Lobster
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I debated re-doing my forum avatar with a TV on my head but, you know, that would take time and effort.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Didn't you get your Pariah Starter Kit in the mail?
The idea that people would decide to snub you for voicing an opinion on something in a forum where the whole idea is to voice opinions on something is pretty ridiculous, isn't it. Luckily I've never seen any sign of it here at all. icemanstryketh is the first person I've ever seen even mention it. Maybe I don't hang around the same circles (or maybe that circle has already made me a pariah and I never noticed)
If anything it's almost always more fun to counter-argue with someone than decide that you're now "snubbing" them in some way online. How would they even know? And why would they even care?
I think I missed this.Quote:Originally Posted by Reppu
Time is a power-creep set that needs the nerf bat, much like Titan Weapons. At the very LEAST Farsight needs to not work with it and give such ludicrous Defensive levels. It makes Force Fields lose even more appeal.
Could you clarify why you're OK with nerfing time, but against nerfing demons/etc., especially given this comment:
It seems like we could apply the exact same "power creep" logic to Demons and Thugs. The angle I guess I can see here is that bots may have already set a high standard for MM power. Still, your "nerfing a set so another feels better about itself is the wrong way to go about it" seems to directly conflict with "Time is a power-creep set that needs the nerf bat, much like Titan Weapons" which calls for nerfing on two separate sets.Quote:Originally Posted by Reppu
Nerfing a set so another feels better about itself is the wrong way to go about it. It if you nerf demons, then what? Nerf Thugs. Nerf Robotics.
Hell, let's branch ATs. Nerf Phantom Army while we're at it!
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Quote:...Originally Posted by icemanstryketh
You wrote a great guide on crabbing, you should quit while your reputation is intact. Nerf-saying against other powersets is also pariah material.
Are you referring to the bit where I said that I wouldn't mind if demons took a hit? From the section you quoted it's not really clear what you are responding to.
*IF* that is what you are referring to, I'd say it's a far cry from "nerf-saying" (which I am interpreting to mean something like "Request/demand-ing that another set be nerfed). I simply said that it wouldn't bother me if it were. To elaborate and clarify: I wouldn't play my demon/ mms any less if they were a little weaker. Is that "nerf-saying"?
That being said, are the forums really so bad these days that folks would "make me a pariah" (How would they even do that?) for voicing a pretty flexible opinion (I don't think that they do...)? -
Quote:If you're finding it better than nin for damage, that seems pretty solid - nin is one of the higher damage primaries (when you can keep the pets alive long enough...).Originally Posted by Mad Grim
Beast Mastery is not that bad, in its current state I would put it just above Nin and Merc, due purely to how survivable it is. The ONLY problems are slightly less DPS and very few AoEs. Defensively they are perfectly fine, offensive is the issue.
As for the others, no, no nerf there. As stated, there are existing sets that are just as good or better than /Time.
I can only comment as to what I've actually seen in game, but my trio hit 26 last night and added the dire wolves. I turned the difficulty up 2 notches (running variably at +2/0 and +1/4 so far for testing - I know, I'm a slacker, I *could* go higher, but my fun threshold for leveling up generally involves simple facerolling) and I have no issues yet. Even without bothering to use the -res from my secondaries (time, dark, traps), purple freak tanks are dropping plenty fast. Survivability is decent, but my pets are close (~39-43ish) to the defcap, so that is to be expected. Sans all those defenses, they seem to die slightly slower than the other melee pets, but not by much.
More anecdotal stuff: There was a 43 bm/ff on my ITF team last night and he reported that the damage was pretty solid for him so far. -
Quote:Well, like I said, it's not that bad for me (it certainly doesn't "feel" as bad as the 33% # you mention in the MM issues thread) and I don't even have the 32 buff yet on my live chars. If I have time tonight I'll fire up my test beast/therm with the 32 buff and stare at them for a bit.Originally Posted by Reppu
I have not purchased it. I can ask any number of 50 MM's to allow me to sit and watch their pets (not) attack in RWZ.
Coming from you, this means absolutely nothing. I'm sure you can understand why, being as mature as you are.Quote:And again, cease with the (not) subtle jabs. Be mature if you're going to chastise.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for a bit and pretend you are a completely different poster without your existing post history. Starting... now!Quote:Originally Posted by Reppu
I'm toning it down with out censoring myself, at the very least. Don't expect anything more!
