Madam_Enigma
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Posts
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Joined
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Before I rerolled Poison Bloom (same sets though) for storyline reasons, I had very few complaints from teams about not healing them. I mean, I will top them off post battle, or toss a heal out when I have time mid fight. Some of the main complainers were brutes who thought that they could solo the mission thus ran ahead, even though they were bing sidekicked by me. Mind you, that was before the current Sidekick/Exemp version. So they would get too far away, jump into a group of level 50 mobs when their level 25, and die horribly.
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It's very subtle actually. You'll notice it as you get fewer and fewer team invites the higher you get in level. Even when there are dozens of team LFM messages being posted. In Mercy and Port Oaks it's non-existant. It I find starts to from in Cap Au Diablo. By the time you reach Nerva teams almost entirely dry up for masterminds usually. The exception seems to be if your a /thermal or /pain mastermind.
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I'll probably make two. Right away I may make a Gameboy/Thermal. Then when Going Rogue finally goes live I'm rerolling Leath (my dark/rad defender) as a Gameboy/Dark mastermind (praetorian of course).
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Quote:*chears*Originally Posted by ShadowsBetween
Actually, no, they can't. Even the tier one pets take a minute or two to recharge. The Tier 3 takes several. Additionally, the pet upgrade powers take a default of nearly 45 endurance, each. Meaning replacing that one zombie and getting it back into useful shape is pretty much going to shut down a MM completely for a little while, assuming the pet summon is even up. (And except for Gang War, none of the pets can have their recharge rate enhanced, outside of taking Hasten.)
The pets are both a MM's damage output, *and* a good chunk of their personal health if they are using Bodyguard mode. Additionally, outside of Pain and possibly Thermal, MM sets don't get "teh uber h3alz" Alkaloid is expensive, slow, and doesn't heal for much unless it's been pretty heavily slotted. O2 boost isn't much more powerful. Twilight Grasp requires both a target to vampire *and* that the MM is pretty much standing right behind you. If you've invited a MM to your team as a primary healer, you've already made a serious mistake. Just because some MMs *can* heal, doesn't make it their primary job.
IMO the only group a mastermind who can heal is the primary healer for is... their henchmen. Team should be healed now and then too, but keep those hench alive. -
Well firestorm, I've also encountered one team where they demanded I didn't summon any pets. I agreed, although I did explain that they were removing me from the damage dealing capabilities entirely. They said they just wanted my debuffs and heals. Mind you, I was on a ninja/poison. Half way through the mission I got the boot. When I asked, the leader said it was because I wasn't contributing to the team's xp/second speed.
Er, excuse me? They wanted me to contribute to how fast they get xp... but don't want me doing damage?! I don't get it. -
While on Poison Bloom I found I only used goto for the following two things:
1. EB fights to force whoever I use nox gas on into melee
2. to force the villain heavy into melee in RV
If I need goto for other reasons (say setting my genin up as bank vault guards while jounin destroy the vault door) I can use the pet window. But others may have varying results. -
Quote:No, you wouldn't touch one cause your to-hit would be so low you would keep missingOriginally Posted by Nox__Fatalis
If you are /dark it's not your job to heal teammates. The radius on that thing is just too small. Unnerf it and then we'll talk.
For that reason alone I wouldn't touch dark for MMs with a ten foot pole.
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Quote:By comparison, I slot up human form attacks too. This is because sometimes what the team needs is someone to keep minions out of action. Enter Inky Aspect! But just standing there with Inky and Orbiting Death running is dull. So I slot up my human form attacks too.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Unfortunately there is a certain amount of truth in the 2-form stereotype. It's possible to make a Kheld that is capable of attacking in all three forms, the problem is that in my opinion there isn't much reason to do so. The basic problem is that both the Human form and the Nova form are essentially Blaster variants. The Nova form is a straight Blaster while the Human form is a Blapper (it's actually closer to an Assault/Armor AT but you get the point). So the issue becomes that since both the Human form and the Nova form are damage dealers is there any real advantage to building up the attacks in both? My feeling is no, there isn't enough difference between the two to warrant it.
There are plenty of advantages to switching to and from Dwarf form depending on the situation but much less reason to switch between Human and Nova.
My experience is that I want to either stay Human all the time (except when I need to go Dwarf) or go Nova almost all the time and switch back to Human every so often for the buffs and pet powers but not bothering with the Human attacks. I did try making a tri-form build where the Human form was intended to be a pocket controller but it just didn't have enough controls to make it really useful.
