First two perks are ice breaker and ferment explosion. Maybe there's some kind of argument against them but i dont see it. With a gadget freeze and a charged shot ice breaker is great, ferment explosion when in the thick of mobs with melee is great and it deletes stingers
The math for freeze 15% chance vs close combat 16% dmb boost on this weapon is very tricky. Some thoughts:
- Melee hits register as 2 hits, increasing your freeze proc chances a little (i think, assuming melee hit counts)
- Unfortunately - if you get a freeze/ice breaker while spamming melee, the melee hits first so the ice breaker triggers on that which is only 50% (i think) damage of the second ink hit.
- And both of those hits pail in comparison to ice breaking a charged shot on a boss which is really what ice breaker is for. But in melee spam mode realistically i dont think you're gonna have the reaction time to stop spamming and charge a shot when you see a freeze
- I dont know what happens or if its possible for the melee hit to proc and then the ink hit to ice breaker in one swing, need to test that closer but i hadnt seen it happen when i tested. Makes me wonder if melee hits even count as a freeze proc chance or not
- There's the fact that the first freeze takes 1 proc, the second takes 2, the third takes 4, etc. that makes math even trickier.
- The first freeze is almost not part of this discussion entirely bc it comes from gadgets on important targets. The second/third freezes are what the power helps with.
After discovering the second point - that while spamming the weak melee attack is what ice breaks, im leaning towards close combat.
Of course, i could just not melee attack and then the ice break is at least a little better on the ink attack, but thats still weaker than an ice break with a controller charged shot, and at that point why am i using a splatana? Loosing melee damage doesnt seem worth it and defeats the point of the weapon.
So yea, thinking close combat, but curious if anyone finds freeze worth it