Synaesthetix

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Tommorrow night, I pwn Defiant.

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Are you doing that on Test?

If so, I might pop along if I can copy Gonzo over - didn't get a chance to see you off tonight, as I was/am working. No idea if I'll be able to scratch you or not, but I'd hate not to try.

What insane, deluded part of you makes you think that a team of MMs would be letting anything in front of them live?

Ah, forgive me my rambling, then - I'm not used to people accepting anything I say quite so readily.

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Good plan we (the pvp people) should come up with a specific PVP build and duplicate it for an 8 man team and put it into practice (on defiant as thats where i am )

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PvP-specific build or no PvP-specific build, you're still going to get rooted during the animation of Full-Auto - it's an unescapable part of the attack.

And, going by PvP experience, anyone not in the direct blast radius of the various Full Auto cones will be wandering over to you, and applying fist to chin, metaphorically speaking - which allows for about 4 seconds' worth of unreturnable attacks. 4 seconds is enough, as I'm sure you're aware, for any high-damage AT to send you back to the hospital with a note saying "AR sucks" pinned to your backside. Worse, 2 Ice Blasters could come along with a "proper" nuke, and wipe the lot of you out in one fell swoop.

Don't get me wrong, I see what you're up to, and what the intent is - I'm guessing that with 7 SBs, the recharge on Full Auto will be negligible, and with a few FSs you'll be at the damage cap = instantaneous nuke that can be spammed, essentially. This is all well and good, but you're still stuck in one place for 4 seconds.

If you're making a PvP-specific team, though, it's not necessarily for the best to take one build and duplicate it (or octuplicate it, to be perfectly correct ). Filling in the gaps would be better logic, in my eyes - a couple of /Sonics would fill that role quite nicely, for instance.

But I digress - good luck with your AR/Kins.

True - but I'm guessing that you'd have lost at least one 'troller by that point, possibly more. You could also stagger Tar Patch drops, or drop them over a wide area - at some point, the 'trollers would have to engage the MMs, which means getting in close enough to attack, and close enough to the likelihood of being near a Tar Patch. This also means you're going to have 56 guns pointed in your general direction, including AoE crossover. Call me crazy, but those odds aren't exactly indicative of a favourable outcome.

FWIW, I'd probably put a mix of 7 Dark, 1 FF MMs - so all the MMs can hide in the safety of a Dispersion/Force Bubble. Surrounded by bots, it'd be difficult enough to select a target, never mind take one out.

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Neither is particularly well-suited to AoE blasting, though.

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Sonics is full of aoes. (why i only have 3 sonic attacks!) Sirens song is an aoe sleep, there are 2 early aoes, 1 with good knockback.

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None of them are particularly damaging, with the exception of Howl which is a short-range cone. That doesn't, I submit, make Sonic an AoE damage set - Fire and AR are AoE damage sets - and I would find it somewhat remiss to recommend Sonic to someone who's looking for AoE damage.

You don't strictly need the second Acc in Power Push - IIRC, it gets a 30% Acc boost to begin with.

If you want to push PFFers around at will though, go for it.

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I wanna make a 8 man AR/kinetic team that would bug the hell out of people lol 8xSiphon speeds (stacking) 8xtransfer power 8xfulcrum shift then the full auto shooting begins

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... and then when you're halfway through the Full Auto animation, the rest of the zone sprints over and beats you like a (particularly well-battered) gong. If you're lucky, you may well have finished the attack by the time you're all dead.

It'd be more effective to have 8 Ice/Kins, have 7 set off Blizzard, and have the last spam Transference.

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At level 10 i will take bone crusher but i'm not sure what i will take on level 8. any suggestions?

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Either Beanbag or Energy Punch would be a good choice - Beanbag will stun Lieutenants, making life that much easier; Energy Punch is a good, solid attack.

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I'd assume they'd all be using Fluffy, so we are talking about 16 Darkest Nights and Petrifying Gazes. If the Fluffies are used at point blank range, that is also 8 Chill of the Night Auras, which actually has a slightly higher Acc debuff than DN.

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And then you can throw Twilight Grasp's debuff on top of all that, spammed as necessary.

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Ye gods.

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That's about where I got to.

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SB cancels anything that slow

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Well, the Slow Res in SB isn't enough to counteract 8 stacked Tar Patches - unless you've got 8/Kins; more than that though, and what I was considering more important, was the stacked -Res which would be devastating when combined with 56 pets wading in.

