I recently made a buccaneer, currently 14x. Since I don't have barrage maxed yet, I have been spamming demolition in bosses. But I was wondering what would be the most optimal combo for 1v1 when both skills are maxed. I read on another thread that without SE, spamming demolition has higher DPS than barrage+demo. But some buccaneer players in game tell me otherwise. And am I also right to say that whenever there's more than 1 target, barrage + DS would be best? Thanks in advance for any input and advice!
Barrage demo is better than demo initially, however at high range / on apple you can start losing damage due to hitting cap on barrage, at which point demo > barrage demo. As for when there are multiple targets, I compared different mobbing skills / combos %/s in the bucanner class thread a while back if you're interested in that. Another thing to consider is what classes you are partying with: for example, if partying with warriors who split dps between targets you may want to balance your dps between your targets to avoid the situation where one mob dies significantly earlier. Bucc's equally distributed dps options are pretty bad though (snatch ds primarily), so this is only really relevant in the previously mentioned warrior situation.
Basically it depends on which role you're filling. Buccaneer is a versatile class that can fill both ranged and melee roles, just not as well as dedicated melee or ranged. Generally speaking, ranged are single target and melee are multi-target, so if you're filling a ranged role you'd use single target combo and if melee, multi-target combos, or a mix of both. Are you doing ranged stuff? (CWKPQ top, HT heads, top right Zak arm) Barrage + Demo, or Demo spam if target is far away/at very high range when Barrage loses DPS from damage cap. Are you doing melee stuff? (CWKPQ bottom, HT hand/wing, 3-4 targets at Zak arms) DS + Snatch, but Snatch is a really late game skill so you'll probably mix it up with Barrage + DS for a long time UNLESS at something like Zakum where you stand in the bottom left armpit and there's a Hero/DK to avoid killing the bottom left arm early and screwing their DPS.
Thanks for your response! So am I right to say that barrage+demo is always better (not capping) than spamming demo with or without SE? I'm a little confused because this other thread says that when there's no SE, demo itself is stronger. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/bucc-best-dps-combo.135244/
Yes, demo without SE should be 1709%/s (8x500 %/2.34 s), demo barrage with no se should be 1825% ([3300% + 4000%]/4 s). With SE barrage demo is better too because SE adds a flat %140 to each line, so more lines / second makes SE better.
Where did you get 4 sec from? I thought barrage is a bit slower (like 1.83 sec, unless royals buffed the speed?)
I believe there were some minor animation changes / delay tweaks for buccs prior to the large update 59 buff. I'm a bit busy right now but I will check this later and update this post. Edit: in update 48: Lowered skill delay on Buccaneer’s Barrage and Dragon Strike. A while ago I recorded a couple periods of the combo and checked the approximate time by hand, for use in scripts comparing different bucc damage methods. It was from one of these matlab scripts I looked up the value when I initially replied to op. I'm not in game so I can't re check this right now, but are you recording a significantly different duration for the combo?
A lot of Gach items and APR are inflated atm, give double vote a chance to sink in and they should drop.
