Moonlighter
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Posts
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Joined
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Fire really helps make up for DM's lack of AoE.
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My problem with /Elec is I feel it needs a supplemental AoE. I took the set because the way I read it the set had an AoE stun and a big PBAoE with Thunder Strike. I finally leveled my blaster and it turns out Lighting Clap has only a small chance to stun secondary targets and Thunder Strike does only token damage to secondary targets. I was annoyed, especially since /Mental has so much supplemental AoE.
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Dual Pistols is lacking.
~ It's single target DPS is bad, mostly due to Executioner's Shot being bad.
~ It's animations are painfully slow making kiting much more difficult.
~ It's AoE is only mediocre, and since they are all DoTd that tick as you animate you end up taking an extra attack over an AoE that winds up first and then delivers damage.
~ The set has redraw.
~ Despite the fire ammo, the set is still mostly Lethal.
Don't get me wrong, it has some advantages. The nuke doesn't end drain you which is awesome even though you have to stand in the middle of the spawn to use it. You can also slot all sorts of weird sets because of the alternate ammo.
If they wanted to tweak the set, here are my suggestions on where to look:
~ For all that is holy, make Hail of Bullets give typed defense as well as positional. The blaster APPs offer typed defense powers, so making the defense on the nuke use positional defense is just bizarre, *especially* since the PBAoE makes no sense on a range capped blaster.
~ Fix Executioner's Round. Lower the animation, increase the range, up the damage, do something to make this power not suck.
~ Make more of the damage use the alternate ammo energy type. Giving the set alternate ammo and still making a majority of the attacks Lethal is totally bizarre to me.
~ Give Piercing Rounds the -Res regardless of ammo type. Lower the animation time to be in line with the damage.
~ Make Cold and Acid rounds worthwhile. For example, you could give Acid an additional -Res effect and give Cold a chance to apply a Hold to minions and Lts when you use it. -
Quote:Huh?Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma
But many blasters (solo at least) don't need damage per second. They need damage per shot. Which has ever been the same with archery. For most content the changes in attack animations make no difference. In fact, I find that a bigger hit to DPS isn't animation length. It's recharge time. Which archery can have issues with.
Overall DPS is derived from DPA. Burst DPS is derived from DPA. Regardless of how you look at it, Flurry is never going to be a good attack even if a single Flurry does more overall damage than some better single attacks; it simply takes too long. It's all about DPA.
Sure at low levels recharge time can cause gaps in your attack chain. Creating a smooth attack chain, however, is trivial for a blaster. As for Archery, with it's extremely low recharge of its first attack recharge should not be an issue in creating an attack chain. -
Quote:At what difficulty? And doing what missions? Are you running +1/x8 like most of the other IO'd ATs do? Running Vanguard? Freakshow maps?Originally Posted by Rintera
my blaster is fully IO'd out and has no survival or end issues.
One problem with subjective discussions of power is that varying people have wildly variant difficulty settings. People play doms, masterminds and corruptors at x8 and say blasters are weak. Others like to play vanilla default settings (or x2) and say blasters don't have issues.
Personally I can comfortably play at x4 with bosses turned on with normal difficulty, a little higher against easy groups like Freaks and Council (so long as I kill the vamps first) and less for tip missions (Carnies, Arachnos, $%#& 12 waves of sappers) and harder content like Vanguard. -
Quote:The power of Focused Accuracy isn't the ToHit or even the Accuracy, it's the ToHit Debuff resistance.Originally Posted by joebartender
Something like 7.9% tohit at ED cap and 20% acc that you can't enchance.
Never thought it was worth it myself but I know some people can't stand to miss and take everything possible to always be at the tohit cap -
Coming from the scrapper side and just recently adding IOs to two end game blasters I found the following:
~ For such a stark lack of mitigation and mez protection blasters ranged single target damage is really kind of meh.
~ A lot of the sets really only have a cone and a targeted 360 degree radius as their primary AoE. Every secondary should probably have a meaningful supplementary AoE like /Mental.
