Happy_Thoughts

I think he tried at least two or three things, but yeah my impression is also that it's been given up on.

My suggestion to do away with the clunky, broken mechanic and replace it with a slash command, like /lightoilslick or something (that would only work if you had an Oil Slick out, and would only work on your own), apparently didn't make the cut.

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I just want the dang thing to always light when hit with the appropriate damage type. Is it supposed to have a 'chance to' light?

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Nope, it's supposed to light every time it's hit with fire or energy. This is one of the long-standing bugs which I doubt will ever be fixed.

I usually make a macro:
/macro "BG" "petcom_all def follow"

You could just as easily bind it to a key:
/bind <key> /petcom_all def follow

I've never liked the default pet control icons that get put on the tray; I'd rather have at least an abbreviation ("BG", "Pass", etc.) so I'm not sure if you can edit them, but it just takes a right-click to find out.

There's also a whole series of binds that people seem to like to use, but they involve the number pad keys which I use for movement (and it wouldn't make sense to use those binds with other keys; the layout of the number pad is perfect for them). That may be helpful to you as well.

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Why do you hate Empathy so bad just because there are retards playing?

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Who said they hated empathy? This is something that usually happens in the "healer" threads; people who are disgusted with the "healer" mentality generally aren't anti-empath, but rather anti-poorly-played-defender. Every person I have seen who describes themselves as a "healer" has built themselves to be just that (there are probably exceptions, but they're too rare for me to make an effort to find). No "healer" is of any use to me, regardless of what character I'm playing. But an actual defender is, every time.

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Empathy is not as useless a set as its being made out to be.

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It is if all someone is built to do is heal. But that has nothing to do with the set and everything to do with the player at the controls. A buffing, healing, blasting empath contributes at every stage of the game. I may have missed it, but I don't believe anyone has said otherwise.

The Presence Pool will be your best friend in the whole wide world. Provoke (in bodyguard mode of course) and Invoke Panic did more to keep my ninjas alive than any/all of my /TA powers. Aid Other and Aid Self help a lot, too.

My first assumption was that you wanted lots of global recharge to support the long-cooldown buffs, but with Fortitude and Recovery Aura not being slotted for maximum recharge (none at all in Fortitude) while wasting set bonuses by having more than 5 of one type, I'm not entirely sure what the goal here is.

Also, unless you're just hell-bent on having Grant Invisibility, I'd consider getting a +stealth IO to stack with your superspeed and dropping the concealment pool altogether. With those two power picks you could get Tentacles and Nightfall (which provide better -tohit than Grant Invis provides +def, as well as damage plus immobilization from tentacles). I have it on good authority that two damage procs in Nightfall and three in Tentacles does wonders. Or, if you really want to be the helpless hero type, the leadership pool is generally far more helpful than concealment.

I've dabbled with Dark Pit but, on its own, it didn't really do much for me. There's no accuracy debuff component to it, just a straight minion-only stun which lasts between about 9 and 12 seconds base, depending on your level. And it's got a one-minute recharge, and a lower base accuracy—though in this case Radiation Infection would help with that last bit.

Where Dark Pit really has potential is if you have another stun to stack it with, like Thunderclap (Storm Summoning) or Oppressive Gloom (epic power pool).

Tentacles and Nightfall both do a base 9.38 tohit debuff, and that's on top of Radiation Infection's 31.25 (base) to 49.87 (slotted) tohit debuff. My theory is that if things are unable to move toward you, their accuracy is floored, and they're suffering from a -75% recharge debuff (remember I said I love Lingering Radiation?) ... well, a short-duration, minion-only stun isn't bringing a whole lot to the mix there.

My absolute best advice is to copy yourself over to the test server once you have some levels and try different options out for yourself. Not everyone plays the same, and you may decide you like <insert power name here> after all.

First, try not to trip over all those synergies lying around. Rad/Dark is a great combo!

On the Rad side, of course Radiation Infection and Enervating Field are your bread and butter (EF is an endurance hog, so slot appropriately). Even though you'll have tentacles to keep things standing still in the debuff fields, I like using Lingering Radiation as well for the recharge debuff; plus it's nice for bosses who don't get immobilized easily.

Tentacles is a great place for damage procs if you can find/afford them. I have 3 in mine and it makes a noticeable difference. Plus it's nice when a single target gets multi-procced, it just makes me giggle!

Choking Cloud is a "love it or hate it" power. I absolutely love it, but it really loses a lot of leverage if you're /dark blast. It can still be situationally useful, but since you're going to be positioning yourself for cones mostly, the PBAE nature of Choking Cloud is going to go to waste most of the time. I take it on all of my Radiation Emission characters, but when paired with Dark Blast I don't take it and don't miss it.

Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism play very nicely together. Very nicely.

Defensively, Radiation Emission slotted with tohit debuffs is a great survival tool (and pulling tool, too); offensively, the Tentacles/Nightfall combination has a tendency to melt groups of baddies with tons of damage spam.

Dark Blast can be a little light on single-target damage, and doesn't get Aim, so you may want to slot up Dark Blast and possibly Gloom or Moonbeam; though if you have the veteran attack powers you may find you get by without Gloom or Nightfall (Radiation Infection and Enervating Field make the veteran powers much more reliable and effective).

Enjoy your new 'fender!

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Saying to not use BA to ignite OSA is a somewhat bad thing to promote on the boards to less-experienced players, IMO.
For one thing it works perfectly well,

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Yes, it works. But no better than any other fire or energy power, including the origin powers. The difference is that when you use Blazing Arrow rather than an origin power, you've taken a use of one of your best single-target attacks and used it for zero extra damage.

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Secondly, it does so much more often than an inherent attack will based on BA's inherent Accuracy bonus and its ability to enhance Accuracy.

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A long time ago, the defense of the Oil Slick target was lowered to an insanely negative amount. Any attack has a 95% chance to hit it. Even the origin powers. Accuracies and bonuses don't realistically factor in to this particular equation.

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As far as using BA to light OSA being a "waste" of BA... that's kind of an odd argument also, considering that BA recharges and can be used over and over again like every other attack.

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Each time you fire Blazing Arrow at the oil slick, you're not firing it at an enemy and therefore wasting the damage from that shot. Sure, it recharges, but since it's the big hammer in the archery toolbox, using it for no greater effect than the piddly origin power seems like a waste to me.

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Thats not counting your ability to light OSA on Fire with Blazing Arrow

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Ack, no! Blazing Arrow is just too good of a hammer to waste on activating another power. Pick either magic or technology origin and use the origin power to light Oil Slick. Then hit a boss or lieutenant with Blazing Arrow.

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Which do folks think is more useful for an end game Fire tank, fairly well IOed out? Spawn mitigation from Earth's Quicksand/Burn, or AV control and takedown with the Immob/Burn of Ice?

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Who says you have to choose? Earth mastery gets a single-target immobilize too.

I've got an arc that's nearly all robots (the types of robots vary based on mission level) that may do what you're looking for. The dialog is somewhat groan-worthy, so be warned.

The title is "Rock 'em Sock 'em!" and the ID is 204003.

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Ok, try to wrap your mind around this. A few issues back the devs made it so AV's and GMs heavily resist to-hit debuffs. Thus dark miasma's entire set when well slotted ends up being barely effective at debuffing the AV's to-hit. Fortunately they also made it so AVs have 50% to-hit instead of 75, and a 1.5 acc modifier.

Because Flash Arrow's to-hit debuff is unresistable if 3 slotted for to-hit debuff it's roughly equal in effectiveness to pretty much the entire debuff arrey of Dark Miasma at debuffing an AV's to-hit. Without Dark Servant Dark Miasma gets an AV's to-hit down by just under 6%. So does Trick Arrow. The thing is, Dark also has a powerful aoe heal and -regen which can be spammed. So it's not so much to-hit debuffing but the other things that dark does which helps it take on AV's.

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So you're saying that ~6% is "barely effective" as a debuff value when /Dark does it against AVs, and you're saying that /TA does the same value—not just against AVs, but everything in the game.

What was the point again?

And for a point of clarification, that spammable AOE heal/-regen also has -damage and a -tohit component, which may or may not have been counted in that initial 6%.

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Glue Arrow - Only really good defensive power in the set, however it is hard to place because it is a targetting AOE rather than a location AOE, does almost no recharge debuff (20% again, isn't much) and frequently won't last through a fight.

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Three recharge SO's and this recharges exactly as fast as it wears off. Look, no more complaint about it not lasting through a fight. Slot some slows in it too and the recharge debuff is stronger. Happy times. The same is true of PGA and most of the other debuffs too.

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Unless there was a change that I missed (which is possible), slow enhancements only affect -speed, not -recharge. The debuff portion of PGA (-damage) is also unenhanceable. So are the -resist debuffs in Acid and Disruption Arrows. That leaves -defense and -speed—and technically -tohit, though it's such a low return for the slotting investment—as the enhanceable debuffs in Trick Arrow.

I'm looking to increase the survivability of my Dark Melee/Fire Armor brute, but am unsure of the best way to accomplish this.

