Doctor_Gravity

I heard a rumor a while ago that this was only increasing enemy defeat awards, and not mission xp. Is this still true?

If so, then this seems like a direct “thou shal not use stealth to complete missions” from the devs, which is kind of unfortunate. (I really liked the feeling that my ninja could sneak past all the minions, and take out the important guy, with no one the wiser.)

I’m reminded of a dev quote (from Positron himself, actually, if I remember right) that went something like “A buff that only affects some circumstances will quickly become indistinguishable from a nerf that affects all other circumstances.” Right now, if the xp increase isn’t uniform across major sources of xp (Enemy kills, mission completes, and storyline completes) I’m kind of feeling kind of like everyone may be getting a smoother xp curve except for me, and people like me, who sometimes prefer to focus on objectives rather than painstakingly chopping everyone in the warehouse into bits.

Anyway. Here's to hoping that it's a uniform increase, and not "smoother xp curve as long as you play in a certain way."

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As for how it is PvP, say you are selling "Progenitor Goo Mk XII" for 800 Quatlu's and I have one I want to sell. I am going to price my item based off not only what the 'market' says it should go for, but also based off of what others are selling for AT THIS MOMENT. So, if I think you're selling too low, I could buy yours, then try to sell both at a higher price. Or, if I think you're selling too high, I can undercut you, reducing your chance of selling. Either way, my actions will effect you, and your actions will effect me. Thus, "PvP."

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You have 800 quatlus??! Clearly your bet on the newcomer paid off!




P. S. It's normally spelled Quatloo.

P. P. S. Adding apostrophes to the ends of words to pluralize them makes sentient plants cry. Check out here for a handy guide!

P. P. P. S. Kudos on bringing up the whole "any economy = pvp" point!

Yes. I like PvP. I only wish that there were more incentive for people to PvP, and that other zones were as popular as Siren's Call.

That, and I wish there were more incentive to team up in PvP. right now, the high spike-damage people can (and do) pretty much just float around and farm reputation off of squishies, and do considerably better than if they were on a team.

But otherwise, yes, I do enjoy the PvP fun. It's fast paced, and there are enough power effects that combine in interesting ways that it is constantly interesting. And once you accept the facts that "I can't always win here like I do in PvE", and "1 one 1 fights are paper-rock-scissors", it becomes a lot of fun.

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MMs safety comes from hiding behind pets,..

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For starters. The there's your secondary and your power pools powers. The MM secondaries all have some form of control in them. MMs are the best soloing AT out there in PvE, as they combine god-like safety with very nice firepower.


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Incorrect. FF does not have a form of control. All it has is the ability to extend the life expectancy of my group and minions. It doesn't even protect ME all that much. While all of the other secondaries have control or attacks of some sort, FF does NOT. Bodyguard completely bypasses all protection that I can put on my pets, by channeling the damage directly through me.


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FF actually has some fairly substantial control. People just tend to ignore it for some reason.

Let's look at what it has:

- Knockdown: Force bolt is an awesome power, as I'm sure you know. Naturally, doesn't work against people with knockback protection, but hey, holds don't work on people with hold protection either. Also has a substantial chance of toggle-dropping in the current environment.

- More knockdown: Repulsion field knocks down a lot. And toggle drops too. (Which can help get rid of pesky anti-knockdown powers.)

- Disorient: Repulsion bomb does disorient. (sometimes?) in addition to being a brutally efficient toggle dropper. In addition to doing knockdown.

- Repel: Force bubble is SCARY for people who don't have KB protection. You can completely negate entire melee classes, if they haven't taken acrobatics. (Flame tanks and ninja stalkers, for example.)

- Phase: Detention field is an UNRESISTABLE control. "Poof, you're out of the fight for 10 seconds". The ONLY way to resist it is to not get hit by it. If you can land it as a hit (and it has decent built-in accuracy) then they don't get to fight back for a while. Of course, you don't get to hurt them during this time, but this is still an amazing tool for removing a key member of an opponent team. (For example, detention field the ice/em blaster while you take down their healer.) (Cutie Ka and Princess doll would be such a team on Justice, so I know you've seen them.)

In short: Force field has plenty of control, in addition to its formidable defense ability.
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I do a lot of PvP missions, as those are the best xp bang for your time bucks. Scrappers and brutes are about kneck-to-kneck the fastest soloers, but they can have problems with different bosses, depending on their build. MMs, otoh, are setup-time slower, and can deal with bosses in pretty much absolute safety. Even if it's a very tough boss, you can kill and run, come back, and take care of it. Only controllers match that safety, but they lack the firepower.

-Jeff

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You do a lot of missions...but how much exp do you have in PvP?

I PvP a LOT...more than any other MM on my entire server. I think I have a right to be more than slightly upset by the fact that my entire secondary is going to be bypassed by players and totally ignored in PvP.

Suriyama
40 bots and bubbles
Justice

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I dunno, I pvp with my MM a lot on Justice as well. Although you may have me lately, since I've been neglecting my "make people respect masterminds in PvP" crusade in favor of trying to level up my stalker in time for I7. I play a /traps MM myself in PvP, so I don't have your exact experiences, but I know the FF set pretty well (from my 50 controller) and I PvP enough with my Mastermind to feel like I'm at least qualified to comment here:

Your secondary is hardly going to be "completely bypassed by players," and it won't be "ignored in pvp" except by people who don't know what it does.

Yes, your secondary can be partially bypassed by the bodyguard damage. (Welcome to the club!) It's hardly complete though, since if you have dispersion bubble up, they still have to hit you through that. (Yes, I know it's not as protected as the bots, with dispersion bubble + single target bubbles, but it's still a whole lot better than nothing.)

And, of course, you obviously have the option of going into PFF mode, and becoming super-hard to hit. (Although less frequently thanks to the recent nerf.) (Since according to Castle, PFF + bodyguard as it was turned out to be overpoweringly good.)

And again, you still have all the (formidable) control options in force fields to fall back on, which you now have more time to use, even outside of PFF, thanks to bodyguard. (x4 as much time, most likely.)

As a /FF, you're STILL going to be one of the hardest to kill MMs around, I think. You can just hide in PFF, and attack. Assuming you don't get one-shotted through it, (i. e. assasin struck) they'll probalby have to toggle-drop you to kill you. At which point, when they finally DO toggle-drop your PFF, you suddenly start taking 25% normal damage, as bodyguard kicks in.

Don't think of it as canceling each other out, think of bodyguard as a 2nd layer of defenses after they peel off your first. It's like insurance!

(As an asside, I feel like losing minions left and right is just par for the course here. About time they started dying before the MM. Keeping your minions alive should not be the highest priority. Keeping the mastermind alive should be. Minions are easy to resummon. Mid-fight, if need be. (Since they'll bodyguard just as well, even unupgraded.))

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble, so I'll cut this off here. But I think your predictions of doom (or at least of not getting anything good out of it) are a bit unrealistic. It definitely increases the survivability of EVERY mastermind considerably, in PvP.



P. S., do we know for sure that PFF/Invis/Phase shift/etc cut off bodyguard? We know that it cuts off supremacy, but do we know for certain (i. e. red name) that it cuts off bodyguard? We know that (As per Positron) you have to be within "Supremacy range". We've been assuming that it's just tied in to supremacy, and so would get cut off like most PBAoE powers. But what if it's a separate PBAoE power on each minion instead? Which just happens to have the same range as supremacy? Unless a red name has commented on it, I'm not sure I'd completely discount the possibility of bodyguard working while inside of PFF. Of course I wouldn't count on it, either. But it remains a possibility. And of course, if they did let it work through PFF, then FFs would mitigate it at least as much as any other set. (More than most, in fact.) Random musings...

