Name: Blightbearer

Thinking it would be an Assault Rifle.
Rolled with Weapon Damage, Damage to Health, Damage to Targets out of Cover.
Mag Size: 50

Talent: Accumulative Injection

Dealing damage accumulates a damage pool. (Pool size is either infinite or some High-End number for a cap) Upon zooming in, switches to semi-auto fire or a charged shot and gives you Poison Ammunition. Semi-auto fire consumes (PH 10%) of the damage pool per shot fired and delivers damage as a Poison Status Effect over (PH 5) seconds. Fully charged shots consume the entire accumulated damage pool and delivers a lethal injection. 100% of the damage accumulated as a Poison Status Effect over (PH 5) seconds.

Status Effect Damage and Duration are increased with Status Effect Attribute.
Poison is a Status Effect that bypasses armor and effects Health "Directly".


The functionality of the weapon itself will be similar to Bullhorns Semi-Auto Fire mode, and Nemesis' Charged Shot. Unlike Bullhorn or the Nemesis, Blightbearer does not have any Weapon PERCENT increases because the damage it deals will be based entirely off of what the agent accumulates. In otherwords, you kill 10 enemies and for simplicity sake say they had 100 health each. You killed 10 of them, your Damage pool is at 1000 damage. Semi-auto fire will consume (X%) of the pool and deal that damage as a Poison Status Effect over (X) seconds. So say the Semi-Auto consumes 10% per shot.  And let's assume the Poison duration is the current default of 5 seconds. You would deal 100 Poison Damage over 5 seconds. (20 Damage per second for 5 seconds) Using the same factors in the Semi-Auto fire mode. The Charge shot would deal 1000 Poison Damage over 5 seconds. (200 Damage per second for 5 seconds)

Gist of this weapon is a single target Executor. This weapon would make "Health" Rolls more valuable instead of the dead stat that it currently is,
and it would give the Damage to Health roll some actual value in this Tank / Bonus Armor Sim we currently have, Heartbreaker was a nice touch but it transformed our tanks into temporary tanks with a lot of damage. 

Overall I feel as though, in regards to tank build, there should be more of a focus towards health instead of armor. But if you are going to stack
tons of armor there should be penalties, such as slower movement speeds due to the vast amount of "armor plates" you SHOULD be carrying around. Maybe with a health/armor rework on our agents we can bring back old talents, for example the old version of "Strained" back when it used to grant 10% critical hit damage for every 5% of your armor that is depleated. Or maybe the old Berserk Talent. Which was: +10% weapon damage for every 10% of max armor depleted. Ofc they would have to be reworked to fit in the current build, but that is not a decision for me to make so, 

Blightbearer. Enough said.

@jagdforce

Yeah I did basically the same as desrocchi. I obtained my Bullhorn and never touched Legendary difficulty again. HOWEVER if your interested in getting the Bullhorn, what LateNiteDelight hinted at is by far the easier option.

"Summit"

You don't need to but setting the targeted loot to AR's probably helps a bit but then just grind out a quick set of Armor, Armor Regen Foundry Bulwark gear. Grab yourself the Liberty Exotic Pistol and then play Summit.

Here's the trick though. Clear floors till you get to a boss floor on any difficulty you want, could even be on normal if you want. But the moment you get to a boss floor go back to the Summit lobby and when you access the elevator again set the difficulty to Legendary. Go in, take out like 3 enemies to get the boss to spawn, and then kill boss. Make sure to not leave the floor or kill all the enemies, JUST the boss. If the boss doesnt drop the Bullhorn rinse and repeat.

When asked, what would most people claim is the worst or rather least powerful GearSet in Division 2?

I personally thought Tip of the Spear.
To my surprise after I asked the question on a few Discord servers and to random people I met whilst playing the game in both DarkZone and FreeRoam, the GearSet that I heard most often was the Ongoing Directive Set.

Now I personally love the OD set. Always a fan Damage over Time effects in every game where it can reasonably be built in. So making a
4 - Piece OD build with the Vile mask, Contractors Gloves, and Pestilence as the weapon of choice has been quite enjoyable. HOWEVER,
now thinking on the subject, I can see why the Ongoing Directive Set was the most common answer for people.

Ongoing Directive as most if not all of you know is as follows:
2+ Pieces
  +15% Status Effects
3+ Pieces
  +30% Reload Speed
4+ Pieces
 Rules of Engagment
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 20% and applies bleed on hit.

The Chestpiece Talent: Parabellum Rounds - Increases Hollow-Point ammo damage to 35%.
The Backpack Talent: Trauma Specialist - Increases the duration of your bleed status effects by 50% and all bleed damage done by 100%.

So the set sounds nice and it is in my personal opinion however it is actually weaker than the other sets. First up is how it has a prerequisite right off the bat where you need to specifically kill an enemy that is already afflicted with a Status Effect. If your soloing this is a non-issue 99% of the time. Add a team of random people and the chances you in particular land the killing blow on a specific target that is suffering from a Status Effect is even lower. So before the set can even show any of its magic you need to use either a weapon with an Affliction Talent such as the Sadist talent get kills and trigger its effect, use a grenade that causes a status effect, shoot certain weakpoints if the enemy has one, shoot something in the environment, or use a skill that applies some kind of Status Effect. You could also use the Chestpiece Talent Trauma, but that's another can of worms with its absurd Cooldown issues. Finally on the other hand you can just the shotgun Scorpio, quick and easy Status Effects. But then again your using Scorpio, which to me personally defeats the purpose of having a GearSet that can apply Damage over Time effects if you can't use Pestilence in tandem with it.
So that's first issue with the set and predominantly the main issue if your in a group. The Second issue is the damage on the set. Third is the Bleed
tick value.
Let's start with the 20% weapon damage boost. Let's compare sets for a minute. A detailed breakdown will be at the very end of the post. These here however will simply
be the numbers.

