Carnifax

[ QUOTE ]
My Acc/Recharge is from the purple set, which is giving me 4% recovery bonus (due to having 2 purples in)

If you promise to take DimShift and tell people how great it is, maybe someone will buy you the purple

NOT ME THOUGH! HAHAHAHA

[/ QUOTE ]
Cunning...

Its a pity I read the forums in Opera in plain text black and white and spotted your supposedly hidden disclaimer a mile off

[ QUOTE ]
3 damage procs (Smashing, lethal and Energy from memory)
1 -recharge proc
1 chance to hold proc (20-33% chance for each target! )
1 Acc/Recharge IO from a set.

With set bonus' it can hit enough times and is fireable every 5 secondish or so



[/ QUOTE ]
I go with 3 damage PROCS, 1 -recharge PROC and 2 Acc/End IOs. I can't slot or afford the Purple one yet. The End is needed as its on my staminaless char

[ QUOTE ]
Trust me. You'll get what's coming to you, and you'll never even see it coming.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ooooh I can't wait. Is it a ninja stealth assassin of my very own? I'll hug him and kiss him and call him Mr Cuddlelumps.

[ QUOTE ]
Can I be on the list too please?

[/ QUOTE ]
Noooooooooooo. My prize. Mines! Horrids Okton trying to steals our prizes.


Ahem. Yep I'm with Okton on this one, its not that its terribly bad itself, its just very situational really, I've a hard enough time cramming all my other powers into my PvE build that something I might use once in a blue moon has to go.

If it was a timed toggle, like the Only Affects Self powers like Phase Shift it'd be much more handy.

Yay. I made the list.

What do I win?

Actually I've never used Dimension Shift. I can see the tactical use of them occasionally (they'd be great again Carnie Master Illusionists to deal with that damned Pet spam) but I've never taken it. Well I pencilled it in on a Test PvP build before but never tried it out.

Zombies and Ninjas tend to be more melee based, with the tier 1 and 2s especially liking melee(or being more effective in it in the case of Grave Knights. You need to force-move them beside an enemy to get them to draw their broadswords. Once they do that they do silly damage). Necros tier 3 is more controller-like with an annoying Torrent power.

Thugs are probably the kings of pre-32 ranged damage. Tier 1 and 2s fire ranged Lethal attacks & cones, which the exception of the Arsonist who is your 3rd Tier one minion and does AOE Fire damage. Your Tier 3 is a Brute in a box although like Necros Grave Knights he can have AI issues and need a bit of encouragement.

For PvE I've found Thugs/Traps very, very effective indeed. My Necro/Dark is effective too but requires more micro-management, especially with the Grave Knights.

Necros level 18 power is great, rezzes a dead Henchie as a Spirit henchman. Means a very valid way of playing a Necro is to use a zombie as an alpha soaker, if he dies doing it extract the spirit and resummon the zombie.

Thugs level 18 is highly amusing, summon a flood of lowbie thugs. Great for mobbing bosses but they die very easily (and can easily aggro an entire room).

On the American Forum Bots are frequently mentioned as the toughest pets once you get 2 protectors going. Bots/Traps seems to be the anti-AV MM of choice over there.

For PvP I'm not sure on primary really, I suppose Ranged pets should be able to keep firing on moving targets better than meleers and for secondary Poison is probably the strongest followed by maybe Trick Arrow (for the stackable -slows). *Edit : Looking at that thread Zombies and Ninja seem other peoples choices for PvP

[ QUOTE ]
What?

Wormhole is made of win!

Silly billy. Worm/hole+AoE Immob = Second group hold



[/ QUOTE ]
Plus its got a slightly longer duration than Flashfire. And no other AOE mez can be used to play "Fetch" with the scrappers.

"Go get it boy. Go get it. Thats a good boy"

Solo or on small teams its probably the best tactical AOE mez in the game. I love being able to TP enemy bosses solo. They don't come out stunned but with my Grav/TA they're Ice Arrow + Grav Distorted into a hold before they can even get back onto their feet.

