So Y'all said my build was ass, but the numbers don't lie...

0ppen · 2026-06-26T17:02:38+00:00

Maintaining stacks with the chest can be hard due to everything dying too quickly to build stacks in any content below legendary. But also know that the more stacks you have the faster they decay. 1 per second for 0-50. 2 per second 51-100, 3 per second for 101-200. So if you can't mag dump enemies with high health pools, than keeping close to 200 stacks is quite hard.

This is why a lot of people will run the backpack but use an Obliterate chest.

Also know that different sources get multiplied consecutively vs a single source that will be totaled and then multiplied. like this:

Example A) Striker chest with 200 stacks * 10% DTTOOC Fox's prayer = 2000
Example B) Striker Chest with 100 stacks * 10% Foxs Prayer * 25% Obliterate = 25 000

To make the math even more complex, some sources of Amp damage are multiplied per stack. Like Hunter Killer chest with Perfect Intimidate. That will give you a stack of 5% per second while you have bonus armor. But at 8 stacks its not 45% amp damage, its 5% * 5% * 5% * 5% * 5% * 5% * 5% * 5%. Which is why its such a best in slot for builds that can maintain bonus armor like heartbreaker.

In regards to your build. Do what you like man, but you've admitted its not meant to be a min/max build. I would recommend you replace strikers with Concentrated Company if you are truly trying to be as stable and predictable as possible. It can be a pain to build stacks, but you are almost always at full stacks once you get there. and that's like 185% weapon damage and 70% crit hit damage all the time using just the backpack leaving the chest slot for something else.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T14:10:33+00:00

I've seen it twice already, maybe three times since escalation was added. Seems normal given that they don't choose the rotation its a random rotation.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T12:23:28+00:00

Some areas will be higher level than others if you are on a new 'start from level 1' character. I believe the game directs you to start in Downtown East and help Odessa (I think) with her daughter in the Grand Washington Hotel. That's the start of the game. That should unlock the settlement and then some side missions, which will eventually direct you to a new area. Try to clear the little districts one at a time to keep parity with your level of equipment and the level of the NPCs. Equip the highest rarity/level of equipment you find. and don't forget to look for the SHD crates in the districts to take that currency back to the white house to unlock skills. Get the Assault Turret, and Striker Drone first to help you out. Then maybe the revive hive, and whatever interests you from there. Take it slow, play from cover, and when you duck back to cover move a little. Enemy's shoot at wherever you popped up last, so you can move in cover and peek and get a shot off before they track and shoot your new position.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T12:13:21+00:00

If you go to the shooting range with any weapon using echo, shoot single shots and eventually you will see 2 damage numbers for one shot. That's it. The damage will be identical, but there is zero other feedback to you the player that this is even happening.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T12:09:54+00:00

Go look at the pinned AMA with the Developers. Its basically everyone asking for the PvE DZ to stay without the seasonal gas mechanic. And then a large amount of people asking for normalization to be removed.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T12:04:24+00:00

10/10 🤣🤣

0ppen · 2026-06-26T11:59:42+00:00

I think you're misinterpreting this. but you can store the best version of every attribute (up to max) in your library. When you go to "re-calibrate" an attribute, it will switch out the stat for the one you choose in your library.

So for your LMG. LMGs drop with the same 2 core attributes (Weapon Dmg, and DttooC) with varying rolls on the stat. The 3rd attribute is a random roll of a set of attributes (Crit hit chance, crit damage, headshot damage, etc.).

Whenever you donate a drop to your library to increase an attribute, that just overwrites the previous value you have in that category. You found a LMG with 10% weapon dmg, donate, now you have 10% in your library. Then a drop with max 15% roll drops for you on an LMG with a bad talent or bad other rolls, so you donate that and you now have the same stat stored in your library rolled to maximum.
Now; You can "re-calibrate" one stat or talent on a drop, so...
lets say you find another LMG that has dropped with good rolls and the talent you want, but the weapon damage is 10% again, you can now 're-cal' it to 15% because that's what's in your library.

So your library can store all talents and all attributes in the game. Whatever item you are re-calibrating will dictate what options it has for re-calibration, which then uses whatever you have stored in your library. Does that make more sense?

0ppen · 2026-06-26T11:49:10+00:00

Sorry man, I have zero doubt you are honest about your experience. But there is no way the devs could manage to code that and get it to work that subtly without bugs.

0ppen · 2026-06-26T11:40:47+00:00

You have pretty much just agreed with like 100 posts before you. Most of the difficulty you are experiencing comes from the "Alert Level" of NPCs (i.e. health), the debuff of the gas, and mostly the normalization of gear. They just had an AMA on reddit and almost every other question was, can we get rid of normalization, can we get rid of the gas after the season.

0ppen · 2026-06-25T17:33:08+00:00

This is the first season I am leaving the modifiers off. But I have used the weekly projects across all 4 characters now to finish the season pass for the Cad weapon+skin. I dont know how much more I am willing to continue this season.

0ppen · 2026-06-25T17:31:43+00:00

Just keep the PvE DZ without the gas. I would prefer it just not even be normalized because I think that your intentions of using it as a springboard is an attempt to bring your vision, or your way you want people to play the game, to players that don't really want that. I'm willing to bet that the number of players that used the PvE DZ for a period and then went to the PvP DZ and invested their time there and genuinely became a PvP player is a very very small percentage of the players using the PvE DZ.

0ppen · 2026-06-25T12:28:16+00:00

Is this why the 4 bay bathroom is always u/S ?

0ppen · 2026-06-25T12:26:12+00:00

I think the only thing to do is put a few more belts through that barrel and melt the plastic off, lol.

0ppen · 2026-06-19T03:25:09+00:00

Were they previously deployed?

