EricHough
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Posts
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Quote:Except that last I checked only the first power in the secondary was usable while mezzed, not the second. If you can use mind probe while mezzed, I am quite impressed and assuming its not a bug, that would make me rethink some choices in a couple of my blasters.Originally Posted by Auroxis
Really depends on how you slot your other tier 1/2 attacks. If I have a 1-2 second cooldown between Mind Probe and X-Ray Beam while mezzed, IMO it's not that big of a deal. Of course that's with intensive recharge slotting and set bonuses, which a new character won't have. So it probably is a good idea to pick it up before you start pimping your char. -
I don't know what my schedule will be on sunday but I will drop by with my fire/dark corruptor or plant/fire dom (depending on my mood) if I can.
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Quote:No, Oro allows access to almost all story arcs, not just ones associated with badges. There are a few that are not in oro but not many - few enough that I couldn't tell you which ones are not there. The dev's made a fairly serious effort to get all the story arcs they could into oro. Now, not all story arcs show up at the level you would expect, especially redside as many of the badge arcs there show up one level bracket higher than you get them from live contacts. Plus, many story arcs that have an extremely wide level range (Montague Castanella's intro to the Midnighter Club arc for example) show up at the top end of the level range. Also, if an arc requires you to unlock the contact it will not show up in Oro until you have done so, like Archmage Tarixus redside.Originally Posted by tanstaafl
IIRC Oro only does arcs that have a badge assoicated with them, and you miss some things like the temp power from Boccor if you do it via Oro. Turning off XP works best.
Temp powers are a different matter - not all the Oro arcs award the temp power that the normal one does and some of them award a different version (such as the Wedding ring in Stephanie Peebles arc - the normal version has like an hour of usage, the Oro version 5 minutes), I suspect that varies from power to power. -
Each of the rogue islands has contact 'chains' that you have to unlock by running mayhem missions - one mayhem per contact chain. In the lower level islands, those chains are very short, generally only 1 contact in port oakes. After port oakes most of the chains have 2 contacts per 5 level range. The broker will introduce you to the first contact in each chain appropriate for your current level, after that once you outlevel the current contact they will introduce you to the next one in their chain, but not to contacts in other chains.
For information on the contact chains try RedTomax (tomax.cohtitan.com) - there is a link to a rogue isles and a paragon city contact page off the main page. The rogue isles contact page has a pictoral link of all the contact chains, there are 3 or so per island which does make it hard to get them all before you out level them. (I would have included a direct link to the RI contacts but cohtitan is not responding right now).
As other folks have mentioned, if you want to run them all on the same character you will need to turn off XP before you get out of the level range for all the contacts. In most cases this is at every 5 levels (L10 for port oakes, L15 for the first set of contacts in Cap, etc) but it has been a while since I have worried about outlevelling contacts, so to be safe you might want to turn off XP one level earlier than that.
Another option: Once you start a story arc (i.e. you have the little book icon for the arc in the contact window) you will always be able to finish it, even if you have far outlevelled the contact. So, instead of getting a contact, running their arc, then getting the next contact you could run enough mayhems to start all the contact chains for that island, then run just enough missions to get the story arc for each contact until you have them all. At that point you can finish all the story arcs. This may eventually catch up with you and you may find you still need to turn off XP but it is one method to squeeze in more story arcs while still earning XP. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Raster
Definitely agree. I'd love to see an updated F/F guide from a veteran, at least some good suggestions how to IO set slot the powers. Thats were I'm at right now and not sure the old guides are still accurate.
What patrol pool do you guys recommend for F/F scrapper, sometime today I'll get to choose, I'm thinking body mastery for more survivability, but another AOE might be good as well. Appreciate any suggestions?If you are willing to take a short trip over to the darkside long enough you could pick up the patron pools and take soul mastery for shadow meld - fully slotted with defense/recharge it will give you 31% def to all for 15 seconds and be up every 45 seconds - thats without any global recharge, just the ED cap. Its very nice for blunting alpha's and if you have even a little def will leave you at the softcap for that 15 seconds.Quote:Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
I would go Fire
Body don't really offer much for your survivability. It is picked up more for the endurance recovery it offers.
