If the situation is right, Assault Robot's burning missiles can do quite a bit of damage.
But I would say Thug has the highest damage only because of Enforcers.
If survival is not an issue, Thug, Ninja and Demon are all good choices for pure damage.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Thugs have the highest damage. Demons are pretty good too, but I think Thugs edge them out because of the leadership stacking.
Question. I know for robots that damage spike is mainly in groups from burn patches, but is that what bumps Thugs up too, since the Arsonist has a smaller version of it? Or is it just that stacking leadership brings them up past most everyone else?
"I have something to say! It's better to burn out then to fade away!"
Assault Bot Swarm Missiles put a burn patch under each mob in the AoE, so for large groups Bots probably do max damage.
For good average damage (not really dependent on how many mobs there are) I would probably say Thugs (Enforcers and Arsonist have good AoE and Bruisers do good ST damage)
For Single Target, I would say Ninjas (high damage, high recharge attacks)
/Dark and /Traps do consistent -regen and -resist, whereas most other secondaries only offer one or the other. /TA will come in 3rd I'm guessing.
My answer: depending on the mob size, I'd say either Bot/Dark or Ninja/Dark
Whatever primary you choose the only answer for secondary is /storm. Storm with solid recharge can put out approx 100dps on it's own...
my suggestion is bots/storm.
it tears through normal spawns cause bots have excellent aoe and storm is way better than traps, TA, and is as good or better than dark at rapidly applying -res over a large area.
For tough single targets most would look to a secondary that offers -regen to shut them down, but since the assault bot now seems to be applying his correctly your primary is easily capable of matching sets with standard -regen powers (-500) and can even completely shut them down at times like traps does.
So you have -regen covered, you have damage boosting covered and you have a high damage primary. Then you tack on the dps of the storm powers and you have a winner.
Case in point a bots/storm ripped off 325dps pylon kill back when assault bot was bugged and not applying -regen, with a build that was only 85% complete. Of course incarnate powers are silly and skew everything, but i think for simplicity it is easiest to ignore them (lore at least). Not that storm wouldn't boost them more or less as well as any other secondary.
that isn't to say bots/storm doesn't have issues, but rather if the question is highest damage across the most scenarios, i believe it is the answer.
For a pure damage perspective demon/thermal is probably pretty high on the list. Melt Armor, plus forge, plus inherent -res in demons, plus hell on earth.
Add in the BU proc on the demonlings, and leadership, and you have some amazing damage.
I also think bot/traps would out perform bot/storm, due to higher -resistance in acid mortar, higher -regen in poison trap, and better all around survival. While freezing rain is amazing, it doesn't stack with itself, where each acid mortar stacks with itself for higher -resistance values. Plus /traps is MUCH easier on your end bar then /storm is..
Dark/thugs/cold mast hero converted solos all the gms so far that i have tried (badge GMS)
I would say its A ok....
Quote:
Of course freezing rain self stacks...well assuming you don't encounter the bug that cuts the duration short...which you probably will. But it can and does self stack.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
I also think bot/traps would out perform bot/storm, due to higher -resistance in acid mortar, higher -regen in poison trap, and better all around survival. While freezing rain is amazing, it doesn't stack with itself, where each acid mortar stacks with itself for higher -resistance values. Plus /traps is MUCH easier on your end bar then /storm is..
|
Traps can get more -res against a single target if your freezing rain is bugging out on you. otherwise FR is easy to double stack, while acid mortar is less easy to have perma double stacked.
Also 30% vs 20%. You don't need to perma double stack FR to outdo acid mortar double stacked.
That said, AM is better at applying Achilles.
And once again on a bot/storm vs bot/traps the -regen is covered by the assault bot. He will frequently layer 1000% which is the same strength as poison trap and will shut down a GM. He's all but guaranteed to apply 500%, which leaves what, a 14? dps difference for storm to make up vs the 1000% of poison trap against an AV...