Striker: Up to 65% Weapon damage.
Heartbreaker: Up to 100% Weapon damage and 200% bonus armor.
Aces & Eights: Up to 50% Weapon damage.
Tip of the Spear: Up to 40% Weapon Damage with a 20% bonus to Signature Weapon damage.
Negotiators Dilemma: Bit tricky since there is no actual boost in damage but you can think of it as being 3 to 5 FOLD damage. Kinda.
Hunter's Fury: Up to 55% Weapon damage.
Future Initiative: Up to 25% Weapon damage. But can reach up 70% Weapon damage.
------------------
Eclipse Protocol \ 
Rigger             |- Can reach up to 45% Weapon damage. (If your confused find this below in the breakdown)
Hard Wired       / 
------------------
And then everything here can be boosted by Memento but that's not the point.

SO. Damage-wise it makes sense that Ongoing Directive is considered the worst or the least used. Guess I'm just wierd for liking it, but now with the
numbers depicting the pecking order for the GearSets out of the way we can move on to MORE numbers. Namely the Bleed damage which is the "magic" of the Ongoing Directive GearSet. Turns out there IS a formula for this, which is: Bleed Damage = 29,863 * (1 + % Status Effects) 
Where this base damage value of 29,863 came from... you tell me. But that is the base damage per second for the Bleeding Status Effect.
Now assuming you have a OD build specifically for the Bleed you would more than likely have Status Effects rolled on each piece of gear. So the formula would look something like so: Bleed Damage = 29,863 * (1 + 65% Status Effects)
The answer being 49,273.95 Bleed damage per second for 10 seconds. Earlier it was mentioned that the third issue is the Bleed Tick value, that is because for some reason the Ongoing Directive Bleed only lasts for 9 seconds. And if you add the backpack on for the "Trauma Specialist" talent which should increase the duration by 50%, you get a 12 second bleed. Either way though. A 10 second Bleed + 50% should be 15 seconds. OR a 9 second Bleed + 50% should be 13.5, also the backpack claims to increase all Bleed damage done by 100%. If you follow the formula you SHOULD get 104,520.5 Bleed damage per Second. But what you actually get is 82,123 Bleed damage per Second. So it's not correct on both accounts unless the targets in the firing range have innate bleed resistance...
Overall the bleed is on the low side and it isn't being calculated correctly at present. Which now, I think, solidifies the reasons why Ongoing Directive
is the worst or least used GearSet. So onto what this whole post is even about, fixing Ongoing Directive so that it can be a contender against other GearSets.
I've thought of a few ways Ongoing Directive could be tweaked to bring it back some of its magic. So, I'm not sure how many people remember BUT the original Ongoing Directive GearSet used to be 6 - piece, and had the following stats:
2+ Pieces
 +20.0% Weapon Handling
3+ Pieces
 25% Burn Damage
4+ Pieces
 25% Bleed Damage
5+ Pieces
 Emergency Requisition: Combat resources (armor kits, armor, grenades) within 40 meters of you are automatically collected. This occurs every 30 seconds.
6+ Pieces
 The Right Tool..: Killing an enemy with a weapon grants some special ammo (incendiary, explosive, shock) to one of your other weapons.

With the changes to the core system a lot of these stats are not really viable on OD now but as you can see it had increased Fire damage and it had multiple ammo types so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to re-incorporate them would it? But what I suggest for Version ONE of my OD reworks is such,
Version ONE:
4+ Pieces
 The Right Tools for Engagement
 Killing a status afflicted enemy grants an ammo buff for your active weapon. (Functionally like True Patriot)
 For 10 seconds this buff will cycle though 4 ammo types (Explosive, Incendiary, Poison, Shock) until the 10 seconds expire or the target is afflicted with all 4 effects. All Status Effects afflicting the target are then removed, dealing the accumulative damage they would have caused over their durations in a single instance. If the target dies from the burst a random special ammo is given to the active weapon.
(Exactly how Hollow-Point ammo currently functions)
Chestpiece: 50% chance for Status Effects to be transferred to another target within 20 meters upon burst.
Backpack: If a target dies with a Status Effect afflicting them a random special ammo is also given to the active weapon and all party members within 25 meters.

Version TWO:
4+ Pieces
 Lethal Engagement
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 20% and applies bleed on hit. Bleed can Critical Hit and every time it crits the severity of the bleed increases. Bleed duration is reduced the higher the severity. However each critical bullet on target refreshes the bleed duration. (Bleed damage doubles each time the bleed tick Crits)
Chestpiece: Increases the tick rate of the bleeding by half. (Bleed every 0.5 seconds instead of every 1 second.)
Backpack: Damaging a Bleeding enemy causes them to lose 50% Bleed Resistance for 5 seconds. (Effect cooldown 10 Seconds)

Version THREE:
4+ Pieces
 Organic Bypass
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 15% and applies bleed on hit. Bleed damage can crit and BYPASSES ARMOR.
Chestpiece: Increases Hollow-Point ammo's penetrative power, causing enemies hit to lose Bleed resistance by 2% for 5 seconds. Stacks 20 times.
Backpack: Bleed Crits increase the duration of your bleeds by 50% and all bleed damage done is increased by 100%.

Each version has their own quirks, each still have the prerequisite of needing to kill a status afflicted enemy first before the set can work its magic.
I'd like to remind everyone reading Version Two however that the base effect is not bullet crits from you, its the bleed itself. Which is one tick per second unless you get the Chestpiece of course. So its not as fast as you might initially think.
Also one more thing that should really be implemented. This is specifically for the Darkzone or Conflict. If I hit someone with ANY DoT be it Bleed, Burn, Poison, etc. if I go down the effects should stay on the targets for their remaining durations as long as I don't revive into a checkpoint or respawn. I have noticed that the moment you go down all Status Effect durations magically drop to ZERO and the targets you shot are free from anymore damage. Which I would like to point out, Bleeding is pretty much the WHOLE POINT of the current Ongoing Directive GearSet.

So, thank you for reading this absurdly long novel. Your time and thoughts are appreciated.


******
Under this line is the breakdown of the above mentioned damage numbers for the GearSets.
******

Striker: Prerequisite is shooting enemies. Stacks up to 25% weapon damage. But if you use both the Chest and Backpack for striker you can bump that all the way up to a maximum of 65% Weapon damage. Otherwise its 32.5% with just the backpack. Or 50% with just the Chespiece.

