Jibikao
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Posts
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Stalker is a joke in trials. With large group like that, you rarely need to set up Assassin Strike and AS's damage isn't even that good.
It's tough to even scout for Acid or Grenade on your own because there are always mobs surrounding them and their tohit chance is so high that your soft-capped defense doesn't mean much.
In BAF, there's always so much lag during Prisoner Outbreak. Sure, you may get off one BU + AS on a running lieut but other ATs are aoe, immb and hit just as hard. Assassin Strike does not stand out during that phase at all.
So basically, the so-called toughest trials don't need Stalker's ability to Assassinate or Scout. I don't think Stalker is useless or a garbage but if Assassin Strike is meaningless during such large teams, then give me something back! The dev took away some precious AoE attacks in place of AS. But honestly, I want to keep Assassin Strike but it is just not a good attack at all. It takes too long to activate and the interruption is annoying. I am not talking about how "Wow!" Assassin Strike is when you are lvl 20.
The good news is Stalker is not the only AT having access to Judgment for aoe damage. Every AT can. :P -
Quote:Mmmm, same here. I haven't used my MMs but my Fortunata and Soldier have problem getting "commons". I have whole bunch of Uncommon and Rares.Originally Posted by flipside
Just to add more anecdotal evidence (backed by some drop logs I have), I primarily play an Ice/Storm/Ice controller when running the trials. With my setup, I rely heavily on pseudopets and actual pets for damage output: Freezing Rain, Lightning Storm, Tornado, Ice Storm and Jack Frost. I use all those back by Frostbite, which is extremely low damaging, to keep stuff in place. My result? I have mostly gotten rare drops during the trials. I am in a significant shortage of commons and uncommons for my crafting needs, but have a ton of rares which I can do nothing with. I have not gotten a VR once, however.
So I guess even when the pets are not helping towards the reward, you must have something that is counted towards. In your case, you help by using aoe immb. -
If you are not taking Build Up, then you should drop Placate. Placate doesn't improve your dps. Placate is only there for good burst damage and a "soft control". For example, I sometimes would placate a minion and go in to kill a boss. As long as you don't hit the minion, he won't even know you are there for something like 10s.
What I would do is:
1. Keep Tough. You don't need Weave but Tough is very important as some attacks can kill you in one hit (ie: high level Ritki Commando).
2. Looks like you are going for Blood Widow route, so I would drop Placate and Mask Presence and keep Follow Up.
3. If you drop Placate and Mask, you'll have room to take Web Envelop and Shatter Armor. Web is useful against flyers or runners.
4. I would drop Weave for another Maneuver so all the teammates benefit.
5. Are you going for Cardiac? If you are, then you can drop one -end slot in Assault. -
Ah I see thanks.
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Quote:Oh! I don't think the description says the pet is "invulnerable" so it makes no sense to me why you would want two pets with only 800ish health. I do notice they have support powers.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Essentially Core Path gets the boss pet in your T3 while Radial path gets a slightly better support pet.
For each tree there are three pets: Boss, Lieutenant and Support. The support pet comes in three flavors: Basic Support (cannot attack, takes damage), Support With Attack (exactly what is says on the tin), Invulnerable Support (cannot attack but immune to damage).
The four choices for T3 are:
Total Core: Boss + Lieutenant
Partial Core: Boss + Basic Support
Partial Radial: Lieutenant + Support with Attack
Total Radial: Lieutenant + Invulnerable Support
Which one you want depends on what is important to you. Personally I like the Core path since it gets the boss out earlier and the support pets are kinda meh IMHO but the Total Radial path is appealing for people who like the support pets and want to ensure it lives the complete duration. I will say that taking the Partial Radial strikes me as being a very poor choice, Partial Core will do more damage in most cases anyway and not having any attacks will help keep the support pet alive.
Yeah, Partial Radial doesn't make sense to me. The boss pet has over 2500 health which is almost double of my Fortunata health and his damage is so high.
For a SoA, I see the boss pet being the best choice as we have many team buffs for them. I guess if I am a stalker who stealth, I may just get a support pet since the pet will be taking most of the time and die.