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I'm curious about this - I have read that Ninjitsu caltrops do not have a -fly/-jump component, and the break hide if they do damage. My stalker isn't high enough to try them out yet. Anyone who has tested able to confirm/deny this?

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Caltrops do not break hide, either to throw them, or when they do damage. They DO make mobs attack you, after the mob has been damaged by them, even if you are hidden, but they do not actually break your hide status. (This is because mobs don't need to "see" you after they're mad at you, and will chase you even if you are completely invis.)

Yeah, ice/EM blappers have, in my book at least, surpassed stalkers as my least-favorite matchup in PvP. They tend to have knockback protection, root protection, and get in and out fast enough to kill me before the robots can take them down. Web grenade seems to be my only real friend here, but even then, it really only takes 2 ice blasts to take me down, usually. (At least with buildup.) Maybe 3, tops.

Currently, my tactics against them are mostly "attack them before they attack you." Since if they attack you, the fight ends very quickly. I've had some luck with Teleport-foe, dumpsters, and boatloads of mines. If they don't have a heal-bot, you can usually have your robots at least scare them off. They tend to pack trays full of greens and breakfrees though, so it's tough either way.

Still researching how to deal with these. They may be one of those "you need to find a team" matchups though.

It's like what _castle_ said - Placate (the power) does 2 things:

- it makes the opponent unable to target them for a bit. (This is the "status effect" called placate.
- it puts the caster into a "hide like state" for about 10 seconds. Hide-like in this case = can't see them, and they can do Assassin strikes out of it. (But they don't get the defense boost that the hide toggle grants.)

You lose track of them because of the 2nd part - Just imagine they did something very distracting (that hand motion! So distracting!) and you lost track of them.

_castle_ sez:
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FYI:
hide gives "hide" Status.
Placate gives "hide" Status.
Smoke Flash does NOT give "hide" Status.


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Thus, I read from this - Using placate (the power) gives you the hide status. It does not give you everything the "hide" toggle gives you, since the hide toggle gives you "hide status" as well as some +Def.

Hide status just equals unsupressed stealth, along with the ability to do AS. You CAN placate one person, turn around and AS someone else who was agroed to you, because placate makes you hidden. You CAN turn off hide, placate someone, and then go dance through mob spawns for the 10 seconds or whatever that the temp hide effect lasts. Because placate makes you hidden.

If you don't believe me, these are easy things to verify for yourselves, people. Maybe I should follow the original poster's lead, and make yet another thread, to explain how placate works. :P

I remember you! Yeah, those were fun!

Caltrops and grant invis - Caltrops is good, but it does overlap slightly with web grenade in effect. (stoping jumpers, and slowing walking.) I think between the two of them, web grenade is probably more important. Caltrops is, however, one of the few anti-stalker powers we have at our disposal. Since it does damage as well as slow, it not only prevents assasin strikes, but it also destealths them. Experienced stalkers will stay away. (or at least resort to less crippling "jump by joust" attacks, or ranged attacks, which are less likely to one-shot us.)

Caltrops is also extremely useful for trapping people in shallow depressions, such as dumpsters, fountains, and other geometry. You can do the same thing with web grenade, but if you miss, they'll get away.

It also helps a ton for keeping people in poison traps long enough for the detoggling to take effect.

I feel like caltrops is fairly important, all in all. (Or at least I find myself using it a lot.) You could probably get by without it, but it makes life easier. (and i LOVE it vs melee people, since they tend to have to come into range to melee, so they often get slowed by them. I've spent whole fights just running around, keeping the caltrops between me and a brute, while the robots fired away.)

To summarize:

Web grenade advantages:
-recharge component
-range
-can bring down fliers (Caltrops has -fly also, but it's harder to get the caltrops up to the fliers. )

Caltrops advantanges:
-auto-hit
-helps more vs stalkers


Grant invis, I have no idea or opinion on yet. It seems like it could be very handy, for moving your pets around unseen. (I'm constantly envious of Dark Miasma's group stealth power for this reason.) Probably great in teams. It's hard to know though, since stalkers have everyone so paranoid about stealth that lots of teams pack tactics and other +perception powers. Could get a pain to reapply constantly though, since I believe it only lasts 2 minutes.

Here, I got bored, and dug up a [color= red]_Castle_[/color] response from earlier, saying quite clearly that placate gives you "hide" status.

Check it out

sigh.

you ARE hidden, to everyone, when you placate.

Mob agro code just works so that if they're "mad" at you, they'll chase you whether or not they can see you. So you CAN do things like placate someone, and then jump into the middle of a second group of enemies, with complete safety. They can't see you.

It's just that if 2 things are mad at you, and you placate one of them, then the other is still mad at you, and so ignores the fact that you're hidden.

Me, in warburg, setting up a few traps with my mastermind. Suddenly a corruptor jumps down from the globe to land in front of me, triggering buildup as he falls. (Presumably because he was about to use his level 32 nova-like power on me.) Sadly he jumped down onto the patch of mines I was setting up.

The resulting explosion didn't kill him. He had about 10% hp left still. However the explosion DID knock him down... and onto a bigger patch of mines I'd set up previously. Which did, in fact, kill him.

Poetry in motion. And I never even fired a shot. Made my day.

heh. good point.

I just assumed that other masterminds would naturally cooperate with your nefarious schemes. :P

Seriously though, I haven't fought very many. Very few seem to hang out in warburg on Justice, it seems. The one time I met one, they got the jump on me, and got me to about 3% health with what I assume was LRM from their commando. I ran away, healed, came back, blew him up when he wasn't watching. It seems like the most important thing is to strike first. He got the jump on me, and I very nearly died. I got the jump on him, and he did die. I think that we're fragile enough (unless you took forcefields and have the amazing PFF) that attacking first is vital. You're going to be at a major disadvantage if they get a head start on you, damage wise. (Maybe less of one if you're dark miasma, and can actually heal yourself.)

Minor update:
I have discovered a technique that cuts down on the number of times I die from stalkers TREMENDOUSLY. I still get killed by other people, but since I started trying this, I have been stalker-killed ZERO times. This may be in part because I didn’t find any really good stalkers to test it on, but the ones that I did encounter, either tried and failed (And were shot by robots), or probed the edges, and couldn’t find a safe way to get me.

So, without minor ado, I present to you, dear audience:

The Gazebo... of TERROR


Here’s the theory: Stalkers who get an AS off on me have basically just won the fight. Caltrops slows them down some, and prevents most actual AS attacks, but it has some problems. In particular, a number of stalkers have instead used superjump to make long, low jumps over my caltrops, and hit me in the middle of it. (Jump-jousting.) And while they can’t AS this way, they can still hit me with nasty things like total focus, bone smasher, and energy transfer. (Which usually, if they used build-up and some inspirations, is enough to take a very large chunk of my life, in addition to often disorienting.)

So the problem is, how to make it so they can’t do jump-by hits? Well, the best way I’ve come up with is to use terrain. Pick your spots so that they can’t do it. On Warburg, northwest of the globe, there is a small gazebo, for which this tactic is named. One day, after getting hit by a few too many stalkers, I tried going into the gazebo, laying caltrops, and planting mines. It worked WONDERFULLY. The geometry blocks people from jumping by, so they pretty much have to come in through the front door. It also turns out to be a GREAT place to TP foes into, since it is harder to get out of by random jumping than most places. I got a lot of kills in that gazebo. It seems as close to stalker-proof as anything I’ve seen. You could probably use other geometry features the same way, if you had to. A lot of buildings have alcoves in the sides that could probably work almost as well.