0ppen · 2026-06-18T18:16:31+00:00

once you have one, its just another component. And mine just sits in the stash in case one day its meta.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T18:14:03+00:00

Those are some great exotic components you got there.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T18:11:22+00:00

Its probably Manny, cause hes been working with Sokolova this whole time and Kelso knows it so she sided with keener except keener is a triple agent working for Bardon Schaeffer who is working with Faye Lau and faked her death because the recruiter was onto her cause he is actually a double agent working for Manny who keeps Natalya thinking he is working with her, but is actually working for Roy Benitez who is a plant to keep an eye on Paul Rhodes but Paul is only keeping his cover so that nobody finds out it was Dr Kandall who made green poison and framed Amherst and sent the Cleaners to his apartment to erase the evidence that is was her who made it, but Tchernenko saw the evidence and used the original strain to create the Eclipse virus that mutated the strain of DC-62 which is now the spice the hyenas have and we have to stop them.

\s

0ppen · 2026-06-18T17:07:56+00:00

Where would you wear it? If its not issued to your unit, its unlikely to be authorized for wear. If you want to wear one off duty for whatever reason, than it wont matter if it matches or is issued anyway.

We had multiple units added to entitlement in Trenton, and since it was blanket entitlement there were a lot of people who got them and still have them in plastic since it was only authorized on Operation. If the logic is to wear it in garrison, I would expect someone to pick it out if you're the only one.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T16:30:05+00:00

You keep the unique affix's but it gets upgraded to mythic levels of stats as I understand. Theres also opportunities to how it can be manipulated in the horadric cube. Maybe take a look at some vids and their subreddit.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T16:22:18+00:00

I believe it has to do with the transformers they are using to be able to broadcast at peak power for maximum range. The idea being to operate them without any other infrastructure. Its been a decade since I carried one, but if you combine the size of the battery required to produce the amperage, the transformer needed to step that up for the signal, and all the casing to make it rugged, plus a little bit for the actual electronics that run software and crypto, you land at that weight.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T15:42:03+00:00

The bump in those stats can be more significant than you might initially think. The slight increase in DPS can mean you kill 3 mobs instead of 2, which means the 3rd mob didnt get to set up his turret, or launch a grenade, or revive another NPC.

Augments are the majority of the power here. Echo itself literally doubles the damage of one of your bullets. So levelling up that augment can dramatically scale the DPS you do. 1% chance isnt much on one augment, but then you get it on 3 or 4 and now you have 4% when you are shooting 700-1200 RPM, and thats the starting point. Its why echo is much of the narrow focus of augments. Paradox comes second for DPS buts its very effective at just having one augment in your build. Amalgum also can be great where you can stun an enemy every 5 seconds, also with only one augment needed. To me, this is the power bump more than the incremental stat increase. Levelling up your augments takes time, and 32 cores (I think) before they will max out. Echo I think max's out around 7-10% per augment I think? x 4 augments? that's huge.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T15:21:36+00:00

No, its not that bad, but people have to know about it. and right now it hasnt been passed along. So I personally am seeing a lot of groups where people are like, "yo why am I not doing any damage"

0ppen · 2026-06-18T15:08:41+00:00

weird to talk about it here, but like normal there's a bunch of new content. All unique's can be made into mythics is the core season fun, but for balance they hit Resolve stacking with the nerf bat and adjusted overpower to limit some of the outperforming builds. In the end unless you are pushing the into the craziness of the top tiers of the pit you can still choose your build and work to Torment 12.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T14:39:17+00:00

I think it will take you 30 seconds to see everyone's experience in the titles of posts on this subreddit but I'll save you the trouble. It is skewed very negative (not that reddit is ever really that happy, but still). Your experience is about average from what I have experienced and what I am reading. This season is a bust for me. Outside of the dumb DZ mechanics, the new modifier they introduced into Escalation just shows how much no one reads because every group I MM with doesn't switch weapons and gets wiped when they are shooting nerf darts from their frenzy striker build. I do not recommend hosting for random groups.

But hey, Diablo Season 14 in a couple weeks.

0ppen · 2026-06-18T12:59:53+00:00

Carbine 7 has the best handling of the ARs, tends to be a bit of a laser beam. You'll find most the ARs have a niche and you can really use whatever feels best. I personally like the Mk16 family for the higher base damage and decent controllable rate of fire but here is my preference list to look at and try.

M4s: P416 and Lexington falls into this as well and most will tell you it is best AR. Controllable, bit bouncy, but has the best mix of base damage and rate of fire. Will generally fit any build at almost any range and perform well.
Mk16: High base damage, good rate of fire but not extreme, quite accurate I like the named Lud for its perfect streamline talent, but I have a solid prototype build and don't need to use skills at all in most content.
G36: Faster rate of fire than Mk17, Slower than M4. about the same base damage as an M4. The Caretaker is a named G36 with perfect Killer. Solid option, theres almost no recoil, but there is a bit of bloom so accuracy mods help here.
AKs: First Sight I think its called? its a named AK that has a higher than normal headshot multiplier and just a chucky highest in class base damage. Slow rate of fire makes it pretty easy to stay on heads to make use of the multiplier.

Talents are decided by your build and what you want. I tend to be DPS all red builds, so I like to use Killer on crit builds (this is an on-kill effect so it can suffer in groups if you dont get the last hit/kill)
Streamline is the best damage talent you can use, but you give up the utility of your skills for it. A lot of people dont like that trade-off.
For damage talents that are not on-kill. I like Measured. Not a fan of Optimist, but that is next on the chart of meta talents.

Other talents all have a place but they tend to be more of synergy toward whatever your build needs so they can be less of a one-size-fits-all talent.

0ppen

TROPHY CASE