Disclaimer: I know that brutes aren't tanks; however, I find myself popping inspirations (mostly defense and heals, with the occasional resist) every fight. And, to be honest, "every fight" means grabbing a few groups together which may be part of the problem but I just get bored fighting things one at a time.

I'm sitting at 32—at least, when I actually train; I'm torn between Midnight Grasp and Tough (with the other coming at 35). So slots are still at a premium, and of course the uber ultra purply enhancements are out of the question.

What I'm wondering is: what option should I aim for with IO set bonuses? Smashing/Lethal defense? Melee defense? Hit points? Regeneration? Recharge for spammable Healing Flames? Something else entirely?

I'm not asking for a specific build, but some feedback on what has helped some of the more aggressive /Fire Armor brutes stay upright would be wonderful.

Thanks!

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The original guide seems pretty bad (spelling and grammar aside), as he rates voltaic sentinal so highly. Plus the slotting of Tar Patch is really bad (in both builds posted).

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Well, look at when it was written -- November 2004! Not only have some game fundamentals changed since then, but both of the powers you name have specifically been changed since then as well.

Go go necropost!

I have personally sent PMs to Positron and Statesman in September, October, and November of last year regarding Flash Arrow's inadequate value as a Defender primary power, as well as other issues compiled by the then-current TA Defender community.

Neither of them bothered to even read any of the PMs; for which I take the blame for stupidly putting "Trick Arrow" in the subject line.

So, yes, apparently it is too much to ask to have the -accuracy increased to actual Defender levels, rather than be based on a Blaster secondary power. I know this, because we have asked plenty of times already.

At a base 6.5% debuff value for Defenders (it's 3% base for Masterminds, I believe), I don't recommend anyone getting this power for use as an accuracy debuff, except when stacking on top of someone else's.

As far as TA being powerful later on, that's partly true. Oil Slick Arrow can do really nice damage for a Defender, when it's up and if everything works out properly (it's STILL bugged and doesn't always light).

As a Necomancy/Trick Arrow user, you won't have any way of lighting the slick yourself unless you happened to choose the "correct" origin or have a nifty temp power that does fire or energy damage.

The debuffs (aside from Flash Arrow) are nice, but it takes a lot of time to place them all down due to animation times and the fact that effects are spread out over a lot of individual powers; and you'll have to spend more time reapplying them due to short durations on some key powers. The one thing you can debuff better than anyone else is -resistance, by stacking Disruption and Acid (Acid having a chance to miss) for a 40% debuff. (Yes, no other Defender can debuff -perception so we're technically the best at that too, but it's so buggy and situational, and easily undone by stray fire/wandering teammates that I don't feel it counts).

Anyway, I think the devs have not said all they're going to not say on the set, and it is the way it will be until they unplug the servers. If there's any doubt of that, check which developer created this "Official Thread." Sad, that.

The set has style and potential, but it also has fundamental problems which the developers don't seem to care to hear about.

From the LIVE patch notes, 6/6/06:
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Oil Slick Arrow should no longer have the odd failure to ignite condition.

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_Castle_, this was not working properly after the last update on test (6/1). Has it been fixed since then, or will it be addressed soon?

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I can sit here and tell you right now for a fact that the dmg oil slick does has an uncanny knack for aggroing enemies on me unless I have a nice tanker buffer, and that aggro is usually painful, poison gas arrow/flash arrow/glue arrow on.

The knockdown and dmg mitgation is quite true, I only have the issue after ignition.

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When we did our group test on the training room (earlier in this thread), my TA defender didn't take inordinate amounts of damage (more than the stormie, but less than the dark). I used (and attempted to ignite) Oil Slick each time it was available. We had zero tankers or controllers (we had two peacebringers, but neither of them was using dwarf form). I was using every single TA debuff that was available each fight (and had every single TA power in the build for the test).

It could very well be buggy AI/aggro issues (comparable to the inconsistent Flash Arrow aggro bugginess), or it could be something else entirely. I wouldn't say that Oil Slick damage aggro is unilaterally problematic, though. My experience is that it's certainly less problematic than the cumbersome and currently inconsistent lighting mechanism, for those secondaries that actually have a means of lighting it.

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One more quick question for everyone (in particular the TA vets that have been responding and testing in this thread): what are your thoughts in regards to 3 slotting Flash Arrow for debuffs? IIRC doing so would only take you from a 7.5 to 13% rate, which is hardly gamebreaking. My current position is that the slots are better spent elsewhere, but I'm curious as to how others feel about it.