Kelds can be very fun and rewarding. Two words though for getting the most out of your keid: Key Binds -
Quote:Nope, they can appear randomly when teamed with a keld of any type too. They spawn more frequently then shadow cyst crystals, and with fewer team wipes as a result of them spawning. I did a Katie TF a couple days ago. 3 rogue peacebringers spawned, and a cyst.Originally Posted by Pedro Schwartz
Yaaayy
But you onlyfind them on these arcs? -
Quote:Actually, I slotted my nova form for 3 end mod, and have chance for end drain procs in the nova attacks I could put it in. That, and my usual attack chain includes double miring first. So either I die fast, or everything else dies fast. Dwarf form I want eventually slotted for 3 resist and 3 end mod.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
You're not blasting fast enough in Nova, then.
I put the Perf Shifter +End in the Dwarf and Nova form powers to help. -
As others have stated, no stamina in the forms. They do get baked in higher recovery, so that may be worth slotting. Your mind may vary. I find in dwarf form my WS needs more end recovery. In nova and human, not so much.
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As Whisper said, the real advantage of Swap Ammo is it's versitility. If the team has plenty of survivability, use fire ammo for more damage over time. If it doesn't, then cryo or (imo better choice) chem rounds. If something highly resists lethal, but has less resistance to say cold or toxic, you can swap your secondary damage type to help bypass that lethal resistance. Personally, I rarely use cryo ammo since I find chem rounds aid survivability more on my blaster.
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Quote:Well, my nin/poison mastermind tends to mostly heal pets (a full time job almost). However I do spam debuffs and holds too. And if I have a moment from healing pets I toss a heal (more usually a rez) at the team mate who needs it. Course the rez usually goes to the brute. Heals go to doms more often then not.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
No, but there's a balance to be had. I've had some MMs recently who've left my poor Squashy dom die while they're busy shooting things (although not for a while now I've gone past the low teens). On a tiny 3 man team last week with a Pain Domination MM. I died the death of a thousand cuts 3 or 4 times without getting a heal (but, oddly, he then rezzed me almost immediately each time). Very frustrating. Pets can be resummoned pretty quickly, dying occasionally isn't a bad thing at all.
If the Dual Pistol release is anything to go by we're going to be up to our armpits in Demon MMs when i17 goes live (ironically with the DP release I opted to play a Plant/Emp because I figured the buffs would go really well with all those DPers running about).
Edit: Pets can be resummoned true. But the summon power has a rather long cooldown in combat. And it is EXPENSIVE to rebuff them. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
I'm a little nervous about the sheer number of Darkity-dark-dark whip wielding ladies in scanty clothes we're gonna have when this does go live. There's going to be a LOT of new, n00b mastermind players and if there's one PuG member who irritates its a n00b mastermind with little idea of how to control his pets and who focuses solely on healing them and shooting / whipping. Nothing worse than a MM who doesn't help his teamies out with his support set and instead does things like try and heal the tier ones (that said in the last week almost every MM I played with was pretty darn good, probably because I'm out of the lowbie zones).
* I'm planning to pick up Aid Self on my Dom.*
It's a pity Kinetic Combat and Elec Control aren't out at the same time really to help dilute the effect (plus I could start a KC/WP toon and not worry about the kinky whip-wielding DSers saving me on teams).
Hey, I heal my tier 1 ninjas! Would you rather the mastermind ran around without ANY sort of damage capability? Cause if you don't tend to your pets, that's what happens. Rather fast too sometimes. -
Quote:I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble why council missions were giving you trouble. Ok, maybe warwolves, but that's an exception. And TA has plenty of tools to deal with warwolves. And I've been on many teams where people did in fact notice the -damage.Originally Posted by EricHough
I ended up abandoning my archery/TA at 21 as acid arrow, while very nice, did not up my kill speed enough that I could handle a simple council paper mission without ending up nearly dead after every other group of minions. Poison gas arrow was nearly useless - the damage reduction was not noticable and the sleep, while it helped some, was not enough (it was basically the sleep that let me get though 2 groups before having to rest/stand around and let my health regen). I just didn't have the patience to push on to see if disruption arrow made up the difference. While the set is probably very solid once you get OSL level 35 is way to long for me to wait for a decent soloer.
