Mid_Boss
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Posts
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Joined
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A weapon set on a dominator is generally a pretty bad idea in general as we can see with Thorns. To stay alive you must constantly switch between attacking and mezzing which means near constant weapon redraw. It only takes about a second to draw your weapon but for a dom that's repeated redraws through a fight. You can easily spend a good 5 to 10 seconds of each fight going through the weapon animation and that's unbearable to me.
I'd be all for Bows, and Thorns for that matter, but only after they get around to fixing weapon redraw. -
Quote:If they really had a problem with the +HP aspect it would be simplicity itself to change it to +regeneration. But really, the +HP means that a boss pet would take three hits to kill in an incarnate trial instead of 2. Really not a big deal.Originally Posted by Draeth Darkstar
When the changes to single target buff sets were made, they weren't made to make them more powerful, they were made to make them less obnoxious to play, especially in huge groups of players. Those changes were made in the half-issue update following the introduction of Leagues and Incarnate Trials to the game. Let me tell you from personal experience that casting two buffs on six pets and twenty four players, one at a time, is unbearable.
Re:Frostwork, I see no reason to adjust a targeted buff when it's ported to Masterminds. It's not like people can't already Frostwork a Mastermind's pets for them if so inclined. -
The only combo I would use with beam rifle, or any weapon set, would be /ice or /sonic because they're pretty passive. Never would I go with anything else because of the constant weapon redraw that would be involved.
I'm currently working a beam/ice up to 50. Beam has -regeneration if you hit enemies with disintegrate attacks and has -res and -def. Ice has plenty of -reg, -def, and -res. Together it's got tons of AV killing awesomeness. -
Quote:You think /cold is boring?? Try playing Force Fields. The only way that I got my bot/ff to 50 is back when I use to RP he'd stand around reading a new paper or eating a sandwich making sarcastic comments while the rest of the team fought. Was the only thing that made him interesting enough to stick with until 50.Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
Cold would be nice on a mastermind. For me, I found Cold effective but so boring. Supremely boring. Getting a Fire/Cold controller to 50 was the second most boring I ever made, my level 43 earth/cold (deleted) being most boring.
But masterminds never bore me. Especially thugs. I think thugs/cold would be so fun. I think merc/cold would be too, due to not ever having to see their drab uniforms again, thanks to the shields.
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Any word on them porting this over to the masterminds? It would be an amazing set for any MM primary.
I've been waiting for it ever since they started porting powers to other ATs.
I've been like "Wooo will happen. It's inevitable! .... Wooo......... Wooo.............................................. ..............................................Wooo ............................... (years pass) ...................................... Ok so when is this gonna happen already?" -
I find nothing is better than Mu mastery for electric control. Power Sink, Ball Lightening, and Guardian will all do wonders for your ability to sap enemies.
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Quote:Good call on Voltaic. It will do damage to random enemies breaking your Sleep on them.Originally Posted by Chromium_Man
My one big regret from leveling up my Elec/Elec Dom was putting off Conductive Aura until the early 20s. He came up before inherent fitness and at that time I subscribed to the philosophy that the all toggle powers needed to be held off till 20 when I got Stamina. After I took it, I checked the end cost and realized it was 0. /facepalm
Anyway, /Elec oddly benefits from its sole decent AoE power (Static Discharge) coming so late (Thunderstrike is garbage IMHO. More on that later.). Because it comes so late you can focus on the first 5 powers of /Elec (two ST melee, two ST ranged, and Build Up). I would highly recommend taking an slotting them all as early as possible. From your primary, your bread and butter powers in the early levels are Tesla Cage, Jolting Chain, Conductive Aura, and Static Field. If you take the 9 powers I just talked about (plus travel and pool powers as needed) you can develop an awesome leveling strategy by the time you hit 20 that you will use until you hit 50.
Here's my strategy:
1) Find a mob.
2) Throw Jolting Chain.
