Polishing My Oscar

It is, as they say, finished. After doing some research and tweaking my build a bit, and making sure I had the absolute best talismans I could currently get, I went and faced Oscar again. This was only the third day I'd tried, the first two being Monday and Tuesday evenings. I needed to get some AP first, to purchase some Hammer abilities that had been suggested to me by CherryBomb, so I ran "Enter the Filth" and then worked on my story missions and Issue 7 stuff in Shadowy Forest before facing Oscar again.

I discovered that while my purge opportunities (needed for Phase 2) came from Hinder procs, Oscar is immune to Hinder; so I was screwed using that old build. You'll see what I did use below.

As you'll see even further below, Magson suggested I focus on shotgun abilities. However, there are some parts of Oscar's platform outside the shotgun range, so I used Elemental abilities for sustained damage no matter where I was positioned. The deck I used to beat Oscar:

Actives:

• Ignition (Strike) ~ This is the only builder I ended up using;  728 DPS at my current Combat Power.
• Raging Bullet (Strike) ~ 573-1348 damage, depending on range. I had to have my purple shotgun equipped for the Weapon Power, but this ended up being the only Shotgun active in my "victory deck."
• Lightning Manifestation (Stationary Chain "turret") ~ More for the purge of Lightning in Bottle (passive), though the added DPS was nice.
• Speed Freak (Buff) ~ For a boost in Phase 3, when the little red guy chased me around.
• Turn the Tables (Heal) ~ just in case. I think I used it once or twice, not absolutely sure it's necessary.
• Short Fuse (Buff) ~ 25% increase in DPS with Final Fuse, again for Phase 3.
• Thor's Hammer (Strike) ~ 1860-some-odd damage. I only used it when LM was on cooldown during Phase 1; too risky during the other phases.
• Vector-Space ~ I used it a bit, but the aux weapons aren't necessary to beat Oscar, and I have a mod (or something) that provides an occasional heal, which was useless, given the no-heals debuff Oscar threw on me. (Strangely, TtT is unaffected by this debuff.)

Passives:

• Lightning in a Bottle ~ Causes LM to purge buffs; important during Phase 2. This ended up being my guaranteed purge, but I had to time it so that it covered Oscar's three one-shot-you self buffs.
• Elemental Force ~ Guaranteed crit every 8 hits.
• Final Fuse ~ Increases percent damage increase of Short Fuse to 25% for 10 seconds, used during Phase 3.
• Big Bang~ Increases damage of Lightning Manifestation (and other things).
• Grounded ~ Purges cause damage. (Honestly not sure how this stacked with LM/LiaB.)
• Strike Force ~ Increases Penetration chance of Strikes by 7.5%.
• Wrecking Crew ~ Increases crit power of Strikes by 20%.
• Energy Transfer (in this case) ~ Reduces the damage of Vector while increasing the damage of Space.

In my post about fighting Oscar from a few days ago, I requested some advice from my readers, and got a couple responses, like the suggestion from CherryBomb through Twitter. Magson, however, did a thorough workup of a good build and posted it in the comments. . . about 45 minutes after I'd beaten Oscar with the build described above. I wanted to include it here with my gratitude for his research efforts. [My comments look like this.]

Actives:

• Striker - Builder. Same damage as Single Barrel, is a Strike so you don't need a 2nd builder in Ignition, and always takes advantage of Strike Force passive for the 7.5% penetration increase. [I had SB on my deck earlier this week. I don't have Striker, but I could have gotten it. I didn't even see it, but most of my abilities were Elemental anyway, due to the range issue mentioned above.]

• Out for a Kill - Consumer. Raging Bullet does max damage at melee range. OfaK does identical damage to that max but at all ranges. [Despite more consistent damage than Raging Bullet, OfaK is not a Strike, which is what I built many of my passives around. Besides, at my Combat Power, it was only about a 15% difference at max distance.]

• Flame Strike - Strike consumer with same cast time as the GCD and only 2 resources so it can be cast faster and more often than Thor's Hammer and thus have higher sustained dps. [FS would have been great, but I haven't worked on that arc of the wheel at all.]

• Magnetic Wipe - Purge [I was actually working on the points for MW when I decided to give Oscar another go and ended up beating him.]

• Turn the Tables - self heal  [I used that one!]

• Short Fuse - Excellent buff! [I used that one, too!]

• Breaching Shot - Excellent buff #2! [BS would have been good. I use it regularly.]

Passives

• Strike Force - increased pen chance for Strike attacks [I used that one!]

• Iron Maiden - increased pen chance for all attacks, after you pen an afflicted target [I don't have the ability.]

• Bloodsport - applies afflict on any non-glancing hit [Works with Iron Maiden. But glances remove the afflict. Might have worked, but I am honestly not sure how much I was glancing.]

• Incision - pens cause an additional afflict [I don't have the ability.]

• 3rd Degree - every 4th pen causes another afflict [I don't have the ability.]

• Sudden Return - pens do additional damage [I don't have the ability.]

• Gross Anatomy - when afflicts expire another hit is taken by the target. Whenever I've parsed this out with 3 afflicts in the build like this it does as much damage as a finisher - passively. It's awesome! [I don't have the ability.]

Downside to this build is that it needs 2 blade passives which you'd have to build toward, and you don't have a lot of Blood on your chronicle, so it's unlikely that you have 3rd Degree or Gross Anatomy either. So an alternate set of passives might be like this. The 4 substitutions are:

• Mind over Matter - afflicts on critical hit  [I have a low crit rating (7.9% chance) other than the guaranteed 8th hit from Elemental Force.]

• Brawler - +15% crit damage [Low crit rating]

• Elemental Force - every 8th hit is a crit. Make your rotation put this on Out for a Kill as much as possible. [I used that one! (Not OfaK)]

• Cool, Calm, and Collected - 8% boost to all damage for 10s after a crit. EF keeps this up 100% of the time. [Could've worked.]

Magson mentioned some other things from his research, like you should have at least 600 DPS (which I did). Everything else is about positioning (shifting almost constantly) and kiting the little red guy at the end. Magson mentioned practicing against the target dummies in the faction HQs, helpful for checking DPS and rotation. Personally, I despise DPS meters, and based on my research into offensive stats, I knew I was good on that front. My DPS only suffered on Monday and Tuesday when I stopped casting to reposition.

The most important thing is to understand the fight itself and a few key things about each phase. Then practice the dance. Once I became more comfortable with moving around—and developed a plan for avoiding the circles—casting wasn't a problem. But since challenging Oscar and learning the fight comes without cost other than time spent (in other words, no repair bill), I stand by my comment that the only way to "practice" for Oscar is to practice with Oscar.

Other than having a guaranteed purge handy, I have no advice for weapons. OH! Many casts include a self-hinder, like Assault Rifle "aimed" shots. Using these will guarantee that the little red guy in Phase 3 will get you. So make sure you have plenty of instant casts, or at least casts that allow you to run. I didn't use Thor's Hammer at all during Phase 3.