Hey guys Whitesushi here with the numbers on Airheart as well as some observations regarding the skill. This is sort of like a "review" post of the hero as well having played her for a while doing some missions. Before we go into the math, here's some things you need to know about the ability
Damage done by the ability is based on the player operating the turret rather than the player who placed it
Damage done by the ability is affected by TECH as well as Hero Ability Damage
Ability only starts its cooldown once expired rather than when placed
You can exit the turret early, you just have to bind a key to "Vehicle Exit" in the options menu
Now that that's out of the way, we move on to the math portion. Working backwards on ROSIE damage factoring in tech as well as hero ability damage, the base damage of the skill is 67. This is similar to Throwing Stars at 52 or about slightly more than half of abilities like Frag Grenade at 101 or Dragon Slash at 95. The ability I am going to compare it against, TEDDY, sits at 16 and we will be assuming Enforcer Grizzly's TEDDY in this scenario.
| R.O.S.I.E. | T.E.D.D.Y. | Description |
---|
Base DMG | 67 | 16 | Base damage of the ability |
Real DMG | 91.8 | 20.0 | Damage after factoring in hero perks |
Damage/s | 642.5 | 120.0 | Real damage multiplied by fire rate |
Total Damage | 13768.5 | 3600.0 | Total damage in one usage of the skill |
Uptime | 16.56% | 50.00% | "Duration" of skill divided by cooldown |
Real DPS | 2280.1 | 1800.0 | DPS after factoring in uptime |
As you can see, in terms of burst damage while the skill is activated, R.O.S.I.E. beats T.E.D.D.Y. by like 3.8 times. However when we factoring in uptime over the entire course of a defense and then looking at the damage numbers again, this value is only 1.3 times.
If you just think about it, there is so much downtime on the ability that in most missions that last ~8 minutes... which is almost every mission, you only get to use ability TWICE. That's as bad as bombardment gadget.
In fact, I found that you need to achieve 79% accuracy in order for R.O.S.I.E. to inch out T.E.D.D.Y. in real DPS. Furthermore, there are other issues the ability suffers from such as
Damage fall off (you do less damage to targets across longer distances)
Accuracy... because obviously you are not 100% accurate with this
Stationary and vulnerable to bees/lobbers/blasters/slingers/propanes/mini husks
Overheat mechanic that slows down your fire rate
You can't do other forms of damage while in the turret (can't shoot, throw abilities etc)
That's not all. One of the biggest problems I have with the ability is that it is awkward to use. Since cooldown only starts after we finish using it, ideally we want to place and finish firing the bullets as soon as possible to tap into higher uptime. However, we are also given a limited amount of ammunition which makes players want to save shots for the meatier targets (smashers/mini-boss). Basically, it's a littler counter-intuitive.
Conclusion
If you are thinking of
Using her to melt Smashers/Mini-bosses, you are better off doing that with a damage dealer like Urban Assault because especially for mini-bosses, they like to move and can easily move out of view for your turret (not that you do that much damage on the turret either
Using her to clear waves of husks down a funnel, you are better off placing a gas trap since that hits everything and has close to 100% uptime
Using her to sweep waves of husks in open area, you are better off playing Enforcer Grizzly and letting T.E.D.D.Y. do the work
Even if you really want to use a B.A.S.E, there are generally better Constructors like
Syd/Tank Penny for heavy single target damage
MegaBASE for covering large areas (CAT4 Atlas)
Heavy BASE for trash clear and trap reload
She's not even fun to use because you are constantly worried about using up the very limited 150 rounds and having to wait on an almost 2 minutes cooldown. Not to mention if you are in public games, there's a very real chance someone just steals the seat from you :(
TL;DR Uptime on the ability is too low and the ability itself is plagued by problems that makes it not worth using unless you want something that looks cool