Exxar
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Posts
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Quote:How exactly are +20% to hit buff and slow movement +33% better than +45% recharge?Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Spiritual Radial Alpha is what he meant. -
For a tank Crab, you'd want to take both Maneuvers, Tough, Weave, Fortification and Serum. Serum should be perma (you can also easily get permahaste that way), and you should stuff in enough set bonuses to cap your defense vs all positions. Everything else is optional.
Here's an example "tank" Crab:
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It's a bit weird at first glance, but it's only an example. You can take a tanky Crab in a lot of directions. -
Yeah I originally opted for a Bane because I like Stalkers. I'm in an odd relationship with them too... Mostly miss the AoE damage and CC is much better than anything I've seen by Stalkers till now. But now that I've specced into a crabstermind and am looking at my Alpha build I just can't help but compare Banes only to Crabs.
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Quote:That's what I was afraid of. So it's back to "banes suck" for me for the most part. Damn.Originally Posted by Jibikao
My level shift bane originally went with Musculature path thinking that more damage is better but I had endurance problem during long fights. And while I can carry more blue inspirations, I feel I am better off carrying more Reds than blue because Red last a lot longer (60s) than what Blue can do. A small blue only gives 25 end which can be used up in 10s if I spam all my attacks nonstop.
My Bane is now full Cardiac and it's a much smoother build. I mostly only carry Red, Orange and Green.
Very well put. But I don't know, banes just seem to tether at the border of being competitive with crabs, and that really doesn't give me much of an incentive to invest in a bane build.Quote:Originally Posted by Jibikao
Survivability comes from more than one source (resistance). Bane can start the fight with an almost guaranteed knockdown in Shatter and if you chain Crowd Control next, the target has a high chance to get knocked down again. Soft-controls do help Bane survive a bit better.
When I played NW, she has the most defense of all but when I get unlucky and get hit twice in a row by a boss, I die very fast. Comparing to Bane, a boss may spend a lot of time "bouncing" up and down.
There are some situations where having more resistance is better like against Avs that you can't knockdown or GMs. In the case of GM/AV, Bane's resistance debuffs do make a huge difference and I mostly get AoE defense because I know I am never going to steal aggro away from a Tanker/Brute. What I need is higher AoE defense and I save Orange inspirations too because I know I still have 10% to get hit. -
I'd have to load up the toon on test and respec to check that. Which I'll probably do in the near future but CBA right now.
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Quote:Yeah, it's actually not that big of a deal if you stuff in 5 LoTGs and don't need to slot too many defense sets.Originally Posted by Jibikao
Wow.. never know it's possible to have Perma Arachnos Blaster?? Isn't recharge at 900s with only 240s duration?
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Completely forgot about Foresight.
*looks at lvl 8 widow*
Oooooooh yeeeeeeah. -
Uh oh. You're at the softcap with Cloaking Device turned on. You missed the part where it gives only 5.857% defense once your Hidden status breaks, instead of 11.71% with which you're at the cap.
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You can indeed softcap to all positions by only taking defensive powers (CT: Defensive, TT: Maneuvers, perma Mind Link, Combat Jumping, Foresight). Indeed, by taking the pool Maneuvers, Mask Presence and the Steadfast Protection +def IO you can go over 57% which is nice because you don't have any DDR.
I'd only stick defensive IOs into the mix if I could get enough recharge and still be left with open spots. Extra defense is very nice because of no DDR, but isn't something you need to compromise your build for. So yeah, I'd take a certain combination of the defensive powers and slot for permahaste, and once I'm there, I'd consider getting some additional defense if I can spare the endurance for eg. pool Maneuvers or slots for +def sets. -
Interesting power picks. But as a pet herder type of toon, a bane is really a very poor substitute for a crab. As I recently discovered, the patron pet is crap and Spiderlings actually pack the biggest punch.
EDIT: Call Reinforcements are a nice addition to any bane build if you can stick them in, but they're still just a nice addition, not something to base your build on. The patron pet is not even that, because as a power it's literally less than half as effective as Call Reinforcements. -
Made a Bane build with Musculature Core Paragon (my previous 155 DPS one was with Cardiac). CBA to properly caluclate end consumption, but I think it would be borderline functional in that regard (same net endurance recovery of 2.5 EPS as the Cardiac build, but that of course means attacks will drain more juice).
