CrazyJerseyan

Originally Posted by Arbegla

Quick update. I hit level 6 yesterday, got my second ninja, and i'm using the above build, so rocking Envemon, Weaken, and 2 trigger happy ninja's is just pretty much fun right now.

I turned bosses on as quickly as i could, and i'm thinking of upping the difficulty to +0/2 or /3 just to get bigger groups. With the focus on single target damage, i'm pretty sure even with /2 giving more bosses then expected, i should be able to chew through them pretty easily.

Originally Posted by Bubblerella

If you want to do damage on a defender you'd be better off with a corr. Best corr is fire/cold for what it brings and can do. Fire/Kin is fine if you like hearing "SB Meh"

Originally Posted by Justaris

This is a hugely open-ended question and cannot really be answered without some idea of what you are looking for. The various Defender primary powersets are arguably the most diverse in the game from one another and they each have pros and cons to them.

You want buffs? FF, Traps and Cold can give you Defense, Sonic can give you Resistance, Empathy can give you a little of everything and is wonderful for recovery, regeneration and healing. Kinetics is the king for damage buffs and for recharge reduction, though Empathy's Adrenalin Boost works well too.

You want debuffs? Radiation can give you a little of everything, with an emphasis on regen debuffs. Dark Miasma can give you a ton of -tohit, and a smattering of -dam, -res and tons of control, not to mention an autohit cone stun power that doubles as the best rez in the game and the only mass rez. Trick Arrow can throw out just about everything and do some serious damage at the same time with OSA. Cold can neuter special abilities and turn the fearsome Ghost Widow into a kitty cat.

You want control? Storm can manipulate the field like few others can, though it can be irksome in the hands of a novice. Dark also ranks highly here, as does Trick Arrow.


The above is oversimplified, of course, since the Defender powersets almost all cover more than one of the roles above. If you have more questions, it may be possible to help you in a more specific way.


If you are asking about damage only, then it will to some measure depend on your secondary powerset, but ultimately nothing is going to rival Kinetics. Most likely the debuffing sets such as Sonic, Rad and Dark would be runners-up, with the buffing sets last as they have no way to increase their own damage (though some, like Empathy, can increase the damage done by teammates).

Originally Posted by Bookkeeper_Jay

The point was vague, sorry I missed it.

Originally Posted by Myrdinn

Updated, and thanks for the Thursday night run!

Originally Posted by BeornAgain

Um, what is "heal decay"?

Originally Posted by Phillygirl

I know people seem disapointed with the psi/em choice but honestly it's the one that is most used now for PvP. Dom's, stalkers, and sonic's are more situational. I really would like to stress that it is the prefered blaster/at that's why there was limited spots for the other at's, and your not getting the leftover spot.

I am sure we will adress different team makeups so I don't want to get into it here but your core team will have and need 3-4 psi/em's for their spike/damage abilities.



Also would like to remind people I will be runing Posi tf tonight 9pm est. For those who have just rolled I can get you to lvl 10 between 8-9pm in time to tf.

Originally Posted by Phillygirl

For those that couldn't make it last night here is a run down of what was covered:

Opening given by Lin

First and formost the goal is to have fun and to teach the basics of a specific kind of PvP, team arena.

There are various types of PvP in this game: Zone, Duels, team and Base raiding (RIP). Each category of PvP has its own skill set and mechanics and no category is better or above the rest.

Zone PvPers typical build for self sufficiency (ie..pff and aid self, or hibernate) and don't focus on using insp so much as you won't be zoning to your base every time you run out of insp just to reload.

Duelist focus on 1 vs 1 and build their character to also be self sufficient.

While team PvPers create characters that work well together to create situations where a target is removed from play rapidly while giving themselves the best chance as survival by evading till heals can come in from a dedicated healer

The reason we chose team-based PvP is because it gives us the best chance at a controlled environment for people to learn in and work together.

