Edit 7/20; Changes Catalyst stats. In case it changes again, the 4 rolls for my catalyst should be 4x Critical Damage Rating.

HAPPY GOTG2 DAY!

 

Alternative Builds

Tanky Hybrid

 

 

   

 

       

 Welcome to the updated Rocket Raccoon guide. 

 

Why should you play Rocket Raccoon?

 

 

This build will focus on using summons for fast clearing times as well as having excellent single target dps.

 

 

 

This guide will take you through the steps necessary to become the most flarkin' awesome raccoon that you were always meant to be.

 

You can click any of the links below to navigate this guide:

 

Gear And Gear Alternatives

Talent Choices And When To Pick Them

Infinity Node Priority

How To Perform Your Rotation

Alternative Fillers And When To Use Them

Tips And Tricks That Can Help Increase Your Damage In A Pinch

         

 

 

 

1:15 TTK (Cosmic Small Raid Dummy)

I accidentally had the Omega Shield buff that summons a soldier every now and then. The Nick Fury Insignia also summons soldiers, so that's why there are slightly more soldiers on the screen than usual.

 

 

1:17 Cosmic Trainyard DR.

  

1:49 Cosmic Skrull Bounty Chest Run 

 

1:13 Kurse Bounty Run

 

 

3:09 Dark Dimension Event

 

 

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Alternative Gear

 

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 These lists below were generated with a Rocket Raccoon spreadsheet I used to find my best gear lists and rotation.

Artifacts

 

 

This is a viable beginner artifact that can be used. The only problem with using this is that you NEED to be below 15% spirit in order to refresh this. In practical situations where you will most likely use Laser Drill for escaping aoe, this artifact loses a lot of value. If you are using Shoot and Run, you'll probably be using Rocket Dash for mobility making this a lot more useful.

 

Other viable alternatives include:

 

 

Medallions

 

 I value this above all the best because of how rediculously easy this is to reroll compared to everything else in addition to the health that it provides. There is also a bug with this where you can get the +2 int from using any ability.

 

may seem like an odd choice to be at number one for dps. The reason why this rose a lot while Infernal War Skrull Medallion lost a lot of power is mainly the summoner changes as well as the high value of crit for Rocket. Both the Ranged Damage Rating and Area Damage Rating do not translate to pets. Everything on Bullseye Medallion does. This is also above the SHIELD Agent Medallion because of the +1 to all Attributes that the Cosmic Bullseye Medallion has.

 

 

Relics

 

 is even more valuable now that it can be transfered to summons.

Runewords

 

 still keeps the crown after the patch. With the new brut formula, this means that this will be even juicier. Also has a nice amount of crit.

 

Legendaries

 

 is now the dps legendary of choice. This is entirely due to the fact that only the +10% Attack Speed translates to pets for Golden Bow of Apollo. Everything on Neptune's Trident transfers to pets.

 

If you want a nice mix of defensive and offensive, get Norn Stones. The proc on it enough to give basically a second health bar every minute. If you think you can survive without the Shield of Persues but don't want to switch directly to Neptune's Trident, get Norn Stones.

Rings

 

Energy wins over ranged due to how summon scaling works now. Ranged will not transfer over while energy will. We can also take advantage of the signature now that it actually does damage.

Slot 1

 

While ranked abovein terms of raw dps,  is worth more for me because of the TTL advantage that it brings. Unfortunately, this list doesn't take into the proc on Fragment, but it would be worth about +10k dps.

 

The main reason why this is ranked above Fragment is because of the +7 Int that this brings with the new patch. 

 

Slot 2

 

 The cosmic chests are only going to be worth it when you have really high rolled stats. Otherwise, just go with Doomsday Chair until you miraculously come across an amazing comic chest.

Edit: The cosmic chests listed here have illegal stats. Until I can make a new list, the new bis cosmic stat set is: Crit Strike/Brut Damage/Crit Damage instead of Int/Crit Strike/Crit Damage

 brings with it energy damage, 5 int, some health and defenses, and a summon proc that can scale from summon damage. 

does a bit more dps than Doomsday Chair but lacks the defensive capabilities that Chair provides. The energy proc on this has a somewhat high uptime; however, the vulnerability proc is something to be desired.