3) While the mobs are flopping, drop Static Field right underneath them. Most mobs will be slept before they get up.
4) Use Tesla Cage on the hardest target in the bunch (or the first target you plan to kill, depending on your preference.)
5) Charge in (after popping Build Up, if it's up) and use your awesome early-game attack chain (Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, in whatever order you choose) to kill a single SLEEPING MINION.
6) Reapply Tesla Cage/Static Field as needed as you repeat Step 5 for each remaining minion in the mob. At this point you probably haven't been hit much because your all-ST attack chain won't wake anyone but the one you've just killed.
7) Once all the soft targets are dead, turn your attention to the aforementioned hard target. By this point s/he is gasping for END (you remembered to toggle on Conductive Aura, right?). CA won't wake the mob while it drains them and now you can stomp the hard target and throw in Tesla Cage as needed to make sure he stays a statue.
8) Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is the strategy I used for probably 38 levels (once I got Static Field). As you level up you can just pick up whatever extra powers you want to add in and it just gets better and better.
Here's what I took and skipped (again YMMV):
Skipped:
Primary: Electric Fence (as a long time Blaster player, I have no love for ST immobilizes)
Secondary: Zapp (the play style explained above is too fast-paced for a snipe attack), Thunder Strike (this is the Blaster version of the power, not the Melee AT power AFAIK and thus causes KB, not KD, thus knocking everyone out of your Static Field and defeating your whole strategy), Voltaic Sentinel (I never took this power on my Blaster OR my Dom. I don't know why but I just don't like it.)
Took:
Primary: Chain Fences (taken very late in the build, slotted with Efficacy Adapter for extra End Drain and recharge bonus), Paralyzing Blast (essential to my level 50 +0/x6 soloing strategy), Synaptic Overload (depending on your feelings about confuse powers. I personally hate them, but Coercive Persuasion sets are so relatively cheap for purple sets that I took it just to slot the set), Gremlins (some people love them, some people hate them, but overall I find they keep just enough of the enemy aggro off of me to make them worthwhile)
Secondary: Static Discharge (visually it's probably my favorite power in either set. It defeats the purpose of the strategy I explained above to an extent, but it's nice to have on teams or when you get a few of the AoE hard control powers and want to kill a mob faster than you can with my above strategy.
For what it's worth, I took Mu as my APP (I also love themed characters). I took Ball Lightning for extra AoE damage and Charged Armor to slot a -KB IO in for times I'm building domination instead of in the midst of perma-Dom and skipped the rest. The only one I would say is LESS skippable is Power Sink, but an Elec/Elec Dom already passively drains so well with Conductive Aura and after achieving perma-Dom, I never need to top off my blue bar.
I hope all that helps. Keep posting any questions you have and I'm happy to help. Writing about my favorite character is a lot more fun than I would have thought. I might have even been inspired to write a guide about running an Electriple Dominator after all this.
(P.S. I'm still trying to get "Electriple" for Elec/Elec/Elec characters to catch on after 7 years. Did it work?) -
I can't imagine putting slots into stone spears or taking hurl bolder at all. Stone Spear is the WORST attack I've ever seen. Perhaps the worst attack in the game. Only hits enemies on the ground, has a pitiful amount of a highly resisted damage type, and has a ridiculous animation time. I love Earth Assault as a whole, but I have nothing but indignant hate for Stone Spears and it's cousin Hurl Bolder.
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Quote:Exactly. I'm still holding out hope that, since they're porting the set over, that they'll buff it. At the moment it's limping far behind the other support sets.Originally Posted by Reppu
The core problem will be the healing. Even at those large resistance numbers, they will take continuous damage, and need the healing to keep them going. Sonic sacrifices the healing for... nothing worthwhile.
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Go with storm. Sonic is going to suck for MMs. Resistance sets can't hold up without heals and sonic is the only resistance based set with no heals. On top of that the only thing that's gonna die faster than your pets is your endurance bar. Dispersion and Disruption are already pretty damn costly together for any other AT but MMs pay more endurance for their powers than anyone else.
