Little_Whorn

The other day when I sat down to play through the DA story arcs, I noticed that Dream Doctor is functionally an illusion/staff AT. I'm not sure if he gets access to all of the powers in each powerset (I doubt it), but he definitely gets PA, blind, and flash (I think) on the illusion side and Guarded Spin and the tier 9 big hitter (sky something, can't remember) on the staff side. Are there other NPCs I'm unaware of that do this? Is this a possible experiment by the devs into combining traditionally unrelated powersets? Maybe something we can look forward to in the future? Hint hint, nudge nudge devs...

Strangely enough, I've had the exact same experience with bots/traps. I know it's supposed to rock and I build for all of the right things like defense, recharge, hp, and provoke, but it always seems to pale against my thugs/dark (or thugs/time or bots/time). Especially in DA where defenses tend to melt quicker, traps's lack of healing seems really noticeable to me. Maybe it just takes elaborate play like what Plainguy is describing. The other sets just seem much simpler and easily just as effective. It's a shame for me because I want to love traps, but I can't get it to work and compared to time or dark, just seems lackluster.

Well, your intuition about StJ relative lack of AoE is pretty on-target. It sacrifices much of its AoE for the ST capabilities. Many people focus their attention on the ST, especially Stalkers, but still find the AoE to be somewhat sufficient at the very least. Spinning strike's tiny radius isn't as much of a penalty when playing solo as you have more time and room to best position yourself.

Personally, StJ's relative lack of AoE is a deal-breaker for me on all ATs except Stalker, where I can focus my efforts into being the best boss hunter I can be. Further, I find that Spinning Strike's tiny radius suffers even more in late game content where the large enemy models prevent me from hitting more than 2-3 in a single strike--see WarWork Lts, etc.

Great build, Steel, but I do question leaving out increase density. Even with no slots added, it carries a hefty 25% base resist buff to Smash/Energy, some of the two most common damages in the incarnate realm. And it could take one of the resist/+def IOs in the native slot, freeing up a slot elsewhere (in your case, tough). It's not a game changer like SB or FS, but certainly a one-slot wonder that is much easier to keep up now with the buff being AoE. Anyway, my 2c.

I'll add another consideration into the mix. Try picking a relatively hands-off, light-on-clicks primary so that you can pick up more Psi powers to better experience what the set has to offer. It'd be a shame to pick a super busy primary that would demand so much attention in order to be effective that you hardly ever get to psi blast and enjoy your secondary.

Another relevant question I have is whether I can perma sleep the nicti at all. My spore burst is up in 11.65s and sleeps for (mag3:37.5/mag3:56.3). If the nicti don't resist sleep mez at all, I might be able to perma sleep them, even at lvl 54. But I'm really not sure.

I've thought about bringing a dark/ dom to try perma-confusing Rommy, but I'm not really sure if it can be done on a lvl 54 AV. Maybe... I'd rather exhaust my attempts to complete this challenge for me with my plant/psi dom though before I give up and roll another toon more capable of doing it.

From my experience, they can be slept and confused, rommy and the nicti. But they all have regular AV level confuse protection, so with seeds, it's only when their protection/purple triangles is down. However, I don't think they have sleep protection (similar to any other AV). Sometimes the sleep works, and sometimes it doesn't. Hence my idea to sleep the whole group and attack rommy without any interference.

I tried sleeping the nicti and pulling rommy away, but it's too difficult for me so far to switch targets from Rommy to the Nicti to keep them slept when they are far away. If they wake, they immediately latch back onto rommy, no matter the distance. That might be fixable with more practice.

How about this strategy? Desummoning my pet and creepers, so there is no AoE. Then hitting the spawn with spore burst to sleep the whole bunch. Then jumping in and spamming single target attacks on Rommy until he goes down, remembering to refresh spore burst as soon as it is up. Think that might work? Does Rommy or the Nictuses have any sleep protection?

Fair enough. Thanks for your opinion.

I didn't know where else to post this, but i've been attempting solo-itfs on my dom so i figured I'd post here. So, I've attempted +4/x8 solo itfs twice now and twice i've failed. Getting through the missions is easy enough, i could probably do it without deaths if I was a bit lucky and played better, but that's irrelevant. Point is, I can't take out Rommy when he's attached to his nictus friends. I've failed at him twice now. I think if I could separate him to prevent him from being healed and me from being attacked by the nictus/nictus spawns, I could probably succeed. I've yet to find some glitch in the terrain to separate them. The roof no longer works.

I've heard that if I attack and pull him immediately after the cutscene, then he can be separated... Anyone know more about this? Is it possible? How immediate is immediately? A couple of seconds? Do I still need to keep him in range of the nictus so they can be defeated when he is? I'd hate to take him down only to fail at killing his three nictus because they can't be separated. Any advice anyone?