~ I expected the primaries of blasters to be balanced better. I am used to scrappers where the primaries are fairly well balanced, each with it's own advantages and disadvantages. Blasters have clear winners (Fire, Archery) and sets that are somewhat lackluster. (Elec, Dual Pistols)
(Note before DP and Elec lovers jump in defending their sets: I know they are playable, but you have to admit they don't have the oomph or advantage over the top blaster sets.)
~ Blasters are *way* too dependent on Scorpion Shield or Frozen Armor to hit end game mitigation. The reason this is so annoying is it either means a purple glow and a trip villain side or the dreaded ice cube armor which fits very few concepts.
~ Targeted AoE IO sets really really suck. They really need to add two more good sets to support the combinations that rely on cones and ranged AoEs. -
Usually I have too many goals and too much other content to bother looking for MA arcs to play. When I do, these things usually detract from my experience:
~ A lot of arcs are bad.
~ I don't like comedy arcs. I think early on I ran into two comedy arcs I thought were cute, but after that they've either been bad or a rehash of the same common themes.
~ My high level characters have plenty to do in the actual game so usually when I want to try some AE arcs it's in the 20-35 range. I have learned the hard way to avoid arcs with custom enemy groups. They are much harder than most normal content and they give out crappy XP and tickets. It's a shame because at first I liked seeing new groups but there are so many combinations that are just not fun.
~ I haven't liked any of the guest author arcs I've played. I have liked a lot of the dev choice arcs (minus the comedy ones) but the guest author arcs have been bad. It was a disappointment since I loved the Elementals comics by Bill Willingham and didn't like his arcs.
~ A lot of the arcs try to evoke emotion by either being overly violent or alluding to overly violent acts. I never thought this would be bothersome. I love violent gritty movies. I found that having it being described in an MMO environment really detracted from my enjoyment of the game.
~ No mission bonus or arc XP. This is actually a bigger problem than slightly less creature XP: I am giving up the big juicy mission bonus and bigger arc bonus playing through AE arcs.
That said, here's what I didn't find to be a problem.
~ For the most part I enjoyed most of the Dev Choice arcs. I might not have loved them, but to me most of them (outside the comedy ones) provided a decent play experience.
~ I didn't have a problem finding story arcs that were not farms. For the most part the farm missions were pretty obvious.
~ I found some good low level arcs that I enjoyed better than leveling in Atlas again. Since Praetoria is so much better content wise, however, I stopped looking for lowbie arcs in AE.
~ Most of the arcs were playable if I had AVs turned off for my high level characters, but fewer for my mid level characters. My high level characters want purple and shard drops too much to play arcs so the hard arcs have no play value.
Edit: The ironic thing about my last statement is my one completed arc is geared at high levels and has numerous EBs with the assumption that people who don't want them will have settings that make them bosses. At some point I should probably make them bosses. -
I had a terrible experience with this and quit 5 spawns into the second mission. What level were you when you people ran this?
I ran it with a fresh level 20 scrapper and quit five groups into the second mission. Mobs spamming -50 hit debuff and -35 defense debuff that lasts a minute? While throwing +100% recharge debuffs and slows? Really?
Debuffs in this game have gotten out of hand.
At high level sure, but I don't even have SOs yet. I'd rather stab myself in the eyes than play through a mission at level 20 at 1/4 speed with my attack chain having 30 second wait periods while I have a 27% to hit. -
Quote:But... with inherent Fitness in the latest issue those MAN builds got a huge buff!Originally Posted by Castle
I'll be honest here: I *love* DPS meters.
I love using them to figure out rotations.
I love using them to predict success/failure for certain encounters (as in: we have the DPS to overcome this situation, so, how did we fail...to the combat logs!)
I even love comparing my DPS against others with similar builds to see if my performance is "on par."
I don't think a DPS-meter is all that useful of a feature for City-Of, however. Your DPS is far more dependent on who you are teamed with and what your specific job is during an encounter than pretty much anything else. In other games, where roles are far more stringent and DPS tolerances are so tight they hum, they might have a place, but not here.
Here, we're Super Powered and it's a pretty good bet that your DPS isn't too low.
