Pigeon's Stare needs a legendary passive buff

[thin skiff]

I think legendary weapons should be able to line up with starforged, not be heavily surpassed by them in-slot. A damage buff to Pigeon's Stare to have it within the same realm as Disintegrator's damage makes sense. It does not have the movement and wind-up debuffs but it adds a challenge to stay on-target. It should be adequately rewarding to do that, but instead, the legendary passive 30% damage only brings it somewhere close to the baseline of a starforged Disintegrator.

It doesn't compete with other high-level beam lasers like the RGBeam or just a standard starforged beam laser with % damage superior passive lines.

All of these pale in comparison to a starforged disintegrator with % damage passive lines though. The raw numbers are way higher.

The Pigeon's Stare should be worth using without the extra damage, and it should feel bonkers when you manage to stay on target long enough to trigger the overload. So for example, I would push the base numbers up by 10%, and have the passive add 50-60% to the damage. This is to bring it in line with a well-rolled superior Beam Laser or Disintegrator. Or, keep the base numbers the same, and push the damage bonus to 100%.

[thin skiff]

^ Here is an example that just dropped for me. The baseline stats for the Disintegrator are higher than the Pigeon's Stare stats would be if its passive is triggered. Meaning, disregarding the HUGE damage boost from Superior passive lines, my damage is still higher as a baseline.

I can just reroll the Disintegrator a few times until I get the 5% damage, 1% on kill damage, and repair on kill passives, and it's completely unbeatable. The legendary is not even within the same realm.

[thin skiff]

Important to add, I can put the Barrage catalyst on the Disintegrator while keeping the "Powerful" prefix.

[undone ginkgo]

I had the same exact conundrum but... Keep in mind that when taking a Prototype Disintegrator, you are comparing a level 30 legendary to a level 31 superior (prototype means +1 level). If it's starforged, it's level 32.

I felt sour about the Pigeon's Stare, until I've managed to drop one with almost maximum passive stats (at max stats, the overload delay is 1.5s, not 2.5, and damage boost is 40%, not 20%), a Radiant modifier (+1 level), and then I've slapped a Sovereign catalyst on it (+2 levels, minus 0.5 level for every set bonus active), effectively having a level 33 legendary with nearly maximum stats.

The result is that out of the box its kinetic and energy damage almost matches my starforged Powerful Disintegrator. But then there's the 40% damage bonus (36% in my case) on overload. And it eats dramatically less energy than the Disintegrator, and doesn't have the annoying spool up + recoil mechanic.

[undone ginkgo]

I believe the Barrage catalyst is largely useless on the Disintegrator, unless you're flying an Interceptor with its ULT active 90% of the time, or burning through energy injectors all the time. Otherwise the bloody thing devours too much energy for the Barrage to ever meaningfully kick in.

[tropic fable]

If you're violent enough you can keep yourself fueled on energy orbs
You can supplement that with "all day" on the front shield
You can spec your perks to extra energy (Teleporter + downtime warrior's pretty good, just make sure to keep one charge spent)
And worst case scenario you can, as you mentioned, burn an energy injector to top yourself off during a drought

[thin skiff]

The barrage catalyst only needs 6 seconds to spool up... I mean, yes, if you're not flying an Interceptor, you're not going to keep it firing for a minute straight. But all of this and your screenshot are disregarding superior bonuses like on this one:

I have yet to drop a powerful starforged one, but having these two passives, as well as the 20% bonus damage to Ancients, really adds up

pigeon's stare doesn't compete

[undone ginkgo]

btw apologies, I kept saying "maximum stats" in my message, however the variant of the weapon I got has almost the maximum stats.

[thin skiff]

I think an advantage legendaries have is you can make them part of sets... but for a primary weapon, it'd be giving up too much damage

either way, ragnarok + penumbra to trigger it + zero-k boomer seems to be the actual strongest aoe combo rn

idk by how far

[thin skiff]

I just dropped a powerful disintegrator

[undone ginkgo]

Noice 👍

[undone ginkgo]

Set catalysts are actually pretty bad IMO.
I can't think of any particular set bonus which I want badly enough, while at the same time having a legendary competing for the slot.
On top of that, set bonuses conflict with the Sovereign catalyst, possibly the best legendary catalyst.

