Madam_Enigma

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I figured it is survivable with the "candy", but I was going for something like power-synergies, that perhaps would prevent the crash from being so bad... like maybe using Essence Boost and Conserve Power before the crash could actually lessen the health/endurance loss?

About monitoring the icons and their blinking, I already have the icons showing and blinking, but those visual cues are a little too subtle in the heat of battle.

My character is already a TriFormPB, but there are times where White Dwarf just doesn't cut it tanking-wise and seeing the numbers on Lightform, I figure it's a better tank-form at least for the limited time it's on. The crash though could kill you, and honestly, seeing as Warshades get Eclipse that can stack on top of the Black Dwarf armor, I'm left wanting here... you know?

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you'd still take the full health/end loss. That would help with costs to run toggles once you eat a blue insp though. On my SR scrapper I try to make sure I'm not fighting when elude crashes. I do so by using it as a panic button then waiting out the remaining duration after the room I needed elude for. I'd imagine lightform can be used similarly.

Over on test I used it to get an EB off my back. Due to slotting of it, the EB took some serious damage too while I hit my dull pain clone.

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I enjoy blowing my robots up, do you need more of a reason?

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It's gotta be more useful then the cyborg pack's power... Blowing yourself up FTL.

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that is pretty sad, but the good thing is, those who play it just for pl-ing will definitely grow bored of it and stop playing once they figure out that there's nowhere to go after pl-ing to 50, because, chances are they won't have a clue how to get a TF going, or even how to get to the pvp map for that matter. I don't know how the other servers are doing, but on Freedom the farming runs rampid. I say if ya can't beat'em, join'em, just not completely....I like to pl up to 20 or so just to not have to kill 10, 000 snakes for the 34th time, lol.

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Not to mention that power leveling 30 levels I find leaves you without enough funds to enhance your abilities.

No Halon, if it procs on yourself too you'd get a recharge debuff every time it went off.

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I don't have my difficulty on five so I only fight EB's solo. When you can walk away from your computer in the middle of a fight with an elite boss, your character is stupid powerful. When you can aggro multiple bosses and walk away from your computer, your character is stupid powerful.

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How do you get elite bosses in a mission? I run on 5 solid, always, and never see them. Which missions?

Or are you talking about downgraded AVs?

Ok, that's probably what you're talking about. I just wish elite bosses were at the ends of level 5 paper missions. Right after elite bosses were invented, years ago, this was the case.

But I guess too many people wimped out that 5 was now too hard, because it quickly went away. Personally my scrappers loved it, and it was long before CoV.

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Uhm, there were elite bosses long before CoV. Frostfire is an elite boss. As is Hercules in one of the striga arcs. Atta too is an EB. And the final mission of the Positron Task Force has an EB in it. All those were around before CoV. In fact, I think Frostfire and Atta were added in issue 2.

First of all, Welcome to CoX. Here is what your traditional PL team does. Outside of AE it works as follows.

First you have a couple level 50's. One of them will be the mission holder, and is set to challenge level 5.

Next you add 3 people who are around level 46 or 47.

Finally you have the 3 people being power leveled. They are sidekicked by the 3 people who are around 46 or 47. This way they still get xp, and maximize the amount.

The next step is to select a level 50 mission with extreme amounts of enemies. The two level 50's go through and slaughter everything in the mission without completing it. Everyone else stands just inside the mission soaking up xp. Sounds boring doesn't it? It is.

AE added a new wrinkle to the mix. Now PLers can custom design a mission with extreme amounts of fairly easy to beat mobs with high xp gain. They then gather 7 lowbies and PL them all with the mission. No longer do they have to reset the mission since they can just repeat the single mission AE arc. It makes me sick.

We get a great tool that allows us to finally share our character stories with others, and these people can only see a power leveling tool.

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*I read somewhere that pets won't heal until there has been enough damage to use the whole heal. By that I mean, if the heal will do 100 points, they won't use it on a target that is only down 95. For this reason, it was suggested not to enhance the heals, since that would make the healing pet wait longer before using it. Is that Correct?

Thanks

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It occurs to me, though I haven't run the numbers, that slotting for heal may actually be counterproductive beyond what you describe, if true.

Consider: Generally speaking, during a battle it's a bad thing if your endurance is topped off (not MM-specific, but in general.) This is because your wasting your endurance recovery, which could be better used popping off some little power or something, if nothing else, and keeping end. just below top.

Of course, most people are fighting to keep it from bottoming out, but that's another story.


Go to back to the healbot, say. Now he's pumped up with +heals. So he heals less often, all other things being equal, because it takes longer to get to his "full heal" line in the sand.

