Early Impressions: Power sets

[Lantyssa]

I'm running an AR/Blood DPS/Solo build. What are people using for A Blood DPS finisher? I've been using the entry level DOTs but they don't seem all that exciting.

Infection and Blood Spike currently.  There's a higher level instant I plan on replacing Blood Spike with, but will likely play around with this some.

Exsanguinate seems a decent dump, but I tend to use Blades for a quick dump, and Blood as a more situational one.

[Sky]

I feel left out, posted my build and totally didn't get yelled at.

On AR healing, though I only used it for solo healing I found the same thing. It's nice that you can dish dps while healing, but Komoto was in tank gear, so his dps sucked and so did his heals/leeches. So I don't think it would be all that great unless you went into heal gear, but then the dps would tank.

Just doesn't seem to be a very solo friendly game after Kings. I'm still enjoying it, but since I hit SC every time I log in, I'm a ghost...because I finally got fed up with dying so much.

[Falconeer]

All I can say is that it IS totally and easily soloable. Just not with every build. I am by no means saying that you have to use one of the "good builds". I am saying that there are dozens of good builds, you just can't sit on what worked up to that point as you would in other games. The system is so very flexible with builds and there are so many viable ones that cannot be gathered in one post. At the same time though it's unforgiving with those who don't adapt or evolve, and makes their gaming experience pretty crappy. you have no idea how many threads on the official boards have been "GAME IS TOO HARD! BLUE MOUNTAIN IS BROKEN! WHAT WERE YOU THINKIN FUNCOM" and so on. But this is no EverQuest, there's no grind and there's no smashing your own nuts. Just, slightly harder than the average DIKU.

Bottom line, neither Savage Coast or Blue Mountain are hard AT ALL in solo. But you might have to get a few more AP and items before you get there, or you might have to take a second, third or fourth look at the skill wheel. As noted somewhere else, it's not a hard game at all, but it's way more challenging than what we've been trained to in the last 8 years or so.

[Zetor]

I've used a variation on the cookie cutter "crits and strikes" ele/shotgun build for almost the entire game and it's worked really well, even when soloing hard missions in the lategame areas (only exception was the 'Rogue Agent' mission where I had to switch to a shotgun/AR build with Anima Shot). The build kills crap really quickly, has very good burst to deal with healing mobs / "you can only damage me for 2 seconds every 10 seconds" kind of stuff, crits like crazy, has good range, and stacks up 10 stacks of weaken [-30% damage] on harder targets in a few seconds - which gives it a lot more survivability. I did have to use consumables occasionally on tougher pulls / unexpected adds... the Turn the Tables heal is nice, but it isn't going to keep you alive forever.

Variations I've used:
- Kneecapper instead of Do or Die before I got the 13248975 AP together for it (left it for last, as it is a LOT of investment in the pve dps misc tree for basically one elite skill... but it's worth it) and against enemies that get weaker when crippled
- Flame Strike instead of Electrical Storm for more singletarget deeps against bosses
- that 'deal x damage when you apply weaken' passive shotgun ability instead of Live Wire until I got halfway through Egypt (that's also a pretty hefty AP investment)
- Under the Radar instead of Punisher in groups for aggro control (assuming that someone can apply weaken)
- a half-ass shotgun-only build for that one mission that disables your secondary weapon, since ele focus can't go in the first slot (love ya, Funcom!  )

[HaemishM]

I'm running an AR/Blood DPS/Solo build. What are people using for A Blood DPS finisher? I've been using the entry level DOTs but they don't seem all that exciting.

Blood has a nice finishing combo with Blood Spike. You have to build up 4 blood resources first, then you toss Blood Spike twice. If you hit the second blood spike while the DOT from the first Blood Spike is still going on the mob, you get a serious bit of extra damage (like 2 or 3 times normal damage, even more if you crit and/or penetrate).

