I just want to preface this by saying that this is essentially a re-vamp of my initial “Slow Burn” build that I posted a while ago. I’ve discovered that there are two working variants of the build with comparable damage output. My goal with this build was to embrace the reliability of Lavawhale’s burn rotation, while making use of the Break Shot party DPS boost and, originally, to switch to using Vines as my active card for proccing tilesets. With that being said, I’ll go back over the rotation first since it’s effectively the same for both variants, and then I’ll go over the tilesets and talent setups for each variant after that.
Rotation
The shot rotation and card rotation is going to be the same for both variants, with the one key difference between the two being what I’ll refer to henceforth as the “Tile Card” (the card whose tile we use in the sets). With that being said, the shot rotation is as follows:
CC, B/T, C, S, s, B/T, C, S, s, B/T, C, S
CC = Charged Curve (this is to keep the Showing Off debuff applied at all times)
B = Burn a card
T = Play Tile Card
C = Charged Shot
S = Fast Shot (fired immediately after the previous shot)
s = Slow Shot (fired after a ~0.5sec delay from the previous shot)
The card management rotation for both variants is relatively simple. When you start charging a shot (the C’s in the rotation) you should be grabbing a card from your deck and immediately belting it. To make this easier, I like to keep the belt slot close to the card deck so it’s a small and quick motion to belt the next card.
The reason you want to be pulling the next card while charging your C’s and belting it immediately is to manage the cooldown on the card deck effectively & reduce the risk of your card deck glitching out when trying to draw the next card for the rotation.
Edit: Removed section here about whether or not to burn Vines or Flames, as with the help of @Infiniterune it looks like just using both cards every time, regardless of your tileset variant, is the best option.
Slow Burn Variant
The Tilesets:
The Talents:
- Slow Burn
- Quick Draw
- On the Line
- Break Shot
- True Gambler
The reason I used Quick Draw on the Slow Burn Variant is because Stack the Deck increases the chances of you having to shoot off one of your Vines cards with the Spread Empowerment from burning a Flames card, which decreases the duration of the DoT from your Vines. It’s a relatively minor loss, but you want to avoid it as much as possible, so you don’t want to increase the number of Flames cards you might have to burn by going with Stack the Deck.
Stack the Deck Variant
The Tilesets:
The Talents:
- Fully Loaded or Slow Burn
- Stack the Deck
- On the Line
- Break Shot
- True Gambler
The reason I leave the option open here for the level 5 talent is that it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. The 10% crit chance increase on Fully Loaded is relatively minor compared to the crit chance you already have as a True Gambler scoundrel, and your magazine will not always be full when using this build. However, at the same time, you will only be using Vines and maybe Flint cards very selectively/situationally, making the added duration from Slow Burn also relatively minor and unnoticeable. The important part for this one is Stack the Deck, as Flames is your Tile Card for this variant and having more Flames cards in your deck means you get to proc the 2 tilesets that use the Flames card tile more often.
Some Ending Notes:
Proccing the short delay tile requires some pretty precise charged-shot-release timing. Basically you need to train yourself as best as you can to release your charged shot the very moment you see the faintest hint of purple glow indicating it’s finished charging. You can even release slightly before it actually starts to show the glowing effect and it will still be fully charged + apply the Break Shot debuff.
The ideal armor affixes and weapon affixes are still the same as they were in my original post. You want crit damage and projectile damage on all your armor, and Bleed on your gun most importantly, Giantkiller as a second affix if you have a legendary. Iceheart can also be good if you run with a lot of rotation mages. Unbending isn’t terrible, especially with the super glass-cannon nature of scoundrels who use True Gambler.
The big question anybody who’s seen the old post is probably asking is “what is the damage of the Stack the Deck variant compared to the original Slow Burn variant?” Well, in the testing I did on the fellowship hall dummy, they were both relatively on par with each-other, with the Slow Burn variant having a slightly higher average trend. The Slow Burn variant is really nice when you get lucky with Vines duplications and you can maintain consistent stacks of the DoT, it’s also cool when you have a Contamination mage (I know they are rare, but when you have on it is pretty nice for this variant). On the flipside, much like Lavawhale’s original Burn Tile build, the Stack the Deck variant of my build has much better Bleed spike potential which is a fantastic DPS boost when it happens.
I hope whoever decided to read all this enjoyed it. I have not recorded them yet, but as with my original post, I will link some demonstration videos below. I’ll get around to it like tomorrow, but just know I won’t talk much in the videos. They are purely for your visual reference, to help you see what the rotation looks like & see how the tiles proc.
Feel free to hit me up in-game or on the discord server if you want a set (I charge 50k for them) or if you have any further questions and I’ll do my best to answer them for you!
Another Edit:
I’m just adding this here at the end to clarify the tileset option I’m referencing, but basically @Infiniterune also found that using both a Vines and a Flames tileset as the 4th and 5th options for this build and rotation is technically the optimal way to use it, at least according to Greg’s calculations.
The tiles for this third variant, which I’ve just taken to calling the “Optimal Variant” are as follows:
I’ll try to keep this post updated if there are any further changes to any of this! It’s also worth mentioning that I think this can work with either Stack the Deck or Quick Draw, but I and I expect Stack the Deck might be slightly better in comparison, but I just personally prefer Quick Draw for a few different reasons.
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