Dveight

Excellent guide! Although I'm more of a fan than you of OM, you still got all your points across well. My crab is 50 and rocking 43% ranged defense and perma pets and I have to say I'm glad I chose the biggest AoE damage machine in the VEAT arsenal after reading your guide

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The Crab has Aim to provide a minor damage buff, but in my experience he doesn't kill groups of mobs as quickly as the Huntsman. He is still lethal, however. He reminds me of my AR/devices blaster. And the two sets of spiders, once they're added, will boost his damage output and survivability

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patently untrue. While BU will provide 10 seconds of higher burst damage, crabs surpass huntsman in terms of DPS, which happens to be a more practical yardstick to measure performance since it more accurately reflects normal gameplay, ie. missions. As opposed to, for example, comparing 2 toons against one outdoor spawn and then calling it a day. Crabs do more DPS than huntsman, and I'd even argue the burst damage too. Crab's cone is twice as wide and encompasses a heckuva lot more mobs in its arc. Damage type is much less widely resisted, 3 extra pets that actually contribute quite a bit more DPS than people who don't know any better commonly think. And of course, there's OM which recharges quite a bit faster than traditional blaster nukes. There's also no redraw when taking patron attacks. None of the above mentioned even accounts for the crab's PBAoE attack. If I chose to mention that, it'd widen the gap even further, crabs are already ahead without it.

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Great guide. But aren't you gimping yourself by not going Bane or Crab? Just looking at the dmg numbers on Mids it just does not seem worth it unless it is for a particular concept.

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I can't speak for banes, but you're right that aside from concept it's not worth it to not branch into crab if you're looking at damage. Fleeting_Whisper actually summed it up quite well with this post:

Wolf Spiders have 3 (damaging) AoEs: Heavy Burst, Venom Grenade, and Frag Grenade. Crabs get 4 AoEs that can be put in a regular attack chain: Suppression, Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade, and Frenzy.

Suppression does more damage than Heavy Burst, with a 4s longer recharge and 0.33s longer cast, and twice the arc size
Venom Grenade(Crab) is 0.2s faster cast than Venom Grenade(Wolf)
Frag Grenade(Crab) has a 0.2s faster cast than Frag Grenade(Wolf), and does higher mag knockback
Frenzy does more damage than any of the other AoEs
None of the Crab AoEs cause redraw

And Omega Maneuver isn't available every fight, but does more damage still.

The Wolf Spider can't have a better AoE chain than the Crab Spider, assuming both are building optimized attack chains. It's not possible.

And just to add to that myself, you can go for a perma-pet crab build that will allow for 6 pets to be out punishing your foes at all times, yet another thing this huntsman can't do.

I lament today's post-modern culture

AWESOME CHANGE!!! THANK YOU DEVS!!!

/sarcasm

just my typical luck, every double XP weekend so far has been the weekend I end up working my 12 hours shifts

/em cries

Let me get this straight... You've been playing this game for 3 years and still think what you do is new to anyone else, and you don't even know how easy it is to bypass locked accounts?
Hey! I think this is the first time I've ever met a veteran newb! You could use that for a forum name! Ultinewb! Speaking of which, like my new one? Fitting yes?
Better luck next time, thanks for coming out. /em gloats
*chortle*

Lime_Tang Solo'd a ton of AV's and Heroes back in Sept. with his thugs/traps/mace MM, which is pretty outstanding for thugs since they're squishier than bots. If you scroll down more he gives a whole list of the ones he took down. And he has VIDS! The more I see this the more I realize that the heavy lifter for all this boils down once again to Poison Trap. The rest of the power picks are just the assist IMO. I had some successes against a lot of the vindicators on a pretty screwed up SO build a long while back with my trapper.

Post deleted by Ex Libris

they hate it cuz I solo'd it.

lol. I may disagree with Lasto on some things (and have) but he's right on this score. Black, if burn patch is such a huge issue for ya, I'd likely consider a different secondary altogether. /dark and even /TA along with Mu Mastery are better picks than traps when it comes to that. I'm currently working on a bots/TA (already have /traps at 50) and he decimates spawns with that oil slick far faster than my bots/traps ever will. Of course there remains one point, and that is /traps is much better at taking out big targets like AV's. But then again, I don't feel a burning need to run around doing so and making look-at-me threads about it. Quite the contrary, you're far more likely to see me ramp down the slider to villainous just so I can blow through an EB as fast as I can so I can just move on to the next mish! Soloing AV's is inefficient and time consuming and my mommy and daddy gave me lots of attention when I was a wittle boy.