You would need to go villain, take a patron and run the first patron arc. Once you do that you can switch back to hero and still use the patron pool. The only drawback is there really isn't all that much in soul mastery that is worth taking other than shadow meld. Dark blast is ok (and you pretty much have to take it to get shadow meld) and if you want a hold, soul storm is decent but there is no AE at all, just a snipe and a pet summons that is on too long a recharge to really be useful. -
Quote:The reason for this is that the third slot is being heavily hit by ED reduction, especially with L50 IO's which give considerably more enhancement than standard SO's (42.4% per IO instead of the 32%-38% an SO would give depending on the relative level). The first level 50 IO in a power buys you the full 42%, the second buys you almost as much, about 41% for a total of 83% but the third only buys you 16%, capping out at 99%. So even though health only gives you slightly over half the regen as fast healing, you are gettting more than twice as much enhancement by putting a second slot in health instead of a third in fast healing. If you were working with SO's or lower level IO's, you probably wouldn't see enough difference to justify the slot in health instead of FH.Originally Posted by CBeet
Okay maybe I didn't explain it very well.
Let's say Fast Healing has 2 slots and Health has 1 slot, the default slot. You level up, one slot goes into an attack and the other can go into Fast Healing or Health. According to Mids (so I may be wrong) it is better to put the extra slot into Health than into Fast Healing, so that both powers have 2 slots each.
The numbers are as follows for a Willpower Tanker using level 50 IOs in Mids:
2 in Fast Healing, 1 in Health: 294% Regeneration in Totals tab
3 in Fast Healing, 1 in Health: 306% Regeneration in Totals tab
2 in Fast Healing, 2 in Health: 311% Regeneration in Totals tab
Sure it's a small difference, but when juggling slots in an expensive build and looking for the highest numbers possible, it's a handy piece of information to have. -
Quote:I think it's pretty clear that the increased healing reflects the fact that the heal requires a to hit. Both transference and twilight grasp heal about the same - roughly twice that of the pbae heals in pain, thermal, radiation and empathy (all of which are roughly the same power) and both of them require to hit rolls (and thus require enemy targets before you can even use them) and so are harder to use than the other heals, which can be fired at any time and always work. So they both heal for more damage and include some amount of debuffs on the target to balance that factor.Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure
I feel that when City of Villains was released, the developers were cautious about granting the MM too much healing-- particularly AoE healing. The addition of Pain and Thermal with their AoE heals affecting a full radius would appear to be a change in that initial policy.
However, Twilight Grasp is nearly twice as powerful as Warmth or Nullify Pain, so the skill's reduced radius might simply be due to the skill's potency.
I think your initial thought is the correct one - the dev's where unsure how powerful an MM with a AE heal would be, so they chose to neuter twilight grasp somewhat at first. Unfortunately, the dark miasma set is so good for an MM even with the reduced radius on TG that it is unlikely to ever be changed. -
Quote:That's not true with twilight grasp. The main power is actually a single target attack that does some debuffs. If it hits, that attack then spawns a pet at your location that does the AE heal. Because the pet does not spawn until the the attack finishes pets CAN wander out of it, especially with the small radius on the MM version. On my demon/dark MM my hyperactive little demonlings wander out of the heal area all the time after I have started to fire off TG.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
You only need to be near them when you trigger the power (when the animation starts). It doesn't matter if they then wander off before the green number hits, it'll still hit them. Most PBAOEs work like this, if an enemy is in range when the power starts to animate then they'll be checked to hit even if they run out of range while it's animating.
This is the same thing that causes problems with transfusion in the kinetics set - in this case they are worse because the pet spawns at the enemies location and if the enemy dies before the pet can spawn, you get no pet and no heal. At least with TG you will always get a heal, even if you are only healing yourself. -
Quote:However you stand on the current argument Claws, this is a huge red herring - blasters are preferred over melee on MoSTF runs because of Ghost widow - you need a lot of damage to take here down and can only afford to have your tank in melee range, so you need ranged damage/debuffs and can only afford to have 1-2 extra melee folks.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Answer this: If blasters are SO underpowered relative to other ATs, and scrappers are clearly so much better, why is it most optimized MoSTF teams will take a blaster before (grudgingly) allowing a scrapper to tag along?
Unfortunately, I suspect there i no easy way to resolve the core disagreement in this thread. Everyone pretty much seems to agree that blasters give up some amount of survivability in exchange for being the AE damage specialists (and getting some really good single target damage as well). What folks can't agree on is whether blasters get ENOUGH damage in exchange. Without access to serious amounts of data that probably only the dev's ever see any arguments folks bring up are going to be mostly anecdotal. -
If you haven't filled it up yet I'll join you Major - I can bring any number of characters depending on what you need - either my fire/dark corruptor or huntsman would probably be a good choice.
