Alpha Slot on MM's Discussion

Yay! I'm glad it came out before I got back. I can't wait to try this in Jan! Exciting!

Ok, most of my MMs will either take Musculature or Nerve. More dmg is always awesome but freeing up more slots is also beneficial. It'll definitely have to be a case-by-case basis.

I am a little torn. I can see how having extra stun and extra recharge would help Bots/Dark. Extra heal and extra recharge would help Demons/Thermal. Extra end would definitely help demons. Extra Damage would help everything, since extra stun duration, end cost, and recharge of controls would warrant less attention if everything is already DEAD.

I'm thinking the +Dam one for my bots/ff MM as well, I have great survivability as it is but DPS is lacking when it comes of Bosses, EB's and AV's, I don't have any heavy recharge dependent powers. Each of the boosts will help in some way but I"m still not to certain of actual results till I've had a chance to field test the real impact on the numbers.

After looking things over, and the addition of Stamina for free I'll be doing Nerve and Musculature. One run at the LGTF has already seen me craft the first Musculature Boost.

HA Ive got a Merc/TA.... you KNOW im taking damage....

I run out of endurance alot.

My Demons run out of endurance alot...


Endurance reduction here i come...

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

What is missing is that you don't have to specifically focus on just one type of Alpha Slot. I'm thinking about getting Cardiac for the endurance redux to deal with the extra toggles that im running solo, and on larger teams, use Spiritual for larger teams that would benifit more from having my secondary powers up more often.

Bear in mind that it changes when the higher up version are available and you have to focus on one or two types. Go go go TFs and Hami raids.

I went with spiritual on my thugs/dark to perma my fluffy. It was great to have gw and debuffs up a lot more too. I joined a successful lrsf and had a lot of fun I died a few times but only because I was drunk with power and charged into situations I shouldn't have.

I slotted Musculature last night, I noticed a fairly good increase in my pets damage output, hope that the uncommon one will yield better results as I was already close of ED cap on some of them, I'm interested in seeing what the Acc/Def boost can do for my positional defence numbers.

Alas, I wasn't paying attention tot he ingame interface and crafted Musculature Radial, when I want Core!

Back to the drawing board! (only two days of gaming to get where I am now, so no great shakes!)

Okay, correct me if I'm wrong here, but why would end red affect your demons end use and not just yours.

My understanding is that the end red component of IOs only affected the cost of summoning the pets not the cost of the pets use of their powers.

Upgraded to the uncommon musculature alpha last night, it made a noticeable difference when killing lvl 52 & 53 Rikti in the RWZ, MM pet damage is now in the 107% -111% range. I'll do some side by side comparisons with and without it this weekend to make sure its just not me thinking I'm killing faster.

Picked up Musculature Radial for my Mercs/Poison and I do think there's a noticeable difference, and as they say...every little bit helps. I did figure the -Def would be nice given just how many itty bitty defense debuffs my minions are tossing around.

I think it's going to depend on how your pets are slotted.

My pets are already in the yellow/red for damage slotting, so 5% (1/6th of 33%) isn't going to be much noticeable. The uncommon might do something for me though.

I'm definately nowhere near the damage cap so I will be going for musculature now for my solo build.

I've set myself the task of getting all or most of the different uncommons and seeing what effects they have on my Bot/Dark.

So far I've only got a Cardiac Radial Boost, a basic Musclature Boost and a basic Cardiac Boost that I will be upgrading to Core Boost soon.

Cardiac Radial Boost - This has been extremely nice on the endurance cost for both me and my pets. The end drain on Prot Bots is very minimal now, and casting all 3 tiers and fluffy can be done simultaneously and still be left with over 50% end.

Musclature Boost - Even though all my pets are @ 94% and above on damage, I did notice quite a difference in the speed spawns went down. Can't wait to see the damage output when I upgrade this to a Core Boost.

I only have done 2 of my MM's so far.

I went Cardiac Radial for my Merc/Dark to offset all the toggles in heavy fights. I noticed a huge difference on AV/EB fights when I have DN, Shadowfall, Maneuvers, Assault, CJ, Acro and spamming TG for -regen. I now don't have to turn SS off halfway through the fight . Also, the +res gives my SF and Dark Embrace more resistance which is a good thing,

I went Nerve Radial on my Thugs/Pain as my heals are pretty much capped and 97% and the rech is high enough I can spam them whenever needed. Also WoP is perma and AC has a 8 second down time with 125% global rch and 6 slotted. I decided to focus on my pets, Enforcers specifically. Mine are slotted with 3x Nucleolus, 2x Cytoskeleton and an Achilles -res for 95% hit/dam and +40% def. Their Maneuvers went from 8.75 base to 12.25 with Cyto's and 14 with Nerve. This is a 1.75 Def increase per for 3.50 total .

Basically their total def with their Maneuvers, mine, 2x def IO's went from 38.5 to 42 which to me is a huge increase.

Mercs/Traps, here. Fighting against L50 longbow and arachnos is dangerous business at x4 for me, primarily because even if I survive the initial encounter, it's a long slog towards grinding everybody down with the mercs consistent but slow DOT damage.

I'm going the Musculature Core path, towards that juicy 45% Damage boost. So far, all I have is the common, and it's not making a noticable difference. That may change when I get the uncommon and it moves from 104% damage to 112% damage (approx).

Way I see it, if you've properly IO'd the hell out of your build, you shouldn't need more recharge or more endurance reduction or accuracy. Instead, use the ED bypassing upper tiers to get more of the one thing you can't get any more of but always helps you... raw damage.

Ninja/Storm for me: so far I've only gotten Cardio Common, but I will soon follow the same path I did on Test and get Cardio Radial.

Right now I'm at about 35% Ranged Defense and 65% Resist, but soloing multiple EBs (think Mender Silo's TF) or multiple mobs (when my ninjas decide to run all over the room) gets kinda end-heavy, thanks to resummoning/reupgrading, Snowstorm, Tornado, LS, FR, and 6-7 toggles.

My original IO plan was to build for recovery to support myself, so I don't really have much end reduction slotted, so the initial Cardio Common made a *huge* impact on my ability already.

I picked up the musculature common last night on my bots/dark. As others have said, one of the the hardest things (if not the hardest) for mms to come by is extra +dmg, and I really don't *need* anything so I just went with the gravy.

One thing I've already noticed is that it allows me to use my 2 slotted thunderstrike (I had nothing else screaming at me at 49 and I wanted an attack, but only had 1 free slot) much more effectively.

It's a shame the incarnate stuff doesn't rsk down or it would allow for some interesting builds, but I suppose that's the price we pay. Still, I rarely rsk sooo... I'm tempted to try a build specifically targeted at alpha slotting. Maybe after I make that first billion...

My other 50 mms are a nec/dark which I'll also be grabbing another dam/immob alpha and a nec/pain that I'm torn between recharge/heal and damage/def debuff... I'll probably have to get both.

I have to say that, even though I'm not big on attack power focused MMs, the builds you can get with the damage alpha interest me.

Cardiac is pretty awesome. Went with it on my SS/MERCS MM and neither mine or my pets endurance barely budge now.

Which is great because my pets would just peter out as they hit 0 endurace. Now they can go balls out 100% of the time.