This means more time is spent topped off rather than regenerating end. This means he's actually dumping less end. into (whatever) part of the fight that finds it useful.

So far so good. What I don't know, offhand, is whether the healbots will use up their end. when not healing at all.

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Presumably they would be using endurance as they attack.

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I'll admit, my Tanker(SD/WM) didn't have anything but the first attack and Taunt for a long time(35 levels, to be exact). Mainly because Shield Defense called for me to take everything in the set Defense-wise, along with Tough and Weave, but also because my AoEs were later level.

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Stuff like this is what I use my 2nd build for. Low-level and solo builds get more early attack and sacrifice some defense. Then once I get to the right level I choose my second build and redo it for the "best" powers and higher level attacks. This also gives me an "old" build to switch back to if I Exp or Malf with someone much lower level.

Just my 2 Inf.

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At level 18 (I think) my ice/mace tanker has only 3 attacks, but then again I do use those attacks frequently.

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Reform essence is a dull pain [+ max HP] clone that carries over into both forms, with proper slotting it can be up near constantly and with IOs, perma. It makes a huge difference.

White dwarfs play like SS/fire tanks, the dwarf heal is a large part of the mitigation, the knockdown helps a lot also. If you use IO sets, building for +rech and HP is a solid direction to go in this regard.

Generally you should only need dwarf form outside of an extra heal when facing a void/quant or when tanking for larger groups. This weekend I did a number of missions on large teams, most with AVs. Due to the tanks not having taunt, I ended up as primary tanker, and generally outlasted them due to capped [85] resists on larger teams. Granted, a dwarf isn't as reliable as a tank, but can certainly substitute in for mediocre ones.

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Shadow Freak tanks are also good reasons to be in dwarf form. Those suckers hit hard.

What makes me sad about AE is... that there's so many people who think it's main function is to PL to 50.

Heh, I can beat most any sig hero/villain as an EB. It may be hard, and I may end up resummoning frequently (and ODing on lucks) but I have done it. Posi gave me less trouble then Miss Liberty actually. Valkyrie also was a pain due to her ranged targeted aoe. Thought she's suppose to be melee?!

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You don't. And unless you want to specifically spawn AVs, you can avoid them outright while being solo the entire time.

Really, some people just get too caught up in wanting to beat this game at its hardest. I think it's more fun to play at a level challenging (but not impossible) to one's self than to play to someone else's definition of challenging.

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you'll still get EB's, which are not necessarily that much easier.

ghost widow and dr. quaxtrin as eb's are still extremely deadly.

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Ghost widow, dangerous as an EB? I loled. When I fought her for my patron arc she went down easy. Then again I had 6 poison traps stacked right where she'd spawn, had my pets set up there, and had the oni buffed with nox gas... THEN I used the blinkie. She got slept right away, her end got nuked for the moment, then she spent the rest of the fight vomiting from nox gas.

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Team Teleport and Ninjas are made for each other. I set them on agressive and let them go as I TP from group to group with them. I rarely lose any and they melt mobs.

I do not have to do any ninja micromanaging with Team TP. They are exactly where I put them.

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Ninja on aggressive?! *shudders* I have seen ninja run rampant if put in aggressive. It's rarely IMO worth doing.

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did see you mention it, but I also saw enough comparisons with Flash Arrow's unresistable -tohit throughout the thread implying or outright stating that the two sets had basically the same -tohit vs AVs that it seemed necessary to emphasise the difference once you do factor Fluffy in. Although the difference isn't quite as extreme, it felt like watching a comparison with Kin's +dam that kept excluding Fulcrum Shift.

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Till I can actually mess around with it, I can't honestly include Dark Servant in any calculations. Then there's the fact that it's not a persistent pet for masterminds. I also heard it has a tendency to pick one enemy that's out of the way and focus on it. If that's true, it can't be counted on.

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Normal max debuff: 60.5
Normal sustainable debuff: 41.75 (can't keep Fearsome Stare up constantly)

Max debuff on AV: 15.125
Sustainable debuff on AV: 10.4375

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If I did the maths right, my Necro/Dark has an enhanced max debuff of 9.125 against AVs with Twilight Grasp double stacked but no Dark Servant and not counting Shadowfall.

My (very rough) testing in-game says my sustainable debuff is at or close to that maximum - I don't quite have Fearsome Stare perma yet (20 sec duration on the debuff, 27 sec recharge, when I'm done it should be about 21 sec) but I think I can almost triple stack Twilight Grasp (20 sec duration, 7.8 seconds activation+recharge) so yeah, that sounds about right all things considered.