EDIT: Went and calculated attack chain endurance drain too, turns out it's 4 EPS which is not nice, giving only a minute of continuous beatdown.
This build isn't running Tough (could be turned on if need be since it's fully slotted but end is a problem) and has 180 DPS with the same attack chain, 175 if I use Venom nade instead of Crowd Control every other cycle.
That I'm willing to accept as borderline balanced with crabs, I think, even considering pets - the bane is going to always have his full DPS right where he wants it and the build does have Call Reinforcements too. The problems of end consumption and no DDR remain though.
EDIT: Bah, forgot to include the Cloaking Device in my endurance calculations. Net endurance gain falls to 2.37... I'm not happy. -
Quote:Without any pets, doing Single Shot -> Burst -> Single Shot -> Arm Lash with the Achilles proc in Single Shot. The build also has Spiderlings and Call Reinforcements to up that number by 100-150 in ideal conditions (depending on how you run Assault and slot the pets).Originally Posted by Jibikao
164 ST dps is with or without any pet?
Could get about 5 DPS more if i swapped in Bayonet instead of Arm Lash but then I'd lose 5% recharge which I'm not willing to do.
You forgot taking survivability into the equation. Crabs are much more survivable and I don't think that additional resistance debuffing is worth the survivability you can get with a crab, not by a long shot.Quote:Originally Posted by Jibikao
Like I said, I am not surprised that Bane has less dps because he does the most resistance debuffs of all. If Bane has the highest dps while debuffing the most, then there is a problem. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Jibikao
What else does the Blaster do? More controls?Yes it seems the blaster is equivalent to a disruptor in terms of damage, but as far as I know it only blasts doing damage while the disruptors hold and perhaps sap a bit. Also, you get 2 disruptors and don't have to get two additional powers in order to have them.Quote:Originally Posted by vernichterhelge
the epic Blaster and the call reinforcement pets are the same (5DPS go on build up proc)
Really not sure what I like better myself. The disruptors survive much better but are on a much longer timer. They do less damage but hold. Thing is I don't really have a feeling about how much of a benefit their holds are, and if the better survivability but longer recharge nets better effective uptime than lower survivability but also faster recharge.Quote:Originally Posted by Jibikao
I still like Call Reinforcement the best because you get two decent pets and they survive much better than the little spiderlings. In fact, I believe my current Crab build got rid of the spiderlings. -
Thought I'd share this piece of info here for all of those who are wondering how many and which pets to take with their spiders.
Did some testing on the pylons using various pets. Without Assault, with Venom nade being up 100% of the time, with the Achilles proc in Single Shot and Call Reinforcements being slotted with the Soulbound Allegiance BU proc the DPS contribution of the individual pet powers was roughly as follows:
Summon Blaster - 20
Call Reinforcements - 45
Summon Spiderlings -70
Who'd have thought that the little buggers added up so much damage. Anyway, these results are widely open to interpretation since the pets were all focused on a single target but are all over the place in normal gameplay conditions. Even when they do focus on a single target such as in AV fights, they usually die pretty quickly due to AoE.
But yeah, I think this is at least good enough to conclude that if we can't take all 3 pets, we can at least ditch the patron one with taking the smallest hit. Choosing between the lings and disruptors is tough call though. The lings seem to add up more damage over time and are on a lower recharge, but have no abilities besides damage and die the easiest. The disruptors are on a longer recharge, contribute with less damage, but are more survivable and have holds. Tough call. -
Quote:Never noticed DE resist lethal with my Claws scrapper. Robots, yes, they're a pain, but they're also the only type of enemy I've ever noticed having problematic levels of lethal resistance.Originally Posted by Aneurysmo
It's more true against some mob types than others. My current main (claws/SR brute) cries whenever he sees a robot or DE-heavy map.
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Quote:While this was certainly true in the 20-28 game before inherent Stamina (and in the 20-35 game before Energize), now you can just take Tough at about 20 and make all your early-game pains go away.Originally Posted by Daemodand
The disadvantage is it's the single cruddiest melee armor in the game. Make sure to team with plenty of support for the first 27 levels because ElA gets eaten alive in the low-level game.
