Best Blackarrow traits?

[davidrspiers]

Currently running 6 crit, 2 damage for health, and 4 mitigation.
R6.

What are other's running?

[davidrspiers]

Switched to 6 master, 2 damage, 3 crit, one miti.

[Spilo]

For solo running, I'd suggest 3 crit, 3 mastery, 3 morale, and possibly 3 critical defense. I believe BAs benefit from a nice Critical rating boost from a trait, so you could also run 3 of each mit, 3 morale, and 3 mastery. 6 of Crit is not the best idea, in my opinion.

[ChaChaLoco]

Health for Damage R2, Health for Power R2, Critical Rating Boostx3, Mastery Boostx3, Tactical Mitigationx3, Physical Mitigationx1.

This is the general purpose build I run with, which is somewhat similar to what Spilo has suggested (bar the Critical Protection Boosts, which I will get into later). I'll quickly break down why I chose the other traits I did.

• I forego using the R1 health traits as I don't think they are worth the trait slot compared to some of the other corruptions available.
• At least 3 Critical Rating Boosts is pretty standard for most Creep classes because of the +5% critical chance corruption set bonus (which can bring your critical chance up from 25% to 30%).
• Using more than 3 Mastery Boosts (particularly if Creeps control some of the Outposts) results in diminishing returns that aren't worth the very slight increase to your damage. The 3-set bonus here isn't anything spectacular though, so you may decide you want to run with extra mitigations instead if you are running around by yourself or getting focussed a lot as a low rank (if you are higher in rank I'd suggest sticking with the 3 Mastery boosts).
• The 3 Tactical Mitigations are for a few reasons: firstly, you can't block, parry or evade tactical damage; secondly, you have the 'Moving Target' skill you can use to evade physical damage, most of the time I find it's usually the tactical classes (Runekeepers, Loremasters, etc.) that are doing the most damage to me, as I can usually kite/evade the physical melee/ranged clases; and finally, Critical Protection Boosts aren't a particularly good alternative.
• The Physical Mitigation there is just to fluff out that slot. Not a particularly great reason, I know, but it's really up to you what you use there. You could throw in another Health trait if you like (if I'm traiting for mitigations I'll usually switch my Mastery Boost and Physical Mitigations around: that is, Physical Mitigationx3 and Mastery Boostx1).

With respect to Critical Protection Boosts, I really don't think they are worth it as the damage reduction you get from 3 of them compared to 3 regular Mitigations is not competitive, even on critical and devastating hits. I did some testing on this a few months back with Afluk. Granted this was a while ago so the data may no longer be valid, but as far as I'm aware Turbine has made no major changes to the way mitigations and criticals work that would invalidate our tests. If I get around to finding all the data I saved on the subject I'll post it here, but I recently did some extensive reformatting, so it may be lost in translation on one of my backup HDDs somewhere.

I hope this helps.

[Tirn]

Health for Damage R2, Health for Power R2, Critical Rating Boostx3, Mastery Boostx3, Tactical Mitigationx3, Physical Mitigationx1.

This is the general purpose build I run with, which is somewhat similar to what Spilo has suggested (bar the Critical Protection Boosts, which I will get into later). I'll quickly break down why I chose the other traits I did.

• I forego using the R1 health traits as I don't think they are worth the trait slot compared to some of the other corruptions available.
• At least 3 Critical Rating Boosts is pretty standard for most Creep classes because of the +5% critical chance corruption set bonus (which can bring your critical chance up from 25% to 30%).
• Using more than 3 Mastery Boosts (particularly if Creeps control some of the Outposts) results in diminishing returns that aren't worth the very slight increase to your damage. The 3-set bonus here isn't anything spectacular though, so you may decide you want to run with extra mitigations instead if you are running around by yourself or getting focussed a lot as a low rank (if you are higher in rank I'd suggest sticking with the 3 Mastery boosts).
• The 3 Tactical Mitigations are for a few reasons: firstly, you can't block, parry or evade tactical damage; secondly, you have the 'Moving Target' skill you can use to evade physical damage, most of the time I find it's usually the tactical classes (Runekeepers, Loremasters, etc.) that are doing the most damage to me, as I can usually kite/evade the physical melee/ranged clases; and finally, Critical Protection Boosts aren't a particularly good alternative.
• The Physical Mitigation there is just to fluff out that slot. Not a particularly great reason, I know, but it's really up to you what you use there. You could throw in another Health trait if you like (if I'm traiting for mitigations I'll usually switch my Mastery Boost and Physical Mitigations around: that is, Physical Mitigationx3 and Mastery Boostx1).

With respect to Critical Protection Boosts, I really don't think they are worth it as the damage reduction you get from 3 of them compared to 3 regular Mitigations is not competitive, even on critical and devastating hits. I did some testing on this a few months back with Afluk. Granted this was a while ago so the data may no longer be valid, but as far as I'm aware Turbine has made no major changes to the way mitigations and criticals work that would invalidate our tests. If I get around to finding all the data I saved on the subject I'll post it here, but I recently did some extensive reformatting, so it may be lost in translation on one of my backup HDDs somewhere.

I hope this helps.

agreed on most save that with just 3 mastery you will always have real power problems . The BA is a squishy class not really built these days for solo play (what creep class is ? ) hence I run with a glass cannon build as I don't expect nor want to be in the fight long enough to know what the inevitable will be . Kill fast and get out of dodge equally as fast .