But as I said earlier in the thread, Dark Servant shouldn't be discounted as he contributes a significant amount of tohit debuff; even at range he'll output -tohit in quantities similar to the character that summoned him (enhanced, mine has 7.5 for TG, 7.5 for TT, 22.5 for DN, for a total of 37.5*0.25 = 9.375 debuff while he's alive and within 40ft). Get him into melee and Chill of Night gives another 45*.25 = 11.25 debuff.

So adding him to the player's contribution and you're looking at 30% total debuff if you keep him in melee, and 20% if he ends up at range (rarely dies if he's allowed to sit at range, varies with AV and team composition if you keep him in melee - Manti sure couldn't scratch him, but BAB smacked him down pretty quickly).

So yeah, what I'm trying to say is don't discount Dark Servant from -tohit comparisons, because his -tohit contribution is often more than the rest of the set combined.


Standard disclaimer that I may have got all that wrong applies though - I rarely delve into the mechanics/maths of it all and approaching midnight probably isn't the best time to start. And as I say, it's the -damage I value the most, the -tohit is just gravy to me (for AV fights, anyway).

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Heh, you didn't see where I commented on MY build and personal lack of having the dark servant to try out. I did comment though that it could possibly duplicate my total debuffing. And this is defenders, not masterminds since I don't have a /dark mastermind high enough to have all the debuffs.

I deleted it due to frustration. My pets were always running out of healing range mid heal animation, thus not getting healed. Things also were hitting though darkest night far too often. This meant I had to heal frequently, and the pets weren't getting healed due to running away. I got maybe to 12 before giving up on the char in disgust.

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So, how viable is necro/FF?

I was thinking about trying a necro/traps build. But honestly, Traps is a complete mystery to me. Tried it on a corrupter and lost interest around the time I got the FFG. In terms of cool toys it seemed pretty heavily backloaded. Then again, a corruptor and a MM are pretty different, so maybe traps will do the trick.

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do you want to solo av's?

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Honestly? (mini-rant warning ahead)

Why should I want to solo an AV? Please, somebody enlighten me. I really have no clue why there is non-stop talk about this subject. It just sounds like an irrelevant gimmick that's been blow up into the end-all, be-all of character greatness. Maybe there's something to it I'm just missing.

I've read some of these threads. To solo an AV, there's a very cut-and-dried formula. We know why FF doesn't work well and DM, Traps, and Poison do. It's very unlikely most of the people who do so are coming up with a build that hasn't already been done, so for them, zero points for creativity. And since the capabilities essential to shutting down an AV--namely, hefty anti-regen effects--don't carry over to the way you fight the other 99% of battles, it's not a true metric of overall power.

So, in a practical sense, what's the big whoop? Some neat badge or prize you get for doing 100% of the damage to an AV? Once I have the answer to that, I'll ponder whether or not I want to spend time taking down an AV.

Otherwise, the practical considerations mainly have to do with handling door mishes smoothly.

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this must be your first villain.

there are more arcs with EB's and AV's redside post 40 than anything blue side. you WILL run into them. yo uwill run into them several times just trying to unlock a patron pool.

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And the question is still very valid. Why have a build that can solo an AV, when a build that can handle the EB scaled version is more practical?

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bots isnt so hot against an av unless you pair it with a secondary that can debuff a lot. why you may ask?

not so great single target damage and nearly every bot attack and ability has a long recharge compared to every other primary but merc controls.

can it? yes. but it's not just av's that will drive you insane. widdershins and biff as an EB will make you want to punch a baby

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They made me feel like that on a ninja/poison too. They couldn't kill my hench... But I had trouble with them even with debuffing regen.

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Well, widows can get mind link for a click def boost, but that's not something IMO you can depend on always. And spiders don't get that to begin with. If a spider gets high melee and aoe defense, they had to sacrifice a fair amount of offensive ability. Part of which could easily be their pets.

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Are you only considering only SO's? That statement isn't true when you consider IO's. The only thing I have given up on my SoA's is a travel power, but that is part concept. SoA's have so many powers that can accept sets with defense bonuses that it's not hard to soft cap any of them if you want. I found it particularly easy to soft cap both my Bane, and NW (that is without ML, and hidden) while maintaining a complete attack chain on both.

Sorry to de-rail. I enjoyed this story. It reminded me of when I first played my Soldier back when everyone and their grandmothers were doing it. It was common to group with 6+ SoA's, and it was a blast. More recently I was playing my Huntsman build with 2 other Crabs, and we demolished many a spawn. It's always a blast to group with other SoA's.

