Happy New Year!! I’m finally getting around to shuffling around my Skill Tree and wondered what opinions were on Megavore. Let me start by saying I love Crit shooting. My primaries are Jakob’s ( Maggie, Bekah) and Torgue( Alchemist and new Craps pistol). I truly enjoy Torgue weapons and in my opinion the new Craps is one of if not the best pistol in the game.
With that, I was wondering how a build may work using Megavore vs traditional Crit shooting. I have found that even with the Torgue weapons I continue going for Crit shots but of course in mob situations it would be great to have the sticky ammo maximize damage to the greatest extent possible( meaning anywhere on the enemy ). I’ve read back and forth opinions on the topic but would love some first hand knowledge from folks on the forum. Thanks!!
I’ve found that, while definitely useful, megavore isn’t by any means a gamechanger unless you use shotguns or a masher with FL4K a lot. With it, a few point-blank blasts with either will almost always refresh your action skill, so it is definitely a must-have if you like that playstyle, or simply own a Maggie that you find yourself using quite often.
Otherwise, just learning to hit enemies in their critical spots reliably with your prefered ranged weapons makes megavore a useful- if unnecessary- skill, with the points perhaps being better allocated in a different tree.
While usually youd go for crit spots anyway sometimes megavore does help when the crit spots are being blocked, i know a 20 percent chance doesnt seem like much but it does help
I’ve always used the power inside instead of Megavore in my rakk build but I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and go for Megavore instead - it’s just more useful in more situations.
Whilst TPI does boost ALL damage - flak doesn’t exactly do crazy damage with grenades and actions skills etc. You can still crit normally with Megavore but it’s synergy with headcount and the ability to make things crit that normally can’t does add up to more damage in the long run.
My personal conclusion on this has always been that Megavore is more effective than TPI.
I know a 20% crit chance does not sound like much, but that 20% chance applies to every single projectile on the Maggie, the Brainstormer, every reflection of the Projectile Recursion, etc. I cannot prove it, but I believe it even applies to your Rakks based on my playing experience.
I think it certainly is possible that TPI could be stronger than Megavore, but IMO Megavore has much more utility in a Hunter/Stalker build and it ends up having more effective damage output.
Try it for yourself in mobbing. I run a Rakk build and I have probably compared TPI and Megavore for damage output at least 10 times or more. Each time, I have always concluded that I simply kill stuff faster with Megavore than with TPI.
Megavore is a contender for most powerful capstone in the game. It synergizes well with other skills in the tree like LNT & headcount. it is super effective with high pellet count weapon and it lets you score crits with a few types of damage that cannot crit naturally. The biggest ‘downside’ to building around megavore is that your gear choice start to feel the same all the time but leveraging Megavore is probably the meta for things like slaughters and our first takedown.
Exhibit A is the Brainstormer. Megavore gives the Brainstormer the ability to crit with chains. Get a few extra elements on it with anointments and we have a gun that will:
clear entire rooms
shoot almost nonstop because of LNT
give you crazy fast cooldown on fade and gamma as long as there are enough mobs.
You watch anyone trying to run the takedown quickly (outside of very specific stuff like lucky 7 abuse) and the odds are they use Brainstormer at some point, or as a primary weapon for the mobbing sections.
And while they are not as bonkers as brainstormer, most guns with gimmicks that chain/ricochet between enemies are going to get extra crits with megavore. Jakobs ricochet, redistributor, recursion, conference call, hive, lump. Other guns will get a lot of forgiveness with your aim, like if you’re stacking bangstick shots, megavore can keep that afloat when you miss the crit. There are just a ton of good multi-pellets guns in this game.
So as a hypothetical… let’s assume one is running the following : a Rakk Build utilizing a St4kbot mod with weapon, splash damage, a transformer shield with 50% fire ASE, some form of artifact with increased shield capacity and primary weapons being Jakob’s and Torgue( corrosive) . With this, if you were to run the new Moxi DLC with Megavore would the 20% crit chance on Megavore work in your favor over straight Crit shooting, particularly with the Torgue sticky projectiles and the splash damage that follows? I mean if one were to take the Alchemist or Craps pistol for example… if you can land a projectile in a crit spot with say, 20 sticky body shots each with a 20% chance of crit Damage, the possible damage output, together with the mod and Rakk/ ASE output on anointed weapons seems insane. Not to mention the additional damage output on your shield ASE dmg. Add to this a nade with 50% dmg increase on ASE and . Am I off track here?
