GenericVillain

Just slot up alkaloid with heal sets to get heal, recharge, and end redux in there. It's basically the same power heal wise as o2 boost in terms of heal, recharge, animation time, and end cost, and I could spam that power on my stormy, even before I crazy slotted my stormy out for end recovery and +max end. It's all my stormy ever needed heal wise for my zombies, but I also had freezing rain, so enemies didn't damage me much to begin with.

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Best way to slot it is 3 acc/mez HOs, and 3 tohit debuff IOs from the undermined set to get capped accuracy, fear duration, immob duration, hold duration, tohit debuff, and some end reduction and recharge (for casting the lich again faster if he dies or you die).

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But....you can't put Recharge into Henchmen powers....

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You can if you use IO sets. They just won't boost the recharge of the pet attacks anymore. But they will boost how fast the actual power recharges.

Also, I meant 3 piece Dampened Spirits and not Undermined Defenses looking over what I wrote. Undermined being defense debuff and Dampened being the tohit debuff one and all.

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It's amazing how such a simple change to a single power takes a set from being fun to being "meh". I've shelved my EM/EA indefinitely.

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Turning TF into a mag 3 stun instead of mag 4 didn't help either.

Best way to slot it is 3 acc/mez HOs, and 3 tohit debuff IOs from the undermined set to get capped accuracy, fear duration, immob duration, hold duration, tohit debuff, and some end reduction and recharge (for casting the lich again faster if he dies or you die).

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The patron holds are your best attack.

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Soul Storm is so sweet.

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so it does nothing, I was actually hoping to increase my recharge not the pets.

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Yeah, doesn't work, as nice as that'd be.

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Personally I feel like you are wasting some slots in Sentinal, Tesla Cage and Short Circuit but thats just my two cents.

For instance, Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt and Ball Lightning along with Heat Ex and Power Sink are gonna be all the end drain you need.

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Short Circuit and VSentinal do a ton of end spike damage, which compliement Heat Exaustion really well. You can never have enough end spike. The sooner they get to 0, the sooner they can't run away or hurt you, and if they got blues, the faster you run them out of blues.

Lightning bolt and charged bolts aren't nearly good enough end damage compare to those powers, especially since VSent is hands free end damage. Plus, SC does aoe -recovery and -end which is really brutal against MMs.

Tesla Cage is your only ranged -end power besides heat exausion, and HE isn't perma, and sometimes it misses, sometimes you're fighting more than one person, and sometimes people have end drain resistance or IOed up recovery and you need more -recovery.

Tough is gonna give you almost 0 benefit in pvp on top of your other resist shield, because of how DR works with resistance and squishies. You're better off dropping that for like... something else.

I went with mu mastery on my elec/therm because power sink and the mu pet make for some really nice sapping though. Also I took the shields and forge and thaw on my therm so I can buff teammates and my pet with them. While I can understand not taking the shields, though, you really should at least have forge, just for the odd teamup. But in my case, it also goes to my mu pet and lets him hit practically anything which is nice.

But there's merit to having hibernate too... possibly more so than not.

Anyways, I highly highly suggest looking into IO set pieces for that build. With 3 performance shifters and 2 efficacy adapters, I can max out accuracy, endmod, and recharge, and get 2 health bonuses, and have 1 slot left over to either put in end redux, damage, or just save for another power. And that's just the start of what you can do.

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The AV musta been pretty resistant then cause it was still doing quite a bit of damage too.

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Or the Defenders sucked. However half the damage is still anywhere from 250-1200 damage, depending on the AV, so it comes down to what the player or AT can take.

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Well, what she means is that damage resistance resists -damage, so if the AV had a lot of resistance, that half damage reduction might be only 25% for example.

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Stacking FS, I also didn't include because it would expose variables which would alter the overall calculation, primarily slotting. It needs to be slotted for Accuracy, but beyond that, if you're slotting for -ToHit, then you're sacrificing +Recharge, or if you slot for +Recharge, you sacrifice -ToHit, and in either case, you still haven't slotted it for Endurance Reduction. It's no longer a simple 1+1 equation, the whole thing changes. Frankly, I don't know what the optimal slotting of FS would be, whether the character in question would have Hasten and/or Tactics (which would alleviate the slotting issue, but add the issue of even more rapid endurance consumption, which in and of itself affects the average -ToHit a Dark can apply)... too much recalculating for too many different variations for me to make any kind of accurate estimation of the contribution of double-stacked FS.


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Looking at the numbers, you'd need like a really hacked out build to double stack FS anyways. Like 100% recharge in FS and hasten and some global recharge to get anywhere near double FS most of the time. So single FS is pretty fair.

Although, looking at that, Twilights Grasp has a duration of 20 seconds and a base recharge of 8, which with very minimal slotting is perma doubled. And if you add in a second 3.75 (which is very reasonable considering TG is also -damage, a heal, and -regen, which is all very nice for AV fights)

TG + FS: ((3.75*2 + (11.25 * 1.56)) * 0.15) * 0.95 = 3.569625%

Added to DN's 2.6325 is a 6.2% tohit debuff which passes up flash arrow. And I think accounting for stacking TG is reasonable, since my dark MM can pretty much spam that heal all day, even with toggles running.

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How much -ToHit does Darkest Night apply to an AV?

I'll give you a hint: less than Flash Arrow.

How much -ToHit does Flash Arrow apply to an AV?

Here's another hint: more than all of Dark's -ToHit combined.


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I'd like to see the math on that if you have it lying around, because even though an AV's tohit debuff resistance is massive, if you can get the fluffy sitting on an AV and stack fearsome stares, you can get a -lot- of tohit debuff down.