Further to that, how often have you participated in full teams of 8 with your bots/traps? The spawn sizes are so big that the KB is never even an issue at all so.... no problem, non-issue, no Mu required. And when you're soloing, the spawns aren't big enough to care about burn patches very much. In fact, my web nade technique works perfectly on small spawns like that, so I don't need Mu there either.

Post deleted by Ex Libris

here ya go

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just one note about your patron - the -KB effect of Mu's AoE immobilize is handy for keeping mobs in burn patches. However, the extra 21% defense you get from Mace mastery's shield stacks real nice with your probot and FFG defenses

depends on how tanky you want to get. I just use a little trick of putting a 'nade on a centered boss and aiming my attack at him. the nade has -KB, so the other mobs taking burn patches around the guy you naded aren't getting knocked out of it and neither is he. It's not as good as Mu's AoE immobilize but I value scorpion shield more in the late game.

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if you dont care about the shield then it shouldn't even be a question for you. Go Mu. Personally I think you're obsessing over much about burn patches, but whatever floats your boat.

all the points have already been listed Black Carnage. I've listed what I think about the KB issue already. you need to decide which route suits your own priorities now

Ghost, that's another argument entirely. some of us ran the numbers for leadership a long while back and it was generally accepted it wasn't really worthwhile. So that's 2 powerpicks gone. I can't understand why anyone would even bother with stealth on bots/traps. another gone. that leaves travel, which anyone takes anyway, cancelling that out. Why are you so concerned with Steadfast on an MM? it's not a groundbreaking IO.
As far as AV's go, we've been nailing them down with SO's.

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pure defense or pure resistence is always better than mixed defense and resistence

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that's always been an accepted formula, I agree Lasto. what Ult is saying though is that he gets the def from IO set bonuses that he would get from scorp shield. But he misses the point of MM's entirely with that philosophy. You dont need extraneous mitigation with this AT. Especially bots/traps! you're much better served going full throttle on recharge and damage. You can do it with Mu too. Not as much, but you can. But he's putting def/res bonuses as his main priorities for IO bonuses, which we all know makes baby jesus cry into his mohammed teddy bear. ok so maybe I made that last part up... >.>

heh, Silverspar is the one here who's nailed the heart of the matter. You're an MM for godsakes, one of the most unkillable AT's there are if not the most. I've yet to play an AT that's so hard to get damage taken badges. Slotting, and even more importantly, paying, for IO sets with bonuses focused on damage mitigation is a useless waste of time. recharge and damage are all that matter for a bots/traps. LotG > Steadfast. Last time I checked you couldn't slot 12.5% +recharge in Mu's shield, but you can in mine

you like poison trap? do you? damn right I do. And it's going to be up a LOT. I also like the idea of psionic procs x2 in acid mortar. do you know how much better that is when you're having 2 AM's more often? Doubling AM more often is a lot better than a few 2.5% defense bonuses I'll tell you.

you're a mastermind, but you're building with a squishie mentality. Any +def set bonuses I have are purely cooincidental, not intentional. Scorp shield is one power pick and a few slots, I let my regular power picks +BG do all the heavy lifting, not IO bonuses that are so greatly unecessary for a nigh-unkillable AT when I can focus on pure recharge and damage. Here's another one for you as well. +HP and +regen IO bonuses are also better bonuses for an MM than +def IO bonuses. You chaps totally overlooked the point of bots/traps.

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I disagree, Resistance fills holes. There will be times when your Defense is bypassed. There are opponents with high accuracy, to-hit buffs, and -Defense debuffs. When your defense fails, having 42% resistance to smash/lethal/energy is nice. Especially since most things that do -Def are Energy or Lethal.

Additionally, it reduces the damage your henchmen take when you get hit while in Bodyguard mode.

Finally, resistance sets allow you to slot Steadfast protection for a global +3% defense.

I dislike Scorpion's shield since it will not stack with +Range and +Melee defense which you find in a lot of IO sets.