After getting two /ElA brutes to 50 and decking them out with 1-1.5 bill, I can say that survivability-wise it's quite solid. Can be a bit of a late bloomer if not built right, but now with Energize and inherent Stamina it was never easier to have a good experience throughout the game. Regarding its offensive potential... just woah. And now with Alpha slot it's never been easier to have both permahaste and S/L softcap. -
SS, Claws, DB or WM for sustained AoE damage. ElM has uber burst AoE but less sustained potential than the others. So it all depends on what recharge you get for L-Rod. But as a caveat even then, the other sets listed here also have good ST DPS, which ElM doesn't. So I find it subpar.
Between SS, Claws, DB and WM the difference is mostly in play style. With SS you just jump in and start stomping till everything is dead. With Claws you maintain double-stacked Follow-Up and Spin Spin Spin, with Eviscerate in between if you're using it (I'm not because it feels so sloooooow). WM and DB require a little bit of legwork since two of their three AoEs are cones. But all of them can dish out great AoE.
Interesting piece of info - Spin on double-stacked FU outdamages FS on double-stacked Rage, and double-stacked FU is much easier to get than double-stacked Rage. FS has bigger radius though so makes the initial strike much easier. -
Heh, just made a hybrid crab/huntsman build with 164 ST DPS vs the bane's 155, but with no Surveillance or Shatter Armor. Unlike the bane, however, this toon has massive resists, 2000 hp and 25 hp/s regen, two arachnobot disruptors and a excrementload of AoE. So much for banes.
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Quote:Oh I didn't have any problem soloing, quite the contrary, and I was not talking about soloing AVs. Bosses go down in a few hits, but on harder targets like EBs while solo I experienced much slower kill times than on my other melee toons. I was also refering to contributing to AV fights on teams which should be one of my strong points as a ST and debuffing specialist. Yet the numbers I got on paper and the sluggish feeling in the game didn't match those expectations at all.Originally Posted by EricHough
Hmm, it may be that the reason our experiences differed is that I only ran my mace bane solo - I had a huntsman build as his primary build that I ran in groups, so I couldn't say how the mace single target damage compared in a group. All I know is that I soloed with bosses on, level set to +2 or +3 and had no problems with any bosses or EB's. I have never tried soloing AV's with him or any other character - I consider soloing AV's to be a gimmick/not worth the time. I get that some folks like to do it and want to squeeze out huge amounts of DPS in order to do that but spending inordinate amounts of time to kill a single target isn't really my thing.
Yes 155 is nicely at the top of the second thread but I expect results much closer to the first thread when I deck a toon with a 1-1.5 billion build (I use everything except PvP IOs and purple sets, with the exception of cheapass ones like Absolute Amazement and Fortunata Hypnosis). Spending that kind of inf I can get a comfortable minimum of about 180 DPS with most scrapper or brute primaries (which is pretty much consistent with Billz' first thread, with a few exceptions of course in which I'm not sure how he got such low results, DB and Claws for example). Ignoring Alpha slotting, of course.Quote:Originally Posted by EricHough
However, I question the declaration that 155 dps is crap - that puts a bane mace user firmly in the middle of most brute scrapper primaries with normal amounts of recharge and while it leaves them at the bottom of the heap when you throw in a ton of recharge, its still in the ballpark. I am referring to the DPS numbers that Bill Z Bubba calculated in the following threads: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=132369 and http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=132894
IN the first thread he calculated DPS using insane recharge values (250%) and included gloom in most of the brute chains. In the second thread he calculated DPS with attacks slotted with either 1 or 2 recharge reduction IO's (L50). In that second thread the values he got where:
And the build I based my calculations above is just such a build. That's why I said the toon was fantastic for leveling, but became quite lacking in the endgame when some serious IOs entered the picture. -
The biggest difference between a bane and a crab is in survivability. The bane is softcaped, has 1600 HP and has 30% resistance to S/L and not even 10 to rest. The crab is softcapped, has 2000 HP and has 50% resistance to S/L and 40% to everything else except psionics. Both have no DDR whatsoever, but when defense debuffs enter play a bane is mince meat while a crab still has decent survivability.