Heartbreaker: Prerequisite is shooting pulsed enemies. Stacks up to 50% to BOTH weapon damage and bonus armor. If you use both Chest and Backpack that bumps up to 100% Weapon Damage and 200% bonus armor.  Otherwise its 100% weapon damage and 50% bonus armor with just the Chest or 50% weapon damage and 100% bonus armor with just the backpack.

Aces & Eights: Prerequisite is shooting enemies with a Marksman Rifle to flip 5 Cards. Flip 2 cards with a Headshot. So at base you need a minimum of 2 headshots and one body shot to flip the 5 required cards. Once all 5 are flipped you have a 30% Damage boost for (X) number of shots. Based on your hand of cards. 4 of a kind - 4 shots, Full House - 3 shots, Aces & Eights - 2 shots.
So I hate to say this but the backpack on the Aces & Eights set is kind of Irrelevant in comparison to almost ANY other backpack talent. So ignoring that,if you have the Chest the damage bonus increases to 50%.

Tip of the Spear: Prerequisite is just dealing damage with your signature weapon and you gain 20% weapon damage for a minute. Sig ammo is auto generated per minute. But if you have both the Chest and Backpack that bumps up to 40% weapon damage with an additional 20% damage to your Sig Weapon and double the Sig Ammo generation. Otherwise its 40% weapon damage with just the Chest or 20% weapon damage but double sig ammo generation and 20% more Sig weapon damage with just the backpack.

Negotiator's Dilemma: Prerequisite is just hitting enemies with Critical hits. So most of the time you have a 60% chance to trigger this set per bullet.
ND actually doesn't have any Weapon damage however damage is spread to all 3 targets you have critically hit in tandem at 50% value. Killing a critically hit enemy however adds a stack of 2% Critical hit damage up to 20 stacks. Which are lost when out of combat.
Using both Chest and Backpack you get 5 targets instead of 3 and you deal your full 100% damage on each target instead of 50%. Otherwise the chest only gives you the 2 extra targets and the backpack only gives you the full 100% damage spread on 3 targets.

Hunter's Fury: Prerequisite is killing enemies within 15 meters. 20% weapon damage but if you kill within that 15 meters you gain an additional 5% weapon damage per kill stacking up 5 times for 10 seconds. So as long as you are within range and there are plenty of enemies you basically have 55% weapon damage. The Chest and Backpack don't add damage but make it easier to maintain the damage. 

Now this last part is easy. Eclipse Protocol, Rigger, Future Initiative, Hard Wired. Let's face it. You are more than likely using the Exotic AR
Capacitor which will stack your weapon damage up to 45% OR you'll use the Test Subject AR which will give you 40% weapon damage. Or the non perfect In-Sync Talent which will give you 30% weapon damage. Future Initiative being the outlier being able to grant you an additional 25% on top. Enough said.

I wont talk about Foundry Bulwark, True Patriot, or System Corruption in depth because they are too far out of the scope of the tests. But what I will say about True Patriot is that it is more in tune with sustainability than damage potential and System Corruption is only a very short BURST of damage potential but primarily it is heavily defensive. Foundry Bulwark is purely Defensive.

@suschunga
you never know, maybe for once there might be a revolutionary new idea and it solves all the issues. ALL OF THEM.

@crash-todesktop
Hmm, Tom seems to have struck a nerve. Good.

Well if you want to say its too weak now, thats fine with me. Give it a buff, triple the damage status damage, though you don't really need it. What you seem to forget even though you said it yourself. People might just go pure Status Effects for their gear rolls. So here is my delusion. 854,081 damage. Just from the 65% Status Effects alone, assuming you have a perfect build. If they allow the effects to crit, factor in that if not then so be it. Add chestpiece, your required to get all four status effects to trigger the PoP in the first place so its a guaranteed coin flip on burst to go to another target and burst again, and again, and again. Guess what? Let's say your lucky today. Your coin flip lands true 10 times in a row. Now you're looking at 8,540,810 damage. What if you're facing only two enemies. 4,270,405 damage dealt respectively to the two targets. To top it all off. Who told you to stop shooting after you afflicted all 4 Status Effects? Go ahead tack on your Eagle Bearers 680K damage 7 or 8 times a second. What we have been talking about has always been a rework of the Ongoing Directive build. Not a weapon. Your bullets and the non-resistant bullet damage they do that your so fond of still apply. And for good measure lets assume they make it so special ammo is given on anyone's kill, like I said we can change the backpack to yours and boost the damage dealt by 25% per status. Congratulations you have turned a somewhat balanced suggestion into a monster, and that's fine by me. It would be more fun this way. What number you think would happen if you weren't using your fancy Eagle Bearer and instead used Pestilence, and for good measure throw on the Vile mask as well. Somewhere around 800k a second with Pest, 850K with the Pop(Minimum), whatever natural "non-bullet resisted" damage Pest would do by itself. And Vile doing around another 700 or 800k in total on top of that. Sounds pretty good to me, and all this is without your backpack suggestion...

I thank you Crash. ToDesktop. You have been most helpful in flushing out the specifics of the damage and functionality. Your efforts are appreciated.

@crash-todesktop

500K damage isnt all that bad at all. Have you seen the enemies and builds that exist? Besides PvP-wise it would be nerfed anyways just look at Scorpio in PvP, or even just look at ANY of the skills. I'm sure you have seen the "PvP damage values" versus the FreeRoam numbers. Devs would just have to take the Scorpio approach to the set just like they have done for basically everything in the game already. And in PvE I think you underestimate that 500K. Let me ask you, would you say Pestilence is a good gun? OFC you would. You can make a 4 piece True Patriot build with Memento, and Contractors gloves. All 4 TP pieces being Armor rolled and the gloves rolled for weapon damage. You'll have like what, almost 2 Million armor and Pestilence at full stacks dealing over 1 Million per second. That 1 Million+ already out performs the 500K every 4 seconds that OD would do with Version 1. However in that 500K a portion of it was poison, so the health bar of the enemy behind the armor is slowly corroding away so once you finally break the armor there is less work for you to do in order to drop them the rest of the way. Or if you were able to PoP the effect enough times to flat out kill the target just before you shatter the armor. There is also always the option of afflicting targets and then targeting someone else. So the dots could soften them up some if for example they ran and hid before you could take them out.

