DrMike2000
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Kinetics really doesn't need any of them.
My Grav/Emp Controller took Cardiac and I've loved the effects, even with Recovery Aura being up more often than not.
I take it you use Transfusion to manage your end requirements? If thats not enough, go Cardiac. You will feel the difference.
Damage and recharge tend to get ED slotted when they're needed anyway, but very few powers get 3 slotted for end reduction, so even with the basic boost you get a significant change.
Acc/Def would be nice I guess, depends on how you've slotted your actual defence granting powers though. Once you've taken ED into account, the gains may be very small.
Another bonus with Cardiac is that it uses a G'rai Matter. You can farm for Rikti merits and Shard drops at the same time if you're going it alone. -
Signed.
I hate missing the right level to up my SO's and then having to go through this process.
The simplest solution would be to ditch the combine feature altogether now. Anyone who gives a stuff about a few %age points can buy IOs now. Although I'm sure there's a few anti-market diehards who still want it, so make it a global option: "Do Not Combine Enhancements" -
Sapping isn't easy still. We have no single target power that gives good -End and -Recovery reliably, so evaluating the basic mechanism is a bit like evaluating holds based purely on Choking Cloud and KO Blow. But having said that, I've tried the following:
Elec/Energy Blaster: 1 star.
Power Boost + SC Falls just short of sapping +2s in a very frustrating way.
Elec/Elec Blaster: 3 stars.
Decent group sap if you can survive. I tended to hold first, sap second.
Kin/Elec Defender: 4 stars.
Good single target sap via Transferendce and Short Circuit.
Elec/Elec Dom: 5 stars!
Best sapper I've played yet. No reliance on poxy old Short Circuit, instead you drain your enemies justb by being there. You don't have any -Recovery, but hard-sapping is not such an issue with the other controls you have. -
Ive played both into the 30s on Tanks, and have a 305 WP brute and low 30s Inv Scrapper.
The two sets play very similarly - both make you tough as nails in a fairly passive way, and at your toughest in the middle of a crowd.
Invulnerability has a big self heal for when things go south, I find myself missing that on Willpower.
But Willpower has a far superior Tier 9 in my opinion. Its up exactly 40% of the time, and its like having a spare pocketful of orange and purples to swallow every now and then. When you're not quite tough enough, you get a good bit tougher.
I haven't taken Unstoppable, but it looks much more drastic in every way. Huge recharge, huge boost, huge crash. I think I'd hardly ever use it.
Both my tanks really benefitted from Tough in the Fighting pool, by the way. I can't recommend it enough. -
I love it.
Mostly, I play characters to 50 and then retire them. Some of those 50's were characters I'd become kind of fond of, and it was often a bit sad to hit 50. I decided to dig some of them out again a year or so ago. I made lots of influence getting purples, I got all the accolades on a few of them. I decided to purple one of them out and splash out on LotG's and so on.
The Incarnate system is like an extension of that - more stuff to acquire for my main characters, and more reason to keep on playing them. -
Really, a blast set has no place totally neutering entire spawns like Short Circuit sort of attempts to do. That's what control sets are for.
Other AoE controls in Blast sets tend to be minion only (Dark Pit) or poor-man's controls like sleep (Sirens Song) or knockback (Gale, Shockwave).
The way I envision Electrical Blast playing would be you'd concentrate on blasting. You'd slot SC for damage. You'd blast away at a boss, and at some point before bringing his health to zero you're drop his end to zero.
On a Defender, that might happen for a leiutenant too, but a blaster would defeat them first.
Sort of like with Ice Blast. You don't think either at build time or in combat "Am I going to defeat this guy or debuff his recharge?" You just do both at once.
And yeah, I'd spread the -Recovery around too like you suggest. -
Finally! I've told you to get Thunderstrike in every thread like this, even this one.
Thunderstrike is cheap and awesome.
It gives you bonus recovery, and global accuracy so you don't waste end by missing.
It carries the equivalent of 3 Dam, 2 Acc, 2 End Redux and 3 recharge in the powers its slotted in. (Almost 2 of each...)
