Is it Worth Chasing Musculature with my Fire Cor?

Just curious what you guys think.

My fire-time corr is nearing the might Incarnate stuff. I'm not sure what to do. (never had a 50 Cor before.)

On one hand I think we (as Corruptors) start in the hole compared to blasters only doing 75% of blaster damage. I can't make a LOT of that up with the Time powerset. Just in the one debuff power: Slowed Response (22.5%).

Slowed response makes me -close- to basic blaster damage for 30 second bursts. So it seemed logical to go full out Musculature Total Core Revamp.

But now I'm having second thoughts. Am I chasing the damage holy grail where perhaps I should be going after the recharge holy grail? (Spiritual).

The thinking there is to have my debuff up more often, same as my larger AOE's or whatever....

I'm just not sure. Any thoughts?

Without giving it an in depth looking, Spiritual tends to be the 'better' option as I'm updating my characters in that it allows them to more easily achieve insane feats of recharge without utterly sacrificing the rest of their build in order to do so, resulting a giant net gain for everything.

Musculature, I feel, is only better when you're build already performs very well without additional recharge, can't do any better with more recharge, and isn't gimped by the fact that you *have* so much recharge. At that point moar damage is really the only reasonable route.

If all you really care about is DPS, then musculature on top of a high-end global recharge build without much personal defense is probably a good option for you. It's not *my* playstyle, but I'm not you either, so maybe you like that kind of thing.

Edit: Your best way to figure out what *you* want to do is come up with a build and show it to us. We're much more capable of helping you with that bit of work out of the way.

You raise a good point about the recharge.

But I worked my build out and compared the numbers with Spiritual vs. Musculature.

While the recharge benefits very slow items like Chrono, and Farsight, and I suppose Hasten..... my actual attacks fire often enough that I don't see a HUGE benefit to having (for instance) Rain of Fire up every 16.45 seconds vs every 15.50 seconds....

However the damage bonus of Musculature is constant... and every attack. Stacked with "Aim" it is.... quite notable.

I guess I'm answering my own question here. Just curious what other Fire Corruptors have done.

I personally went with Cardiac. Fire/Time is pretty end heavy. The extra resists also benefits Tough/Dark Embrace (I went for softcapped m/r/AoE defense).

The power of a Corruptor has never been in raw damage. It's the combination of decent damage and team support. Force multiplication. Honestly, I'm not impressed by Musculature. I've always gone Spiritual or Cardiac on my characters.

I'll be going for Cardiac. My corr is only level 28 right now, but Fire/Time is probably the fastest end burning character I've ever made. And like Silas said, the extra resists work nicely in my build as well.

You know it's odd since I started this thread I've been watching my end use with my fire/time corr, and it's not bad at all.

He's properly slotted, and since I got conserve energy or whatever it's called, and Chrono Shift... no real issues. I think Cardiac would be somewhat of a waste for me. It's really almost never an issue unless I nuke... which is natural.

Still weighing musculature, or spiritual.

I think it just depends. I usually tend towards spiritual or cardiac, only on a few characters do I prefer musculature. Basically only character I've used it so far is my Plant Dom, who has so much global recharge that spiritual isn't needed, and due to domination firing off so often, also doesn't need cardiac.

Is Chonro Shift perma with your current build, without spiritual? One of the issues I have looking at a Fire/Time, which I'm currently leveling, is that I want enough recharge to get Chrono Shift permanent, but I also want to get my defense up to softcap if I can. I'm willing to depend on power boost/buildup to get to softcap, but I don't really want to depend on TJ. So getting enough recharge for perma chrono, and getting enough defense is a pain. Spiritual helps out there. However if you aren't as worried about defense, and/or have enough global recharge to get Chrono up to perma then spiritual isn't needed quite as badly.

One thing to keep in mind is that Spiritual also boosts healing, and slow if you choose the right one. On the flip side, Musculature also boosts Endmod and To-hit debuff. It's useful to keep in mind the other effects beyond the primary one that most people think about. The fact that spiritual also boosts healing is another reason I tend to choose it.

Basically, IMO, if Chrono Shift is perma without spiritual, then go Musculature, otherwise go spiritual.

It comes down to whether you can meet your build goals (rech, endurance recovery, defense etc.) without resorting to the alpha slot.

If you can do so, by all means go for musculature. It will buff your judgement and lore pet damage as well.

Ok....