And your right, real life examples, dear me what am I thinking. A game based on the gritty reality of an agents life after a virus caused a pandemic. I forgot that means that those lucky few of us that weren't affected by the virus had our bodies incontrovertibly altered to have ironskin and bleeding metal. Sorry I missed that piece of Lore, where is it in game I must have passed it by. Joking aside, no it wouldn't justify all other effects to bypass. Fire does indeed burn metal eventually, also with fire unless our agents aren't wearing any clothes it does indeed have something to burn. Human flesh isn't all that flammable by itself. Poison already bypasses but depending on toxicity it could corrode metal and cloth so Bleed and Poison could be flipped around. Shock, well metal would conduct that, so shock could very well be a detriment to the agent. That's a good idea Crash, thanks for suggesting it the more ARMOR we have the more damage and the longer the duration should be for Shock. Though I will say I have never seen the Poison effect actually causing a stun effect. I know the High-Velocity rounds do that and disorient and disruption effects do the same kinda. But never poison.
As for your issue with bleed bypassing, the whole point is to make the targets easier to kill, it doesn't matter if you don't flat out kill them before you shred the armor, it just that once you do break the armor the bleed damage was a supplement and you only require one more bullet instead of 10, or even ZERO more bullets because the armors is gone and the other 3 status effects converge on the rest of the health.

Still didn't say anything about making it harder to use. The only comment I made was "because it functions the way it does, it would be nice if there was more oomphf behind it basically." I'm all for if you want to make it just any target with a status effect that dies grants or drops special ammo. Would just make the set even easier to use, and again I'll say it again, I am all for it, BUT that would simply mean you wouldn't need the backpack anymore. The backpack literally grants you special ammo no matter who kills a target. So functionally its an upgrade to the current OD set as it already is, the only difference is you need to get a kill to have the rotation. Thinking Countdown, since you brought it up. Someone will trigger a status if not you, I'm sure there are a ton of riotfoam users, because I have seen them in almost every match. So functionally even if you didn't get the kill you would already have the effect of the current OD build already going. So for the most part it is balanced, but sure, we can change the backpack talent to something else if the base set just gave out special ammo like candy. You know what in honor of you I'll even take yours, how does that sound. IF they make it so any death of a Status afflicted enemy drops special ammo of a kind then the backpack can be a 25% damage amp per status affliction. I'm down for that.

Look, with everything you described for your version, which I am perfectly fine with BTW, the way you are describing it and the way your fighting the versions I spitballed out on the table it sounds as though we should just remove all Status effects from the game in general. Change the OD build to when you shoot a target it is MARKed killing marked target gives you damage. That is what everything you have been saying boils down to, in which case just play a different GearSet or create a completely different GearSet then. Basically put a Memento on top of Memento and add a Memento. But as it stands OD is niche because it does something no other GearSet does in the game, whats so bad about being different?

Now, I'd say we are both to blame in the battle for reading comprehension so I'll stop that there. And why I posted about vile mask, is simply that. I'd love your build "IF" toxic delivery was treated as a status effect, or at least something that would trigger that additional 25% damage PER status. It's a solo thing, I'm sure you wouldn't understand.

And Finally, I get it. Your the type that gets offended if I were to just casually drop the line "No offense BUT," So in the GREAT words of Tom McDonald, *you probably watched SouthPark while growing up, so why are you offended?

*Worded slightly differently to fit the sentence.

@crash-todesktop
Such hostility, when did I ever say I hated gun dps builds. I'm not forcing OD into a niche position because it is already in a niche position. And your right 700K is a nice chunk but you seem to think its a constant effect and it would actually be that full value. Remember the ammo would cycle between the 4 ammo types so thats at least 4 of the 10 seconds. Leaving 6 seconds left on the Bleed duration, 7 for the burn, 4 for the Poison and as you have said each enemy has different HZD protection amounts. That in turn reduces the duration of the effects as well and thats on ALL effects not just one of them. So the example I gave earlier is the ideal perfect scenario with Zero Hazard Protections, which will never happen. So still assuming Zero Hazard Protection at best it would be 517,625 damage per POP. Slap on your Hazard Protection and its going under 500K. To top it off you seem to only want builds that are instant, damage up front no exception. The Chest and Back for this set is utility to help spread and being able to maintain the effects which is the whole point of it to begin with.
Im also not trying to remake Predmark since it didnt do anything until you landed 10 shots on a single target so even the current OD is better since the bleed is already triggered. And to be fair chungus's have resistance to bullets lol. Since you need to break the armor first.

So, why is bypassing armor weird? Poison already does it, and Blood is organic, unless you live in some other world where you can somehow make metal bleed it would make sense that bleeding should deal damage DIRECTLY to the hp bar instead of forcing to go through metal chunks of armor first. Poison honestly should have an innate effect to corrode armor. Or make armor more brittle to destroy it faster. And as for reducing the resistances, there is a reason why there is a duration on the effect and not a static one time value. If there wasnt a duration then yes the issue you described would be a factor.
So, who said anything about making things harder for PvP? All three versions I suggested have the same prereq as the current OD. So whats harder?
As for where that one line came from, well directly from your fingers. You literally typed that the gun was supposed to do the damage.
If the dev team wants to make it easier as well, then good lol. That's fine by me, the only issue is if it is TOO easy like all other sets where just hitting the enemy is the prereq, then having more power wont balance out. Unless ofc this new dev team will revamp EVERYTHING and make basic hits a new standard.
And yeah Im well aware that vile and pest arent Status effects.

And like I said I like your suggestion as much as you seem to think I dont, I can see the value of your version and EP collaboration. Sadly as I have mentioned I do solo the most so I doubt Ill ever see the true collaboration of the two sets were it to be implemented.

