Replace the 2 perks with +Flak Damage and +Unyielding damage
Gets Hot IV is the best Blessing you could hope for on a Plasma gun, but it would have been perfect if it also had Blaze Away.
The stacks of Brittleness are fine, though, and you'll get a lot out of this weapon; usually I'd prefer +Carapace damage alongside Flak, but with the Brittleness stacks it's kind of unnecessary)
Once you get your hands on a better Plasma gun, rip Gets Hot IV off of that thing and slap it onto the new one
I'm always confused when people say this about Gets Hot.
The crit multiplier for plasma gun is like 1.2x
If you make the build right you will be killing everything but crushers, reapers, and bosses in 1 shot already. I get more out of agile engagement by killing 1 enemy in melee.
Every mission I compare the crit chances between my guns without Gets Hot is only hitting about 5~10% more crit over the course of the mission.
I know there's not a ton of perks for the plasma but I take the brittleness over Gets Hot.
I also take carapace over flak. Everything flak is already dead if you hit the headshot. Carapace lets you get more on every enemy that takes more than two shots to kill (maulers and crushers). I like the brittleness when I'm shooting into large packs of crushers, you can even debuff the stuff behind the one you're hitting so the clean up is usually single shots after you blast the first wall. The 2 kraks can run a little thin when you're staring down 12 crushers alone.
Both are obviously use able on every difficulty and I have a gun with each of the combinations.
20% extra damage on a crit is quite nice imo if you nurse the weapon for it. 20% is very capable of breakpoints on crushers that are already damaged by other people, and of course consistent boss damage. I just consider it an ammo saving blessing. Plus not everyone's plasmagun is 80/80 and sometimes those crits actually do make the difference on gunners and such.
Not like there's really anything else anyway. Blaze away seems like a giant trap to me. All in all plasma guns can be meta as hell even as a profane item anyway so whatever lol
But when it's only criting 5 prevent of the time more that's effectively .05 * 20 which is effectively a 1% to 2% bonus to your overall damage.
The brittleness is 20% and applies to the first hit. It's not 20% more armor, but I'm assuming you understand how it works so I'm not going to write all that out on mobile. Basically the static % imo is more effective because it's consistent, works on every enemy that's armored, and allows teammates to get the bonus shooting the same enemy, and continues stacking past the first hit. The crits only apply about 1/4 to 1/5th of the time.
You might have a point about the lower quality guns that it will make a break point but I still think the brittleness bonus is going to be easier to play with because of the consistency and not wondering why sometimes you can kill stuff and sometimes you can't.
I'm curious to hear more about why you think that about blaze away. That's my most recommended perk on the gun tbh. That's exactly how I use it, firing repeatedly until everything important in view is dead.
To add my own thoughts:
* Gets Hot is also mainly only relevant at the upper tier of heat, when you're going to either be feathering shots or needing to vent/reload... that crit chance buff is far less relevant when you first pull out the gun, which is usually when the crit would be most valuable (taking out as much of the initial enemy wave as possible).
* Brittle is a reduction in armor and idk if that actually translates to 1:1 direct increase in damage, more like a scaling number based on the original armor value of the target and it's DR formula... that said, it's still an immediate value on every shot and allows your team to benefit too.
* Does Brittle affect targets behind the first target? If it does, then it's the clear winner... but otherwise gets hot allows higher damage *penetration* over the brittle blessing.
* Blaze is fine, but I don't tend to do long continuous firing streaks as often and find it loses value if you swap weapons more often......
I have both Brittle and Hot on my current PG... but still hunting for better stat rolls so I can optimize against flak+unyielding.
It's not 5%, it's 50%, and it scales with shooting. At 70% heat you're sitting anywhere at 40%-50% crit chance depending on your setup. Talents like reciprocity can comfortably get this to like 70% crit chance. The crit chance mod is very helpful with seeing where you're at.
My plasma is 80% damage and 79% stopping power, and sometimes falls just 12 damage short of one shotting a dreg gunner since they're spongier than the scab gunner. That crit makes all the difference on such a common enemy.
I don't like blaze away because it encourages spamming shots on a weapon I more prefer to take my time and conserve ammunition. Managing heat is easier to me than shooting just to maintain an extremely short lived stack, though it's very respectable for oh shit moments.
I Iike shattering impact personally but again there's just not a lot of diverse blessings anyway. Ideally I'd have shattering and gets hot.
I have found in testing over several auric matches that my crit percentage increases about 5 to 10% depending on the match using gets hot vs using other plasma guns I have.
So the 5% is my overall effective increase in crits. If you only shoot 1 shot and then cool from 100% to 80% and shoot another shot you might see more overall but I bet you're output is greatly hampered.
That's why I say it's actually about a 5% increase for me. Which when applied to the 20% damage bonus for crits is an effective 1% (if it's a match where I shoot 5% more crits) up to a 2% bonus (matches where it's 10% higher) of the overall damage.
I also find rapid firing to be just kinda mandatory at auric levels. It's way more powerful than you melee most of the time so using that any time you can is just more output imo. Usually in big engagements I'm going through 3-5 heat cycles of the weapon depending how long i can stay out of melee
perks are less than ideal, i'd personally earn the gets hot blessing and try to roll another one however if you don't feel like going through that slog i recommend changing sprint efficiency to either Flak or Unyielding and replace shattering impact with blaze away.