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I personally don't view IO sets as 'required'. I'll try fitting them in, but their a nice bonus and not a build 'must have'. And even if you do include them, slotting to get soft capped defense for instance can mean sacrificing things.

Mine was when I first made my WS. Some guy in the tutorial zone sees me teleporting around, and he sends me a tell asking 'How much did you have to bribe the devs for a level one travel power?"

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When you know the strength of them they are great... but they also can be very much tinfoil with the right conditions. I have a harder time taking out a few longbow chasers than I do certain AVs. Get some foes that do lots of KB, sleep, and stick in them as runners the set falls apart.

I also noticed the bodygaurd bug... I use provoke and sands of mu as much as possible to keep the aggro up.

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I don't think it's a bug so much as in defensive stance they only attack things that are posing a threat. If the enemy can't hit, the AI says "This isn't a threat" and stops attacking.

There is no 'one' build, but if you don't want to gimp yourself there are some things that should be taken right away. Pet summons and upgrades being among them. Completely ignoring your secondary also can easily gimp you. And I've seen people do just that.

Archvillains (not elite boss downgraded AV's) have 75% resistance to to-hit debuffs. They've had this for a while now. After looking at the enhanced values of my Dark defender I see this as my max to-hit debuff vs against an actual AV. I am assuming double stacked twilight gasp since I spam it on AV's for the -regen.

Normal max debuff: 60.5
Normal sustainable debuff: 41.75 (can't keep Fearsome Stare up constantly)

Max debuff on AV: 15.125
Sustainable debuff on AV: 10.4375

This is without dark servant mind you. Haven't had a chance to toy with that one yet, but I will. Too many other characters distract me from my dark defender.

By comparison, my TA defender looks to be capping out at 10% or so to-hit debuff.

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Sure - especially if half of them are outside the slow because the enemy I targetted it on happens to be the one who hung back while the others ran, which is what happens to me all the time on the few low level TA MM's and defenders I have tried to play,

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here is what I do, and it works wonders. I lead off with PGA, usually putting a large number of them asleep while blunting the rest of the alpha strike. I then immediately launch a glue arrow. At this point their all still tightly grouped.

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I almost never group so rarely see this but my answer would be that shadow fall will keep the far off enemies from noticing you and with the ability to stealth past a couple of groups, drop darkest night on a far group so you can pull 1-2 groups into a carefully placed tar patch, lock them down with fearsome stare then proceed to drop AE hell on them dark will handle this just as well, if not better than TA.

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When I've seen groups try that, it tends to fail. In rooms such as what I described Shadow Fall isn't going to prevent the first group from noticing you as you stealth around to the rear groups. And trying to pull the rear ones tends to attract the guys you stealthed past anyway. I also slotted my flash arrow for range. I first debuff the front group's perception, then as I approach them hit the other two groups with flash arrow.

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I don't get what you are thinking you can do here in TA that you can't do in dark. Dark can drop tar patch and get just a smuch -resistance as TA (yes, I know thats an odd quirk of the psuedo pet mechanics, but it is true), fearsome stare is, again, a HUGE debuff and lock down that blunts alpha's at least as well as flash arrow and having a heal is really nice - nice enought that in a set that DOESN'T have one I want a lot more debuff.

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You forget about oil slick. While melee pet sets don't get as much use out of it, a burning oil slick will add a huge amount of damage. As such you've just raised the party damage twice. This ends the fight quicker. Dark's tools will speed the fight up a some, but mostly are for negating the enemy's ability to hit. Two different ways of doing the same thing.

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Considering that you can get over 30% total to hit debuff between DN and FS, having a target or two not getting part of that because FS missed or they are out of the DN area is pretty minor compared to the low value of flash arrow against anything but AV's. Now, point 6 almost is a winner with me as I think the RNG in this game conspires against me - but again, 5.25% vs a minimum of 15%, maximum of 30% seems a no brainer to me.

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From my experience, in chaotic (and bad) PUGs it's not that a few mobs aren't debuffed by darkest night. It's that NONE are affected by it because someone killed the anchor first and keeps targeting the anchor first. I personally find DN more useful solo then grouped since solo the anchor isn't killed first every time.

And finally, for defenders FA might be 10% debuff... when slotted up. Even for defenders the to-hit debuff in FA is underwhelming.

It does pay for that power in one thing... If you keep your pets in bodyguard mode they'll have a tendency to stop attacking after the enemy fails to hit them a few times. I keep noticing this on my ninja, and they don't have THAT great of defense. I also sometimes notice it on thugs.