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Marvel Heroes Black Panther Guide

Marvel Heroes Black Panther Guide by Leloric

A lot has changed with the coming of 1.2. Many people have asked me in game what I am using build wise so I’ve been working on a build. To do so though and properly evaluate choices requires knowing the inner workings of things and a lot of that has changed also. This thread is going to be about a lot of those numbers involved and some theory crafting around those numbers and how it helps me determine my personal choice in build. Keep in mind there are other build options out there and I’d be glad to discuss some of those but I’m generally aiming for most efficient and best dps. I’ll be delving into some math here and there but will also try and provide some layman’s terms for what I am explaining for those not math savvy. Much of the info I provide will pertain to endgame and lev 60 BP but much of it also translates over to lower levels too. If you just want a build I posted my current build on the second post of this thread.

Skill Coefficients

Probably the most important inner workings of any hero is their skill coefficients. For those who don’t know each skill has a multiplier that determines how much dmg rating, critical hit dmg, and even on hit procs the skill actually gets. Any coefficient below 1 gets less then the stated value and any over 1 gets more. With the larger amount’s of dmg rating and critical hit dmg available in 1.2 these coefficients are more important then ever.

Here’s a list of BP skill coefficient’s as of 1.2a:

Panther Slash: 0.4
Enervating Slash: 0.4 Bleed 0.5/sec
Freezing Slash: 0.5
Scything Sweep: 0.4
Evasive Throw: 1.2
Slashing Lunge: 0.7 (no fighting power bonus)
Triple Throw: 0.5
Knockdown Strike: 2.0
Panther Leap: 1.15
Agile Kick: 0.85
Knockdown Sweep: 0.85
Savage Strike: 0.9 Bleed: 0.5/sec
Vibranium Trap: 0.8

All basic powers have had a considerable drop in their coefficients as of 1.2 and as such if the spirit allows spirit spenders will often outpace basic’s for dmg.

Dot type skills such as our bleeds have changed a bit in how they work with coefficients also. Our bleeds tick 2x per second dmg rating coefficient is per second so you get .25 per tick. Crit’s of any though will give you 0.5 times your critical dmg. As such dot’s can favor critical dmg more than base dmg rating in many cases.

Knockdown strike is of special note as it has a 2.0 coefficient. This means this skill will vastly outpace most others as you add more dmg rating and critical dmg. I’ll examine this in depth later as we look at which skill to use for a spirit spender.

Dodge, Defense, and Critical Ratings

All of these are now additive ratings that when applied to a formula give you a % value for each.

The current formulas for each are here:

Dodge% just ove

DEF% = 90R/(R + 100L + 500)

CRIT% = 100R/(R + 30L + 150)

R=Rating L=Level

So what does this mean for BP?

At lev 60 currently our values can in general hit around 40% on each of these formulas without too much effort. You can get higher in any one but often at the expense of another area or dps. You start to hit fairly significant diminishing returns past 40%. 40% dodge and defense gives you a total reduction of 64%. I find this to provided pretty good survivability for BP in T4 red content.

Rating values for each to hit 40% at level 60:

Crit 1300
Dodge 2600
Defense 5200

Critical: Rank 26 Panther speed (20 ranks 5 cosmics 1 medallion) gives 539 crit rating. So to hit 1300 you need an additional 761 rating from other gear.

Dodge: How much you need from gear depends a lot on how much you spend on your passive. Currently from rank 17 Panther Grace (10 ranks 7 more from gear) I get 2193 dodge leaving me 407 to get from gear to reach our target 2600. A pym’s if you use one will cover most of this.

Defense: Lev 60 armor gives 1680 and the other 3 slots give 1120 for a total of 5040. 1 rank in panther soul and +6 from cosmic/medallions gives 138. We are just under our target with just this. Addtnl def rolls on gear are not unwanted but a 300 extra defense roll (5500 rating) gives you a net 1.25% more reduction via defense not gonna make or break you. 300 def rolls on all 4 items will get you just under 45% dmg reduction. Getting much defense beyond your base amount is not a very big difference to overall survival.

Theory crafting

So now that we have the tools to be able to examine different situations let’s take a look at what different choices building a Black Panther pertains to.