I won't start a new thread for this, but I just ran all the numbers for my Beam Rifle/Poison Corruptor.

I don't have significant end problems right now. But as a corr, even with Assault, I think the biggest factor after Cardiac (which isn't an issue) becomes recharge.

For me, the only power I don't have recharging quite as often as I'd like is my Nuke. I tested things out in Mid's and even with Spiritual Core Paragon, the Nuke is sometimes benefiting from a chance for +recharge Procs I have in two attacks (that's tricky... you have to disable them in mids or you get some misleading numbers!).

Anyway, it boils down to getting Spirtual and having my Nuke recharge 7 seconds faster, or getting Musculature and getting a fairly decent boost on my total DPS. I'm definitely leaning Musculature, PLUS.... the Debuff boost will help too.

I went with radial musculature for my fire/rad, and intend to go with core musculature for my fire/time. The damage increase is too large to pass up. If I have any endurance or recharge problems, I'd much rather work them out using IO sets.

I had my fire-time corr on a lot lately....

And since I started this thread I've been wanting to really examine my end usage because a few people have brought up end consumption concerns with their fire-time.

It finally happened where I had endurance isssues.... we were doing a Jenkins AV arch. We end up going against the dude who calls down orbital strikes and has the robot dudes with him in a court yard. I can't remember his name, sorry.

Anyway, the level was set to +4 x8. The AV was +4.... I hit him with everything I had.... It went really well for a long time. I noticed that all of our full team was out of Endurance before me.... except one person.

When my Chrono-Shift came up, the team had some endurance... for a short time. Then it was just me and this other person fighting a +4 AV.

I would reach a point of... ah crap... no endurance... and then "Conserve Power" would pop up just in time. Eventually I ran completely dry, and had no more tricks up my sleeve.....BUT the AV fight was on for a VERY long time. The mission was reset... some people were certain he was bugged... he would get down to about 20% health and then regen like crazy. We went back in after turning it down and it was a different story.

So now I'm thinking... does this mean I should go Cardiac?

I did a further test... I went into AE with my Fire-Time and did non-stop groups by myself to see what would happen... the problem is the drop rate of blues is way more than I need.

So I'm a bit stuck. I mean yes, in a prolonged AV fight with no insipirations, and no support characters (other than myself) I could have used cardiac. But at that rate, I still might have burned out of end.

I'm still wondering if maybe you guys went more offensive on your builds than me. Am I the only one taking Conserve Power? I mean combined with efficient slotting, and Chrono-shift/Hasten, I get an end boost, and Conserve Power comes back....?

The more recharge you have, the better your endurance efficiency needs to be.

The faster you active powers, the more endurance you consume per second.

CP will probably help, but if you have a high rech focused build - I can't recommend anything other than Cardiac.


If you want to do Blaster level damage, you should make a Blaster.

That's what they do.

Just as you are at a damage disadvantage vs. a Blaster at base, you will be at a (most likely larger) disadvantage after musculature vs. a Blaster if they grab musculature as well.



If you have low rech and want to increase your damage output, it will be very build dependent but my opinion is that Spiritual would be the better choice as it benefits both your Primary and Secondary (as does Cardiac for that matter).

If you have all of your Rech needs and all of your End under control, then I would go Musculature.

im personally gonna wait until the next half issue to see what additional trees of incarnate slots we will have to chooe (we will be getting new alpha, destiny, judgement, and interface options so im waiting for now to see what comes of it)

Well I have to be honest, I think my corr does good damage.

Scourge sometimes comes up big. I mean you can't rely on it, but sometimes it results in some monster damage. The bigger the target, the better it is.....

After really looking at the numbers, I still think for my Corr that Musculature is the way to go for right now (I still have 2 levels to 50). Power Build up is a nice addition too... a very nice alternative or addon to AIM.

Musculature gets me doing very respectable damage, without having to switch to a blaster variant and retaining my control/debuff element of Poison. Same goes for my Time toon really.

If you can wait a bit.. I suggest looking at the new Alpha- Agility. It covers End Mod, Recharge and a bit of Defense. It'll help your own recovery and Chrono Shift and boost all your recharge. (I'm also partial to Vigor but it doesn't exactly fit what you need.)

The only character I used Musculature on is my TA/Archery Defender. If you're looking for more damage- go Reactive Interface. On a Fire Blast character it is sick damage, my Fire/Fire/Fire Dom is completely over the top now, wiping out X8 mob sizes in a flash.