The damage increase from 2 level bonuses is huge.

[thin skiff]

@undone ginkgo What about the potential for a good Chaos catalyst roll?

[undone ginkgo]

Chaos catalyst is 100% pointless when Flawless exists.

[thin skiff]

But it rerolls the non-legendary stats too. You're saying Flawless clamps all the values that Chaos can reroll to maximum?

I disagree. Here's a Chaos rolled Pigeon's Stare that I have, comparing with Flawless as a replacement

[undone ginkgo]

Why is the DPS different? I don't think that catalyst should touch damage numbers, unless I'm wrong.

[thin skiff]

It's touching them for sure. I've been trying to roll a nice one

i don't know if it's remotely worth it

because the best rolled superior passive lines on a disintegrator contribute +175% weapon damage. This is it:

• Increase damage 5% per sec of holding fire up to 100%
• Killing an enemy gives +1% bonus dmg for 8 sec stacking up to 25%
• +20% damage to ancients and ancient controlled enemies
• Barrage catalyst 3% damage every sec of holding fire up to 30%

Pigeon's Stare can only get to a disintegrator's base damage with chaos rolls, and contribute 40%.

and that's with a nuts Chaos roll.

The only thing that would make a difference here, is if the % damage buff from Pigeon's Stare is stacked multiplicatively with other buffs, rather than adding to the bonus %dmg pool

but the devs haven't shown a damage formula yet

[undone ginkgo]

I see.
Well, I still think it's not worth it. I've played around with it a bit, and the best possible rolls from the Chaos catalyst are nothing compared to the damage buff from the Sovereign catalyst's +2 level bonus.

[thin skiff]

Thanks for checking that

Have you managed to drop an insane Disintegrator

[undone ginkgo]

Best to just loot a max attribute radiant weapon from a rift, and then put a Sovereign on it.

[thin skiff]

I'm working on one, I don't have the 20% ancients buff on mine yet

I have three radiant pigeon's stares actually

[thin skiff]

but also, isn't the sovereign buff limited by how many set bonuses you have active

[undone ginkgo]

The only one I got is the one I've linked a screenshot of earlier.
I don't want to keep rolling it, because the game keeps giving me useless mining bonuses way to often, and the Pigeon's Stare is way more convenient to use anyway, even if it deals a bit less damage.

[undone ginkgo]

Correct. You get a -0.5 level penalty to that catalyst's effectiveness for every set bonus active.

Not that there's too many sets worth using anyway. The only bonuses I care about is the +30% ULT gen from Tides of the Siren's Sea for my Interceptor, and the bonuses from the Stormchaser set for my Sentinel.

Bomber for example does not care about any set bonuses.

[thin skiff]

what about Opulence's 24% damage buff

[undone ginkgo]

Do legendaries count as "Starforged" though?

[thin skiff]

Yes

Radiants do

[undone ginkgo]

Even then, I believe Sovereign catalyst gives you more base damage increase than the Opulence set bonus. Might be wrong.

[thin skiff]

afaik - I checked it in this discord's chat search lol

[thin skiff]

I just got sovereign to 1.5 levels with tides of siren's sea set bonus active

it's actually not even at ehe base damage of a disintegrator

and i'm not allowed to have any set bonuses active except 1, while it's equipped, so I don't get to benefit from vigilante 60% damage on big targets, opulence 24% damage, stormchaser energy orb drop

chaos roll for comparison

honestly the % add up so hard that the chaos rolled one without limitations seems muuuuch stronger

and that's weaker than disintegrator

can you push lunacy 2000 like this?

[undone ginkgo]

Interesting, so Chaos might not be as bad as I thought.

[undone ginkgo]

no idea, I wouldn't take anything else but a Bomber or Sentinel for lunacy 2000.

[thin skiff]

have you managed to push beyond 1700 with an interceptor? I just did one with my build

OK i tried rolling chaos again and this is the current comparison

best chaos roll so far..

[undone ginkgo]

Tried it, but no. The problem I'm having is that this thing is too reliant on its ULT in order to do any appreciable damage.

It's like the Gunship, but only dealing higher damage during the ULT, and nowhere near as tanky.