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Quote:It is COMPLETELY over powered. My demon/dark/fire has the dps of a non-incarnate blaster. +3 x8 spawns melt before him. It helps that -resistance powers like Tar Patch and Freezing Rain increase the damage of the procs. I hope to increase it to +4 once I have Judgment and Destiny.Originally Posted by Square_Woot
I was just wondering about this today. I almost have my slot unlocked, and was thinking of going reactive with my Bots/Traps. It almost seems overpowered if they have a chance to trigger on all attacks, since an MM's pets trigger more attacks in a ten second period than any other AT.
*sigh* I really wish they would have ported over Cold Domination instead of Sonics or gave Sonics a much needed buff. Cold has 2 aoe -resistance powers plus the far superior +defense buffs.. Sonics is going to be trash for anyone but demons. -
Incarnate Plant doms have what might be the best damage, even over fire. Why? Reactive Core Flawless Interface 75% chance for 65 points of fire dot which WILL carry into your Carrion Creepers. They attack about every 2 seconds. So that's, roughly, 50 damage every 2 seconds from each creeper just with the Incarnate proc. With more procs enhancements I have mine doing an average damage of 140. Yes that about as much as what Flares does, enhanced, with Embrace of Fire activated.
Hot Feet can't match that. It can only proc every 10 seconds. Carrion can proc every time they attack, every 2 seconds. -
I honestly don't think sonic is going to be all that great. Actually, it's.... probably going to suck really bad.
I'll elaborate
Sonic, unlike newer sets, is saddled with two powers so situational that they are neigh useless. Of coarse I speak of Cage and Repulsion.
Resistance sets are inferior to defense sets. Not only is defense it's own mez protection (since you can't mez what you can't hit) but defense percentage is twice as effective as resistance. It only take 45% defense to reach soft cap which blocks 90% of incoming damage. You would need a resistance level of 90% to match that but the % on both resistance and defense buffs are the same so right there defense buffs are twice as effective as resistance buffs. 15% defense from a defense buff set bring me a lot closer to 45% cap than 15% resistance from resistance sets bring me to 90% resistance. Sonics still have that Psi damage hole that defense buff sets don't. Also, unlike EVERY other resistance set, Sonic has no healing to make up for it's inferiority to defense. Anyone who's ever played a /fire MM knows that even demons with /fire shields need healed CONSTANTLY to be kept alive. The 17% resistance from Dispersion isn't going to compensate for spammed heals. In short, you're going to be re-summoning a LOT.
To use disruption field you need a melee pet so that makes sonic pointless for mercs and bots. And holy crap the endurance cost to run dispersion and disruption for an MM is going to be insane. MM take 25% (?) more endurance to use their powers. So to run them both with cost 1.95/sec before enhancement. .90 with ED capped endurance reduction.
So, sonics might be passable on demons since there's a lot of synergy there but with any other pet type it's gonna fail pretty badly.
I had hoped that, since they were porting it anyway, they'd give Sonic some much needed love. Close the Psi hole and give the Resistance %s a boost to make them competitive with defense buff sets.
Frankly, I would MUCH rather have seen Cold Domination ported over which is superior to Sonic in EVERY WAY. -
Disintegrate is a high damage single target dot attack that inflicts disintegration on enemies allows all other rifle attacks to do additional damage and secondary affects. The rifle's first two single target attacks and its snipe will spread disintegration to near by enemies inflicting them with small dot and making them suffer the same additional damage and secondary affects.
Sadly, this means the set needs considerable amounts of set up time making it a VERY poor choice for any active secondaries who have to break the combo to heal allies, debuff enemies, etc. Plus the weapon redraw and that it's a very ranged set so it's probably the WORST set to pair with Kinetics, Trick Arrow, and Time Manipulation imaginable. But it's awesome for the most passive secondaries like Ice and Sonics.
