (which I may wait to update the guide until I can make it less confusing) that players who want to min/max and slaughter this boss should do the following (this will require 2 loadouts):

Use the Ground Pounder on the boss's head, starting before he is ever broken out, for the entire time he's on the ground. (This should work out to be the highest DPS because of ease of use, higher survivability, and timely ammo refills - ~6k average DPS directly to his health).

Use your highest white damage weapon while he is hanging until his armor breaks (blow all CDs).

Then, once the armor is broken (here comes the if then situations):

If he is hanging use the Wolfhound.

If he is on the ground:

*Use the Wolfhound if your DPS up-time (@100% crits) is 65% or greater (that is to say you hit him at max dps with crits more that 65% of the time).

*Use the ground Pounder if your DPS up-time is less than 65% (ie: you have to slow DPS, because of movement and drop shock, so much that you are doing less than 65% of the damage you do during the burn phase).

*If you don't know/can't decide use the Ground Pounder while he's on the ground - make sure to take into account if you are being forced to reload at really bad times and spend a lot of time doing it.

Your score may lower depending on your previous method, but your damage will be more effective.

**I will keep reviewing this to make sure this is the best choice.**

With respect to the VBR:

Anyone using a VBR is likely not actually the "heavy hitter" they think they are - sure their score might look good, but let me explain why they really aren't helping as much as they could:

I have a orange VBR with a x2.7crit @ 1195 DMG (that's 3 crit rolls, a crit mod, and a 10% damage roll), with a burst mag that's 6775 mag crit DPS and 4917 average crit DPS. I have a blue wolfhound (x5.6 crit mult) with a mag crit DPS of 13504 (1.99 times more than the VBR) and a average crit dps of 9247 (1.9 times more than the VBR). So this blue wolfhound can out DPS that orange VBR, with its HUGE crit mult and a +10% damage roll, in almost half the time (taking out more health than if the VBR got 100% crits for all of the burn phases for the whole fight). So if those "big hitters" would chose to hit big with a armor breaking weapon instead, they would be helping everyone much more, because they would be helping to break the armor even faster, giving the wolfhounds even more time to **** face.

With respect to weapon variety:

I wanted to add that I am interested in promoting people using a broader range of weapons in order to both kill the WM and have fun, which is why I've been working to expand my recommendations within reason. But there are problems that happen when you do that, so I want people to also make an informed decision. I'm trying my best not to say "don't use them," but I do have to object when they are called "the heavy hitters" (lol) and want the sacrifice that is being made to be well understood - and why I am resistant to them.

[Keeper Riff]

how do you post thumbnails.... ...this is trickier than it looks to me, lol

Easy way — 1-upload the picture on some image hosting site like postimage.org; 2-Copy one of the codes presented on the page when upload is finished; 3-Hit "Preview" to see if the forum accepts the code you copied.
More complicated way — upload the picture somewhere and copy two links: one for the thumbnail a.k.a http://host.com/thumbnail.jpg, the other one for full picture a.k.a http://host.com/fullpic.jpg (right click on the pic – Copy Image Location or something like that in your browser). Paste them in the tags like this:

[url=http://host.com/fullpic.jpg][img]http://host.com/thumbnail.jpg[/img][/url] 

[Fuzzle]

Questions:
PC NA and PC EU are separate right? Shouldn't they have different categories like Xbox vs Playstation?

Also, when you were doing your ground pounder maths, did you account for the part where ground pounders aren't doing the extra damage from damage spikes? I'm just wondering situationally, if it's probably still better to shoot his arm when he's on the ground if you happen to be in a good position to do so and the group you are in is good about having spikes available. I would think so.

[Nilxain]

Questions:
PC NA and PC EU are separate right? Shouldn't they have different categories like Xbox vs Playstation?

Also, when you were doing your ground pounder maths, did you account for the part where ground pounders aren't doing the extra damage from damage spikes? I'm just wondering situationally, if it's probably still better to shoot his arm when he's on the ground if you happen to be in a good position to do so and the group you are in is good about having spikes available. I would think so.

They are doing extra damage, my GP goes from 1600-1800 (depending on if I'm behind him) to 2k-2.3k when I'm in a spike. You have to pay attention though, because sometimes you will step into a spike and it won't recognize it (not buffing any of your weapons - also not getting wings). When this happens step out and in again and it should register. But, that aside, basically it doesn't matter (kind of a long explanation as to why - but it's similar to the If/then scenarios in the quote).