Unless you have a MAN-build...but that's your own fault. :P -
Quote:The "you have a week to respec all your characters" aspect of this issue is really aggravating.Originally Posted by Werner
Thanks! Yeah, almost unfortunately, I like some of what I see in that (for instance, it didn't occur to me to go with a full Gladiator's Armor set), plus I've had some recent ideas of my own, so it looks like I'm going to lose the first of the two freespecs while I keep playing with ideas. Oh, well. I'm sitting on five veteran respecs, and so far it looks like I'm keeping the vast majority of my IOs, so I should be fine. I'm just so eager to actually play it!
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After doing two or three I stopped because it's so boring once you have the stats down to do it. My attention span isn't high enough to pound on something that long. I probably need a higher DPS build to keep me happy.
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Quote:My bad I didn't have Death Shroud turned on in Mid's so the End usage showed much lower. Even with a second Performance Shifter +End in Physical Perfection it won't make the End difference.Originally Posted by Werner
OK, take two now that I have the I19 Mids' and can actually see what's going on.
I'm not sure what you mean about putting the Performance Shifter proc in the heal - it doesn't take endurance modification sets. Or did you mean put it in Physical Perfection? The Miracle would provide more. I've kind of accounted for the Theft of Essence, essentially by ignoring the cost of the heal. The heal as you have it is 21 endurance, which pretty much means if I'm surrounded, the heal should be free. And even if it takes a little endurance, it takes a little time too.
Yeah, I don't think I considered the effect of the recharge alpha on Conserve Power. I'm sticking the Miracle in the empty slot in Physical Perfection and trying this again...
While Conserve Power is down, the toggles take 2.72 EPS and the attack chain takes 3.66 EPS for a total of 6.38 EPS. Our recovery is 3.77 EPS plus 0.2 EPS from the Performance Shifter proc plus 20% * 7.5% * 115.4 / 10 = .17. So net endurance drain is 2.24 EPS. It won't even last a minute. Mind you, that's with everything running. As I'd normally run for AV soloing, the toggles are only 2.04 EPS, so net drain is down to 1.56 EPS. That's about 74 seconds. I'm afraid it's not enough to last between Conserve Powers, even with the very rare recharge alpha. -
Quote:The i19 version is available btw.Originally Posted by Werner
Hmmm, well, I'm not just in the endurance alpha for the endurance - I'm also in it for the resistance. I wanted high resistance numbers, and the alpha slot looks to be getting me about 5% smashing, lethal, negative, psionic, fire and cold. Since I'm hovering around 50% already damage type frequency averaged, I figure that's about a 10% survivability boost.
But spiritual, of course, brings my heal back faster and makes it stronger, at least when fighting a single target or heavily to-hit debuffed. On paper at least, it probably equals out. I prefer not taking damage in the first place, but I can live with healing it back. Also, I'm a huge fan of passive regen, and hated sacrificing it in the build I posted.
Well, first, let's see if the reduced endurance consumption really does let us go with spiritual. Hmmm, there seems to be a problem with the I18 version adding up the toggles. I can match all the ED calculations and resulting values, but when I sum them up, it's somewhat higher than Mids' shows. I also can't tell how you've slotted Health and Stamina. So I'm not certain what the recovery is like. But making some guesses, I'm showing myself burning out in barely over a minute, and that's with some optional toggles off. So I don't think I'll be able to use spiritual unless something is very different looking at it in the I19 version.
Health has Numina's and the +Regen unique, but it could just as easily have the Miracle +Recovery unique.
Stamina is 6 slotted with Perf Shifter - you get the 2.5% Recovery bonus, better Recovery from slotted, and the fat AoE bonus. Plus you squeeze in another 2.5 Damage.
Also, at that point you should have one Perf Shifter proc and +End proc in your heal. That's a lot of extra End that I don't know if you've calculated. That doesn't take into account dropping the PvP IO in Phys Perf for another Perf Shifter proc. Plus Conserve Power which in the recharge alpha build has a much better up time.