Rules Committee- Flux - talking points:

We set up the rules for a couple of reasons,to prevent people from getting an unfair advantage, because it's a learning environment, and to make sure everyone has fun and enjoys the experience.


Go over rules:

1) Players new to PvP will be only allowed to 1 character throughout the duration of Boot Camp.

2) Vet PvPers and BC1 grads will be able to pick 2 characters to play in this session of BC, if they choose to play a "healer" as one of their characters they will get an additional slot (total of 3 characters allowed).

3) No Purples/PvP IOs will be allowed in Boot Camp2

4)Alpha Slotting up to T2 is allowed. No level Shifted characters allowed in BC2. If a player is noted to be level shifted in a match, the match will be replayed. If someone slots a T3 or T4 once the match has started that match will be forfeited. No other Incarnate powers maybe used. (NOTE: we need to test to see if setting a team match to heavweight (41-46) will remove all incarnate powers, if so we will use this feature)

5) All accolades are allowed.

6) At least 50% of the team must be made up for Players new to PvP.

7) No more then 2 stalkers per round. If two are played one must be a player new to PvP.

8) No more than 1 Taunter per round (Scrapper/Brute/Tank).

9) No more then 2 players with TK maybe used per round. In some cases, teams maybe need to play 3 or more characters with TK in these situations 2 players will be designated as TKers and only they are allowed to use that power.

10) No more then 1 Thermal per round.

Eligibility:

This event is directed at players *new to pvp* so players who have zone experience or duelists may find this event a little slow for them at first, but if they stick with it they might enjoy the team aspect after week 8.
Participants are expected to show some level of dedication or willingness to learn so players who miss two or more meeting/team practices without a valid reason or checking in with their team captain (post week 8) *may* be dropped from their team and /or the event.

Sportsmanship:

The rules committee will not tolerate any form of griefing or harassment of players by participants. People will be warned by private tell if they are felt to be out of line. Major infractions may lead to immediate removal from the event. This will go for in game, on the forums and on vent.


Scouting/balancing committee introduction given by Phillygirl


This group will design teams with relative balance in mind, so that everyone can play on an equal footing and have fun. We *may* rebalance the teams if necessary, so you may find yourself on different teams from time to time.

Everyone did a quick introduction of themselves.


Ideas/check off committee intro given by MP

The basic layout of the event was be talked about: 16 weeks, with breaks for Holidays.

ATs/Powersets that are eligible was stated and signup sheet will be posted.

This group will me monitoring players and if players need additional help with various aspect of the PvP game, we will set them up with either group workshops or 1:1 mentoring with a vet pvper to help them.

Players where welcome them again and tell them the most important thing is to have fun.


The sign up was posted and the slot's for dom's, stalkers and sonic/em blasters have been filled.


For those not on that sheet you can now make your Psi/em blaster. If you contact me or masque we will invite you to the global channel we are using.


It was also stated that many have offered to help with XP acceleration and both myself and Justaris will be running acco and tf teams weekly. These will be announced in the global channel so remember to keep that channel up on your toons.


Above all, this is supposed to be a fun learning experience for everyone. We’re here to answer questions, help each other out, and let people know about a particular part of the game that can be a lot of fun.

Please let any of us know if you have any questions. Welcome!

Originally Posted by Flux_Vector

Do you post with two accounts? Cause you're not the original poster's forum name, and your name wasn't on the build.

If you're soloing tips and not doing so on team level difficulties, it's no wonder to me that you aren't having much trouble with being mezzed.

BU doesn't affect photon seekers. Neither does cosmic balance, set bonuses, or buffs like assault or fulcrum shift. It's one of the AT's longstanding known issues - unlike other pet-delivered damage powers (rain of X, burn, trip mine, etc) photon seekers don't inherit damage buffs from their caster. Unless there's been a stealth fix in the interim, but none of my friends who still are playing PBs has told me of one.

