Got my butt kicked by Carnies....

This did not seem right to me, but I thought I'd ask here in case I missed something.

My soft-capped Fire/SR (46% to all positions) was running the Mask Heist Tip mission at 0/8 and got creamed, three times. The first I chalked it up to a bad luck streak, but then the same happened the next two attempts. My Def was not debuffed, that I coudl see. The group I fought had 2 Master Illusionists and their spawns which did most of the damage, all the minions went down easy.

On the fourth, I opened a tab for Hit Rolls, and saw that certain attacks had chance to hit well over 5%. Blind was 66%, Spectral Wounds 53%, Energy Torrent and Power Bolt were 31% and 28% (I forget which was which).

Is this normal? Do they have Acc or ToHit bonuses that I'm unaware of?

Pets have 75% to hit instead of 50%. I assume that's true of what Master Illusionists summon. So at the soft cap, they'll still have 30% to hit, which with accuracy modifiers could easily be significantly higher.

Well, that explains why I was getting my butt kicked by carnies as well. I have been doing +1/+8 on my FM/SR Brute and I decided to pick carnies to see how I do and wow they hit me A LOT. That dot drove me crazy when trying to use aid self also. I understand we all need weaknesses, but it does not really seem fair to me that a pet can make your soft cap seem useless, especially as many as the master illusionist summons + the phantasms.

It has always seemed strange to me that pets have higher to hit than regular enemies, but there aren't all that many pets in the game outside of AE. As weaknesses go, it's fairly benign most of the time. You could always build for 70% defense and laugh at Master Illusionists, but I really don't think the sacrifices would be worth it. Also watch out for Devouring Earth in tip missions, who clock in at 64% to hit before they even drop a Quartz.

Also, you're SR. Blind and Spectral wounds have no positional component so you'd be using Psi defense.

Heh. I didn't even think of that. They're just bad mojo for Super Reflexes. If it's any consolation, anyone with substantial defense debuffs rips up my Katana/Dark, who is otherwise my most survivable toon, Tankers included.

Carnies set for 8 people are extra nasty. Between the Master Illusionists and Dark Ring Mistresses they have enough debuffs to destroy any Scrapper if you're not careful.

My best Scrapper at fighting large mobs of them is my fire/shield, and that is using a lot of hit and run tactics.

Hm, ok. Considering that, as you said, you are working mostly with standard IOs, I am not really sure where the discrepancy comes from. I have my end passives underslotted (musculature alpha will give me more recovery once i get the first rare) but as far as I remember I haven't died of toggle dropping the last few times against Carnies. The main problem of the mask is the def and regen debuff, which are the main defenses of a WP toon (aside from s/l res). I am not sure how high the regen debuff is, since I am only monitoring my defense normally, but the defense debuff is utterly crippling without ddr. My psi def is around 28%,psi res around 30% and I am not sure how you would be getting much above that without extensive IO slotting. I have all the important accolades, so my hitpoints are around 2200 (around 2300 when fully slotted) and regen with one enemy in rttc is around 700%.

I know that the phase shift cycles are fixed and there is certainly improvement possible there to time this better and avoid a few unaffected hits. But it's not like my defeats were close enough to put it on a phase shift timing issue. This all just makes me think that I suck at priority killing against Carnies or am oblivious to something. I will certainly be looking into this over the next days and monitor all my stats to see what my cause of death is, so I can work towards minimizing the problems. The fact that you are doing fine with a WP toon gives me hope that I can improve here.

Before I give 'my solution' I just want to say I actually didn't know 'pets' had 75% to hit. And I still think this is why defense based sets have a harder uphill climb than those sets that assume you're going to get hit.

With my 50 DM/Shield, I typically have the difficulty too high for Carnie folk, and I refused to turn it down. And I figured out the true strength of the Carnie are two fold- debuff, and pets.

Now when I go into a Carnie mission, I zero in on the master illusionist. And there is no doubt she is getting out her pets. I ALWAYS deal with them first. No doubt.

I used to make the mistake of trying to make sure I was dealing damage to the master illusionist in some way. Now I zero in on the pets, while she fades in and out, doing her floaty phase out thing. This has made the missions a lot more doable. The pets must go first.

Good to know, thanks for the info, all. Now that I think of it, I actually read here previously that pets had higher to-hit chance, but it totally slipped my mind. Good to know about Blind, they were throwing that around a lot and I think it was the attack doing the highest damage.

If I expect to go up against large mobs of Carnies with my Claws/SR some of the things I do are:
1) Use Elusive Mind. For 60 seconds that's another +20% vs Psi attacks which puts me around +36% def (psi) from there a small Luck gets me soft capped vs Psi. It also has Psi resistance though not amazing amounts it adds to the Oranges I'll be using (have used).
2) Monitor my Psi defense. Making sure to keep and not combine my purples into other inspires.
3) Monitor my +To Hit and Last Hit Chance. Eat those yellows I've been hording as needed and pay special attention to ensuring my Follow Up buff lands and keeps me buffed. True ugly and I hit Geas which has both +To Hit (25%) and large amounts of +recovery. (and eat a small Luck to counter Geas' -def)
4) As others have said the Fluffy gets attention sometimes over the MI, though I tend to focus on her (them) first then the Fluffy.

My spines/da and kat/da dont have issues that I recall. But I build for a high recharge heal as well as decent defense.

It's kind of funny. I typically run my tip missions at x5 on my claw/SR (though she just got her level shift and I am thinking I will probably go to x8 now), and she doesn't usually have problems with Carnies, even though I frequently see two Master Illusionists in a spawn. The biggest problem I do have with them on my SR is the AoE end drain when they die, which has a 30% acc bonus baked in. If I take down two many at once (easy to do with a Claw), my blue bar can nosedive really fast, especially considering my build is BARELY end sustainable as it is.

Of course, the difference between x5 and x8 on a Super Reflex scrapper is pretty significant. The random number generator gets to take a lot more potshots at you on x8. Part of me kinda regrets not running on x8 before getting my level shift, because it would have been an interesting challenge... but I'd never have been able to finish my tip missions every day like that. Takes too long.

That said, my Master Illusionist strategy is pretty straightforward.

1). Kill the Dark Servant(s)
2). Kill the Phantasm(s)
3). Kill the Master Illusionist(s).

Mixing Spin into my attack chain in crowds generally takes care of the summoned illusionists along with the rest of the spawn.

I have *some* psi defense from Weave and Combat Jumping and the +3% defense IO, which helps. I also run Focused Accuracy which helps a LOT at dealing with the tohit debuff from the Dark Servants. I still kill them first, because if I let them live too long, bad things start to happen, but I don't start whiffing the first time they hit me.

Having high regen (around 300%, when my build is finished it will be 335%) and as many +HP bonuses as I could cram into my build helps a lot here.

All of that said, Master Illusionists are pretty high on the list of things that are dangerous to my /SR. They fall somewhere behind Devouring Earth (in general, and especially Quartz droppers), Rulaaru eyeballs, and the masses of Bane Spiders you get in any high spawn size Arachnos mission.


My Willpower, on the other hand, utterly laughs at Master Illusionists... and then gets whomped by the Dark Ring Mistress I didn't see at the back of the spawn. Regularly. I am not sure what it is about Dark Ring Mistresses that just destroy my /WP scrapper, but I have just learned to accept that they must go down first always. I guess it's probably the Mask.

I think the biggest shock I have had recently, though, is realizing that with the prevalence of defense debuff at high levels, my /SR is much harder to kill than my /WP on the whole these days. And more fun, too.