Nature Affinity: what are you skipping?

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

That tends to be the time I need it most, tho'. I mean AoE -def and -res do help make mass fights faster, but any help I can get in taking down EB's and AV's is definitely welcome.

Ayup, this.

I'm right there with you thus far. Perhaps playing alongside it will change my mind, but it just hasn't grabbed my attention. Perhaps I'm a bit too excited about bio-armor and wanted it first

I won't be skipping it. I mean, in all likelihood I won't be using it, but it still fits 4slots of Basilisk's Gaze, right?

Seriously though, a PBAoE toggle in a mid-ranged set is just silly design. If it's meant to be a self defense against stray agro that breaks through the pack, then its effectiveness(proc chance/magnitude) and end cost are completely out of line with that.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Worse? You mean with them getting access to non-crashing nukes and potentially insta-snipes? >>

So is everyone else in comparison, so yeah, their performance will stay the same when comparing to other combos. I'm talking about how all the pseudo pet attacks will finally have correct AT numbers assigned to them, instead of everyone getting blaster versions.

I would hit Synapse with this info again just in case - I was hoping the end boost would be higher too but he seemed to want to buff just the healing strength when all those changes hit.

I was aiming to perma Wild Growth and slot it for resist but I'm thinking of going for +heal instead, even slotted, 20% resist isn't that good.

But I do think Mids is wrong and that that absorb in WB does increase with heal enhancements, but it's a new mechanic (as far as I know), absorb depends on the targets HP, so maybe that's not in the program yet. I did test +heal in the Sorcery absorb and it worked there.

...but I already have /Darkness Affinity for my Trollers (which, IMO, provides just as much; if not better mitigation) and /Poison for my Trollers and Corrs.

Trickshooter,

I've played a NA quite a bit on beta and while I don't have the numbers on Lifegiving Spores, I can tell you that the heal patch is quite good. I've been using it extensively on my NA/DP defender and with it on I do not see any end issues. At level 31-33 I've used it to take on several EBs and the like and except for Malaise (end draining jerk) I've been able to stand with em for 10-15 minutes at a time while only popping one or two blues.

Granted, I've been using chem rounds quite a bit so I can stand toe to toe with em, but the build has no IOs and end usage is quite nice. For normal mobs and even Boss levels, I rarely use the heal now.
Note: with an EB, you will have to use the heal some, but not exhaustively.

I did skip rebirth and Entagle Aura as I was trying the Sorcery PP too.

Something to consider JayboH, having the best buffs in the game this time means You have the best Tier 9... by quite a bit. Overgrowth is clocking in at a +82.5% Dam for defenders (66% for Corrupters, Controllers and 49.5% for MMs).

If you want damage, you can take Dark Mastery with Overgrowth and give yourself a hefty amount of damage for any secondary you want.

I've thought about making a NA/Sonic/Dark Defender that should be huuuuge on damage. When using Soul Drain, you can get damage boost from ~160-232% (solo) depending on how many SD hits.

If you're just doing SOs or vanilla IOs then I would go Heal and Recharge

For IO set(s), I was looking at Numina: H/R, H/E/R and H plus two (optional) vanilla resist IOs; optional because you could probably recoup the loss from not slotting them with the set bonus changes slated for i24

You might have convinced me to shell out some points this time around.

It gets better, Overgrowth also adds a base 12.5% tohit buff. This means you can do the fast snipe without tactics. You will still need the Kismet though.

Personally, I'm gonna make take my NA/DP from test and remake him live. With this combo you can make a pretty strong -Dam/+Dam machine. With this combo, i've been able to deal with some EBs and Manticore at +1 with relative ease without IOs.


Here are some of the -Dam numbers this combo can acheive.
For aoe and you will have to use Chem rounds that provide -Dam.
Spore Cloud with a -28.13%.
Hail of Bullets with a -25% for 8 sec.
Bullet rain with a -12.5% for 8 sec.
Empty clips with a -12.5% for 6 sec.
This would provide a small window of 78.18% -Dam and a sustainable (if you keep blasting and jumping) of 53.18%. SC + BR + HoB. Sprinkle in BR and EC as available.
Looks like I miscalculated on this part and it's even better than originally anticipated.

For single target you have
Spore Cloud with a -28.13%.
Corrosive Enzymes with a -31.25% for 30 seconds.
Hail of Bullets with a -25% for 8 sec.
all other single target blasts go for 12.5% for 6 to 8 sec.
That's 59.38 with just spore cloud and corrosive enzymes. Adding in the other numbers (many variations) and you can get to 85% consistently. This assumes you can maintain 2 blast debuffs going (actually it's at 84.38%). You should be able to keep 3 going (for 96.88%) with relative ease.

I know of at least one build in one MMO which is entirely built around exactly such a mechanic. The character gets a bunch of self-penalty-ally-buff powers, and a pool of corresponding enemy-debuff-self-buff powers. It's actually pretty awesome.

Not much of a DP guy; so I'll probably have to grab my -dmg from Interface (and I just recently learned that -res can actually help with -dmg)

Yay Archons!

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

I made a liar of myself again . I went Defender and Lifegiving Spores are awesome with Vigilance.

For clarity, I'm not claiming that Lifegiving Spores is some end hog. Far from it. Unslotted, it will effectively only cost 0.01 endurance a second if the caster stands in it, which is not going to make a dent in what players naturally recover per second (about 2.08 end per second with unslotted Stamina).

The thing that bothers me is that it's a toggle that costs endurance to grant endurance, and because it costs more endurance than it grants, the caster essentially doesn't get access to that bonus endurance. That leaves it as just a weak heal over time with an effectively small endurance cost for the caster. It's not horrible, but it's not that impressive either, which is why I said that I'd skip it if I had to (my current build plan includes it, but with only the single base slot). This is all while unslotted, by the way. A single slot of either EndRedux or EndMod and the power will give more endurance than it takes away. I'm just not sure slotting should be required to avoid a power making one of it's own buff values be effectively a negative value.

Toggles that cost endurance and grant endurance or recovery are very strange and, minus Lifegiving Spores and (I think) some bonus effects in the upcoming Bio Armor toggles, these kinds of powers typically have no endurance cost.

Obviously, as a team toggle it should have an endurance cost. With that said, I don't think it should be granting endurance. I think the +Endurance (possibly converted to +Recovery) should be moved in to one of the Click powers, and Lifegiving Spores should gain some other effect to replace the +Endurance. Perhaps add 25-30% +Recovery to Wild Growth (1% Endurance every 4 seconds is comparable to about 15% +Recovery, so I'd increase that to compensate for the reduced uptime of Wild Growth compared to Lifegiving Spores), reduce Wild Growth's +Regen to 50%, and then add another 50% +Regen to Lifegiving Spores.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside