Maelwys

I'm not sure perma-unstoppable is the way to go TBH. I can count on one hand the number of occasions I've actually needed to use unstoppable since getting my INV tanker to level 50 (almost 3 years ago now) and only one of those was since IOs were introduced (versus Ghost Widow, followed by Recluse, on a bad STF team).

Perma Dull Pain, combined with Invincibility and capped S/L resists, lets you tank virtually anything. Some AVs and High-level Psychic foes are the only exception to this. And Unstoppable won't help out versus the Psychic damage (for that you want oranges, or the Vanguard Shield and the Striga Wedding Band)

My tanker has been refitted slightly in Issue 13, but that was only to rejig the set bonuses very slightly (to decrease the number of enemies invincibility needs to cap his S/L/E/N defense from 8 to 4). Resists, Capped HP, 40HP-per-second regeneration and Dull Pain's occasional heal takes care of the rest.

He can currently stand in the middle of Lusca or tank the likes of Infernal toe-to-toe unsupported without bothering to use anything other than toggles and taunt. [u]Here[u] is his current build. Whilst Unstoppable might still be useful in PvP (allowing for the lack of mez protection in current PvP - and the toggle suppression that goes with it) It's very doubtful you'll use it these days in PvE on a decent build.

Another thing to note is that Endurance Sapping counts as a mez as far as the "diminishing strengths with foe level" thing is concerned. In other words, you'll sap less of a +1's endurance bar than a +0's - about 90%.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Relative level modifiers
level below above
0 1.00 1.00
1 1.11 0.90
2 1.22 0.80
3 1.33 0.65
4 1.44 0.48
5 1.55 0.30
6 1.66 0.15
7 1.77 0.08
8 1.88 0.05
9 2.00 0.04
10 2.10 0.03</pre><hr />

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Repulsion Bomb inflicts Knockback

[/ QUOTE ]It does not.

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It does so.

It just inflicts less than 1.0 Mag of it which translates into KnockDOWN on most even-level mobs or higher...

(Bah... you stuck that comment in before I typed up the second paragraph and proof read the first one!! In any case, the whole knockback component business is largely irrelevant next to the horrifically stupid regular bouts of weapon redraw which taking Repulsion Bomb would introduce to the character. No thanks... )

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Why no Repulsion Bomb? It's a decent AoE attack now, with very nice secondry effects.

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True, but it causes Redraw, has a long animation time (over 3 seconds), inflicts Knockback and has virtually identical damage to "Fistful of Arrows" which is in the build already and highly-spammable. The stun component also only affects minions, which are already mitigated by Force Bubble plus all the Ranged Defense.

At the moment it looks like Fistful and RoA will be enough on their own, but if I wanted another AoE at the expense of ranged defense, I'd swap out "Ranged Shot" for "Explosive Arrow" which has roughly the same base accuracy/damage/radius as Repulsion Bomb, but with a longer range, lower endurance cost and a much shorter recharge cycle (albeit with KnockBACK rather than KnockDOWN).

OK, the title might seem to be an oxymoron, but here's the deal:

Due to a severe relapse of Altitis I'm making a batch of new toons, amongst which is a FF/Archery Defender.

Now I've got a Sonic/Elec Defender at 50 already, so I'm quite used to bubbling. I don't mind buffing folks (especially if it's only a matter of refreshing the buffs once every 4 minutes rather than once every 17 seconds, darn Fort-spamming Illusion/Empathy Controller...) so Forcefield's looking to be rather an easy ride.

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There's a few things I'm looking at from this toon in particular -

1. Self-Sustained extreme survivability. From experience with the aforementioned Sonic/Elec, it's handy for a Bubbler to be very survivable on it's own merits. The reason for this is that when you're on a team, everyone will get the benefit of your allied buffs except for you. Since FF Defenders can effectively softcap the Defense of an entire team, there is some serious ground to make up. PFF helps, naturally, but that makes you only-affecting-self, which in turn will stop you contributing to the team via attacks or tossing an emergency heal at someone. FF has Force Bubble, which keeps most foes away from melee range. Softcapping Ranged Defence via IO Set Bonuses seems the way to go here.