Actually, I have to disagree with the OP's basic thesis too. He goes by the assumption that Trick Arrows is a set without enough damage mitigation. he also disregards the amount of -recharge the set has, and why -recharge stacking is powerful with the set. Let me explain it by describing what TA was before issue five launched, and why it was changed.
During open beta for issue five Trick Arrow could apply so much -recharge that enemies would just stand there with nothing to do. They would effectively be held because it also had so much -speed that mobs could not move very fast. This was mainly due to Glue Arrow. It originally had a 45 second duration I think, but only 6 second or so recharge. And it self stacked. So that 20% -recharge could be stacked six times AT LEAST by one defender. Everyone knew this was too powerful and would be changed.
About the claims that Trick Arrow has les -recharge in it then anything else:
Entangling Arrow: 12.50% -recharge for 15 seconds (4 second recharge)
Glue Arrow: 20.00% -recharge for 30 seconds
Ice Arrow: 12.50% -recharge for 10 seconds (18 second recharge)
Note the duration of Entangling arrow vs recharge. It is stackable up to 3, almost 4 times.
Vs
Lingering Radiation: 75% -recharge for 30 seconds (1.5 nub recharge)
This one wins out, but it's also not perma without some serious +recharge slotting. with the same amount of +recharge slotting you could begin stacking glue arrow to easily match or beat this
vs
Web Grenade: 62.50% -recharge for 15 seconds
Poison Trap: 30% -recharge for ten seconds (1.5 min recharge)
Note that you either need to have placed multiple poison traps or have some serious +recharge slotting for it to apply more then that 30% -recharge. And web grenade is single target only. You could affect 3 targets with it, maybe 4 with slotting at once. But if you have enough -recharge to use Poison Trap as a perma aoe -recharge, you could at most have 4 stacked at a time. While the trick archerer given the same insane level of recharge could stack 15+ copies of glue arrow easily. Why? Because by that point glue arrow would be recharged almost as fast as it finishes animating.
vs Cold: Ok, HERE is a clear winner. BUt then if you didn't expect a cold based set to have more -recharge I'd laugh.
Storm also can deal a lot more -recharge reliably to a wide area. Except that it's a enemy targeted toggle. So constantly draining endurance, and if the target dies you lose that -recharge. Expect your anchor to die fast in most teams. TA on the other hand is fire and forget.
Trick Arrow also has as much or more -damage in one power then many buff/debuff sets have. Sure kinetics has more if stacked and Cold has a -damage power with twice the effect. But Benumb is on a 2 minute recharge timer. It takes heavy +recharge to make it perma ON ONE TARGET. 3 standard SO enhancements make poison gas arrow perma without additional +recharge set bonuses or quicken.
The -resist debuffs btw are weaker then comparable powers in other sets due to stacking issues too. While sonic gets two -resist powers which stack (at higher values) one is single target (acid arrow is an aoe, even if a small one) and the other has a really high endurance cost to run. How high? 1.04/sec unslotted. Since base recovery rate is 1.67/sec that means it takes almost all your base recovery to run.
Honestly, Trick Arrow is very effective as it is right now. Buffs would be apreciated sure. However it doesn't underpreform as badly as the OP thinks. It does have a serious lack of strong tohit debuffing. However it's one tohit debuff is perma out of the box, and unresistable. Which means vs an AV or GM flash arrow is as effective or more then other sets applying tohit debuffs. -
Quote:Fine then, is it going to be a toggle, or click power? If a toggle, how much end drain? If a click power, can it be used on others or just yourself? It can't take range enhancements if your making it a self centered aura (heh an arrogant aura). What aspects of the power under the hood might cause problems because of this change? If a toggle, what about balance issues? Should it still have a chance for an unresistable hold? If not, what will it have? As you can see, it's not just a case of "make it self targeted". There are many more aspects that would have to be worked on.Originally Posted by konshu
Well, that's not a difficult problem to overcome. Just consider "self" to be equivalent to the tier 3 or whatever gives the highest debuffs.
If the power is centered on the caster, then the caster will also get the aggro from the affected mobs. So since there is increased risk, the reward should match appropriately. -
Quote:At least you may want to set one up for Follow, Attack, Stay, Aggressive, Defensive, and Passive separately. Goto IMO can be done from the pet window usually. I find goto is most helpful when preplanning a fight.Originally Posted by milehigh77
Hello everyone, it's your friendly neighborhood n00b.
