Little_Whorn

Awesome post, Vysires. Makes sense to me now between what you and Blue_Fenix posted. Sounds like this project is still a wash unfortunately as even if I somehow manage to perma-confuse the 54 AV, I'm going to be spamming possess so often that I'd never have a chance to attack or do anything else.

Fair enough, Beauregard. If I'm understanding you correctly this time, you are essentially championing resists and +hp as just as important as eeking out the last few defense % and to that, I totally agree. Fortunately, it's possible to soft-cap defenses without sacrificing resists and other variables too much, but I still very much agree with you here.

Using your KC vs. Gaussian's example, there is more to the tradeoff than that. Spending the 3 slots of KC leaves Tactics with 2 slots, perfect for two rectified reticles adding 1.88 s/l def of their own. Add that to the 3.75 def from the KCs and you have 5.63 defense to s/l. By using the slots for full Gaussian's, you get the 2.5% all positionals + 1.25% S/L/E/N/F/C. It's far from an obvious decision then. 5.63% s/l (possibly taking you from 40% s/l to 45% s/l, which is huge [see Dechs soft-cap analysis]) or the Gaussian set bonuses? My preference would be for the s/l especially since the Gaussian defense would be largely meaningless for my already low melee, AoE, F, and C defenses. At the very least, it's far from a "bad tradeoff."

With respect to the unresistable part of Siphon Speed, consider me surprised. I'll have to try it in-game later tonight to try it out for myself. It's not that I think you're lying. I'm just surprised that a power I've used so often and understood so well is not currently behaving as I remember it. But, I've been wrong before many times, so this could very well be another time I'm wrong. I'll check tonight. FWIW, thanks for the info.

A couple of friendly responses to Beauregard:

Siphon Speed: I dunno, Beauregard. Everything I've looked up and experienced personally says the opposite of what you are saying. Redtomax lists all of the effects (62.5% run slow, 62.5% jump slow, and -20% rech debuff) as unresistable. MIDS does the same. Ironically, the only debuff that isn't listed as unresistable is the -3.5 max run slow. With respect to my in-game experience and in stark contrast to what you say, Warwolves DON'T run at full speed when tagged with Siphon Speed, AVs ARE slowed as well, and BAF escapee Lts ARE slowed to a crawl. Tar patch, snow storm, infrigidate. None of them have been able to meaningfully slow these enemies. But I swear, I've done it myself. I even got myself yelled at by a BAF league for jumping ahead at the "pull siege" phase and tagging him with two quick Siphon Speeds, slowing him to a relative crawl. I dunno what to say, I've seen it work this way and Mids/Redtomax agree.

The Softcap Argument: Normally, I'd agree with you. Too many "set bonus" slots and powers can be murder on a build. But in this case, it's very possible to softcap without sacrificing too many slots or picking otherwise useless powers. Also, your survival list, while I agree completely, does imply a few logical errors. First, playing smart is always a prerequisite to survival, so I think it's fair to take it off the table when comparing builds. There's little point to comparing builds if we also have to take into account player futility, so let's assume a good player is playing. That means no using brawl (it's just slotted for the set bonuses, it's not meant to be used). As an aside, I play with Steel occasionally anyway, and he's a smart player in every sense of the word. Second, eeking out every last % of defense without sacrificing powers or powerslotting too much works toward accomplishing your #2 and #4. The closer you are to the softcap, the more likely you are to surviving that first attack or alpha. Normally, it's a balancing act. More defense at the expense of costly build sacrifices? Or less defense, but more efficient power picks and slotting? Here, with tons of inf (which I know Steel has), it's very possible to have your cake and eat it too. I agree with #3 completely and to that effect, picked up mass hypnosis and siren's song on my kin/son to stack the sleeps (works well with FS which doesn't awake them) and for the good set bonuses.

With respect to your "reality of teaming" point, with softcapped s/l/e/n/r, there's really not many attacks that don't fall under that. Incinerate, fire breath, and a few others, but that's a pretty broad coverage. And the fact that teams often make building for personal defense unnecessary is irrelevant. For those teams that don't, you're ready for survival on your own. And for those teams that do, you're still good to go. It doesn't make any difference whether you are teaming or not. With that logic, a blaster could forgo building for ranged defense, despite the obvious good that would provide, because "hey, the rest of the league will help me there."

Another thing is that your personal experience in witnessing players screw up because they have poor builds that sacrificed too much for every % of defense does NOT mean that it is impossible for a build to eek out defense in a good way. Bad, inefficient builds are just that. However, it's very possible to aim for eeking out defense on a kin/son without sacrificing the build.

