Post by Kieran on Apr 26, 2011 9:05:18 GMT -5
Introduction:
From my experience, those that believe the best defense is a good offense will not like the Devastator. Set in the Brawler role, the Devastator is designed to dish out damage and to do so with masochistic glee. This is not to say that the Devastator is 100% about damage - in addition to its great DPS capabilities, the Devastator has a wide range of crowd controlling powers that makes it a scary foe to meet in the battlefield.
Generic Preface:
All of my builds are meant to be equally playable in both PVE and PVP. Because of this, if you're a PVE-only kind of guy, feel free to remove the PVP advantages (mainly Nailed to the Ground and Crippling Challenge) and replace with the next Rank up - or allocate the advantage points somewhere completely different, as it's ultimately up to you. I would like to say though that even though my builds can do PVP, they also built to perform great in PVE, so it isn't like you're losing anything by having that PVP aspect to the build.
Powers:
Level 1: Bludgeon
Level 1: Cleave
Level 6: Teleport (R2, R3)
Level 6: Eruption
Level 8: Unstoppable (R2, R3)
Level 11: Decimate (Nailed to the Ground, Crippling Challenge)
Level 14: Guard (R2, R3)
Level 17: Skewer (R2, R3, Follow-Through)
Level 22: Arc of Ruin (R2, No Quarter)
Level 27: Aggressor (R2, R3)
Level 32: Vicious Decent (Relentless)
Level 35: Whatever travel power saddles your pig (can you dig the reference?)
Level 40: Brimstone (R2, R3)
Talents:
Recovery/Strength
Recovery/Constitution
Strength/Constitution
Recovery/Endurance
Strength/Endurance
Constitution/Endurance
Power Explanations:
Bludgeon: This is your energy builder and nothing more - I wouldn't recommend Until Morale Improves because come Arc of Ruin at level 22, it will be pretty much completely unneeded.
Cleave: With Eruption, Cleave just isn’t worth upgrading. Also, while it is an early AOE, the Devastator has many, many more AOE attacks, which thus makes this power kinda redundant and unnecessary.
Teleport: Teleport works great with a Devastator because you can teleport in right beside your target(s), and start unleashing blow after punishing blow. Also, I would highly recommend this power over any other travel power because it allows you to get out of dangerous situations very quickly and painlessly. Say you’re surrounded and being pummeled to death by a number of baddies – all you gotta do is pop into teleport, launch straight up, and keep going until you lose aggro. If you’re in a building, just use teleport to retreat the way you came until you’re in the clear. Since Archetypes mostly don't have good energy management and self heals (and the Devastator is no exception), Teleport allows you to survive encounters where you would normally die. Additionally, teleport allows you to skip the hordes of hallway baddies that are a pain in the rear. As I had leftover advantage points, I was able to rank this up to R3.
Eruption: This is gonna be one of your go-to skills for a long time. While the damage isn’t that amazing, Eruption has a 10 foot knockup effect while only having a 3 second recharge time. This means that you can spam it again and again and again on your foes – essentially constantly juggling a single target for as long as you want (so long as the target is not immune to knocks, however). However, I don’t recommend leveling up this skill because the damage increase from higher levels isn’t that much. Eruption does a swell job at R1, so it’s perfectly fine to leave it there.
Unstoppable: This passive is awesome. It increases your damage, allows you to absorb some damage, and increases your knock resistance. As a result, R3 is highly recommended.
Decimate: I’ll start out by saying that whether you like this power or not is dependent on whether you like PVP or not. If you do PVP only or PVE and PVP, you’ll definitely want to grab this power and slap on Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground. This will turn Decimate into your absolute shut-down power, which is made even sweeter by the lunge aspect of this power. However, if you avoid PVP like the plague, then you’ll wanna act likewise with this power, as it will be largely useless to you. If you decide to avoid this power, feel free to take the advantage points spent on Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground and reallocate them to wherever you’d like (Eruption R2, Eruption R3/Magma Burst, Until Morale Improves on Bludgeon, Bludgeon R2, Bludgeon R3, Cleave R2, or Cleave R3, Bludgeon R2 – recommended largely in this order).