In general when designing my build I want the following:

primary attack
basic attack
aoe attack
passives/support
dps enhancers

What should my primary attack be?

Having multiple attacks in general can be bad. You cannot use two different attacks at once. You in general want to pick one main attack and build around it. As we saw earlier basic attacks have poor coefficients and can no longer be very viable solutions to being our primary dps skill. As such we need a strong spirit spender.

Looking at the skill coefficients and dmg output of skills I think in general the choice boils down to either knockdown strike or savage strike.

Knockdown strike: The big coefficient for knockdown strike is what helps sell it. The higher dmg rating and critical dmg you have the better this gets. It also has a really long stun that helps a lot on yellow and blue mobs. It is also extremely cheap for 10 spirit base cost. Get’s 2x the benefit from predator’s aim and panther sight.

Savage Strike: Big benefit here is the bleed. It ticks while you do other things. This means for bosses etc that you have to move around with like Rhino or those you have to chase down a lot like Hood you get the bleed while not attacking, also strong in those situations where you are not able to stay in fighting full time on the boss and have to drop back and heal a bit. Expensive but the nature of it means you often use it less with more basics in between.

At first glance SS seems like the no brainer over KS as naked at rank 20 SS does 2244-3365 base and bleed of 987 2x/sec and KS does 1511-2266. As we start to add dmg rating though the gap is rapidly closed and at dmg rating of 666 the minimum amounts are equal and 1000 rating the maximums are equal for the base dmg amounts.

588 is the dmg rating for lev 60 Blades and you can get another ~350 energy rating on it. That is essentially your 1k to even them out. So what happens when we get another 1k from costume affixes, 300k from predator’s aim and another ~1k from panther sight? At 3300 dmg rating you get rank 20 SS at 5214-6335 and KS at 8111-8866. Criticals further blow this up. The same skills with 1800 critical dmg give SS: 9441-11122 on a crit KS: 15766-16899 on a crit. KS is so far ahead it’s hard to see the bleeds making up the difference at top end gear. Add in a full stack of melee dmg or crit dmg relics and it’s even worse. Jungle snare multiplying your dmg also widens this gap further.

So I think the conclusion at this point is low gear then SS is better but when you start to reach high gear values KS pulls ahead considerably.

Which Basic Attack

Some heroes can get away without running a basic attack. BP can’t because he lacks enough spirit regen to fuel spirit spenders full time. Plus he gets a big dps boost from predators aim when using basics. So since we need one let’s consider which one.

Panther slash is the worst of the three it carries the lowest coefficient and has no additional benefit.

Enervating Slash: Best dps with the dot especially since we won’t be using it full time. The weaken effect while not outstanding can make a difference especially against certain bosses who like to hit a lot of times real fast like gorgon’s melee attacks.

Freezing slash: Less dps then ES but provides good CC effect against bosses and yellows/blues allowing you to take less dmg.

Not gonna get into dmg numbers too much here as ES is the clear winner there. It boils down to more def versus more offense. Your choice of primary can influence this too. The bleed effect of ES works better with KS builds as you use it less in those builds spamming KS much more.

Which AOE

You have a couple choices if you wanna go with an aoe skill. Scything sweep is a fast spam close area aoe with decent dmg. Vtrap is a much bigger aoe with good-great dmg and cc effect but often moves you out of melee range of bigger targets and has a delay. Each of the different uniques provides bonuses to a different aoe and if you’ve found one can influence a decision here.

Knockdown sweep also provides a small frontal aoe boost.

My personal preference for aoe is none. I don’t have the points I want to be able to spend to properly boost one of these. In general Cosmic devastation will take care of a lot of the white mobs leaving just the few stronger mobs to take down via single targets.

A single point in vtrap if running high dmg rating gear to supplement KS can do decent aoe dmg also because of it’s higher coefficient.

Which Passives/Support and DPS Enhancers

If you’ve maxed a primary and a basic and have chosen not to do an aoe you have 87 points left to spend and too many places to put them.

