14-20% Impact for 2 seconds on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
19-25% Impact for 1.5s on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
4.5-6% Close Range damage on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
14-20% Damage on Second, Third and Fourth shots in a Salvo.
You can certainly make them work and they do provide benefits. But compare them to other talents you can pick as veteran instead of them, and they are just trash. Their cost (talent points) does not outweigh their benefits.
I'm certain if you play with a well coordinated premade group you can get greater benefits from your keystones, but when you're playing with random players in quickplay auric damnation, you need consistency, if you want consistent good results. The keystones simply does not provide that.
(quick note on curios, at the moment enemy flames are extremely overtuned. If the flames are nerfed you should get some other perks instead of less dmg from bombers and flamers.)
You shout pretty much all the time (use your ability) for replenishing toughness, buffing friends, staggering enemies, buffing yourself.
You melt Ogryns with your hail of bullets.
You take out specials from afar.
You nade threatening groups such as ragers mixed with hordes.
You permastun enemies that dare to get into a melee fight with your shovel.
You permastun bosses with shouting, nades and melt them down with your shooting by applying debuffs to the bosses and buffs to your teammates.
You benefit from every stimm you can pick up, every stimm is very useful for you.
You wonder why you'd ever use one of the keystones when other talents are simply better.
No. They're just bad. Here I'll go through each strength and weakness of the keystones.
Build up the stacks and you do absolute insane bonkers weakspot dmg. I've played around alot with it, had some fun, even uploaded build for it.
But in the end, if you don't get those stacks constantly and keep em up constantly, it does nothing. It does not exist. And on auric damnation where you have to keep dodging, ducking and sliding to not die makes it even harder to keep the stacks up.
Compare it to the talents Rending Strikes and Onslaught. First one giving permanent +10% rending to all weapons all the time. Second one giving stacking brittleness debuff when you dmg a single target all the time.
When a crusher group is about to wreck your team, you don't have time to first build up focus stacks so you can then kill them. You need to kill them now. Other talents help you do that, the keystone does not unless you're lucky enough to already have stacks ready for when you need them.
The extra dmg is great, no denying it, for the whole team? Even better. Undoubtedly you'll be able to kill bosses faster with this keystone than this build. But it suffers from the same thing Marksman's Focus does: Inconsistency.
In crusher groups, where you might face up to something like 8, you can apply the focus debuff to 1 of them. Great. That one goes down pretty fast, then you have 7 more. Sure you can apply the focus debuff again, but you no longer have the many focus debuff stacks that you did for the first, as it takes time for the stacks to regenerate.
Another thing, you'll very often play maps on auric damnation where you can't see a damn thing. And you need to keep spamming the mark button through darkness, fog, mist, blood splatter, whatever, to find specials and elites hiding amongst the chaos. With this keystone you'll be wasting your stacks doing so, not having them ready for when you truly need them.
The strongest veteran keystone. Yet it's still not strong enough to earn a talent point in this build. This build is primarily ranged, even though your shovel is strong. So you won't be getting the full benefits of this keystone.
To be honest, I don't have too much negative to say about this keystone. It fits into a nice role, the more melee focused veteran. But as the shovel is always second or last option with this build, it doesn't benefit the build enough for a talent point.
So lets quickly talk about why it's stronger than the other 2.
First off: Consistency. Easier to activate and benefit from.
Secondly: Doesn't hinder your gameplay. You neither have to stand still/move slowly and clunky nor holding off from marking targets because you're saving stacks.
But even then, this build is stronger for random groups in auric damnation than a melee focused veteran build. Does that mean I'll only play this build to the end of time? Of course not.
Even though I've taken a huge shit on the keystones, I'll still play with them. Not because they're stronger, but simply for variety, even though I'll have a harder time. Because shit, we play this game for fun after all. I just wish keystones were better designed so it didn't feel like I was intentionally handicapping myself trying to play with them.
I highly doubt it. I truly believe they only tested these keystones out in their premade groups either playing together in the same room or chatting with eachother over discord. Not saying even with premade groups with great communication the keystones become great, just that it would help mitigate the huge downsides associated with the keystones.