Trust me, nados and LS do a lot more than 14dps and as a mm you arent attacking much, so applying them isn't cutting into your personal dps like it otherwise would for other storm AT's.
bots/traps is pretty robust though, but it's not like bots/storm is a push over. it is easy to get 40% def on your bots and you have spot heals for when stuff does get through your stormy chaos, which is way better than bodyguard mode for normal spawns. For single targets, ya /traps is quite a bit tougher, but it isn't like bots/storm can't no inspiration virtually every AV out there, so that extra survivability is often wasted.
Don't get me wrong, bots/traps is godly...and for cheap too haha, but it doesn't do near the damage of bots/storm, which was the question.
Quote:
A little while ago I did some simple test on how the lieuts perform against Dummy in RWZ. Enforcers use a lot of attacks during 2mins frame and half of it is aoe cone damage! I didn't test Robot (because I don't have one higher than lvl 32) but I am pretty confident that Protector Robot does a bit less single target damage than Spec-Ops (but Protector Robot has one aoe attack) before resistance is taken into consideration.|
Originally Posted by Paladiamors
Question. I know for robots that damage spike is mainly in groups from burn patches, but is that what bumps Thugs up too, since the Arsonist has a smaller version of it? Or is it just that stacking leadership brings them up past most everyone else?
|
I was mainly testing Enforcers, Grave Knights and Jounins. Grave Knight has the highest potential for ST dps. It really depends on how many Headsplitter and Disem they use. Jounins have the biggest gap in terms of dps because Jounins' range dps suck hard. This is one of the reasons why I didn't give Ninja as the highest damage MM because sometimes your Jounins are not in melee range.
Back to Enforcers. I've had a Thug/Trap before. I know people complain about Arsonist all the time but I actually feel sometimes his bomb "scatters" the mob too much. If I don't have any aoe immb or slow, I don't like to scatter the mob. The other two minions do good damage too. And Bruiser' AI has improved and handclap no longer knocks back (it knocks down instead).
For consistent high dps, I would give Thug and Demon the edge. Demon has exotic damage types and they have -resistance.
Robot does well because SURVIVAL DOES MATTER and it matters a lot. :P Robots are all range (even though some of them run in. Well all pets run in now anyway), with knock backs and they have good defense and have good resistance type (lethal and psionic) and I believe Assault Robot has one nasty -regen which is very useful against AVs. Ninja has the worst damage vs survival ratio.
I would rank:
Thug = Demon > Ninja > Robot > Necro (lack of good aoe damage) > Merc (doesn't excel in any category really)
If you are fighting something that doesn't move much, then Ninja will definitely have the highest dps potential especially in trials. As squishy as Genins are, they actually produce the most damage as a "group", more than two Jounins. In trials, they have level shifts that are equal to your level. You want to put smoke flash on Genins because they use the most attacks and they are extremely aggressive.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
On a side note, for those of you who haven't decided which Lore pet to get, give Vanguard a try.
Vanguard is not that popular but Vanguard's design actually fits MM's need. Sorcerer is the only pet in this game that I can honestly say she does not run in. I've done so many trials with her and she has never ran close to the AV and died. Not even once. She draws her staff and just blast away and she has a self heal. Her st damage isn't the top but she is extremely safe.
The support pet has Assault leadership that benefits all (since you don't need the +damage that much) and has Twlight Grasp for aoe healing.