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Quote:I was referring to your forum persona/act. I keep forgetting I have to make everything extremely clear, lest you go off on a tangent.Originally Posted by Reppu
The idle periods are more jarring for Beasts. More attacks means quicker acceleration of Pack Mentality which means better overall damage. Increasing their base damage doesn't fix that annoying 'going to sit here and wag my tail and not do anything!' They like to do during 'cooldown periods'.
Also, flat-out insulting me is against forum rules.
Are you playing a beast mm currently (I thought you said you were going to play one in beta, but I don't remember if you did?). I am, and I'm not seeing any particular attack chain gap issues, even without the 32 buff. Sure, I see a gap once in a while, but generally they and/or the targets are moving once in a while as well, so I barely notice... -
Sorry about getting annoyed last night, I always forget how obnoxious you [Reppu] are. The style attached to your forum persona is always jarring to me, especially after so many years of relative calm here. Dragged me right down with it. Alright, thicker skin and more sleep and moving on...
My last comment was primarily about attack chain gaps, not the nerfing bit which you grabbed onto. People are obviously going to disagree with game balancing mechanics - my take on it is that if you have one set that is generally overperforming, and would be just fine with a nerf, and a handful of sets that are OK (even if some are slightly under) - you nerf that single power or powerset. Yes, some of the other sets could use boosts - but in general they are OK. OK in the grander scheme of the game, even if they are "weak for an mm".
We're obviously not going to agree there, so fine.
(If the devs want to spend the time buffing every other MM set, and their fine with that level of power great, more power to them.)
Attack chains: Are people seeing *attack chain* issues with beasts with the 32 buffs that are worse than other sets? I'm not in the 20s, my experiences seem to match the numbers above. Definitely less standing around than zombies. Ninja are the outlier here due to their large number of low recharge attacks. Maybe a little more so than demons, but I think we agree that demons are a little on the strong side?
If beast damage is low, I would rather see the base damage on attacks buffed instead of say, recharge lowered or another attack added. I think this would work better due to the way pets run around a lot in general play (unless you have an immobilize or, at high levels, take a patron immob - but one might use caltrops and like the enemy running around). Plus, people like big numbers, especially with crits. -
Quote:No.Originally Posted by Reppu
Thank you for agreeing! Phew, glad to see someone is able to understand why decisions are bad.
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Quote:No.Originally Posted by Reppu
Nerfing a set so another feels better about itself is the wrong way to go about it. It if you nerf demons, then what? Nerf Thugs. Nerf Robotics.
Hell, let's branch ATs. Nerf Phantom Army while we're at it!
No. -
I didn't claim that the sheet "proves" anything...
Let's see. Most of my motivation for messing with it was trying to see the theoretical "attack chain disparity", apologies for not making that clear. The damage stuff was just kind of sidebar. I don't have the time or the energy to figure out all the debuff stuff (I also didn't bother doing the other 2 demonling types, I left "brawl" out of some of the ranged damage calculations - for the most part we don't want the ranged guys charging in to brawl anyway...) So maybe those #s are more interesting:
% of "optimal" attack chain spent doing nothing*
Code:*Assuming both pet and target are locked in place (hence, 'optimal' - in reality both will probably be moving a bit, interrupting attack chains and perhaps occupying gaps that might otherwise be annoying with movement).--Beast-- Wolves: 21% Lions:20% Dire:13% --Bots-- Drones: 11% Prot:36% Assault: 7% --Demons-- Fire t1: 12% Ember:53% Garg:14% Prince: 12% --Merc-- Soldiers:10% Spec Ops:5% Comm:8% --Nec-- Zom: 39% Grave:14% --Ninja-- 0% --Thug-- Thug: 37% Arsonist:52% Enf:4% Bruis:4%
And yes, I took lots of shortcuts (mostly because I don't have a lot of time for this stuff ). For starters, I left off nondamaging attacks, since I'm going for something like an optimal attack chain.
Oh - and if the numbers on tomax are right, Arsonist is about at 14.6, assuming every single tick of the patch hits.
The main problems I have with the set so far are with the lions' buffs.
1) They don't stack with other casters' lions (I'm only level 22x3 on live at the moment, so I'm not even sure if they stack with the other lion from the same caster). To me, that's incredibly obnoxious given that bots, demons and thugs all stack across MMs.
2) 25% uptime seems really odd given the other 3 sets mention have 100% uptime and #s that are as good or better (IIRC).
I'm not PLing these guys, so it will be a while before I can compare them to my high end MMs but, like I said, 1-22, they are pretty middle-of-the-road/OK.
