Many threads on Sapper are from one year ago and no one clear my doubts about this class.
I’m theorycrafting, for rank 9, these two builds, since i can’t play effectively as QS3 with my crappy latency. A2-Sap2-Wugu1-Falc3-Mergen or A2-Sap3-Falc3-Mergen
my goal is to have a competitive challenge mode archer but with a good bossing capability, the reason i put Wugushi is because i already have x3 Velnia Monkey cards lv10
Is “broom trap: revolution count” worth?
Is “broom trap: firepower boost” mandatory?
How good are Collar bomb, Claymore and Spike Shooter?
Is Sapper still good place after “Circling:expand” nerf?
Which builds would you recommend between the two above?
I’m no expert at Sapper. This is all from old experiences with the class and I don’t really play a Sapper anymore so take the information with a grain of salt.
From what I remember, it cycles the Broom Trap’s faster, so it hits more often.
Not really “mandatory”, but it does increase your chance to hit criticals a lot. Most, if not all, of your Broom Trap hits will be critical.
Collar Bomb isn’t as good without 0 AoE ratio now, I believe. It does 10 hits, but splits up the hits on different targets. I don’t know if AoE ratio affects it.
Claymore, I have no idea at all.
Spike Shooter, does good burst against bosses. Especially with Aiming allowing all hits to hit.
Sorry, I don’t know on this either.
Personally, I would be Archer2>Sapper2>Rogue>Falcon3>Mergen, but if I had to choose from those two, I would pick the Sapper 3 one.
Capture has a long CD(3 minutes), but when you use it, you can have 2 Broom Trap and 2 Arrow Sprinkle out for a huge burst of damage.
Falconer and Sapper is my expertise -> playing Main A2-Sap3-Falc3
Most things Kanna said are true. Lemme add my advice, thoughts and opinions:
That’s correct. A Broom trap with the full revolution count attribute hits the same target around 21 times.
A Broom Trap without only hits it for around 15 times.
This attribute is a no-brainer and a must have.
Also correct. If you already got a decent Crit Rate, BT will crit like all the time. If not you should still take it because more crit chance means more damage anyway.
Collar Bombs is for many a kinda mysterious skill. So lemme explain it:
Hits or “Installs” like it is called here can be treated as true mulit hits.
They actually do not split among targets, they indeed it everything close enough at the exact point it detonates (it gives the initial target a debuff with a light circling around it and this light wil explode if it touches another enemy) with full damage and every target gets the full hit count.
Those hits ofc can crit and every single hit can crit on its own.
I am not sure if it actually has a limited hit count -> with activated aiming and no great Aoe Attack (2) I already managed to hit 7 targets with it (ofc they won’t take the same damage because not every target will get the same amount of crits in general)
Claymore is your decent single hit aoe.
While being able to get the highest damage value on a target, it’s best used against groups especially when set up and then used when cicling is active (currently).
It got a little knockback which is fine and best used in pvp.
It has a high value against flying targets which are - if you look at sapper on its own - are the worst enemy.
Its biggest let down is, that it can be destroyed hence it should not be hesistated to long to let it explode.
Personally I got them both maxed which is no must in anyway and i prefer Collar Bomb more.
Kanna is right with Spike Shooter there: Best used against bosses and actually really hard to use sometimes if there is no active aiming (always install a very short one in that scenario)
Despite it’s ridiculous cooldown and by far too low damage in that regard I would almost every Sapper 3 recommend to take this skill.
First things first: the expand nerf will hit almost all Archer classes using Falc 3 in a way…
Better would be to ask: “Is any archer class using Falconer 3 not hit by the expand nerf?”
Sapper is no exception compared to almost all of them: your damage against multiple targets will be lower.
But is is a special case here because its skills do not care about AoE Attack meaning the new expand attribute giving Aoe Atk is useless for those skills…
Wugu C1 is awful in my opinion while Wugu C2 is really good. Hence I would not be a fan of your first build option there.
There is nothing wrong with the 2nd. Sapper 3 offers a much stronger Broom Trap thanks to 5 more level and it’s splendid attribute plus a nice burst skill in form of Spike Shooter.
Kanna’s preferred build isn’t bad either and has a higher burst potential as the Sapper 3 variant.
But i got my own opinion about it:
So the combo BT+AS thanks to Capture is really strong yes indeed stronger than a Spike Shooter which can be used almost 2 times during the same duration.
However the issue i got with Rogue, especially with rogue 1 is that this was all it can do.
Feint isn’t great on its own and best used with Barrage which is missing in all the builds (correct me if that hidden combo got removed but as far as i noticed it isn’t since i got 2 chars using this)
Vendetta is not as bad as it used to be but I never find it to be powerful enough as a skill OR a buff.
Sneak hit is a nice to have thing which will be used anyway but it isn’t really that useful if not combined with werewolf cards (which is barely done afai noticed because it is the very VERY precious purple card slot) OR you try to play according to it which isn’t something easy to do for this build compared to the moving shooters QS, SR and BM. In the end it will give you some extra damage which you will notice fomr time to time.
Capture is, especially in this build, a great skill for the combo. High damage which on it’s own will be able to reduce a bosses’ hp significantly.
For me personally those things are not enough compared to the much enhanced BT of a Sapper 3 and it’s high constant damage thanks to the 2 mentioned reasons, the Spike Shooter and the extra points you will invest to further strengthen more of you other damage skills.