I have a few more questions:
1. What's the benefit of tier 4 pets then? I see it's just one boss pet with a minion?
2. How come the lieut pets only have 800ish health? Shouldn't lieut have like more than the minion? -
I got tier 3 Clockwork on Core path (the Left Path) and it's one Boss pet (Dismantler) + one minion (Builder). The boss pet has over 2500 health and the minion only has about 800.
I've been reading the "details" (right click) but I can't figure out why the Right Path (Radial) only has two minion pets with both health at 800 something. Am I missing something here?
Why would anyone choose the right path if you only get two pets with health 800? The description doesn't say you get more than two pets so I am a bit confused here.
Any idea? -
I don't think "special" includes Resistance Debuff but this interface debuff should lower the target's resistance to secondary effects like mez duration, recharge debuff resistance. etc.
But I don't know by how much. -
Necro never feels "bloom" IMO. Lich helps but he ain't a powerhouse. His contribution is more "subtle". I like Lich but Commando/Assault Robot brings more "wow" effect.
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Human Peacebring only brings "too much" knockback to the team. :P
I've tried human-only PB and I can't motivate myself leveling him higher than 32. Not my cup of tea but I am sure everybody brings something to the team. One more body is one more body.
Hell, what does Stalker bring to the team? Damage? lol Oh please... don't get me started. There are easily four other ATs that bring more damage than Stalker. -
The only problem between switching Bane and Crab is that you are stuck with the Cursed Legs forever even after you changed back to Bane.
But yes, your second build can be either Bane or Crab. That's why it's so fun playing a SoA.
I believe you can unlock a 3rd build when you hit 50. So technically, you can have:
1. Bane (melee and stalker oriented)
2. Crab (mini tank with pets)
3. Wolf Soldier build (mostly Rifle attacks)
or
1. Night Widow (build up)
2. Fortunata (range/control specialist)
3. Blood Widow (follow-up) -
On a side note, how is Seer's damage? I just got tier 3 Clockwork and man, Dismantle is a beast with his range attacks. Seer's damage numbers seem slower but their recharge and activation are a lot less too.
Originally my fortunata was going to get Seer just to complete the "theme" but my damage is heavily resisted against Robots so I end up going with Clockwork because their damage type is energy which does good damage on Robots and things that resist Psionic. -
Quote:But can only stack up to 4x Fire DoT on the same target?Originally Posted by blueruckus
Fire DoT I believe follows the same stacking rules of Interface. I've seen multiple dots fire off from my own attacks.
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Quote:Good point. The tier 8 power is what I would call "garbage" and that's being nice, trust me. I don't like my lvl 50 Merc/Poison because /Poison lacks AoE protection for the pets. If I am Corruptor, I guess it's less of a problem because I can at least focus on blasting while the secondary powers are on cool-down.Originally Posted by Dromio
Right now Poison has an exceptionally limited tier 9 and a tier 8 that actually does nothing a third of the time. Those powers lacking mean that the limitations of the rest of the set (the single target nature mostly) are called into focus. If those two powers can be brought to a competitive level the rest of the set (which I think compares favorably to other sets) will not seem so limited.
Tier 9 power is decent if you put it on Bruiser because he at least survives better than other pets that go melee and stay melee. I tried to goto Commando but it is hard as he has knockbacks too.
Poison Trap needs to be better. -
Quote:Just a side note, I have yet to see Black Scorpion comment on any power-related questions recently. There has been huge discussions on how to improve Stalker and I've yet to see him chime on it. Castle did a few times to let us know what he thinks (even though I disagree).Originally Posted by JayboH
I asked in the video stream today about the possibility of having the devs take a good look at the Poison set and Matt (Positron) asked that we do it on the boards for Black Scorpion to review and hopefully comment on.
So does Black Scorpion really browse the forum and comment on the threads? Checking on the Dev-tracker, I rarely see him post. -
My thoughts:
1. Envenom: If the theme is to make /Poison a ST debuff expert (which I agree), then the value needs to be a bit higher. Endurance cost and recharge need to be addressed as well. Tar Patch is a huge AoE debuff that only costs 9 end. Both Envenom and Weaken cost 13 end and has an accuracy check. Freezing Rain can debuff aoe better than what Envenom can do. Freezing Rain also causes knockdowns.