2. Damage output. FF is a very easy ride. Since it doesn't even have Sonic's Clarity buff or Liquefy Debuff, you really only need to "do stuff" every four minutes (reapplying bubbles). There are also three or four skippable powers in the set, which leave room for a nice attack chain. Power Boost is always a good idea for a Defense-buffing toon, and the Defender version also acts as a damage-boosting "Build up" (albeit with a very long recharge time). Boosting +damage further via set bonuses is an easy way to clock up bigger numbers.

3. Extra Team benefit. If your teammates are all buffed up and you're survivable on your own merits, then all that really matters is steamrolling through content faster and more efficently. The odd time that something gets through your defences, a heal might be needed to top the victim's healbar back up (Aid Other/Aid Self), but other than that it's all down to boosting +Damage and +Accuracy. Which means taking the leadership pool set, where Maneuvers even stacks nicely with your Bubbles.

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The Travel Pool is going to be Superjump. I've had my fill of Fliers and Speeders lately.

So the powers I'm looking at, in no particular order are:

Hurdle
Health
Stamina

Combat Jumping
Super Jump

Assault
Tactics
Maneuvers

Aid Other
Aid Self

Power Build Up
Epic Shield

Personal Force Field
Deflection Shield
Insulation Shield
Dispersion Bubble
Force Bubble

This leaves seven power picks for the Secondary Powerset and extra "Flavour" powers.

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Given that I'm after damage output and will have a lot of free time, the secondary was a fairly easy choice. By far the best AoE damage set for Defenders is Archery, the downside being that you need to redraw after using a power that's not from your secondary powerset... but if I'm only buffing up once every four minutes or emergency healing, then that's a lot of time available for pointy sticks.

After a lot of "Hmm"ing and "Ha"ing, I've arrived at [u]this build[u]. I don't give a rat's rear about the price of the enhancements as it'll get slotted up eventually regardless of cost.


To me the main draws of this build are

(i) Just under softcapped Ranged/Energy/Negative Defence for me (when Power Build Up or PFF aren't running) and softcapped defence to all but Psionic for everyone else (44.71% without PBU - close enough!) with Aid Other/Aid Self to compensate for any damage that slips through.

(ii) Very high damage output (both ST and AoE) with a spammable ST chain delivering anything from 500 to 870 damage every 5 seconds, and an AoE spike hitting between 550 and 1000 damage over 6 seconds. In addition to the constant global damage buff of +38.3%, Rain of Arrows recharge time will nearly always coincide with Aim, and often with Power Build Up as well. The extra Build Up in "Snap Shot" is a nice extra bonus whenever it activates. "Ranged Shot" is an extra fluff power that's in primarily as a set bonus mule, but it might prove useful occasionally for pulling.


Anyone have any comments on this? Is it a pipedream? Is it do-able? Is there anything glaringly obvious that I'm missing from the above build (besides Hasten, the traditional "get RoA up sooner!" power, which I'm not going to be able to work in and likely won't miss with over 76.3% Global Recharge anyway)?

Constructive comments and/or comical abuse appreciated!

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AVs aren't immune to end drain, just highly resistant and/or have larger pools (I can't remember which it is). I've been on a team with my Elec/Elec/Mu Brute that's managed to drain Nictus Romulus and keep him empty.

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fair comment but if you're doing it on your own you'll rarely ever make a dent in an AV/GM

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I've drained AVs before with Power Boosted (slotted) Short Circuit plus Tesla Cage. It takes ages, but it's doable. GMs are another story and generally have too much recovery.

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farmers are the reason for everything bad in life.

[/ QUOTE ]Indeed they are, and when we find them we'll roast their figgin on a spike!

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Hang 'em up by the bura'zak-ka!

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Oh, I never noticed the data link thing Cheers for that.

I do like the build you've made a lot, but I'm a bit concerned about the global recharge being below 55%, as Maelwys said I'd need at least 55% global recharge to get perma-DP. I've dropped one Impervium Armor from RPD and slotted another Stupefy into Fault, which means I lose 1.88% Def in Psionic, but ups my recharge to 53.8%. That's as near as I can get to the 55% that I'm after for now. Have a look and see what you think of the change:


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Hasten needs to be 3-slotted or you're not going to come close to Perma Dull Pain. At the moment you're looking at a best-case scenario of one Perma Run (Dull Pain is recharging during the full duration of Hasten) followed by a downtime of around 15 seconds between the second and third activations of Dull Pain.