 

Slot 3

 

 

 wins here wins here--no contest. The sheer raw power along with the accessibility of aquiring this means that there will not be any real alternatives. Get this as soon as you can. This is even better now that the damage from the int and energy transfer to minions.

Slot 4

 

 

 This will be your number 1 item for this slot. The amount of int, crit, crit damage, and brut put this well ahead of the pack. The summon damage is the icing on the cake.

 

If you can't manage to get a Cerebra's Helmet Interface, get a Quad Plasma Cannon to tide you over until you can start doing Danger Room. 

Slot 5

 

 

  This is one of the best items you can get that has both offense and defense. It has MASSIVE amounts of damage along with crit and crit damage. It also has a nice amount of health meaning that you won't have to make up for it elsewhere.

 

The reason why I am using is because it provides Vulnerability for me. While  or any other teamup with vulnerabiliy can also provide Vulnerability, I find Cobra's Hood to be better in that it allows me the flexibility to have any teamup I want. Coulson would provide the highest dps, but I use Wolverine in my video because that's what I currently have.

 

This now does slightly more dps than Essence due to the summoning changes, and it's much easier to get. The only reason why I'm not wearing this in this guide is the lack of health. However, this is what you should be using until you can get a decent Essence of Jinn.

 

Cosmic Spirit Affixes

 

 

Get Critical Damage Rating for all 4 Cosmic Spirit affixes. It's even more valuable now that it transfers to minions.

 

 

Insignias

 

 

You can generally get away with picking any of the top 7 insignias listed here, except for one.

 can summon up to 2 mini Groot minions. Each of these Groots can do around 8k dps each. I highly recommend you try to get this insignia above all others as soon as you can.

 

 

Insignia Stats

 

 

 

Pet Affixes 3-5

 

 

 

Blessings

 

 

is now the absolute top dog now that the Brutal Damage can be transfered to minions. 

 

 

Slot 1/5 Enchants

 

 

 

Challenge Bonuses

 

 

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Talents

 

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Tier 1 

(I Am Groot > We Are Groot)

 

 

We Are Groot

This is a great talent to pick if you want to speed run terminals for bounty chests or SHIELD Supply Crates. Pair this up with the Upgraded Hadron Enforcer talent and you'll be a genocidal maniac riding a tree.  It won't increase your single target dps, but it will increase your happiness every time you use it. For this build, I focus more on turrets than anything else. While We Are Groot is still valuable, this build's focus on turrets diminishes the value of this talent.

 

Groot's Healing Spores

This gives a lot of defensive stats like health regen and about ~700 base health. Use this talent if you are ever in a situation where you are dying to attrition. It can also be handy for Danger Doom or other situations where you are not immediately getting gibbed by attacks. The automatic summon for Groot is also nice if you don't want to remember when to resummon him. Even with being able to replace the Groot on your bar with another ability, it still doesn't come close to being able to make up the dps that I Am Groot gives.

 

I Am Groot 

 

Take this if you want to the highest dps and health for Groot. With the summoner changes, Groot now does way more damage, making this mandatory for maximizing dps. 

 

Tier 2 

(Upgraded Minigun  = Upgraded Arc Turrets  > Upgraded Hadron Enforcer

 

 

Upgraded Arc Turrets

Take this talent if you want to do the most dps on a stationary target. This will cause all Suppression Turrets to form a chain of lightning between them. In addition, this allows you to plop down another suppression turret. One big problem with this talent is that the mobs have to be on the lightning to get damaged by it. This means that if mobs are moving constantly, you're gonna have a rough time constantly repositioning your turrets if you're far away. The best way to take advantage of this talent is to try to get the mobs hit by all three lightning walls. The most effective way to do this is by stacking all 3 Suppression Turrets right on top of one another.

 

Upgraded Minigun

 

Pick this talent if you are using Photon Minigun and want the highest dps against targets that move. This was recently nerfed to only give +30% base attack instead of the bugged +60% attack speed it was giving before.

