Firstly: The Universal Perks
first and foremost, their are two very distinct builds for Brain Rupture (burst): active and passive, but you can hybrid both quite easily. These perks up top, these are the ones that you always want to pick to turn killing elites into great crowd control. And here is a secret that has worked since the beta: each tick of a weapon, or dot counts SEPARATELY for the chance to brain burst-- the same for the repeated hit rend on veteran. of even greater importance is that if you hit multiple enemies with an attack, it will tend to choose the enemy with the highest health, or someone close to the highest health, meaning a flame, surge, or splash damage hit will ALWAYS choose ELITES OR SPECIALS that are the HARDEST to kill with your staff.
Second: Building For Your Weapons And Blessings
this one is great for the auto brain rupture build, as it will passively reward you extremely well for just using secondary fire on any TICK RATE weapon-- this is the flame staff and the surge staff pretty much alone for pure psycher, but i have not tried it with burning headhunter recon lasgun-- in theory, it should count each hit and each dot APPLICATION seperatly-- fire 15 times, it is possibly 30 chances. i do not recommend using any gun with auto brain burst though because of the secrets i shared in the last section. however....
any long range, headshot/cleaving ranged will definitely work for fast active casting, as you just need to worry about raw hordes without elites less than 5 meters from each other (cough, poxwalkers). for this build, it is better to run whichever form of shield makes you more comfortable-- bubble is great for just counter "sniping" while the double cast specialist tripping hazard can let you refresh your activation buff as soon as it ends, and will leave any special running through it open long enough to get brain rupture off with the stacks you will be getting in the next active BR section combined with that.
Thirdly: Panic Button + Never Being Forced To
this is where the two builds differ vastly, as venting shriek is focused almost entirely around going as long between casts as you can manage, building damage slowly, killing fast. For flames staff only,
you want the burning shriek with...
10% chance to get siphon stacks and MASSIVE peril reduction so that you can always have the ability back before your peril is high again. for anything that just has crit burning or just a surge staff, you want the chance on kill and raw damage screech, the coherency radius and quell speed helping you keep on keeping on, while the damage ramping from the middle will always get you a stronger-than-normal scream.
Fourth: The Free Cast
this is where active cast shines like a supernova: empowered psionics plus the cast speed boost after using your ability = 1 second, completely free (should be negative) active casts on HORDES OF ELITES. as long as you can get 3 elites without using bursts, you can cast 3 times for free on any individual elite, turning crusher brains into boiling hot soup on PATCH 13 with all three. with active casting, the burning elite kills, the spreading flames, you should be focusing entirely on elites and specials with the ability, letting their deaths fuel your, quite frankly, insane horde clear.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067497048
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