_Ail_
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Quote:You mean like your advice to slot hot feet "x5 Obliteration, Recharge IO"?Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I tend to type Recharge when I mean Endurance for example).
In all seriousness though, this is a very nice guide. I hope you will try to finish it up sometime. -
Quote:If you are playing a more ranged build, you can fire off a few ST attacks before doing AOEs. On my Beam/NRG blaster for example I can do disintegrate a couple of other things before doing AOEs. I think the Beam/NRG seems to benefit a lot from defiance. I use the T1 and T2 attacks and get benefit from using them while mezzed and seem to carry a much better defiance bonus. The character works well. I have tried an FF/Beam defender and much prefer the blaster version.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
I'm a little confused by what you are describing and how this is unique to Electric. You should be able to maintain some defiance from mob to mob, and your AOE attacks are generally best used at the start of the fight. It doesn't matter what Blaster set I've played, that's almost always the case, unless there is some troublesome mob that you would be better off mezzing before using your AOEs (but for a lot of sets, an AOE KB attack can do just as well). So I'm not seeing the big handicap you are describing for Short Circuit. Heck, you could leap into range of the mobs with that, activate it and hop at the same time, and be out of melee range if you want. Or you could stay there (which works fine for my E^3 Blaster).
It is nice to use your melee attacks if you have them, but the ST blasts for tier 1 and 2 are not weaker than other, comparable ST tier 1 and 2 blasts.
Guess I don't get the negatives you are supposedly highlighting in that post. Electric certainly does have a more melee centered approach if you want to leverage it well, but I'm not seeing how it doesn't somehow benefit from Defiance.
With elec/elec, it seems optimal play has you jumping right in at the beginning and short circuiting and ball lightning and then using the melee attacks from electricity manipulation. So the T1 and T2 from the blast set don't tend to come up and you don't tend to get as much of a defiance damage bonus as well in my experience. But the AOEs don't do a whole lot of damage in electrical blast and it just seems to go very slowly. The melee attacks are enough better than the T1 and T2 blast that it is hard to justify taking both and/or slotting the blasts. The character on the whole would seemingly be better played as a (i) Brute if it is the elec melee attacks you like or a (ii) Controller (and possibly dominator) if it is the end draining you like.
Finally, I have a DP/Dark blaster. Attack chain is spring attack --> soul drain --> hail of bullets --> bullet rain, and then finish off the remaining guys in the spawn with ST attacks from the primary. Again, I use and like the character and the character "works". A comparable character might be a DP/Kin corruptor but again the DP/Dark works very well and I can honestly say I prefer this incarnation of the character and don't want to reroll as another AT.
So I'm not disagreeing with you Grey Pilgrim as you seem to have some very good points. Maybe the T1 and T2 from Elec blast are fine but the AOEs are weaker (?) and the set lacks other ST attacks and my playstyle is not leveraging the benefits of elec/elec properly.
I just found in practice that my other blasters seemed to work better and were doing what they were supposed to be doing and didn't seem to be so obviously underperforming.
I do think that all blasters need help but elec blast always seems to suck for me. Is it that elec blast has weak AOEs and only 2 ST attacks? So that maybe the T1 and T2 are fine but everything else is messed up?
It is not a blaster, but my kin/elec defender (not deleted, but not played anymore...as in not played for 4+ years and even then not played much) always just seemed weaker than it ought to be. I like to solo all of the hard arcs and there were some end-game guys (don't remember who now sorry--it has been too many years) he just couldn't get past (back in the day...not sure how it would be now...) I would take my standard "kill EB pack" of a bunch of reds and purples and pop them and just not have the dps to punch through the guy. This didn't happen with other defenders regarded as weak like my TA/A (and certainly not with the strong defenders who are little AV-soloers like rad/whatever and yes probably also rad/elec although I never played rad/elec) so I am at a loss to explain the gimp-ness.
I deleted my elec/kin corruptor before getting to fight recluse at the end of the patron arcs, but that also would have been a good solo test of the character. With the spawn of summoned guys around recluse kin should be at max damage but I still wonder if the character would have been able to do it... Again, this would have been back before people could summon incarnate pets and have reactive proc and all sorts of other things that people can do now. -
Quote:POST BUILD PLEASE!Originally Posted by Grim Saint
Stalkers have always been my AT of choice but since i22 and the ATO sets they have become exactly what you said - single target chainsaws. Throw in the awesomeness of Street Justice and you have a freaking monster on your hands. In fact yesterday I was able to solo a Rikti Pylon in 3 minutes 52 seconds (no inspirations or pets) with my StJ/Nin. That's down from 7 minutes prior to i22.
