Biowraith

I set up Biowraith on Defiant and Union, and had a look at player numbers while I was there. At 5.15pm GMT (or GMT+1 or whatever the hell the UK is on just now) - that's when I generally go online after work - I looked at visible blueside characters and got 49 Defiant, 129 Union, 47 Victory (my original home server), 251 Virtue, and 302 Freedom.

I'll probably stick with my current servers for now, but I'll keep an eye on Union to see how it fares at times when even the busiest US servers get pretty quiet. (edit: it occurs to me the event thing on Union this evening may be skewing the numbers a bit there...)

While I do use Gun Drone, I can't help but think that the time it takes to set up is time I'd be better spending on using other powers. Maybe if it had a much longer duration I'd view it more favourably, but as it is the long interruptible cast doesn't seem commensurate with the benefit of using the power (especially for normal spawns).

One small thing to note is that Trick Arrow's -tohit is unresistable. Doesn't mean much for most enemies, but once you're hitting AVs that helps make it competitive with Dark in that area (though Dark can still edge ahead if memory serves). Course Dark still brings a hefty amount of -damage which isn't resisted in the same way, so it's usually still better for mitigation in that scenario (not to mention the heavy aoe heal).

Also not sure if the chart is taking into account TG's self-stacking? It's not difficult to get 2-3 stacks of its debuffs on a single target, and once you're making +recharge builds you can get a few more. Unsure if there's a limit to how many times it can stack, but it definitely stacks from the same source (or did last time I tested it anyway).


And yeah, Dark's popularity is not without good cause. It's a bit of a monster for debuffing, and that's on top of aoe controls and a strong aoe heal. It always amuses me to think of how it was once (arguably justifiably) viewed as one of the weakest buff/debuff sets in the game.

I'll 2nd (or 3rd, or whatever) the Fire/Dark Corruptor build. It's a powerful build in general, but the main advantage for this particular request is it blooms very early. Drop Tar Patch on a corner, drop Darkest Night on the spawn as you jump back round the corner, drop Rain of Fire when they hit the Tar (before they can even see/attack you), then pop out to Fireball them into the ground. Relatively safe AoE mayhem, all at level 8.

But yeah, try switching to the 2nd build and training that to 20 first, may save you some time.

I'm fairly sure the procs will go off no matter which version of Swap Ammo you're currently running. All the game cares about is whether the power can be slotted for that type of enhancement, not whether it actually produces the effect or not.

The best example of that is Robotics' Pulse Rifle Blast: at one point this power was flagged to accept knockback enhancements (and sets) despite the power not having *any* knockback effects. The knockback set smashing damage proc worked just fine in that power.

For my Necro/Dark I went as follows:

Soul Extraction - the two intensive recharge pet aura uniques, the other 4 devoted to acc/dam/rech (I ultimately used the purple pet set to maximise both damage and recharge). I use Zombie Horde for the other two pet aura uniques.

Lich - Cloud Senses chance of negative damage proc (almost everything the Lich does can proc that), 4 slots to acc/dam (it may not be a high damage pet, but it does still put damage out), 1 last slot for either another proc or a straight -tohit generic. I work on the basis that between myself, Dark Servant, and Lich I already put out a hell of a lot of -tothit and control so I'd rather squeeze a bit more damage from Lich. I may be in the minority in this.

Dark Servant - also gets the Cloud Senses damage proc (again, almost everything he does can proc this). After that I'd focus on getting a base level of accuracy, enough recharge to more or less perma, then the rest on -tohit (though I also squeezed in some healing - I ended up with 48% acc, 65% rech, 31% -tohit, 53% heal). While Servant's strongest suit is -tohit, he does a lot of useful stuff so it's partly personal preference exactly how much you devote to enhancing any given aspect.

Set bonuses - +recharge is a good one for Dark Miasma - double stacking Tar Patch, having Fearsome Stare and Howling Twilight out more often, getting Dark Servant perma, more frequent Twilight Grasp (as much for the debuff as the heal), etc etc. Other than that I'd look to +maxhp (esp. if you take a tankermind approach) and +recovery (Dark Miasma can be a bit of a drain, though with inherent Fitness that's not as big a deal now). Or alternatively +def to stack with your -tohit for targets that resist it (e.g. AVs).

APP/PPP - I'm not sure there's any that truly stand out as more useful than the others, they'd all be decent choices. As said, Black Scorpion may have an edge stacking the +def shield with all your -tohit, and Soul Mastery gives you another layer or control (and a bit more -tohit if you pick up Nightfall) while staying consistent(ish) in theme. But really, go with whatever takes your fancy here. I took Soul and don't regret it.

I'm in the UK but I've always been on the US servers - when they offered transfers from US to EU the EU ones had been open long enough that I was fairly sure I'd lose character names etc if I switched (not to mention become separated from the friends that were still playing at that point).

With the merge I will probably roll a character or two on Defiant and/or Union, if only out of curiosity as to the population size at the times I play (I've always wondered whether I'd have found more teams etc if I'd made that initial switch). I'm also looking forward to the possibility of more EU timezone people playing on the US servers.

I always precede a Lambda, whether I'm lead or not, with "Anyone new to this that's unsure of how to find temp powers when they're not on your trays?". I've never once had someone speak up, yet probably 90% of the runs someone doesn't find/use their acid(s).

