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Posts
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Someone should level a toon only using temp powers to defeat enemies.
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From where you are at I'd either go /mace if you like fighting fewer tougher enemies, or I'd go /soul if you like fighting larger spawns.
Also at lvl 37 I'd strongly start thinking about franken-slotting and possibly even slotting in some cheap-ish sets that boost global recharge. -
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Oh ok, you keep on with your "bad-*****" self.
You've mistaken thinking I care about your opinion. I don't. I care about you calling my credibility in to question because in most discussions I deal only with the facts. I also care about you saying that PA operated under a different set of mechanics than every other power in the game, which it doesn't.
Beyond that if you take the time to reread our interactions I think you'll find that personal involvement (outside of the time taken to explain how the power operates which is largely pulled from the ill/cold guide I'm making and was to the benefit of the thread and not you specifically) has been very low from me.
Demorecord is great, but it doesn't show the UI, which would have devolved even faster than a low res clip.
I did take the opportunity to review the thread prior to posting this and I made an interesting observation. Not only have you been primarily posting misinformation and arguing from a position of "superior" knowledge, you also haven't bothered to help the OP with a build.
Anyway, you are obviously a "smart" guy and I'm sure what you "remember" about the power is accurate. I can think of no one better for the task of "discovering" how the power used to function. Your familiarity with the power certainly instills "confidence" that you will be "successful". -
Quote:Illusion isn't even that focused around PA. It only becomes that way if you want to use the set for one specific purpose, which is taking out really tough single targets.Interesting and thanks for the thoughts so far. Actually my title was misleading but more to attract attention. It was merely a debate on gravity versus illusion that made me ponder if Illusion was a 1 trick pony. I enjoy gravity and illusion albeit not as much as other control sets.
There are/were so many sets that had that 1 power that many people considered to be the crown jewel. The one set that even if the other 8 powers were mostly crappy (old Psi Assault) they played it. Then one the other 8 powers got a decent buff and the 1 OP'd power got reigned in, many people believed the set as a whole was unplayable. A concept which boggles my mind, but to each his own.
Confuse, non-suppressing invisibility, and spectral terror are all powers I'd rate as very good and easily as valuable as PA for fighting team sized spawns with or without a team. -
Quote:I've found similar with regard to ill/storm. You just don't get a lot of opportunity to cut lose with everything when teaming and you often need support (like speed boost/recovery aura) to go all out in the first place, so that affects how crazy you can go solo. Or at least for how long.I found that with my Ill/Storm on teams, I had to hold back on using Tornado and Lightning Storm a lot to reduce knockback. I have to use Hurricane in a very limited role. And without some heavy-duty Recovery slotting, I was running out of endurance a lot. Ill/Storm is a lot of fun, but I found that I had to rein in several powers on teams, which I do not have to do with an Ill/Rad. Flash+Fireball adds up to some decent AoE damage. I find that overall, my Ill/Rad is my most flexible build in almost all situations.
I give the nod to ill/rad across the scope of the entire game. It takes off early and gets very strong. I'm partial to ill/cold myself. It's harder to build and matures way latter, but wow is it strong when it gets there. The additional force mulitplication on your pets is very tangible. I prefer ice mastery for aoe myself because with the amount of recharge being tossed around for perma PA it is up very often and it does tremendous damage contained or uncontained, which suites illusion well. The end costs of spamming iceblast and icestorm might be more than /rad can handle though, I haven't looked closely.
It's hard to go wrong with illusion/anything though if you are planning to throw absurd amounts of recharge at it. -
Quote:You may have missed the part of the discussion that was lobbying for infrig to stack upon itself.Not quite. AV resistance means that even with Infridgidate a single col dom only gets them to about -25%, you need more people with -recharge to get them all the way. The upside is the benefit of -recharge increases very fast so a single cold dom increases recharge times by 33% but 2 cold doms double them.
It isn't particularly hard to create a toon that could stack it 4 times.