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Quote:Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
I believe you need 70% global recharge, in addition to having Hasten 3-slotted with recharge, in order to get perma-Dom. I think. I also hear that you probably want your global recharge to be more like 75% or 80% just to give you a bit of a gap or a moment to recast it with some luxury.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong though. I've never done it myself.
Lewis
You are correct Lewis - with minimum of 70% global recharge and 3 slotted hasten if you put dom on auto fire and are Johnny on the spot when it comes to firing off hasten as soon as it recharges, you will keep perma-dom up. The drawback is if you are slightly late on firing off hasten or get hit by ANY recharge debuffs you will lose perma-dom. I have a plant/fire who is at about 77% global recharge and I have to be pretty much on the ball or dom drops - during the second ITF mission I am pretty much going to lose perma-dom once or twice with all the recharge debuffs flying around.
I don't know where it becomes comfortable - I would guess somewhere around 80%-100% global recharge. At 120% global you will have perma-dom without hasten (I think - don't have any dom's there yet, so going from memory of forum posts). -
Quote:What you are missing about drain psyche is that in addition to boosting the casters end and health recovery, it also does a -500% end and health recovery debuff to the targets - shutting down their end regeneration. For a sapping strategy, this is a very powerful affect and it can be made permanent far more easily than power boost.Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure
For what? If it's for personal regneration, well then I agree. It's no where near close for sapping. And if you have enough recharge for perma[Drain Psyche], then [Power Boost] has a 50% uptime at similar recharge values and is being used on the alpha of every spawn. That is insane for Electric Control.Quote:Originally Posted by Nny_the_mad 
dp + aura > powerboost+aura (dp alone is better) -
I have a DB/WP brute and scrapper, tested on both and I do see the build up flash on the brute but not on the scrapper. I vaguely remember seeing the build up flash in the past but I don't remember if it was only on the brute - its been a while since i have played either.
So, next I went to the character creator, started creating a DP character of each type and went to the powers screen and checked out blinding feint animation for each AT - the brute shows the 'build up' type flash, the scrapper and tank do not. So it looks like this is only on brutes.
My guess would be that when they copied the power set animations over to redside somehow the animation used for build up in stalker's DB got crossed with the BF animation in the brute version - but thats a WAG - it could be that all 3 versions of BF where meant to do a build up type animation and only the brute got it. -
Quote:All mostly good advice - however I would suggest cloud senses or siphon insight in Dark Servant. DS has the same base accuracy as any pet (75%) and I don't believe supremacy affects it, so you will want to slot some accuracy - If someone can confirm that supremacy DOES affect DS, then you don't require the accuracy but 4 Cloud Senses will give you 6.25% recharge and if are trying to slot DEF the full 6 piece set will give 3.75% ranged def.Originally Posted by Psylenz
First of all, I think the forum posters should give Firewasp some slack as he is new to using Dark Miasma on a mastermind. Second of all, it takes a big person to allow that they learned something when some of the posts here have been really inflammatory.
I slot Howling Twilight for max recharge first, and with stuns as slots allow. Chill of the Night is a PbAoE debuff aura on the Dark Servant. It is on the Dark Servant all the time. It has a buzzing sound effect. The radius from the Dark Servant is 10 feet. The entire effect is then of course 20 feet wide. Chill of the Night does very tiny negative energy damage but has a whopping base of 30% tohit debuff. Compare to the Dark Servant's Darkest Night which has a radius of 20 ft. The mastermind's twilight grasp radius is 10 ft also.
I usually slot 6 dampened spirits in dark servant shortly after achieving level 30 enhancements. Everything that the dark servant does has a tohit debuff component. For final slotting, frankenslotting for recharge, accuracy, tohit debuff, heals, and hold can be done with HAMI-ohs.
I don't have a /dark MM with DS yet but my fire/dark corruptor slotted 4 cloud senses (to hit debuff, acc/to hit debuff, acc/rech, to hit debuff/rech/end red) and a siphon insight (acc/end red/rech) for 60% acc, 35% end red, 57% rech and 43% to hit debuff. I haven't allocated a 6th slot but you could easily stick a proc of some kind here to add some bonus damage to dark servant, although the cloud senses proc is probably the best choice and its pretty expensive. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Shadow State
Castle's bailiwick is power functionality, the fact that he only invokes the "Cottage Rule" for power functionality should not be taken to mean that the logic behind it (don't change things on players without a really good reason) can't be extended to other areas.