I'm currently running with this chain (starting in hide, using Build Up whenever it refreshes). AS has the ATO set, Initial Strike has the Hecatomb proc, and Shin Breaker has Achilles Heel:
Crushing Uppercut --> Initial Strike --> Shin Breaker --> Initial Strike --> Assassin's Strike --> Spinning Strike/Crushing Uppercut (alternating)
By the time I use AS it almost always has full focus for the guaranteed critical, plus with the ATO proc I drop instantly into hide (base 15 sec recharge guarantees it will trigger 100% of the time). This sets me up for a critical/fully combo'd Spinning Strike or Crushing Uppercut depending on whether I need AOE or ST at that moment.
I almost never assassinate from hide anymore since Crushing Uppercut does nearly the same critical damage and is instant.
You'll notice I dropped Sweeping Cross since Spinning Strike is ALWAYS the better option and will be always be refreshed and fully combo'd with enough recharge. Skipped Heavy Blow since Initial Strike fits more comfortably. I even dropped Placate since AS and CU always critical in this chain anyway. With the extra powers I was able to pick up more situational goodies like Vengeance and Afterburner (for trips to the Shadow Shard).
I didn't take haste since perma doesn't add anything I don't have already, plus you can only auto one power and that power should be Kuji-In Rin. I also can't stand having my hands glow all the damn time.
Definitely don't pass up Caltrops - the mitigation is outstanding. Throw a Ragnorak proc in there to turn a horde of enemies into fleeing/falling/flopping fish. Throw in Reactive Interface and they're also on fire
Best of luck with your character. Can't wait to hear how it goes. The "Batman Build" is no longer just a novelty!!
Seriously, you refer to it a lot in the post above. So post it so that we can look at it. Thanks! -
Quote:I think this is definitely true for electric blast. With short circuit and all of the melee attacks, my deleted 50 elec/elec cried out to be played in melee.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I actually think more blasters die because they aggressively go into melee range to use those tempting melee and PBAoE attacks without the experience to leverage them properly.
But I don't think this plays to a blaster's strength:
(1) The first 2 elec/ attacks can be used while mezzed, but in playing an elec/elec your big ST attacks are goin g to be the high damage /elec melee ones not the wimpy ST elec/ ones.
(2) You have defiance which ups damage the more you attack, but you are going to be doing your AOEs like short circuit fairly quickly upon getting into a spawn, because you want to drain their endurance. So these don't benefit from defiance really.
In short, an elec/elec/(?elec?) blaster doesn't really benefit from defiance much at all if played "properly" and should probably be some other AT entirely. Hence the deletion... -
Quote:Originally Posted by plainguy
Just a reminder that the S/L damage has to be a secondary damage type in the attack to benefit from that defense. So if your getting hit with a Ranged attack that does Energy damage which also has a S/L damage component you will have zero defenses against that attack, assuming your range and energy defenses are zero.
At higher levels and the incarnate type missions your of course noticing that not only is S/L minimal but of course they cheat with the defense reducing attacks.
Personally I went range cap hover blaster type on my TA Archer. I find that I can solo many mob types at 4/8 setting. Which allows me the ability now to farm AE missions and regular missions as needed. Of course as many I am not soloing Malta on 4/8 as many are not doing that. There are just very tough mob groups that many are not soloing on a 4/8 setting and that is a given. There are some that can and I know with my Huntsman build with perma pets and barrier can solo 4/8 Malta. But cycling through radio missions to get a group of council, freakshow or CoTs is not that difficult. I know my TA Archer has a radio mission of CoTs I use on 4/8 setting to get TIP missions and was able to pull out 3 purple drops over the last few months. So this stuff is all possible.
I think that Flash arrow also helps shore up my defenses against debuffs which as I mentioned happens in the new incarnate missions.
The new changes only boosts my build allowing me to lock down mobs with the sleep changes so I am getting hit even less now as I can lock down some mobs with sleep and benefit from range defenses.
As you can see everyone has a different opinion on either defenses or recharge. I would rather give up 20 seconds of recharge and be defense capped knowing I can survive the onslaught of incoming attacks. Again I am completely discussing solo here, because being part of a team means nothing. What I mean about that is on a team you will have enough buffs, debuffs and damage handle 4/8 and of course incarnate stuff usually. But knowing I can handle 4/8 on a team means those 7 other players are just extra for me. As that defense capped tank,brute,scrapper is thinking the same thing. Further there are so many incarnate slotted people now that usually 4 or 5 players are blasting out a judgement attack against a group of helpless 4/8 setting mobs.