At this point I have to assume that either a) there's some bug eating up a portion of the temp powers (and we really are out of acids with only 6 used), or b) it's deliberate on their part - deliberately ignoring league chat, deliberately not speaking up if they're unsure, or deliberately not checking when asked (or I suppose they know they have them, know what to do, and deliberately don't do so, but Hanlon's razor all that).


Oh, and re: checking that people have league chat enabled, rather than broadcast I'd use team chat and ask team leaders (via tell, in case it's them that don't have league chat on) to do the same. Some folks have broadcast disabled/hidden, but most seem to see team chat, at least before the action starts.

The main two are Venom Grenade and Suppression. Both have a decent area of effect and relatively unresisted damage types (toxic & energy), with the former also having the all-important -res element.

Frag Grenade is also an option as it's fairly good damage (better than M30 that more people are familiar with), but it's got a smaller radius and a knockback chance, so some people bypass it.

Some people also take Heavy Burst from the Wolf tree as it's similar to Suppression but with the downside of lethal damage and the upside of slightly faster animation.

Quite a few people also go for the Leviathan patron pool as Bile Spray covers a wide area, and Venom Grenade does extra -resistance to toxic damage.

Most stick to the ranged options - an un-IO'd Crab has superior ranged defense, and more/better options for ranged AoE. But if you do expect to spend some time in melee you have Arm Lash (good damage, but generally tricky to hit more than 2 or 3 targets) and Frenzy (easier to hit multiple targets, average damage, small radius) - I took both on my Crab, but at least judging by forum posts I'm in the minority. You'd also maybe be struggling for slots if you took both - I found things very tight on my build.

So I decided to do some testing myself: Diamagnetic -tohit version, used against an even level Manticore (in AE), monitoring via Power Analyzer temp. For tl;dr version, skip to the last paragraph.

NOTE: all this was done on live, so if the cited unresistable is a change on test server, I didn't test that.

Numbers:

Base -tohit on my Darkest Night: 29.53%
My character has alpha level shift, so expected base -tohit when used on an even level foe (counting as 1 level below me): 1.11*29.53 = 32.78%
Manticore's base tohit: 50% (double checked with Power Analyzer - he sometimes runs Maneuvers for +10% but I waited for that to be disabled to avoid any conflicts).

So I did two tests. First I applied Darkest Night to Manticore and used Power Analyzer to check his stats:
Darkest Night debuff showing in combat attributes: 32.78% (as expected).
Manticore's modified base tohit: 45.08%

So Manticore was only actually debuffed for -4.92%. His debuff resistance is 85% (consistent with level 50 AV, but I double checked with Power Analyser to be sure), so debuffs only apply at 15% normal value. 0.15*32.78 = 4.92.

All of the above is as I'd expect - I did it to confirm the baseline (and to be sure how it'd be displayed via power analyser).

So now I used attacks with Diamagnetic slotted (the pure -tohit version).
Single application of Diamagnetic debuff showing in combat attributes: 5%.
Manticore's modified base tohit: 49.25%

So Manticore was only debuffed for 0.75% tohit. 0.15*5=0.75.


So the conclusion of this testing is:
1) AV debuff resistance (and any other debuff resistance I guess) has full effect against Diamagnetic -tohit debuff. Presumably the same applies to the other interface debuffs.
2) Interestingly, the purple patch does not appear to apply - with my level shift I should have been getting 1.11*5 = 5.55% debuff, but I just got the base 5%.

Personally I'm not too keen on the chance-to-infect idea for Weaken/Envenom. While I do think it would be a nice (and interesting) boost to the powers' performance, it jars with me a bit for the theme - it feels more like something a Disease set would have, rather than a Poison set (and in my mind the two are distinct). Admittedly my knowledge of toxicology is limited, but I never really think of poison as being something that'll spread from person to person.

It's a minor quibble, I know, s'just something that doesn't feel quite right to me. Possibly I'm alone in this.

That's the one I'd read too - I know a few people took that to mean they were fixing MMs, but I don't like to get my hopes up for this sort of thing unless they explicitly say so. Alas I'm UK timezone, so while I do have a US account, whenever I've been on US test there's not been enough people around to actually form a trial, much less run enough of them for meaningful testing.

My understanding was that interface debuffs stacked 4 times (6 for the fire DoT), and that the -regen one was -15% per stack (which admittedly is still pretty useless given the only targets it's really valuable for resist it so much).

Has something changed with the numbers that I've missed?

I feel they should add a small chance for an alternate cut-scene. For the BAF, same as currently except Mother slowly topples forwards. For the Lambda, instead of chattering and drinking serum, Marauder performs the forbidden dance with a Vicky.

Just wanted to say that I've also been on one or two BAFs where we completely ignored the adds. Not pulled AVs to spawn, no reinforcement teams, no switching to kill them then back to the AVs. If they happened to wander near enough to the AVs to get hit by splash damage, fine, but nobody was going after them otherwise. The AVs were dying silly fast on those leagues though, so there weren't many ambush waves and the 9CUs didn't really get enough time to power up and become a problem.

So long as this upcoming post confirms that Cannon of Justice is finally getting a nerf, I'll be happy.