If you don't want the support pet like I do, the other pet has Lethal -resistance. So if you are Thug or Merc, that should improve dps even more as a group.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Quote:
So, assuming a bug doesn't cut your duration, you can keep it double stacked. Ok, thats fair enough, but AM isn't affected by said bug, so its easier to keep double, and even triple stacked.|
Originally Posted by pomo
Of course freezing rain self stacks...well assuming you don't encounter the bug that cuts the duration short...which you probably will. But it can and does self stack.
|
Quote:
|
Traps can get more -res against a single target if your freezing rain is bugging out on you. otherwise FR is easy to double stack, while acid mortar is less easy to have perma double stacked. Also 30% vs 20%. You don't need to perma double stack FR to outdo acid mortar double stacked. That said, AM is better at applying Achilles. |
Double stacked FR is about 60% -res, which you would need to triple stack AM to match, but its pretty easy to do that, due to the recharge time of 90 seconds, and duration of 60. You'd only need about a recharge time of below 30 seconds to perma double stack, and about 20 seconds to have a triple stack up. Using the same above situation (t4 spiritual, t4 ageless, 240% global recharge combined) your looking at 19.4 recharge, which due to casting time, and the debuff duration lasting on the last shell hitting, you've got a triple stack, and about 10 seconds of a quad stack (again, due to shell duration)
The real winner is how often you can keep the Achilles Heel debuff active, due to that adding a pretty solid -20% resistance, for pretty cheap. You've already said that AM does it better, due to it not being limited by the 10 sec cooldown that FR is.
Quote:
| And once again on a bot/storm vs bot/traps the -regen is covered by the assault bot. He will frequently layer 1000% which is the same strength as poison trap and will shut down a GM. He's all but guaranteed to apply 500%, which leaves what, a 14? dps difference for storm to make up vs the 1000% of poison trap against an AV... |
Poison trap is AoE, and the debuff is easily perma, plus its -1000%, so even against AVs it will floor their regen completely. Makes it much easier to lock down an entire groups regen, then a hard single target.
Quote:
| Trust me, nados and LS do a lot more than 14dps and as a mm you arent attacking much, so applying them isn't cutting into your personal dps like it otherwise would for other storm AT's. |
Caltrops may cause some fear (the running away kind) but it does deal some pretty hefty damage, especially when you consider you can triple and quad stack it pretty easily.
Quote:
|
bots/traps is pretty robust though, but it's not like bots/storm is a push over. it is easy to get 40% def on your bots and you have spot heals for when stuff does get through your stormy chaos, which is way better than bodyguard mode for normal spawns. For single targets, ya /traps is quite a bit tougher, but it isn't like bots/storm can't no inspiration virtually every AV out there, so that extra survivability is often wasted. Don't get me wrong, bots/traps is godly...and for cheap too haha, but it doesn't do near the damage of bots/storm, which was the question. |
Plus the cost weighs pretty heavily too, with much more invested in /storm you can do more damage then /traps, but the difference may not actually be worth the additional cost.
not so much. Against groups you drop freezing rain and assault bot lights them up with burn patches and you pretty much move the the next group.
Acid mortar, which i think is a great power, applies aoe -res very slowly. if you drop it at range there is a good chance it will not get the group at all instead electing to simply keep debuffing the same closest foe again and again. If you drop it in the middle it switches targets much better, but still takes a few cycles to get a whole spawn. As opposed to just dropping FR from range and watching your assault bot nuke them all in a matter of seconds.
-regen is virtually meaningless against junk mobs. Heck is barely does anything against EB's. It isn't until you encounter AV's that it starts to make a significant impact. No doubt poison trap is astounding. I love it on my fire/traps and traps/arch, but unless you are fighting multiple AV's at once with the intention of killing them with aoe damage (my fav way of doing all the AV battles in RSF) then you really don't need more than st -regen.
For spawn to spawn action it shouldn't be living long enough to stack mortars or FR really. So FR is better in that environment. Against something that lives long enough to stack these powers then you are now having to contend with stacked storm powers.
*the freezing rain/sleet bug will be fixed one day. I don't advocate making builds around bugs either positive or negative in nature.
each tic of rain does this:
"RES(All Types) -30% for 30s [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster"
15 sec rain and this is what happens after the last tic, thus working properly FR has a 45 sec -res duration.
AM is better at applying achilies certainly. Is it better than FR and nado at applying it though?... depends most likely.
