DodgerTA

Still my favorite quote of the evening:

"What the..? He used Whirlwind for something other than changing costumes!?"

Syphon Strike: Bombast and Fallout Phil are me. :-)

Last night was so much fun!

3 lvl 50 Kinetics and a lvl 49 (SK'd) Rad/Rad killed a lvl 50 monster last night on test. It wasn't even HARD. Took about seven minutes (which is even slightly faster than some scrappers can do it without the HP boost). With all the Fulcrum Shifting going around, the monster was hitting me for about 40 points of damage per foot stomp. THAT's insane. :-D

I'm used to doing the most damage in any all-defender/controller team when I'm using Fallout Phil. I made a comment to Quason that, "With you guys tossing out Total Focus all the time, I can barely keep aggro!" And it was true. Total Focus ROCKS. :-)

Quason's build made me jealous to see it in action. I'll be more effective with Bombast after I respec him and start playing regularly again. But Syphon's description was correct... ferret on speed is about what he's supposed to be. :-)

I'll be over there tonight as Fallout Phil, to get some ideas hopefully for Bombast's respec. Right now, he's a bit gimped with no real defenses (he has Stealth and Maneuvers, and neither slotted up properly), so I'd love to see how you guys do it.

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Unfortunately that's not quite true. Lemme toss out the numbers, as best I can- it's been a while, so I'm going on memory (and what posts still exist) here.

First off, let's look at base villain accuaracy.

Minion - 50%
Lieutenant - 65%
Boss - 75%

Now, RI in and of itself reduces villain accuracy by 30%. So minions drop to 20%, lieutenants to 35%, and bosses to 45%. Not too shabby, right? Right. RI's an excellent power.


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Actually, this is flat out wrong. They get reduced by a percentage of their base accuracy.

Minons lose 30% of their (50%) accuracy, or .5 * .7 = 35% base

Lt's lose 30% of their (62.5%) accuracy, or .625 * .7 = 43.75%

Bosses lose 30% of their (75%) accuracy, or .75 * .7 = 52.5%

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If we then assume 3 accuracy debuffs in RI, the accuracy reduction is doubled- i.e. minions and lieutenants both hit the 5% minimum and bosses are staring at a 15% accuracy. That's pretty substantial right there- but we can still drop boss accuracy.


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Also wrong. The proper values for 3-slots would be
.5 * .4 = 20%
.625 * .4 = 25%
.75 * .4 = 30%

For 6-slots, it's
.5 * .1 = 5%
.625 * .1 = 6.25%
.75 * .1 = 7.5%

All of these are capped with the defense bonus from hasten.

The formula for determining the acc debuff is
BTH * (1 - Acc Debuffs) = MTH

So if you have a 60% debuff it's

BTH * (1 - .6) = MTH
or
BTH * .4 = MTH

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AOE's are a must have in this powerset, no doubt. But I can't agree with taking only Irradiate, and skipping Neutron Bomb. With perma-hasten, perma-AM, your recharge time on Irradiate is almost EXACTLY 10 seconds. The slightest hesitation or lag and the second Irradiate doesn't make the AIM sequence. More importantly, with Neutron in the mix the mobs are dead in 3 seconds, not 10. It's damage mitigation, and faster levelling. Also stacking the two will let you take out higher level mobs, quicker, even if you're fine against even cons with just Irradiate.

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I should clarify that I meant Irradiate, Neutron Bomb, Irradiate again - all within the space of 1 aim. That is a LOT of damage. (NB is an annoying abbreviation, I'll just call it "Bomb")

RI + EF + Aim + Irradiate + Bomb + Irradiate = radiation death peddler. If you care to, back up and finish with a good Electron Haze if the three attacks weren't enough damage for you.

And try chaining NB + Brawl. I'm not kidding. Brawl's animation is fast enough to fit into NB's recharge time. Go ahead. Try it. :-) Brawl does crap damage because nobody slots it, but... it's 14 extra damage nonetheless. ;-)

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Edit: I would further add, if you want to get into the fine nuances, that NB alone has overall better DPS than CB alone. The problem is that your calculation is DPS based on activation time alone. It assumes you can buff your recharge rate to where it is equal to or less than the activation time. That's true with NB, but not with CB. You can get 5 NB's in for every one CB, assuming perma-hasten plus perma-AM. Of course, cycling the two WILL produce better DPS than either alone. But I'm not sure I'm agreeing with NB even being second best of 4. It's actually first best of 4 in raw DPS.

