DrMike2000
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Gravity (and Ice)'s AoE immobilise take 3 damage procs, since it takes slow enhancements.
So you can end up with some very light AoE damage there. I tire dit and it wasn't that great, but you may wish to decide for yourself.
Beyond that, its main drawcard is Propel - excellent damage-per-endurance early on (somewhat less relevant with Stamina inherent now) but later on it chokes on the crazy anim time, and thus stays slow no matter how much recharge boost you get. -
Looks like a very solid build, Duneytron, as befitting someone with such an awesome surname
I'd echo Madame P and advise you to get the Steadfast IO.
You're one slot short of the good set bonuses in Manouvers. I'd maybe change that for 4 LotG's to get the extra HP. My rule of thumb for defence powers is Red Fortune if you six slot, LotG otherwise.
Maybe also take an End slot out of Force Bubble (or Assault even) and put th eextra slot into recharge for PBU? -
Rad and Dark Miasma both have that "house of cards" feel, with your To Hit debuff toggle as the keystone.
One mezz turns that off, which can lead to chain mez or death as everyone can now hit you.
Carry break frees. Maybe use one pre-emptivcely when you say tackle a Rikti Mesmersist boss, so he cant mezz you until you get him stunned.
Mez the mezzers first.
Maybe invest in some stealth (even a Stealth IO in one of the prestige sprints) so you start a fight on your terms.
Build up some ranged Defence to go with your -To Hit bonuses. This affects enemies outside the radiation infection core and soen't drop if you get mezzed or your toggles drop.
These will all reduce the chance of you getting taken down, but it can still happen. -
Yeah, I've heard that the Nictus eseences resist caging, which sucks hard for such a situational power.
Carnie Phantasms do stick around after their parent Illusionist goes down, and I don't think have a lifespan even. Caging the Phantasm's decoys would be nice (often the last enemy standing), but i doubt it would work since they're untouchable anyway. -
Re Psionic Mastery vs Primal...
You can't heal your Singularity, but you can boost its regeneration by 2000% using Regen Aura and AB when you're solo. So giving it power-boosted fortitude isn't a huge priority - it'll generally outlive its recharge on base Fortitude.
I went Grav/Emp/Psi on my main, and I love Psionic Tornado. Its a great place for the Force Feedback proc, although I guess the same could be said of Energy Torrent in Primal.
I agree with Tex - slot Crush and Gravity Distortion as attacks.
I gave GD four pieces of Basilisk, a Dam/Mez Hami-O and a level 50 Dam IO for 70-odd % damage, good hold stats and the 7.5% global recharge. I put 5 of the Grav Anchors into Crushing Field to get that bonus.
Mainly, I'm glad to see you've got the Ragnorak and Grav Anchor procs in Crushing Field. I just love that power when its enhanced like that - the knockup and gravity lookalike hold just look so right. -
I picked up Sonic Cage in my free-Stamina respec, and have generally found it to be as much of a pain as I always imagined.
One unexpected situation I have found it incredibly useful for though is Singularities. If I'm fighting Longbow or Family, and one of the bosses casts a Singy, I can cage it quick smart and not slow the team down at all. Its the perfect target - a tough, annoying, otherwise un-mezzable pet who dissappears with its owner.
Any other similar NPC pets where it's this handy? Dark Servant on Carnie Illusionists are the only other one I can think of off the top of my head. -
I agree with the OP's initial feelings, that choosing single target often seems to leave you at a disadvantage.
Energy Melee on Tanks gives up AoE for single target, and yet its ST damage isn't that impressive, even when you take the stuns into account. My dark/EM tank was fun to play, but I didn't really feel like I had the burst damage ST wallop i'd signed up for.
Similarly, my MA/SR stalker, with NO AoE at all, didn't feel that good at ST. Another competent character, but lacking somehow.
And I've given up taking snipes altogether pretty much on my Blasters and Defenders.
Its seems to me that there are opportunities in the game for a bit more single target punch than we get. I'm talking about the ability to maybe one shot a red-con leiutenant on a Blaster using snipe or a Stalker using Assassin's Strike, or two shot on a EM Tanker using Total Focus and Energy Transfer.
Currently we don't have that. Is it the danger of taking all the risk out of solo missions that's holding us back? -
The Psi attacks that hit the hardest tend to be the ones that have a ranged position to them, eg Carnie Ringmistress Psi blasts, Fortunata bosses.
The non-positioned ones (Mind or Illusion Control powers used by Rikti, Illusionists, and so on) do less damage but more control. The control's pretty superfluous to your Scrapper due to their innate mez protection.
