BIGMIKE

I say traps, at least that's they way I went.

Lots of synergy between the two and only one drawback.

Bots are vulnerable to smashing, which you mainly get in melee. Bots prefer ranged, so caltrops at the feet of bots keep melee types away. Caltrops are generally great anyway.

Protector bots will forcefield your /traps pets. They 'spike' heal other bots and you get repair available to heal as well. Triage beacon speeds up regen, adding to this.

Some static pets in traps works with bots prefering ranged, the melee mobs come to you, and your traps.

Bots are mainly single target at lower levels. Acid mortar will 'tank' for you allowing you to work through the mobs one by one. Whilst getting the force field from the protector bot.

Your minions grab aggro, allowing you to 'toe bomb' fairly easily.

Thematically (sp?) they work well together.

The only drawback I've found is when the bots knockback mobs out of gas traps / caltrops. You can use the web grenade to stick the mob first though.

I went bots/traps and I've been very happy with that decision.

Mike.

I've been playing an Ice/Ice dom on and off for a few months now and whilst I'm still low lvl I'll give you my planned build and opinions so far.

Domination is awesome. You should be aiming to build it as fast as possible and use it as often as possible. If it's recharged, it gets clicked. The only time it doesn't is if I'm getting near the 'mission end' and I know I'll need it for that.

You build domination by clicking powers, most often by attacking, make sure you've taken enough attacks. I don't know the figures but a dominator gets better damage from melee attacks than ranged attacks. So if you want to make the most out of your attacks get used to being in melee. As an Ice dom Arctic air, Chilling embrace, Glacier are all pbaoe, so you'll want to be in melee anyway.

As a dom you're really squishy. When you're in control and the mobs are held then it doesn't matter. Lose control and you'll be eating dirt really quickly. I've played a Mind dom and three single target controls means you walk through mobs. Ice on the other hand has to juggle targets with Block of Ice.

You'll learn to hate Arachnos mobs. Seers seem impossible to hold, and when one does stick, they throw it off in seconds. Wolfspiders are tricky too, and I understand that Mu don’t get caught by ice slicks.

Try to team with Stalkers. They critical when they attack held targets, even when they're not hidden.

I wouldn't recommend Frostbite, damage is minor, and they'll still shoot / hit back. I've taken the AoE immob on a Plant/Thorn so when the mobs were confused I could 'tag' them with damage and stop them running off. How do you plan on using it?

Arctic air is good, but it has a heavy endurance cost, so I'd slot it for endurance reduction before anything else. You won't be able to run it all the time and still do other stuff. I've only ever seen a minor confuse effect off it as well; it's nowhere near as good as Seeds of Confusion. Whilst in its effect a mob will most likely make one, maybe two confused attacks. Spending the rest of their time running away from, or attacking, you.

Doms are based around domination, hasten improves the recharge of powers allowing you to build it quicker. It improves the recharge of the domination power itself allowing you to use it more often. When domination isn't recharged, it recharges your holds allowing you to stack / hold more targets. It opens up super speed allowing you to 'stealth' missions. As you can see, I like hasten on dominators.

Ice slick. Wow Ice slick, this makes such a difference. Doesn't last too long but makes a huge difference. I can't recommend this highly enough. You target the location for the slick so you can aim round corners. For me, ice slick is my aoe control at the moment. Teamed, I’ve been able to combine it with tarpatch and rain of fire, now that was fun to watch.

So I’ve hit 13 and it’s starting to get tough, which doesn’t help my alt-itis any. I’m under the impression it gets better, but we’ll have to see. At the moment it’s no easy ride.

So my build so far, and plans for the future.

