Auspice

I have a 50 mercs/poison, it's alright except for the whole "if they have SS, they run" thing. Mercs is a little better for stopping runners, but the fact is that if they want to get away, there's not much you can do.

You also HAVE to take mace, for powerboost. I can't imagine not taking PB on a /poison.

I'll be sideswapping my emp to redside, either way.

You don't need an emp to do this or that, but god I bet AB feels good on all those dommies out there. And recovery aura would be interesting too for fury-addicted brutes.

Everything else in Emp is functionally similar to something in paindom, or in some cases worse (eg. suppress pain vs. regen aura).

Seems to be working right now, pimptastic

Now I have about 100 mil worth of recipes to throw up...

Virtue, cap, st. martial, whatever - doesn't seem to matter what I do, whether it's buy, sell, put stuff up. Every 5-10 minutes I'm crashing.

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forge is the best buff in the game. period.


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speed boost

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adrenaline boost

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power boosted vengeance

I'm not sure how you beat a thugs/pain unless he was woefully underslotted. Thugs are insanely good at hitting through dark's DRed to hell debuffs, especially with HO slotting. On top of that, ninjas are tough to heal with Dark and you have no way to shut down a Pain's incredible durability especially if they take mace for layered mitigation.

Still, you have a crazy amount of set bonuses.

Anyway, mastermind pvpers are kind of rare since they're not really good at the top end. Too many people can just run from you since there's no -max run anymore. Poison is still good, Pain is still good in teams, but most of the rest are kinda so-so.

The villainside primary healer is a pain domination mastermind, with necro/pain being probably the best overall in terms of team survival. Corruptors are the primary support, though. A thermal can stop a lot more damage than a pain mastermind unless the mastermind is extremely skilled.

I also think that the transference endspike is absolute pain. Fighting a kin/thermal team can be absolutely horrible because if you get endspiked by HE and transference, you won't even be able to phase or escape. An elec/kin can even do it solo without needing a thermal - if you get tagged by tesla > short circuit, the kin can transference > TB > tesla again, and you can't do anything except flounder while their teammates wail on you.

I hadn't even thought about ID, geez now I'm going to have to fit it in...

It's funny that /Dark was used as an example of hard slotting because Twilight's Grasp and Fearsome Stare are the only powers that need slotting in that set to be effective. Every other power in /Dark is decent out of the box, and only gets better when you slot it.

Traps though is worse because it relies heavily on IOing in order to be effective. Proc slotting is the best way to play traps. PGT is much better with procs even in the new world order. Caltrops is an excellent proc tool and Acid Mortar is an amazing proc beast.

I'm no traps corruptor player, but if I was going to give a traps recommendation, I'd suggest dark blast. You have a self heal, tohit debuffs to help FFG work, and some mez too. If that's too far outside your concept, what about electric blast, or even AR/Rad or something?

Or of course, you could make a Mercs/Traps mastermind as suggested elsewhere, which is a lot better than an AR/Traps.

You really, really want +def in the enforcer. It adds a ton to pet survivability. Normal +def, not the edict unique. Slotting them for +tohit is good in the endgame if you've got HOs.

1 recharge 5 proc caltrops are ftw.

My proc testing was done prior to i13.

I'd test it again but then I'd have to actually buy the garbage IO.

Also keep in mind that petless masterminds have far less health than a Defender or Corruptor.

I'd tolerate a petless MM on my team though, if it was /pain and hugged brutes - because suppress pain is such a good power that it completely eclipses soothing aura.

Actually, I put my soldiers against a stationary PvP target, and told them to attack. I saw them chain rapidly against the target, and my target would tell me how long he stayed resistance debuffed.

That amount was less than half the time (maybe 1/5th) with three soldiers on a single target. I also monitored the damage I was getting. The proc rate is really bad. On the other hand the ToLG proc would routinely generate about an entire full burst worth of damage every little bit here and there, which came out to much more overall ST dps. Because enforcer -def powers have longer recharges than the extremely fast (and slotted for +recharge at the time) soldier bursts, I doubt enforcers really maintain the debuff for any reasonable time. If they could keep it up even half the time it would definitely be worth it because the arsonist does so much more damage, but in practice with mercenaries it doesn't happen even on a single foe.

Edit: Oh, and my testing was done without upgrade 2, so no long animation full auto bursts, just the faster single bursts, and no grenade on the medic.

I had it slotted in soldiers waaay back when you could buff soldier recharge. It almost never makes any meaningful difference, compared to the chance for neg proc.

Note that I only meant in PvP. Dark is quite excellent in PvE.

Poison for duels, pain for teams. Dark isn't awful, but it's not incredibly good either.

Achilles is terrible, 10% chance for 10 seconds of -res is terribad. Don't put it in any pets, even merc soldiers.

stop dying plz

btw your art is le jawsome as always

She's been busy mostly drawing Shion. She has one of those job + life things, so that occupies some of her time too.

Seriously though, I'll trade a sketch of Trend for a sketch of Meo

JOULEEEEEE

WHY ARE YOU SO AWESOME :<

Trend's power is generated by epic and she restores health by winning teh internetz. Just throwing that out there.

If I draw a stick figure Trendy, will you draw me a stick figure Meo?

GET HYPE

Trendy's full of awesome and wins. I can't wait to see Joule's version of Melanie

Note that she doesn't just do sketches. She can and does do full-color work, so if you want to trade that sort of stuff, all you gotta do is ask.

Also, her work is awesumz. I come from the bowels of the evil gameplay/PvP/market forums just to prop her art