I'd go for positional defences over typed for this reason. -
I agree with Julius.
The resistance shield will be better against Ranged S/L attacks, obviously, but you've already trivialised them with your defence.
The big remaining threat is large melee attacks, which are often Smashing/Lethal, but not always.
Depending on what else you've got, you could have around 70% S/L resistance as a Defender (less for other squishies) if you slotted Tough and an epic shield, or you could probably get 35% S/L defence, which is equivalent mitigation.
I'd go towards Scorpion Shield in most cases. Ranged and S/L defences are quite complementary, even though they do overlap a bit. -
Energy Blast all the way.
I grew up reading the 70's Marvel "cosmic" characters like Adam Warlock, Captain Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Energy Blast just fits that whole vibe - its flashy, has a powerful feeling (even if you dont defeat an enemy, you send them flying) and ties in with all sorts of cosmic power concepts.
Superhero comics and especially games are funny like that. Why does a scrapper fighting with bare hand or weapons do more damage than a tank who can lift 100 tons? Its for storytelling or balance reasons, even if it doesn't make internal sense.
So while, say, Assault Rifle, does the same damage as Energy Blast, I'd much rather be crushing atoms between my fingers than carrying a gun.
Mechanically I like Energy Blast for not having a hard mez. Many other blast sets pack much of their defensive punch into a single power (Cosmic Burst, Tesla Cage) whereas Energy Blast spreads it out more broadly. It also makes certain enemies much more challenging, eg Tsoo Sorcerors, if you can mez them outright.
I've got 5 and counting. I'm sure i'll make more.
[EDIT] Concepts are of course flexible. An Assault Rifle blaster could be carrying the One True Gun, an artefact from some kind of Platonic realm that exists outside time. An Energy Blaster could be an ex-fireman who built a suit of armour in his shed with a high pressure hose. But Energy Blast still screams "cosmic" to me -
The biggest outlier of them all is Sonic Blast on Defenders.
It provides more -Resistance debuffs than any primary (even Sonic Resonance) against a single hard target. And its not bad against groups - Howl provides -20% Res debuff as part of the attack.
I highly recommend FF/Sonic as a combination of defensive buffs and offensive debuffs.
Sonic/Sonic is the more aggressive version of that - less protective but face-melting amounts of -Resistance. -
They're OK.
I have the Tier 3 set up in my bases, but the bonuses are small and I'm not a big fan of the green smog that surrounds you after using half of them. The 20% Recharge boost is one of the better ones, but even so I can't be bothered zoning into the base to grab them half the time.
Grant Invis is very useful for non-Stalkers who wish to run the Spy Hunt arc redside for 16 merits in around 20 minutes (+90 min logged off). Although I dont think I've ever put that one into practice... -
Kin/Elec is as good a pure sapper as you'll get. You get Transference (BIG -end) and Short Circuit (reliable -Rec). So your target of choice has no end, and no recovery and plain cannot fight back. 100% guaranteed.
One SC is up again (and SiphonS peed helps here), the same goes for the rest of the mob.
Elec/Elec doms dont get any source of 100% reliable -recovery. They make good all round controllers, since they're layering their patchy sapping with knockdown, sleep patches, and actual hard control. A Kin/Elec will sap better, but the Dom being a Dominator will obviosuly control better all round.
In reponse to Angel's original question, Kinetics is at the offence far end of the offence/defence scale for Defenders. It can feel lacking if your team is already offensive based, eg a bunch of Blasters. Add in a good Tank or FF-er or other form of safety and you're rocking with Kinetics.
On top of all the obvious heals, damage boost and so on, you're often giving temmates sizeable gifts like perma-Domination, perma-Phantom Army, perma-Mind Link and so on via speed boost, many of which amplify the whole teams performance. -
I'd say yes and no.
You drop mob's endurance pretty fast, but unless you're /Psi, you have no reliable means of -Recovery, so enemies who are just sapped will occasionally fire back still.
They can also be held, knocked down, slept or confused, so its not a big deal.
So, yes, you do sap, but in a soft-control kind of way. (Unlike say Elec/Elec Blaster who ca drop a mob to zero and keep them pinned there once they've established control.) And you layer this with lots of other soft control.
I love my Elec/Elec Dom, he's a lot of fun to play. While Electrical Control isn't what I hoped for, its a very enjoyable and effective set. -
Sure. But compared to say, Force Field (and I'm obviosuly thinking of Defenders here), Sonic Offers a lot less for the solo-er.