Block of Ice 1 Acc 3 HoldDur 5 Rechg 9 Rechg 9 Rechg
Ice Bolt 1 Acc 3 EndRdx
Ice Sword 2 Acc 5 EndRdx 15 Dam 17 Dam 19 Dam
Ice Sword Circle 4 Acc 15 EndRdx
Arctic Air 6 EndRdx 7 EndRdx 7 EndRdx
Hasten 8 Rechg
Ice Blast 10 Acc 11 EndRdx 11 Dam 17 Dam 19 Dam
Ice Slick 12 Rechg 13 Rechg 13 Rechg
Super Speed 14 Run
Power Boost 16 Rechg 21 Rechg 21 Rechg
Hurdle 18 Jump
Health 20 Heal
Stamina 22 EndMod 23 EndMod 23 EndMod
Aid Other? 24 25 25
Glacier 26 27 27
Chilling Embrace / Shiver? 28 29 29
Aid Self? 30 31 31
Jack Frost 32 33 33
Greater Ice Sword 35 36 36
Bitter Ice Blast 38 39 39

Ok, comments on your build. Bear in mind that I'm no expert on this.

I'd go Acc/Rechg X2/Hold X2/Acc on Block of Ice. I wouldn't slot ice bolt so much, I don't think enhancing the minor damage will help out enough. Drop frostbite, take Ice Sword instead and use the slots from ice bolt. Do you need both arctic air and shiver? I've not taken shiver, but I thought it was a cone slow, kind of duplicating arctic airs effect.

That's about as far as I can go until I level up a bit .

Regards,

Mike.

Hi, yeah just hit 20 and now I have little green balls of fun to play with. Is it wrong to chuckle at the sound of vomiting? .

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(Personally I'm Corruptor mad so I was a little surprised at the MM-heavy resposne I got )

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A corruptor can shoot or set a trap, a MM can shoot and set a trap at the same time. A corruptor gets shot at, and finds it hard to heal, a MM gets the minions shot at and replaces them if they die. If for some reason a MM does gets shot at, then the 'bodyguards' will take a lot of the sting off it.

I've had a dark/dark corruptor up to 30 and feel so much safer and capable as my MM.

The thing I'd like to know is with the mutliple hit checks on a trip mine, does it scourge or not? 'Cause if it does, that could be one really big bang!

[ QUOTE ]

Thanks Mike, hopefully we'll see you around. (Nice toon name, by the way!)

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Sure, just shout (and post an update here of how you get on).

Cheers,

Mike.

Hello Folks,

I'm currently playing Bots/Traps on Union (Anna Matronic) currently at lvl 19. I don't think I'd be able to commit to a regular time / night, and I don't tend to start playing til about 9pm anyway.

However I'd love to know how this works out, and I'd like to see it in action too. Especially in a mayhem mission, so if you need a stand in, give me a shout.

Couple of questions though. Is poison trap really available at 20? for some reason I thought it was 24.

Do you expect many problems in the long run? I mean most likely 6 MM with pets and FFGs and all, potentially lots of lag there.

Anyway good luck with it all and keep us posted on the successes / problems you get.

Cheers,

Mike.

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Actually I have - but I only got it about a level ago and it's hard to tell if it does much with just TOs in it. Thanks for the other advice though..


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Well I've been Alting it up in CoH and I'm going back to the MM for a while, any comments on Maneuvers yet?

Mike.

Excellent list of sound suggestions.

Not ready for the RP side of things myself, still prefer face to face stuff at the moment. However when I get bored of the grind I'll bear it all in mind.

Cheers,

Mike.

Ok,

Well thanks for the opinions. It wan't really 'is gale any good?', more 'should I live with it's weakness rather than compensate for them?'.

I've tried it without accuracy and with accuracy and I think I'm going to go with conventional wisdom on it and slot for accuracy.

I don't use it much in large teams, but a fair bit in smaller ones. Going through the Hollows missions, I'm often galing mobs into dead end corridors and the snow storm anchor / freezing rain aoe. When I do that, I want all of my targets to move.

I'm not often using it to 'save' melee types. Steamy mist does a grand job of controling aggro from nearby spawns so it's rare for the team to get overwhelmed. In fact in large groups I'm not really using gale, only to shove escaping mobs back.

As for it's redundancy with hurricane, I'm aware that may be an issue. Which is why I'm making my power picks with the 9mth veteran respec in mind. Although so far I've not had a moment when I've really wanted O2 boost either.

So until at least 16th (when I get bored working through the fitness pool) I'm keeping gale and slotting it for accuracy.

Cheers,

Mike.

