EricHough

I would seriously consider taking air superiority or some other pool attack while levelling - even if you respec out of it later it will help a lot as the real problem with a solo plant controller (of any type) is dealing out single target damage. Your AE damage is reasonably solid once you have seeds+roots going reliably but single LT's (or one left after you kill all the minions around him) are not worth confuse or roots and your single target hold is just not enough damage alone.

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It definitely makes sense when you put it that way. Anyone with a high level /elec played on test yet and want to share their experiences?

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I played for about half an hour this evening, and soloing my Mind/Elec was even smoother than usual. Damage was rolling out, and because I was wasting less of those big hits on overkill my End usage was lower than on live.

Unfortunately, I'm going to need a respec soon. The lower recharges on the melee mean I have too many attacks now. Not sure what I'll drop, though.

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I have the same problem on my mind/electric - she is only 22 and doesn't have to many attacks but I had slotted up mez for damage because I needed it as a filler in my attack chain. Now with the faster recharge on charged brawl and havok punch I can actually manage a fairly fast, very solid attack chain with LB+CB+HP which means I can pull some of the slots out of mezmerize and allocate them to other things.

Overall despite the drop in individual attack damage I am finding my mind/electric to be insanely good - I habitually frankenslot attacks as soon as I hit L22 and with 56% accuracy, 36% rech/end reduction and 90%+ damage in most of my attacks my chain is very solid, I barely burn through my end and I am seriously considering dropping hasten - so far I have never needed to use it, although I have only run a few paper missions on villainous - I need to bump her up to level 3 and see how things work as I might want hasten at that point. (she doesn't have enough AE damage or control to handle larger groups yet so level 1 or 3 is the only choice).

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Its created a bonus for certain secondaries or primaries that was probably unintended. By that I mean I don't think anyone on the dev team thought "Hey, lets give /Storm, /Traps and Thugs/ Masterminds a much-needed boost!" when they first made these sets.

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The game is balanced around SO, not IO's. So the dev's really don't care.

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That is a good point and ultimately I don't care that much either (as I noted above, I am taking full advantage of this on my thugs/traps MM) it just seems that this is yet another way that the stronger sets have been made stronger (thugs specfically) and weaker ones haven't been helped much unless you want to play /storm (I am thinking specifically of mercenaries here - which are generally considered the worst of the MM sets although ninja's have thier own problems as well).

I am actually worried about power push - it is sooo good I can easily see them adjusting it back in some way. A tier 2 blast that does 100% KB and is at a 1.4 accuracy? At the very least I would expect to see the accuracy pushed back to normal levels (1.0). I would hope they leave the KB alone - it actually makes the set worthwhile having a controll that works 100% of the time early on.

Mind you - I love the set on test as it is but I certainly don't want to get used to it and then see it trimmed back.

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Fine, then. My Ice blaster can't slot a set specifically designed with blasters in mind (Sting of the Manticore).
Said Stone tanker can't slot the Sandman proc which is great for survivability.
Plenty of controllers can't slot various control sets.

And if you need recharge in your pets, tone your difficulty down.

Mastermind pets aren't the pets Recharge-Intensive Pet sets were for. They're for the ones on long recharge timers, like Warshades' fluffies, Tornado, Lightning Storm, or Patron pets. Mastermind pets don't need recharge enhancement, because the summons refresh fast enough as is.

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This argument fails as its the same argument I responded to previously. Your right, your ice blaster cannot slot sting of the manticore - but the benefits offered by that set can be found in other sets (global recharge, global damage, etc) where the unique IO's in the RIP sets give benefits NOT found elsewhere.

As for recharge in MM pet sets - my point was not that it was needed but that you can still benefit from them - sure, not as much as tornado, LS and other pets benefit but you CAN benefit from them. I don't WANT recharge in my MM pets - if I did i would slot recharge. I was just pointing out that claiming that the MM pets don't benefit at all from recharge is wrong.