It's fairly good with Dark, Trap, Rad, and Storm since they pretty much use all their support powers right off the bat and then just blast the rest of the fight unless some patch healing needs done. -
Ah but he's using it with a corruptor and it scourges like rain of fire does. Making it much more powerfull for corruptors and very much worth taking and leveraging.
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Quote:Actually it has AIM and Disintegration has a lot of damage in itself, it's the set's third and highest damage ST damage attack much like Blazing Arrow and Bitter Ice Blast for Arrow and Ice respectively.Originally Posted by Winterminal
In a sense, yes. It is also along the lines of Sonic Attack's -RES secondary effect, but coming from one move in the set. The actual attack's name on the Beam Rifle set is called Disintegration (if memory serves). Essentially, it is a 10 second DoT effect that doesn't necessarily do a whole lot of damage on its own, but during those 10 seconds, all following attacks do more damage than normal. My guess would be that the set lacks Aim, replacing it with this attack, but still: Build Up from your secondary plus Disintegration could lead to MAJOR damage output.
The real problem is, Blasters have only a few seconds before they die horribly and screaming like the defenseless cream puffs they are. DoT powers and powers that require a set up to shine like what this set has don't lend themselves well to the "I get two shots before I'm dead or mezzed then dead".... mechanic blasters have. I hate calling it a mechanic. That lends it too much legitimacy. Is there a commonly recognized word that properly encompasses "Lazily thrown together" "Badly designed" and "Fails horrifically without a MASSIVE money investment" that I can use for this AT? Suggestions please. Not a fan of blasters as you can tell. But I play them anyway because I like the ridiculous challenge they are fighting anything past level 30 where everything has a mez. Other ATs are powerful to the point of being boring..... I play blasters BECAUSE they suck.
But then again, there's really not a whole lot they CAN do that fits into this... "mechanic". They've very much painted themselves into a corner with blasters. -
Quote:This.Originally Posted by EvilRyu
Even before incarnates I felt blasters need some kind of help. The damage difference vs the other ATs is no where near enough considering their squishieness. I can say without a doubt getting a blaster to 50 was the hardest thing I ever done. When I look at comparable ATs in other MMOs it makes me wonder why they screwed blasters over the way they did. The whole range thing being their defense is a bold face lie especially since almost all the critter factions will out range you at some point.
The two issues with blasters is they exchange all survivability for dps that's only slightly higher than a scrapper, brute, and corruptors while those three ATs have little trouble staying alive. Corruptors have less damage but Scourge makes up for the lack of Build Up (Though now they can take Power Build Up which is just ridiculous) and half the secondaries have -res debuffs in them making, at range, most corruptors have comparable damage to blasters. PLUS they have heals, buffs, and debuffs to keep them alive while doing that damage. dead = 0 dps
And that's just corruptors. Let's talk about brutes and scrappers, who in late game can leave the rest of the party behind and go solo spawns on their own. Sure their dps is lower than a blaster (only slightly lower in some cases), but they are hard as hell for enemies to kill. While a blaster needs controllers, buffs, and a tank to do what he does in safety and even then if the slightest thing goes wrong they're the first to die. dead = 0 dps
The problem is blaster secondaries. They should have gotten some protection, control, and melee options in that set. Instead they got a Frankenstein medley of cut and pasted powers from other ATs which leads me to believe blasters were the last AT to be designed and they did it in a rush. But the bar has been set, pretty damn low I might add, so they can't go back and change it all now and new sets can't out perform the old ones by too much.