So when I look at my bane builds, I'm just meh... -
Quote:Originally Posted by Jibikao
Even with Shatter Armor you feel your damage is low? Do you have double assault as well?I must confess my experience is a bit outdated. It stems from the time before Shatter Armor when I just ran double Assault. But let me do some fresh calcs.Quote:Originally Posted by EricHough
Is this just a 'feeling' from playing, or do you actually have real numbers to back it up.
Ok, running double Assault and using the attack chain Shatter Armor -> Pulverize -> Shatter -> Pulverize -> Crowd Control -> Shatter I'm getting 155 DPS on paper. That's the same crap I was getting before. Adding in Venom Grenade instead of CC every two cycles drops the DPS to 150, but with the benefit of an additional -20% to the opponent's resists. I don't know how precisely the resist penalty from SA, VG and Surveillance increases damage, so this could either be crap or actually awesome if the increase is somewhat linear with the resistance penalty.
Hrrm. I never did a pylon run before I respecced my bane into a crab so I can only really say 155 DPS on paper is crap by itself and that I felt extremely sluggish, as well as useless in AV fights. I'm tempted to spec him back now to check if my feeling was just a feeling or not. It would really be awesome to run as a bane again doing good damage, but the no DDR bit is still bugging me greatly.
EDIT: Deleted a bit where I thought you were comparing Eviscerate with Shatter instead of CC like you did... -
Quote:/Fire has the highest ST DPS of all the dom secondaries (significantly higher), and the hold in Mind/ is one of the fastest activating. That means you can stack insane amounts of hold without losing much DPS (which you lose if your hold takes longer to cast). Fire does have a hold with a shorter casting time (the only one shorter than in Mind/) but only by a fraction of a second, and it doesn't have Confuse which is the tool that allows you to solo stuff like LRSF.Originally Posted by Aneurysmo
Mind/Fire, not Fire/Psi? /Psi gets 1100% reg and rec perma. Why would one pick Mind/Fire and why does it solo so well? Not doubting you here, I've just not got a lot of experience in Dominators.
Why not? You can easily get enough recharge and just need to drop into human form when recharge is up.Quote:Originally Posted by Aneurysmo
I also quite like builds to have perma hasten, and this doesn't seem achievable on a WS.
I chose SD/Fire instead of SD/SS because Combustion and FSC do more damage than FS with double-stacked Rage.Quote:Originally Posted by Aneurysmo
but why would one pick /Fire over /SS -
Banes have awesome burst damage but their sustained ST DPS is crap. They are also melee toons purely based on defense with no DDR whatsoever. Because of that, I ended up speccing out of my bane build. He was awesome while leveling, weak in the endgame when he was all pimped out and softcapped (compared to your usual scrapper or whatnot experience). Sure, the buffs are nice, but I can have those with a huntsman or crab too. The only thing banes have going for them are the extra ST res debuffs in Surveillance and Shatter armor (although technically you can get that one on huntsmans and crabs too), but even with those, I was not satisfied with my sustained damage output (felt sluggish as hell too).
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Quote:When an attack is performed, the game rolls for a chance for the attack to land. This is directly dependent on the target's defense value. So the higher your defense, the less likely you'll be hit in the first place.Originally Posted by Fista
As I understand it when the game attacts it checks as to wich value (def or res) is higher and does it's calculations against that value. So either confirm this is correct or explain how my understanding is wrong. Then tell me how to make the best of it in either case.
If an attack does land, the damage it does is reduced by the target's resistance to that type of damage.
So they both work at the same time, they just do different things.
Energy Aura is pretty much a purely defensive set with two tricks. One being stealth that doesn't suppress in combat, and the other being Energy Drain. It restores your endurance, drains the endurance of the mobs it hits, and heals for a little bit. The heal component is only worthwhile when surrounded by a bucketload of mobs (ideally 10 or more).
So to survive with EA, you'll want to get 3 SOs worth of defense buff enhancement into your defense toggles, and some heals into Energy Drain if you can spare the slots. That, and pick your fights wisely because you should be able fight half a spawn without the other half noticing you if a spawn is spread out. That's moot in a team setting, however.
Once you start using IOs, you should slot for defense, simple as that. -
After you get past 30 or so. Before that it can be a pain if you don't pick your opponents carefully.