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but would be interesting to see though. I guess it would come down to who holds who first but I think the trollers would win that in the long run

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/petcom_all agg + BFs says that the 'trollers would need to do more than out-hold the MM team. Thankfully, most good Controllers are far more than just hold-bots.

It'd be an interesting one to watch, if nothing else.

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I'd pick Sonics every time without hesitation; I just don't think either set does what you're looking for.

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Why isn't your Scrapper Spines then?

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One of them is, though.

(I picked Claws/SR precisely for the challenge, as it goes.)

In reality, Sonics is anything but a weak set. Not only does it do quite significant Smashing/Energy damage and the ability to stack -Res, but it also gets decent control abilities later on. There's no reason for any Sonic Blaster to 'give up', really.

Archery, however, is relatively poor, and suffers from the "Claws Effect" - quick, low-damage attacks just don't fare well in CoX.

Neither is particularly well-suited to AoE blasting, though. Sonics is moderately endurance-heavy; Archery seems endurance-light, but because of the low-damage it does you need to execute that many more attacks - which negates the lower endurance cost. In a choice between the two, I'd pick Sonics every time without hesitation; I just don't think either set does what you're looking for.

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Corruptors are far behind in damage dealing, and no damage = you don't win

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I've not seen a problem with Corruptor damage at any point in PvP. Add Scourge into it, and it's silly how much damage can get dumped onto an opponent.

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Robot Mastermind plan:- All pets buffed. All pets initially targeting the same controller, with a plan of the order to take them down. Masterminds stay as far back as possble, ideally Phased/PFFed. Pets engage in a very close formation. MM don't engage until pets have recharged, so they can follow with an immediate second wave.

Number of pets in each wave: 56
Maximum number of targets affected by a single power = 16. Chance of all the controllers managing to debuff all the pets, including the nasty big robots = unlikely at best.

As I said, the Somme with robots.

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Or, alternatively, a /Dark MM team - stacking 8 Darkest Nights (one for each 'troller) and 8 tar patches - and you have 8 Fearsome Stares/Petrifying Gazes as well, hypothetically speaking.

Ouch, that's not even nice to think about.

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But to think something that is part of the game lame just cuz' it takes a bit longer to fight, is very silly and lame (ain't you skilled enough to kill someone who uses inpirations? xD). Insparations are cheap and everyone can afford them.

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I love your circular logic. No, really, I could listen to it all day long, don't stop there. "X is lame because Y is lame don't be lame xD" - I love how you qualify that so eruditely, it's humbling to be able to speak to such intellectual titans on a daily basis.

As for taking out insp-abusers, I've found it's generally the PvP newbies who do it anyway; that, or those who couldn't win a battle if you tied your keyboard behind your back - it's always satisfying to drop them after they've chugged a tray's worth.

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Again... seriously, who cares? People have never been honorable before why should they start now. There's allways something in every game the good players ditch but it doesn't make it less right or more lame any more than those who say it are.

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As I said, I'm following my own personal code of conduct - I couldn't give two quick [censored] what other people do, if I have to pump inspirations repeatedly to get a kill, I don't deserve the kill. Pretty much my only exception to this is with Arena matches against someone of a similar level - where, arguably, inspiration selection is as much a part of the event as any other factor. (Even then, the system is open to abuse.)

If people need the help that inspirations afford them, then good for them - it's just not for me, and my personal opinion isn't up for debate.

Depends what you're aiming for. In the course of normal PvE play, I'd say it's overkill; for a PvP-specific build, I could see the point in a) having extra mez-protection; b) having extra toggles.

Have to agree with the above statements - AR/Traps will struggle immensely as a PvP build. When challenged to make a suitable PvP AR/Traps build for a friend of mine, I ran into no end of trouble; even the best build I could come up with had gaping holes in it.

If you are only going for a PvE build, I'd consider the Concealment Pool (Stealth, Invis optimally) in order to help with your trap placement - Invis-ing into a group, setting up Time Bomb, Poison Trap etc. would be of no end of use.

Buckshot and M30 Grenade? I wince at the lack of damage output, with a weak cone and a weak AoE respectively - all you'll be doing is tickling mobs for aggro. If you like the taste of carpet, ignore Slug and Burst with pleasure; if you actually want to kill anything inside of ten minutes, I'd advise taking them and slotting them. Beanbag, if you can squeeze it in, is a great single-target mez (disorient) - great for mitigating incoming damage.