As far as I know the closest thing we've gotten to a "FX Cottage Rule" was Brawler's statement that animations wont be changed based on aesthetics.
My primary objection to throwing around the 'cottage rule' phrase is that it refers to a very specific, limited guideline that Castle said he tried to follow. Most of the time I see folks invoking it they are doing it incorrectly and with a bad understanding of it - which just contributed to FUD on the forums.
Certainly the 'cottage rule' is just a guide line and with enough reason it will even be violated, as BrandX pointed out for a few specific things (although I suspect the majority of the changes in question where not on Castles watch). However, it is pretty clear that it DOES take good reasons to violate the rule - a good example of that is the fact that brute electric armor's power order stayed the same despite that fact that the scrapper version changed or the reverse - when SR was ported to brutes evasion was moved up so that you could get some AE def before L28 but the scrapper version was left the same. I am fairly sure most existing brutes/scrappers with those powersets would have loved to get the earlier version of the powers or at least had no objection.
This is all an aside - despite my objections to invoking 'that phrase' I am in general agreement with the replies to the OP - changing a single FX/Animation just because a few or even a lot of folks are aesthetically displeased with it is not going to happen. Even if a clear majority of folks would be pleased with the change it is also true from a customer satisfaction standpoint that 1 unhappy customer roughly equals 10 happy customers, so a change like this would need to please 10 times the number of folks it displeased just to break even. Far better to wait until you can do it right with power customization.
On that topic (power customization) I certainly hope they include a lot more no FX or lessened FX options for the various pool powers, as well as alternative FX for some powers - I am thinking mostly of things like aid other/aid self which are so clearly tech powers that it ruins immersion for non-tech characters. -
Quote:The rogue morality mission can only be used to change your alignment to rogue. You do get a choice at the end of the morality mission to change your alignment or keep your current one - but the only change offered is to the morality type of the mission. I don't know what happens if you choose not to change your alignment but I suspect you won't get any more rewards beyond the mission and kill XP. The real reward is the alignment change.Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
Okay, thanks.
I have a question then, if anyone happens to know...
I have done my 10 missions to go Rogue (as opposed to zero for a villain) on my Crab, and have the Rogue mission in my queue. If I do that mission and choose to remain a villain, do I get anything for my troubles? Or will that even be an option? Do I just have to not do it?
I'm level 34, and upon learning this, I'd rather just not transfer hero-side until after I've got my APP powers.
You're saying that I should be able to go Rogue now, but don't you lose your contacts if you do so? Or did I imagine that? I don't want to be stuck predominately in the Isles with no missions for 7 levels.
You can gain rewards for re-enforcing your current alignment - but to do that you will have to run 10 MORE tips, selecting the villain option for each tip to get 10 villain morality points, then get a villain morality mission - and doing this will wipe out all your rogue morality points forcing you to start all over again.
You can re-enforce any alignment for extra rewards, the rewards you get depend on whether or not this is the first time you are re-enforcing your alignment.
First time re-enforcement gives you 50 reward merits for hero or villain and 30 reward merits for rogue/vigilante. After that heroes/villains get the special alignment merits (hero merits for heroes, villain merits for villains) that can be redeemed for rare recipes, purples and pvp recipes (although purples and pvp recipes cost a LOT of alignment merits, standard rares are cost 1 or 2 alignment merits each) - you get 1 merit each time you re-enforce your hero/villain alignment. Rogues/vigilantes continue to get standard reward merits, getting 60 each time after the first. -
Quote:Do you have a quote from a Dev about a 'visual fx cottage rule'? I ask because you don't even seem to understand the regular cottage rule if you think it applies to something like FX.Originally Posted by Obsidius
Not at all. Changing a power wholesale, well, changes it, for those who want change and those who don't. You have one campe that is happy, while the other isn't. Hence, the Cottage Rule.
Based on various commnents I have seen castle make the cottage rule appears to exist mostly to prevent changes to powers that will REQUIRE a respec. Specifically, Castle prefers not to change the level at which you can take a power OR the power's function in such a way that make IO sets the powers takes no longer work - both are things that would require a person with the changed power to respec or play with an invalid build. Castle also doesn't seem to mind ADDING abilities to existing powers that allow you to slot new IO sets in them.