It will cap your Ranged Defence on a FF Defender.
Do it do it do it! Six slot Power Blast, Power Bolt and Power Burst with this, change nothing else and tell me you don't feel the difference! -
Explain how Defenders scourge.
It sounds like you're talking about the Corrupter inherent attribute where they do double damage on low health enemies. Defender's shouldn't do that.
Have you found a bug where some powers Scourge on Defenders?
Do you mean "scourge" in some other way?
I dont understand what you're saying -
Agreed, Amy.
Electrical Blast's massive design flaw is Short Circuit.
End Drain affects bosses the same as minions, so if it can drain a single minion, then as an AoE it can equally well drain a room ful of bosses.
And thats too much for a blast set, therefore the long recharge, the low drain value etc.
If it were up to me I'd spread the drain more evenly between all powers, so that the single target blasts had a noticeable secondary effect too. Letting a blast set neuter a single boss in a few moves is acceptable, multiple bosses isn't. -
I made sure Freezing Rain and Ice Storm kept the same recharge slotting throughout my career, and used them as an opener on every group pretty much.
Steamy Mist is a slot-hungry beast - I went 1 Res IO 2 Res/End, 2 Def/End, 1 Def IO
I'd recommend Hasten, and chasing recharge bonuses. Recharge really helps out. This was one of the few characters where used Decimation for the ST blasts instead of Thunderstrike. The bonus endurance and recovery was also nice.
My main advice on Storm/Ice though is just do it!
Its a magic combo, very functional, thematically good pairing, and yeah, just plain awesome. -
1) You maximise damage-per-endurance by slotting equal numbers of end redux and damage, eg 1 acc, 2 end redux 2, damage in your attacks would work better.
2) Rikti resist energy and smashing fairly heavily. (30% + I believe?) This will skew your results. You should try fighting CoT mages instead if you're after scientific validity. They have no resistances or vulnerabilities.
3) 5-slotting your single target attacks with Thunderstrikes (Ignore Dam/Rech) will give you capped damage, and 60% or so Accuracy and End Redux. (and 2% Recovery per set). They are available right now, today, at a very reasonable price. Can you give me a good reason not to use them? -
Scourge may as well be a straight up damage boost. Its not like Corrupters use Scourge "tactically" and wait till enemies are below half health or anything. You attack, and your attacks do more damage on average.
Defenders just got a damage boost when they need it, ie solo or small teams.
So what's your suggestion? -
Invulnerability has a pretty low footprint in terms of power selections.
You can get by on TI, UY, DP and Invincibility. Add in Tough Hide and RPD if you get the free selections later.
DP takes Doctored Wounds for an extra 5% Recharge, Invincibility takes Red Fortune. 5 slotting each will give you very good frankenslotting values.
Dark Armour is quite good too.
Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, Obsidian Shield, Dark Regen and Oppressive Gloom will give you basic functionality in 5 powers. Fill the KB/immobilise hole with an IO in Combat Jumping if you dont wnat to be invisible, otherwise grab Cloak of Darkness. -
Yeah, I forgot to mention that Tesla Cage is quite awesome. 5 seconds recharge whilst slotted means that it can deal with most bosses, whereas Short Circuit has twice the recharge before it can properly zap a boss (or a group, or group of bosses...)
Of course, Cosmic Burst does the same and carries Tier 3 damage.
You're right about Rad Blast though. Its secondary effect of -Dam does suffer these days, with global accuracy flying around, and the Leadership pool opening up for a lot of us this week.
But, it also lets you mix in Sands of MU quite reliably into your attack chain. Fantastic damage, especially when boosted by any -Res powers. My Sonic/Rad duo swear by it. -
I think Electrical Blast is one of the weaker Defender blast sets, and not a good match with Dark.
AoE damage is standard, unless you try to leverage Short Circuit for End Drain at the expense of damage slotting.
Single Target damage is low due to the lack of a Tier 3 Blast. Voltaic Sentinel isn't bad, its good damage per endurance, but its slow and often spreads its damage around. This is worse for a Blaster than a Defender though, since you aren't relying on quick defeats to stay alive.