4x infrig+snow+2x sleet
=87.5*4+62.5+40*2
=492.5% -rech reduced by 85%
= 73.875% -rech
or 1.13% away from -rech cap. As Dechs pointed out when it comes to some cheaty-face AV's/powers that will make a tremendous difference. Stacking Infrig would make cold head and shoulders above the other debuff sets against hard targets. I don't see a compelling reason to promote the set to that status. Now if someone had said they wanted to promote TA into being the strongest debuff set I'd be more inclined to agree, but cold is already a very powerful buff set and currently sits as one of the top debuff sets as well. -
Next_of_Kin the build you posted has 38.7% ranged, 39.6% s/l with SI/GI suppressed.
One thing I found really handy was to enter the database and hand edit all the stealth powers that suppress across the various AT's by removing the bonus defense entries. It only took about 5 min, but it removes a lot of confusion when putting builds together. -
Is the question whether Phantom Army alone is greater than the entire gravity set?
Maybe.
To specifically address the question you asked; yes I'd still find PA to be valuable even with no taunt. I find imps valuable. Illusion without PA isn't exactly weak. It's no earth control, but it has a spammable aoe fear with a huge tohit debuff, and confuse. Those two powers alone will let you take out a lot of spawns teamed or solo.
Tex, I think everyone would like more dynamic npc's across all ranks rather than just the higher echelon. But when I look at how the player base responds to cheat mode npcs like Illusionist Carnies it really makes me wonder how everyone would respond to (using your example) AV's entering a cheat mode that 100% ignores:
taunt - tanks aren't going to be happy.
all forms of mez - no more immobs for you! and it would override stacked holds.
all forms of soft control - can't let it be slowed during this period.
Because in order to ensure that an AV can "run over and push a button" it has to be immune to practically everything we do during that phase. A change like that will have an impact on a lot of players, but if your desire is specifically to target illusion (or PA) it will likely impact them toward the bottom end of the scale.
If there is nothing a player can do to stop the npc from pushing that button then they may as well just grant it the effect of the power while it stands there. It simply running across the room isn't making the fight any more dynamic.
To use an example that is already in game, picture the missions where you have to stop X from escaping. Now imagine if you couldn't affect that target with slows, holds, immobs, knockdown, taunt, etc and your only resolution was either deal enough damage or it escapes. I don't think many players would find that enjoyable, fair, or particularly involving.
Unless you are suggesting that during this phase it should only ignore taunt, or only the taunt generated from PA? But that would seem silly (and even more arbitrary than the ptod) as a team would just bring anyone with an immobilize power and trivialize the encounter by preventing it from activating the button. -
Quote:So we are back to you implying I lied. Ok.Not at all, but feel free to make assumptions. I've seen too many bogus videos and pictures posted on the forums. I've never been one to hit the "I believe button" right away.
Demos can't be manipulated quite as easily and are a little more reliable for "data mining". Regardless I found the unaccounted buff that was skewing my testing.
You may want to examine your use of quotations as a bit of friendly advice for the future. Generally if you meant exactly what you are typing you would not use them as they are entirely unnecessary. Placing them puts emphasis that you likely have little confidence in the statements you are making.
In the end all I really care about is getting the thumbs up from Adam and Jamie for another myth successfully busted. -
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Until they fix sleet so it lasts the full duration I prefer to get its recharge down as close to duration of the rain as possible.
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Maybe, but there is a whole class of enemies that overwhelming with single target control is generally pretty hard to accomplish. But stacking infrig in addition to the other cold powers would pretty easily put them near the -rech cap.
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Quote:I get an activation time of 4.49 for the chain you mentioned.Man I keep forgetting about Hami's on my builds. Switched the End/Hold to a Dam/Mez. It's a start. Might later switch out the Basilisk's set with something else to get more Damage if need be.
My plan has been to use a chain of Dominate->Subdue->Mind Probe. Cycles in 3.96 s, 636.5 dmg for a DPS of 160.5. (simple calculation, nothing fancy, so I'm not sure about accuracy. The 18% -res from the Ray should help bump it up a bit, and then there's pet damage also.) Combined with Drain Psyche, I was thinking that'd be more than enough to take an AV down quickly.
