The Alpha Slot and my Traps/DP


Adeon Hawkwood

 

Posted

When I began alphaing, my criteria at that time was "Out of Acc, Dmg, End and Recharge, which one of those will help this character the most right now?" It occured to me, while looking further down the tree for my toons, I should have started at the end state and mapped a way to get there. So I'm going about the process of a more thorough analysis of what different alphas do. I'm taking a look at my Traps/DP now.

Cardiac Core Paragon

Endurance is a non-issue today.
My resistance from epic shield (Dark Embrace) goes from 43 to 47%. Not too compelling.
Range would be nice, but as a Trapper, I don't get TOO far out for cones.

This is no-go.

Cardiac Radial Paragon
Not evaluated - Fear, Sleep and Intangibility don't apply, on top of an already losing alpha.

Musculature Core Paragon
Everything in this is useful for this toon.
Web Grenade's immob duration increases from 28 to 36 seconds
Acid Mortar's -Def debuff goes from -42 to -48
The +Dmg boost is quite nice. There's too many numbers, but I'll just say this is a compelling direction to go.

Musculature Radial Paragon
This one is chock full of goodies.

The Damage boost is a bit less then the prior one, but still nice.
Immob and Def debuff are the same.
End Mod takes Recovery rate from 162% (3.15 end/sec) to 170% (3.31 end/sec)
Run Speed goes up, I use Sprint+Ninja for travel and run increases from 56.4 to 60.4 mph.
To-Hit debuff from Seeker Drones goes from -9.5 to -10.85.

Nerve Core Paragon
I have Tactics, 45% Global Accuracy and Acid Mortar debuffing def. Accuracy isn't in my "problem set". So I won't analyze what this gives me for accuracy which is already 95% for +3 enemies.
On teams I usually use Toxic rounds, so I'm guessing this would improve hold duration of Suppresive Fire
I'm already soft-capped to the 3 positional defenses, this eeks out another 3-ish percent. I don't gain much, the team (from Maneuvers and FFG) goes from 25.5% to 28.3.

This one's sort of "meh".


Nerve Radial Paragon
Not evaluated. Same as above but with additional benefits to confuse, taunt and fly, none of which I do.

Spiritual Core Paragon
Recharge, Stun and Healing, I like the sound of that.

Global recharge is currently 83.8%. I'll look at the effects on Hasten, Triage, Acid Mortar, Poison Trap, Seekers and Hail of Bullets. These are the powers I want up he most.

Hasten goes from 133.5 to 119 (withHasten up). In other words, it's now perma.
All the following numbers (representing seconds of recharge) include Hasten
Triage: 57.9 to 52.6
Acid: 29 to 25.3
Poison: 26.2 to 23.7
Seekers: 29 to 25.3
HoB: 34.9 to 31.6

This also buffs stun and healing.
Seeker stun goes from 9 to 12 seconds
Triage regen goes from 287.7% to 326.9%
My own regen goes from 180% to 193% (9.8 hp/sec to 10.5)


Spiritual Radial Paragon
Recharge bonus in this goes from 45 to 33, but has more useful goodies, all of which I can use, including Slow (for Caltrops), To-Hit (for Tactics) and Jump.
The recharge numbers mentioned above increase about a second across the board. Hasten has a couple seconds down time.
To-Hit in Tactics increases from 19.69 to 21.48.

I've gone down the Spiritual path and after this analysis, I'm confident it's the right one. Musculature is tempting too, but not enough to make me switch direction at this point. I'm sure I'll end up with Spiritual Radial Paragon, over Core, but I've got a while to go to worry too much about that.

I submit this post to see if something in my reasoning is flawed and if there's some consideration I missed.


Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)

 

Posted

That looks reasonable to me, for a Traps I would generally recommend either Cardiac Core Paragon, Musculature Core Paragon or Spiritual Radial Paragon. Nerve Core Paragon would also be a possibility for a Traps character who is running on SOs and doesn't have tactics (those +4s are a devil to hit with just SOs and no Tactics).

In my particular case I went for Cardiac Core Paragon but my Traps is paired with Assault Rifle and has Full Leadership and Fighting making the combination of Endurance Reduction and Range a lot more appealing. In addition to the obvious benefit of running 6 pool/epic toggles with no endurance issues the range bonus enhances flamethrower, buckshot and full auto to a noticeable degree especially since the endurance bonus means I can switch the Dam/End IO in Buckshot and Flamethrower for a Dam/Range (using the Positron's Blast set) to get their range up to 54ft. The resistance bonus is also slightly more useful since I have two resistance based powers (about 7% S/L resistance, 4% energy resistance total).

In your case though I think Spiritual makes a lot more sense, especially if it gets you to perma-hasten so I would definitely go that route. I strongly considered Spiritual on my character and eventually I might even make a second build designed to leverage that instead of Cardiac.


 

Posted

Spiritual line is definitely the way to go for most traps builds.


 

Posted

If you don't need the endurance (and most builds will not), go with the recharge (Spirit Core Paragon or Spirit Radial Paragon)


 

Posted

I agree, permahasten and spiritual goodies are the way to go, but off the top of my head, the amount of resistance from the cardiac computations seems low.


Triumphant Defenders Forever
Psylenz FF/Psi, ArticQuark Storm/Rad, Symon BarSisyphus Bots/psn, Max VanSydow Thugs/Dk, Cyclone Symon Bots/stm, Blue Loki Ice/Cd, Widow 46526
HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.