[Miasma]

All I can say is that it IS totally and easily soloable. Just not with every build. I am by no means saying that you have to use one of the "good builds". I am saying that there are dozens of good builds, you just can't sit on what worked up to that point as you would in other games. The system is so very flexible with builds and there are so many viable ones that cannot be gathered in one post. At the same time though it's unforgiving with those who don't adapt or evolve, and makes their gaming experience pretty crappy. you have no idea how many threads on the official boards have been "GAME IS TOO HARD! BLUE MOUNTAIN IS BROKEN! WHAT WERE YOU THINKIN FUNCOM" and so on. But this is no EverQuest, there's no grind and there's no smashing your own nuts. Just, slightly harder than the average DIKU.

Bottom line, neither Savage Coast or Blue Mountain are hard AT ALL in solo. But you might have to get a few more AP and items before you get there, or you might have to take a second, third or fourth look at the skill wheel. As noted somewhere else, it's not a hard game at all, but it's way more challenging than what we've been trained to in the last 8 years or so.

While I'm currently something of a fanboy for this game I think saying that it doesn't get harder after Kingsmouth is somewhat untrue.  It's just that there are things you can change and do to match the next zone's difficulty.  Savage Coast is a little harder than Kingsmouth but you can negate that by using two weapons that work well together.  Blue Mountain is a leap in difficulty but once you get a build that focuses on doing one thing well with matching passives and stick that self heal on your active bar it's doable.  Quite honestly I found Blue Mountain to be more difficult than the next zone which is Scorched Desert.  There are some nasty damn places in Blue Mountain with tons of hard to see mobs all over the place.  You will die a lot in Blue Mountain, don't worry about it.  Once you make it through Blue Mountain you will have a very good idea of what you're doing and there are no more sudden jumps in difficulty in my opinion.  By then you will also probably be specialing in your two chosen weapons and train both to level ten, this helps prevent glances.  Once you get to Translyvania you should have enough AP to do a nice outer ring build.

Also remember you can buy QL6 blue weapons from a vendor in Blue mountain for quest tokens.  50 for the weapon and another 15 for a nice blue glyph to put in it if you have spare tokens.

Edit: Oh and if something just seems way too hard then take a look around and see if there is a better way to do things.  Sometimes you have to drag mobs through the environment or smash a red outlined thing to kill them.  If you are given a quest item to debuff them/buff you you had better use it.  As an example I was knocking myself out killing this tough group of enemies for one quest to get to a certain npc.  Turned out I didn't have to do that at all, there was a sniper rifle across the street which smarter people were using to one shot the quest...

[Falconeer]

It DOES get harder after Kingsmouth! Just... not hard to the point that you can say it's not solo friendly.

[Miasma]

I feel left out, posted my build and totally didn't get yelled at.

I'm not good enough to say much but I'll try "yelling", first I moved you build over to the flash based wheel because I hate that other one.

- I don't like that you have two builder abilities, I would drop "Above the Law".
- Light blue abilities affect a whole group and are really only useful there so I would drop "Deadly Aim", 8 seconds of higher crit chance which can only be used every minute and a half isn't good.  I would buy the self heal and put it there.
- You have a lot of group focused attacks, I have found that tha AoEs are only useful if facing at least three enemies.  If you are fighting two just burn one down with harder hitting single target attacks then kill the other.
- I don't like that you have two Ground targeted AoEs, the time you spend aiming the ground effect is time which would be better spent firing off another ability.
- I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?
- If you do "Dirty Tricks" does the "Hothead" passive give you a stack for every enemy hindered or just one?  If it's just one drop that passive.
- Most of your passives are based on crit so your gear is going to need a lot of crit rating on it to make that work.  You would probably have to craft your own crit glyphs because that many won't drop naturally.
- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

[brellium]

I feel left out, posted my build and totally didn't get yelled at.

I'm not good enough to say much but I'll try "yelling", first I moved you build over to the flash based wheel because I hate that other one.
- I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?

You can interrupt it, but yeah, it has a small amount of damage for just one hit.

[caladein]

Personally, I'm a fan of this character builder: http://www.badomens.net/calculator as I usually work out of a flat list anyway.  Doesn't export out to the gear manager mod though like the Drakkashi or SecretSandbox ones do if you're using that.