The damage discrepancy isn't terrible - you wont quit in disgust over the lower damage, but its maybe 80-90% as much as Energy Blast, which is pretty much standard.
Power Build Up + Short Circuit gives you almost drained mobs, which is about as useful as almost held mobs, or almost defeated ones.
Kinetics/Electric makes a good single target sapper with Transfusion and SC. And Kinetics needs the extra mitigation.
Dark however, has nothing to help drain groups, and doesn't really need the extra safety. I'd recommend Dark/Psy as a better choice.
Save experiments in sapping for Electrical Control, its way better at it than Electrical Blast. -
Ice and Earth used to be tied as the low damage sets.
The introduction of temporary powers (first veteran ones, then purchasable ones) let Earth pull ahead, since its -Def secondary effect lets you use temps much more reliably.
I think your suggestions would help the set a lot, Tex. -
Quote:You are right, but its lots of patchy bits of mitigation.Originally Posted by Arondell
Five of Trick Arrows powers are AoE effects with defensive components.
1. Flash Arrow(-To-Hit)
2. Glue Arrow(-Recharge(20%))
3. Poison Gas(-Damage(-31.25%))
4. Oil Slick(Knock down)
5. EMP Arrow(Hold + various other endurance effects)
Also its two single target attacks Entangle and Ice Arrow both have Slow and -Recharge components. There is actually a lot of mitigation in the set.
Oils Slick and EMP are on long recharges, they aren't always up when the chips are down.
The other three powers combined, drop incoming damage to:
69% (Posion Gas Arrow drops damage)
* 75% (slotted Flash Arrow makes some attacks miss)
* 80% (Glue Arrow slows down attack rate)
= 42% or so of what it was, and thats against even con mobs.
They still don't make me (or my team) feel safe against that rezzed Freak Tank who's got it in for me. Both the numbers and my ingame experiences said to me that TA took a lot of powers to do too little.
Contrast with slotted Radiation Infection, which drops incoming damage vs even-cons to 10% all on its own.
Or Traps Force Field Generator, keeping almost half the damage off you at all times for no in-combat animation cost.
I like the set, but it seems to spend some of its points in things that don't matter.
The end effects of EMP depend on Elec Blast or a teammate to do anything other than drain a +0 boss with slotting - the drain is less than 100% vs +1's, +0 lts and below are held anyway while drained.
The extra Hold in the primary (Ice Arrow) just happens to not stack with the set that maybe 3/4 of Defenders take for their secondary, because it has a stun (Stunning Shot).
The fact that Flash Arrow is unresistable is nice and all, but I'd rather it just had a decent base value instead of not losing any of its 10% vs AVs. -
It's very possible to make a tough as nails IO'd Force Field Defender. I'd say its the best way to get a ranged/armoured character within the archetype system we have, at least the least concept intrusive one.
I'd stick to positional defences (Melee, Ranged, AoE) rather than typed (smashing, lethal etc), since the two are redundant with each other often.
I agree that Weave is well worth it for this kind of build.
Your basic defence numbers are:
Dispersion (slotted) - 16%
Hover - 2.5%
Weave (slotted) -8%
Steadfast Unique in Tough - 3%
Manouvers (slotted) 5.5%
= 36% vs everything, better than Super reflexes alone.
Three Thunderstrike sets cap Ranged Defence, thats the easy one.
For AoE I'd go two Aegis (Temp Invuln and Tough) and whatever else, maybe the full set of Performance Shifter in Stamina. The extra end from the proc helped too. That and the BotZ should be enough.
Melee is less of a worry if you Hover and have Repulsion Field.
Combat Jumping is a good pick too, for an extra 2.5% to all, 4% if 3-slotted just for Defence. Might be worth picking that up in I19?
I'm not sure about Energy Blast as a great secondary - depends on your Huge Fairy concept I guess if anything else fits.
I love Energy and FF, but together they overlap too much - too much knockback and too much defensive power. I really dug FF/Sonic as a pairing, and would recommend that if it fits your character in any way. -
My impresions of TA/A:
The Bad:
It doesn't offer a lot of mitigation solo.