Ninja/'s damage is balanced by their fragility... but demons kind of have everything, I'd like to see them take a hit. Maybe lose the stacking -res? -
Quote:I don't use passive when solo/boxing, and it was on defensive at that point in the trial, so I couldn't say.Originally Posted by Chill_Out
Hi Lobster. Interesting. Quick question, do you recall if having pets in passive was helpful? Currently it seems Passive doesn't have any effect on pet AI at those moments, for my pets.
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Quote:This really sounds like it has something to do with some kind of trigger after a new monster spawns... I had the same issue last night with my beasts (on all 3 alts) race off across the map to intercept an ambush.Originally Posted by Chill_Out
I'm curious Grim, did you try to run them through any trials? If you can, take one of them through TPN, BAF or MoM. My passive pets run off and aggro at the following points:
BAF - seige spawns. They race across the map. Goto makes them race back momentarily before they retarget Seige, then die. They are on passive since we loaded the map. Same thing happens when NS spawns. They seem fine during prisoner phase.
TPN - fine until Maelstrom spawns outside, they they immediately target him and race off. IN passive, again.
MoM - first map outside the hospital, pets on passive, load up, they race off and attack Malaise. Penelope Yin map, soon as I load, they race off to attack Penny.
These are not usual behaviors (even for MM pets with their wonky AI). I have multiple MMs as my preferred characters since CoV launched, and I'm very famiilar with the care and handling of pets. I've been running trials with MMs since BAF and LAM opened. This is definitely something new.
It reminds me of the recently-fixed tutorial bug, where upon summoning, the MM pet would run off to aggro shivans and engage in back and forth pathing behavior.
I know this thread is about Beast secondaries, so I'll stop here, but I did want to address that this (for me) seems to be a iTrial issue, not a general gameplay issue (and hence, related to how pets respond to AV attacks/auras/etc).
In case it wasnt' clear, I always run pets in Passive mode (I don't rely on BG mode) for maximum controllability. Its a habit I picked up from my EQ2 raiding days as a Necromancer. You don't want to be 'that guy' who's pets pull a Leroy and wipe the team because your pet got the silly idea to pick a fight on its own.
It is worth noting that I had this problem with pets running off to attack siege when he spawns in the BAF well before BM went live, so I don't think it's particularly new, maybe just made worse? -
In light of the conversation about shoddy beast damage and attack chain gaps, I decided to muck around with "optimal" pet attack chains (optimal in the sense that there's some sense in them: favor heavy damage->aoe->range->whatever - I'm not sure how the game AI decides and I don't have much time for testing that these days).
I've only put in the numbers for beast,ninja,nec & thugs so far. If you're curious, or want to complain about my attack chains or methodology (you can probably do better), the spreadsheet is here.
#s:
Ninja:
*Genin: 23.4
*Jonin: 21.4
*Oni: 22.4
Beast:
*Non-Alpha howler: 16.2
*Lion: 19.9
*Dire: 17.6
Nec:
*Zombie: 13.2
*Grave Knight: 18.9
Thugs:
*Non-arsonist thug: 11.7
*Enforcer: 11.4
*Brute: ~19 (didn't do this one out far enough to find a loop)
Mercs:
*Soldiers: 8.2
*Spec-Ops: 10.4
*Commando: 15
Bots:
*Drones: 7.6
*Protector: 9.4
*Assault: 8.2 + burn patches
Demons:
*Fire Demonling: 18.1
*Ember Demon: 10.6
*HF Gargoyle: 21.8 + aura (3.75 per tick)
*Demon Prince: 21.4
This is all assuming an immobilized single target, not counting buffs, using base dmg, not factoring pet -levels in, oni being bad at prioritizing, etc. Buuuuuuut I still think it's useful for comparison - even if only of dev intent. Anyway...
So we've got beast in between nec & ninja for damage, but theoretically above either for durability (but necs have debuffs to offset this), which seems like a fair goal. (Thugs are ranged, I just put them in here for comparison, but I will get to adding merc, demon & bots eventually).
Also worth noting is that beast seems to have less gaps than nec, it's just those crazy ninja with no gaps...
My beast mms are 18 now and I'm not noticing any damage issues in that level range, at least as compared to other 3 box teams I've done.
Maybe if I have some time later I'll try and factor in their various buffs & enhancements.
[Edit:
I added in the other sets, because I guess I have a spreadsheet problem. <.<.
So yeah. Demons. They have damage that is almost as good as ninja +more aoe + heals + -resist +shields + variable damage types.... totally not a recipe for strength? I have several demon mms, and I wouldn't mind seeing them take a hit to bring them closer in line with the other sets.
