Fury Flechette

I'm cogitating an idea of an all knockback super team. Essentially, gathering all the despised (?) energy blasters, Kheldians, storm defenders and force fielders, etc. together and trying hard to scatter anything and everything.

Ideally, this team would be able to stand up to any content in this game, but I'm curious about how knockback would affect AVs. It's trivial for a force fielder to slot force bolt so it has over 50 mag which would mean that it will override the purple triangles of doom and cause an AV to be knocked down/back in one shot.

What I don't know is whether or not knockback has a "duration" of sorts. There's a lot of powers like energy torrent which can be spec'ed to have over 10 magnitude of knockback. Theoretically, would such an application of multiple knockback powers have to occur simultaneously or is it more forgiving and will the magnitude of such powers stack if the powers stack within the duration of a second or two? Consider a full team of knockback specialists all having one or more powers all having a knockback magnitude of 10 or more all spamming their kb powers.

I realize that this is an oddball question, but if you happen to have any insight into this, I'd be much obliged.

Day 12: Crowd Control

I hit level 33 earlier today and wasn't going to update until I got a couple of more powers and slots on the build. However, Crowd Control is just too good not to talk about. It's like that super popular, friendly guy you want everyone to know because he's become your best friend. I am completely impressed with what it can do. Huge cone, good damage and excellent mitigation. Best yet, Venom Grenade and Crowd Control already go together like peanut butter and jelly.




With 4 slots, it's slotted with around 65% accuracy, 96% damage and 18% end redx. A set of Obliteration is just begging to go into this power. Or maybe a set of Sciroccos with a Force Feedback proc. Lots of possibilities.

I'm starting up the missions available for my last contact, Operative Rutger. I really don't like Operative Rutger only because his missions tend to be full of AVs/EBs. It's not that I mind fighting them, it's just that Fara right now isn't properly slotted to deal with them at her current level. Because of that, she tends to go through AV/EB missions slowly and methodically using inspirations, temp powers and pets. I'm hoping that by the 40s, an elite boss will be a minor speed bump rather than the neighborhood detour it tends to be right now.

Finally, I'm very impressed with the Bane spec at this point. I have a similar level Widow and had a Fortunata that reached the high 30s and I can honestly say that at this point in time, the Bane feels more powerful. The Bane just does a satisfying amount of damage. Sure, it can't slug it out in long fights, but because of the ability to deliver tremendous amounts of burst damage, her fragility can be forgiven and worked around.

Having experience with a Widow, I tried to slot up the Bane's attacks with a lot of endurance reduction since it took me many levels and a lot of slots until I felt my Widow was endurance efficient. Banes don't seem to worry about endurance reduction/recovery as much since fights are far shorter. Either the opposition is dead or your Bane is in trouble. The balancing point seems to be their fragility, which hopefully I'll rectify in the coming levels. All in all, the character up to this point has been a pleasant surprise.

Day 10-11: Building Power

I haven't updated in a while largely because I didn't have much to report. Fara successfully leveled out of her 20s and is now level 32. Currently, Fara has been on patrol for 49 hours, has 304,087,392 infamy, 150 reward merits and has a mixture of set IOs to frankenslot her powers. She has no meaningful set bonuses other than the Steadfast Res/Def IO and a couple of very small hitpoint bonuses.

49 hours to level 32 isn't fast by any means, but because of the odd hours I've been playing, I've only teamed for 1 level. Further, I've been religiously trying to finish story arcs, get every badge for each mayhem mission and avoid AE entirely.

Right now, power-wise, Fara is really only marginally better than a SO build at this point. Slightly better defense (due to the Steadfast), better end management due to frankenslotting, better accuracy due to frankenslotting but nothing else that you couldn't get with a straight SO build. Banes are clearly a build that matures late. I honestly don't see significant improvement in Fara's survivability until the late 30s when she can properly slot up Tough and begin to start using some of the better global set bonuses.