Guard: The reason I have leveled this up to R3 is because of its Retaliation self-buff. Whenever you take a hit while activating Guard, Retaliation will be applied or refreshed on you. This causes your next attack to be augmented considerably – by 120% with R3. This can cause a jaw-dropping amount of damage if utilized correctly.
Skewer: This is a remarkable power in that, with the right specs, it can become utterly DEVASTATING (pun!). To get the most out of this power, though, you’ll want to be charging instead of tapping at, because Follow Through increases the charge power by 25%. While Initiative might seem nice, all it does is increase the starting damage output of Skewer, while Follow Through actually raises the damage ceiling for it. When you level up to R3, have Follow Through, and charge this power, the damage becomes astronomical. Now, factor in the Retaliation buff from Guard (after doing a quick block), and you’ll have enough power level mountains. Thus, Skewer, once you get it and upgrade it, will become one of your main damaging powers – and a monstrous one at that. All of this is why I advocate Skewer over Skullcrusher; the latter being just another crowd control power – nothing special.
Arc of Ruin: While the damage isn’t amazing with this power, the ability to disorient your enemies and do so with an AOE effect is pretty cool. Moreover, with No Quarter, it also applies a debuff to whoever you hit, which makes this a new supporting power. Rank 2 is recommended for more damage.
Aggressor: This is yet another fantastic power in the Devastator’s arsenal. Maxing this power is highly recommended, as it passively boosts your damage by 22% at R3.
Vicious Descent: When I first saw this choice, I thought it would be an easy win for Earth Splitter. I mean, a ranged knockdown that does great damage? Why on earth would I possibly want to choose Vicious Descent over Earth Splitter? Then I realized that Earth Splitter is RANGED. As the Devastator is set in the Brawler role, all ranged damage is reduced by 30%. Needless to say, I was majorly bummed, as Earth Splitter was effectively hamstringed by this. However, Vicious Descent is still a good power in its own right – for while it’s not meant to do much damage, the fact that it is a lunge combined with Relentless makes it a pretty good crowd controlling power. R2 and R3 are not necessary, as Vicious Descent does its job perfectly at R1.
Brimstone: This is a pretty awesome power. At R3, Brimstone does very nice damage and its ability to knockdown and disorient its targets makes it not only a DPS machine, but a crowd controlling one as well. Aftershock isn’t really that great of an edition unless your character concept supports a flaming hammer – if that is your wish, then remove R3 and substitute Aftershock in its place. But yeah, R3 Brimstone is typically the best choice. But hey, character conceptualization for the win!
Talent Explanations:
As for the Talents: Recovery increases the amount of energy you have when going into a battle and also increases the energy gained from using your Energy Builder (which thus allows you to spend less time using your Energy Builder and more time doing damage), Constitution increases your health and ensures that you have more time to do more damage (which is what the Devastator is all about), Endurance increases your overall amount of energy and also boosts your Energy Builder gain, and Strength increases your overall damage dealt.
I recommend getting the ones listed because by choosing +5s for +8s essentially gives you two extra Talent points than you would get by sticking with +8s (10 compared to 8). Additionally, there is a complex system of Diminishing Returns for most Characteristics once you get beyond 200-220, so over-leveling your stats can have marginal results later on while balancing them out guarantees that you have good, high level stats in multiple Characteristics.
Extra Note:
For those of you who like to give the Flash a run for his money, you're gonna have the time of your life with this build, as I had enough spare points to rank Teleport up to R3. Now you'll be able to move so fast, it's as if you were utilizing a Portal - PUN INTENDED!!!
Extra Note #2:
I would like to quote GammaBreaker on the subject of Crippling Challenge's side effect: "Crippling Challenge, while an essential block-breaker in PVP, is also a *taunt* in PVE. It will make whatever you're shooting come over and sock you in the chops. Even if it's a cosmic boss being tanked by a Behemoth."
So please be aware of this when you use a power with Crippling Challenge. And again, ultimately, if you don't like this or don't want to do PVP, feel free to remove it and spend the advantage points elsewhere. But do know that Crippling Challenge is almost required to play PVP, as it is a powerful debuff and it breaks through blocks.
It's really your call, though.
Conclusion:
Well, that’s all for now – if you have any input or advice for improving this guide, please feel free to let me know! Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me either by PM or in-game! And if I have errors anywhere in my guide, please let me know and I’ll fix them as soon as possible!