@suschunga
you never know, maybe for once there might be a revolutionary new idea and it solves all the issues. ALL OF THEM.

@rashbak101

So im just going to ask your opinion then, since you dont want obvious comments.

What step should development take then for the Darkzone? You have zero interest in Pvp but your pay to win, sorry your pay to skip time on upgrades and expertise levels makes it so those who dont pay are at an absolute disadvantage to those with deep pockets. Sure they will eventually get there but those with deep pockets have already been there and enjoyed plenty of time beating up on the little poor people. Which may or may not drive people away from the game since they are completely out matched.

If its any conciliation I also feel as though it is still too long of a grind but thats what the devs made and it was probably by design to give people things to do so they could have time to develop stuff without completely losing their playerbase.

@crash-todesktop

Yeah, I wasnt bringing other talents into the mix with the calculations. ONLY the number value. So thanks for doing the math for additive/multiplicative for me. Number-wise is what I posted above anyway, just adding both chest and backpack pieces effects together for the largest number possible is all I did for the math, whether it was additive or multiplicative wasn't my agenda. Just wanted the number.

And I actually DON'T want to make a "gun-DPS" OD build. There is literally ZERO variety in the style of builds. It's either bullets or skills. Whereas I personally have the absolute most fun playing with DoT's. AKA Pestilence, Bleed, and Vile. OD build. Almost the sole reason why I like it so much is that it is INCREDIBLY unique to all other builds in the game since the damage done doesn't require you to be actively facing a target. Just use cover shoot them a few times, when they shoot back you duck down and hide while they are still taking damage. Furthermore when they duck down into cover they are also STILL taking damage. I dislike skill builds in Division 2 simply because all the "NEW" content that comes out, brings a form of EMP so "skills" one of the main draws of Division, and what makes agents unique are nullified completely. Example, the Hunters in Countdown and any and all Hunters for that matter. Roosevelt Island mission that was reworked when the emp sticky was released. Skill builds are nice but they are blocked too easily. So the only real build outside those bounds that is unique is Ongoing Directive and bleeding.

As for the prereq that you have an issue with, yeah, I have an issue with it too but what are the odds that it will be reworked into something easier to trigger and still have the same result? With all of them once it starts and you get that prereq it becomes perpetual. The current version of OD that everyone seems to dislike is really weak since people either build for resists or if in a group they end up killing your target before you get the last hit to replenish your ammo. So what I specifically did was to make them stronger or at least strong enough to be able to increase the likelihood of hitting that last shot on an enemy.
The first version however should have ZERO issues with maintaining the effects after you start it. It was designed for that purpose and then a little boost for teamplay since all targets should be afflicted, with the backpack equipped you get a special ammo regardless as long as the target is killed when it was afflicted. So teammates... have at it. Also its a lot less restrictive than you think. Just don't stop shooting, get the 4 procs, POP, get another 4 proc, POP again. Each POP, assuming the Chestpiece is equipped, 50% chance of transferring the 4 procs to a target within 20 meters. Well... what happens if the target gets all 4 procs? POP! If you do the math, yeah yeah, argue about my math later, but if you do the math thats Bleed, Burn, Poison, Shock. I haven't done the numbers for shock but the other three, base values with ZERO Status Effects rolled on gear would be an accumulated 298,630 Bleed (10 seconds worth), 331,810 Burn (10 seconds worth), and 132,725 Poison (5 seconds worth). Adding all those together you end up dealing 763,165 damage every... POP. Some of that obviously being Poison and going through directly to the Health bypassing the armor. Yes it is single target and that is slightly restrictive but now imagine getting lucky with that 50% transfer from the Chestpiece. Do you hear the Rice Krispies yet my friend? But your right it is unrelated to Hollow Point ammo, and thats because it is an ammo buff not ammo itself, functioning like True Patriot.

Versions 2 and 3 however I dumbed down on the effects keeping them strictly to bleed to keep it more inline with the current version. Both versions the amplified weapon damage was reduced to compensate for the extra damage you would get from the bleed. With the introduction of crits the bleeds actually have more value which is directly related to the Crit chance and crit damage roles on your gear. Which need I remind on how that is a CHOICE to build then instead of the only option. AKA you have 4 pieces of OD thats a main stat and "ONE" other stat. So crit chance, crit damage, or status effects. With the introduction of Crits the set possibilities expand and since you can only take up one of those options on those pieces specifically...
Version 2 though is a bit interesting though, I have been talking about criticals for the bleed but one fact remains that the bleed can only crit once every second and it only has a 60% chance at that assuming your agent has a 60% crit chance. So I can see a lot more SMG builds in the future if this were to be a considered rework. But the interesting part of version 2 is that with the Chestpiece that tick rate is faster. So not only is it double the damage per second that damage can be boosted if your within the backpack talents cooldown time frame. It also makes resistance builds actually manageable in darkzone, by ACTUALLY making them less powerful and able to actually afflict them with a status instead of complete immunity.
As for Version 3, its for the most part the same as the original OD except the bleed damage scales for a limited amount of time and since Bleeding is an "Organic" function in the first place, it just doesn't have to deal with armor. Your bullets obviously still have to go through armor which is what makes this build probably the most reasonable version, since its only the one instance of bleed damage per second that attacks the health directly. Your bullets still need to chew through the armor. Combining this with an AR and a hollow man mask could potentially be a way to kill something without having to go through that stupid 2 million armor wall. Considering the Expertise system giving everyone a massive boost to armor once they get far enough into it... Pretty sure this is kind of thing is needed.

Overall the only real issue with the killing a status afflicted enemy to start using the set is in Conflict since you need to drop an afflicted player first. When I first thought of my OD, Pest, Vile build the day Vile was released this was the first thing I tried in Conflict. Yes it was a HUGE pain to get the ball rolling since I needed that first affliction kill, which was part of the skill required to use the build. Once I had it though... had the time of my life till people started bringing in nothing but resistance builds. Point is though, the prereq for killing a status'd, isn't really that bad. The reward should just justify the requirement a bit more since it isn't an instant gratification like all the other GearSets.