 

Upgraded Hadron Enforcer

 

With the latest patch, Hadron Enforcer received a substantial buff. However, this does not mean that this talent is worth using. I would say to use this talent if you are using We Are Groot from the first tier. This is conjunction with We Are Groot can allow you to speed farm Bounty Chests and SHIELD Suppy Crates very fast.  For general use, this thing isn't very good and worth getting over Upgraded Minigun.

 

 

Tier 3 

(Upgraded Time Dilator > Laser Drill > Upgraded Combat Shield)

 

 

Upgraded Time Dilator

Your Time Warp Turret now becomes an aoe dps turret with this talent! This would be your number one choice as a summoner if not for Laser Drill being on this same tier. You can still take this talent over Laser Drill, but with how Shoot and Run works, it's such a QOL upgrade that it's worth it; however, this build uses as many turrets as possible while moving as quickly as possible making the nature of drop-and-forget turrets very valuable for fast clearing.

 

Laser Drill

 

Since this build focuses on fast terminal clear times, Laser Drill is less mandatory than in a regular Rocket build. You can take this for extra mobility if Rocket Dash and Shoot and Run are not doing it for you.

 

Upgraded Combat Shield

This talent essentially gives you ~1000 health and a 1 second invulnerability on a 15 second timer. It's an okay-ish defensive talent, but the main problem is that you will need to dedicate a bar to Combat Shield in order to take advantage of this. With bar space already being limited this struggles to find it's place, especially when it's on the same tier as Laser Drill.

 

I would not advice taking this talent. You could probably get better defensive uses from Laser Drill.

 

 

Tier 4 

(Upgraded Plasma RIfle)

 

 

Upgraded Plasma Rifle

 

Take this talent if you want the highest dps. With the new summoning changes, the Heavy Plasma Shells that this talent fires do much more damage. So much so that this talent is too much of a dps decrease over Upgraded Ordianance and Gravity Mine. This also gives your Blaster Turrets aoe capabilities for terminal speed farming. This is mandatory for this build.

 

Upgraded Big Gun

This talent can allow you to use BFG as a filler if you wanted. It gives just enough damage and reduced plasma ammo cost to compete with Heavy Plasma Rifle as your aoe filler. If you wanted, you could use this to reduce your plasma costs and take Upgraded Dilator over Laser Drill... if you wanted /shrug. I still wouldn't advise not taking Laser Drill, but it is an option. I would say to take this if you are weaving, but I don't find BFG weaving to be that lucrative this time around.

Other than that, you can use this talent to make your BFG bit more beefy. That's about it.

 

Take this talent if you plan to use BFG as your filler. Otherwise, take this if you aren't using Heavy Plasma Rifle, Gravity Mine, or C-12 Stun Grenade.

 

Upgraded Ordianance

This talent is a hit and miss.

On one hand, it makes Gravity Mine and C-12 Stun Grenade almost worth using. The high animation times on Gravity Mine and C-12 really make those cooldowns almost dps neutral, but the ability to have any teamup you want for any situation is a big plus. 

On the other Hand, utilizing Rocket Dash to reduce the cooldown of the aforementioned abilities actually results in a dps loss which is hilarious. If you were to talent this, I would suggest using it for just buffing those 2 abilities and not worrying about using Rocket Dash.

 

Take this talent if you are using Gravity Mine or C-12 Stun Grenade in your rotation. This allows you to use Gravity Mine as a pseudo-dps cooldown while also applying vulnerability.

 

 

Tier 5

(Upgraded Gauss RIfle > Upgraded Fleetslayer > Upgraded Plasma Cannon)

 

 

Upgraded Fleetslayer

 

 Currently, this does a bit less damage than Upgraded Gauss RIfle. There's also a bug that allows you to get some of the benefits of the talent without actually taking it. I'll talk about that bug when we get to Upgraded Gauss Rifle

 

Upgraded Plasma Cannon

 

 This talent has essentially died with the latest patch. The way that this was competing on dps was with the 5 second aftermath that M78 Plasma Launcher had. This would allow M78 to still run for ~8 seconds with this talent. With the newest patch, that 5 second aftermath was removed and this talent gutted as a result. Basically, this talent increases the radius of M78 Plasma Cannon while still keepong the net damage the same. I would not advise on taking this talent after the nerfs.