None of which matters anyways because flash arrow is a 3.75% non resistable debuff (for MMs) which is still lowered by enemies being higher level than you, and dark has a 3.75% defense aura (among other things) which does literally the same thing, only enemy level doesn't scale it. So it evens out before dark's other tohit debuffs.

The rest of what you said still stands though.

As a sidenote, I still prefer freezing rain to anything either set does. Enough mitigation for most teams with the knockdown and slow, the -resists are as big as tarpatch, it's got -defense, and it's stackable if the fight lasts long enough. I really couldn't ask for anymore in a power.

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Yeah, once you have six pets running around just grab the taunt from the presence pool. Thanks to everyone here, I use that power like mad, and it changes things immensely. Yeah, I take damage. And? I only take a tiny bit. By the time the mobs are down, I've regenerated that health back.

Seriously, get up to 24, grab presence, go to town.

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Not always wise, but it is a tactic. AoE sigs (Miss Liberty I'm looking at you) will shred you to ribbons with such tactics. Valkyre also has a NASTY targeted aoe... not sure why either since she's a meleer.

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That's why you don't stand in your pets if they have aoes. Bodyguard has like a 60 foot range so you can keep your pets out of aoe range pretty well.

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As to zombies vs. other pets, I thought they were resistant to Lethal, but they seem vulnerable. Certainly fire kills them right away.

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All tiers of zombies have 0 resistance to both lethal and fire.

Also, if you wanna make your necro/ff way more survivable, I highly recommend getting both of the +5% defense to pet auras. You can't slot in the recharge intensive pet one until the patch on test that makes it slottable in soul extraction goes through, but when it does, that's an extra 10% defense to your zombies on top of what your FF bubbles give. And while you are at it, slot in both resist IOs too and give your zombies an extra 20% resists to everything, including lethal and fire.

I highly recommend not running around in pff since that makes your dispersion bubble stop giving your pets benefit and you have bodyguard mode anyways, and I'd also recommend picking up provoke and drain life and taunting all the trouble targets away from your zombies and onto your bodyguarded self.

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Also, I highly recommend at least 2 slotting your upgrades for end redux. Recharge doesn't matter, but that end reduction is highly valued. If you can spare the slots, maybe even 3 slot. You're 2 levels away from SOs/25 IOs so that'll help a lot. Getting better values in your bubbles/dispersion and more end redux is certainally nice. Also, when you get your lich, I also highly recommend slotting for tohit debuff over any thing else (except for accuracy of course). Tohit debuffs on top of mad defense and your pets will feel unkillable again.

A Spines/WP brute would be pretty solid. They can take the punishment and like being surrounded so I think they could make it work. And if you take boxing on the way to tough, you can brawl/boxing your way to high fury quickly, then just pretty much stay at high fury by moving from spawn to spawn quickly.

Price you pay for having by far the most powerful nuke in the game. It's hard to get the full damage of it. But in return it does more damage than other nukes, controls the spawn for the duration, and can kill more than 16 enemies.

Also, if they did change it for blizzard, they better change it for powers like rain of arrows, rain of fire, ice storm, pretty much every arrow in trick arrow, sleet, tar patch, and so on.

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As a side note, I know it's not a game limitation that the patch disappears when the player dies. It is possible for them to code patches to stay. They've changed npc powers to and from sticking, the necromancy soul extract power sticks, and I believe there are other examples. So it's got to be intentional design.

As a sidenote, flurry doesn't actually do as much damage as mids claims it does. It does a lot of damage yes, but blaster flurry isn't no 383 base damage, mids is either wrong or outdated (or both). Real numbers reports something like 182 base damage. Which is still like higher base damage than like blazing arrow, but given the animation time and lack of range makes chaining blasts the superior option still.

I suggest an uber end drain build if you want people annoyed. Something like an elec/thermal/mu or elec/kin/mu. People really hate having their end bars emptied.

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The ToHit debuffing automatically goes to Zombies/Dark.

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Unless it's pvp in which case both are about equally good because of DR.

Only mastermind to give my necro/storm trouble so far was another necro/storm. I've fought a fair number of darks, poisons, and traps, although admittedly most of them weren't that great. Hurricane really messes pets up though if the MM doesn't have some kinda of aoe -defense though... so much so that I usually don't even have to heal my pets anymore.

You won't stun the pets, and I don't believe you'll knock them out of bodyguard mode, although it's worth testing.

I pvp with my necro/storm/mace all the time. I made him to fight MMs, which he does really well against, and he also does really well against other ATs. Haven't lost any duels yet (although there are build I'm pretty sure beat him when played right).

About Mace, the -fly, -jump is nice as it really disrupts most people's ability to fight you, and if they don't have SS, turns them into sitting ducks. And the def shield is really nice in combination with the tohit debuffs.

As other people pointed out, this does nothing to stop farming. All anyone will do now is figure out what they have to do to get close to 1500 tickets, and just do that and reset over and over. Glowy clicks will probably be farm completion of choice now too.

I know arcanaville posted the formulas awhile back, but you wouldn't be able to do anything with them as you'd need to know certain numbers that vary based on both AT and effect type, and I dunno if anyone knows those numbers.

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Illusion/Storm Controller vs. Necro/Storm MM

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I'd more put this as a tie The confuse is kind of annoying, but not that debilitating (especially if you have tactics, which mine does), and the ill/storm doesn't have enough damage output to kill the necro/storm. The real kicker is phantom army. That craps annoying.

FA used to have better tohit than tactics in addition to everything else (was like base +20% I believe), but they changed it to like +5% tohit and +20% accuracy. The resistance to tohit debuffs makes it pretty insane though.