Want to play a ranged damage dealer? Play a corruptor. Want melee damage? Scrapper or brute. Want to mix it up? Dominator. Blaster dps isn't NEARLY enough to make them competitive with ATs that actually have ways to survive the aggro they cause. I had hoped they would get a persistent damage buff from attacking like the rage bar brutes have. That would have solved everything by making them damage gods worth all the crap needed to keep them alive. But no, they went with small, short duration, damage buffs instead. WTF? -
It amplifies secondary affects and increases recharge? I was wondering when they'd add a power that makes enemies more susceptible to debuffs and control. So far the only one we had was Benumb,
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Storm the world of Asgard and do battle with Einherjar warriors and Valkyries to defend the Golden Apples, the source of Norse gods' powers from the 5th Column in "The Golden Apples" AE code 512180
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The Golden Apples
Storm the world of Asgard and do battle with Einherjar warriors and Valkyries to defend the Golden Apples, an aspect of the Well of Furies and the source of Norse gods' powers, from the 5th Column.
-All three maps range from short to medium length
-All custom characters have their own flavor descriptions
-Custom characters have been balanced to be challenging but not too much so
-Valkyries are AV class enemies and designed to be a challenge for high level teams. -
Bot/FF/Mace.... You'll be unkillable. Your damage will be crap. But you'll be unkillable.
I've got a 50 bot/ff/mace and I honestly don't get the claims that bot has so much damage. Yeah the Assault Bot missiles cause burn patches which do great damage. But all the pets have knockback so the enemies are IMMEDIATELY knocked out of the burn patches so.... Great damage potential, but actual damage, not so great. -
Quote:-res debuff gives you more damage than a +damage debuff. +damage modifies your target's base damage -res increases your total damage. If your pet is enhanced to 95% damage from enhancements you'd need a +60% damage buff to equal the increased damage a -30% -resistance debuff gives. For 9 endurance you buff the damage of everyone and all your pets while to keep 3 team mates or pets Forged costs 39 endurance. Plus Forge wont enhance the damage of your Incarnate abilities while Tar will.Originally Posted by kalashnikow
eeehhhm, the thing is, "forge" can buff 3 targets if you cycle them. that's the big daemon and 2 middle daemons that get buffed. consider those three are responsible for roughly 90% of the damage your pets can produce its quite a buff you have at your disposal. and it is always with you, not like the tar patch that stay on the ground far behind the rolling strike force.
If you're in a team that tar increases the damage of all your team mates. Not just the three you are cycling through. I wouldn't have the patience to Forge babysit 3 targets anyway.
If you're not on a team and you're rolling fast enough that Tar is not up every spawn then increase your difficulty you can handle a lot more than what you're fighting. -
I would suggest demon/dark. Tar Patch lowers the damage resistance of all enemies in the aoe which is far better than a +damage buff that only affects one pet. Tar Patch and Freezing Rain are by far the two best powers for enhancing pet damage. It will also enhance the damage of your incarnate abilities.
Dark also has tons of -accuracy so you wont have to resummon your pets much, if at all. Fearsome Stare is just an all around awesome power and Black Hole is a great "Oh crap!" emergency power though I wouldn't waste any slots on it. Be sure to grab Howling too the -regen is has will be key in AV and GM fights.
The only thing that screws over Dark are high defense enemies. I'd suggest taking Tactics from the Leadership pool. -
Quote:Holy crap I thought the fire damage proc would only stack a couple times. But 6??Originally Posted by Cheetatron
I went Musc with my Alpha and I don't think I could have made a better decision(it also boosts lore and judgement dmg!)
The fire dmg proc only stacks up to 6 times on any given target but yes otherwise you are correct
I took the barrier core line all the way up to Epiphany since I'm in melee anyways I took the void -dmg line all the way up to VR for judgement -
So! Any MM Incarnates out there want to share how awesome Incarnate powers are for MMs? From what I'm reading, Alpha/Cardiac would remove the need to slot pets with -endurance opening up slots for procs, damage, or accuracy. Interface/Reactive would give each pet 50 points of fire damage for each attack and since most pet attacks don't even do 50 points of damage doesn't that DOUBLE their damage output??
What's it like having Lore pets? Are they affected by Supremacy?
Thoughts on Judgment and Destiny?