Hello,

I've just started up a storm / electric defender on Union and picked gale. I'm getting used to it at the moment and it's working out fine.

As far as I am aware it's inaccurate (something like 10%?) so I've started to slot it with accuracy but after last night I'm not so sure I want to.

I'm in a sizable PUG doing Police Band missions. Our scrapper needs to take a break so we're left with the tanker as the only melee character. The mobs get past him, I gale, they get blown back. Later he gets a bit overwhelmed, I make a judgment call and gale his targets. About half the spawn gets hit and knocked back.

This is what has got me thinking. If gale misses the majority, only a smaller number gets knocked out of melee, still giving the melee characters something to hit. It also means they get hit less, and hopefully don't get annoyed by it.

I slot Gale for knockback, realise that I won't hit everything, but know that I can safely thin down the mobs in melee.

So I'm looking for opinions of more experienced stormies, what do you think?

Mike.

Hello,

1) I like leadership, I've taken it whenever I've played a MM. Although I've only taken Assault and Tactics in the past.

However I've just picked up an old bot/trap MM left at 14th on Union, and I'm thinking about manuvers. Normally the low percentage defense buff doesn't warant it, but combined with the protectors bubbles and the FFG it might be.

Has anyone taken manuvers on a Bots/Traps MM that can comment on it?

2) I normally take stamina, but I'm not on this one. My highest endurance usage is at the start of the mission, summoning and equiping. I have no direct attacks from robots, and haven't found a power I need to spam (or has a huge cost) in traps. So no fitness for me, quite liberating actually .

3) I think it's because it's CoV. On the whole villain ATs are more diverse and don't need to team. Heroes are more specialised and do. So there isn't so much of a LFT culture, and hence less blind invites. In my recent experience there's less villain players anyway. Heroes has been running longer, so would most likely have a larger player base.

Oh and a Mastermind is a team. Even with the waiting for everyone to arrive at the start of the mission .

Cheers,

Mike.

Hello

Take a look at this tread on the US forums

Mastermind Binds

It's sooooo useful and it'll demonstrate the idea of chaining multiple binds to one key.

Mike.

Hello,

I've just started up a thugs/poision MM, still low lvl but it's working well for me.

I get the impression that punks are high damage, low defense. The de-buffs in poison mean that the damage hits home so a good offense is a good form of defense.

The only times things get a bit tricky is where I'm up aginst large numbers and I can't debuff them all quick enough.

Dark Miasma is great, I've had it on my corruptor (lvl 30) and I'm missing the debuff / heal of twilight grasp, increased damage / slow of tar patch and control of fearsome stare. It was a tough choice not to take poison over DM but it fitted the concept and I wanted a change.

So with low numbers of tough opponents poison is good, the debuffing helps offset the lvl difference of the punks. Against large numbers of even opponents I don't think it's going to be too hot, but we'll have to wait and see.

Cheers,

Mike.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, no darkest night? You crazy foo!
The best tools in dark dark are Darkest Night

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I'm up to 26 with my DD corruptor now, and I'll have to second this one. Darkest Night is my second favourite power in this build. It just shuts things down so well. You'll find that you do average damage, so the extra time DN gives you via damage mitigation helps out so much.

Combined with Twilight Grasp and the only problem I'm finding is actually defeating EB/AV types. I just can't do enough damage solo to get over thier healing .

So far there's no way that they get close to killing me, I just run out of end , Still it is fun to try .

Oh and get yourself a Shivan Shard when available. That's how I solo them nowadays.

Cheers,

Mike.

Hi there,

I'm mainly a CoV guy, but I thought I'd combine subscriptions and try out CoH. After a couple of toons, I've settled on a Tanker and at the moment it's a real blast!

I'm only at 8 atm, but last night I teamed with a D/D Defender and we smashed large spawns easily. Diving in, grabbing agro, it made combat 'tactical' and not just button mashing .

I've gone for a Stone/Fire build and I was wondering if there are any powers I should avoid / pick, or any tactics / points to watch out for. I'm hoping its going to stay this much fun and not start to suck in a few lvls.

Anyone with experience want to chip in?

Cheers,

Mike.