You don't have the personal safety provided by Force Bolt and Repulsion Field, because Sonic Repulsion needs an ally. (You do have the odd NPC helper, or vet combat pets, patron pets or temp power pets, but none of them are there on tap.)
Your 24% resistance (Defender numbers) from Dispersion keeps you much less safe than the 16% Defence from Dispersion Bubble. More incoming damage, and debuffs are not diminished.
You can't really leverage your offensive buffs (sonic's big bonus over FF) too well solo, because Disruption Field needs an ally.
And Force Field is never really touted as a strong solo-er.
Which buff/debuff set soloes worse than Sonic Resonance in your opinion, and why? I'm at a loss to think of any. I'm not trying to make out that Sonic is impossible to solo with, more that its strengths lie elsewhere. -
Quote:I really can't agree with this assessment.Originally Posted by Gemini_2099
/Sonic surprisingly is a good solo set, but it doesn't mature until in the 30's when have enough slots to make it work. I suppose it has a reputation for being a poor solo set 1-20, but even then I have to question that as Sonic Siphon is one of the better out of the box powers you can have from level 1.
The reason why /Sonic is actually a good set late in the game is because you can take a lot more hits than normal which buys you enough time to unload all your heavy hitters (eg full auto). And because a lot of the powers are fire and forget, or situational, you spend most of the time blasting away. Liquefy increases your survivability when you need it the most against bosses or ambushes.
Sonic is about the worse solo set of them all for buffing and debuffing.
Of the powers that don't require a teammate:
- Sonic Siphon takes up animation time and end that could be filled with another attack instead. Its therefore only useful against Boss class or higher when solo. Many other set's Res debuffs also apply other effects, eg Acid Arrow, Freezing Rain.
- Sonic Cage will slow you down. Its good as a panic button, but its situational.
- Sonic Dispersion. OK, this it good. But even slotted it gives you about 18% resistance as a Corrupter? 36% stacked with Tough. That effectively gives you as many hit points as an unarmoured Blaster.
- Liquefy. Great, but the recharge is a bit long.
So for plowing through a radio/tip mission solo, you're a low damage Blaster, just using your primary, with the bonus of mez protection. I don't think any other set does worse than that solo. When you meet the boss at the end, and maybe the odd time inbetween, you can pull out Liquefy and Sonic Siphon and get a bit more out of it.
I really like the set, and have four Sonic Resonancers myself, but I can't say it solos well. You can solo with it, sure, but other powersets bring more.
My one Sonic res Corrupter is Fire Blast/Sonic, and I enjoyed that combo quite a bit, but found it very lacking in personal protection. I really like Energy Blast/Sonic together, because of the defensive uses of Knockback. -
Yeah, definitely go a Defender.
Corrupters give teammates about 42% Res, Defenders dish out about 57%.
-60% Res debuff vs 45% from both powers.
Defenders -Res in Sonic Blasts easily close the damage gap.
Its probably the pairing with the biggest noticable difference between Def and Corr values. -
I slotted my Grav/Emp with the Cardiac Boost, and yep, its been night and day alright.
I tend to spam Crushing Field and Psi Tornado pretty vigorously, and neither were slotted particularly well for end redux.
CF had Gravitational Anchor and the Ragnorak proc, Tornado had Posi's and the Force Feedback proc. In other words, I was very heavily geared towards recharge, with the mantra that more recharge made Recovery Aura come back more, and therefore more endurance.
When looking at my alpha slot, I think I figured out Recovery Aura's downtime would drop by 4 seconds or something of that order if I went Spiritual.
I guess what we're seeing is that currently, the Alpha slot works well for whatever you haven't slotted already. None of my powers have ED-capped end reducation, so the gains are big. Lots of them have ED-capped Recharge reduction, so the gains are small there. Once we get the higher alpha s that ignore ED to a bigger extent, this may change.
(Similarly my Sonic Defender has foregone damage slotting in favour of Recharge, something I skimped on a bit with the actual powers slotting.) -
Sonic and Kinetics are both pretty bad.
Sonic Resonance gives you the option of chasing either Fire/Cold/AoE defence via Aegis or End recovery and Psi Resistance via Impervium Armour. Both help a bit, but aren't really what you want. I've got 36% AoE Defence on one Defender, planning on over 50% Psi res on the other (counting Mind over Body), but neither of them are going to change my game.
With Kinetics, my main problem was figuring out what I needed. I guess Accuracy and Defence were the big two goals, since the set itself ssess to your Recharge and endurance needs very nicely.