From my experience, those that believe the best defense is a good offense will not like the Devastator. Set in the Brawler role, the Devastator is designed to dish out damage and to do so with masochistic glee. This is not to say that the Devastator is 100% about damage - in addition to its great DPS capabilities, the Devastator has a wide range of crowd controlling powers that makes it a scary foe to meet in the battlefield.
Generic Preface:
All of my builds are meant to be equally playable in both PVE and PVP. Because of this, if you're a PVE-only kind of guy, feel free to remove the PVP advantages (mainly Nailed to the Ground and Crippling Challenge) and replace with the next Rank up - or allocate the advantage points somewhere completely different, as it's ultimately up to you. I would like to say though that even though my builds can do PVP, they also built to perform great in PVE, so it isn't like you're losing anything by having that PVP aspect to the build.
Powers:
Level 1: Bludgeon
Level 1: Cleave
Level 6: Teleport (R2, R3)
Level 6: Eruption
Level 8: Unstoppable (R2, R3)
Level 11: Decimate (Nailed to the Ground, Crippling Challenge)
Level 14: Guard (R2, R3)
Level 17: Skewer (R2, R3, Follow-Through)
Level 22: Arc of Ruin (R2, No Quarter)
Level 27: Aggressor (R2, R3)
Level 32: Vicious Decent (Relentless)
Level 35: Whatever travel power saddles your pig (can you dig the reference?)
Level 40: Brimstone (R2, R3)
Talents:
Recovery/Strength
Recovery/Constitution
Strength/Constitution
Recovery/Endurance
Strength/Endurance
Constitution/Endurance
Power Explanations:
Bludgeon: This is your energy builder and nothing more - I wouldn't recommend Until Morale Improves because come Arc of Ruin at level 22, it will be pretty much completely unneeded.
Cleave: With Eruption, Cleave just isn’t worth upgrading. Also, while it is an early AOE, the Devastator has many, many more AOE attacks, which thus makes this power kinda redundant and unnecessary.
Teleport: Teleport works great with a Devastator because you can teleport in right beside your target(s), and start unleashing blow after punishing blow. Also, I would highly recommend this power over any other travel power because it allows you to get out of dangerous situations very quickly and painlessly. Say you’re surrounded and being pummeled to death by a number of baddies – all you gotta do is pop into teleport, launch straight up, and keep going until you lose aggro. If you’re in a building, just use teleport to retreat the way you came until you’re in the clear. Since Archetypes mostly don't have good energy management and self heals (and the Devastator is no exception), Teleport allows you to survive encounters where you would normally die. Additionally, teleport allows you to skip the hordes of hallway baddies that are a pain in the rear. As I had leftover advantage points, I was able to rank this up to R3.
Eruption: This is gonna be one of your go-to skills for a long time. While the damage isn’t that amazing, Eruption has a 10 foot knockup effect while only having a 3 second recharge time. This means that you can spam it again and again and again on your foes – essentially constantly juggling a single target for as long as you want (so long as the target is not immune to knocks, however). However, I don’t recommend leveling up this skill because the damage increase from higher levels isn’t that much. Eruption does a swell job at R1, so it’s perfectly fine to leave it there.
Unstoppable: This passive is awesome. It increases your damage, allows you to absorb some damage, and increases your knock resistance. As a result, R3 is highly recommended.
Decimate: I’ll start out by saying that whether you like this power or not is dependent on whether you like PVP or not. If you do PVP only or PVE and PVP, you’ll definitely want to grab this power and slap on Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground. This will turn Decimate into your absolute shut-down power, which is made even sweeter by the lunge aspect of this power. However, if you avoid PVP like the plague, then you’ll wanna act likewise with this power, as it will be largely useless to you. If you decide to avoid this power, feel free to take the advantage points spent on Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground and reallocate them to wherever you’d like (Eruption R2, Eruption R3/Magma Burst, Until Morale Improves on Bludgeon, Bludgeon R2, Bludgeon R3, Cleave R2, or Cleave R3, Bludgeon R2 – recommended largely in this order).
Guard: The reason I have leveled this up to R3 is because of its Retaliation self-buff. Whenever you take a hit while activating Guard, Retaliation will be applied or refreshed on you. This causes your next attack to be augmented considerably – by 120% with R3. This can cause a jaw-dropping amount of damage if utilized correctly.