I want to stress that this is not a cure-all tactic. It works well vs stalkers, but some stalkers still have some pretty decent ranged attacks, which they can still pester you with. (especially with buildup/rage/crit upping their damage) Also, while this works well for stalkers, it still has problems with other people, such as blasters and TP-foe abusers, since they know exactly where you are. (Especially if you have your force field drone out, etc.)

Anyway, that’s all for now. Let me know if anyone else has luck with this, or comes up with any other good answers to the stalkers’ damage spikes.

-Dr. Kronos

A guide, for your reading pleasure.

Focusing on PvP more than PvE, since no one seems to be talking much about it yet, except to say that they think MMs suck at it.

The fools! I'll show them all!

...

*ahem*

Yes. anyway. The guide:

Robots and Traps: A MM's guide to PvP [i6]

-Doctor Kronos

[color= yellow]Doctor Kronos Presents:[/color]
Ask Doctor Kronos: How do I deal with...

Stalkers:
If you’re running around in Warburg, or Bloody Bay too near an asteroid, be prepared to deal with stalkers. Unless you are on a team with lots of people all running tactics, you won’t see them before they attack and [normally] kill you. If you know there are stalkers around, then you need to take certain precautions. For one thing, don’t move in straight lines, if your travel power is flight or superspeed. (Or while sprinting). (teleport seems pretty safe.) When you’re standing still, try to make sure that you’re in an area with some kind of auto-hit effect that will disrupt stealth and assassin strikes. Powers like hurricane, force bubble, mud pots, etc are marvelous for this. Sadly, we have none of these. With traps/robots, the best I’ve come up with is standing in caltrops. Still works, but limits you a bit more. If you have dark miasma as a secondary, tar patch works rather well also. (Especially since it is so huge.) Now, most stalkers are smart enough that they won’t actually come IN to your no-stalker-zone, but will wait outside of it for you to get careless or bored. If you have an AoE attack that doesn’t require a target, you can use it to try to “ping” for nearby stalkers. Detonator can work for this, as can things like repulsion bomb (on a robot) or nuclear missiles, if you have any extra.

The other thing to remember, is that if you tell your robots to attack a stalker, it doesn’t MATTER if they hide again, your robots will keep attacking them. Which makes them more likely to be revealed, as well as making it really obvious where they are. (just watch the laser beams.) Now, the clever stalkers will run off and lead your robots through zone mobs, to try to bring you extra agro, so use this tactic with caution. But remember, if you need to keep a stalker off you, just send your robots after them, and you’ve bought yourself at least some time.

Honestly, stalkers will probably be the hardest fights you’ll have, if you’re not on a team. Good stalkers will either not attack if you have caltrops set up, or attack with other ways. Good stalkers will also run away if they don’t kill you right away and you start fighting back, only to return later, all sneaky-like.

Bottom line is, stalkers are some of the most dangerous people you’ll meet. Or rather not meet, since they’re all hiding.

Brutes/Tankers/scrappers:
Brutes to some extent, and tankers even more, have the unfortunate (for you) combination of lots of hp, and good defensive toggles. Especially on a tanker, you’re really not going to be able to kill them as long as they have their toggles up. A competent stone tank, with full toggles, just dies too slowly, and has more than enough time to get away. (and can cause you a lot of harm if you wait around in melee range for your robots to take him down.)

So what to do? Well, debuffs can help some. Acid mortar can negate, to some extent, some of the toggle defense. And seeker drones can buy you some time while they whiff in melee. However, the bottom line is, you need to get rid of some of their toggles. It just isn’t going to happen otherwise, unless the tanker is playing very poorly.

Luckily, we have a REALLY GOOD move for getting rid of toggles. The best in the game that I know of, actually. (And sadly I’m probably playing a part in its downfall by publicizing it here, since it will no doubt be a target of calls for nerfs at some point.) Our Poison Traps are GREAT. I still haven’t figured out if they just stack holds really quickly, or if they just happen to occasionally trigger a mag-100 hold that blows through resistance. (Seems to be the huge hold, but it’s hard to tell for certain.) If people stick around in your clouds of poison, they will very often be held (and lose toggles) as a result. Granted, the hold is only for about a second. But that’s all you need to get rid of toggles and get your bots a chance to do some real damage to an otherwise impervious scrapper or tanker.

Caltrops and possibly web grenade can slow people down, which increases the amount of time they have to spend in your cloud of poison. Use them as much as you feel you can. Stand in the cloud yourself, so they have to come into it if they want to melee you. If they are waiting around outside the cloud, waiting for it to disperse, feel free to teleport them in. And after they get in, make sure you keep them as immobile as you can, with caltrops or any other means you have at your disposal.

The “inescapable pit” technique is good here, to keep people in a cloud, if there is a suitable spot to set up.

Melee types tend to be the easiest to hit with seeker drones, since their location is more predictable, and less likely to be 50 feet up in the air. By all means, slap a couple on them, to mitigate their damage output as much as you can.

If you see one of these people use their “ultimate defensive power” (moment of glory, unstoppable, elude, etc) then the best thing to do is usually just run away, or withdraw, since you really can’t kill them during this time. (Or rather you can, but it’s really really hard.) And since it’s a click power, you can’t drop it like a toggle. So just withdraw until it wears off, and then continue the fight from there.

Blasters:
Blasters can pose a serious threat, if they get a chance to build up/aim, and then hit you with their hardest attacks. I’ve been one-shotted by thunderous blast before, and it’s somewhat frustrating. However, blasters themselves are also fairly squishy, and if you get the drop on them, they die just as fast. So the secret to fighting blasters is, attack first, attack hard, and don’t let them run. Also, if you can, don’t let them get direct line-of-sight to you, so they can’t hit back. Hide just around a corner, or behind a dumpster, etc, after you start the fight. That way they can’t just shoot you and end the fight through massive damage spikes.

Some blasters will use tripmines and try to teleport you into them.

If you can get some seeker drones to hit a blaster, it helps a lot, but realize that they can still ignore most of the effect by using aim/buildup. (And they will.) It still helps a lot if you survive the built-up volley however.

Try to web-grenade them, so they can’t escape if things turn sour. Especially since many blasters can fly.

Blasters have almost zero access to status protection, so lay any holds, disorients, and roots on thick.


Corruptors:
Both less and more annoying than blasters. They are less likely to kill you in one-two massive hits (since not even corruptors do blaster damage) but more likely to extend the fight through healing, etc. A lot of the stuff I said about blasters applies to corruptors as well.

Corruptors can also take the same traps set we have, and use a lot of the same tricks with it. I’ve only met one that did, though, so I don’t think it’s as popular as, say, radiation or dark miasma yet.

The main secret with corruptors is to keep on them, and not get discouraged by their self-heals. Eventually, one of your robots’ photon grenades, or maybe a seeker drone, will stun them, and then you’ve got them. Corruptors DO have some status protection, but it is mostly for teammates, and so you can usually still stun the corruptor. (There are a few exceptions, such as sonics)

Defenders:
Tend to be very frustrating, since they can often heal themselves faster than you can hurt them. Also, very frustrating in groups, since they can often put allies’ hp bars back up to full at a moments notice. The good news is that they have just as hard a time killing YOU, since their damage output isn’t marvelous. These fights are often stalemates, unless you can get them to hit a lot of mines, or other sudden spikes of damage, with some knockdown to delay the inevitable heal.

Status effects can help a lot. Some defenders can guard against them (forcefields, sonics) but others aren’t quite so well protected.