One nice thing about capped range I suppose is that it frees up destiny to be something other than Clarion. This is useful.
I think with just 20-ish range def you are still going to need Clarion, though, so middling ranged def doesn't seem that useful to me. -
I've posted a somewhat recent build on the defenders forums and you only have to search for it, replacing of course whatever you like (I did blazing arrow) with the new ATO set.
I think resistance doesn't work that well in practice for low hit point ATs. Defense blocks the whole attack, if any component of it did damage that the defense defended against. Resistance just blocks that damage type. It might be blasphemy, but I don't even bother toggling tough on (even though defender tough modifiers are AMAZING!) and just use it as a steadfast prot mule.
The -damage in PGA will help you far more IMO--and to be honest I think it only helps me middling.
Best of luck. I tried a ranged-cap defense build by the way. I liked it, but when you get a really recharge-intensive build and realize you can have oil slick up almost all of the time, it is hard to go back to anything else. -
Quote:Now that you don't have to SB a million people kin is not that busy. Solo, you just jump in, fulcrum shift, and start blasting away, occasionally pausing to heal yourself. I wouldn't worry about redraw much to be honest.Originally Posted by VKhaun
for DP/ it's about redraw really.
Kinetics is a super busy set so you'd mostly be throwing out those powers and not too many pistol attacks since you have to stop and pull the pistols out each time, but then it's worth it to stop and drop a Hail of Bullets after the other people AoE to try and put out some crazy AoE scourge. Go for that if you want to be mostly supportive but then drop a bomb sometimes.
Rad runs toggles and casts less frequently to rez and buff. Go for that if you want to shoot people, but even with /rad sometimes your team composition may require you to spam the PBAoE heal and you're right back to redrawing pistols for every one or two attacks.
Rad also works fine of course. I think kin would be more fun though. -
DP/Kin maybe.
Hail of Bullets requires point blank range, so you are going to be there anyway and might as well have kin to make HoB a real spawn killer. -
To the OP: What you have done and what New Dawn have done are both fine.
I personally think your original build probably has too much effort spent on defense. With Stealth toggled and damaged/attacked selected in options menu so it shows its true value, you have 52% s/l def and 22.6% ranged.
I think the 52% is overkill and would just go with 45%. I think the 22.6% is largely useless considering you already have s/l def and you will still probably have to end up getting Clarion if you don't want to get mezzed frequently.
I would take all of that extra stuff and pile it into recharge. In *many* builds recharge shows diminishing returns because you are only looking (for example) at some base 10 second recharge attack and the difference in having merely good recharge and great recharge only amounts to some fraction of second extra for that attack. In TA however, you have oil slick with a base 180 second recharge and so things still keep improving noticeably as you crank up the recharge.
It is entirely in your hands though, and you can be fine with many builds. -
I deleted my lvl 50 elec/elec blaster, and my elec/kin corruptor. I have not yet deleted my kin/elec defender, but it is probably nostalgia more than anything else.
Elec blast sucks. It is too bad because it is very nice thematically.
Just admit that the cards are against you (which is too bad!) and roll a elec/cold troller or something similar, and be happy to have end drain and not suck. -
Quote:Maybe I will try it out then...I have been thinking about it. It is down to between Mind/Dark and Plant/Dark doms. The plant dark had been winning, to be honest, but maybe I should give mind a try.Originally Posted by RiverOcean
Huh... I've never had a problem getting all up close and melee on a Mind Dom. Mind/Stone is still one of my favorites.
* Fire powerboosted control from range, jump in and beat the snot out of everything in sight. -
Quote:What level are you? I like the idea of mind's hard controls paired with dark assault, but am worried that dark assault seems so PBAOE/melee and mind is all ranged. What are your thoughts on this?Originally Posted by RiverOcean
Mind/Dark is working out to be fun. I made a "Vampiri" clone.. lol.
Oh with Electric/Dark I was contemplating the +Regen in the primary with the Self-heal in the secondary. Might make a squishy a little harder to kill ;-).