The trick is to get Hasten recharged ASAP so that you can keep it up as often as possible. In simple terms: Dull Pain has a duration of 120 seconds, so must recharge in AT MOST an average of 120 Seconds (factoring in when it recharges whilst Hasten is always running, and when that recharging overlaps with Hasten's downtime)

The above assumes you activate everything as soon as it's recharged, have no network lag at all, aren't debuffed by any form of -recharge, and don't account for animation times (over 2 secs to activate Hasten)...

In practice it's a little more difficult to calculate: my own INV/SS has 55% global recharge, plus three level 50 recharge IOs in Hasten and 97.5% recharge enhancement in Dull Pain. Dull Pain recharges in 111.6 Seconds with Hasten up, and 142.6 Seconds without it up. Hasten downtime is around 20 seconds. If Hasten is down for the full 20 seconds during Dull Pain's recharge time, I get one or two seconds of lower HP. A Force Feedback Proc in Footstomp eliminates this completely, and gives me a bit of leeway for -recharge debuffs.

Could also be a request for one of those "One-Sided Levelling Pacts".

I'm not into Powerlevelling either, though I did grab my tenth level 50 last week. I like getting all the temporary power pets/armors far too much to speed through the levels... and there really comes a point when you need to learn how to use your powerset combo on a PUG, regardless of how familiar you are with the theory.

Farming, on the other hand, is something that's practically required these days if you want to be able to afford a decent build of Set IOs. Whether you're farming Merits or Influence (or both).

If the OP is serious, it might help to post the name of the server your alt is on, and if it's a Hero/Villain. There are a number of dedicated powerlevelling Supergroups on both servers, but I suspect that 200 million might be a little too low for their services (given that you'd not be a sg member). You might find a random taker if it's just an Experience-Pact you're after though, but you'd need to specify the alt's faction + server.

(The reason I say 200 million is a little low is that most powerlevelling groups seem to be asking for all the salvage/influence your character gains during their farming sessions, plus usually a little bit extra to make the whole endeavour worth their while. 200 million influence is peanuts compared to the combined total of influence/salvage/recipes a character will pick up during the entire journey from level one to fifty, assuming that they're being Powerlevelled in a level 50's missions and receiving the appropriate drops. Level Pacts are a completely different beast, as you don't even need to be logged in to gain experience)

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As for not always being able to find someone online I see that written far too often, if you play at strange times then it makes sense to meet other who play at strange times and then it will become easier to find people in future.

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Or get a second account.

It might be that whatever alt you're on at the time isn't capable of taking down an Elite Boss or Archvillain by itself (even with Shivans) but there's not an AV in the game outside of Task Forces that can't be duoed by a decent damage dealer plus a well-built support toon. That goes for many GMs too...

Can't say as how I've ever been particularly bothered by EBs even on squishier characters. Heck, even if I'm playing a squishier character I can generally take down a full fledged AV by popping a Shivan.

The other thing is that there honestly aren't that many arcs heroside that feature EBs/AVs.

Aside from the three Faultline ones and a few on the Ouroboros TFs, we've got: Frostfire, Atta, Dr. Vahzilok, Heracles, Maestro, Envoy of Shadow, Terra, Countess Crey, Madame of Mystery, 'Nemesis?', Nosferatu, Portal Corp Missions (Dreck, Preatorians, Babbage and the Psychic Clockwork King). Did I miss any...?

I could understand it if this was redside though. Some of those arcs are more random in EB/AV placement.

You won't get perma Dull Pain without at least 55% Global Recharge plus Hasten anyway... but If I was to drop something in that build it'd be Hurl Boulder, followed by Resist Elements. Neither are particularly great.

Slotting the "chance for smashing damage" proc from the purple hold set usually produces as much extra damage (or even slightly more - when averaged over time) as slotting up a hold for damage. Expensive, sure... but it means that slotting a hold with 5 or 6 of the purples doesn't lose you any real damage output.

I think the OP is talking about running missions on Invincible ("every opponent is a proper challenge"), but with an EB rather than an AV at the end... rather than talking about getting rid of EBs from missions.

Although some of my characters still view AVs as a speedbump... I'm hoping that with the Issue 14 mission creator I'll be able to make a full map of Elite Boss level mobs with a proper AV at the end. Scrapper Heaven!!