2. Weaken: Reduce both endurance cost and recharge so we can apply on more targets sooner.
3. Poison Trap: First of all, they need to re-name this power because it is confusing. This Trap is NOTHING like the famous Poison Trap. Second of all, they need to get rid of the interruption timer. If the better Poison Trap doesn't have interrupt, why does this one need interrupt? The -endurance effect is very weak as none of the MM pets really do -endurance drain. I would add another effect to Poison Trap so it gives /Poison some good aoe controls. Some ideas: Add -damage after the cloud comes out.
4. Noxious Gas: I would reduce recharge on this down to 240s. It is already hard to use on some of the pets like Commando. I prefer casting it on an ally as well. -
Quote:Yeah that's why I've been telling people that "give it more time!" because we really only start with two trials and obviously they will seem very repetitive after a while. It's just like when they first introduced SFs. I didn't play this game since beta but I know they've added a lot more SFs later on so people don't feel like they need to repeat the same SFs over and over again for drops.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Unless you know the person in question, you have no basis to say this at all. You're making an assumption.
I've made the statement myself that I'm going to sit back and see what happens, see if this is indicated as the overall direction of the game from here on out and if it fractures the game - and if so, yes, I will leave. No other reasons needed. But I'm giving it time. (Not least because the rather negative lower-level impact it's having needs to even out. When I do a server search and see one person from 1-10, zero from 11-20, 2-3 people from 20-30 and 30-40, a fair number in the 40s and everyone else on their 50s in missions, Pocket D and/or RWZ... that needs to even out some, and hopefully will when the new-shiny-ness wears off.)
I can see the concern for having way too many people playing high level toons and not enough in lower levels but I think that's because most people are excited about the new content. Much like when Going Rogue came out, a lot of people made new toons for Praetoria and new powersets. There are a lot less people in Praetoria now. I would log on to the 3rd zone and there's only like 1-2 players.
Probably the best addition to overall "team gaming" is Weekly Strike Target IMO. We do Weekly all the time to get double merits and every week is a different SF so we don't get too bored with the same one. And it's quite easy to find a SF team for the specific target. Before we would log on and debate which SF to do for 30mins but now we know which one to do because we can get Well and double bonus in the end!
I actually do enjoy i20 (and mainly because getting new powers is always exciting for me). I just want to know if they will introduce more ways to get them "easier" than doing the trials. Just by converting Shards to Threads is going to take forever.
How about if you do a +4 Master run on lvl 50 SFs like LRSF, Lady Grey and Barracuda you can choose a Common/Uncommon salvage for Incarnate? That way people can get Shards and some Threads/salvages. -
I know you cannot stack more than 4x of the Resistance debuff but what about the Fire DoT? Can you stack more than one?
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Quote:Yikes.. Interface doesn't seem that good but hey, it's like free bonus debuffs that you don't need to click.Originally Posted by Kenteko
The -regen interface (and all the interfaces) are resistable as normal debuffs. They last ten seconds making stacking consistently beyond extremely challenging for anyone without a pet. Lore pets can apply the interface debuff but at the moment, Diamagnetic and Gravitic look to be complete trash due to AV resistances (while Paralytic and Reactive are rarely resisted/viable). Interface seems to be awesome all around for MMs, while fairly blah to everyone else with a few exceptions.
This was tested as a DM Brute vs Nemesis the AV and later during a Rikti Pylon with Power Analyzer MK III running. Diamagnetic was resisted to the full value of their resistance. -
Quote:Yeah for an 8s attack, Burst is darn fast. In fact, both Venom and Bayonet only take 1.67s but they feel like 2.67s when you cycle them just because Burst and Single are so fast. lolOriginally Posted by blueruckus
Burst is on a 1 sec activation as well so getting high recharge and chaining single shot and burst becomes a fairly decent ST setup.
In comparison, I think Crabs Fang takes 2s.
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Quote:I was reading their details and looks like Clock's damage is very high but their activation is slower. I've only used one toon for i20 so far and it's Fortunata. She just needs more damage and I see Clock is doing energy damage which is a great compliment to my mostly "psionic" damage.Originally Posted by blueruckus
For your bane, I would recommend trying out Clockwork lore. They have 0 melee attacks so they will remain stationary and continue to lob attacks from range while you go in to melee and do your thing. These guys don't die very often because of this.