Thanks! -
Quote:Doesn't everybody who is anyoneOriginally Posted by Rigel_Kent
Sadfase again. I guess I'm still not completely over that. have a +accuracy of like +1 billion? TA has long sucked for low levels and that is another issue, but I don't think the tohit check is a big deal for higher level people.
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Quote:You are correct. Who knows what the market will be like?Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
When converters hit there will be no "Cheap purples." The time to rethink is now.
You can fairly easily get non-pvp, non-purple stuff now. And the super packs make it even easier with the merits-for-sale (if they weren't already easy enough just quickly running the first signature mission once a week for each of your characters.) But the supply of pvp/purples should still stay pretty low, even though there will be conversion among all of them... -
People use PGA as something other than a Fortunata Hypnosis mule? Sounds good.
I do use it in my attack chain (even after the -res so that the -dam is supposedly increased) but if I couldn't use it as a cheap purple IO set mule I would have to think more carefully about it... -
aka... This is lame... What is the point of a test server if you do stuff like this?
The whole way gravity has been handled has been incompetent. I honestly wish it had not been "fixed" at all rather than handling it this way. Since it has now been "fixed" we can expect no further significant modifications to it for another 4-6 years...
No matter that the impact changes help controllers and are irrelevant for dominators. No matter that dimension shift is still pointless, unless you now want to slot it with enfeebled op for the s/l defense bonus. It has been "fixed" and we are all happy! -
Quote:Defender: Rad/SonicOriginally Posted by Caz Man
Possibly an AV soloer that is not melee. Post away with your builds that you absolutely love =]
Controller: Ill/Rad
Corruptor: Sonic/Traps
Dominator: Mind/Fire
And...those are the only ATs I have actual expertise with. I have 50s with all ATs (or did before I deleted them) but I stick with Defenders, Dominators, Controllers, and Corruptors for the most part because playing them makes me feel less like a monkey banging a keyboard randomly.
Of course, many people like being a monkey banging a keyboard randomly, so your mileage may vary...
Edit: Among other ATs, I rate (with more tongue-in-cheek than the above recommendations):
Stalker: Fun, as AS and placate and hide liven things up. Kin/Nin maybe.
Blaster: Fun, because you can't go asleep as you are too fragile. Fire/Fire for the theme.
Mastermind: Impossible to stay awake, but I have heard good things about Bots/Traps.
Warshade/Peacebringer: Well, you are what you are with no non-reversible build choices, so...
Widow: Go Fortunata. Although you will be bored, mind link might not be up all the time and you can watch psionic tornado.
Soldier: You have to go some sort of bane because you don't want legs sticking out of your back. You will be a ST specialist.
Tank: You have aggro concerns so get to stay awake. Fire/Fire because you can lord it over brutes that you have combustion.
Scrapper or Brute: You have gone to the dark side. You need a frontal lobotomy to enjoy the game. Play what you will, because you have a frontal lobotomy and should be pitied. -
Quote:+1. SeriouslyOriginally Posted by ketch
My mileage does indeed vary. With a 16 target cap and 95% accuracy on common every spawn controls, there are times when controls simply can't contain all the mobs whether due to over-aggro, ambushes, or tightly knit mobs. Running solo at +4/x8, you'll quickly notice how often a single uncontrolled boss can ruin your fun with 2-3 lucky shots. Defense helps provide a buffer against that.
There is no doubt that perma-doms are certainly survivable, but perma-doms with softcapped defenses are markedly more survivable. Also, as noted before there are diminishing returns on recharge buffs.
For a concrete example, let's look at some powers from Mind Control at three different levels of global recharge. We'll assume 66.6% (two SOs worth) of recharge in each power; that's a middling value between what some commonly used sets offer. I've tossed in Stalagmites for an example of a more common every spawn control.
You can see that, after a certain point, even large amounts of recharge make very little difference to quick recharging controls. The best benefits are on the longest recharge powers. Now some people may prefer shooting for extreme recharge and eschewing defense. I, however, seriously question if having your every spawn control up 2-5 seconds faster is worth more than softcapping one of your defenses.Code:BASE 0% 145% 175% 205% Dominate 8 4.8 2.57 2.34 2.15 Confuse 8 4.8 2.57 2.34 2.15 Mass Hypnosis 45 27.01 14.44 13.17 12.11 Terrify 40 24.01 12.84 11.71 10.76 Total Domination 240 144.06 77.02 70.26 64.59 Mass Confusion 240 144.06 77.02 70.26 64.59 Stalagmites 90 54.02 28.88 26.35 24.22
Being permadom is nice. Having great recharge is nice. But there are times when you also want a little defense, I find.