With respect to Transference, I guess I have to chalk this up to playstyle difference because in my experience, having a single-target end drain with no capabilities to keep a mob's end from immediately beginning to recover is of very limited use to me. It always seems like a mob just needs a sliver of end to get off powerful attacks. That's why Elec control works so well at sapping. It drains end on a large AoE scale and keeps it from recovering. Transference does neither of that and so I find it far more useful as an end recovery tool rather than a sapping tool (which means less recharge is required). Furthermore, the endurance modification set bonuses don't offer much for a kin/son. More recovery and a tiny bit of HP on a low HP kin/son? Pass. But, YMMV. *shrug*

Lots of good advice from Bearegard in my opinion, but I do disagree with a few of the opinions, so I'll touch on those to provide another point of view.

Siphon Speed: I think this power is worth it because of three reasons. First, being able to leisurely maintain a 40% recharge boost helps to compensate for lower recharge elsewhere in the build. Second, the speed boost doesn't suppress and allows for much quicker and easier movement. Third, the debuff is one of the few powers marked as irresistable in the game and thus is very useful against even AVs, Warwolves, and BAF escapees.

Transference: Agreed, but recharge isn't all that important, especially with Siphon Speed. It's only a 30s base rech and global recharge is enough to get it down below 15s. If end is so much a problem that a full end recharge every 15s doesn't cut it, it's time to rethink the build So I wouldn't slot for recharge. Just Acc/End works.

Inertial reduction: I'd consider scrapping it altogether. And the same for SS. A kin with high defense and Siphon Speed can do without either the travel power or the stealth (super fast and high defense? Just run or slot sprint with stealth) and save the spots.

Boxing/Flurry/Brawl: I disagree. Everything I know about defense mechanics screams about the importance of the last few percent. I agree that the goal is to survive, but I argue that reaching the soft cap is working toward that goal. Plus, and I think this may be even more important imo, but reaching the actual softcap of 45% should be the goal rather than settling for 40% and barrier. Why? Because there is only one major weakness in my experience with my kin/son. Mezzes. Especially autohit, psi mezzes. Rather than using barrier to accomplish what can be done from within the powersets with IOs, I find it more advantageous to save Destiny for Clarion. With the heal, resists, and softcapped s/l/e/n/r, there won't be much to outright kill you. But an errant mez that shuts down your defenses and heals? Game over.

Dark Mastery: I'm on the fence with this. Soul Transfer is a sexy, sexy beast. But there is no denying that death should be avoided in the first place and perhaps more poignant, the VIP Return to Battle power does do an adequate job of standing in for Soul Transfer. On the build below, I went Psionic Mastery for the psionic res and the better 2nd epic power (better than Electricity and Mu for set bonuses). One thing to note is that the energy resist is lower on Electricity's armor than Mu's armor.

Here's what I run with.

--Ninch667

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...68E73FD388F331

Thanks for the reference, Blue_Fenix.

It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to perma-confuse a 54 AV. 2.508 arcanatime animation, 2.08s recharge, 61s of mag 6 confuse. (2.508 + 2.08)*10= 45.58.

But, I'm not sure how to account for the two separate confuse durations that domination provides, but at a minimum, it doesn't look likely, especially considering the purple patch.

oh well, back to the drawing board.

So, I'm trying to turn my dark/psi into an AV killer at high levels of difficulty (i.e. +4 without my incarnate lvl boosts) which seems to turn on whether I can get enough stacks of Possess onto a +4 AV enough to perma-confuse straight through the purple triangles and the purple patch. Anyone with perhaps experience with an IO'd mind/ dom know if this can be reliably accomplished? I've read accounts of mind/ doms perma confusing the LRSF heroes, but they are only lvl 53.

Not much reason for the s/l vs. ranged debate with tw/elec. With defensive sweep giving melee def but only smashing def, it's fairly simple (but not cheap) to build for 32.5 def to all of the positionals, which is demonstrably better than just s/l in my experience. Maybe if defensive sweep boosted s/l instead of s/r there would be an argument for building just s/l, but here it's much better in the endgame to just go for a home run and cap the positionals which provides much better coverage. I usually build for s/l when building for positionals requires far too many build sacrifices to get there, so s/l does the job. But when it's not only possible but encouraged to build for significant positional defense (see defensive sweep), I see no reason not to pass up the Toyota and go for the Mercedes, metaphorically speaking.