Radiant strike's KB is a pain in the butt, but as an attack it's got a very high DPA and is very well worth using at every opportunity. It's statistically the most powerful single-target attack you get by a significant margin, due to its fast animation speed.

I am a numbers guy.

I've found for PBs that the lack of true status protection makes tactical defense and self-healing/essence boosting more important than resistance shields. Even a brief stun suppresses your toggles during its application, meaning whatever resists you have are liable to be suppressed during periods you're actually getting hit by multiple attackers, since many NPC stuns are 'incidental' to their standard attacks (such as with rikti energy blasts).

Fire and cold resist are pretty minor in most content. Most fire and cold attacks are split 30% to 60% with smashing or lethal damage. Other than cherrypicking enemies like in a fire AE farm, I don't know of any content where you'd get more mitigation from the fire/cold shield than from the smash/lethal one. Not that it's necessarily bad to have, but I certainly get more actual survivability from superspeed.

Except it's not an attack that fires in 4s vs one that fires in 6, it's an attack that animates in 3.3 seconds vs one that animatins in 1.2 seconds. Recharge time matters less for your overall damage output than animation time. A fast-animating attack does higher damage per second of animation speed, and animation speed is the only choke on your attack chain that you can't do anything about. I fire radiant strike twice as often as I fire incandescent strike in my single target attack chain.

And again, BU doesn't work with photon seekers, or at least, it didn't as of issue 19.

I misidentified your pvp io as part of the hecatomb set though, they looked similar when I pulled up the data chunk to inspect because that 'long forum export' format really annoys me to read.

Then it works for you, and congratulations. But your build (which at the time of my posting I had no way of knowing was your build) is a nonstandard one and makes what I consider to be terrible choices for high-end play in the hands of someone who isn't tuning it specifically to a certain goal. I consider mez resistance an extremely questionable choice in particular, especially because you're slotting powers you otherwise wouldn't in order to get it, and overslotting shields for it. Also, because it was nerfed with the pvp changes in issue 13 - you're using around 180% hold resistance, for example, to get about the same effect as 100% hold resistance would've given in issue 12.

You can easily get the 5% recharge boost from doctored wounds in your heal powers instead.

Set bonus on apocalypse. Recharge is the PB's friend. The hold proc in devastation is mag 2 and achilles heel doesn't stack, so having too many of them in your attack chain isn't worth it. It's a judgement call how many to use.

I don't expect to use IS to hold a boss, because its cycle time is too long. When you factor in its animation speed, and level and rank resistance adjustments for the target, having IS on a 6-second recharge is just barely enough time to stack it onto a boss. You'll see him actually be held for like, 3-4 seconds before it wears off, if you're lucky. And a lot of that time will likely be consumed by IS's animation.

I don't expect to use pulsar to stun anything but minions. But stunning an 8 person spawn of minions is worth a lot of mitigation. I doubt a PB could survive an 8 person spawn by themselves for very long without using pulsar, or nuking in some fashion, to get the minions out of the equation. It's the same animation speed as IS, but it hits all the minions in a spawn and some of the LTs. That neuters alpha strikes when you fire it from stealth, and helps your team.

It - and dawn strike - are also some of the only powers PBs get that make them anything other than a gimped scrapper. Half the ATs in the game - scrapper, stalker, brute, warshade, PB, soldier, and widow - do the "survivable DPS" thing. All the other ones do it better - more survivable, more DPS. PBs need to have, and use effective, their extras to nuke and control and heal other. Really, I'd advocate human/nova for PBs who wanted to do their best, because nova's AOEs are quite well worth it.

You get +hp from +recharge as a pb, in the form of essence boost. My build still comes out to 2030 hitpoints with perma-ess boost. That's only 70 less than your 2100 and I'm not throwing slots at it.

You also get +20% hitpoints from accolades on any given character. That's generally 7 to 10 set bonuses worth without having to throw slots at it at all, if you make the effort - and if you're gonna build out a char you should be willing to make the effort.