I'm interested in seeing more results from THB, but there are far too many uncontrolled variables for the experiment to mean anything when it comes to relative blaster performance.

First, the experiment is completely longitudinal and contains no analysis of any of the other powersets available to blasters (or stalkers). As a result, the experiment is completely irrelevant as to whether blasters are underperforming as a whole. Taking a single representative of a group and pitting it against a single representative of another group says very little about comparing the groups. Stats 101.

Second, there's other uncontrolled variables. What if THB is worse at playing blasters than stalkers, as in one playstyle is easier for him to play than the other? What if he plays one variable while he is awake and alert and the other while he is tired and sleepy (or drunk :P)? What if THB is a great player (or crappy) in general and is not representative of average skill required to play each build? What if the differences in kill rate/death rate (if any) are more attributable to a ST vs. AoE analysis? Playing at +0/x0 with fewer enemies benefits ST much more than playing at -1/x8. It's possible then that THB could find his lone stalker to outperform his lone blaster at +0/x0 simply because blasters perform better against more enemies. I'm reminded of the scenario in which it's often better to turn up the enemy count and lower the enemy levels when playing a brute simply because of the way Fury works. What if the proximity of spawns in missions favors powers that are more frequently usable than powers that are stronger but recharge less often? I'm reminded of the old farming threads asking whether FSC or LR was better for the non-AE farms. And this list is far from exhaustive.

Just way too many variables that could affect the outcome of THB's results in such a small sample-size experiment. This is why Arcanaville argues for relying on large scale statistical data mining to determine AT performance issues rather than small scale model comparisons. With this many variables at play, THB's experiment logically cannot provide any larger conclusions than "THB's DP/Dark blaster died more/less often on the same missions than THB's Elec/Nin stalker." That's useful and interesting on its own (hence my enjoyment of this experiment; I plan on asking which story arcs were his favorites so I can give em a try), but applying that conclusion to the much more complex issue of general blaster under-performance would be a clear fallacy.

OK, just respec'd and slotted the proc into roots. They fixed it. It works now and I can easily keep it double stacked, triple stacked on tough spawns. It works at least as well as it did slotted in subdue now. Oh happy day! Well played, devs. Sneaky little fix.

Just logged on to check on Siphon Speed as I said I would. In-game it says unresistable, but I thought I'd try it out and see. I'm right. Siphon Speed IS unresistable. Here's three screenshots I just took of a Warwolf Lt and against Diabolique as an Elite Boss. As you can see, the Warwolf has 100% recharge resistance and Diabolique has 84%. Yet, each casting of Siphon Speed lowers their recharge by 22% (not 20% because I'm level shifted). And while the Combat Attributes window lacks any display of slow resistance, it DOES show movement speed, and as I expected, both enemies were significantly slowed by each casting. With two casts of Siphon Speed, both were slowed to a crawl.

So, to tie this back to the OP, take Siphon Speed for its unique unresistable quality, not to mention the easy recharge and movement boosts.

On my plant/psi, I built for softcapped s/l/r and high recharge. To that end, I slotted Mind Probe with full Mako for the ranged def bonus, but Kin Combats also work to raise S/L. For my other ST attack, Subdue, I used decimation + Sup. Ascendancy of Dom proc. For Psychic Shockwave, I slotted 5 Armageddons (excluding the lone damage enhancing one and including the proc) and the eradication proc. Armageddons can be replaced with the much cheaper Obliteration set as well. That way, sufficient slotting of Acc, Dam, some end redux, and high recharge plus 2-proc madness! For Drain Psyche, I frankenslotted for two reasons. First, I wanted to maximize the healing, accuracy, and recharge with only 5 slots used to save the slot for elsewhere. Second, I frankenslotted because the healing sets offer mediocre set bonuses for a dom focusing on S/L/R defense and global recharge. So I mixed Touch of the Nictus and Doctored Wounds for maximum effectiveness at only 5 slots.

I suggest a mastermind. Time can be very clicky and busy if played to the fullest extent possible. Between temporal mending, temporal selection refreshers, time crawls and time stops, refreshing power boost, farsight, and chrono shift, and casting distortion field, there isn't much time to cast anything else. And unlike many other sets with 1 or 2 duds, every one of those powers are useful and work best when cast as soon as they are up. I felt stretched extremely thin on my time/sonic defender trying to use all of my powers to the fullest. Ironically, just not enough time.

That's why I suggest a Mastermind. The pet attacks and commands don't waste valuable casting time and as a result, it allows you to fully concentrate on maximizing your time powers. That way, you are free to use both your primary and your secondary to their fullest.