Asajj Ventress
what are the best mods. The game suggests offense, cc. Would she be better with Speed and CC. or should i go CD, CC. what are your guys suggestions. i would like to put her with the count. I am trying...
Forum Discussion
I wouldn't go speed. She gets TM jumps which should benefit her a lot. You shouldn't have trouble getting her to take a lot of turns.
I actually find CC pretty useless for Ventress. In easy battles, why bother, and in harder battles with zombie dying you get +15% CC for every death of enemy OR ally, so you'll rack up a 100% CC chance pretty quickly in the more difficult battles (like HSTR).
Therefore, DO NOT use CC% mods.
Likewise you'll gain a lot of offense. The game often encourages you to increase a toon's strength, so if they're good at offense, the game suggests continuing to mod that and make them the BEST at offense. Mathematically, though, it's hard to support. CD is based on your total damage before taking the Crit into account. That is based on your offense + defense penetration vs. the opponents Defense. You can read all the blah, blah, blah below, but trust me when i say that there's a small but noticeable advantage as soon as either allies or enemies have died 3 times. Remember that zombie dies twice for free, so I'm saying that as soon as you kill a single enemy, either you're better off with a CD set, OR none of your night sisters have been dying, in which case you didn't really need the advantage anyway.
Go CD set, go.
The blah, blah, blah if you want to read it:
So the lesson here is that Ventress has to be g11 or less to go with an offense mod set in PvP, and even then you should switch it out against raids and other PvE content for a CD set. And you should NEVER use CC% sets.
I actually find CC pretty useless for Ventress. In easy battles, why bother, and in harder battles with zombie dying you get +15% CC for every death of enemy OR ally, so you'll rack up a 100% CC chance pretty quickly in the more difficult battles (like HSTR).
Therefore, DO NOT use CC% mods.
Likewise you'll gain a lot of offense. The game often encourages you to increase a toon's strength, so if they're good at offense, the game suggests continuing to mod that and make them the BEST at offense. Mathematically, though, it's hard to support. CD is based on your total damage before taking the Crit into account. That is based on your offense + defense penetration vs. the opponents Defense. You can read all the blah, blah, blah below, but trust me when i say that there's a small but noticeable advantage as soon as either allies or enemies have died 3 times. Remember that zombie dies twice for free, so I'm saying that as soon as you kill a single enemy, either you're better off with a CD set, OR none of your night sisters have been dying, in which case you didn't really need the advantage anyway.
Go CD set, go.
The blah, blah, blah if you want to read it:
Spoiler
Imagine you've got a lot of bonus offense, like you might in HSTR where you're constantly summoning a dead ally to attack and then letting them die again (under Talzin lead). If you rack up +480% offense, then you have
100% offense (base)
480% offense (unique)
15 % offense (mod set)
By the time you've sent your offense into the stratosphere like this, 15 is only (15/595) = 2.5% of your total offense.
So by using an offense mod set, when Ventress is at her most awesome, that mod set is only adding 2.5% to your base damage.
But when Ventress is at her most awesome, her CC% is over 100%, so using a CD set gains you 30% critical damage (making Crit Damage = 180% of base damage instead of 150% of base damage), but off a base damage which is 2.5% less. Of course, that person that invested in Offense mods still gets a 100% crit chance by then, so to compare final damage (with defense penetration the same in each case), you just perform this calculation:
97.5 * 1.80 = 175.5
100 * 1.5 = 150
175.5/150 = 1.17 (or 117%)
Ultimately, then, when you're cranking out the nastiest damage Ventress can dish, you're getting well over 10% more damage by using a Critical Damage set compared to an Offense set. This is a huge advantage when using Ventress in raids (she can be used in solo teams for HAAT and p3 Solo squads for HSTR). The break-even point is only around 4 deaths (I haven't calculated it precisely), and you're going to getting a lot more than 4 deaths in p3 HSTR since you'll be killing the Telekinetic Sabers 3 times for each topple with at least 2 topples (6 deaths already, so already it's a tiny bit better to use CD set) and at her best Ventress is doing less than 2% damage, so you have to more than 50 attacks by Ventress, which requires more than 50 attacks by Daka, which means more than 100 assists by your dead night sister (should be initiate). Your advantage of +17% was calculated after 32 deaths. Imagine the advantage at 106 deaths. Ultimately this means a much higher chance of completing the phase before Traya has a chance to use Isolate.