As for NA EU, great question, I was hoping this would come up :-)

Disclaimer: I don't think I've had any EU friends on in a while so I'm not 100% sure this is still the case, but:

I purposely didn't separate them because they can still play together, you just have to port to them :-) This is a good thing because it gives more options for getting onto a server that isn't 3/4 arkbroke >.<

However, do let me know if it's not this way anymore.

Edit: I was just thinking about the spikes more, and it is possible that the increase I'm seeing is from someone's nano that has proc'ed at the same time. I have noticed several times not getting the increase, but often if I step out and in I will get it - that could just be a coincidence; I'll have to look more closely - THX for the heads up.

I do however want to stress that even without the bonus from a spike the GP is still be better for most people - because the DPS up-time is huge, the skill cap is very low, and the survivability is as high as any hip fire weapon.

I'll test a spike and report it as a bug if I find the same result.

[Sdric]

Why are we still discussing this?
SMG with Extended Mag. + Falloff Damage Barrel
+Wolfhound/ TACC
Reload, crit damage Perks and Blast Shield.

This is why: http://imageshack.com/a/img41/7397/mjrj.jpg
The weapons, green ones are fine, : http://imageshack.com/a/img20/1175/k6bf.png

And please, don't use Volge weapons.

[Fuzzle]

I assumed the spikes weren't working for groundpounders since they are double damage, right? I never see a 3k+ on my ground pounder, which caused me to assume the extra damage was from the sucker punch perk or radiation nano's or both. Sorry if my assumptions were mistaken and groundpounders just don't do double damage for some reason.

As for the sub-carbine, any particular reason you chose this weapon over something with higher DPS? To me it seems like a sub-par weapon to use. It has pretty good hip accuracy, and a decent longevity firing in bursts, but it seems to me like a techmag would be significantly better particularly if anyone is using ammo spikes.

Edit: I'm also basing this off of something I read a long while back that burst fire weapons always equal to be half their listed rate of fire for sustained firing, if this is incorrect I'd appreciate some correction.

[ironcladtrash]

As for NA EU, great question, I was hoping this would come up :-)

Disclaimer: I don't think I've had any EU friends on in a while so I'm not 100% sure this is still the case, but:

I purposely didn't separate them because they can still play together, you just have to port to them :-) This is a good thing because it gives more options for getting onto a server that isn't 3/4 arkbroke >.<

However, do let me know if it's not this way anymore.

This was never the case. NA and EU servers are different you can't and never could port to them. You would have to create a character on the server to play there and pick NA or EU server when you log into the game.

[Fuzzle]

This was never the case. NA and EU servers are different you can't and never could port to them. You would have to create a character on the server to play there and pick NA or EU server when you log into the game.

Maybe he plays Firefall too, and is thinking of that? Since you can port to EU servers in that game.

If you could ever do that in this game, that's news to me!

[ironcladtrash]

Maybe he plays Firefall too, and is thinking of that? Since you can port to EU servers in that game.

He's probably confused because of the PTS server where we were all together.

[Nilxain]

I assumed the spikes weren't working for groundpounders since they are double damage, right? I never see a 3k+ on my ground pounder, which caused me to assume the extra damage was from the sucker punch perk or radiation nano's or both. Sorry if my assumptions were mistaken and groundpounders just don't do double damage for some reason.

As for the sub-carbine, any particular reason you chose this weapon over something with higher DPS? To me it seems like a sub-par weapon to use. It has pretty good hip accuracy, and a decent longevity firing in bursts, but it seems to me like a techmag would be significantly better particularly if anyone is using ammo spikes.

Edit: I'm also basing this off of something I read a long while back that burst fire weapons always equal to be half their listed rate of fire for sustained firing, if this is incorrect I'd appreciate some correction.

TBCH I have put so much time into weapons, and tactics and whatnot that I haven't had much brain power left to process spike information. So I haven't sat down to see how spike are effecting weapons, by what amount, and if they effect all of the types of weapons the same - so you could be right. If you or someone else would like to test some different weapons and post it in the Warmaster Guide then I would like to see it. Otherwise whenever I get some time I'll test a bunch of different guns. Just thinking about the numbers I've seen 2x seems right, I just don't know how universal that is.

Great input TY for bringing it up :-)

This was never the case. NA and EU servers are different you can't and never could port to them. You would have to create a character on the server to play there and pick NA or EU server when you log into the game.

Are you sure I thought that was just consoles? You could be right, TBH this is not the kind of thing I pay much attention to lol.