Still, she isn't shabby and with some inspiration use she was able to down Baracuda, The Shaper, and Calistyx as +1 Elite Bosses. She also had a run in with Back Alley Brawler, but unfortunately, a scaled Freedom Phalanx member is still too much. I had to Shivan him to clear the mission.



The fight with BAB pretty much sums up Fara's current power to a tee. She has great offensive capability, particularly burst with her first three attacks. It was impressive much of BAB's life she took off with her first salvo of attacks. However, she couldn't sustain and when the second set of purples wore off and BAB's invulnerability uber power kicked in, BAB was able to quickly two shot Fara into the dust.

I really dislike how fragile Banes are at this point. I'm hoping that Tough and more hitpoints later on will ameliorate the situation. I'm not looking for brute level toughness but something that can do better than being two shotted by a +1 Elite Boss.

The other capability I've been working towards is giving Fara some AoE capabilities. Venom Grenade is great and has worked out better than I thought it would. While Surveillance will be missed, the ability to debuff an entire group and deal damage at the same time is very nice. At level 32, Fara trained up Crowd Control and I'm hoping that this power will give her the added dimension to be able to deal damage to groups. I don't have any expectation that Crowd Control will have a big radius, but just being able to damage adjacent targets is something that would be welcome.

Finally as Fara hit her 30s, it called for a new costume design. I went with the ninja look this time, silver with black accents.

I don't hide but there are times when I just prefer to solo. Generally just toggling on Do Not Accept Team Invites is enough to prevent the blind invite. I'd consider accepting a team invite if politely worded, and if I have time.

I've been pleasantly surprised lately that I've been recognized by my forum handle which is also my global name. I've had a lot of players whom I've met on PUGs who tell me they read my posts though they don't actively post on the forums. I'm assuming they like my posts since none of these admissions of recognition has led to me being kicked off of a team yet.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, besides complete lack of effort, that a casual player cannot get every item they can possibly desire. And I'm completely serious about that.

As many of you know, I conducted an experiment (linked in my sig) to show what a player can make casually playing for a couple hours a day. The experiment was conducted precisely to silence these sorts of statements that everything is too expensive, market is out of control, players *have to* use RMT to afford stuff, blah, blah.

I honestly don't know what else I can do to spell out how ridiculously easy it is to make what you want in this game.

Day 9: Upping Up the Difficulty

It's amazing how much difference a couple of levels and a few more slots can make on a character. While Fara the Bane felt weak at level 24, by level 28 she was far more formidable. Another slot in each attack upping both its accuracy and smoothing out its recharge made a significant difference. Every attack is frankenslotted with a mixture of set IOs concentrating on accuracy, damage and some recharge and end reduction (depending on what's needed).

Even though her defenses have remained largely the same (22% melee/AoE and 34% range), Fara can output enough damage in her first three attacks to take a +1 boss down to around 25%. It's enough offense that I felt comfortable moving her difficulty to +1 level / x1 players / with bosses. Enabling bosses by itself ups the mission complete bonuses enough that finishing a mission seems to make quite a dent on the xp bar.



Fara's offense seems formidable but she's still a one-dimensional character. She still plays like a stalker with weaker defenses. She has no AoE capability and she's irritatingly squishy. In a fight where there's been some critical misses or where she's been debuffed makes her over reliant on inspirations. Enough so that I don't feel like I can go into a significant boss fight without having a number of greens.

I plan to change that of course. The next few power picks are designed to flesh out her abilities. Level 28 will see the return of Venom Grenade, level 30 will start the fighting pool, level 32 will be reserved for Crowd Control and level 35 and 38 will be Tough and Weave respectively.

My hope is that Venom Grenade + Crowd Control will give her more AoE ability while the fighting pool will give her more resiliency and up her defenses.

Why did I opt for Venom Grenade over Surveillance? They're both 20% -res powers but Surveillance is single target while Venom Grenade affects multiple targets. As fas I know, Surveillance doesn't aggro the target (and hence break stealth) and provides a significant defense debuff. Vendom Grenade definitely does cause aggro, but also does a significant amount of damage. Then there's a redraw factor, switching from mace to gun back to mace which may drive some players crazy (doesn't bother me).