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed with Carnifax, Acid arrow and EMP arrow are both too good sticks to pass up, get 'em when they become avaliable.

I'd also avoid Total focus at 49 and just take the mez then personally, if you've built yourself right you'll be too busy shooting off arrows (and in your case healling the odd teammate) to be hitting stuff hard, but that's me personally.

Frankly I'd get rid of Explosive arrow as well: it knocks everything around so much it can become very tricky to both use it and to keep stuff in your patch of doom.

Plus Poison Gas arrow is a good investment to make, not necessary but definitly worth considering (and probably more useful than ranged arrow for a suggestion of what to axe)


As for flash over net, I go flash myself, a big AoE accuracy debuff seems a lot more useful than a single target immobolize. Though again, that's just me.

[/ QUOTE ]

The ToHit debuff for Flash Arrow is 6.25%. Thats fairly measly really. Plus Flash is bugged so that although it doesn't aggro itself it registers the caster as "The last attacker" so when the group does aggro any mobs with no better targets (either taunters or someone who did them damage) will choose the caster as their initial target.

Flash (and its controller kin, Smoke) can be handy for stealthing occasionally, I've used Smoke occasionally to get past tough spots (most memorably vs the high level DE in Eden when doing the end of Numinas TF).

Ice/Sonics is one I'm thinking about too with the new AI for jack. I think he'd look quite spiffy with the Sonic Shields and Disruption field running on him.

EMP is a great power, best ranged hold in the game. But vs Praetorians its not much cop because the -Regen only lasts 15 seconds. Acid Arrow is a great power too, the -Resist is the same as Disruption Arrow, its quick and perma out of the box and its got -defense too (so will take the -Resist PROC in the Achilles Heel set). Vs AVs alone the perma -resist from Acid is probably better than the 15 seconds out of every 5 mins -regen that EMP gives.

I'd take Net Arrow over Flash for AVs as well (to keep them in the burny goodness of Oil Slick).

For my money I'd drop the rez and take Acid Arrow and take EMP instead of the Ranged or Explosive Arrow (swap em around) for mass holding enemies (I'd keep Explosive first and try and get a Forced Feedback +recharge PROC in it).

After thinking about it for a long while I'm considering Poison Gas Arrow again, mostly for soloing EBs myself, the -damage might mean the difference between life and death.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just remember that Disruption Arrow stacks with itself, but Acid doesn't, so you should be able to have about -60% Res at points during the battle.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you sure?

I'd need to double check just because I usually think its best to but as it is I currently only get the recharge to meet a base duration with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You need Haste (or IO sets) to get two Disruption Arrows up. Even then it won't stack for very long. You can get about 8 seconds of both being up and the effects duration is 5.25 seconds so with 3 recharges and Haste you can get a max of about 12-13 seconds stacked.

With just 3 recharges you've got max about 4 seconds as the inital ones effect lingers.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Sonics does have an AOE sleep (decent solo) and a single target stun which give it a bit of utility too.

Plus it can give you a migrane with all the screeching going on!

[/ QUOTE ]

I used to have Sirens Song (the sonic sleep attack) but I always forgot I'd used it and then used Howl and wake them all up

I'm pretty sure that mobs were angrier after being woken up.

I do enjoy my Sonic Corr tho, I played the character Solo most of the way to 50 normally on Renlentless, as someone meantioned earlier in this thread about the difficultly settings in relation to the power sets.

Having the -def isn't that noticable while on a big team but being able to effectively solo Heroes can make up for it.

[/ QUOTE ]

-Resist in Sonics. -Def is Rad, which is great pre-SOs and for tight builds as you can get away with less slots in the Rad Blasts, especially coupled with Aim and Irradiate. For my money Rad is the "slotting king" with this, the -Defense IO sets (including the Achilles Heel PROC) and the Forced Feedback PROC in Electron Haze.