I saw on another thread that it takes 9(?) applications of the hold to perma hold an AV, and Domination's duration is long enough. Am I right about this?
I had looked at Confuse, but didn't think it was that much easier to insert damage attacks into. Might give it a look. Course, confusing AV will wind up with more Drain Psyche fodder dead, so not as much Endurance available...but maybe that's not a big issue at all.
dom = 1.32
mind probe = 1.32
subdue = 1.85
Which means (using the build you supplied) you are going to have 11.73 holds stacked. 7.81 of which will be mag 6, you of course can't have a fraction of a hold so 7 @ mag 6 and 4 @ mag 3.
So mag 54 assuming you never miss.
TK adds another mag 6.
I think that would be dicey. If you miss with dominate like twice in one minute you are probably going to lose control of it.
You mention keeping fodder around for DP, which is fine, but you also mention using the pet for added dps. You can't have it both ways though. If multiple targets are out your pet will not focus on the AV.
I dunno, I'm sure you can get it to work though. I know when I was looking at my mind/fire confuse made more sense, but then blaze, incin, and fireblast are all really good attacks and they recharge much slower than the /psi attacks so finding a way to draw out the chain worked out to be better. The other aspect I liked about it was no need for defense in the build which I've found is generally the case for mind as it is so good at pausing the game so extending that to AV's is nice. Just a thought though. gl. -
You are aware how low your damage will be with a hold strategy yes?
TK isn't really useful when the triangles are down because a single dominate will hold them. It is useful to help overpower their mag when you hit ~50.
You want to know a secret to solo'ing AV's with mind doms that requires no defense/resistance at all? Confuse. that way you can take out AV's that use non s/l attacks, which are numerous.
Not only can you stack way higher mag of confuse easier than holds its duration means you can actually maintain some semblance of an attack chain rather rather than the hold>attack>hold>attack that is necessary with a hold strategy.
You can very likely use confuse>and then 3 attacks>repeat and maintain enough mag.
If you are adamant about using a hold stategy then at least use some dam/mez HO's in dominate so you still do ok dps.
Antoinette, you want to avoid using terrorize because it is useless against an AV not because it interferes with mez suppression which doesn't exist in pve. -
Why would you want ranged def when you are standing in melee range using fissure on them?
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I say hello to PP's with benumb and then let them MOG just so I can point and laugh at them.
Infrigidate not stacking might be a pvp thing, or it might be because it would be incredibly overpowered. It's not that challenging to stack infrig 4 times (if it could). That is more -rech than Heat Loss and would hit the -dam cap against fire with 3 applications. -
You'll find most people skip acc slotting in sleet because it ticks 5 times per second and it only takes one tick to land and the target will be debuffed. The chances of it not debuffing an enemy over the duration of the rain is very low. Even when targets use their godmodes like elude it still manages to land at least one tick ime.
If you aren't going for an extreme recharge build for near perma heatloss thus eliminating endurance concerns then the slotting I usually go with is:
2 piece Touch of Lady grey: end/rech, def/end/rech
2 piece Undermined Defense: same as above
I also like to put an achilies -res proc
and if your build has room the 6th slot is a decent enough spot for a damage proc, but finding room in build for a 6th slot in the power can be tough. -
It's not a latency issue as the power works the same way loaded on the smallest map with a netgraph so smooth you can do your practice putting on it. The delay in the pets summoned makes it more confusing, but it still operates using the same mechanics of recharge and cast times as any other power. For whatever reason though it has been a power shrouded in mystery for a long time.
Your use of quotations suggests the mystery still lingers with you, but oh well. There is only so much one can do.
Now trying to figure out stuff with Hell on Earth is a task given that the later summons are not guaranteed.