Look - there are three facts here:

1) an additional 10% resistance and 5% def is a large benefit to MM pets which becomes even more effective when stacked with the regular pet set uniques
2) SOME MM's can use the RIP uniques and some cannot - making those that can much more effective
3) The fact that SOME mm's can slot he unique's mean that the dev's don't consider it unreasonable to stack the pet aura benefits, which I see as the only valid reason for not allowing all MM's to slot the RIP uniques.

The amusing thing here is that one of the MM sets almost everyone considers the best (Thugs) is one of the few that can slot both sets of unique's without picking a specific secondary. I certinaly don't consider that balanced in any way and I HAVE a thugs/traps who is benefitting from this.

I have seen no reasonable arguements so far for NOT giving MM's these bonuses, just arguments for not allowing them to slot the RIP sets or invalid comparsins to other set bonuses that are not unique.

I really think the dev's should have made the RIP unique's not stack with the regular pet set unique's - then the fact that some MM's could slot the RIP sets would have just meant that they had more options for getting a nice, but small, bonus. Letting them stack is what makes the combination very powerfull. However, at this point in time there is no way to remove this ability without a lot of whining and crying to the only reasonable change is to allow all MM's to use them - which means allowing MM pets to slot the RIP sets.

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My /SR has to go to pool powers to slot a Steadfast for +3% defense, it's not fair~!
My Stone Melee tank can't slot a cheap purple sleep set like that Icy Melee tank can, not fair!
My Energy Melee tanker can't get a 4-slot 7.5% recharge bonus from KO Blow, but your SS tanker can! Totally not fair!
My BS/Invuln can't slot Theft of Essence procs, but that Dark Melee/Dark Armor scrapper can slot two! Not fair!


In other words, not every powerset can slot every type of IO, so quit your [censored].

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But your SR CAN go to a pool power to slot the steadfast, your stone melee CAN slot some purple sets - the fact that some are cheap and others are not is a factor of popularity, not ability. All the other examples you give can get similar bonuses by slotting some other sets in some way i.e your energy melee can slot a lot of stun sets that the SS can't because all his attacks do stun - however there is NO way for an MM to slot a bonus designed entirely for pets unless they pick a specific primary or secondary set.

The recharge intensive pet sets are yet another example of the dev's not completely thinking things through - there is NO reason that normal MM pets should not be able to slot them other then an arbitrary decision - recharge intensive pet sets are damage based sets just like the regular pet sets (which is why dark miasma's dark servant cannot slot either) so the fact that SOME pets can slot both and some pets can slot one or the other is purely arbitrary. Yes, you can argue that the MM pets don't NEED the recharge - but they DO benefit from it (just not much) and allowing them to slot the recharge intensive sets are not going to give them any advantage except for balancing out the various sets by allowing them all to slot the unique's - using the other IO's in the sets in regular pets is actually going to be a disadvanage in many cases.

I could see not allowing regular MM pets to slot the recharge intensive pet sets if there was NO way for any MM to slot them (so NO mm pets could benefit from the uniques) - but the fact that SOME of them can means that it is stupid to leave things as it is.

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Used to do it that way, but found I needed 1-2 purples to do the toggle pull anyway

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Wuh?

I'm not trying to be a meanie here, but... wuh?

I've got four level 50 Dark Miasmas, and I never ran into this. How do you position yourself to apply the debuff, and what do you do next?

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I'm still in the 20s, and don't have a travel power yet. The toggle isn't enough, even stacked with shadowfall, to keep me mostly untouched. Until I picked up CJ at last level, immobs were an issue, too. I don't have full invis, and don't move around too quickly yet, plus lack sufficient +def set bonuses and slotting to get high enough -tohit or +def to run without a little extra def from eating insp.

RagManX

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Darlest night will never be enough alone - you need to stack it with fearsome stare. The reason fearsome stare is considered a must take power in /dark is not the fear (although that is a nice bonus) its the fact that it has as much -to hit as darkest night AND is not a toggle that will drop if you are mezzed.

One of the standard pulls I use when soloing my fire/dark corruptor is the folllowing:

1) Use shadowfall to stealth into position to drop darkest night on an LT or boss in the back of a spawn or two
2) Run back around a corner and drop tar patch on the mob side of the corner
3) when the mobs have followed to the corner and are stuck in tar patch, pop around the corner and hit the group with fearsome stare. At this point they will have at least a 30% to hit debuff stacked on them (more with good slotting) and you should be pretty safe - worse case you get mezzed and drop darkest night but by then the fear should have locked everything down.
4. Aim+RoF+Fireball+whatever to finish things off, or whatever attack powers you have in your primary.

