Almost one week is over since the update of Tom Clancy’s The Division version 1.2 went live. Lots of stuff has changed and also 4 new Gear Sets were added, which makes the pool of available Gear Sets count 8 in total to choose from. But the question is, are they any good or viable to look for, or are the first four sets still a better option to go?
Before you give it a read, we just want to make sure that this article reflects our personal thoughts about those Gear Sets and that there still could be ways to make them useful! However, we haven’t figured out how. Also player’s experiences differ a lot, so let’s start.
Final Measure
The Final Measure Gear Set is clearly our favorite of the new ones. Having +50% Exotic Damage Resilience in times of DZ bracket 201+ is almost a must have when you want to survive the Cleaner elites with their flamethrowers or Gas Grenades up there, and this is just the set bonus for 2 equipped pieces of this set. It’s the perfect start for a tanky build with a huge boost to resistances of all kind. Also other NPCs in this bracket seem to make use of different types of bullets like electrified ones now?
Apart from NPCs, it’s also very useful in PvP encounters, as it will significantly lower the enemy’s damage output of Explosive and Incendiary Bullets, as well as the now more and more popular becoming Sticky Bomb builds.
Nevertheless, having 100% of Exotic Damage Resilience could let you think of being completely immune to certain Status Effects like Burn or Bleed, but that’s not the case. Although the incoming damage from Exotic Damage is equal to 0, the burn or slow effect when burning or bleeding is still applied.
The 3-set bonus is adding additional protection versus elites. +15% Protection From Elites makes your life in the Dark Zone and against High-Value Targets a bit easier, but doesn’t give you any benefit against hostile agents. Protection From Elites is not part of how Toughness is calculated, but definitely grants you more survivability on top of it against NPCs.
That’s basically it, as its Gear Set Talent is more or less useless, because the enemies’ AI is smart enough to dodge most of your grenades you throw at them, not to mention real players. In case you manage to land a hit, a small green icon appears below your grenades’ display, indicating how long the defuse buff lasts. In that time of around 50-60 seconds, you can basically stand in one of the red grenade circles and your SHD gear tech will automatically defuse it for you. You can then use the grenade and repeat the process as long as you want to.
Unfortunately the grenade system isn’t working correctly anymore as grenades are either not blowing up or the talent isn’t triggered when an enemy is hit. This happened to us a couple of times during our tests – a re-login fixed it.
The idea behind it is nice, but risking your life for face tanking missiles like those from the APC in Falcon Lost or the mortars in Clear Sky doesn’t really make it stronger.
Conclusion
The Final Measure Gear Set is not yet fully part of the new build meta, but is definitely being considered in certain builds and in combination with other Gear Sets like the Striker’s Battlegear or Sentry’s Call. Moreover it can be used in PvE as well as PvP scenarios, making it a good allrounder and tank and support set in the first place. However, we would not go higher and equip more than 3 items of this set, unless you want to play the team role as a Catcher, just to expose yourself for defusing a grenade.
Predator’s Mark
The Predator’s Mark Gear Set is a really good option when you are playing in a group and basically relies on range, focus and accuracy. Why so will be explained a bit later, but let’s first have a look at its set bonuses.
+20% Optimal Range is the first bonus when you equip 2 items of this set. In The Division, Range describes the
Max distance before the weapon is no longer effective.
That means that its effective damage drops after a certain distance. You will see that attribute on every weapon and while it’s very low on Shotguns and Submachine Guns (SMGs), it’s very high for Assault Rifles and Marksman Rifles. This percentage boost might grant your rifles a better damage output at a specific distance to the target, but keeping in mind that it additionally gives you +800 Assault Rifle Damage and +700 Pistol Damage for the 3-set bonus, it’s really questionable how viable it is unless you prefer to take out enemies at high range with Assault Rifles and Pistols in the end.
What really makes this set good and in some cases also outstanding is the Predator’s Mark Gear Set Talent. As long as you hit 10 shots without switching the target, the target is inflicted with the Bleed Status Effect. It really isn’t the additional damage of 100% your enemy will suffer from which makes this a really useful set, but more that your prey will not be able to move or escape anymore.
How does it work? The talent effect is not stackable and is only applied once for a time of 9-10 seconds till the next one gets applied. However you will have to hit your target again 10 times once the effect is over. When using a Shotgun, every pellet is counted as a single hit, making it almost working within 1 or 2 seconds.
Agents who already use this set might have noticed a change in the UI that is now visualizing how many bullets are needed to proc the effect. In the screenshot above you can notice a green bar right next to the gun with 7/10 bullets already hit.
Conclusion
As a solo player, just relying on its Gear Set Talent could get you in trouble because the set itself doesn’t grant you any additonal and mentionable bonuses, but in a group you can easily slow down NPCs or other agents, making it an almost inevitable, necessary and overpowered part in your team’s composition.
Lone Star
In the third place is the Lone Star Gear Set. In all honesty, we have expected a bit more from it or the originally announced weapon specific Gear Set(s). It will probably get better and find more supporters once the weapon balancing patch goes live.
Starting with the 2-set bonus of +100% Ammo Capacity, it is something like a nice-to-have for longer adventures without having to refill your ammunition or switching gear before that, but that’s it.
The reason is that the current system of how ammo is stored in your backpack does only consider the Ammo Capacity value you have when restocking. That means, that if you temporarily equip 2 pieces of the Lone Star Gear Set right before you restock, you will get the full Lone Star 2-set bonus, even if you switch your gear back to your initial setup once the refilling process is done. Having something like a Critical Hit Chance/Critical Hit Damage or Rate of Fire/Reload set bonus instead would be a lot better in overall and would help to sort out some weaknesses of the 2 aforementioned weapon archetypes.
This already brings us to the set bonus when you equip 3 items. +1,000 LMG Damage and +1,000 Shotgun Damage seems a lot at first, but in the end the overall damage increase is still too low to make those weapons work against high level NPCs and players. The Rate of Fire of LMGs is way too low, not worth to speak of their DPS at all, +/- the 1,000 damage points added with this bonus. Furthermore, if you can’t control the recoil it’s over.
Also the Shotgun’s damage boost is so so. Considering that your Shotgun has a base damage of 60k up to 100k+, +/- 1,000 damage doesn’t change a lot. Anyway, worth to notice is that the +Shotgun Damage is actually applied to every pellet.
Similar to the 2-set bonus, the Gear Set Talent of the Lone Star set is nice-to-have, but really nothing compared to previous sets from update 1.1. Sure, for some weapons the holstering (which automatically refills your magazine) plus switching back could save you some seconds in combat instead of reloading your gun, but it’s highly doubtable if you would do it all the time when it requires you to do so. Instead, just reloading your weapon with an appropriate magazine that has the Reload Speed attribute is probably the better way to go as you don’t have to sacrifice 4 item slots.
Conclusion
When you like playing with LMGs and Shotguns and primarily don’t think about efficiency, this is the set to go as it buffs the damage output of both archetypes and allows you to spend much more time roaming around than going back to a Safe House, Safe Room, or your Base of Operations. That being said, there are much better options out there to max out LMG or Shotgun builds, which necessarily don’t directly boost your weapon’s damage, but grant you much better and scaled bonuses instead.
Hunter’s Faith
Last but not least and also the set we think of that it’s the weakest one of the new Gear Sets is the Hunter’s Faith Gear Set. Despite the fact that it shows the Sentry’s Call icon in the screenshot, it is especially designed for snipers and Marksman Rifles, but doesn’t nearly come close to that what Sentry’s Call Gear Set would provide for you.
We actually made a mistake when first publishing this set and have used Critical Hit Chance instead of Critical Hit Damage. While this would be awesome, it sadly is not the case. Instead it’s +20% Marksman Rifle Critical Hit Damage. Why would you pick this bonus when Sentry’s Call gives you +30% Headshot Damage that is a guaranteed damage increase on a headshot of your full damage?
Well, why not trying a combination of both, with 2 pieces of Hunter’s Faith to get the additional Critical Hit Damage and the full Sentry’s Call set for a maxed out sniper experience? Thanks for the hint xoAXIOMox.
The 3-set bonus is the same as for the Sentry set – +20% Damage to Elites, so it’s still quite nice to have that against the new High-Value Targets and NPCs in the Dark Zone 201+ GS bracket.
Hunter’s Faith’s Gear Set Talent isn’t much better than the rest. Considering that you operate at high range, a temporary armor buff is definitely not what you need, especially when you lose it after a single bullet hits you.
Conclusion
Unless we haven’t missed something important out, you should definitely go with Sentry’s Call than this one if you like to deal lots of damage while standing far and in a safe distance away from the enemy. The new gear set lacks of damage and a useful talent and maybe will get revamped once the new weapon balancing update goes live.
Summary
Compared to the first 4 Gear Sets (except Path of the Nomad), none of the new ones seems to be perfect. While Final Measure and Predator’s Mark have some good approaches and probably will get a fix spot in the upcoming meta, the Lone Star and Hunter’s Faith Gear Set definitely need some rework and polishing in our opinion. With this update, the developers want to get as much information as possible about the player’s weapon usage to prepare the next big weapon balancing changes coming with one of the next updates.
As these are our thoughts, we would like to know what Gear Sets you are using or want to use? Comment below or post something in the related forum thread.