Warworks lore is beastly as you may have already heard but on tougher AV fights Vicky may get smacked around by AoE. Running double maneuvers and barrier, however, you'll find her sticking around a long time.
I switch between clocks and war depending on the situation. -
Before I did the trials, I thought you can only choose one Incarnate ability at one time (much like how you can only slot one Alpha at once) so you need to plan your build to take advantage of Judgement's nuke or Lore's pets or team buffs/debuffs.
I didn't know you can use all of them.
I can see how the OP feels this way. -
Quote:I've failed so many Lamba and learned that getting 10 Acids is way more important than getting 10 Grenades because if you can get all the doors down, the ambushes are way less and you may have time to camp at the Weapon spawn point for Grenade later (as long as nobody aggro the main AV, which apparently is hard to do because SOMEBODY always aggro the AV...ugh!!).Originally Posted by Rikis
Allow me to cry a little... let me tell you the story of the PuG Lambda I just led.
I'm on my Brute, who is 50(+3) with Lore and Destiny at t3, Judgement and Interface at t2. So we get in and someone immediately leaves, leaving us with 7 and the turnstile system does not fill us. So there we are merrily plopping along, laying a path of destruction through the Praetorian forces. After a more tedious than expected fight against the Security Team, I go into detail explaining what needs to happen. I go over the basics, have some room in your power tray for the temps, destroy the objects and move on, patrols pile up if you stay. I even go to the details, describing what the containment units look like so that they know what to hone in on. I sent all 6 of them after the acids while I alone went after the grenades.
Anyone care to guess at the outcome of the raid phase? Anyone? Did you think maybe 5 acids and 1 grenade? Perhaps 4 acids and 3 grenades? No, sadly, and I mean that to the full extent of the word, sadly no. We ended the raid phase with 7 pacification grenades and *2* acids. I trusted them when two of them told me they had expertise in the lab before. I was actually still fine, still had Demonic Aura and Elusive Mind for the last three weapon caches when we ran out of time.
Ugh.
To make it all the better, the turnstile finally adds two people, when we have 10 minutes left on Marauder and 5 portals still up. -
Quote:Yeah...I've noticed this as well. I've joined and beat way more BAF and still haven't unlocked Lore slot even though I've already made enough pieces to get to tier 3 Lore. I've failed several Lamba and my Destiny slot in unlocked! lolOriginally Posted by Blood_Beret
I agree, iXP comes quicker on Lambda because there are more mobs before the trial even begins.
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Quote:Oh..shoot. Silver Mantis on villain side... which one is that? Air Pirate?Originally Posted by Aggelakis
As seen in the announcements forum, there was an issue with the Posi/Tarikoss WSTs not awarding the Notice. They've been changed to Psyche/Mantis for the remainder of the week.
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Quote:You killed a pylon by yourself in 49s? wow... what did you do? You were using Lore pets and other incarnate abilities?Originally Posted by blueruckus
I know crabs have amazing AoE potential but our ST damage gets downplayed quite a bit. Sure, we may not have the strongest ST attacks in our primary but we've got plenty of damage in our pets and debuffs.
I've always heard a lot of these scrapper Rikti Pylon challenges but have never run one since I've only played one scrapper and she was fairly decent but nothing spectacular. I've tried to attack these before on many other characters just for giggles but faceplanted immediately. My crab, on the contrary, is my favorite character because of it's perfect combination of multiple aspects of what makes a 'good build'.
So anyway, I decided to give it a go with my crab not knowing what to really expect. To my surprise, I actually succeeded, and fairly quickly for that matter. After a couple more runs I got my time down even more. The last run I managed a 49 second run, which figures out to 639 DPS.
I proceeded to check out the Rikti pylon thread and was amazed to see that this is actually a pretty awesome time. From the looks of it, even managing 3 mins is considered pretty good. I'm thinking I can knock this time down even further when I get my T4 Lore and actually remember to use my Judgement powers.
So the next time someone tells you Crabs are crappy for ST damage, just know that this really is not the case and that they're just extremely misinformed.
I know Crabs can beat pylon because you can shoot from long distance while the pets get close. The problem with my Bane is that my pets die when I get close because the aoe is big and wide. Without pet's damage, my Bane can get down more than 50%. I also don't have enough knockback protection so when I get hit, I lose like 5-6s.