If the mobs are bunched together already or there are not good corners to run to I open with fearsome stare to lock them down - then drop darkest night, tar patch, etc. The HUGE range on fearsome stare means that they only have to be mostly bunched to get everything.

Both fearsome stare and darkest night should be slotted for to hit debuff as soon as posssible (so right after acc/rech in FS and end reduction in DN) to maximize the protection.

Unlike most folks on this thread I actually have had the opposite experience - I have an easier time soloing my controllers than my corruptors, although I will freely admit I only play certain controller sets (mind, illusion and plant to be specific). I have only been able to get 2 corruptor up to L22+, my fire/rad because I duo'ed with my brother (2 fire/rads burn through things very fast) and my fire/dark because I pushed on through the levels that are toughest for me during a double XP weekend. I don't play the fire/rad any more and while i have gotten my fire/dark to 31 I find it to be either to easy or to frustrating to play.

On the other hand I have 2 plant/*, 3 Illusion/* and 2 mind/* controllers that are between 25 and 40 and I may eventually push my illusion/rad up to 50.

Part of the reason I have so much easier time with controllers is because on blue side you can start slotting some SO level enhancements at Level 10 depending on your origin and being able to cap your damage slotting by level 11 or 13 in certain powers helps a lot. However I find playing even my L31 fire/dark an exercise in frustration and I am fairly sure I don't just need to lrn2play - I am quite comfortable with standard dark tactics.

I would suggest that the OP try BOTH and make sure you are using equally soloable power sets. As folks mentioned above anything/dark is pretty good for soloing as a corruptor with /rad a good second choice (I actually think /rad is a better debuffing secondary but /dark has more -to hit, more control and is less dependant on toggles which helps a lot while soloing). For controllers mind/anything solo's excellently at all levels (although it is not as fast post 32 as other controllers with pets) and both plant and illusion are fairly soloable as well.

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~ In Wave 2, how do all the MM minions (including the Gang War peeps) have a 30% plus chance to hit a capped character? There was no defense debuff that registered on my defense monitor. Did anyone notice any Empathy types buffing with a ToHit buff maybe? (I am working on kill order and things are too hectic for me to figure our all the secondaries.)



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If NPC masterminds get supremacy just like PC MM's then they would give thier pets a 10% to hit buff - I suppose some combination of stacking supremacy + scaling could produce this effect. Just a thought.

Not sure about any of the other questions - I tried the challenge a long while back when Arcanaville first designed it and decided it wasn't my cup of tea so don't know a lot about it.

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QR

As a side question, is the 6% to hit IO better than a 9% accuracy set bonus? I just realized I could drop a 4th LoTG and grab that IO if its better.

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Yes, it's better. I wouldn't make a build without it.

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It depends on the situation, but I'll agree that, in most cases, the +tohit is better. Of course, in most cases, neither is really going to be needed.

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The only scrappers that I don't eventually slot with a kismet +acc IO are dual blades and claws as you can have a constant +10% to hit buff from BF/FU, more if you slot the powers with to hit buff enhancements or have enough recharge to stack them, although since these attacks have to hit to get the buff I can see a case for slotting a kismet even for DB/Claws.

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On my 41 Bots/FF I have, looking at thier stats in-game, gotten all my bots to over 50% def (to ranged and AoE) using my bubbles, ProBots bubbles, big bubble and Maneuvers.

But looking at your numbers that shouldn't be possible...right? So what else could have enhanced the Def of my bots?

Thanks!

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JupiterMoon's character in his post is bots/traps, not bots/FF, which is why they are not soft capped. If you actually read his ENTIRE post, not just part of it, you will see that he is doing an equal comparison - bots/traps to thugs/traps with identical enhancement slotting.