I didn't recommend it to them. I did the opposite and pointed out I haven't updated it for issue 19 and the free fitness pool and said point blank I wasn't happy with it and wasn't able to get it to a point where I was happy.

I just said it might give them some ideas. But the posted build already included some purples, too (and a pvp IO I misidentified as a purple). In for a penny, in for a pound.

Originally Posted by Flux_Vector

That build is terrible for a humanform PB. It throws numerous slots away on status resistance bonuses in powers that don't really benefit from being slotted so heavily, like buildup and tactics. Status resistance lowers the duration of mez, it doesn't prevent you from being mezzed. In fact, with the amount of mez resistance in that build, mezzes will last about half their usual durations. Acrobatics does offer actual protection against a single mag 2 hold... but only minions and some AOEs are mag 2 in PvE, and minions tend to use stuns or sleeps, rather than holds. LT and boss-tier holds are mag 3, so would trample right over acrobatics. That all said? Acrobatics is a lot more reasonable of a counter-status measure than 6-slotting BU and tactics for a +7.5% mez resist bonus.

An even better defensive option would be pulsar, for stunning those minions before they can stun you, but... this build doesn't have it. For a human form PB, not having pulsar is simply insane. Considering its stats the fact that it's one of the AT's best powers is kind of a sign pointing to how badly PBs need some love from the devs, but it in fact is one of the PB's best powers.

Superspeed with the stealth proc, or stealth itself, is also tactically invaluable for being able to cherry pick an enemy with a hold and hit him with incandescent strike before he holds you... but again this build hasn't got it.

Slots are being wasted on the shields too, and on regen and max hp bonuses. You've only got two AOEs, solar flare and photon seekers, and they're AOEs your teammates will hate cause of the scatter they cause. And passing up dawn strike is, for a PB, also utterly insane in my opinion. With the recharge bonuses available to a high tier build, and now the incarnate Judgement slot, you probably should be able to combine dawn strike, photon seekers, and judgement to nuke down spawns of +con and high-rank enemies by yourself, or alternate through them to nuke down 3 spawns out of every 4 or 5 in more normal content.

Putting hecatomb into incandescent strike is a bad idea, you want to put procs into the attacks that fire more often whenever you have a choice. It should go in radiant strike. You also don't have to 6-slot it, the pure damage IO just gets most of its bonus wasted against the ED cap in every purple damage set. It's generally better to find an IO from another set that gives acc/end or acc/rech/end or something.

Here's my old PB build. It hasn't been updated for i19 or later, mainly because I've shelved the character until we can get some dev attention to improve on the AT a bit. But it should give you some ideas. With the powers freed up by i19 I was considering between a smash/lethal defense build with tough and weave and working in kinetic combats, using the spiritual alpha to compensate for lost purple recharge bonuses... or... I don't know what else, to be frank. I hit a brick wall where it didn't feel like I could realistically revamp the character to a point I was happy with, even with incarnate powers.[/code]

Originally Posted by 4c3Player

ok so id like to be devestating in the zone pvp areas and im not really sure what primary,secondary and epic to choose pls help

Originally Posted by Zenyth

You're right, as another MMO I'm sure you're all familiar with said "bring the player not the class", and I like to think I know and play my class well enough that people will want to bring me along.

That doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with the Peacebringer AT though. Just because you can still scoop up soup with it doesn't mean you should eat with a rusty spoon.

As for Warshades, I don't have one personally; but they seem to get by alright thanks to their gimmick. The more enemies they've got around to drain the more powerful and durable they are. Its simple, but effective, and something only they have. It helps them keep pace with the other AT's at least.

Originally Posted by Kenteko

And here is where guesses and "experience" falls apart. For you to not be getting CCed, Cosmic Balance would have to be fueled by no less then three controllers/dominators (to effectively give you 3 hold/stun/etc protection). To your specific numbers, you have hold 2 passively, which means you run and are specced acrobatics, bringing that number up to one controller or dominator who needs to be in the group with you to make it so that one mez won't immediately CC you. Alternatively, you could have been grouping with a traps, a force field, or a sonic resonance that had their aura up, or one of the many support classes that tend to have this obsessive urge to throw their mez protect on people.