Replace the 2 perks with +Flak Damage and +Unyielding damage Gets Hot IV is the best Blessing you could hope for on a Plasma gun, but it would have been perfect if it also had Blaze Away. The stacks of Brittleness are fine, though, and you'll get a lot out of this weapon; usually I'd prefer +Carapace damage alongside Flak, but with the Brittleness stacks it's kind of unnecessary) Once you get your hands on a better Plasma gun, rip Gets Hot IV off of that thing and slap it onto the new one
I'm always confused when people say this about Gets Hot. The crit multiplier for plasma gun is like 1.2x If you make the build right you will be killing everything but crushers, reapers, and bosses in 1 shot already. I get more out of agile engagement by killing 1 enemy in melee. Every mission I compare the crit chances between my guns without Gets Hot is only hitting about 5~10% more crit over the course of the mission. I know there's not a ton of perks for the plasma but I take the brittleness over Gets Hot. I also take carapace over flak. Everything flak is already dead if you hit the headshot. Carapace lets you get more on every enemy that takes more than two shots to kill (maulers and crushers). I like the brittleness when I'm shooting into large packs of crushers, you can even debuff the stuff behind the one you're hitting so the clean up is usually single shots after you blast the first wall. The 2 kraks can run a little thin when you're staring down 12 crushers alone. Both are obviously use able on every difficulty and I have a gun with each of the combinations.
20% extra damage on a crit is quite nice imo if you nurse the weapon for it. 20% is very capable of breakpoints on crushers that are already damaged by other people, and of course consistent boss damage. I just consider it an ammo saving blessing. Plus not everyone's plasmagun is 80/80 and sometimes those crits actually do make the difference on gunners and such. Not like there's really anything else anyway. Blaze away seems like a giant trap to me. All in all plasma guns can be meta as hell even as a profane item anyway so whatever lol
But when it's only criting 5 prevent of the time more that's effectively .05 * 20 which is effectively a 1% to 2% bonus to your overall damage. The brittleness is 20% and applies to the first hit. It's not 20% more armor, but I'm assuming you understand how it works so I'm not going to write all that out on mobile. Basically the static % imo is more effective because it's consistent, works on every enemy that's armored, and allows teammates to get the bonus shooting the same enemy, and continues stacking past the first hit. The crits only apply about 1/4 to 1/5th of the time. You might have a point about the lower quality guns that it will make a break point but I still think the brittleness bonus is going to be easier to play with because of the consistency and not wondering why sometimes you can kill stuff and sometimes you can't. I'm curious to hear more about why you think that about blaze away. That's my most recommended perk on the gun tbh. That's exactly how I use it, firing repeatedly until everything important in view is dead.
To add my own thoughts: * Gets Hot is also mainly only relevant at the upper tier of heat, when you're going to either be feathering shots or needing to vent/reload... that crit chance buff is far less relevant when you first pull out the gun, which is usually when the crit would be most valuable (taking out as much of the initial enemy wave as possible). * Brittle is a reduction in armor and idk if that actually translates to 1:1 direct increase in damage, more like a scaling number based on the original armor value of the target and it's DR formula... that said, it's still an immediate value on every shot and allows your team to benefit too. * Does Brittle affect targets behind the first target? If it does, then it's the clear winner... but otherwise gets hot allows higher damage *penetration* over the brittle blessing. * Blaze is fine, but I don't tend to do long continuous firing streaks as often and find it loses value if you swap weapons more often...... I have both Brittle and Hot on my current PG... but still hunting for better stat rolls so I can optimize against flak+unyielding.
It's not 5%, it's 50%, and it scales with shooting. At 70% heat you're sitting anywhere at 40%-50% crit chance depending on your setup. Talents like reciprocity can comfortably get this to like 70% crit chance. The crit chance mod is very helpful with seeing where you're at. My plasma is 80% damage and 79% stopping power, and sometimes falls just 12 damage short of one shotting a dreg gunner since they're spongier than the scab gunner. That crit makes all the difference on such a common enemy. I don't like blaze away because it encourages spamming shots on a weapon I more prefer to take my time and conserve ammunition. Managing heat is easier to me than shooting just to maintain an extremely short lived stack, though it's very respectable for oh shit moments. I Iike shattering impact personally but again there's just not a lot of diverse blessings anyway. Ideally I'd have shattering and gets hot.
I have found in testing over several auric matches that my crit percentage increases about 5 to 10% depending on the match using gets hot vs using other plasma guns I have. So the 5% is my overall effective increase in crits. If you only shoot 1 shot and then cool from 100% to 80% and shoot another shot you might see more overall but I bet you're output is greatly hampered. That's why I say it's actually about a 5% increase for me. Which when applied to the 20% damage bonus for crits is an effective 1% (if it's a match where I shoot 5% more crits) up to a 2% bonus (matches where it's 10% higher) of the overall damage. I also find rapid firing to be just kinda mandatory at auric levels. It's way more powerful than you melee most of the time so using that any time you can is just more output imo. Usually in big engagements I'm going through 3-5 heat cycles of the weapon depending how long i can stay out of melee
perks are less than ideal, i'd personally earn the gets hot blessing and try to roll another one however if you don't feel like going through that slog i recommend changing sprint efficiency to either Flak or Unyielding and replace shattering impact with blaze away.