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Give yourself 3 accolades Freedom Phalanx Reserve, Portal Jockey and Task Force Commander and see how many bonus hitpoints your over the top with Dullpain up.

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Tanker HP Cap is 171.4%.
Slotted Dull Pain adds a little under 60% HP.

That's 11.4% left from other sources, including accolades.

In other words, Dull Pain, plus 'Portal Jockey' and 'Freedom Phalanx Reserve Member' will cap you. No need for even 'Task force Commander', let alone any +HP set bonuses.

I find it very useful for an Empath to have some means of keeping a nasty mob busy whilst you deal with your team's health bars "bugging out". Personally, this was a major contributing factor in my rolling a Illusion/Empath rather than a Mind/Empath or an Empath Defender (despite the somewhat "FoTM" perception of Ill/Empath... the other main reason was that Defender Power Boost is only up half as often as the Controller version).

I'd echo the above comments about Hasten (or lots of global recharge). Having four or five members of a team permanently Fort'ed works wonders. Particularly if you can Power-Boosted-Fort the main aggro culprit(s). It'll also help to get the two RAs and Adrenaline Boost (AKA "Nuking Blaster crack") up sooner.

It is possible, albeit very expensive, to get an Empath that has all the Empathy powers slotted up plus Power Boost, Hasten, loads of recharge, good mob control ability AND decent damage output. My own Illusion/Empathy build is one such example, but set me back over 800 million influence. If you're going for a pure support role, SOs plus Hasten, Power Boost and a decent set of allied-targetting binds will get you by just fine.

I've had a Sonic/Elec Defender sitting at 50 for a while, was my fourth level hero and first support toon.

Whilst it might look better on paper, in practice (Short Circuit + Power Sink) isn't as good for endurance drain "spikes" as (Short Circuit + Power Boost). This remains so even after the Power boost nerf (I've tried them both ways). Spamming Tesla Cage will also completely halt recovery on one [non-AV/GM] PvE foe.

By far the best use of sapping I've ever come across on my Sonic/Elec was to keep clusters of Elite Bosses drained (Dr Aeon on the Statesman TF, for example) as Elite Bosses only have Boss-level Endurance pools.

In practice, all Elec offers outside of End Drain is Sparky the Voltaic Sentinel (which actually does very respectable damage these days with the EndMod Acc/Rech Sets, the only problem is you can't "aim" that damage when fighting more than one foe). The tier 1 and tier 2 blasts are also quite fast animating and a fairly unresisted damage type.

In terms of control, whilst I still keep Short Circuit in the build these days I've done away with Tesla Cage in favour of Dominate. It's very, very rare that I encounter a dangerous single foe that can't be either held or taken care of via a Sonic Cage, or a group of foes that can't be handled by a Liquefy patch (it's long recharge and the knockdown is worthless, but the levels of -tohit and -defence are awesome).

At the moment, my Sonic/Elec is /Psychic for Mind Over Body (Psychic damage resistance) and Dominate (inflicts hold, plus does comparable damage to Elec's tier one blast).

IMO the only Sonic power in the set that's skippable is Sonic Repulsion. I'm also a big fan of taking Aid Other/Aid Self (no need for Stimulant with Clarity), plus Assault/Tactics.

Having said all that, if I was rolling my toon again I'd probably go /Sonic. If you can do without an extra form of control (End Drain) then /Elec doesn't really offer much over /Sonic... and /Sonic's extra -resist is golden when fighting Bosses or AVs. I'd happily trade Sparky for Shout, even with the half-hour-long animation time.

Rule of thumb:

1. Anything that works as a set bonus will stop working if you're exemplared less than 3 levels below the level of the enhancement. The power this is slotted in DOES NOT need to be available at your current level.

2. Anything that works as a Proc (inflicts damage or says "X effect for X seconds" on the description) will work regardless of your level as long as the power it's slotted in is available at your current level.

3. Purple set bonuses don't obey these rules. They're (meant to be) ALWAYS on...

The Regen cap can't be reached without a lot of regen from Set Bonuses, plus Slotted Integration/Health/Fast Healing, Plus slotted Instant Healing running... and even then you'll need both slotted Adrenaline Boost AND slotted Regeneration Aura cast on you from a friendly Empath to hit the cap.