He does note in at least one of his posts that you can softcap with bots/FF but I think it is pretty obvious that you give up a lot to do that - */FF is pretty much a completely defensive set with no way to boost your pets offensively.

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Yeah- that's the only skill where Gaussian's proc can make a solid contribution. Well, that and Blinding Feint I should say.

Ironically, the proc is better in a Toggle than in most click skills.

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A lot of people claim it is better in a toggle - and I agree that unless you use a click power more often then once every 10 seconds you will have more checks for it to fire off in toggle however with the short duration of the buildup I have always felt that the odds of it both firing off AND affecting attacks was a lot less likely in a toggle as it checks every 10 seconds whether or not you are actually in combat, about to attack, etc - so if it fires off when a mob has a sliver of health left, or when running between combats it won't do you any good.

At least with buildup/aim you are always going to follow up with attacks immediately afterwords so you will get maximum benefit from the build up effect if it does fire off. Obviously, follow up/blinding feint is going to be the best choice as with a reasonable amount of recharge you can use that more than every 10 seconds but I had a gaussian's chance for build up in my archery/devices blasters targetting drone and I don't recall EVER noticing the build up effect being of use. That doesn't mean it wasn't but I certainly didn't notice it.

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There is really very little difference between any of the other servers as far as population goes. The ability to join teams has far more to do with your ability and effort than any other factor.

Just like Player, my home server is Protector, one of the "lowest". I never have problems getting or forming a team at almost any time of the day.

* Join your server global channels.
* Find an SG with active players.
* Use the server section here on the forum.

That is all you need to do to get teams on any server, no matter what the population.

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I play on protector and don't even advertise for teams and I STILL get at least 1 invite a play session, on blue side at least. I play red side on justice and don't get as many invites there but still get quite a few.

Craft the steadfast and then sell it crafted - you will get a better price (much better, far more than it costs to craft). Make sure you check the prices for several levels around the one you are selling and set a price based on all of them otherwise you risk setting too high a price because you happen to have the one level that occaisonally sells for more than others.

Tried to play your arc with my fire/dark corruptor - killed in two shots by the EB right at the beginning of the first mission. Please - think seriously about putting gratuitous EB/AV's in missions. Having a multi-mission arc build up to an EB/AV is ok but running into EB's in every mission is getting really frustrating and starting to turn me off of AE mission entirely.

I was not willing to even play beyond this so I didn't actually rate it as I can't say if the rest of it was good/bad/etc - but if you want your arc accessable to most characters I should be able to play it on something other than level 1 with a non-scrapper/brute/tank.

Actually, which power you slot it in won't matter so much as whether you also slot additional health enhancements in the power - both of the +regen unique's are not affected by the power in which they are slotted but they ARE affected by the enhancements slotted in that power - so if you have the numina unique plus 3 SO/IO healing enhancements (roughly 95% with ED) you will get a 38% regen boost from the unique instead of the normal 20%, regardless of whether it is slotted in HPT, health or fast healing.

Provided you can spare the slots I WOULD put it in HPT - along with 3 other healing enhancments to max the HP from HPT and the regen from the unique (unless you are into slotting HPT with resistance enhancments as well - but that is rarely worth it). The only reason I would suggest HPT above health/fast healing is that this is the best one to slot up first out of the 3 so this will maximize the benefit of the slots.

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It'ss too bad that using eviscerate in an ST attack chain would seriously hurt the overall damage output. At least that's what my gut tells me. The persistent 15% chance to crit + the -DR proc might make it ok.

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Are you sure that using eviscerate would hurt the single target attack chain? It looks like it has a higher DPA than strike, which is frequently included in the standard claws attack chain (FU+Slash+focus+strike), at least according to in game numbers on my claws scrapper who currently shows a 49.68 DPA for eviscerate vs a 46.69 DPA in strike (unbuffed numbers at L50). I don't have the arcanatime formula handy to calculate a real DPA (and I am too lazy to look it up and apply it) so that might push strike up over eviscerate but I thought that arcanatime tended to impact faster attacks much more than slower ones.