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If you look at my post, I specifically mention adding the attacks to "an attack chain"

With Hasten and AM, it is easy to build an attack chain where you never have to wait for anything to recharge. The more you use NB in that chain the lower it will be.

And yes, I compare the single-targets to the AoE's. You know why? Because I have rarely if ever needed to kill just 1 guy. And if I did? I just sniped him, because I can EASILY 2-shot an orange minion with EF and a snipe followed by a CB.

As for single-target attacks, why would you possibly try to make a single-target damager out of the best AoE set a Defender gets? (we have 3 AoE attacks in Rad, 2 radial and a good damage cone) You want single-target damage, Rad/Psi is probably a better choice.

Again my numbers were Per seconds activation. I was presenting them as how much damage they bring to an attack chain, when you can post your attacks in an order that you always have one recharged to fire off. It's easily doable.

Over time (damage / rech + activation)

Irradiate's 27.8 / (1.1 + 10) = 2.50
NB's 25 / (1.7 + 8) = 2.57

With 1 recharge in Irradiate,
Irradiate's 27.8 / (1.1 + 8.5) = 2.89

I put 1 rech in Irradiate but not NeutBomb because I open the fight with RI + EF + Aim + Irradiate (to debuff defense for max accuracy), then NB, and with the recharger, I can Irradiate again before Aim wears off.

At this point, that group are dead anyway, and my DPS calculations are moot because I'm already heading toward the next fight. :-D

It's not in the brawl indexes, so I'm not certain. It's AoE, has 3s activation and at level 40 will do between 700 and 800 damage. How that compares with the others, I'm not sure. It may actually lower your DPS used in an attack chain because it prevents you from attacking at all for a little while (due to -endo and -recovery) but it's really an attack chain all its own. ;-)

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Still, there's 2 points I can see in favor of taking CB. First is the aforementioned disorient. It's a question of how often it works, especially against bosses. Second is the issue of server lag. Server lag will slow down a constant NB sequence more so than one with longer recharge attacks worked in. And finally there's the issue of what the actual damage ratio between the two is. If you can do me a favor, check it next time you log. I don't need the exact numbers, just the rough ratio between the two. I am thinking about whether to take CB at lvl 30 or not.

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I'm getting a little fed up with your misinformation about NB's damage potential, which is lackluster at best, even over time.

Spamming NB is nowhere NEAR the damage potential you keep suggesting. ALL other attacks in Rad (except Proton Volley because it's a snipe with a long activation time, which is still more useful for its long range and +Acc) add more DPS in an attack chain.

Brawl Indexes:
Neutrino Bolt - 1.6667 Energy
X-Ray Beam - 2.7778 Energy
Irradiate - 0.2778 Energy * 10
Electron Haze - 3.7500 Energy
Proton Volley - 1.9444 Energy * 4
Cosmic Burst - 5.8889 Energy
Neutrino Bomb - 2.5000 Energy

Damage Per Seconds of Activation: (assuming damage is Brawl Index * 10 for easy calculation)
Neutrino Bolt: 16.7 (16.7dam /1s activation)
XRay Beam: 18.5 (27.8dam /1.5s activation)
Irradiate: 27.8 AoE (27.8dam /1s activation)
Electron Haze: 12.5 Cone (37.5dam /3s activation)
Proton Volley: 12.9 = (77.6dam /6s activation)
Cosmic Burst: 28 (58.9dam /2.1s activation)
Neutrino Bomb: 12.5 AoE (25dam /2s activation)

(The EH and Neutron Bomb are lower, but if you hit only 2 guys with them, they still outdamage NB)

NB, WHILE FAST AND CHEAP, is the SECOND LOWEST DPS you can add to your attack chain with Rad Blast.

There's the math.

Tactics is a buff.

RI is a debuff.

Against higher level things, buffs are always better.

3-slotted with defense debuffs against +4's RI provides 29% defense debuff.

6-slotted tactics would provide well over 33% acc buff. Which is much more handy most of the time.

Buffs are better against higher-level mobs because debuffs scale.