I need roughly 10 points in panther grace to hit my goal of 40% dodge 1 point in stealthy escape, blessing of bast, and panther soul. So I have 74 points to spend among Jungle snare, Panther Speed, Predator’s aim, Panther sight, and Dora Milaje. Jungle snare and panther speed by far give the best returns. Dora provide more dmg then the other options if they stay alive (something that is less likely in harder content) this also makes you want to pump more points into it to increase their survivability.

If you use those 60 points to max those three you have 14 left to spare among the remaining two. Aim is more reliable and gives it’s bonus to everyone, sight gives the bigger bonus but is less reliable also better in groups as you likely have less aggro.

If you are running a KS build and not attacking much with basics you can consider going 1 point in your basic and then having 33 to split among the aim/sight which lets you max one and still give decent support to the other. SS builds can’t afford this so much as they need to be attacking more with basics.

Which Costume Affixes

In general you can use your affixes to help meet your 40% from crit and dodge or to even push it up further. I generally want to try and leave these affixes open for either critical dmg or base dmg rating. The bigger question is which one.

I don’t know the exact totals but maxed rolls on a lev 60 costume for base dmg rating is around 800 and critical hit dmg is around 2.5k. An important thing to remember also is base dmg is multiplied by your fighting skill rank and the likes while critical dmg is not. In the case of knockdown strike let’s consider each option. 800 dmg rating with a 2.0 coefficient will give 1600 dmg rating which is then multiplied by your energy bonus and then by your fighting skill dmg bonus and if a crit by another 1.5. So for me at 40% crit, rank 7 fighting skill and rank 4 energy that’s .616001.11.2+.41.516001.1*1.2=2535.4 avg dmg per hit. 2.5k crit dmg gives 5k with the coefficient and at a 40% crit rate gives 2k average dmg per hit. So base dmg rating is the better option here, although crit dmg will give you the bigger numbers on your max crit for bragging rights. SS builds will be closer to even as the crit dmg rating favors the dots more as I explained in the coefficients section.

As for the core lifesteal is a big boost you and your dora both grant life steal and it’s your main form of health regen since we don’t have many points to spend in bast. Fighting skill is a big boost to your dmg, lowers costs, and increases att speed why would you not want that.

Which Relics?

This pretty much follows the above reasoning on affixes. If SS build either melee dmg rating or critical dmg. If KS go dmg rating. This holds true for lower amounts not sure how they scale at higher amounts.

One thing to point out also is the life on hit relics also rely on coefficients. KS having a 2.0 coefficient means that each hit will give you two heals per hit. If you are looking for more survivability this is a great option.

Which Artifacts?

This is probably the biggest choice.

While not a must I think Pym’s is pretty close to being so. Relying on spamming KS even at a low cost or using SS intermittently both will cost some spirit mix in jungle snare costs and recasting dora’s and it get’s expensive. Pym’s also helps you hit 40% dodge, and the extra boost to health and movement speed is nice too. This is probably the only gear slot that I don’t have any dps increase at all in.

The other slot is fairly open.

Edge is a great dps boost as it gives base dmg, cirt dmg, as well as crit and brutal strike rating. Probably my top choice for 2nd slot.

Fearsome Fist is borderline OP my only issue with it on BP is he generally does not want to be getting hit to get sight bonus when FFoF is going good it’s great but there’s a lot of dead times when I’m not getting hit much that it falls well short. I prefer the more consistent dmg increase of Edge.

Another big favorite of mine is Shiar cloaking device for this build. Big dmg boost to unaware targets and an invis clickie to make sure that happens. Wish the dodge rating was crit rating but outside of that I really like this artifact.

Big base dmg works well with KS and as such Metasensory and xerogen are nice options.

Which + rating skills do we want

Whether KS or SS we want + ranks to the skill we chose there.

Jungle snare ranks are also highly prized as each is 1% dmg increase.

These are the two main targets but any of our above maxed skills are nice as well as some single target ones like blessing of bast or panther soul.

So that pretty much breaks down our choices here for how I want to build my BP. In the next post I’ll post the actual build and some more pictures and such.

Here’s a screenie of my current build with no gear on:

Here’s some of my relevant stats and a screenie of my KS. I don’t have any good + rank KS gear yet at lev 60 been rerolling cosmics trying to get one.