[Ingmar]

Is there one of those that has all the Funcom decks built into it already? I looked at a couple and haven't found one that does that yet.

EDIT: Why yes, the one right above my post. 

[Segoris]

I feel left out, posted my build and totally didn't get yelled at.

I don't even have to look at your previous post, I just look at your avatar and know YOU MMO WRONG NUB!

Better?

[Lantyssa]

Is there one of those that has all the Funcom decks built into it already? I looked at a couple and haven't found one that does that yet.

That Bad Omens one does.  Looks really nice, too.  I'm going to play with it when I have a chance.

[Segoris]

- If you do "Dirty Tricks" does the "Hothead" passive give you a stack for every enemy hindered or just one?  If it's just one drop that passive.
- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

Completely agree with Miasma. A couple things:

Hothead is limited to one buff as it is not a stacking buff (if a buff stacks multiple times then it will say it stacks X number of times)
Pistol & ele do work pretty well together later on, but early on not so much imo

Blood has a nice finishing combo with Blood Spike. You have to build up 4 blood resources first, then you toss Blood Spike twice. If you hit the second blood spike while the DOT from the first Blood Spike is still going on the mob, you get a serious bit of extra damage (like 2 or 3 times normal damage, even more if you crit and/or penetrate).

One of the reasons I like Blood Spike (one of the rare things I do like in Blood for DPS) is that if you wanted to you could actually do 1 builder and then 1 Blood Spike using a focus attack.

[Sky]

- I don't like that you have two builder abilities, I would drop "Above the Law".

Above the law was just to soften up groups, the only time I used it as a builder was for my initial drone. Anything else was a bonus. My rotation was Above the Law, Dirty Tricks, Drone Kit, then build with Hair Trigger, dump Elem with Thor's Hammer, dump Pistol with Shootout.

- Light blue abilities affect a whole group and are really only useful there so I would drop "Deadly Aim", 8 seconds of higher crit chance which can only be used every minute and a half isn't good.  I would buy the self heal and put it there.

I can trigger it every couple of combats, and with the crit passives I have I'm loath to dump it because I crit like a mofo. I also don't currently have a ton of good replacement options. I do plan on adding the Misc tree heal, it's what I'm building to right now - plan is to slot it where Drone Kit is now.

- You have a lot of group focused attacks, I have found that tha AoEs are only useful if facing at least three enemies.  If you are fighting two just burn one down with harder hitting single target attacks then kill the other.

Working on a new setup for this. Part of the transition from Kings to SC, in Kings I would often take on 4 single dot mobs (I was also running with a pistol chain attack).

- I don't like that you have two Ground targeted AoEs, the time you spend aiming the ground effect is time which would be better spent firing off another ability.


Never really spent a lot of time aiming them until I ran Polaris. Very easy to drop it in the right spot solo, and both were mostly openers anyway.

- I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?


Yeah, no shit. My main beef with Elem. The reason my primary builder in that build was Hair Trigger was due to HT being a focus ability, ditto Shootout, having a crit passive based on focus attacks (Increased Focus). HT I could interrupt to build, but at a reduced damage output.

- If you do "Dirty Tricks" does the "Hothead" passive give you a stack for every enemy hindered or just one?  If it's just one drop that passive.

I'd prefer a stacking passive, but as I was opening with Dirty Tricks it was nice to get the 7.5% crit to start every combat.

- Most of your passives are based on crit so your gear is going to need a lot of crit rating on it to make that work.  You would probably have to craft your own crit glyphs because that many won't drop naturally.


All my gear is oriented to crit, hit and attack. Mostly still green stuff, QL3. I have crafted a couple blue talismans and glyphs, too.

- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

I had some ideas, but they kind of dried up. I'm open to suggestions for a secondary weapon skill before I dump too much more into Elem. I kind of wanted the Paladin deck outfit, but blade is so much more pen-based and the conditions don't seem to match up well.