 

Upgraded Gauss Rifle

This is your go-to talent now. There is currently a bug with this talent that allows your Blaster Turrets to fire both H7 Fleetslayer and Heavy Gauss RIfle. You won't be using the actual Heavy Gauss Rifle ability, but this talent still does more dps than Upgraded Fleetslayer.

 

 

 

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Infinity DPS Priority

 

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With the removal of the round robin system, we can now put as many points in any of the trees as we want.

 

Here is a priority list of what I have based on this build.

150 Points - Strike Through (Power Gem)
150 Points - Mental Focus (Mind Gem)
150 Points - Energy (Reality Gem)
148 Points - Temporal Loophole (Time Gem)

 

The follow points are for dps procs. These do scale with stats, so they will provide a nice increase in damage.

 

4 points - Time Infusion Gem (Time Gem)
4 Points - Mind Infusion Gem (Mind Gem)
4 Points - Reality Infusion Gem (Reality Gem)
4 points - Power Infusion Gem (Power Gem)
4 Points - Soul Gem Infusion (Soul Gem)
4 Points - Space Gem Infusion (Space Gem)

 

For the rest of your points, you can either pool them into Mind Over Matter > Intelligence or just Intelligence. There isn't a big difference between doing either except maybe at REALLY high levels of Infinity.

 

If you want more spirit to provide a bigger buffer, put them into Deep Thought from Mind Gem. If you want more defense, you can pool your remaining points into Against All Odds in Soul Gem. If you want more dps, dump your points into Intelligence.

 

 

 

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Rotation 

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Summon Your Groot 

Place down your turrets x2 x2x3

Use  every 30 seconds.

 to replenish Ammo

 while waiting for your cooldowns

Vulnerability will be applied by your Cobra's Hood

 

 

Your opener will be:

 use this to activate all of your procs. I typically channel this for around 3-5 seconds. After your procs are activated, use  to activate your cosmic insignia and catalyst damage boosts. Once you have all your buffs active, it is time to quickly summon your x2 x3x3 and . This will allow your buffs to snapshot onto your summons, allowing them to benefit from your buffs much longer. 

 

Once you have your initial summons in place:

Channel  until about 15 seconds after you initially summoned your turrets. You can easily tell when to do this by watching the stack cooldown on your Blaster Turret. Once your Blaster Turret has reached 3 stacks, you'll know that 15 seconds has passed.

Once 15 seconds has passed, you'll want to resummon your turrets again. This will ensure they you'll have the maximum amount of turrets going into . You'll want to repeat this process every 15 seconds.

 

Once 30 seconds have passed since your initial turret summoning:

Use  and then quickly summon x2 x3x3 once again. 

 

Once 60 seconds have passed since your initial  summoning:

You should be a place where you will be able to fire off  again and your current Groot is about to expire. Once  has expired, quickly fire off  and resummon him and x2 x3x3 again.

 

 

You'll keep repeating this process.

Every 15 seconds, resummon your turrets

Every 30 seconds, use  followed by resummoning your turrets.

Every 60 seconds, wait until  despawns, use  right after, and then resummon your turrets.

 

Here are some tips on how to use each individual ability. 

 

Always have the maximum amount of Suppression Turrets, Blaster Turrets, and Time Warp Turrets down and preferably right on top of whatever mob you're hitting

• Try to maximize the amount of time these are out and only reapply these just before they run out. I try to reapply these every 16-18 seconds or so.
• A good way to track when you'll want to reapply these is by quicky placing down all your turrets and then wait for the Blaster Turret cooldown and count to come back up to 3. When this happens, wait a few more seconds before reapplying your turrets.
• This ensures that your Blaster Turrets get out the maximum amount of H7 Fleetslayer and Heavy Gauss Rifle shots before reapplying and resetting the attack timers on your turrets.