With the cardiac boost the sacrifices I made for extra endurance management don't make much sense, but a fully slotted Stamina, Shifter Proc, and swapping the +Regen in Health for a Miracle is a lot of extra end. Plus your end burn is lower.Quote:Going with the cardiac uncommon, the situation is slightly better than before. Now he can go about 8 minutes before burning out, and the down time is shorter. So it's more practical, almost good enough just with the uncommon. The very rare has him very sustainable. He can't quite run everything, but he's in very good shape as long as he can play toggle games, and is less likely to have to slow down if he gets unlucky with procs.
Unfortunately, needing the cardiac boost kind of goes against what you were after with the build. Now things are slower instead of faster since we weren't actually able to pick up the spiritual boost, so we're just not getting the benefits you were hoping for.
Thanks for trying, though! 
I didn't question the Cloak of Fear thing, since that was your design goal, but I don't find that power at all useful now that I've tweaked my Kat/Dark. When I really want it (Cimers) it doesn't work. What exactly do you use it for?Quote:Scanning for other ideas, I suppose I really could consider short changing Divine Avalanche for slots. The set bonuses I'm getting aren't critical. The set was more of an afterthought to fill in slots after I plugged in some defense, and I just didn't consider actually removing slots and going full frankenslot. Use two level 53 Nucleolus (I think I have some lying around) and a Mako's quad. Divine Avalanche's accuracy goes up, even if other attack accuracies go down. Divine Avalanche is THE most critical attack, so that's probably a decent trade. Accuracy is still 95% or higher on the main attacks against +4s. I lose 15 hit points, but I can stick another Ribosome in Tough to get about 2.5% more smashing/lethal defense, bringing me to my smashing/lethal resistance goal. Endurance improves slightly. I like it!
Hmmm, you went Gladiator's Armor in Obsidian Shield and Steadfast Protection in Tough. So what if I do that to free a slot. Down to 59% smashing/lethal resistance. Psionic resistance drops to 51%, still over my goal. Endurance use goes up to what it was again, but still comfortably sustainable with the very rare. But poof, free slot. I'm very tempted to stick a L53 Endoplasm in Cloak of Fear for accuracy and mez. It would make it much more reliable when fighting +4x8. 79% accuracy against them. Lasts 13.11 seconds, but they resist it, uh, purple patch says 48%, so lasts 6.3 seconds. That's really not bad for +4s. But is it enough better than just one Endoplasm? One would be 67.5% accuracy and 4.9 seconds. Might be something better to do with the slot. I could add another Luck of the Gambler somewhere for 10% regeneration and the last tiny bit of AoE defense. I could put it back in Tough and get 61% smashing/lethal resistance. Hmmm, 2% smashing/lethal resistance or a better fear? 61% smashing/lethal resistance is just too tempting. There might be a better option, though, so I'll keep looking. -
The new Mid's is out, no need for a hacked version.
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How about this build?
The reasons I like it is that the EndUse is lower, the Regen is much higher, and if you still have endurance issues you can still swap the +Regen in Physical Perfection for the Miracle +Recovery.
I know the recharge is lower, but the reason I did that is I think with this alternate build you can forego the Endurance alpha and go for Recharge. In the end your powers will be coming up much faster, particularly Build Up. Also Hover has more speed.
The sacrifice I had to make was dropping the proc from Gambler's Cut, but you can drop the +Regen from Physical Perfection, add the slot to Gambler's Cut, and still come ahead in Regen.
My Dark Regen is slightly worse, but if you go with the +Recharge alpha you can swap a bit away from Recharge for more Heal or End. Plus I believe this will top you off with two opponents so I don't know how much the extra heal will really help you.
I wouldn't say this build is better than yours, I am more trying to offer build alternatives and, well, to be frank I would be surprised at this point if anyone actually had a flat out better build.
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Quote:~ There are no lol scrappers.Originally Posted by Zanthar
I know just about any hero is viable for pve, what i want to know is how viable is a Ma/Sr character for pvp AND pve? Is its still viewed as the "Lol" set? Keep in mind my info is some what dated on it..
~ MA was brought from slightly behind to competitive. It is light on AoE but makes up for it with hard hitting attacks with built in control.