I did some rejiggering last night, however my abilities list got borked and only about half of them (the passives, of course) are showing detailed info. One big question I have - for abilities that consume all resources, is there any benefit to stacking the resource or is it ok to use the consumer with a single resource for full effect?

http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?56=0&58=2&57=5&40=6&56=4&n&57=3&56=5&58=3&9=0&56=1&1=0&62=2&41=0

It's a total mess because I had been building in support of that old deck.
- So this one returns to the original pistol builder and using the passive that grants weakened to it; maybe build off that (gnosis for starters 1AP).
- Swap in Start & Finish, my current best pistol single-target consumer; 1s activation but it does play a bit off the weakened thing, too; decent dmg (esp with crits).
- Then I put the chain Wanted back in, does decent single-target dmg and gives me some "AE" damage, mostly used when S&F is on its short cooldown or 3+ mobs.
- Molten Earth, I like this a lot. Similar to Dirty Tricks, a wee bit more dmg and wee bit longer hinder but single-target only.
- Drone Kit just kind of hanging in there waiting to be replaced with self-heal (I get a very minor self-heal from DK)
- Forget what went in slot 6, would be nice to have an Elem consumer here, since ME is resource-less
- I like the +crit until I find something better for this slot in this build

For passive, I added in gnosis just to see how much things would trigger off Weaken; Magnum goes in for the same reason.

I forgot to run dps meter with the old one before I changed it around. The new transition build was doing 200-350 dps on random SC mobs, with a couple higher spikes.

[Seraphim]

- Most of your passives are based on crit so your gear is going to need a lot of crit rating on it to make that work.  You would probably have to craft your own crit glyphs because that many won't drop naturally.


All my gear is oriented to crit, hit and attack. Mostly still green stuff, QL3. I have crafted a couple blue talismans and glyphs, too.

- Pistol and Element don't seem to have many synergies.

I had some ideas, but they kind of dried up. I'm open to suggestions for a secondary weapon skill before I dump too much more into Elem. I kind of wanted the Paladin deck outfit, but blade is so much more pen-based and the conditions don't seem to match up well.


I did some rejiggering last night, however my abilities list got borked and only about half of them (the passives, of course) are showing detailed info. One big question I have - for abilities that consume all resources, is there any benefit to stacking the resource or is it ok to use the consumer with a single resource for full effect?

You do get more damage out of all consumers when you've built up 5 resources, is the difference worth building all the way up? Probably not but I still tend to do it unless it's half-dead trash mobs...
And the thing Elemental and Pistol shares is it's crit triggers which you're already going for, the following is my own crit based passives but it might give you some ideas:

Mad Skills, you already have this but for us can't ever get enough +crit...
Insult to Injury, third ability in Hammers Brutal Force, triggers on crits, reduces targets dmg by up to 30%, sets Weaken.
Punishment, first ability in the same tree as above, triggers when hitting a weakened target upping crit power rating by up to 150.
Paradigm Shift, 5 AP into Chaos to get, +Hit up to 150 rating whenever Insult triggers a Weaken. 'cause Glancing sucks.
One in the Chamber, Pistols Crossfire. Just a little extra dmg on crits. Not always in my deck either.
Magnetic Variance, Elemental Resonance. 33% chance to Purge a single buff off target. Put this in to try and handle Transylvania mobs better, ought to be good in the dungeons as well but before Shadowy Forest nothing you'll need.
Live Wire (Elite), Elemental Altered States, every 5th crit gets a large dmg boost in the form of an extra hit. Mine's up to 1400 extra with the current gear which is pretty darn nice to have.

Before Live Wire and being a Fist/Chaos build I used Empowerment for survival, (critted hots heal an additional 100). Also tried From the Abyss, similar to Live Wire, but hits 5 targets near you for less dmg.
And tinkering with a Exploitation/Tough Luck from the Pistol Trajectionist tree for a hinder/cleanse combo after talking with Njal the other night.

And why use Immortal Spirit instead of Advantage Me as a Pistol crit build? Can't really do enough crits without sacrificing any +Pen gear sadly.