Regarding your GF's ill/rad all I can suggest is actually recording the testing either live or demorecord because "about 3 seconds" could easily be 4 and a bit, which is what you'd expect before you could activate the power again with a 64 second recharge. I don't personally use Hero Stats for timers, they have always seemed messed up to me both when displayed in real-time and when later examining the display sheet. -
It's a solid power, but one that I've always found I use less and less as I progress in levels.
I actually don't use it as much as I'd like in the low levels too because it costs a pretty sizable chunk of endurance. -
Quote:The difference right now is that I've offered you tangible hard evidence as well as a break down of how the power works. You are no longer arguing against subjective experiences, you are arguing against video proof.This.
Running w/ Hero Stats I am getting approximately ~2sec difference from what Mid's is reporting I "should" see. All the other numbers are the same. Nothing subjective about "real" numbers.
I understand "cast time". What I am seeing is that the numbers the game reports contradicts that. That is all.
Anyway, you'll have to explain this contradiction you are seeing more clearly. Does the contradiction explain why you believe PA works under a different recharge principle than all other powers? And beyond that I think we are at the stage where it is safe to say "vid or it didn't happen" -
Quote:The problem with that comparison is that banes are also packing some strong team buffs and can debuff targets as well as some defenders.If you really wanna make a Stalker to VEAT comparison it should be against Banes. They're more closely related in terms of mechanics and associated playstyle.
Solo ya my bane plays a lot like my old stalker, but on a team it plays more like a dominator that uses debuffs, buffs, and personal armor instead of control. I mean I have a bunch of pets, nice mix of melee and ranged damage, but instead of locking them all down I hit them with venom grenade and rely on my defenses to keep me and the team going.
I think the OP's comparo is valid in that NW's play fairly similar to stalkers and that style is consistent whether teamed or solo. Or at least that's what I've found with my NW. -
More on topic, here is a fairly non-gimp 60 second PA ill/rad with 45.1% ranged def (suppressed GI/SI).
How non-gimp you consider a toon with no travel power is up to you. Swift+AM+ninja run isn't terribly slow though.
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Quote:Lots of stuff from a few years ago that was thought to be true has since been disproved.I agree. 100%. Except this was a hot topic a few years ago and was proven that sub 63 seconds was enough to perma. Sadly I do believe the debate never made it over with the new forums. I have been looking for the thread to link to for everyone's benefit.
Quote:Not at all. I even made it a point to state that I thought you were being honest and not doctoring the video.
Quote:I would post a video, I don't have the same build since I respeced into Fire APP.
For instance if you now have an 80 second recharge on PA your theory would suggest 17 seconds of downtime. I will tell you that it will be 20.x each and every time you cast the power.
Quote:What I suspect is causing some lag in your first video is the fact that you are recording it. That could account for the delay. Is it a high end machine?
The thing is I'm not really sure where this misinformation stems from. It's not a particularly complex power. The only information that has changed over time is we now know the cast time is a bit longer than listed due to Arcanatime. But that only explains 0.2 seconds of inaccuracy, not 3 full seconds.
If the power worked instantly instead of delaying the summons we'd know that our recharge would need to be rech time+cast time = duration of power for it to be perma.
ie Accelerate Metabolism has a duration of 120 seconds and a cast time of 2.244 seconds.
To get our needed rech time it is simply 120-2.244 = 117.756 seconds for the power to be perma.
Now for PA we know that the last pet is delayed 3 seconds and has a duration of 60 seconds giving the power an effective duration of 63 seconds. We know that it has a cast time of 3.3 seconds.
To get our needed rech time it is the same as above. 63-3.3 = 59.7 for the power to be perma.
*in the olden days how anyone got an answer that was different than 59.9 (using the listed cast time) is a mystery.
Quote:My experience with sub 60 second PA is that you can recast before the old ones disappear. This would force a despawn off all three PA.
*Perma PA of course is a misnomer as we all know because it will always incur the delay of the first pet being summoned. But that is irrelevant for this discussion aside from knowing that even if you force a despawn of all the pets you will always have a delay.