I have found in my very limited time playing MMs that I am good with only 3 macros at my disposal:- tray 1, slot 1 /macro BG "petcom_all follow defensive"
- tray 1, slot 2 /macro GO "petcom_all goto"
- tray 1, slot 3 /macro Atk "petcom_all attack my target"
When I want to pull my pets to me quickly I use the goto command, followed quickly by either an aoe heal or the BG command. I only use this tactic if I feel I'm on the verge of being overrun by enemies.
Yes, there are times when Aggressive mode is good. Mostly when running a mayhem mission. Passive stance also has it's uses. -
Quote:Just a little nitpick, but Teach wasn't Blackbeard's real name. No one knows what his real name was, because he began using an alis right away and there are zero records of his life before becoming a pirate.Originally Posted by Le Blanc
Thugs/Traps MM on Infinity. He is a US Navy Seal sent in undercover to investigate submarine incursions to the US from the Rogue Isles.
Code name : Brigantine (a type of ship favored by pirates)
Bart, Kidd, Morgan
Rackham, Sharpe
Teach (Blackbeards real last name)
When GR hits, he will jump back to Blueside.
I am thinking about a little girl Demon summoner when that comes out.
My bud made Mr. Brady on Victory, and I'm sure you can imagine all his pets names. -
Quote:Wow, talk about overkill.Originally Posted by StrykerX
Really? I can see it at low levels but I generally build to have a 95% to-hit chance against anything I'm going to be soloing so I really don't notice -defense unless I get to-hit debuffed badly or run into an Elude user. (I normally use the Kismet +6% to-hit IO and around 80-100% accuracy per attack counting global accuracy and slotting though. That hits +4s 95% of the time.)
1.33 acc times 81 tohit (base to-hit plus the unique kismet) is... 107.73% chance to hit. That's with an even level SO. So just one ACC enhancement should be enough to hit anything except high defense mobs rather reliably up to +2 and +3 mobs. -
Quote:OOOH! So 'solo' means 'without using two thirds of your primary'! As I told someone the other day who claimed my thug/ta mastermind couldn't solo the carnie spawns intended for our team of six without my pets:Originally Posted by Nos482
I think you don´t understand. Solo means without pets...and that´s what you´ll have should your pets turn against you.Then you´ll just get flattened...*splat*...Roadkill!
"Your right, I couldn't. They are all my damage. How well would you solo without any of your attacks?"
He stopped mocking my having pets out after that and started to listen as I explained how to better survive vs carnies. -
Quote:Pets already can turn on you. If the mastermind gets confused, his/her pets turn around and start pounding on the mastermind who 'controls' them. Usually resulting in a rapid face plant.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Also, sorry but; HELL NO! to pets that turn on you. That sounds like the epitomy of 'Not Fun' right there. Especially given MMs are not good combatants solo, having a solo mission go backside up due to your own tier 3 pet tearing a limb off just sounds like fail incarnate.
That said, Im looking foward to them. Hopefully one of my Praet's will get to utilise them. -
Quote:For many racing games I've seen (outside of Need for Speed) they get rather detailed. I played one where you had to tune your engine down to the smallest detail, pick the exactly right tire type, adjust the alignment... the hole nine yards. If you messed up too badly, well you would never finish the race. Your skill at car tuning was as important as steering skill.Originally Posted by Rejolt
EDIT: Removed photo link of Cyberdemon "Shoot Cyberdemon until he dies from it!" or something like it comment.
Sadly, there are protip magazines and hint guides selling for $14.99 to $19.99 for games where you basically move left to right and hit the A button.
I've never picked up a NASCAR racing guide, but I'm sure it's 100 glossy pages of "Turn Left." -
Or sooner. I logged out, and it started to download. That means prepatch for next issue usually.
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Quote:Not exactly. The problem I believe is that noxious gas has a different strength for the debuffs depending on which tier you put it on. The debuffs are stronger on a tier 3 then a tier 1. It works differently then ally targeted debuffs which always have the same effect regardless of who it's on.Originally Posted by konshu
If you ask me, the simplest and best thing to do with the Poison tier 9 - Noxious Gas - is to make it PBAoE on self.
Essentially it would be like Choking Cloud but with the power of a rad debuff aura.
Okay, so ... problem solved! Now let's get this proliferated already!!!
<Emits noxious gas till Poison is proliferated.> -
*downloads issue 17 prepatch*