Anyway, you were right V2 and 3 were indeed leaning more into the bleed and that was my point. Shoehorning in more bleed actually WOULD make them better since it is more damage. All that matter is the application on how your using it, and it doesn't have to be Predator Mark 2.0 but the point of Versions 2 and 3 were indeed to take away a bit from the gun itself. What is wrong with that? It will be unique in comparison to the dry grittiness of all the other builds and its not like guns are the end all be all. "your gun is suppose to do the work" There is at least one person on that dev team that disagrees. If the gun is supposed to do all the work, skills wouldn't exist, much less the Vile mask. Vile for sure wouldn't exist if guns were to be the only method. Not to say your making gun damage an exclusive point I get that but variety used to be in the game and with this new Dev team why not again? Also. Status' doing damage would not make it a worse Eclipse Protocol lol. Your forgetting that EP's functionality is the spread of effects, which to be honest isn't really that effective either. EP needs a few more meters.

In any event though, I'd be down for your version as long as you also consider the Vile mask as a status effect. 99.9% of the time I am soloing anyway and that clearly shows in my design choices for weapons and sets, I'm not blind to that but then again I have the most fun when I solo. Its that sense of power that every game tries to give the player and what makes them want to keep coming back to the game. Currently thats the OD build for me even though it is weak. DoTs are my bread and butter and PvE should be fun not outrageously restricted and limiting for players. Need only look at Heartbreaker for an example of this, though I agree with the damage type change, prior to it the build was freeing and not subjected to limits. I haven't looked but I'd bet the player count skyrocketed before the damage change and then probably cut in half after it. Anyways, point is to have fun, and fun is Version One. Enough said lol.

Sorry if it sounded like I was bashing you @crash-todesktop. Division 2 is fun, I just wish for more fun and variety. Maybe augment performance mods that have their own talents. Since you only get three...

Yeah... I miss the old system. Where talents were restricted to the number of core or minor attributes you had. It actually balanced out the game and these "RAINBOW" rolls for gear actually would have made sense since the purpose would have been to get gear based on the attribute just to unlock specific talents. Now if only we could use the good ol' Diablo version of GearSets though. Where each piece of the set BOOSTS the set values instead of collect 4 pieces and DONE!

@xcel30

Fairly certain the base value for all sources of status effects are actually different. Considering the Formulas are such:
Bleed Damage = 29,863 * (1 + % Status Effects)             
Burn Damage = 33181 * (1 + % Status Effects)               
Poison Damage = 26545 * (1 + % Status Effects) 

And the fact that the base values come from World level/World Tier which arent exactly a thing anymore in Division 2 is kinda... depressing? IDK. I feel as though this new Dev team jsut really needs to update things. Damage-Tick-wise all the status effects are really weak. I know they nerfed it once or twice due to people commenting on how broken the chem launcher was but seriously just nerf the chem launcher not the effect itself.
And as far as I know Bleed no longer drops movement speeds. I don't really see any lack of speed on players and I definitely don't see a lack of speed on npc enemies, they don't give two squats at all about bleed.

As for that Predators Mark set. I found it fun for the most part however the insane damage you talk about only really happens if you were a dedicated sniper and didnt decide to target anyone else. So the damage was absolutely warranted, if a player lets themselves get tagged 10 times by a sniper without the sniper shooting anything else... its kinda deserved.

And honestly I'd be down for almost any rework on OD, as much as I like it as it is now, it is really weak in comparison. But I think if we go with the explosion route on your set, the issue would be the size of the Explosion. Almost 100% of the time in Division 2, enemies just aren't bunched up in one spot. Any explosion to be of any worth would need to be much larger. Take grenades for example, and specifically the Mad Bomber Talent. It allows you to cook your nades, sure, but the radius is only increased by 50%. Well let's take the normal concussion grenade for example. Doesn't is only have a 3 meter radius? +50% puts it at 4.5 meters. Enemies react far to fast to a surprise grenade and they all usually run out of the radius LONG before it detonates which I guess is why Mad Bomber has the Cooking feature but... who in their right mind would use up a talent slot for that specifically?

Anyways back on track if OD were to get something with Explosions the Dev team will just have to not be afraid to give it a decent radius. Everything that has been AOE, or Status has been SOOOO heavily curated and neutered. We need only look as far as the Merciless Exotic for a lot of this honestly. Its the only Exotic that requires 50% of its up time and ZERO missed shots just to trigger the only effect it has, which since it is an explosion... it doesnt really do anything anyways. It's an easy fix too, the gun can stay the way it is for the most part. Just drop the Stacks required from 7 to 2 or 3. Being required to shoot 15 shots with ZERO shots missed is a bit overkill.
Okay enough ranting about non Ongoing Directive things.

When asked, what would most people claim is the worst or rather least powerful GearSet in Division 2?

I personally thought Tip of the Spear.
To my surprise after I asked the question on a few Discord servers and to random people I met whilst playing the game in both DarkZone and FreeRoam, the GearSet that I heard most often was the Ongoing Directive Set.

Now I personally love the OD set. Always a fan Damage over Time effects in every game where it can reasonably be built in. So making a
4 - Piece OD build with the Vile mask, Contractors Gloves, and Pestilence as the weapon of choice has been quite enjoyable. HOWEVER,
now thinking on the subject, I can see why the Ongoing Directive Set was the most common answer for people.

Ongoing Directive as most if not all of you know is as follows:
2+ Pieces
  +15% Status Effects
3+ Pieces
  +30% Reload Speed
4+ Pieces
 Rules of Engagment
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 20% and applies bleed on hit.

The Chestpiece Talent: Parabellum Rounds - Increases Hollow-Point ammo damage to 35%.
The Backpack Talent: Trauma Specialist - Increases the duration of your bleed status effects by 50% and all bleed damage done by 100%.