I'd also give a shout out to Fire Blast as not very IO friendly. Lots of Targetted AoEs and only Positron's as a decent set-bonus set to slot in there, which means very poor actual recharge. And nowhere for a nice Stun or Hold set. -
Wormhole is really just a copy of Flashfire or Stalagmites with a smaller radius and the teleport/knockback thrown in. Its as standard as the AoE hold in terms of its duration and recharge time and so on.
And I don't think Gravity has an edge in anything for Dominators.
For a Controller, it has good damage-per-endurance and single target damage, but these are very much diluted by Dominator secondaries.
The other plus point I guess is a tough defensive pet. Singularity will help you solo EBs safely, but its damage output isn't great, which is what you'd need for AVs.
All in all though, Gravity is a bit sub-par on Dominators. It gets the job done, but most other sets bring something extra to the table. -
I'd go Recharge.
The only powers likely to be ED-capped for Recharge are Aim and Build Up (maybe the odd one like Drain Psyche), so you'll be getting a sizeable increase in recharge speed for AoE's, Tier 3's etc.
Damage, like Another_Fan points out, will be a very minimal increase on top of ED capping. Are there any commonly fought enemies where a 4% increase means one less attack to finish them off? I doubt it.
If you're planning to pull slots out of powers to lean on the Incarnate boost, then damage would be more viable, since it frees more slots.
As a heavy set IO user, I wouldnt be doing that. (And Recharge becomes even better if youve used Positrons Blast in your AoEs, with its rather weak 22% Recharge boost) -
Have a look at Sonic Resonance if you plan to team.
Its pretty good for doing a tough ranged character, with mez protection to all but sleeps.
Combine Dispersion and Charged Armour and you have 67% S/L resists with around 55% vs Energy. Its good for building up both Ranged and AoE defence using Thunderstrike and Aegis sets, and then hover-blasting.
Its not a good solo set though, since a lot of the best powers need a teammate to work. Disruption Field in particular.
I've got a Fire/Sonic Corrupter for some AoE carnage, and a Sonic/Energy Defender for, well, more chaotic AoE carnage, but alos some personal protection.
I'd recommend Defender over Corrupter because the buff values are noticeably better, unless you want to take Fore Blast.
If you want to solo, Force Field is much better, but less "Star Force" somehow.
To me, Sonic Resonance/Energy Blast really captures that whole Captain Mar-vell/Silver Surfer cosmic energy vibe where you can harness some kind of science energy to bolster your durability, fire big dirty concussive blasts, fly, possibly transmute elements or boost your physical strength etc etc. -
I'd go for Fire or Dark.
Dark is resisted by CoT and Banished Pantheon.
Cold is resisted by Freakshow as well as by cold-using enemies.
Psi is a really bad idea since it gets resisted heavily when it is resisted.
But on the whole, its a pretty even tie. I saw a sp[readhseet circulated around here ages ago. Lethal does on average around 92% full damage, other sets do around 95% full damage assuming an even spread of enemy types, Fire maybe creeping up to 96% or so? -
Quote:Couldn't agree more. The animation times on the form shifts are way too long, and kill a lot of the tactical possibilities. The hard-coded costumes for the forms kill alot of the concept possibilities for this AT.Originally Posted by Feycat
Sadly, it's my Warshade.
I loved shapeshifting hybrids in other games, but the sludgy shapeshifting control, the fact we have to make our own macros to get our toolbars to flip with our forms, and the fact my favorite form is made of paper just make playing her terribly painful unless I'm on a big team. It's so sad.
I've got him to 41 now, and determined to get to 50, but its never really come together, even with Eclipse. -
FF
Pros: Personal mez protection. Good fallback when controls fail, eg purple triangle AVs.
Cons: No offensive boost. Mind Control is pretty safe - anything really nasty can often get confused before the fight starts, and you have alternating hard controls in Total Dom and Mass Confusion. Mind/FF feels like too much safety.
Empathy
Pros: Good offensive and defensive boosts.
Cons: You're juggling a lot. Mind Control and Empathy are both very active sets, no pets or passive buffs to forget about. Empathy requires you to watch your power bar for recharging buffs, MC requires you to watch the battlefield closely.
Sonic
Pros: Mez protection for you. Best damage boost of the three, a flat 22.5% net increase to all team damage from Disruption Field, and same again for hard targets. (Empathy gives about +15% net damage to the few in contrast, with an extra boost for the chosen one who gets AB) Sonic is a very hands-off set, and lets you think about controlling once you've set up.
Cons: End management is a bit nasty. Poor choice for building global recharge through IOs.
I'd vote for Sonic myself. I must dig out my Mind/Sonic again one day.