 

Cast Hadron Enforcer every 30 seconds, or just before you apply your turrets/Groot

• You want to use Hadron's Enforcer before you summon turrets and Groot so that they can get the benefit from your cosmic insignia and 1000 damage from your catalyst.

 

Cast Laser Drill/Shoot and Run when you are just about to run out of Plasma Ammo 

• It is most efficient to wait until you are JUST about to run out of Plasma Ammo to use Laser Drill/Shoot and Run. The reasoning behind this is that using it as little as possible maximizes Photon Minigun uptime. Do not worry about keeping up the attack speed buff up if you use Laser Drill as that +12% attack speed buff will be HIGHLY diminished at high gear levels, especially with the +IAS node in the infinity tree. Just worry about using Laser Drill/Shoot and Run as little as possible.

 

When all of your cooldowns are down, channel Photon Minigun

• If you took Upgraded Minigun, Photon Minigun will be doing the majority of your dps. Do not worry too much about losing stacks of Photon Minigun. The buff lasts for 5 seconds and takes about 2 seconds to get back. The actual amount of time it takes to reach full power will depend on your attack speed. Each single attack with it will generate a stack. So if you attack 16 times a second then it will generate 16 stacks a second.

 

With Groot, you'll want to make sure that Groot is out at all times. 

• If you are fighting more than one mob, use Groot's Charge ability on cooldown.

 

For farming terminals bounties, you'll either want to drop 1 or 2 turrets at each group of mobs, use Groot's Rain of Brambles, or Hadron Enforcer. There no need to stand back and try to Minigun the mobs down; your turrets are strong enough to kill most of the enemies in each group. Use Rocket Dash for mobility to quickly jump from one pack to the next.

 

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Alternative Fillers

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 Heavy Plasma Rifle

 

 

Over Photon Minigun, Heavy Plasma Rifle has the advantage of exploding into an aoe pulse with every shot; unfortaunetly, it does not perform even close to Photon Minigun for single target.

 

In order for Heavy Plasma Rifle to perform on par with Photon Minigun's single target damage it will have to hit 2-3 mobs. These also have to be relatively close to one another or the burst from this ability will not hit them.

 

A great application for Heavy Plasma Rifle is either in patrol zones or areas where there are lots of clumped up mobs.

 

The sad state of this is that the days are numbered for Heavy Plasma RIfle as omega items come out. Supposedly, there will be an item that allows Photon Minigun to pierce targets. This might completely shut down Heavy Plasma Rifle as a viable aoe filler and make Photon Minigun the king of everything.

 

 

 Big Flarkin' Gun

 

 Big Flarkin Gun--like Heavy Plasma Rifle--will not be winning when compared to Photon Minigun for single target. It will take 2-3 targets for this to be on par with Photon Minigun. 

 

Where this filler shines is in 2 areas:

• Plasma Ammo costs
• Area of effect
• Permanent -60% slow for movement and attack speed on enemies

The area of effect on Big Flarkin' Gun is among the biggest in the game or fillers, if not the biggest. While Heavy Plasma Rifle's aoe only encompasses the area around the impact, Big Flarkin' Gun covers almost the entire area of the spell's effect. In addition to this, Big Flarkin' Gun is hands down the most resource efficient filler that Rocket has. You could go for 50 seconds without recharging your Plasma Ammo pool

 

There are also a couple of downsides to using Big Flarkin Gun' over Photon Minigun and Heavy Plasma Rifle which I will list below:

• You cannot lock on to your target.
• It has about half the range of of Heavy Plasma Rifle and Photon Minigun. 
• It does not scale from Attack Speed. 

The biggest detriment that Big Flarkin' Gun has over Heavy Plasma Rifle is the maximum range. It only spans about half of what Photon Minigun and Heavy Plasma RIfle encompass. This can be a deal breaker if you are kiting or trying to outrange a boss's aoe. Aside from that, you can nither lock onto your target with this, nor does this benefit from attack speed. This means that the higher your gear and attack speed gets, the weaker Big Flarkin Gun will be compared to Heavy Plasma Rifle.

 

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Tips and Tricks

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Cheating with Laser Drill