If you get a toggle debuff on you (enervating field, darkest night, snow storm, etc.) feel free to quick teleport away for a jump or two to get rid of it. All of those debuffs have a set range, and will go away if you get too far away. Or, if you’re feeling especially nasty, go find a group of enemies to stand in the middle of, so that they get mad at the person who put the debuff on you…

Controllers:
Annoying in teams, since they heal their teammates, AND throw annoying effects around like volcanic gas and ice slick. If you have your force field drone out, you have a little more time before they get you with a hold, at least. Happily, they have a harder time controlling your robots, and often won’t even try much, beyond throwing an area effect at them. Many controllers will ignore your robots all together, which is generally a bad idea for them.

They’re not TOO dangerous solo, even if they have pets (since they’re in the same boat you are: the pet may be scary, but if you kill the master, the pet dies. And the master is fairly squishy. Except we have more pets…)

Controller fights tend to feel a lot like corruptor fights to me. They can heal themselves often, but they can’t kill you quickly, so the fights usually last longer. And, like corruptors, if one of your robots gets a disorient through, you basically win, on account of their low hp.

Dominators:
Dominators are basically controllers with holds that don’t last as long, and offensive ability instead of support. They can still be dangerous, especially in teams, but they have nowhere near the spike damage potential of blasters or stalkers. Fights with dominators tend to go more like defender or controller fights, except without the parts where they heal themselves. They’re pretty dangerous when they start using their AT ability domination, though. Happily they can’t do that too often in PvP.

Kheldians:
Kheldians have some weird tricks, and seem to have an answer for everything. The problem is, they can’t use all those answers at the same time. They can have great offense, nearing blaster level, if they turn into a squid. But then they have no defense, and no mez protection. They can get awesome defenses, and mez protection by turning into a giant glowing lobster thing, but then their offense is fairly low. They can have some melee skills (the peacebringers more than the warshades) in human form, but again, no mez protection. Peacebringers can use a power called ‘light form’, which is basically like unstoppable for tankers (massive defense, mez protection, but runs out after a bit, and their hp go way down) but it doesn’t last terribly long, so you can just wait for it to run out. They’ll look like a small, white ball of energy when using this, and they can’t use other forms.

Warshades have less obvious defenses, but if they find some enemies to power up on, can have incredible resistance in human form for a short while (90 sec) afterwards. However, again, no mez protection, so in both cases, disorients and stuns are going to be your friends.

Just realize that a lot of fights will be stalemates, where the kheldian will realize they’re in trouble, turn into the invulnerable lobster, and teleport away in relative safety.

TP-Foe Abusers:
As an abuser of TP foe myself, I am quite aware of just how difficult it can be to counter. I’m also quite aware of how easy it can be to counter, if you’re watching for it. Super speeders often are moving fast enough that my trip mines don’t even detonate. Fliers that are moving upwards while teleported sometimes miss the mines as well. And teleporters who are watching have no trouble. Here’s the trick: if you get out fast enough, the mines won’t always detonate, and the caltrops won’t always effect you.

You can do this with most travel powers, if you’re watching. With superspeed, just start moving as soon as you see the telltale teleport sparkles, and hope you don’t run into a wall. (many people will TP you into corners or dumpers for this reason.) With flight, just fly straight up as soon as you see the glitter. With teleport, (my favorite) just quickly start to teleport yourself somewhere as soon as you see them start to TP you. You’ll warp to them, and then immediately warp to wherever you clicked, giving them a very small window to attack you in. (You’ll miss a lot of mines this way too.) [this also has the advantage that you know you’ll end up somewhere mostly safe.] Superjump has the easiest time, since you can just hold down the jump button and you’re safe. You can get away if you are paying attention, and not overly lagged. (And not sleeping, held, or in another fight.)

You’ll still die from time to time to being teleported into mines. But it’s not as inescapable a tactic as some people think.




And this concludes our guide. Sorry it got a little long. It was fun to write; there was about a week where after every night, I was thinking "oooh, that worked, I should add that to the guide!" If you liked it, then wonderful! Your loyalty will be remembered in the coming revolution, after I achieve my rightful place as ruler of the world! And if you didn't like it, then your name will be remembered, for... later. But, if you didn't like it, please, tell me why! Post comments! Feel free to call this guide the most useless load of drivel you've ever seen. Just tell me what parts you find to not be useful, or that you disagree with. I'm looking to learn here myself. I'm sure there are scores of evil tricks I've never thought of or encountered. If you know of a good counter, or variation for any of the things I've written, post it in the comments! Feedback feedback feedback!

Thank you for your attention. And happy hunting.

[color= yellow]Doctor Kronos Presents:[/color]
The Kronos School of Tactics and Strategy: General PvP thoughts:

These are some thoughts I have on PvP in general, regardless of what AT you are playing. I’m including them here, just because.

Cultivate a thick skin:
Don’t go into the PvP zones if you’re not willing to be laughed at by people who (judging from the Broad Channel chatter) have the maturity level of a 12 year old. Seriously. Really. You WILL meet people who are very ungracious losers, ungracious winners, and general freaks. If you can’t ignore people yelling juvenile insults at you, then the PvP zones are not for you. If you PvP well, you WILL get people insulting you, telling you that you are “cheap”, have “no skill” and couldn’t beat them if it was actually a “fair fight”. (By which they mean, one where the odds are in their favor.) Especially if you win. And that, of course, is the goal.

Be prepared to lose:
You won’t win all the time. It just won’t happen. Sometimes they’ll get the drop on you, sometimes they’ll come at you with 8 people at once, sometimes they’ll just do something you haven’t seen yet. However it happens, get used to the idea of losing from time to time. Get used to the idea of losing, and then being insulted for it, in fact. Because, through no fault of your own, you will occasionally get ganked by a stalker who will shout “LOL N00b MM” over the broad channel. We get used to the idea of winning a lot from playing the game, because, well, the game designers have done an excellent job of tuning it. PvP, this goes out the window. The simple fact is, unlike PvE, everyone can’t win all the time. Someone has to lose. Sometimes that someone will be you. Get used to the idea, and don’t get your ego so tied up into winning that you get discouraged when you have a bad night, and the stalkers are on you thick as mosquitoes, and you can’t go 5 feet from your hospital without getting assassin-struck.

Don’t keep doing the same thing if it isn’t working:
If you find yourself trying something again and again, and it isn’t working (even if it is one of the brilliant and well thought-out schemes from this guide) then stop doing it! I know that this sounds obvious, but there are an amazing number of people who will just keep blindly trying the same thing again and again, because it worked once for them, or because they feel it ought to work. If every time you attack a controller, you end up held and killed and unable to fight back, then don’t just keep charging in and hoping they’ll somehow feel bad for you and stop using their best tactics on you. Change your strategy. Bring break frees. Put out a force field generator. Hold them first. Do SOMETHING different. Because, if what they’re doing is working, they have no reason to stop doing it.

Don’t be afraid to reuse thing what works:
The reverse of the above, if you are doing something that keeps killing someone, feel free to keep doing it. If every time a pesky blaster flies by, you web grenade him and your robots tear him up, then don’t feel like you’re somehow honor-bound to stop doing that. (I mean, if nothing else, we’re villains.) It’s effective, so keep doing it until they change tactics. (Just be careful that they don’t use your consistency to set up traps for you.)

Play the game that is:
One of the most important lessons of PvP is, “play the game that is there, not the game that you wish it was”. People will complain a lot about things being “cheap”. What this usually means, is that it doesn’t conform to their idea of what the game should be. People get used to the way things work in PvE, and get upset when PvP is not the same. “Stupid blasters! They keep attacking squishy me instead of my armored and replaceable robots. That’s cheap!” Players, unlike npcs, will NOT always run in straight lines into your caltrops, will not always attack your robots instead of you, and above all, will not always stick around long enough for you to kill them, if the fight starts turning sour. Get used to it, and do the same thing. Everything has a counter, if you look long enough. If someone does something to you that you can’t figure out a way to deal with, don’t bother whining over the broad channel. (It probably won’t make them stop anyway.) Instead try to figure out why it is working on you, and what you can do to get around it.

