I’ve been doing some light testing based on a recent post explaining how to maximize damage using Pocket Rakks. That post is here .
In my testing i’ve noticed two things: Action skill end annointments count per rakk casted and annointments that give +125% splash damage seem to increase rakk damage as well ( we already knew splash damage increases the damage of rakks from GyspyKing’s post but this shows that the annointment counts for rakks as well as grenades and other splash damage effects).
As for the cooldowns itself, mobbing athenas stretches the cooldown a lot more than just being on sanctuary. This is most likely just a coding thing with sanctuary so people can test out their builds with ease. Each cooldown triggers individually and using skills like head count will refill each charge one at a time. I’m still trying to figure out what the best balance would be for never running out of rakks and/or if using the increased duration of the blue tree gives the birds a longer range.
I’ll add to the comments if i figure out anything more but this post is just meant as a summary for people who are trying to theory craft the best builds. Apologies if this seems too generic of information that seemingly everyone already knows.
Great to see someone else interested in testing the mechanics of the rakk’s
With splash damage/area of effect damage being confirmed as effecting rakk attack damage at this point, I could see that annointed effect being one of the best for this build along with extra charge and enemies taking more damage after rakk attack OR after action skill is used (which is probably superior of the two as it doesn’t requre the rakk’s to hit for it to proc).
Gonna add this here as it’s relevant to the Rakk skill, the game seems to cap the amount of rakks you can stack at 3. This is based on the Rakk counter never moving above 3 despite having multiple pieces of anointed gear equipped with the extra charge effect. Either you can only stack 3 rakks OR the counter is broken and more than 3 rakks are stackable it just does not reflect this visually.
This is made harder to determine because of action skill cooldown being slightly bugged and something gearbox will likely fix (hopefully) in upcoming patches. At times i’m forced to unequip and re-equip my annointed shield with the rakk charge ability to proc the 3rd stack taking effect, if i don’t then the counter remains at 2.
I made a post in the hotfixes thread:
“Hey Noelle, I’m a big fan of these changes and am keen to see what other balance changes the team will bring in the future. Could you look at the issue of action cooldown lag affecting skills like Rakk Attack? While wearing annointed gear that grants an extra charge of Rakk Attack, i’ve experienced the game not registering this and keeping the charge count at 2, and as a result had to unequip and re-equip the piece of gear for the additional charge to take affect. Would be great if we could get a visible charge cap limit on screen too, based on testing i’ve done it seems to be capped at 3 as the charge count doesn’t go past that but it’s hard to tell if it actually can be stacked further and we just aren’t able to see that because of action skill cooldown lag.”
Hopefully this is fixed by the devs in upcoming patches, in the meantime switching the anointed item back and forth fixes the problem.
After yesterday’s hotfix there were some interesting buffs.
Barbaric Yawp! (which i just now realize is a reference to Dead Poet Society) gets an increase from 100 to 200% pet ability power which means if youre running Scorcher spiderant you do now an increased THIRTY PERCENT FIRE DAMAGE! I’ve created a build i’m going to be testing once i get home from work that is linked here
Im going to be playing around with more builds but this should maximize the power of the rakks themselves and possibly survivability as well
Alternatively you can run this if you want to run the capstone for more consistent crits, leading to even faster cooldown on Pocket Rakks! you can also run Pack Tactics instead of Self Repairing system if you’d like a more damage than healing.
imo Megavore is far worse for a Rakk build compared to Power Inside, the green capstone. Rakk cooldown, especially with some gear or ranks towards it, is already so fast that with decent aim, you can constantly keep a charge up. The additional crits from Megavore are not noticeable. And Power Inside is basically made for Rakks because you can send them out faster than the skill wears off.