Basically it came down to wanting some more damage and being able to debuff multiple targets instead of just one. My hunch is that I'll open from stealth with build up and shatter, hit the remaining targets with Venom Grenade and then clobber them with Crowd Control. This is theoretical at this point, but if it doesn't work, I can always respec.

I'm hoping to turn this character into something more than a stalker lite, and I see the next few levels as being crucial for that.

No

However, on many characters I have the Do Not Accept Team Invites turned on.

You can also slot Mind Link with ToHit IOs. In particular, the straight Recharge set piece from Adjusted Targeting works very well in there.

Day 8: Finally a Bane

When I last left Fara, she was halfway to level 24. Fara undertook the story arc from Darren Wade. She blitzed through the arc as her AoE attack chain of Wide Area Grenade, Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade and Heavy Burst was largely complete.

Unlike a few characters I had, Fara had little difficulty dispatching both Kababra Kill and Sigil, the first hero class (actually, they're about as hard as tough bosses) NPCs she encountered. Knowing the grand finale of the arc, I bought Fara an Ethereal Shift temp power and phased out of the Midnight Club as soon she clicked the last glowie of the mission. At the end of the arc, Fara had hit terror level 24 and was about a third of the way to level 25.

Training to level 24 calls for a mandatory respec. Having grown fond of the Huntsman/Soldier build so far, I took advantage of the second build and leveled it up as a Huntsman. On the primary build, Fara moved into becoming a Bane. To celebrate the completion of her soldier training, I outfitted Fara with some new duds. Here's a picture of Fara standing next to her newest acquaintance, Dean MacArthur.



So far, I felt that the default mission difficulty was adequate since the Huntsman spec, while safe, wasn't an offensive power house. I hoped that moving to the Bane specialization would amp up Fara's offense, and hence allow me to raise the difficulty beyond default levels.

To test out her new powers, Fara started up the Dean MacArthur arc. The Bane build played much like a stalker. With stealth capabilities and Build Up, a Bane can deliver a tremendous amount of burst damage, able to two shot orange conning Lts. Generally, in a spawn of three, Fara would utterly decimate one, kill the other in two hits and then wait for her attacks to charge to dispatch the third. It felt a bit clunky but workable.

Below is Fara's level 24 build:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.704
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Bane Theoretical: Level 25 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Bash -- B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(3), Dmg-I(5), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(23)
Level 1: Wolf Spider Armor -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A)
Level 2: Combat Training: Defensive -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(3), DefBuff-I(5)
Level 4: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(7), ResDam-I(9)
Level 6: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7), RechRdx-I(9)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A), DefBuff-I(11), DefBuff-I(11)
Level 12: Poisonous Ray -- Mael'Fry-Acc/Dmg(A), Volly-Acc/Dmg(13), Dmg-I(13), Volly-Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 14: Pulverize -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(15), Dmg-I(15), B'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 16: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 18: Shatter -- B'Snap-Acc/Dmg(A), B'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(19), Dmg-I(19), B'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(21), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Cloaking Device -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 6: Ninja Run
------------

The Dean MacArthur mission went smoothly until she came across her very first clone. I'm not sure how well your character do against clones, but a clone that can stealth, hit build up and essentially deliver huge burst damage is not fun to fight against. Fara suffered her very first character defeat against her own clone.



This was sort of encouraging in a way, since if an NPC with those powers was that formidable, a character with those same powers should be powerful (right? )

Anyway, after using the Resuscitate temp power and returning the same amount whop*ss that the clone just delivered, Fara was able to complete both Dean MacArthur's arc and Leonard's arc. Strangely, the fight with Protean was highly anticlimatic. Jousting and prodigious use of Build Up and Placate made the fight quick and painless, especially since Protean telegraphs his signature uber power. Finishing that arc, Fara reached terror level 26.