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So this set me to wondering about this whole issue. Maybe some people haven't gotten the idea that they can't run these missions at the same difficulty levels they do regular content, maybe they hate the idea of having to admit their builds aren't so uber or something and toning it down. There certainly are cases of people building bosses that are way tough, I was fighting some with an MM this morning that rezzed and drained End that were just too much (still survived them all though . Like normal combat, some builds or ATs or level ranges are just going to flat out be BAD at facing certain types of foes in MA. I kind of think it's up to the player to know their limits and not the MA creator's fault for not tailoring the arc to them. If any squishie could solo an arc, not many would be much of a challenge, which is what some people are creating and playing them for (not me, but some do).

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Soooo TRUE!

I couldn't agree with this sentiment more. Well put sir.

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Well, the problem I have is not that I expect the MA missions to be playable at the same level as PVE missions - its that I have NO way of telling thier difficulty, whatever is in the description. I do like playing close to the edge and with PVE missions I can judge where that is fairly well whether I am paying my scrapper, mastermind or blaster. In the MA I will run one mission that is a walk in the park at level 4 and then the next one will kick my [censored] even at level 2 and since I have to run out to adjust my mission level every time I figure that out it means I have a choice of playing at level 1 and being bored most of the time (except for the occaisonal deadly at L1 mission :-) or spending a lot of time dieing, resetting my mission level, then possibly being bored if I guessed wrong this time.

Also - a mission that is a walk in the park for a tank and reasonably balanced for a stalker could easily by death to a blaster, controller or other squishy. This is one problem with custom content - since you can't know what sets the custom content has you won't know if they are going to be immune to your controls (totally butchering controllers/dominators) or dish out a ton of ranged damage (killing basters faster than they can kill back) until you go in the mission and die - frequently in a single volley, which is frustrating.

They could fix the first problem simply by putting a field analyst/fateweaver in the mission room (why they haven't, I don't know - they actually provide easier access to inspirations which means you can burn through an entire tray per mission if you want to - but you can't reset your mission level). The second problem is not so easily addressable although at this point I pretty much avoid missions that are all custom mobs.

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I'd say it's best to do the opposite. First you use the hold, then the "cage" ( immobilisation, slotted for damage ).

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You can do this, but you sacrifice the Containment bonus you'd get for caging first. It probably depends on how much you fear the retaliation of the mob.

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Uh, no you don't. Holds set up Containment just like Immobilizations do.

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The only problem with using the hold to set up containment and then using the immobilize to do damage is that the immobilize takes so LONG to do its damage - a 9 second DOT is a long DOT. I find it inefficient and boring to wait that long plus as far as I can tell the single target holds and immobilizes do the same damage, its just that the holds either do it up front or over a shorter time. Yes, you can spam the single target immob faster but at low levels that burns a lot of end that you don't have.

I suspect you are better off using the immobilize to set up containment (either single target or AE) then a hold to lock things down (and do damage) and then taking and slotting up a melee attack to actually finish off targets. I find that air superiority speeds things up considerably and it costs less end for the damage then either your hold or immobilize. Boxing is also a good choice as is jump kick. As an added bonus, both jump kick and AS open up movement powers.

One thing to watch out for - I notice a lot of people recommending you buy a system with 2gb of memory and then if that is not enough pick up some extra memory. if you do this be carefull - depending on how the of memory slots on the motherboard are populated you may end up having to replace the existing memory sticks rather than just adding to them - the reason i say this is because most MB's have 4 slots for memory sticks and if your 2 gb system comes with, say, 4 x 512 mb memory sticks (not common, but it could happen) then in order upgrade to 4 gb you will have to buy 4 new 1 GB memory sticks and pull the old ones completely.

I haven't been up to the dell web pages lately but I remember that at least some of the system configuration pages would tell you what kinds of memory the system contained so if it does, just make sure that there is room for expansion.

Has anyone else noticed that since tuesdays patch toggle powers that where on when you clicked the mission exit button are turned off when you get out of the mission? It seemed intermittent at first but this morning it has happened after every single mission I run.

I have logged a bug but if other folks are experiencing it I would urge you to bug it as it can take them several reports and some time to track down problems like this, especially if intermittent.