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You're not going to get a 13% debuff with Flash Arrow. The base debuff value (for Defenders) is 6.25% (I believe this is the number _Castle_ is quoted as providing; if I'm remembering wrong someone please correct me). With three to-hit debuffs you get to about 9.75%. I can think of much better things to do with those extra two slots than getting an extra 1.125% to-hit buff per slot (the default slot gets you to 7.5%).

I'll likely be keeping Flash Arrow in my build for the -perception, and under the logic that some debuff is better than no debuff. But I'm certainly not giving any more slots than it comes with.

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I feel strongly that if they get the ingition fixed that this power will be nerfed after a little while, and most likely for good reason.

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I'm still not clear on where you're coming from. Are you saying that you feel Oil Slick NEEDS to be nerfed as part of a bug fix because you THINK it will be nerfed later on?

Here's the way I see it.

If Oil Slick's failure to ignite is a bug, which it certainly seems to be from _Castle_'s comment (not to mention the basic flammable nature of oil), then it follows that the rest of the power's attributes and behavior was balanced around the power igniting every time it was hit with an appropriate damage type.

Which means that currently, the power is underperforming; not that it will overperform after a bug fix is applied.

So I still don't understand why anything should be given up in exchange for a bug fix.

Yes, Oil Slick is really nice when it works. But it's not fantastically overpowered. It takes three damage SOs to kill even-con minions, over a period of time in which you're subject to return fire. It's got a nuke-class recharge time of 3 minutes base. It's not buffable in Issue 7 (nor do I think it should be or needs to be). It's not an instant, risk-free "I win" button; nor is it an "every fight" power unless you're balancing your checkbook while playing, or if you're teamed with Kinetics/Empathy users (in which case this is fine, as teamwork is supposed to make us better, stronger, faster). In short, Oil Slick has a nice offensive "oomph" which is balanced by other limiting factors; it's not balanced around a bug.

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I hear you Zen but if we get it lighting 100% with it's current abilities it NEEDS to be nerfed.

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I don't understand the reasoning here.

Why should we have to take a performance hit as a price for getting a bug fixed?

New test, which adds more questions.

This time, I brought a level 1 Fire/Fire Tanker to attempt to light the Oil Slick. I ran another set of 50 slicks, but divided the method of lighting evenly between Blazing Aura and Scorch. I did this to check the differences between using a single-target attack and an area effect attack. I also wanted to use attacks with only one damage type to see if the "failure to light" bug (it is a bug, right?) was caused by Blazing Arrow's dual-damage nature.

I would have done two sets of 50, one for each attack, but as each set takes me more than an hour (even with Hasten on autofire), this was a more practical approach for me.

First, let me say how surprised I was that the unsidekicked level 1 Tanker had no difficulty hitting the level 32 Oil Slick.

Here are the results:

Blazing Aura vs. Oil Slick
Ignite success: 88%. 22 out of 25 (two missed the first time, but hit and lit the second time).
Hit ratio: 92.59%. 2 initial misses, which both hit on the next attack, for a total of 25 hits and 2 misses out of 27 attacks.

Scorch vs. Oil Slick
Ignite success: 96%. 24 out of 25 (one missed the first time, but hit and lit the second time).
Hit ratio: 96.15%. 1 initial miss, which hit on the next attack, for a total of 25 hits and 1 misses out of 26 attacks.

Combined Blazing Aura and Scorch vs. Oil Slick
Ignite success: 92%. 46 out of 50 (three missed the first time, but hit and lit the second time).
Hit ratio: 94.34%. 3 initial misses, which all hit on the next attack, for a total of 50 hits and 3 misses out of 53 attacks.



So it seems that the hit percentage is set at around 95%, regardless of attacks, slotting, level difference, etc. Which isn't perfect, but it's probably the best that can be done within the boundaries of the current system. All seven of the misses (across all three of my tests) were followed up with a hit on the next attempt, which is a darn sight better than the performance on live.

I still advocate having Oil Slick light automatically. Yes, the concept of using a second arrow is cute, but it's cumbersome and impractical under most circumstances, and downright unuseful if the TA Defender has chosen the "wrong" secondary.

I am disturbed by the failure to ignite, though. While I did get inconsistent results in the tests I've run so far, the fact is that Oil Slick can and does fail to light up. Since this has happened with Blazing Arrow, Blazing Aura, and Scorch, I think it's clear that it's a problem with Oil Slick itself, and not the method of delivery as some of us suspected (dual damage type, single target vs. area effect, etc.). Hopefully this knowledge helps the dev team track down this bug and squash it. Once again, this is a bug, right?