A Chat About Interface

Who guessed this would be my next thread?

I did my first Keyes last night. We failed, but a shout should go out to the leader who I thought did great with a bunch of noobs! If I was any good at remembering names I'd tell you who I think the only reason we failed was because a number of people made silly excuses and quit.

Any way, half way through I unlocked Interface (which was a surprise) and when it was all over I had enough junk to build the first Reactive (also a surprise) I went for Reactive since -Res looked too good to turn down. However Paragon Wiki only lists it as -2.5% Which doesn't sound like much, especially when Paralytic say -2.5% DEF. Is that right? Does that make Paralytic the better choice?

Plus I could tell people I was going to get paralytic would would amuse me

Dont forget it stacks up to 4 times, so max of 10% -res.

Def debuff is something I rarely chase after, my acc and tohit is usually high enough that I dont miss.

Generally the rule of thumb is if you want to do more damage, reactive is the way to go.

So far I have taken

Fire/Fire tank tier 3 Reactive Fire DoT proc Reactive
Ele/SS tank Damage Debuff Proc

On my Ice/Ice and Ing/NRG I will take the to hit debuff proc Diamagnetic
( 100% chance @ tier 3 yeah im taking that )

Is there a list somewhere of which attacks count as "Your most damaging" ?

I think that is supposed to be "most of your damaging attacks" but I could have read it wrong.

Diamagnetic's -regen is likely the best bet vs AV class or higher mobs, the -tohit is also nice to have on toons with defense.

Gravitic may offer the most survivability on an aoe heavy toon as the -recharge really cuts down on incoming attacks.

Reactive is great for farming, but due to the 4x stacking, may not be great on teams if lots of people have it.

The -dam paralytic doesnt excite me much because you'll get more value out of gravitic and diamagnetic on survivablity and -def is hardly necessary in the end game.

In addition to stacking only four times per player, there is also a hard cap of how many total Reactives can be stacked on one enemy. If I am not mistaken that cap is only ten Reactives (for a total of -25% res). Of course this cap applies to other Interface abilities as well, but it is less of an issue since hardly anyone takes anything other than Reactive. Ironically, since probably 95+% of the player base has chosen Reactive due to it being obviously better, many people are not getting as much use out of it as they think they are. If there is a reason to even look at something other than Reactive, it is that fact.

Personally I like Paralytic, mainly for the -dmg. The -def part of Paralytic is much maligned, but here is something to consider: synergy with Lore pets. The top two DPSing Lore pets, according to testing versus Pylons, are the Cimerorans and the WarWorks. Both of these pet sets debuff defense, and I do not think that it's a coincidence that the defense-debuffers also seem to be the best damage-dealers. The pets don't have the insane accuracy and to-hit bonuses that actual players do, so they benefit from defense debuffs more than players would. So, -def might be more useful than it would appear at first glance.

Reactive is almost certainly still better overall though, all things considered, but Paralytic is a reasonable choice too, especially for a tank, and especially given that so many people take Reactive. Gravitic might be handy too, but I didn't really consider it since I have so much -rchg on my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker already. Diamagnetic just looks a bit weak to me.

I really wish they would make diamagnetic's -regen irresistible. As it stands, the -regen component is pretty much irrelevant, even stacked to the cap. I can't remember the last time -regen significantly helped me on any sub-EB mob, either; and ironically, anything EB and up has that super awesome resistance to debuff. Ironic.