Pick your battles:
Don’t be afraid to run. Don’t be afraid to not attack someone as they fly by, if you’re not ready. More than many sets, traps relies on some set-up time. But even without traps, there is no reason to start a fight if you don’t think it’s one you’ll win. If you see a group of 5 people walk down the street in Warburg, then maybe that’s NOT the best time to jump out with your robots half-assembled, and start shooting one of them. Don’t be afraid to bide your time. And if a fight starts out well, but starts going poorly, don’t be afraid to run and come back later. Don’t be afraid to make sure you have as many advantages as possible before you start a fight. There is nothing noble about starting a fight without being fully set up, any more than it is noble for a tanker to start a fight without all their toggles.

[color= yellow]Doctor Kronos Presents:[/color]
The Kronos School of Tactics and Strategy part II: PvP with a MasterMind:

Any hero or villain who finds themselves in a fight they weren’t ready for is at an automatic disadvantage. The easiest way to make sure to win, is to make sure the fight is over before the other person even realizes you’re fighting. Stalkers know this. Many blasters know it. We should learn from them, and use it as much as we can. Of course, it works well for those classes, since they can do spikes of damage high enough to kill people, in one or two volleys.

Well, we can too, with some setup. TP foe and tripmines work great for that. Even if they survive the initial blast, they still start out with a lot less HP, and a significant disadvantage.

That is, of course, the extreme case, but anything else you can do to get the other guy before he is ready, will only help your chances.


Masterminds have, like every class, several things that they do better than some, or all others. And, like every class, we have some things that only we can do. The trick then, is figuring out how to best make use of the things that are unique to us. Again, stalkers understand this lesson very well. They have one real trick that is unique to them, but they milk it for all it is worth. Well, we have a few tricks of our own, so we need to make sure we’re milking away ourselves.

What are our tricks? The main one, as I see it, is our ability to attack people from very long distances or around corners, and without line of sight, through pets. I’ll explore this more, further down, but it’s worth keeping in mind. Also, with traps, we can make areas that are extremely hazardous for other people to be in, and that often they can’t see until it is too late.

[color= yellow]Doctor Kronos Presents:[/color]
Sinister Schemes: Specific Robots/Traps tactics

A wide, wide world of traps
Got nothing better to do? Plant a trip mine, right on the spot you’re standing on. Or maybe a poison trap. Why? Who knows. Maybe you won’t use it. But it doesn’t cost too much endurance, and it lasts a really long time, so every so often, you’ll be really glad you did. And remember where it is, so if you need to, you can run back to it when a scrapper rushes at you. Remember, enemies don’t get to see your traps. All they see is a helpless (heh heh) mastermind, who they charge at, and suddenly they’re on fire and vomiting. If they hit mines often enough, they’ll start getting kind of paranoid about being near you. Which, all things considered, is not such a bad thing for you.

Zones of Sudden Death:
Set up a bunch of trip mines and a few poison traps, all on one spot. Sprinkle with caltrops. An acid mortar garnish is optional, but always appreciated. Wait for someone to come near. Teleport them into it if they’re a ranged attacker, otherwise stand in and lure melee-types in with yourself as bait. Watch them go boom. Have the robots attack. Laugh maniacally. Repeat.

You can do several variations on this, depending on how you are trying to play. For example, if you are trying to pick someone off without attracting too much attention, you might not bother summoning a FF generator, (because it is so visible) and trying to kill them fast enough that it won’t matter. Alternately, if you are already set up, but no one is getting close (or you want to get a scraper or tanker) I find that summoning the FF generator, and putting down a triage beacon or two (and turning off stealth) is often enough to get people to come over and at least get close enough to see if I’m an easy target or not.

As a traps/robotics mastermind, I find myself doing this sort of thing a lot.

If you get a really nasty pile of mines set up, but don’t see anyone nearby to fight, then make sure you remember where you left it, if you go looking for people. I’ve won a number of fights just by knowing where to run back to, after things turned ugly. If you’re in a battle, and running low on hp, that’s a great time to lure people into your traps. They’ll be frantically following you, trying to land that last couple of hits needed to take you out, and so less cautious than normal.

The inescapable pit:
Caltrops has several interesting effects, all tied together into one nice, tight power. For one thing, it does minor, auto-hit damage, which is useful for destealthing stalkers. It also makes people run really slow, which is the primary use. But it also has the interesting side-effect of making people unable to jump. (Since otherwise they’d just jump out of your caltrop field.) This means that if they are in a small, confined place that they need to jump to get out of (such as a dumpster) then they may be sort of stuck, if that small, confined place has been carefully lined with sharp metal objects in advance by a cunning mastermind. After that, it’s just a matter of getting people in it, either through subtlety (oh deary me, I’m a helpless mastermind in a trash bin! I hope no tankers jump in and try to punch my head in!) or force. (TP foe, sucka! Hah!)

While sticking someone in a pit they can’t get out of isn’t particularly dangerous in itself, it is a major tactical advantage, especially if there are other problems on their mind. (Such as the continuous stream of damage coming from the robots, or the continuous stream of debuffs (and potentially holds) coming from your cloud of poison gas.)

And nothing is quite as embarrassing for SupahHurtz02, scrapper extraordinaire, (“son of zeuse I’ll kill u all lol I have the power of nite on my puches u r doomed make ur time”), as being unable to get out of a simple pool of water. (The small, (1-foot or so) lips for fountains work wonderfully for this tactic, and are especially demoralizing when they keep you from escaping.)


The Long Distance Relationship… OF DOOM:
Think for a moment about comic book villains. Did Dr. Claw ever bother to lead his thugs into battle? Did Shredder bother to go out with his foot soldiers on every outing? Did Darth Vader bother to accompany every storm trooper squadron? Of course not. Because, why subject yourself to danger, when you have minions to do that part for you?

Well, the same is true for us. As most people have noticed by now, if you kill the mastermind, the pets all die. No point in focusing fire on the replacable pets then, when the mastermind is so much squishier, and so much more important to kill. And so, of course, most players will do exactly this: Focus fire on the mastermind, and ignore the pets.

But that doesn’t mean we have to make it EASY for them. Nothing says we have to be anywhere even remotely nearby when they start fighting our robots. I spent a perfectly enjoyable evening harassing some groups of heroes by sending in my robots to attack them, while I hid on top of a building, just barely in sight range. (And I was stealthed, so I was fairly hard to see.) They spent a lot of time trying to find me, and ignoring my robots, and I ended up getting several kills this way, since no one wanted to waste time attacking the bots until it was too late.

You can do the same thing in a lot of ways; hiding around corners, behind billboards, under bridges, etc. Just make sure you’re far enough away (or behind enough cover) that they won’t see you, and let your minions go to town. Just make sure to keep an eye on them, and have them switch targets before some hero leads them through a pack of malta robots, etc.

The downsides with this tactic are that you lose any leadership and supremacy bonuses, but honestly, with 3-slotted damage and 2-3 slotted accuracy on all the bots, they still are pretty formidable, even if you’re not around. One thing I did discover is that you don’t get credit for the kill unless you’re close, however. So it’s often worth it to wait until they’re nearly dead, and then teleport close, for the final blow, before warping away to safety. Also, it’s frankly hard to kill someone who’s paying attention this way, since they can always just run away if things get bad. (Unless you get lucky and disorient them.)

The upsides are that it has extremely low risk, and a lot of people won’t want to run away, and so will instead run around looking for you, while the robots blast away.