See here for the Scrapper HP/Regen/Recovery cap numbers... that pic is from my level 50 Katana/Regen Scrapper with a build that in Mids shows 750% Regeneration without Instant Healing running. The Empath buffs were from a high level Empathy Controller, with RA, RA and AB slotted appropriately for Healing/Endurance.

Rats. Looks like it's all pets then... but at least that means it shouldn't be able to go ignored for long.

The Senior GM they were putting me in contact with got back to me with the somewhat-boilerplate "We are going to forward the information you have provided to our Quality Assurance (QA) department, in order to give the development team as much information as possible regarding this issue."

HOPEFULLY this means it'll eventually get the attention of someone in the Dev team... I did ask specifically for feedback (email or via forums): Something, anything that'll let us know it's on someone's "To-do" list.

[EDIT: Have updated my support ticket with a link to this thread. If anyone comes across any other pets that this is affecting, please post below the Powerset Name, Summon Power name, IO(s) slotted in that power and a short description of what's happening (eg "With &gt;70% accuracy enhancement the pet is only hitting even-level minions at 75% ToHit chance, shown by the Combat Tab ToHit rolls") - Thanks!]

It could be a NEMESIS PLOT!!!

(Still quietlyish optimistic here...)

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I've one either slotted in or ready for my Warshades Fluffies so I'll see if I can tell what effect it has. I'd that the Col is correct though and its a screw-up from the Recharge fix.

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Cheers Carni.

That's what I'm guessing is wrong too... in blocking Recharge Inheritance they've blocked ALL inheritance (any stuff slotted in a summon power usually affects the powers of the pet(s) as well as that summon power).

Hopefully they can make this like the Purple Set so that JUST recharge gets blocked (although there's an issue with the Purple Pet set not passing damage to at least one pet when exemplared - Photon Seekers).

Interestingly enough, in my Sonic/Elec Defender's Voltaic Sentinel the pet's powers are still affected by recharge that's inherited from the Endurance Modification Sets, but not the Purple Pet Set...

First off: Major condolences to all those who lost their jobs as a result of this.

Secondly, the "if the worst happens" bit: My gut feeling is that FFM is right - it's probably too much hassle trying to maintain servers with few staff unless a team in the US ends up doing virtually everything remotely.

So IF administrations ends up being moved to the US, it probably makes sense for them to physically MOVE the servers over there. They already have all the infrastructure in place, so adding four extra servers to the US server farm is probably not that big a deal given that they're all running exactly the same code.

The alternative is a PR fiasco where we get forceably absorbed into the existing US server farm (with all the character/global renaming that implies). I'm being quietly Optimistic here... worst comes to the worst, they could probably get away with bunging us all onto the one "new" US server - the 'European' server.

Sure this is the right thread Praf?

If that was about the Recharge Intensive Pet Enhancements, were you exemplared at the time?

There's a seperate issue relating to any Damage Enhancement granted by Purple Sets in Photon Seekers vanishing when exemplared. Any enhanced damage granted by Purple Sets is only getting applied at level 50, so if you exemplar at all (even to level 45 via Ouroboros) your Seekers will only deal base damage.

I'm trying to get word on both issues. Have submitted bug reports in-game without any luck and the Reps/Devs inboxes are full... tried the PlayNC website earlier today and the query has been elevated to a Senior GM.

I'd double-check your Masterminds if you've got these slotted in their powers. I *think* the way Henchmen slotting passes the numbers along is slightly different to normal (non-controllable) pets, but I wouldn't be surprised if this bug is affecting everything across the board.

Easiest way to check is to watch the pet tohit rolls on your combat tab. If you just have Recharge Intensive pet IOs in them, they'll have base accuracy (75% ToHit chance versus even-level foes). Damage slotting is working exactly the same way, so affected pets will be hitting at roughly 50% normal "slotted" damage.

My PA are currently hitting even levels at 75% (even though the power has well over 70% worth of accuracy slotted) and only inflicting Base Damage when they connect (100% compared to their "slotted" 197% Damage). Note it's only Recharge Intensive IOs that are affected, Other IOs/SOs/etc buff pets normally.

It's possible that this is confined to only the Illusion set. We really need more information here - the Recharge Intensive sets are both brand new so not many folk will actually have many of them slotted yet. The only reason I've been personally testing them is I've started IOing an Illusion/Empath since I13 hit.