[Rendakor]

Here's my solo/duo questing build that I'm using right now:
http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/wheel.php?32=0&33=1&5=0&0=2&32=2&32=6&1=3&74=1&33=2&1=4&33=0&38=0&32=5&38=6
I mostly pull 2-3 mob spawns and AOE them down with Escalation and Balanced Blade, dumping Call of Eris on my main target. Since the foes are perma-Weakened from Escalation, Minor Ward and the Hit Rating buff are both always up. Domino Effect is a decent Impair (and using BB right after builds 2 Blade), and I've got Martial Discipline (with it's healing passive) for when things go tits up. I'm mostly in tanking gear, with a few DPS pieces that I added recently since things in Blue Mountain take forever to kill.

My actual tanking build is similar, except I swapped in a second defensive CD instead of the Impair, and a taunt instead of the AOE finisher. Ideally I'd like them to get the gear manager working better, so I can run an AOE tanking spec for trash and a single target tanking spec for bosses, but it's still pretty finicky right now.

[Miasma]

I honestly don't think I understand elemental enough to talk about it much, it's odd in that has a lot of skills that only use two or three anima points, but if you're running with it you should defintely use a consumer or else you are waisting the five anima points in the weapon.  If I were to guess I would say their intention is for you to use a builder to five then use a two anima ability then a three.

I see a lot of people using elemental in translyvania so I'm sure it's good but I don't know how to use it myself.  Of course maybe I just think a lot of people use it because it makes such a giant pool of lights and effects with every ability.

I personally run hammers/shotgun and love my weakened effect and have a lot of passives that trigger off it.  The hammer weaken causes the enemy to just do less damage which is great and always useful, the pistol weaken is only directly useful against the handful of enemies that self heal or barrier themselves (although it would be great against those enemies).  The passives that exploit weaken will still all be just as good for pistol.

[Falconeer]

What's your hammer/shotgun spec, Miasma? I am sure we run a very similar one based on what you say, but I am curious about the little differences.

This is my solo Shotgun/Hammer one.

Touchdown is a charge and it's always good. It even allows you to skip certain areas and get away from certain mobs. It also just feels right.
Point Blank is a good opener, it alos applies Impaired which I can instantly exploit with Haymaker, then build with Striker and consume both resources with Raging Bullet and more Haymaker. Takedown is extra damage without the bother of a casting bar or having to pay attention at resources (I am looking at you Buckshot) and the Hindering effect is good from fights where I want to start with a bit of an advantage. Finally, Beatdown is great instant damage but especially useful when I just need to interrupt outnumbering mobs.

For passives, I still debuff 3%/stack of mobs damage but I do that through shotgun (Punisher) instead of hammer. Tenderising and Gunsmoke are just a little nice extra damage with each hit, and Improved Strikes and Dead on Target are simple DPS boosters. For penetration purposes, Body Piercing and Strike Force, with this one in particular being the whole point of the "strike" build.

I gotta say, I kill everything really really fast. But I am just at the end of Blue Mountain, and having all DPS equipment (and fairly good weapon) might be part of the reasons, reagrdless of the build.

What's your spec like?

[Miasma]

My build seems similar it's just that I use Hammers as my main and you use Shotguns.

This is my standard questing build, Hammer/Shotgun:

Actives
1 - "Strike" builder.
2 - "Blast" multi target hammer consumer.
3 - "Strike" single target hammer consumer.
4 - Elite.  Long cool down ability which impairs/interrupts and does good damage on anything in front of me.
5 - Multi target shotgun consumer (currently bugged and only doing single target...).
6 - "Strike" single target shotgun consumer.
7 - I play it safe and keep the self heal, I like ending fights at almost full life.

Passives
1 - My three "Strike" attacks all put weakened on the enemy which cause them to do 3% less damage, up to 30% less at full stacks.
2 - Now since all my "Strike" attacks weaken they also buff my physical and magical protection by 30 each hit up to 150.
3 - Straight 7.5% damage increase for all four of my consumers.
4 - All the "Strike" attacks cause weaken which cause an additional small hit.
5 - Straight 10% increase in hammer damage.
6 - Straight 10% increase in shotgun damage.
7 - Elite.  An awesome passive which will heal 40% of my max health over ten seconds if I drop below 50%.  It essentially gives me 40% more hp so long as it's on cooldown.  It only triggers during boss fights or when I screw up so it's usually on cooldown.