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Quote:This can't be exactly true, as I was getting stacks of Pack Mentality last night in the level 1-10 range (but I *think* only after I got the pet buff at 6, so maybe 6-10. Or is the pet buff "Fortify Pack"? I don't know all the names yet) and was critting.Originally Posted by Mad Grim
The Critical Chance comes from Pack Mentality, but only after you have the Fortify Pack power. Once you own the power, there is a critical buff thrown in with the damage buff. Activating the power of course gets rid of it for 60 seconds, in exchange for making them more survivable. In my experience it is best to only use Fortify Pack when your pets start dying. However, I don't see any reason to not take the power.
And no, Raven does not always grant a stack It has a very high chance to grant a stack for every enemy it hits, making it invaluable. -
I got up to level 10 with my dark/time/traps trio last night in Praetoria. No complaints yet.
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Quote:It's cool that they have a rechange intensive pet set in there too..just a shame that many mm combos stil cannot use them...Originally Posted by tanstaafl
Clever having all those Pet enhancments out at same time as the beast mstery. And nicely done on having mastermind AT on special.
And this! -
Quote:I tried beast/thermal on test up to 32 or so. It was not terrible... /therm is probably my least liked mm secondary, so that's saying a bit. I'd choose almost anything else over /therm... (except maybe /pain for /beast), but that's me. I found it a little weaker than general, but completely playable - as long as you don't *need* to be a bad$$#. Definitely won't be playing it live though. traps, time & dark for me to start. Storm is tempting so you can slot the extra 2 pet procs.Originally Posted by Sharpshooter_III
I'd say Beast/Thermal, but I don't want to make my pets be some crazy bad flaming spectacle. I'm terrible with traps, i'm sick of dark powers, shields seems out of canon with beasts, storms seem a bit too grand for a pack of animals, and people will just demand too much focus from pain...
Truth be told though, there's not much in the MM 2ndary that fits too well with beasts, especially when you got four dogs and two cats... personally I'd go for all wolves, easier to RP in virtue when you have a specific animal pack.
Dunno, guess I can go traps... Play with the MM attacks for once. -
Quote:I don't even take patron pets in a build that can't perma (or within 4-5s of perma) them. And I have many patron pets...Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
Ah, okay...didn't know/think it was possible to make a 15 min power perma hehe.
. Dominators are going to be close with perma-dom anyway, but I find them more useful on controllers who don't put out as much damage on their own.
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dark/time & plant/dark here. I was tempted to do the classic dark/dark... but maybe I'll get to that later. I tried to find things that were strong mechanic matches (dark/ really benefits from /time's recharge, pbaoe stun + pbaoe -tohit, -spd debuff, a dmg buff for the pet(s), etc.).
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dark/psi here as well. I've also got a fire/dark so I cover both new set bases.
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Quote:Hover is 100% fine for crabs, I probably have it on mine. I generally take hover as a last power on a lot of chars, slot it with an lotg proc & a fly speed and call it a day.Originally Posted by _eeek_
Ok, thank you so much for the quick response!
Crabs only have one pbaoe, and it's a power I recommend skipping, unless you really want it. -
There was a use for phase? And they nerfed it already?
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Quote:Interesting. I'd much prefer this to all the passive running around and getting pasted because BG isn't absorbing any damage.Originally Posted by Peppercat
It's a misconception that pets can AoE the civilians outside during the telepaths phase, when actually the civs are damage immune unless they get turned, and even then pets won't aggro on them.
In actuallity pets are quite handy as the instant a telepath spawns they'll go for it if they're on defensive. -
Quote:Interesting. Are you standing in the middle of the enemy groups with your pbaoe -tohit toggle on? That helps a ton.Originally Posted by ShadowClaw
My Thugs/Time minions are insanely squishy at lvl 24. My Thugs/FF minions were laughing in the face of enemies, the only problem was the enemies would react erratically and scatter (I wish I recorded the time an Arachnos spider mob RAN UP A WALL).
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Really annoying that you guys spoiled this. Even if it's just a "comic book spoiler" in the sense that it's something else entirely..whatever this post is, is annoying.
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I don't think it's particularly expensive. The +run speed procs were fairly cheep last I checked. Run your hero/ villain tips to confirm your alignment (gaining xp along the way...), then the 4 sig arcs + 1 and that gets you 2.5 lotgs right there. Just do a couple tips & sig arcs as the weekly counter resets and you'll be able to get all the expensive pieces (really only the lotgs, I think). Once you get all the ones you need, keep making more and selling them to buy the other stuff.
What final build are you looking at? H/V merits & the sig arcs make things much more affordable/within reach.