[color= yellow]Traps and Robots: The art of Guerilla warfare.[/color]
A guide to PvPing with mechanical monstrosities.


Hello. My name is Doctor Kronos. I am a scorned scientific genius, with nearly limitless resources, a bewildering array of gadgets, and a seemingly endless supply of killer robots.

I have been having a tremendous amount of fun in the PvP zones, and so I’m writing this guide for other lovers of mechanical mayhem who want some ideas on how to be effective against other players. Sorry if this gets a little long.

Disclaimers:
This guide is primarily aimed at PvP. There may be PvE comments thrown in here from place to place, but the definite focus is on PvP. This guide is my opinions, based on my own gameplay experiences; if you disagree with me on points please say so in comments. This is what has worked for me, but I’m not trying to preach the “one true path” of masterminding. Go with what works for you. And if you have your own masterful schemes, by all means, post them in the comments, so we can see them.

General level:
This is not a guild telling you how to be a good mastermind. There are other guides for that. But this guide does assume that you have at least some level of understanding of how to control your pets. In particular, make sure you can
a) have some or all of your pets start shooting a given target
b) tell all your pets to go to a location
c) quickly change your pets’ stances (aggressive, defensive, passive)
d) tell your pets to stop attacking, and follow you, no questions asked.
There are obviously a lot of other things you should make sure you can do as well (I recommend some of the excellent bind guides on this forum, if you don’t feel up to making up your own.) But these are the things you’ll find yourself needing to do the most, particularly in PvP.

Doctor Kronos Presents:
All about me! General build info:

First, a quick rundown of my build: Here’s what I took and what worked for me:
(presented here, not because I’m saying you should mirror it, but so I can talk about what I did, and what worked for me and what didn’t)

Robotics:
Battle drones
Equip Robot
Repair
Protector Bots
Assault Bot
Upgrade Robot

Traps:
EVERYTHING!!! Muahaha!
Web grenade
Caltrops
Acid Mortar
Triage Beacon
Force Field Generator
Poison Trap
Seeker Drones
Trip Mine
Detonator


Leadership:
Assault
Tactics

Teleportation:
Teleport Foe
Teleport

Stealth:
Stealth


[color= yellow]Rundown of Powers:[/color]
Battle drones (3 accuracy, 3 damage)
Equip Robot (1 recharge)
Protector Bots (3 damage, 3 accuracy)
Assault Bot (3 accuracy, 3 damage)
Upgrade Robot (2 recharge)
These are sort of the “big 5” of any mastermind set. Kind of annoying, really. We have to take 5 powers just to be a “mastermind”. Oh well, I guess other classes also have their “must haves”. I just wish that over half our powersets weren’t like that. Anyway, enough ranting. I took those because I had to, to have lots of robots. And to keep them upgraded. Pretty much everyone takes them, because it’s silly not to.

For slots, I recommend 3 accuracy on every robot, just to make SURE they hit. (remember, minions are -2 levels below you, and lots of players have defensive powers.) That much accuracy may seem redundant, but it really helps when you start meeting people with defensive powers. Damage is also nice, of course. I wobble back and forth, on whether the healing is worth it on the protector bots. Sometimes it is helpful, but I figure, they shoot bad guys more often than they heal allies, so that has to get priority. Individual results may vary.

Repair: (2 recharge)
I like this power. It’s a good spike heal, for when a robot is getting in trouble. I rarely use it on minions unless I feel really safe. (It seems whenever I use it on a minion, the assault bot, or a protector starts to die. I call this “Kronos’s Curse”) It’s great for saving the assault bot though, since it automatically heals them to full. The recharge is nasty, so don’t plan on using it more than once or twice a fight. But it’s still a nice situational power. It could probably be skipped, for a more PvP-centric power, but I feel nervous without at least some way of healing my pets directly.

Web grenade: (2 accuracy)
They make you take this power. At first, I hated it. Then, once I got to PvP, I realized what a blessing it was. It’s a marvelous single target root, with two fairly powerful side effects.. First off, the –recharge is quite handy for reducing how much someone gets to do. But the –fly is a godsend. This is your one-stop choice for stopping every travel power cold except for teleport. It’s also a great panic inducer. Nothing messes a flier up in the head more than suddenly plummeting to the ground. It has to do with the mindset: While you’re flying, you’re pretty safe. You can see everything coming. A lot of stuff can’t reach you. Melee combat is something that happens to other people. As soon as you fall, your field of view drops, your mobility is cut down tremendously, and at this point, there are likely a lot of robots running at you very fast, with very nasty looks in their cold, metallic eyes. Use this ability as much as you can. Got a free moment? Toss a web grenade. Slot some accuracy in it so you hit a lot, and you’re set.

Caltrops: (2 recharge)
Wonderful, great, power. Quick to throw out, nice effect, good recharge. (You can keep them down perma, straight out of the box.) This is good for several things in PvP. You can stand in it, to be stalker-proof. (since it will de-stealth them and interrupt their assassin strikes.) It also is great for keeping fliers and jumpers grounded, after you land a web grenade. (since it suppresses both fly and jump) Superspeeders and teleporters will still escape with ease, but hey, you can’t have everything…

Acid Mortar: 2 recharge, 2 accuracy, 1 defense debuff
A marvelous PvE power, but sadly not quite as useful in PvP. It has a very nice resistance debuff of around -20%. Not quite tarpatch level, but still pretty good. Put this down if you see other people fighting, and want to help, or if you’re setting up a really nasty spot to lure people into. It is most helpful against melee types, who rely on their resistance to save them a lot. (It also has a decent defense debuff, so it helps against super-reflex type people as well, if it can land that first hit.)

Triage Beacon: (3 recharge, 3 healing)
It gives everyone around it +150% regeneration (+300% or so, with 3 healing SOs) for 90 seconds, which can be significant. It’s a solid power, but it announces your presence to everyone for a long ways. In PvP it’s useful for both prolonging fights (it works really well when combined with force field generator, for keeping people alive) as well as for luring people to you, when you’re set up and looking for people to come to you, since it is so visiable.


Force Field Generator: (3 defense)
This power is, in my mind, one of the must-take powers from traps. First off, it’s an area defense boost, just like dispersion bubble in force fields. Also, like dispersion bubble, it gives you resistance to immobilize, disorient and hold. But UNLIKE dispersion bubble, it costs no end to maintain, and (most importantly) if someone DOES hold, disorient, or sleep you, it doesn’t drop. This power has saved me sooo many times, where I get held, think “oh crap”, and then my faithful little generator bobs into range, and I’m free.

In theory, they could attack the drone itself, but it seems fairly annoying to try to kill. No one really tries much. And you can summon a new one every 10 seconds, so you’re fairly safe.

This is a really really good power.


Poison Trap: (3 recharge, 1 hold duration)
A medium power in PvE, this power really shines in PvP. Here’s how it works: You plant a small green ball. It has a very small trigger radius. You cannot be interrupted while planting it, although if you get knocked back, you may end up planting it in the wrong place. If someone triggers it, it explodes into a VERY large (much larger than the trigger area) cloud of poison. Anyone staying in the cloud will get a LOT of ticks of a nasty debuff to their recharge and regeneration. (The regeneration only really matters when fighting people like regen scrappers/stalkers.) Anyone in the area when it is triggered will get a mag-2 hold. (I think this may auto-hit. It seems very reliable, at least.) ALSO, anyone remaining in the cloud has a chance to vomit. Vomit seems to be an unresistable, 2 second hold. (Either that, or it’s just spamming them fast enough that it overcomes peoples’ resistance.) This is where poison trap is especially effective, since if folks are foolish enough to stay in it, (or find themselves stuck in a caltrop patch and can’t leave) they have a good chance of losing their toggles.