Triple stacked trops with 2 procs and doubled stacked AM adds ~34dps
For that amount of rech we'd have roughly
2.5x stacked nado with 1 proc + 2x LS with 2 proc + 1.5x FR (basically factoring in the current bug). which adds ~187 dps*
*I was being much more conservative with my rech numbers early, but using what you have suggested...well.
As for scatter, ya things flee from LS, nado, and even your bots. They flee from trops and acid mortar just as badly ime.
Traps has trops to keep them in place.
Storm has the knockdown of freezing rain, snowstorm, and herdicaning to keep them in your killzone. And let me tell you, storming on a mm is awesome cause you rarely use direct attacks (pseudo pets like LS aren't direct) so you are never suppressed in movement. So herdicanning is so easy compared to using storm on other AT's.
At the end of the day, you more or less need taunt to keep hard targets from fleeing from both set ups, so meh. Ya you can webnade many AV's to keep em in spot, but the challenging AV's generally resist immobs as do GM's. I mean i have taunt on my fire/traps so i can big game hunt 
I dunno, when I was sitting and discussing it with Frosticus back in the day, he figured his bots/storm would edge up near 500 dps (long before incarnates). He managed 325 with no -regen (almost another 100dps right there if it had been working), freezing rain bugged, and an incomplete build with no personal damage powers and nowhere near the uber rech being talked about now. He of course did not know that assault bot and FR were not working correctly when designing the project and subsequently abandoned it based on those two major bugs (one of which has since been fixed). But that is just st dps...The aoe prowess of bots is well known too for when you face bosses and lower.
That said, i've never looked closely at demons. They have a lot of forcemultiplication going on.
Like you say though, the combo has more damage potential (which is what the OP is asking for). The cost/effort to get there is higher than a bots/traps, but the same can be said for something like an ill/cold vs ill/rad. At the end of the day the ill/cold will cost you a lot more, but it is also better at killing things more quickly than the ill/rad. And if that is what you are seeking then the cost somewhat ceases to be a factor.
Quote:
Just wanted to touch on this point a bit more. I wouldn't say 'better', just differently.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
But against groups, with limited protection to KB, /traps will come out ahead, due to being able to control groups better, and have easier to manage high damage attacks (trip mine, caltrops, damage procs etc)
|
The aoe knockdown of freezing rain plus unsuppressed movement of a hurricane mm does an excellent job of keeping things in a tight killzone.
seekers+PT is terrific control, but once it expires after a few short seconds you aren't left with much control.
In a 10 sec or less fight i'd give control of the spawn to the trapper... i mean they are aoe held heh. Longer and the storm far surpasses it what with being able to cluster and neutralize the entire spawn indefinitely.
And if we are being honest the main kb culprit is the aoe swarm missle from assault bot (not the burn one). That can be a handful for any secondary to tame. I like electric fences personally to help a bit, but at the very least i can just push them back into the pack with cane.
Both secondaries tend to excel at setting up fairly immobile kill zones. Storms is a bit more flexible at relocating it though.
edit: just wanted to add that i think bots/traps is probably the most powerful toon in the game when examined across the entire leveling process. I mean you can start crushing AV's with just SOs haha. So it exemplars down well to lower level content and only gets stronger in high levels. But it isn't the highest damaging MM combo...though it is no damage slouch.
Quote:
True enough. The mu electric fenses, effectively adding KB protection helps a ton against the assault bot missiles, and can even be spammed to immobilize AVs pretty effectively.|
Originally Posted by pomo
Both secondaries tend to excel at setting up fairly immobile kill zones. Storms is a bit more flexible at relocating it though.
|
I played a bot/storm on test a few times, granted, it was on SOs, but i found it to be too 'chaotic' for my liking. seekers->poison trap->AoE immobilize followed by AM and some caltrops pretty much meant that i wasn't taking very much damage, unless i tossed a provoke in the mix.