So the set sounds nice and it is in my personal opinion however it is actually weaker than the other sets. First up is how it has a prerequisite right off the bat where you need to specifically kill an enemy that is already afflicted with a Status Effect. If your soloing this is a non-issue 99% of the time. Add a team of random people and the chances you in particular land the killing blow on a specific target that is suffering from a Status Effect is even lower. So before the set can even show any of its magic you need to use either a weapon with an Affliction Talent such as the Sadist talent get kills and trigger its effect, use a grenade that causes a status effect, shoot certain weakpoints if the enemy has one, shoot something in the environment, or use a skill that applies some kind of Status Effect. You could also use the Chestpiece Talent Trauma, but that's another can of worms with its absurd Cooldown issues. Finally on the other hand you can just the shotgun Scorpio, quick and easy Status Effects. But then again your using Scorpio, which to me personally defeats the purpose of having a GearSet that can apply Damage over Time effects if you can't use Pestilence in tandem with it.
So that's first issue with the set and predominantly the main issue if your in a group. The Second issue is the damage on the set. Third is the Bleed
tick value.
Let's start with the 20% weapon damage boost. Let's compare sets for a minute. A detailed breakdown will be at the very end of the post. These here however will simply
be the numbers.

Striker: Up to 65% Weapon damage.
Heartbreaker: Up to 100% Weapon damage and 200% bonus armor.
Aces & Eights: Up to 50% Weapon damage.
Tip of the Spear: Up to 40% Weapon Damage with a 20% bonus to Signature Weapon damage.
Negotiators Dilemma: Bit tricky since there is no actual boost in damage but you can think of it as being 3 to 5 FOLD damage. Kinda.
Hunter's Fury: Up to 55% Weapon damage.
Future Initiative: Up to 25% Weapon damage. But can reach up 70% Weapon damage.
------------------
Eclipse Protocol \ 
Rigger             |- Can reach up to 45% Weapon damage. (If your confused find this below in the breakdown)
Hard Wired       / 
------------------
And then everything here can be boosted by Memento but that's not the point.

SO. Damage-wise it makes sense that Ongoing Directive is considered the worst or the least used. Guess I'm just wierd for liking it, but now with the
numbers depicting the pecking order for the GearSets out of the way we can move on to MORE numbers. Namely the Bleed damage which is the "magic" of the Ongoing Directive GearSet. Turns out there IS a formula for this, which is: Bleed Damage = 29,863 * (1 + % Status Effects) 
Where this base damage value of 29,863 came from... you tell me. But that is the base damage per second for the Bleeding Status Effect.
Now assuming you have a OD build specifically for the Bleed you would more than likely have Status Effects rolled on each piece of gear. So the formula would look something like so: Bleed Damage = 29,863 * (1 + 65% Status Effects)
The answer being 49,273.95 Bleed damage per second for 10 seconds. Earlier it was mentioned that the third issue is the Bleed Tick value, that is because for some reason the Ongoing Directive Bleed only lasts for 9 seconds. And if you add the backpack on for the "Trauma Specialist" talent which should increase the duration by 50%, you get a 12 second bleed. Either way though. A 10 second Bleed + 50% should be 15 seconds. OR a 9 second Bleed + 50% should be 13.5, also the backpack claims to increase all Bleed damage done by 100%. If you follow the formula you SHOULD get 104,520.5 Bleed damage per Second. But what you actually get is 82,123 Bleed damage per Second. So it's not correct on both accounts unless the targets in the firing range have innate bleed resistance...
Overall the bleed is on the low side and it isn't being calculated correctly at present. Which now, I think, solidifies the reasons why Ongoing Directive
is the worst or least used GearSet. So onto what this whole post is even about, fixing Ongoing Directive so that it can be a contender against other GearSets.
I've thought of a few ways Ongoing Directive could be tweaked to bring it back some of its magic. So, I'm not sure how many people remember BUT the original Ongoing Directive GearSet used to be 6 - piece, and had the following stats:
2+ Pieces
 +20.0% Weapon Handling
3+ Pieces
 25% Burn Damage
4+ Pieces
 25% Bleed Damage
5+ Pieces
 Emergency Requisition: Combat resources (armor kits, armor, grenades) within 40 meters of you are automatically collected. This occurs every 30 seconds.
6+ Pieces
 The Right Tool..: Killing an enemy with a weapon grants some special ammo (incendiary, explosive, shock) to one of your other weapons.

With the changes to the core system a lot of these stats are not really viable on OD now but as you can see it had increased Fire damage and it had multiple ammo types so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to re-incorporate them would it? But what I suggest for Version ONE of my OD reworks is such,
Version ONE:
4+ Pieces
 The Right Tools for Engagement
 Killing a status afflicted enemy grants an ammo buff for your active weapon. (Functionally like True Patriot)
 For 10 seconds this buff will cycle though 4 ammo types (Explosive, Incendiary, Poison, Shock) until the 10 seconds expire or the target is afflicted with all 4 effects. All Status Effects afflicting the target are then removed, dealing the accumulative damage they would have caused over their durations in a single instance. If the target dies from the burst a random special ammo is given to the active weapon.
(Exactly how Hollow-Point ammo currently functions)
Chestpiece: 50% chance for Status Effects to be transferred to another target within 20 meters upon burst.
Backpack: If a target dies with a Status Effect afflicting them a random special ammo is also given to the active weapon and all party members within 25 meters.

Version TWO:
4+ Pieces
 Lethal Engagement
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 20% and applies bleed on hit. Bleed can Critical Hit and every time it crits the severity of the bleed increases. Bleed duration is reduced the higher the severity. However each critical bullet on target refreshes the bleed duration. (Bleed damage doubles each time the bleed tick Crits)
Chestpiece: Increases the tick rate of the bleeding by half. (Bleed every 0.5 seconds instead of every 1 second.)
Backpack: Damaging a Bleeding enemy causes them to lose 50% Bleed Resistance for 5 seconds. (Effect cooldown 10 Seconds)

Version THREE:
4+ Pieces
 Organic Bypass
 Killing a status affected enemy granted Hollow-Point Ammo for your active weapon.
 Hollow-Point Ammo amplifies weapon damage by 15% and applies bleed on hit. Bleed damage can crit and BYPASSES ARMOR.
Chestpiece: Increases Hollow-Point ammo's penetrative power, causing enemies hit to lose Bleed resistance by 2% for 5 seconds. Stacks 20 times.
Backpack: Bleed Crits increase the duration of your bleeds by 50% and all bleed damage done is increased by 100%.