That is why when he changed conserve power in electric armor to energize they reduced the amount of end reduction, instead of removing it, and added the heal/regen. Note that while he moved the power to L20 for scrappers he left the brute version at the same level, because swapping it with lightning reflexes would have broken the cottage rule for existing brute characters.
When they made changes to energy melee they readily replaced existing animations in ET and played around with the recharge/end/damage numbers for barrage but left the power order the same, despite the fact that barrage is now clearly a tier 2 attack and should really have been swapped with energy punch - but that would have broken the cottage rule so they left the power order alone.
So, unless you can provide an actual dev quote about an "FX" version of the cottage rule, I am fairly sure that there is no such thing. The developers are certainly NOT going to change the FX in a single power because a few folks (or even a lot of folks) don't 'like' it, about that you are correct. A change like this will always upset at least as many folks as it pleases so the dev team know they are better off waiting for full power pool customization - but they are not avoiding it because of a rule that has nothing whatsoever to do with power effects.
I wonder if Castle regrets ever mentioning the cottage rule - I know almost every time I see folks talk about it on the forums it is clear they do not understand it. -
Quote:Rogues can do anything that a villain can do except go into Fort Cerberus and earn H/V merits. So you can go rogue at any time but you need to stay there (or go all the way to hero and back to villlain) at L40 in order to start a patron arc. You can actually start the arc at L40 and you only have to run the first arc for your patron.Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
What about the Rogues? Same restriction in that they can't talk to the Arbiter to get the VEAT missions?
Basically that means that if you want your VEAT to go hero-side, but you want the APPs, you have to wait until post-level 41 to initiate the side-switching. Is that correct?
ALSO: VEATs can't get Hero Epics?! What on earth for?! -
I can't really add to the suggestions already given in the thread, the previous posters have covered most any point I would have - however as far as numbers for dark servant you can check them in game fairly easily. Just start character creation, select villain (or praetorian) and start creating a corruptor. Select any primary so you can get to the secondary screen, then select dark miasma and click on the show details button. Scroll down to dark servant and the real numbers display on the right will list all the dark servant powers with a "+" next to them - click on the + to drop down the power description. This will give you the base, unenhanced numbers for all powers.
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Here is the best I can see at getting the bare minimum for perma-dom on a mind fire without totally gimping yourself, it gives you 73.5% global recharge when hasten is not up and provided you put domination on auto fire and NEVER forget to fire hasten off as soon as its up, you will stay at perma dom.
It still requires you take at least 3 def based powers for LoTG +recharges and it doesn't achieve perma-dom until L33 due to the slotting requirements for some of the sets (specifically, the 3 extra slots in total domination for the second basilisks gaze set). No matter what, you are going to have to take at least 3 def powers of some kind for LoTG +recharges - all the other options for recharge take too many slots - I went with hover, stealth and invisiblity. You could make a the following changes:
1. Take Grant invisibility instead of total domination, put a 4th LoTG +recharge there. Lets you get perma-dom by L31 but you give up a good hold for another set mule.
2. Replace Combustion with incinerate and slot a crushing impact set in it. Same slot cost, probably a better choice for upping your single target damage as combustion is really a crappy pbae since over half its damage is in a long duration dot.
3. Take combat jumping instead of hover, or take grant invisibility in place of hover. All 3 will take an LoTG +recharge, CJ is a nice mini-travel power and is a pre-cursor to super jump, hover is actually not a bad travel power these days for combat and gets you flight, going with grant invisibility saves you a power pool pick so you could later pick up aid other/aid self or some other power pool if you don't feel you need a movement power.
Trying to get perma-dom without slotting purples leaves you limited by the rule of 5 and the fact that while it is easy for a mind dom to get 6.25% bonuses (all ranged attack, cones, confuse, mesmerize and mass hypnosis can slot them) it is very difficult to get 5% bonuses. You can get 2 7.5% bonuses from Basilisks gaze in your two holds - after that you need LoTG's and whatever you can find that will give you a 5% bonus. Further limiting is the fact that most bonuses take 5 slots and until you hit the mid to late 30's you really don't have any extras.