On my Dark/Sonics Defender I find the stacked -Resist is great on teams, especially if you focus on the same target as a heavy damaging teammate. I tend to target through the best single target damager on the team and shoot whatever they're focused on to ramp up their damage.

A Sonics/Dark or Sonics/Rad (I prefer Dark to be honest as you get the cool Fear in the secondary too) would be an Hero demolisher once you start spamming attacks and Heals+Howling Twlight (for Dark) or Linger Rad on him (-resist and -Regen. Mmmmm).

Sonics does have an AOE sleep (decent solo) and a single target stun which give it a bit of utility too.

Plus it can give you a migrane with all the screeching going on!

[ QUOTE ]
But isn't Fire's single target damage also superior to the other primaries?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure if the DPS is, considering Ice is quicker animating and Sonics helps indirectly by weakening your opponent as you attack.

Certainly the recent Flares change in Fire upps its solo damage a bit, before that change Flares long animation time meant it was fairly useless.

AOE is actually better on teams as solo you'll be rarely facing 3-4 enemies at once (unless you pull two or three groups at once of course )

AOEs are also expensive in End terms so single-target attacks are better, especially against tougher foes. Ice and Sonics start to shine then for the extra control and single target damage they do (sonics is nice vs bosses as the -resistance debuffs will stack up so you'll hit harder as you chain attacks).

If I was soloing Fire I'd go with the 2nd or 4th difficultly setting. (more enemies) With Ice and Sonic I'd go 3rd or 5th (tougher enemies but less of them than 2nd or 4th)

Right, you're going right off the radar now dude, I'm not sure if you've been drinking, or high (if so, can I have some, thats some good [censored]) or what but seriously!!

Generally I'd read your mails expecting a logical argument, even if I disagreed with it. This is the sort of nonsense I'd expect with a smilie at the end of it...

Name one PROC that affects pet AI, other than this one.

I'm not saying new enhancements should be able to affect pet AI, if thats the intended purpose of a new enhancement. But this clearly isn't.

To be honest your whole argument is weak beyond belief, and your continued railing against fact and refusual to accept that maybe you're wrong here is a little bizarre. I've a Bruiser and this PROC and its buggy side effects would be great. But I'm not going to claim its a quirk, not a bug, and campaign for the text to be changed so I can exploit it. Instead I'd prefer the Bruisers AI to be sorted out. Your argument to keeping this seems to be that some people use it as a workaround for another bug. Workarounds in code are a bad way to programme and just end up causing more issues (like say a Singularity or a Phant running in to close combat too) than they solve. Then you end up running around trying to plug all those issues too and end up with a whole raft of rules and subclauses and end up with a big mess.

[ QUOTE ]

It doesn't say on the proc "This proc is guaranteed not to affect the behaviour of your pet".


[/ QUOTE ]
Thats a superb argument right there. The Devs should take it and use it to justify the Burning Oil Slick pet bug (sorry, "quirk") too. Then they won't need to fix that either. I think this sums up your argument right here. Theres also a Dilbert cartoon you might like to use "Thats not a bug, to ensure we hit release date all bugs were upgraded to 'Features'".

Hi folks,
Keep posting these. At the end of the month or thereabouts I'll update the post and ask GR to edit it for me, just so we aren't constantly hassling him with every change.

And @Heyman next time I'm on I'll probably be bugging you for an invite myself

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

[/ QUOTE ]

ah, but this is great with /TA, the more mobs you can get into the Oil slick/disruption zone the better.


[/ QUOTE ]
Disruption Arrow caps at 10 mobs anyway. And on large teams a Controller (or their pet) attracting Adds is generally considered a Bad Thing (Oil slick arrow isn't available all the time either, and won't one-shot kill Yellows or higher)
[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet

[/ QUOTE ]

...until the PA duration expires and the mobs all come after you...