Seeker Drones: (2 recharge, 3 accuracy, 1 accuracy debuff)
Another amazingly good power. You summon 2 small flying drones at a target location. (Which can be quite far away.) They home in on enemies, and explode. Their explosions cause –damage/-accuracy debuffs, as well as sometimes disorienting. As far as I can tell, each drone does -17.5% damage. (not sure about the accuracy.) The debuffs are AoE, and stack, however, so if someone gets hit with both, they have about -35% damage output. The protector bots will also throw these things out, so if you’re set up for a while in one spot, you’ll often have a nice swarm of them.

They are not very good at following you, but with a few recharges, you can recast them pretty much at will. Just make sure you throw some up whenever you are planning on staying in one spot for a while; they make great early warning sentinels. I’ve had several times where the way I knew I was being attacked was because the drones darted offscreen and exploded.


Trip Mine: (3 damage, 2 accuracy 1 recharge)
This power is almost required for PvP with traps, I feel. It’s the defining power of the set. After all, what is more trap-like than having someone come down to attack you, and suddenly exploding?

It’s basically the same power that blasters get. It does random damage. (several successive hits that each have their own to-hit roll.) It does a lot of damage slotted though. One is usually enough to bring an orange minion down to 15-20% hp. And of course, you can have a lot in one place…

Also, it drops toggles sometimes.

What’s not to like?

Detonator: (1 accuracy, 5 undetermined.)
I haven’t fully slotted this yet, so I don’t know what I’ll end up with. I’m leaning towards 3 damage, and then some combination of recharge and accuracy. It has a LONG recharge (10 minutes, I believe) but is a pretty good power, none the less. It’s pretty much a nova, except without the “stand in the middle of a bunch of enemies now that you have zero endurance.” Part. Seems moderately useful in PvE, and unsure in PvP. If it recharged faster, then it would be great for checking for stalkers, but alas, it does not. Nice if the scrapper decides to try to melee your robots, at least. And the animation is extremely quick. Either way it’s a very nice chunk of damage all at once. With no slots in damage, the assault bot comes within 5% of killing white minions. (Higher tier pets yield more damaging explosions.) You can use inspirations to buff the damage of this power, but you need to give them to the robot that is going to explode instead of using them yourself.


Assault: (1 endurance reducer)
I don’t like this power. I turn it on, because, why not? But I’d skip it in a moment, if there were an easier way to get to tactics. It gives us around +11% base damage to our robots. Of course, since most of our robots have 3 damage SOs, the net gain is something like +6% to our total damage output. Not great, but so it goes. At least it provides resistance to tanker taunts and stalker placates!

Tactics: (1 endurance reducer)
This gem is the reason I endure assault. It gives us something like +7% accuracy, which is ok. But more importantly, it lets us see through at least some stealth effects. This is EXTREMELY important in PvP. People will still be able to sneak up on us (especially stalkers) but it helps. Things like stalker hide, or illusionist invisibility are still troublesome, but we can at least see them with it. And the wimpier forms, like stealth, cloaking device, steamy mist, shadow fall, etc, we can see them at nearly twice the normal range, which is significant.

If you plan to PvP at all, I recommend this power, if you can fit it in.

Teleport Foe: (2 accuracy)
The purpose of this is probably pretty obvious. We make wonderful little death-dens with our traps. But sometimes people (especially blasters) won’t be coaxed to coming in. Or maybe they already DID come in, and dislike losing half their HP in the first 5 seconds of combat, and so are trying to leave. Either way, this is a great power to bring them back. If you have a pile of mines, just wait for someone to get close enough, and pull them onto your pile. This is a very hard tactic to counter, unless you are paying attention. Also, note that you do NOT need line-of-sight to snatch people. I will not be surprised if this tactic gets nerfed at some point, either by reducing TP foe, or by giving more powers teleport resists. Meanwhile though, abuse it.

Teleport: (1 endurance reducer)
A good travel power, for people who are willing to micromanage. In particular, I like it for PvP because it is quick, and extremely difficult to “jam”. Basically, unless I’m mezzed in some way, or out of endurance, I can TP. Through all the web grenades, caltrops, tar patches, and ice storms in the world, I can TP away. Also, unless they are watching closely (which turns out to be fairly hard to do) they may not see where you went. 2-3 teleports are almost always enough to shake someone; especially if you have stealth. The downside is, it’s very difficult to pursue someone with this power. But, that’s what TP Foe is for, I guess.

I highly recommend using something like the click-bind (where you press control+click, or something similar) to teleport, and get used to using it quickly, on reaction. And not just for traveling. TPing straight up, when a melee type is in your face is often a good way to buy some time to pop inspirations, and let your bots go to work, while they wonder where you went.

Stealth: (1 endurance reducer)
So-So in PvE, but in PvP, this power shines. The difference between no stealth and stealth is huge. Even though they can see you if you get close, it gives you a lot better chance of surprising people. You’re far more likely to see them before they see you.


[color= yellow]Build strengths and weaknesses:[/color]
First off, my build does not have stamina or hasten. After the great ED nerf of aught-six, I decided to try to not have them. (I’ve never liked the mandatory glowing-hands of hasten anyway.) Hasten would be nice for buffing robots, but otherwise, I feel fine living without it. Stamina is a different story. With all the toggles (assault, tactics, stealth, and often sprint) I find endurance is often an issue. Personally, I feel that I’m willing to wait sometimes, in exchange for 3 extra power slots, but many other people feel differently.

This build has zero direct offense, except for trip mine and detonator. I am fairly unimpressed by the guns in our primary line. The grenade is nice for the occasional disorient, but the protector bots do that anyway. The other gun shots are about defender level damage, but I feel there are better uses for my endurance and time. (As well as the question of, why give your position away?) So this build relies on pets to do pretty much all the damage, except for the initial spike from trip mine. Happily robots seem up to the task.

What this build is VERY good at, with all of the traps and what not, is setting up in a spot and obliterating anyone who comes into it, willingly or unwillingly. This is not a mobile build. This is not what you want to have if you want to chase people across rooftops, lasers and swords flashing in the moonlight. This is what you want to do if you want to fortify a position, and just DARE anyone to come close.

To me, this is a very fun build. Individual results may vary.

[ QUOTE ]
What.....Power Boost will double the duration of....say....Blizzard?

*foams at the mouth*

Could Ice/Eng possibly become even more of a FotM?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

Power boost will significantly increase the duration of the slow effect from blizzard. NOT the duration (and hence damage) of blizzard itself.

[ QUOTE ]

That's pretty much what I don't want. As I said before, I never claimed that this power doesn't "do stuff" but as you said it removes an entire group from combat. This is exactly what I hate. In a team it usually makes everyone wait or confuses everyone. I know based on the way I solo with my other pet-enabled controllers, and my tests with Dim Shift in the past, that I don't want this. I pick and choose each fight carefully, so this power is worthless to me compared to a disorient (which would be offense friendly). In an "oh crap" situation, Dimension Shift is inferior to a disorient in most ways except the boss issue. However, I've been jumped by a new pack with a boss MANY times and have almost never failed to deal with them with the simple use of an offense friendly control power and some minimal strategy on the boss. If I have allies around, the new boss goes bye-bye fast. No waiting.


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Hmm. Maybe I'm just going on more interesting missions, or maybe you're finding groups that are better than mine. But I gotta say, there have been MANY times where removing a large chunk of people from combat is EXACTLY what I want to do. So that we can kill the others that are still IN combat in peace, and stuff. As for the comment about disorient, the problem there is that the disorient duration scales with level, and it takes more slots to get things out of the fight for the same time. That's DS's real strength. It takes a lot less slots to take people out of a fight for X time than it does with an AoE disorient. The downside, is, of course, that you can't hit them while they're out of the fight. (DS also has an advantage over the controller disorients in that the disorients have the problem of only working vs foes on the ground, but that's not a major issue in most situations.)

So, this isn't meant to sound inflamitory, but... if you don't use Dimension Shift in your playstyle, then I'm sorry, and not trying to convert you over to the gospel of DS. But kindly keep in mind that there ARE people who have good uses for it and find it quite helpful in the right situation.

This isn't to say that I wouldn't rather have a disorient than DS in many situations. But there are at least some situations where I'd rather have DS than a disorient, so it's not as if it's AUTOMATICALLY worse. And frankly, our area hold makes up for a lot, in my opinion. I think I WOULD rather have a ranged area hold and dimension shift than a PBAoE hold and a disorient. Being able to open a fight, at a range, with our strongest control option is a HUGE benifit.

And as for our control gap, well... I don't know if wormhole will completely cure it, (I doubt it, actually) but... It's not terrible, and I think the change to wormhole will at least move us in the right direction.

We've never been THAT far behind. A gravity controller on the top of their game and on the ball, can perform as well as most other average controllers. We're close enough that most teams don't care about (or even know about) the difference.

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I know some people care about PvP, maybe most people for all I know, but that is total rubbish that all the PvE players must suck up having a power that "can be used" but "blows chunks" in PvE compared to other options just because it will be good for PvP. I have to be stinktastic on bread-and-butter control just because the power is good in PvP?

You refuse to accept changes to the most commonly regretted powers in our entire set since day 1 (Dimension Shift, Propel) because the PvP is probably going to be strong and the powers are useable in PvE situationally. I guess I can't blame you. I refuse to accept Wormhole being changed after a year of being awesome, being used in every single fight by the many who have it, and being liked by almost everyone, and which would also rock as a single target PvP power for that matter.


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It's not a matter of "Refusing to accept change". I frankly don't think there is a whole lot you or I can do about the change. It either will or won't happen, independant of us, I suspect. What I'm saying is "I think I can work with these tools effectively" What you appear to be saying is "we're broke, we need more stuff!"

And keep in mind, that monsters have resists to control effects, just like players do. Wisps are really annoying, because the minions have boss-level hold magnitude. But intangibility works on them just fine. I'm sorry that you feel the power is "stinktastic" in PvE, and I'm sorry that you feel the set as a whole is significantly sub-par. I'm sorry that you don't think you can find good uses for the new wormhole that will offset the loss of the old wormhole.

But I personally think that Dimension Shift DOES have uses in PvE, if the team knows what is going on, and the controller uses it well. I think that the new wormhole will have enough interesting uses to make up for the lack of single-target percision. And I think that the gravity set as a whole, while slightly behind before, is definitely catching up and gaining ground in issue 4. Is it there yet? Maybe not. But it is at least moving in the right direction.

Just for the reccord, Dimension Shift was never as worthless as everyone seemed to think on the forums either. I mean, it WAS a power that, unslotted, with just the base SO in it, could remove an entire group from combat, INCLUDING BOSSES, for a longer time than it took to recharge.

Could it be used in ways that annoy teams? Certainly. But then, lots of gravity powers can. (As anyone who has succumbed to the dark call of planting singularities in the middle of tank herds knows...) The theme of gravity seems to be more "hard to use well" than "gimped". Sure dimension shift is a fairly situational power, but in those situations, it is incredibly powerful.

(The devs obviously thought so too, since they tweaked it (and it's cousins Detention field, and black hole) a bit in preperation of PvP.)

Surely you people have noticed that there are no defenses against being phased. I predict that gravity is going to be an incredible team player in PvP, since we have not one, but TWO powers that let us remove people from combat, that there is NO RESISTANCE AGAINST. You can't resist being wormholed. You can't resist being dimension shifted. You can try to bump your defense up high enough that the controller misses, but if they hit, there's nothing you can do.


So before people come down TOO hard on dimension shift, think for a moment. Do we REALLY want to try to bargain away the only unresistable status effect in ANY controller set? (at least that I can think of... Feel free to correct me if I'm forgetting something)

Am I the only one not horrified with the changes to wormhole? (Not that I don't like the image of it being a knockdown, but that might be a little too weird to sell the devs on.)

I mean, yes, we all have all come up with strategies for making the old wormhole work. And yes, those strategies no longer work. They changed the power TREMENDOUSLY when they made it AoE instead of single target. It might as well be a new power now.

But are you all sure that it's actually WORSE? Yes, it's clearly DIFFERENT. Yes, we haven't had months to come up with good things to use it for. But remember, there was a time when common forum wisom was "wormhole sux, most controllers say skip it." And then we started coming up with good uses for it, and by golly, it is now the power that I miss the most whenever I play someone other than my grav controller.

Well, now instead of the old wormhole, we have a DIFFERENT weird, unique power that no one knows how to use yet. But you know what? I'm convinced that the new one is at least as powerful as the old one. I don't know how we'll use it (although I have some nasty ideas, especially for PvP) but I'm VERY confident that good uses for it exist.

Before, we used to explain wormhole to people as "it's like TP foe, but I can put them anywhere I want, and it's not interruptable." Well, now it's even FURTHER from TP foe. It is a power like none other in the game, that does weird effects that no other powerset can even pretend to duplicate. Lots of sets have ways of stunning a whole group of people. Only gravity now has a way of making them all be somewhere else. The disorient is merely icing on the cake. Wormhole has never been about the disorient on the end. It's just there for kicks. Don't focus on wormhole's short disorient time. That's not the point of wormhole. The real power of wormhole has always been the control it gives you over that most fundamental aspect of combat: Position. Well, now we have a whole lot MORE control over position, if we just take some time to figure out how to use it. Now we can affect the position of entire GROUPS.

If we can't come up with some kind of use for something like that, then in my opinion, we're not trying.

In general, I agree. A lot of places, knockback is not needed. However, our control only goes so far, (less, in many ways, than most other sets) and sooner or later, we're going to get into a fight where our standard holds and buffs aren't enough by themselves. So what do we do? Well, we have to make use of the tools we have available to us. And one thing that Grav/FF has in abundance is knockbacks. And when push comes to shove (heh) it's a better crowd control option than nothing. Keeping a boss on his/her back can mean the difference between sweet victory and bitter defeat in some circumstances. So I figure it it's not a bad idea for us to figure out all the tricks with knockback that we can in advance.

I agree, in general we have no trouble keeping things safe enough that this sort of thing isn't necessary. But sooner or later, there'll be a scary trial, AV fight, or respec trial. And we're glad that we have knockbacks if we need them.

But either way, glad you found at least something of use in the guide. Happy singularity-bombing.

I prefer to think of lord recluse as "evil" or "villiany" incarnate. That means statesman can be "hero" or "justice" incarnate. Otherwise, if we go with spider-incarnate, what does that leave poor statesman to be the incarnate of besides states? :P (although it does lead to some entertaining images of him doing battle while shouting things like "Kansas Kick!" "Utah Uppercut!" "Mississippi maul!" "North Carolina crush!"...)

Btw, why the automatic assumption that the derivation of the word splits at "Cora" and "lax"? If we're looking for evidence that it's the aquatic AT, then wouldn't it make at least as much sense to split it at "Coral" and "ax"? So that the base word would be, you know, "Coral". Like the animal that makes reefs in oceans...?

[edit: Whoops, just went back and reread the thread, and realized I'd missed HansJanus's post saying almost exactly thie same thing. Sorry!]