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Ok - so clearly there are a large number of folks who think that it is MORE important to be able to down rate a bad mission than it is to prevent a good misison from being down rated inappropriately. I am not sure you are right, but I think we are down to fairly basic opposing points so I don't see how any more discussion will help.

I do think that divorcing the rating system from tickets and badge awards is probably the correct way to go, combined with a better seach engine that has reasonable tags so you can actually find missions you want to play. I suspect the dev's need to do something like that first, then look to see how it affects the rating system before they make changes to it.

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Yes on the last paragraph: badges, tickets and more importantly the freaking free slot should be totally REMOVED from being linked to ratings.

EDIT: I would have no issue with being forced to play an arc, if it showed the number of quits on an arcs as well.

That would be a great flag to folks to not even bother with such a crappy arc.

I'm sorry but I shouldn't have to play through something painful (my time is MY time, not the freaking missh creators--sorry), and I SHOULD be able to warn others away from it.

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You know - I was thinking about this some more and I wonder if what might be best is some kind of multiple rating system.

Have one set of ratings that have nothing to do with tickets, badges, etc and are can be set whether or not you can play through the entire arc. There could even be 2-3 (or more) different categories - playability, story content, etc. These would be individually indexed and would allow you to be more specific about WHY you down rated a mission without having to get personal about it, which is a problem I have now. I hate giving a mission a low rating without providing feedback but if the feedback is simply 'mission is trash' I am not going to send that. However, being able to just flag the 'playability' rating at 1 star would be nice. You shouldn't even be required to fill in all the ratings - just the ones you think are appropriate for the arc.

Then badges/tickets/whatever can be tied to actually completing an arc, possibly even without having to rate it at the end. Obviously some attention would have to be payed to ways to keep someone from gaming the system by creating instantly finished single mission arcs - but you can do that already and as long as my ability to find arcs I want to play is not linked to a reward system I don't really care how the developers implement the reward system. (Selfish of me - I don't actually design arcs - I just want to play them :-).

Ok - so clearly there are a large number of folks who think that it is MORE important to be able to down rate a bad mission than it is to prevent a good misison from being down rated inappropriately. I am not sure you are right, but I think we are down to fairly basic opposing points so I don't see how any more discussion will help.

I do think that divorcing the rating system from tickets and badge awards is probably the correct way to go, combined with a better seach engine that has reasonable tags so you can actually find missions you want to play. I suspect the dev's need to do something like that first, then look to see how it affects the rating system before they make changes to it.

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By the same token, all a crappy arc needs is one friend/SG mate/significant other/second account to rate it ANYthing, and it's permanently out of the zero-star ghetto, since under the proposed no-finish-no-vote system, there's no way to vote it down again except by suffering through it, which most people won't do.

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Your arguement doesn't hold water - if it is easy for me to give a bad arc a low rating it is ALSO easy for someone to give the same bad arc a good rating. At least in the previous proposal we prevent easy ratings ganking and someone at least has to play through the crap arc in order to 'boost' it out of the zero rating level.

Also, what would you propose instead? If you think the current system is ok we have nothing to discuss - if you don't then propose an alternative.

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Except that leaves "excellent but unadvertised" arcs in the same bin as "terrible crap that 600 people have already played and abandoned".

Under that system, I don't want to be the author of the "excellent but unadvertised" arc, and I don't want to be player #601 of the "terrible crap" arc. We need to do something, but I don't think this suggestion is it.

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I don't think the above suggestions are the ONLY thing that needs to be done but I think it should be clear to anyone that allowing folks to rate arcs without playing them is inviting ganking. Add in the fact that the ratings are basically meaningless (my 1 star arc could be your 5 star - simply because you love nemesis arcs and I hate them) other than controlling where they show up in a search and potential hall of fame status (which is ajoke) and I don't see why you would continue to defend the status quo.

Seriously - what we really need is a decent search engine with meaningful tags to speed up searching. Missions creators should be able to flag things like a level range for missions, what archetypes it is designed for (if not all), difficulty level, AV/EB/Boss contents, etc.

If we have a decent search engine I won't give a fig what ratings an arc has - I will search for arcs that fit my characters archtype/level/desires and screw the ratings system.