Here is the build
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.803
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 34 Magic Dominator
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Assault
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Concealment
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Levitate -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(3), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Flares -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(7), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9)
Level 2: Dominate -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(11), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(11), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(13)
Level 4: Fire Breath -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(15), Posi-Dmg/Rng(15), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 6: Confuse -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Mass Hypnosis -- CSndmn-EndRdx/Sleep(A), CSndmn-Acc/Rchg(23), CSndmn-Acc/EndRdx(25), CSndmn-Sleep/Rng(25), CSndmn-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(27)
Level 10: Fire Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(19), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21)
Level 12: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Embrace of Fire -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- Empty(A), Empty(21), Empty(23)
Level 22: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 24: Stealth -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 26: Combustion -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(27), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 28: Invisibility -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 30: Total Domination -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(33), BasGaze-Rchg/Hold(33), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(33)
Level 32: Mass Confusion -- Empty(A), Empty(34), Empty(34), Empty(34)
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Domination
Level 4: Ninja Run -
Quote:The real problem here might be the fact that pets inherit enhancements from set IO's in a strange manner - if a pet power wouldn't accept the set IO then it won't inherit the enhancments from it. While it is obvious that this would apply to things like heal or hold set IO's in a pet, it is not as obvious how it applies to pet damage sets, which you would expect to effect all pet powers. I am fairly sure the real numbers in the pet descriptions for powers don't accurately reflect how enhancements are inherited either.Originally Posted by kendo
if your ember demon is spending a lot of its endurance on healing, one out of the box way to try to fix this is to slot a heal enhancer in his power. believe this forces him to heal less often but for more HP when he does heal. as I understand it, when he heals is based on how much he heals.
made up numbers, but if his unslotted heal is set to heal 30% of base HPs, then he will cast it when anyone hits that level. slotting a heal enhancer in there, raising the heal % to say 40%, would make him wait until someone reached that level of damage before throwing out the heal.
the draw back is that it's kind of a wasted slot in that only 1 of the tier 2 pets has the heal. I generally try to slot enhancers that will help all pets in a tier. but if you are close to maxing out endurance reduction under ED, and have a slot to spare, it might be 1 way to help control his endurance use.
So, if you are slotting pet damage IO's that include end reduction the ember demon heals and many of the demon prince attacks (shiver, his slow aura, his hold) will not be affected by the end red in those enhancements (or the accuracy) because they are not damaging attack powers. Obviously, since some folks have pointed out that they are actually slotting plain end-red enhancments this is not the cause of all the pet end problems, but it might be causing some of them.
As for slotting heals in the ember demon - I am not sure that this will help the end issue. I would think it unlikely that the ember demon's AI is going to adjust it's heal rate based on the current amount it is healing - mostly because this would take a lot of calculation cycles, constantly comparing the value of thier heal against the damage taken by other pets. I suspect that the heals are simply triggered once one or more pets have taken a certain % of their health in damage and that % does not change. -
Quote:When counting DPS don't forget to add in the AE resistance debuff from venom grenade and single target res debuff from surveillance - thats a 20% boost to AE damage (40% for toxic damage which includes every tick of venom grenade after the first) and another 20% boost to a single target like a boss/EB/AV. Just counting the base damage does not show the entire picture, just like with a defender or corruptor.Originally Posted by Firewasp
Yep, that is right -- I only wish a Huntsman"s damage was better. Players told me that a Blaster with AR does more damage. Checked it out on MIDS and they would be right -- DPS is higher. So a Huntsman is a weak blaster with an excellent defense?
Comparing a huntsman to a blaster is a bad comparison. Blasters have the highest ranged/AE damage multiplier in the game but have almost no defenses and little to no group buff ability in exchange for that. A Huntsman probably has the second highest ranged damage multiplier (1.0 vs a blasters 1.125 and just ahead of a dominators 0.95) but they get very nice debuffs, extremely strong group buffs and can fairly easily hit the def softcap. A better comparison is to a corruptor - a huntsman is a corruptor with stronger damage, weaker debuffs, roughly equivalent group buffs and a lot more personal defense.