In the past you couldn't really get everything, but in today's game you really can have it all. It is worth giving up a little recharge for that extra defense. -
Honestly? I'd wait to see how the new Grav/ changes pan out on live--and in particular if there are any changes--before investing a lot in a Grav/NRG right now.
With both lift (already was) and propel being possible new things to add to a ranged attack chain, there is a lot of redundancy with /NRG. -
The last build is better and I am glad we were able to help. I still have minor problems with it, like I think you are overslotting health and could get similar benefits somewhere else and a couple of other slotting decisions (I think you could put one more in havok for the crushing impact recharge bonus.)
My main confusion is why scorpion shield at all? It is a really cool ability, and I think your build could be modified to get great range def and s/l def if you just tweaked it a little bit.
If you don't want s/l def at all though, just choose the concealment power pool and slot any of stealth, invis, grant invis with LoTG mules. This would then free you up to take mu mastery and another aoe or something else nice.
This is all nit-picking of course and if you are having fun go with it! -
I really like the animations though. Piercing rounds is completely over the top but that it why it is so fun. I would hate to see them change it to something with less flair.
The way I see it, they are a good contrast to Beam Rifle, which has really plain animations. Sometimes I am in the mood for one and sometimes another. I am glad that both options are there though.
I hope they would leave the animations alone and just change some of the swap ammo effects. -
(1) Why crush when lift does much more damage? Purely for the set bonus?
(2) Why is weave 6-slotted when the much more potent scorp shield is only 1-slotted? And you put an extra lvl 50 defense IO in hover but none in scorp shield? Bizarre.
(3) Defense seems iffy to me given the fact that you seem at least partially to be building for it.
(4) Weird slotting in health with 5-slotted doctored wounds apparently purely for a 5% recharge bonus?
(5) Most tellingly, why the hell play a Gravity Control set at all if you aren't taking wormhole? Why take a control set and then not take its up every fight power?
I get that you don't like wormhole, but that basically means that you don't like gravity control. Just play one of the other control sets whose up every fight power you like.
The only conceivable reason I can come up with is that you like Singy just that much... Are you sure one of the other sets won't suit you better? You can take whatever pet the new set gives you and still be ahead of the game control-wise (even w/o singy) because you will actually have some damage mitigation ability up every fight. -
Hi Sir Herpaderpus! Thanks for the input and for responding to my thread! I am happy to hear other opinions on the matter.
For reasons I outline in my response to your thread, I don't personally prefer what you have outlined, but I hope you have fun with your character and enjoy things. -
If cost if no object, I have a fire/fire/fire permadom that is softcapped s/l (better IMO than ranged given the melee nature of fire/ and the fact that permadoms already get mez resistance) in a thread around here.
I note you only got to 40% ranged def as well w/o incarnates. (Edit: I see you wanted the hold set to be the new ATO one which gives you 5%.)
I think if you want an all-ranged build, mind/fire is a better bet. Getting a fire control character without hot feet just seems criminal somehow to me. Skipping out on both hot feet and combustion is lowering your AOE mayhem potential too much IMO. Can you redo it as a mind/fire?
To reiterate, with fire^3 I would go softcapped s/l because you will be in melee somewhat frequently. If you want an all ranged build, I would go mind/fire.
You are welcome to do as you like though and surely some here disagree with me. -
Quote:I won't even respond to the OP post because I don't know if he's serious, but...from most important to least...Originally Posted by Trilby
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.953
http://www.cohplanner.com/
(1) Wormhole is your "up every fight" control power as a gravity dom. It needs to be at least 5-slotted, whether with stupefy (if you are cheap) or absolute amazement (if you can afford purples.)
(2) It is quite easy to softcap s/l def and have permadom. I have a build without any purples (or anything expensive even--no kinetic combats) that does it even without hasten. Just keep those as build goals in mind.
(3) To get softcap to s/l def, you need 45% def in those areas. For permadom (which I realize your build has) look at _Brev_'s old permadom faq.
(4) Power push is really good for dominator with /nrg. Don't skip it.
(5) If you are desparate, kinetic crash can be 6-slotted in attacks that you won't use much in your attack chain...it has lots of good bonuses and is dirt cheap and almost as good as a real attack set. If you are at the stage where you can afford purples, forget this.
(6) With the new gravity changes in the pipe, you are better off rolling a controller. If you got it for the knockback, try gravity/storm.