Skewer: This is a remarkable power in that, with the right specs, it can become utterly DEVASTATING (pun!). To get the most out of this power, though, you’ll want to be charging instead of tapping at, because Follow Through increases the charge power by 25%. While Initiative might seem nice, all it does is increase the starting damage output of Skewer, while Follow Through actually raises the damage ceiling for it. When you level up to R3, have Follow Through, and charge this power, the damage becomes astronomical. Now, factor in the Retaliation buff from Guard (after doing a quick block), and you’ll have enough power level mountains. Thus, Skewer, once you get it and upgrade it, will become one of your main damaging powers – and a monstrous one at that. All of this is why I advocate Skewer over Skullcrusher; the latter being just another crowd control power – nothing special.
Arc of Ruin: While the damage isn’t amazing with this power, the ability to disorient your enemies and do so with an AOE effect is pretty cool. Moreover, with No Quarter, it also applies a debuff to whoever you hit, which makes this a new supporting power. Rank 2 is recommended for more damage.
Aggressor: This is yet another fantastic power in the Devastator’s arsenal. Maxing this power is highly recommended, as it passively boosts your damage by 22% at R3.
Vicious Descent: When I first saw this choice, I thought it would be an easy win for Earth Splitter. I mean, a ranged knockdown that does great damage? Why on earth would I possibly want to choose Vicious Descent over Earth Splitter? Then I realized that Earth Splitter is RANGED. As the Devastator is set in the Brawler role, all ranged damage is reduced by 30%. Needless to say, I was majorly bummed, as Earth Splitter was effectively hamstringed by this. However, Vicious Descent is still a good power in its own right – for while it’s not meant to do much damage, the fact that it is a lunge combined with Relentless makes it a pretty good crowd controlling power. R2 and R3 are not necessary, as Vicious Descent does its job perfectly at R1.
Brimstone: This is a pretty awesome power. At R3, Brimstone does very nice damage and its ability to knockdown and disorient its targets makes it not only a DPS machine, but a crowd controlling one as well. Aftershock isn’t really that great of an edition unless your character concept supports a flaming hammer – if that is your wish, then remove R3 and substitute Aftershock in its place. But yeah, R3 Brimstone is typically the best choice. But hey, character conceptualization for the win!
Talent Explanations:
As for the Talents: Recovery increases the amount of energy you have when going into a battle and also increases the energy gained from using your Energy Builder (which thus allows you to spend less time using your Energy Builder and more time doing damage), Constitution increases your health and ensures that you have more time to do more damage (which is what the Devastator is all about), Endurance increases your overall amount of energy and also boosts your Energy Builder gain, and Strength increases your overall damage dealt.
I recommend getting the ones listed because by choosing +5s for +8s essentially gives you two extra Talent points than you would get by sticking with +8s (10 compared to 8). Additionally, there is a complex system of Diminishing Returns for most Characteristics once you get beyond 200-220, so over-leveling your stats can have marginal results later on while balancing them out guarantees that you have good, high level stats in multiple Characteristics.
Extra Note:
For those of you who like to give the Flash a run for his money, you're gonna have the time of your life with this build, as I had enough spare points to rank Teleport up to R3. Now you'll be able to move so fast, it's as if you were utilizing a Portal - PUN INTENDED!!!
Extra Note #2:
I would like to quote GammaBreaker on the subject of Crippling Challenge's side effect: "Crippling Challenge, while an essential block-breaker in PVP, is also a *taunt* in PVE. It will make whatever you're shooting come over and sock you in the chops. Even if it's a cosmic boss being tanked by a Behemoth."
So please be aware of this when you use a power with Crippling Challenge. And again, ultimately, if you don't like this or don't want to do PVP, feel free to remove it and spend the advantage points elsewhere. But do know that Crippling Challenge is almost required to play PVP, as it is a powerful debuff and it breaks through blocks.
It's really your call, though.
Conclusion:
Well, that’s all for now – if you have any input or advice for improving this guide, please feel free to let me know! Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me either by PM or in-game! And if I have errors anywhere in my guide, please let me know and I’ll fix them as soon as possible!