I like it a lot, I get stronger and my enemy gets weaker with every "Strike".  Does a lot of damage to single and pairs of mobs but against swarms it's only mediocre, I don't see a lot of swarms in the later zones though.  I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm critting or penetrating.  It uses weaken which doesn't seem to be countered a lot in the end zones unlike hindered or impaired (most any build based around those two conditions are either made useless or can actually get you killed later because so many mobs have protections against them).

[Miasma]

I notice you use the 7.5% more "effective" Strike passive instead of the straight 10% more damage.  What does "effective" mean, does it mean 7.5% more damage and stuff like weaken and impairs also last 7.5% longer?

[Lantyssa]

Here's my solo/duo questing build that I'm using right now:

Why not swap in Run Rampant for Hand of Change?  It's fairly cheap Chaos and adds a little Evasion.

[Falconeer]

I use 7.5% more effective Strikes AND 10% more effective on Shotguns (Dead on Target). What I don't use is the 10% flat damage on Hammers cause I only use the hammer finisher, while the 7.5% I get from Improved Strikes (assuming is more damage) is ON TOP of the other 10% when it comes to shotgun abilities. If I read the game correctly, my shotgun abilities fo 10% more damage and THEN another 7.5% additional damage as long as they are strike (and both my builder and consumer are). That boosts my hammer consumer too since that is a strike. So in short, I give up 2.5% damage from the hammer consumer (1 ability) for a 7.5% increase on my shotgun builder and consumer (2 abilities). This is assuming I read the system right and bugs are not messing with me.

About "effective", I think it just means it does x% more damage, and they've just been goofball in naming it that way.

[Miasma]

I use 7.5% more effective Strikes AND 10% more effective on Shotguns (Dead on Target). What I don't use is the 10% flat damage on Hammers cause I only use the hammer finisher, while the 7.5% I get from Improved Strikes (assuming is more damage) is ON TOP of the other 10% when it comes to shotgun abilities. If I read the game correctly, my shotgun abilities fo 10% more damage and THEN another 7.5% additional damage as long as they are strike (and both my builder and consumer are). That boosts my hammer consumer too since that is a strike. So in short, I give up 2.5% damage from the hammer consumer (1 ability) for a 7.5% increase on my shotgun builder and consumer (2 abilities). This is assuming I read the system right and bugs are not messing with me.

About "effective", I think it just means it does x% more damage, and they've just been goofball in naming it that way.

Hmm that's interesting.  We both use tenderising which does a small additional hit but if it stacks the way you say it does then it might be better for me to replace it with "Improved Strikes" and you to replace it with "Closer".  Both stack another 7.5% damage which at that point would have to be more damage than the small extra hit tenderising does, I think.

Edit: The small extra hit doesn't apply weaken too does it?  I don't think so.

[Falconeer]

Yeah, closer is really nice. It would make my finisher really, really happy. I might pick that up. Tenderising is not that great and I swap it out in PvP. Same with Gunsmoke. Those are definitely waiting for something better to take ther place.

And no I don't think the extra hits actually apply anything.

[Ingmar]

I'm 1/3 - 1/2 or so done with Savage Coast now, and "put shotgun abilitis on bar, mash buttans" is still working fine. 

[Rasix]

Can anyone recommend a good healing build/deck?  I see a lot of healers using fist/blood, at least on the runs I've done.  Seems a bit more reliable than fist/ar or blood/ar.    Bonus points if it can be worked into a mostly ranged dps build. 

I have a couple goals for my next builds: I'd like to possibly be able to heal, and I'd like a solid ranged DPS build.  Melee DPS can be a bit of a pain in some of these instances.  When I'm solo, my already completed hammer/shotgun build (similar to Falc/Miasma works just fine).

[Sky]

 The hammer weaken causes the enemy to just do less damage which is great and always useful, the pistol weaken is only directly useful against the handful of enemies that self heal or barrier themselves (although it would be great against those enemies).  