@Budgeko In theory you are correct. It doesn’t work out that way in practice. The problem with Stackbot is that even when you only ever crit, the AOE effects from Hollow Point on Guardian Ranks and even (IIRC) DOTs can nullify the effects of the Stackbot COM’s crit damage increase effect. There are plenty of threads here on the forums on the bugged stacking damage of the Stackbot.
So you end up not getting the stacking damage effects for the type of build you mentioned above. IMO, you would be better off in the build you mentioned above in running a Bounty Hunter or Cosmic Stalker COM. For the Takedown, I prefer the Bounty Hunter because of the boosts to The Most Dangerous Game and Hunter’s Eye (really helps melting the robots and Wotan) and the bosses end up going down faster because they get treated as normal enemies for purposes of that COM. For general mobbing, I tend to prefer the Cosmic Stalker because of the boosts to IPS and Big Game.
So with the type of gear you indicated, I would probably not recommend the Stackbot COM.
EDIT: Forgot to mention I also run a Hunter/Stalker build with Megavore, using Rakks to proc ASE benefits, and also similar gear to what you have indicated. The build absolutely wrecks everything in M4.
100% yes. I will screenshot my build below if you are interested in trying it. I am not sure whether this is what others run, but this is how I do it, and I have no problems soloing any M4 content in the game with the Rakk build, no Fade Away required. It has some survivability issues on its own, but if you can get DPS weapons such as the Brainstormer or Maggie with on ASE life steal anointments, it reeeeeeeeeeeeally helps this build. But I do have several survival skills in the build from the Stalker tree.
I use Rakkcelerate for the extra Rakk charge to proc on ASE anointments.
Gear to use is Maggie, Brainstormer, and any other two weapons with good anointments that you like. I prefer the Bekah, Q-System, Trevonator, Rowan’s Call, Night Hawkin, Cutsman, and Hellwalker as some of my main weapons.
Forgot to mention, the ideal Bounty Hunter would have +3 to TMDG and +2 to Hunter’s Eye. I have not found one of those yet, but I will one of these days LOL
If you wanted to, you could take 2-3 points from Grim Harvest and redistribute them based on your personal preference. You might wish to allocate a couple points into Rage and Recover, for example, for a little more healing. I find that I kill things so fast that it really doesn’t matter. But that is up to you.
I started using a terror ammo regen build with the green capstone and switched back to megavore. I just roll a x7 with explosion and when i go down use any ok roll. The crit chance helps so much to make any roll better. Also without megavore fl4ks dps drops a lot more than you think unless you’re an aimbot
Finally specced into Megavore by taking points out of Green Tree Fire Rate ( forgot actual name ). I then tried my hand with Freddie the Traitor on the new Moxxi DLC. I used the Craps Torgue pistol with ASE dmg anointment corrosive, Transformer Shield with 50% shock dmg on ASE and A St4kbot mod with pistol damage, splash dmg and Crit dmg.
The result… pure, unabashed carnage! I purposely focused on body shots and the 20% crit on Megavore made a HUGE difference. My question is… if the class mod I’m using had Crit damage does Megavore consider the body crits the same as the actual Crit spot on the enemy from a damage perspective. Thanks and absolutely love my build now.
Glad it worked out! Yeah I really like that build. I love how fast you can kill with Fl4k, he just feels like a badass. And even when you miss shots, Megavore still makes you feel like you are a sniper. Fl4k is so great.
On that same build you can also take points from Grim Harvest and put them into Two Fang if you want to play around with the Recursion. The Recursion is also really good on Fl4k when you have a 20% (or is it 25%? I can’t remember OTOH) chance to spawn an extra projectile.
Will definitely try that. Haven’t had to much time to really test the build. The next challenge will be Trial of Cunning to see how FL4k fares against anointed Tinks!