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in proper context, you're more of a soloist. For large teams, scorpion's added defense stacked on your probots and FFG makes for better tanking. Also, if you take the medicine pool (you should), defense>resists when it comes to interrupts. same applies to trip mine toe bombing. Your usage of MM's is more of a specialized solo nature against specific opponents. But you could have accomplished what you're doing right now with scorpion anyway. I have, and so have many others.

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I got a question for ya Ultimus; Do AVs run away from your burn-patch, or do they just sit and fry?

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They fry because I web grenade them to stay.

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Huh? I thought they had mega-mez-protection? Or does that not count immob?

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you can stack immob spamming WG. It takes a lot to immob an AV but they'll still get slowed. if you have the mace PPP web, they will stack faster.

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Resistance matters little to a mastermind. That's what bodyguard is for.

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QFT

scorpion shield has always been the better choice for bots/traps because you can stack it's +def with your FFG and your probots. The benefits of this alone outweighs the minor nuisance of KB that Mu's immobilize prevents. Besides, there's an easy way around that.

you are the penultimate power-gamer Ultimus, I'll grant you that. I don't really fault you for that part, I share your attraction for powergaming and we happen to share a lot of AT and powerset choices. Where we differ is in the realization that they ARE powergamer sets. I know they over-perform and see no reason to state the obvious, whereas you seem obvlivious to the fact that everyone already knows these are powerhouses. Am I totally off base here? It just comes across to me, and judging by the amount of flak you seem to draw perhaps some others, that you appear to be doing what many others who fulfill both being experienced, and rolling a strong build can do, but are trumpeting it a little excessively.

I'm rambling. (and well on my way to comfortably drunk I might add ) but basically what I'm getting at is yeah, us veteran players know we can do this stuff, but why is it neccessary to post a play by play of something that's not really that big of a deal to vet players using powerhouse builds? I also roll a bots/traps and an ill/rad on blue side which I know you do as well. But even though they're both well capable of some silly [censored], to be honest I ramp my AV mish's down to heroic EB's just for the sake of blowing through them as fast as possible so I can move on to the next mish. I did that "I wanna see if I can pwn this AV" back in '04/'05 before we were given the option to make them EB's. When they let us do that I quit bothering with it. I dunno. I guess I'm getting cynical but I find it difficult to understand people still enjoying AV soloing after all this time.

totally off-topic: Faxe Brewey in denmark brews 10% alcohol beer. If your local beer store carries it, it has a pretty good flavor to it as well.

and there you're dead wrong. the top reason you'll see touted for not soloing AV's is that it's too time consuming, not that it's too hard. True, your average player can't do it, but then again, I'm hard pressed to find any average casual players who could care less about even trying.

I do have to thank Ultimus for one thing that he's done without meaning to: he's blown the pants off the claims I've seen one or two idiots repeat over and over about how terrible bots DPS is.

I told you so.

my point is, why not try it with toons that aren't so obviously FotM?
I'm far, far, FAR from the only one who's noticed that Ultimus has a tendency to have a beer and then spam "ZOMGARSH beer is AMMAAAAAZING!!!11!!" as if it was some long forgotten secret worthy of front page news. Where have you been?

just curious... how come you dedicate so much time to showing a video game forum how well you do with the game set on one of the easiest modes? I'm not talking about the difficulty slider, I mean the AT's and powersets you choose to do this with. You took the easiest route possible. In all honesty, all you're really accomplishing is doing what others have been doing for years and sensationalizing it. At the end of the day, grabbing a FotM toon and doing something that's not very challenging for it isn't very impressive or even noteworthy. I view it somewhat akin to pulling open the cheat console on a single player FPS and typing /godmode and then loudly brandishing your win.

I think your biggest accomplishment so far hasn't been solo-ing AV's. It's been marketing yourself. In that regard, I'll offer you credit and say good job.

update: if you have the original, you will get a non-echo version on your first flashback. Once you have used both of those, you will get only 5 minute duration echo versions from that point forward. It's been tested, here's the linky

one correction and one clarification for ya:

The wedding band is not an echo as you have listed. See the patch notes for i11, it's not on the list of echo temp powers.

I spoke to you about this next point in PM but putting it here as well for the curious - if you already hold the Sky Raider flight pack, the timer on it will NOT reset to max if you do the arc again. It seems like you need to have completely used up your existing pack before doing this arc in flashback or it will not let you get a new one.