I guess i see your point, PR. It just seems a shame because unless they DO implement some mechanic(s) allowing for suppression of all powers (or at least all toggles--maybe they could split the mechanic by only adding suppression code to toggle powers and keeping the rest unusable), these travel powers will always be relegated to "novelty" status, rather than actually useful. I wonder if the increase in sales from changing it to suppression would offset the cost of going through and adding the suppression mechanic. Taking the time and money to add this QoL feature would allow them to add usable and profitable travel powers anytime they see fit without them being automatically considered novelty powers only useful to RPers and those with PPs to burn.

I'm sure this has been talked about before, but I figured I'd make my own complaint. Coyote run, rocket board, magic carpet all detoggle. WHY?! That makes these powers impossibly irritating to use, especially if you run leadership buffs which take an eternity to cast. We know the devs have the ability to suppress toggles rather than detoggle completely. Why the @$&% don't these travel powers do this?! Based on comments I've heard in game, it would do A LOT to make purchasing these travel powers more attractive.

I sure hope Synapse really takes the time to rework all of the powers. The animations and pet designs are fine, but low survivability melee pets with worthwhile powers on long timers so the pets can use them at the worst time possible? And the only way to beef up survivability is to gimp damage? It's like they've never heard the years of complaints levied against Mercs and Ninjas, and they are determined to make the same mistakes again. *Puts hands over ears* "La-la-la-la-la!"

I suggest /traps. It can be a little slower on teams, but it can tackle AVs, GMs, and such with relative ease. Plus, I don't know about you, but I LOVE setting up mine fields when playing solo. It's not much of a team power, but it's a great feeling to blow up entire spawns with a well-placed mine field.

While /time and /dark are great in their own right, they don't quite have the -regen capabilities of traps, rad, and to a lesser extend, cold. That's not to say they can't also solo big game, but just something to consider.

If you can suffer through the pre-IO end issues, TW/DA has some pretty strong end-build capabilities. CoD helps cap positional defenses, and DA allows for a fairly redraw-less experience.

Thanks for the extensive testing Morganite. On that note, I've tried using roots against 9-12 targets on live as opposed to beta, and there doesn't seem to be any improvement. It still procs around 10% for me.

Hopefully the devs respond to your PM soon, Codewalker. Let us know what they say

Hmm. Did some informal testing by running around in RWZ bunching up Malta to the aggro cap, and the proc rate still seems very low, even with roots saturated with 16 targets. I was only able to stack once for about 2 seconds and most of the time struggled to get even a single proc to go off. It seemed about a proc per minute by my rough guess-timation. Even if the no-stacking flag limits the proc to once per cast, I was spamming target-saturated roots to little effect. This still doesn't seem right.

It very well could be just a spell of unlucky; after all, random is random. But even with roots saturated, this proc is nowhere even close to the perma buff status some have been talking about when slotting it in single target.

I wish I knew the formula behind this proc. It would make testing much easier to do.

Thanks for your reply. I was hoping that there would be some indication that this was a bug, but oh well.

I can't decide where to place the ATO set on my plant/psi dom. I want it to proc often enough to make it worth it and for some reason putting it in roots absolutely kills the proc rate, despite near constant spamming. Is this a bug that I should be reporting? It is my understanding that the ATO procs on cast rather than target. If that's the case, putting it in a single target or AoE power shouldn't matter.

The "bug" is really annoying me because it limits me to placing it in the single target hold and then spamming the hold, which is something I almost never do on my plant/psi. I considered putting it into subdue which has the control aspect and is spammable, but the ATO set doesn't enhance damage, so my single target damage would greatly suffer. It's pretty irritating that the proc is limited to placement in spammable, single-target control powers that aren't used for damage. Doesn't leave much else other than strangler, which is much happier atm 4-slotted with basilisk's gaze.

Does everyone here have the superior version of the proc? I haven't upgraded mine yet and unfortunately, it doesn't proc very often for me at all. I put it in roots on my plant dom which i spam, but I've only seen it stack once. Just unlucky? Or does the Superior version make a big difference on that front?

HOs had it coming. But I'd be down for some accurate resist IOs. Although, when I think about how many powers would actually have a use for accurate resist IOs, I can't think of any besides Eclipse. It would seem a strange concern for the devs to create a new enhancement set, as easy or difficult as that may be, for use in a single power.

Maybe a better fix would be to eliminate accuracy as a concern for eclipse by giving it 1.2 or 1.5 acc to begin with. That way the devs don't have to worry about it missing, they don't have to create a new enhancement set for one single power, and they can avoid any problems autohit status may pose.

Or maybe there are other powers that an accurate resist set would apply to and I'm just forgetting them?

I find that the popular "Fire!" map is an adequate fire map for ss/fire brutes.