[/ QUOTE ]
This is standard with Illusion and any Illusionist knows how to counter it, unpredictable & undocumentated pet behaviour introduced by a PROC is a different kettle o fish.

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

[/ QUOTE ]

So I have to move closer than I need to to use my powers, thus putting myself at unnessassary risk? No thanks.


[/ QUOTE ]
All powers have a range. If you want to use a power effectively you may need to get closer than you want to. That's a basic premise of the game.

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

[/ QUOTE ]

If there is a bug, it's the Phantasm accepting KB sets in the first place. No one is forcing you to slot it with this proc, if you don't like the way it affects the phants behaviour then don't.

[/ QUOTE ]
I imagine this will be the annoyingly quick-fix to this behaviour. The AI change is still a bug, its unpredicable behaviour in previously stable code caused by the introduction of new code. Thats a bug, not a "quirk". The fact that Phants (and other pets) accept these new IO sets is certainly an inconsistancy with previous logic and could also be classifed as a bug (unless they start opening out the older sets to pets as well as they did with Fluffy. Per-leaaaaase!!!)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Why would you want a Phant, who creates a decoy himself anyway, to run into melee?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because sometimes he hangs so far back he is out of the fight all together.

If the Phant is buffed with FFs he makes a passible tank anyway. With a decoy, a double tank.

The proc is bugged to fire 100% of the time anyway. When that is fixed I doubt the effect on pet behavior will be so noticable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree that he ever makes a decent tank himself, due to the decoy. It means that if he does run into combat and his attention then focuses elsewhere he effectively spreads out his aggroing range due to the fact that unaggroed mobs will suddenly "wake up" and spot his materializing decoy. (this is always the case and is one reason I'm careful not to be the first around corners or opening doors in large teams, the PROC AI change breaks this, it could be disasterous in that lab room with the 4 bits of breakable equipment).

A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet.

If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

Why would you want a Phant, who creates a decoy himself anyway, to run into melee? It just means the idiot can now see further and is more likely to draw extra aggro, especially if he runs into melee range, his target dies and then he casts Decoy at another spawn across the room.

Depending on the times I'd like to make an apperance too in various forms (athough I've only 3 toons over 40 and they're all controllers).

So I'm interested but usually unable to get on before 9 (although I'll happily come along late if its still running then)

[ QUOTE ]
Worse. Testing decision ever.

[/ QUOTE ]
I know!

If anything they should have changed it to a fear or something, so mobs could fire back if attacked but then go back to cowering. The one-hit sleep is fairly useless.

[ QUOTE ]
Glue should be, because it's brilliant for agroing mobs and then using to make a get away.

I didn't know that about Poison Gas...



Most of TA's don't stack right? But I'm I right in thinking the "new" version of a power replaced the old version?

[/ QUOTE ]

Poison Gas used to be a targetted placeable, it worked like Glue Arrow and acted something like the Poison Traps, with a sporadic Sleep tick, but got weakened in testing so it became a direct target move. The FX are a throwback to its previous way of working.

Acid Arrow & Flash Arrow don't stack. As far as I know most of the other powers do, if you can fire em off quickly enough.

*Edit : I'm sort of sure that Poisons damage debuff doesn't stack either but Red Tomaxes site seems not to list items that won't self-stack any more.

[ QUOTE ]
There's pretty much two types of ranged AoEs in Trick Arror.

Positional - Oil Slick, Disruption Arrow (And Rain of Arrows from Archery). You click the cursoer where you want to the center of the AoE to be.

Targetted - Acid Arrow, Glue Arrow, Poison Gas, Flash Arrow. The enemy you have in the target box is the center to the AoE.


I'd like more of the former

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, glue should really be positional.

Poison Gas looks like it should be but its not a placeable any more, its just a standard AOE with lingering fx nowadays (doesn't matter if someone wanders into the AOE after its cast, they still won't be affected by it)

EMP is a targetted AOE as well (rightly so)