Dropping FR, and nado on a group meant i soaked the alpha, and not having Mez protection meant that some groups would just eat me alive (i'd get mez'ed, hurricane would drop, steamy mist would suppress and my pets would run around crazy like) which made it really tough to get a feel for the damage in practice. Now, on paper it looks, and sounds awesome, but when 1 stray mez power puts such a kink in your playstyle it makes it tough to pull off.
The nice thing about /traps is that nearly half its powers soak their own aggro. Seekers are your main -tohit/-dam debuff, and they are about the best alpha soakers in the game. AM is your main -res/-def, and it can draw aggro as well. FFG is your main +def, and it is its own target, so enemies have a chance to attack it, instead of you. All of /storms powers come directly from the MM, so all the aggro they create fall right on top of the MM.
Plus with the fact that /storm is already a pretty high endurance costing set, add in the fact that everything is 1.5x more expensive Endurance wise on a MM, and you can floor your endurance bar in record time.
They each have their pros and cons, and i do remember frosticus discussing things about how powerful bot/storm could be, but my /traps was able to meet, and exceed his numbers for DPS values before incarnated came along. The only numbers i was able to find was with the t4 Spiritual Alpha boost, and I managed to do 344.49DPS. The spiritual only really adds recharge, which helps out caltrops and AM, but as Frosticus bot/storm did 321 without the alpha boost, I'd say storm and traps are about even damage wise.
Quote:
traps is more tankermind. Storm is more let everyone soak the alpha a bit and fix as needed. Ultimately traps is insanely tough. Like you say seekers is a godly power. In fact, other than phantom army it is my favorite power in the game.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
True enough. The mu electric fenses, effectively adding KB protection helps a ton against the assault bot missiles, and can even be spammed to immobilize AVs pretty effectively.
I played a bot/storm on test a few times, granted, it was on SOs, but i found it to be too 'chaotic' for my liking. seekers->poison trap->AoE immobilize followed by AM and some caltrops pretty much meant that i wasn't taking very much damage, unless i tossed a provoke in the mix. Dropping FR, and nado on a group meant i soaked the alpha, and not having Mez protection meant that some groups would just eat me alive (i'd get mez'ed, hurricane would drop, steamy mist would suppress and my pets would run around crazy like) which made it really tough to get a feel for the damage in practice. Now, on paper it looks, and sounds awesome, but when 1 stray mez power puts such a kink in your playstyle it makes it tough to pull off. The nice thing about /traps is that nearly half its powers soak their own aggro. Seekers are your main -tohit/-dam debuff, and they are about the best alpha soakers in the game. AM is your main -res/-def, and it can draw aggro as well. FFG is your main +def, and it is its own target, so enemies have a chance to attack it, instead of you. All of /storms powers come directly from the MM, so all the aggro they create fall right on top of the MM. Plus with the fact that /storm is already a pretty high endurance costing set, add in the fact that everything is 1.5x more expensive Endurance wise on a MM, and you can floor your endurance bar in record time. They each have their pros and cons, and i do remember frosticus discussing things about how powerful bot/storm could be, but my /traps was able to meet, and exceed his numbers for DPS values before incarnated came along. The only numbers i was able to find was with the t4 Spiritual Alpha boost, and I managed to do 344.49DPS. The spiritual only really adds recharge, which helps out caltrops and AM, but as Frosticus bot/storm did 321 without the alpha boost, I'd say storm and traps are about even damage wise. |
You gotta keep in mind how much some of these secondaries benefit from recharge. A t4 spiritual with the kind of rech you are talking about attached to a storm will pump out crazy dps... way more than Frost was doing back with like 60% global rech. Plus, -regen from the assault bot wasn't working at the time and pylons regen a bit over 100hp sec.
I mean who knows I guess. I don't have the time (sub just ran out, not gonna renew for awhile ) to finish my own bots/storm/mu, to see if i can't finish what was theorized. His amazing work with ill/cold and theorizing on fire/fire doms as well as banes was pretty compelling at the time. He was super fun to chat with ingame. left field ideas. Sadly, it is relatively meaningless now with incarnates, cause anyone can just summon a lore pet and rip through gm's
so there is a lot less reason for the kind of fine tuning that lots of people were doing at that time.I don't find mez to be much of an issue on my own bots/storm, but I'm just shy of softcapped ranged/aoe def (would be there when finished). Even psy is just shy of 40%, so not much mez gets through. Even less if I tag em with cane. All bots other than the protectors are just shy of softcap to all as well, so if I want them to take an alpha they can. Granted nothing compares to seeker drones...
But again, my premise was never that bots/storm can take the beating bots/traps can. Not even close. But it can withstand just about anything the game has to offer. The damage potential is there (both aoe and st) to move through spawns and tough single targets as fast or faster than any other mm, but like many of the combos in this game with huge potential, you have to build well and play the toon a lot to unlock it.
My Thug/Dark does pretty decent damage. Nothing like getting a group of enemies stuck on Tar Patch and having the Thugs open fire on them.
I also have a Ninja/Traps. I agree with Jibikao. The lower level Ninjas chance of dieing is high. However their single target damage isn't so bad.
I have a thugs/dark (lvl 30), ninjas/pain (lvl 39) and mercs/ff (lvl 50) and I think that with gang war, tar patch and leadership, thugs/dark is a very high damage, very survivable power house.
I have played traps and storm, defender and mastermind varieties. Storm is capable, especially with bots of some amazing things, but the biggest flaw is in the lack of -regen in storm. I also have to be careful with Mastermind's hurricane being a few degrees less capable in the tohit department.
On the other hand, the tornado is a golden thing. Lightning storm is stationary, giving up in movement what it gains in being lethal to say voltaic sentinel. If using these powers is causing too much self-griefing from the knockback, then you are using them wrong.
I never hear the robots complain about knockback. They are predominantly rangers. Good stormers funnel the foes into a kill zone with hurricane, lightning storm, even tornado.
Tornado is priceless. What pet comes back to you every time unless it is so busy killing foes that it expires first? What pet will come back and bowl the bad guys off you, even when you are mezzed and cannot control your pets? What pet chews through paragon protector MoG and kills Crey Dead? What pet can bounce a Freak tank repeatedly helplessly 10 feet off the ground while you deal with his buddies?
Check out Draggynn's storm guide in the defender forums. There is so much good stuff. First and foremost, you can slot recharge intensive set bonuses in tornado on mastermind sets without other recharge intensive pets in the primary. That alone is enough to mule Tornado with 5 slots.
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.
Quote:
So, in short, tornado provides damage variably resisted, unenhanced, to AVs that can amount to 27% regen over the life of the tornado. Remember, most AVs have resistance to being knocked back by the tornado. Of course other factors like the damage resistance in freezing rain affects the target variably. A lot of stormers can stack tornado, too.
|
Originally Posted by Draggynn
I hear people say Tornado is great for Archvillain fights, why?
In Archvillain fights there is usually only one target for tornado to focus on, so it will not be distracted by other targets. Additionally archvillains have knockback protection, meaning that tornado can't fling them somewhere and then have to chase them. This means that you get the full damage potential of Tornado on the archvillain. That's 400 damage unenhanced over its duration, or 13.37 damage per second unenhanced. At the enhancement diversification cap that's 26 damage per second from a single tornado (if the enemy has no resistance to smashing damage). For comparison, a level 50 archvillain has a regeneration rate of 95 hp/sec, so tornado is effectively a 27% regeneration debuff. This additional damage will be essential if you're going to solo an archvillain. |
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.
Quote:
Isn't that like saying that dark melee/super reflexes is flawed because sr lacks a heal? The primary provides the heal, that is one of the synergies of the set pairing, just as assault bot provides the -regen that storm lacks|
Originally Posted by Psylenz
. Storm is capable, especially with bots of some amazing things, but the biggest flaw is in the lack of -regen in storm.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Psylenz
I also have to be careful with Mastermind's hurricane being a few degrees less capable in the tohit department.
|
Unless you just mean storm mm's in general? cause the same goes for dark mm's with their weaker debuffs and smaller radius heal. Which is to say, it is a pretty minor issue for both secondaries given the overall power of mm's.