~ If I was going with Kung Fu I might actually consider Kinetic Melee as well. -
As I mentioned in another thread, I wouldn't mind /Dev if it was more of a mitigation set. Changes I'd like to see:
~ Add a decent defense to Cloaking Device. Make it like 3.75 base.
~ Make the pet less annoying to use. Increased the duration and the recharge, and make the animation for summoning it less annoying.
~ Give the set some -Res to make up for the lack of Build Up. -
I wouldn't mind if /Dev was the "mitigation secondary" with a decent defense boost from Cloaking Device, and some kind of -Res like Acid Trap to make up for a lack of build up.
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Quote:If the Incarnate stuff coming down the pipe in coming issues as hard as the devs hint it might be, the days of passive mitigation builds might be winding down as the premiere content simply uses ToHit and defense debuffs to virtually negate all of our Defense capped builds. If this happens then I would expect to go back and look at all the active mitigation powers we've been skipping.Originally Posted by Desmodos
Prior to Issue 19, I would have agreed with that. Post issue 19, I suspect we will see more DM builds with Touch of Fear. Considering opportunity costs, most builds skipped ToF, but with 3-4 new power choices, I'm hard pressed to find a power more useful than ToF.
Touch of Fear is very good in that it stacks well, and if the Fear doesn't work it has a hefty ToHit debuff. I'd personally slot it for -ToHit. -
On the recommendation of CS I restarted and the IOs were back. Don't know if I will be able to respec now, but the CS person suggested that I would probably be able to.
Thanks! -
Ugh.
I tried a respec and after getting through the entire process I got a "respec failed" message. All of my IOs in the storage tray (the ones I didn't slot but wanted to keep) entirely disappeared, including a Numina's Unique and a Miracle unique both at min level.
Instead the process spammed my chat with the messages included at the end of this post.
Some details:
I was a blaster who went villain side.
I just finished the Black Scorpion arc.
I was respecing using that respec.
At the end of the arc I had leveled but hadn't gone to the trainer yet.
The program seems to let me start a new respec, but the IOs are gone.
(In game petition sent.)
Anything I can do?
(Edit: There's a lot more spam, I can't cut and paste it all.)
(Spam sent by failure.)
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[NPC] Luddite Crusader: Will no one take a flyer? -
Quote:My intent was to play the game in a fun manner. Once I hit my 40s I start playing in Mid's looking at end game builds. The fact that the only defense oriented epic power that has a subtle graphic is only available villain side is what I would call a design problem with the game. My options are break character and go villain for a stint, or break character and spend the rest of my career encased in a block of ice, or choose a much less powerful build. Probably a bad call for the system to have been designed to back a player into that decision.Originally Posted by Tangler
Hero epics don't require you to run through a story-arc just to unlock it though, and if your intent was to get villain epics from the get go, you should have side-switched immediately or easier still just go from prae to vills for new characters.
The least pain to me personally is a stint into villain-dom to pick up that one power and explain it away story-wise in some fashion; symbiotic alien caused me to go evil, bad moral choice caused a fall from grace and redemption, etc.
PS: Yes most of my future blasters will sadly level as villains even and then switch once I have the epics even though I enjoy hero-side more because of this inefficiency in the design. -
Quote:I was saving up for a PvP IO, but after a month and a half I had 14 and I need 35? I'm all for rare drops but seriously?Originally Posted by Doctor_Kumquat
Edit: unless the reason you can't spend em for another week is because you've been saving them up to direct-buy a purple or PvP IO, and you need to get more before you can cash them out. In that case... yeah, you can take Ice Mastery as a filler if you really want a S/L defense shield, and then use the free respec they hand you upon completion of your patron arc to pick up the Scorpion Shield instead.
Anyway, the problem is I'm willing to spend, but for some reason they gate the spending. Why? I am already gated at the earning. It makes no sense to me, and in this case it is very frustrating. Arbitrary restrictions are arbitrary. -
Arghhh...
I... can't... spend... my... hero... merits... for a minimum of a week. And I can't start the stupid process of going villain to get this power.
/bangs head against wall