Caltrops have a good enough slow in them - the main issue is in the long recharge time, so I'd slot them with Recharge Reductions.

Flamethrower is an awesome power, and really loves having six-slots. Flamethrower-neglect is the number one cause of unhappiness in most AR owners, fact.

Ignite doesn't need accuracies - as a 'pet', it gets a bonus accuracy... to the point where I've never seen it miss, in fact. At maximum, it really only needs 4 slots - 3 Dam, 1 RecRed - which is enough to make it functionally perma, should you so desire it.

Acid Mortar looks a little bereft of slots, to my eyes. If I were making a PvP build, after beating my head against the wall in sheer frustration, I'd be tempted to go 3 Acc, 3 DefDebuff to really screw with defence-based sets. TP Foe onto Acid Mortar, Time Bomb, Caltrops, with a Beanbag on top should be suitably devastating - after the 5 minute construction, anyway.

Sniper Rifle can be used in battle with 2 IntReds in it, FYI - which may or may not be of interest to you.

Finally, if you're going with SJ, taking Hurdle on the path to Stamina will synergise better, increasing the speed of your jumps.

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Saying people want skill vs skill and not skill vs inspirations is a flawed argument when a lot of PvP is based on character powers and enhancements, not player skill.

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Hardly a flawed argument at all - I'd say that player build is included as part of the skills that are tested in a PvP environment.

Anyone can get a prêt-à-porter PvP build from the boards, be PL'd to 50, and set out into a PvP zone - a good PvPer, however, will carefully craft and sculpt a build based around their insights and playstyles. True, enhancements have a factor in PvP - don't bother entering a PvP zone without SOs, for example - but they're not the be-all and end-all of PvP. If they were, my Corruptor would not have claimed so many scalps in Sirens, despite being underlevelled for the zone.

If you lack knowledge about your build, you will suffer in a PvP zone; if you know your build inside-out, you will have a greater chance of success. As I stated, I see normal usage of inspirations as a part of good PvPing; I only have a problem with those who abuse the facility.

That all said, I did come up with a concept AR/Elec build, with a focus on melee.

I wouldn't like to play it, but it would be effective against certain opponents.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, Plighty - no need to not be nice about it either. I don't always send people away in flames when I disagree with them, I actually prefer civilised debate.

I understand and appreciate where you're coming from - control makes Blapping a lot easier, in whatever form you can grab it, be it Ice (holds, slows), Elec (hold, end-drain), Energy (KB), or Sonic (disorient, KB, sleep). A lack of control doesn't make Blapping impossible, however - in PvP or PvE... it just makes it that much more important to have your tactics down right.

FWIW, I wouldn't make a Fire/Energy without some form of Concealment, I wouldn't go for two travel pools, and I'd think seriously before not taking Blazing Bolt... then again, I don't really believe in the Holy Grail of Aid Self either, so I'm non-standard in that respect. Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

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Seriously, who cares if it's lame or not? We all wanna win and if we can't win without inspirations ofc we're gonna use it, it's part of the game.

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Some of us would rather 'win' due to our ability to control our characters, as opposed to our ability to buy inspirations, though - a test of skill as opposed to a test of inf.

AR/Eng can be a very good combination - it's possibly one of the most damaging sets in the normal course of the game, in fact. Don't let the fact that there aren't many guides stop you - there are enough guides about AR/ and /Energy that should give you at least some pointers as to where to go. Combine that with what you'll pick up from playing the build, I think you'll soon figure out where to go with it.

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nrg secondary = gooooood, fire primary = baaaaaad,

seriously, consider anyhting except fire for a pvp build, u have no control and the extra dmg is almost pointless (compare this to bonus control).

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Respectfully disagreeing - so long as you can make the extra damage work for you (and a good player will), you have no need of control.

Granted, I think you limit your targets somewhat; at the very least, some builds will be more difficult to take out than others - but at the end of the day, the aim is to reduce your opponents HP to 0... and Fire/Energy is the most direct route of doing that.

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The bad side of AR for blapping is the weapon draw animation, really bad if you want to pull primary attack in the middle of melees (and I dont think any secondary can keep up a melee-only attack chain).

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That's one negative.

The other negative is the rooting on animations for a large number of high-damage-attacks in AR. Nothing spells doom in melee like being stuck in one place for more than a few seconds.