The -To Hit is small in Flash Arrow, and you don't get an easily stackable mez. You get Ice Arrow at 6 and Stunning Shot at 35, both with long recharges compared to say Cosmic Burst or Tesla Cage. So its hard to stop a rampaging boss in its tracks - even Entangling Arrow is just a Mag 3 immobilise, so it takes 2 to immobilise a boss.
There's no self heal. That is very useful solo, especially in the absence of any strong defensive debuffs.
If your plan doesn't work out you have little in the way of panic buttons.
The Good:
You get a good long range attack chain. Blazing Arrow is pretty awesome.
It is NOT a fast paced set. Its a pause and think at every mob set. As you approach each group a different set of arrows have recharged, so you get a variety of methods for taking down a group. It often takes several powers to establish your debuffs, like Garent say, whereas other sets do it all in one. (eg Flash Arrow + Posion Gas < Darkest Night in many ways)
And it is a late blooming set.
I think Trick Arrow underperforms as a Defender primary, taking team and solo into account.
Oh, and Stunning Shot is the boxing glove arrow. We just need an alternative animation for it. -
I immediately thought of knockback powers.
Repulsion Field/Repel are up there. Like Tex says, they're autohit.
Keeping a +5 boss off his feet is pretty cool.
I'd also add Bonfire as a vastly underrated power. Used anywhere indoors it can keep the chosen enemies both unable to attack and cause them a lot of damage. It can be a click round the corner no-risk defeat for some troublesome types.
My Fire Blaster loves it. -
Thats amazing stuff you've done there Dr Gamma. Machine vision's come a long way.
I agree about conventional games and unconventional controllers.
Most game genres we play at the moment are designed for use with the standard controllers of the time, eg keyboards, mice etc.
When a new interface comes along, its best to abandon ideas like first person shooter or platformer and start from scratch.
iPhone games often do this really well, using tilt or multiple contact points as part of the gameplay.
The Wii was a bit of a problem in this way in that games studios found it most economically viable to port PS3/XBox games to the Wii, and that meant not taking advantage of the unique controller.
But CoH definitely makes an awesome demo for this kind of tech.
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Elec/Traps would be an interesting combo that you don't see very often.
Electrical blast is low-ish damage, since it has no Tier 3 Blast like Power Burst/Blaze, but gets Voltaic Sentinel instead, which I belive does not Scourge.
However, think of this as front-loaded damage. You can cast the Sentinel, run in and drop your Traps, and its blasting away for you as you spend animation time laying Acid Mortar and so on.
Elec Blast also has no cones, and traps requires you to be in the thick of things, so that helps.
So there's a bit of synergy there.
Trip Mine will help with the low damage.
Traps may help you get away with using Snipes in combat too. Acid Mortar and Seeker Drones tank, and Poison Gas Trap keeps the enemies busy, allowing you to get off a shot.
And it fits your concept of a tech themed character quite nicely. -
Don't forget the other way of making Kinetic Combat cheaper - ignore the triple piece and slot the Chance for Knockdown instead, and then fill up with an extra Acc/Dam from a cheap set.
It costs an extra slot, but the knockdown proc is quite nice mitigation when it goes off, say in Fire Sword or one of your lighter attacks.
And definitely worth it if you're using Boxing or Kick as a set mule for 4 KC's.
Oh yeah, and once don't forget the Kinetic Dampener temporary power. +16% S/L Def, very nice when you're levelling and need to face a couple of spawns at once. -
Yep. That's a fantastic idea. Move that spawnpoint!
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From some perspectives, having per-costume slot names would be very cool for certain characters, so you appeared as "Clark Kent" rather than "Superman" in slot 2, and so on.
(Or, in my case, allow my Warshade to change names from Michael Mordecai to Una Mordecai - they're a couple who share the same physical space post-merge, kind of like Starhawk and Aleta from Guardians of the Galaxy...)
It would, of course, be a nightmare to orchestrate since names are unique, so forget it.