Overkill (Guardian Rank) and Remnant Orbs?

[gabby_bellot (Gabby)]

Hi! I have what might be a silly question, but I can’t figure it out, so I wanted to put it here. I run an Amara build that relies on Remnant a fair bit, and the Remnant orbs are supposed to apply overkill damage to the enemies they hit. Now, there’s a separate Guardian rank perk called “Overkill” that says it adds overkill damage to your next shot. My question is basically this: does the Overkill skill (in Guardian ranks) mess with or nerf Remnant’s overkill damage in any way? Would I be doing less overkill damage from Remnant if I put enough points into the Enforcer tree and got Overkill? I don’t want to nerf my Remnant orbs in any way, so I wanted to ask before putting more points into Enforcer. Sorry if this isn’t clear or has been asked before!

[Prismatic (Dancing with Jak 'o' the Shadows)]

The only info I could find on this was in [Guide] Overkill Explained. The relevant passage being:

Remnant: Killing an enemy with gun or action skill creates an orb that seeks out enemies and damages them – dealing overkill damage (but without the gun damage Guardian Rank). Excess Damage is added to the orb but your next gun shot still does Overkill Damage – if you shoot an enemy before the orb hits or if the orb fails to hit an enemy. If it kills an enemy, Excess Damage is now based on that. The orb’s base damage does not restrict Overkill Damage – I’ll need to do more testing to find out if this can be abused, and to add more clarity to how this works in general.

[gabby_bellot (Gabby)]

Ah, this is exactly what I wanted to know! Thanks so much for sharing this.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

I just updated that section after more thorough testing:

Killing an enemy with gun or action skill creates an orb that seeks out another enemy and damages them – dealing overkill damage with a small splash radius (but without the gun damage Guardian Rank).

One important difference is that it has no damage cap – I’ve seen it deal 150K damage with only one point invested, that’s a puny base damage of 651. Raising base damage by adding more points becomes irrelevant with some good excess damage (and without, it does little damage anyway), so don’t waste points, 1/3 is all you need.

Interaction with Overkill Guardian reward: These two are mostly independent of each other. Think of it like this: you kill an enemy, an orb rises. The orb carries Excess Damage from the kill which it will release on hit, but you also carry the same Excess Damage which you will release on the next gun shot. If you one-shot the next enemy, the (usually higher) Excess Damage from that kill will be carried by both you and the new orb rising from that.

Each orb keeps the Excess Damage from its respective kill, so if both orbs from the example are still in the air, they will do different damage on hit.

The most notable interaction is that if an orb kills an enemy, your Excess Damage will now be based on that kill, because the Overkill Guardian reward is always based on the last kill, regardless of what did the kill.

[jaded718 (TheBrianest)]

Thanks for testing this so thoroughly an be letting us know!

[TheFourSeven (no no pancake)]

I don’t know the intricacies with Overkill’s various interactions, but all I know is that with an Unforgiven critical on grasped targets (Ties That Bind + Do Harm is a fantastic combo), I end up chaining overkills a lot, and usually see Remnant cleaning up the last mob in a group for millions of damage. 8M is the highest I’ve seen so far. Works great on bosses with adds. Ion Cannon is another great weapon that gets a lot out of it.