My Ninja/Storm is my absolute damage chart destroyer, however keeping the ninjas alive is where the damage gets severely knocked down but in the incarnate trials like BAF the ninjas along with 2-3 tornados and lightning storms as well as perma freezing rain with smoke flash getting spammed every 6 secs on the genins, its damage orgasm! Yeah its crazy too see how much carnage they do to the AVs and the prisoners.
Outside of trials id rate my thugs/dark as a faster soloer than my bots/traps. One tarpatch every spawn along with the -tohit allows my arsonist to just light up spawns. Plus the enforcers do such nice aoe dmg that its quite unreal how superior they are to other lieutenants from the other sets.
Just to set the record straight on the burn patches, the assault bot's burn patches are actually not much stronger than the arsonist's burn patches and in some ways, noticeably weaker. Before the changes to burn nerfed the Assbot's burn patches, the scales considerably tipped in the bots' favor, but now, the arsonist in some ways matches and exceeds the Assbot's burn patches. Here's a comparison.
Assbot's burn patches
16s rech
20ft radius
114 damage over 20s with 68% or 77.56 damage being delivered in 10.81s.
Causes no fear
Assbot is boss pet.
Arsonist burn patches
16s rech
15ft radius
107 damage over 10s with ~68% or 72.5 damage being delivered in 5.25s.
Causes fear
Arsonist is minion pet.
Provided my math is right, this means that the arsonist's burn patches deliver almost the same amount of damage in about half the time. Granted, the assbot has the boss level con on its side, the larger radius, and the fear removed. However, damage delivered up front is almost always more valuable than damage over a longer period of time, especially in teams. Immobilize effects will also be more likely in teams, canceling out the fear effect. However, the main fact that puts thugs over bots for me when considering burn patches is the fact that one of the thug's minions is arguably providing a better (or at least comparable) burn patches than the bot's boss pet, whose burn patches are widely considered the powerset's most powerful attack. By giving a mere minion the same damage burn patches that the Assbot gets (in turn freeing up the Thugs' boss Bruiser to concentrate on single target damage), the thugs powerset becomes a real force to reckon with compared to the bots.
I hope this illuminates the actual differences between the two burn patches rather than relying on vague impressions. I for one, was really sad when the great burn "buff" was applied to the Assault bot. I can't remember exactly, but I think the burn patches used to do 284 damage over 20s, but with the fear component. I don't remember the exact number, but I remember doing the same calculations then and found that the assault bot's burn patches did significantly more damage per second than the thugs (unlike now where the arsonist now does twice as much dps) and WAY more damage over the burn patch's lifetime.
The most intense damage I've personally seen among my own MMs is my Bots/TA. At least when Oil Slick is up, with the -res patches, and the Bots lighting it slick for sure... it's a thing of beauty. I know OSA has a high recharge so it may not be the highest consistent damage, but when it is up, truly awesome.
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
Quote:
sorry, couldn't resist.|
Originally Posted by Little_Whorn
...Assbot's burn patches ... Arsonist burn patches ...
|
all that calculation look nice until arsonist dies while trying to slap some stuff in melee. or grabbing agro and being insta gibbed.
there is nothing so annoying as resummon the arsonist over and over and over and over again.
(just not to forget hand clap from bruiser killing whole AoE herding, which further reduce AoE efficiency.)
What would be the highest damage mastermind set?
I've read plenty of threads about how bots or thugs / dark or traps is good at soloing things in the game, but I'm always grouping and was wondering what set would provide the most damage output. This is assuming the pets have no aggro and would be free to blast away. Also wondering if this set would also be best for the escapee phase in the BAFs.