Each version has their own quirks, each still have the prerequisite of needing to kill a status afflicted enemy first before the set can work its magic.
I'd like to remind everyone reading Version Two however that the base effect is not bullet crits from you, its the bleed itself. Which is one tick per second unless you get the Chestpiece of course. So its not as fast as you might initially think.
Also one more thing that should really be implemented. This is specifically for the Darkzone or Conflict. If I hit someone with ANY DoT be it Bleed, Burn, Poison, etc. if I go down the effects should stay on the targets for their remaining durations as long as I don't revive into a checkpoint or respawn. I have noticed that the moment you go down all Status Effect durations magically drop to ZERO and the targets you shot are free from anymore damage. Which I would like to point out, Bleeding is pretty much the WHOLE POINT of the current Ongoing Directive GearSet.

So, thank you for reading this absurdly long novel. Your time and thoughts are appreciated.


******
Under this line is the breakdown of the above mentioned damage numbers for the GearSets.
******

Striker: Prerequisite is shooting enemies. Stacks up to 25% weapon damage. But if you use both the Chest and Backpack for striker you can bump that all the way up to a maximum of 65% Weapon damage. Otherwise its 32.5% with just the backpack. Or 50% with just the Chespiece.

Heartbreaker: Prerequisite is shooting pulsed enemies. Stacks up to 50% to BOTH weapon damage and bonus armor. If you use both Chest and Backpack that bumps up to 100% Weapon Damage and 200% bonus armor.  Otherwise its 100% weapon damage and 50% bonus armor with just the Chest or 50% weapon damage and 100% bonus armor with just the backpack.

Aces & Eights: Prerequisite is shooting enemies with a Marksman Rifle to flip 5 Cards. Flip 2 cards with a Headshot. So at base you need a minimum of 2 headshots and one body shot to flip the 5 required cards. Once all 5 are flipped you have a 30% Damage boost for (X) number of shots. Based on your hand of cards. 4 of a kind - 4 shots, Full House - 3 shots, Aces & Eights - 2 shots.
So I hate to say this but the backpack on the Aces & Eights set is kind of Irrelevant in comparison to almost ANY other backpack talent. So ignoring that,if you have the Chest the damage bonus increases to 50%.

Tip of the Spear: Prerequisite is just dealing damage with your signature weapon and you gain 20% weapon damage for a minute. Sig ammo is auto generated per minute. But if you have both the Chest and Backpack that bumps up to 40% weapon damage with an additional 20% damage to your Sig Weapon and double the Sig Ammo generation. Otherwise its 40% weapon damage with just the Chest or 20% weapon damage but double sig ammo generation and 20% more Sig weapon damage with just the backpack.

Negotiator's Dilemma: Prerequisite is just hitting enemies with Critical hits. So most of the time you have a 60% chance to trigger this set per bullet.
ND actually doesn't have any Weapon damage however damage is spread to all 3 targets you have critically hit in tandem at 50% value. Killing a critically hit enemy however adds a stack of 2% Critical hit damage up to 20 stacks. Which are lost when out of combat.
Using both Chest and Backpack you get 5 targets instead of 3 and you deal your full 100% damage on each target instead of 50%. Otherwise the chest only gives you the 2 extra targets and the backpack only gives you the full 100% damage spread on 3 targets.

Hunter's Fury: Prerequisite is killing enemies within 15 meters. 20% weapon damage but if you kill within that 15 meters you gain an additional 5% weapon damage per kill stacking up 5 times for 10 seconds. So as long as you are within range and there are plenty of enemies you basically have 55% weapon damage. The Chest and Backpack don't add damage but make it easier to maintain the damage. 

Now this last part is easy. Eclipse Protocol, Rigger, Future Initiative, Hard Wired. Let's face it. You are more than likely using the Exotic AR
Capacitor which will stack your weapon damage up to 45% OR you'll use the Test Subject AR which will give you 40% weapon damage. Or the non perfect In-Sync Talent which will give you 30% weapon damage. Future Initiative being the outlier being able to grant you an additional 25% on top. Enough said.

I wont talk about Foundry Bulwark, True Patriot, or System Corruption in depth because they are too far out of the scope of the tests. But what I will say about True Patriot is that it is more in tune with sustainability than damage potential and System Corruption is only a very short BURST of damage potential but primarily it is heavily defensive. Foundry Bulwark is purely Defensive.

@sethreex

Thanks, though my original thought process was of performance gear mods. Aka the mods you can place inside your Mask, Chestpiece, and Backpack. Or I guess all the skills mods as well could have variants.
But the idea was if Massive were to implement new performance mods that were able to add special effects. AKA adding talents via the mods instead of just the backpack, Chest, and weapons. Namely in this case an example would be something along the lines of:

Every third bullet that hits the enemy inflicts Poison damage, the damage would be based off the weapon used. For example if I were to be a sniper and I hit two shots on something and then I fire the third at a tank instead. It would end up doing a ton of damage against the tank because I was using a sniper rifle in the first place and second because the Poison would bypass the armor. I wasn't sure how well it would be received if I just posed a mods upgrade suggestion so I just designed something more plausible.
The actual idea behind all of this started with something the devs already made I think but they never actually launched it. I can't remember if it was for Division 1 or Division 2 but there was talk about a "Seeker" Gearset. The set bonus was every third shot was a guaranteed 100% Critical Hit. Personally I would have been using that set at all times if it came out. I understand why they didn't but then again with how everything is now, we kinda need something like that to shake up the meta. That or actually buffing up the Gearsets since they are far too weak to be used in Pvp unless everyone is foregoing pulse resistance and Hazard resistance. It's a bit too easy to get high numbers for those two especially pulse resistance, considering every Specialization gives you 50% base.

Anyways back on track. Mods having talents that augment how the generic gun play works was my original intent. And I would be glad to brainstorm a list of effects that could be used for these mods but until then as posted above... Blightbearer. Enough said.