Yeah, that's why I had been avoiding it thus far, it's rarely useful beyond setting the state to cause other effects. Funny how quickly this character went from awesome OP off the rails insanity to 'meh'.

[Miasma]

I'm 1/3 - 1/2 or so done with Savage Coast now, and "put shotgun abilitis on bar, mash buttans" is still working fine. 

I don't like the bizarre "dash backwards ten yards" sub effect that is on so many shotgun abilities.  By the time the first fight was done I'd have aggroed half the zone with my absurd backward dashes.  Never mind my other weapon is melee so I need to stay up there.  Never mind that quite a few shotgun abilities do more damage the closer you are.

[Rendakor]

Here's my solo/duo questing build that I'm using right now:

Why not swap in Run Rampant for Hand of Change?  It's fairly cheap Chaos and adds a little Evasion.

I'm planning on replacing Hand of Change once I grab Brandishing Support; I'm not sure if I want to use Run Rampant or Matador. Any idea which would be more effective?

[Falconeer]

The backward dash is awesome in PvP. Especially when coupled with the always snaring "Close Quarters" elite passive. But at the same time PvP at the moment is an Assault Rifle fest, and there's no place to hide from that bullshit range and the stupid Red Mist nuke.

[Ingmar]

I'm 1/3 - 1/2 or so done with Savage Coast now, and "put shotgun abilitis on bar, mash buttans" is still working fine. 

I don't like the bizarre "dash backwards ten yards" sub effect that is on so many shotgun abilities.  By the time the first fight was done I'd have aggroed half the zone with my absurd backward dashes.  Never mind my other weapon is melee so I need to stay up there.  Never mind that quite a few shotgun abilities do more damage the closer you are.

Yeah I don't use any of those. Right now I have:

builder thingy that is a cone attack, blam blam best animation (pump action, maybe?)
finisher thingy that is a cone attack
builder thingy that is a single shot attack and does more damage if they're hindered (powder burn, this is the only one I remember the name of for sure)
finisher thingy that is a single target attack, the icon looks like the ghost rider skull kind of
an elite cone attack that hinders everyone
a single target attack on a cooldown that hinders people and looks cool
a pistol chain attack finisher thingy because I might as well do something with the pistol combo points

I used to have a penetration buff on there but I found I wasn't remembering to use it much.

[Sjofn]

I used to have a penetration buff on there but I found I wasn't remembering to use it much.

Ooh, start using it again, my character has a couple of things that fire off when she penetrates with an attack (hot).

[Lantyssa]

I'm planning on replacing Hand of Change once I grab Brandishing Support; I'm not sure if I want to use Run Rampant or Matador. Any idea which would be more effective?

I don't think it matters unless you grab some of the passives that have an affect after a glace, evade, or burst.

I'm still working on the final build, but I'm actually planning on using both.

[Sky]

I don't like that so many of your abilities have a casting time.  It means that in the time it took for Thor's Hammer to strike you could have gotten off two other abilities.  "Shoutout" says it takes 2.5 seconds, can you do anything else while it channels or do you have to wait?

Couple things now that I messed with both loadouts a little (vs a track team zed in SC while praying a GM would unbug taking the purple). With the second posted loadout, I was doing 170-260 dps with around 24 seconds ttk the two mobs (one single dot, and a summoned triple dot).

I rejigged the passive to a hybrid of the two builds I linked, but put the original active lineup back for the 'third' loadout. This one was giving me solid, repeatable results: 240dps, 19s ttk.

Two things about the quoted abilties:

Thor's hammer does a pile of dmg. All Elem consumers seem to come with activation times. I don't like it, but it does fit a role.

Shootout, though channeled, can crit on every tick of the channel. Since the alternative is still a 1s activation with only two shots, Shootout ends up doing more reliable damage.

Still stumped for a way to make it faster, or give more opportunities to crit. Seems a crit build needs to avoid big nukes (like Thor's Hammer) in favor of multi-hit stuff like Shootout to get in as many crits as possible.