This doesn't necessarily help you in GAC (or in any game mode when you're early on in the fight), but unless you want to maintain 2 different mod sets for Ventress, I would assume her success in raids is more important and use
Crit Damage (4 mods) + Potency (2 mods)
or
CD + Tenacity
and make sure to use a CD triangle. Offense secondaries are still good, but I'd prioritize Speed since what little you gain in offense will be overwhelmed by her +Offense% bonuses in a long fight. Speed isn't super important because over the long haul she gets all that bonus TM, but it's never bad to get in that first shot.
Even if you're optimizing for GAC and not raids, remember that it only takes a few deaths to reach 100% CC. At gear 12+5 she has 39% crit chance. This means that a mere 4 deaths (and you get 2 of those free with zombie) gets you to 99% CC. So DO NOT use CC mods on Ventress even for PvP.
After 4 deaths, doing the calc means
100 (base offense)
60 (bonus from unique)
15 (bonus from mod set)
Or 175 total vs. 160 total for a CD set.
Meanwhile, since every hit is going to crit, you get
175 * 1.5 (critical hit with offense mods) = 262.5 % of base damage
or
160 * 1.8 (critical hit with CD mods) = 288 % of base damage.
288/262.5 = 1.097 or 109.7%
So crit damage gets you a better advantage even pretty early in the fight during PvP.
100% offense (base)
480% offense (unique)
15 % offense (mod set)
By the time you've sent your offense into the stratosphere like this, 15 is only (15/595) = 2.5% of your total offense.
So by using an offense mod set, when Ventress is at her most awesome, that mod set is only adding 2.5% to your base damage.
But when Ventress is at her most awesome, her CC% is over 100%, so using a CD set gains you 30% critical damage (making Crit Damage = 180% of base damage instead of 150% of base damage), but off a base damage which is 2.5% less. Of course, that person that invested in Offense mods still gets a 100% crit chance by then, so to compare final damage (with defense penetration the same in each case), you just perform this calculation:
97.5 * 1.80 = 175.5
100 * 1.5 = 150
175.5/150 = 1.17 (or 117%)
Ultimately, then, when you're cranking out the nastiest damage Ventress can dish, you're getting well over 10% more damage by using a Critical Damage set compared to an Offense set. This is a huge advantage when using Ventress in raids (she can be used in solo teams for HAAT and p3 Solo squads for HSTR). The break-even point is only around 4 deaths (I haven't calculated it precisely), and you're going to getting a lot more than 4 deaths in p3 HSTR since you'll be killing the Telekinetic Sabers 3 times for each topple with at least 2 topples (6 deaths already, so already it's a tiny bit better to use CD set) and at her best Ventress is doing less than 2% damage, so you have to more than 50 attacks by Ventress, which requires more than 50 attacks by Daka, which means more than 100 assists by your dead night sister (should be initiate). Your advantage of +17% was calculated after 32 deaths. Imagine the advantage at 106 deaths. Ultimately this means a much higher chance of completing the phase before Traya has a chance to use Isolate.
This doesn't necessarily help you in GAC (or in any game mode when you're early on in the fight), but unless you want to maintain 2 different mod sets for Ventress, I would assume her success in raids is more important and use
Crit Damage (4 mods) + Potency (2 mods)
or
CD + Tenacity
and make sure to use a CD triangle. Offense secondaries are still good, but I'd prioritize Speed since what little you gain in offense will be overwhelmed by her +Offense% bonuses in a long fight. Speed isn't super important because over the long haul she gets all that bonus TM, but it's never bad to get in that first shot.
Even if you're optimizing for GAC and not raids, remember that it only takes a few deaths to reach 100% CC. At gear 12+5 she has 39% crit chance. This means that a mere 4 deaths (and you get 2 of those free with zombie) gets you to 99% CC. So DO NOT use CC mods on Ventress even for PvP.
After 4 deaths, doing the calc means
100 (base offense)
60 (bonus from unique)
15 (bonus from mod set)
Or 175 total vs. 160 total for a CD set.
Meanwhile, since every hit is going to crit, you get
175 * 1.5 (critical hit with offense mods) = 262.5 % of base damage
or
160 * 1.8 (critical hit with CD mods) = 288 % of base damage.
288/262.5 = 1.097 or 109.7%
So crit damage gets you a better advantage even pretty early in the fight during PvP.
So the lesson here is that Ventress has to be g11 or less to go with an offense mod set in PvP, and even then you should switch it out against raids and other PvE content for a CD set. And you should NEVER use CC% sets.