Just as an example - my huntsman is at 46% ranged def, 40% melee def and 30% AE def. He provides his entire group with 21% def to all positions (double stacked manuevers), 30% damage (double stacked assault) and 15% to hit. He stacks arctic breath (patron pool cone) on top of venom grenade for a 35% AE resistance debuff (55% for toxic damage) and can add 20% resistance debuff to a hard target with surveillance. My huntsman also has enough status effect protection that I don't think he has ever been mezzed - although he sometimes gets KB'ed since I only slotted one -KB IO. If you want more defenses you could go with a crab huntsman instead of a bane huntsman - trading the extra def in cloaking device for some fairly nice resistances and tank level status protection in fortification, although you would also lose the extra debuff in surveillance. -
Quote:I have a love/hate relationship with suppression - I love the huge cone and the energy damage, I hate the ugly 3 second animation time.Originally Posted by blueruckus
My main gripe with running only gun AoE as opposed to gun/crab AoE is that WAWG and Frag only have a 10 ft. radius which is actually pretty small.
My leading attacks usually consist of Venom, Heavy Burst, Suppression. Venom has a nice 20' radius, Heavy's got a moderate cone range/width, Supression has a ridiculous 60degree cone with the same range as Heavy so I'm hitting a lot more enemies with suppresion than I would be with Frag Grenade. I
Also, I'm running double assault, double maneuvers, and TT:Leadership so I'm also granting boosts to my team like a Hunstman does. In addition to the team, I can pull out the 3 Spiderlings accessible to crab, the 2 Disruptors and also have them affected by my leadership buffs.
Without even getting in to the survivability provided by Fortification/Serum, I would say that overall you get more AoE effectiveness from crab.
Really, I think the main reason people go Huntsman instead of Crab would be 'theme' or dislike of spider backpack.
My huntsman is a bane and I went with that for the following reasons:
1) Cloaking device - +5.8% def to all positions plus stealth
2) no back pack.
3) surveillance - 20% resistance debuff to a single target
4) My main AE's after venom grenade are arctic breath and bile spray from the patron pools, with heavy burst as a finisher.
With a high recharge (80% global I think) and good slotting in my 3 main AE's I only rarely need a fourth and heavy burst is fast and does good damage, even if it isn't as big a cone as suppression. Arctic Breath and bile spray do roughly the same damage as suppression and have fairly large cones (30 degrees by 60 feet long) - arctic breath adds a 15% resistance debuff on top of venom grenades debuff and bile spray is toxic and so it benefits from the full 40% resistance debuff to toxic in VG - for a total boost of 55% on top of all damage buffs. Suppression and frag grenade would be a waste of power picks and slots as VG + AB +BS generally melts most minions and even some LT's, leaving me to clean up the remainder with heavy burst and the single target attacks.
You could do the same thing with a crab build the only real difference is that you would get fortification, serum and aim in place of cloaking device, surveillance and build up. So you would get a heal and pretty good resistances in place of extra debuffing and better def (aim vs buildup is a wash I think - build up gives you a better damage bonus but you lose a couple seconds to redraw). It really depends on what you want - I choose to roll a second soldier who went down the crab path so I could have my huntsman use his alt build as a mace bane for soloing. Also, my huntsman concept did NOT include the backpack, which was a huge deciding factor as well. -
Pretty much no set bonuses apply to pets, just to the mastermind. The only reason to slot full sets of pet damage IO' s is if you are chasing after def for your MM and want the melee def in Sovereign Right, or the AoE and Ranged def in blood mandate, which on a traps mastermind who wants to act as a tank in BG mode is not unreasonable. The exception is the pet aura IO's (+def and +resistance) - and those are not really an exception, they don't grant the pets anything they give YOU a bonus aura that works a lot like supremacy, its that aura that affects the pets.
Other than that you are best off frankenslotting the pets. With level 30 IO's you can cap damage and get over 60% accuracy in just 4 slots (3 x Acc/Dam, 1x Dam) or you can slot for some end reduction (which will affect the pet attacks) and get something like 56% accuracy, 88% damage and 34% end reduction (2 x acc/dam/end, 1x acc/dam, 1x dam). Then you can use the remaining two slots for procs, if the pets have attacks that will take them, pet resist IO's or non-damage IO's. For example, slotting extra DEF in thugs enforcers is good because it enhances their maneuvers - you actually get double benefit from this since there are two of them.
I think the builds that have full sets are either chasing after def bonuses for the MM or folks are just slotting full sets out of habit. -
A brute would probably be best. A brute can pull the initial aggro and group up mobs, allowing you the time to unload your debuffs on them and then open up with AE attacks.
A mastermind would also work but only because an MM is so self sufficient they can team with anyone.
Basically you need someone to pull the initial alpha, since TA doesn't really have an alpha breaker, and someone to keep them busy while you stack up debuffs.