In all seriousness, this now comes down to context. Most high end groups, with a few exceptions, have repeatable, reliable AoEs simply due to their design. Carnies and Malta are among the worst, with Flash and Stun Grenades (as well as tazers) being prevalent and common. Arachnos, PPD, Rikti, and Longbow likewise have reliable control in their bosses, albeit not as extremely "oh god pain" as Malta and Carnies. Some have very little to no control, Council, Cims, Column, generally those groups that are regarded as the garbage tier (excepting Cims).

So here's where your analogy breaks down: If you're fighting things that have minimal CC, the odds of you getting CCed is zero because, well, they have no CC. If you're fighting the mid tier stuff, Arachnos/PPD/Rikti/Longbow, odds are that Wardens are chain CCing you to death or you're not pulling enough aggro on certain mobs (mentalists/mesmerists/queens) to be in remote danger of getting CCed. If you're not fighting Malta and Carnies and are somehow managing to not be chain CCed, then that means you definitely had someone with control breaking abilities on your team or you're lying.

Alternatively, the fact that this entire thing hinges on you having a controller/dominator in your group, I could very readily just state the fact that you not being CCed is because your team members are doing their job (cause, y'know, they have hard aoe control) uninhibited. Unsurprisingly, the more controllers/dominators the team has, the less all squishies in general get CCed.

So basically, I could say my (non existant) peacebringer didn't get CCed because I ran the ITF, the BSF, Khan TF, or even Apex/Tin Mage. The lack of controller on my team doesn't even remotely matter, since there's no hard CC anywhere to be seen in any of these places. Even then, if you're not taking the alpha strike, any half decent controller/tank/dominator will lock down the entire spawn, of which only one in almost any high end SF (LRSF) has consistent aoe mezzes (Longbow Warden), so yea.

Math and logic is fun, isn't it? Also, I'm calling that you ran the ITF a couple of months ago, or even the BSF/Khan TF, both of which are control light/nonexistant.

Originally Posted by Kenteko

I should mention that you need ten THOUSAND percent reduction to lower mez duration to .99% of the original duration, explaining your hyperbole.



Source: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Caps

There is a monumental diminishing return because of the PVP change thus the need for the massive cap. Sitting at 80-300 (depending on buffs/IOs) basically means that you're still sitting at 20-40% effective duration reduction, give or take some %s, due to the fact that the game rounds decimals down as well as the massive diminishing returns.

As a matter of fact, just looking in game I'm passively sitting at 81.10% hold resistance which translates to -19.86% duration. This is by absolutely no means even close to 50%, and diminishing returns exists for status resistances BECAUSE of PVP.

So basically, status resistance is WORSE because of the PVP change that you pointed out, effectively meaning you need substantially higher amounts of mez reduction to even equalize what you had before. This is why status resist toggles were changed to direct resists in PVP (and alot of them) and why the cap was removed.

Originally Posted by Mousetrap

Well, you edited your post, I figured I could do the same. I really did want to be nice to you. I did. Here we go, though.

One, thanks for the thinly veiled insult. I appreciate it. Stop ending every post with something pithy and polite as though it excuses previous rudeness.

Two. Cosmic Balance only buffs you while you're within 300 feet of a given AT who's in your group. I don't think I need to tell you that touting that as mez resistance is foolish. Something I see you've removed from your post.

Three. My sticking point is this. You've put a lot of work into your PB. Speaking as someone who hates the lore concept of the Kheldians, I salute you. Zenyth has done the same or similar. However, this does not mean that Peacebringers are on par with other ATs. Other ATs with a similar amount of work and influence would be performing at a much higher level than yours or Zenyth's. Colloquial evidence of this being the many times he and I have done tip missions together.