-
Posts
1274 -
Joined
-
I will be keeping all of my current tanks as tanks. My one brute will be rerolled, but as a scrapper rather than a tank, and only once his primary gets proliferated to scrappers.
Personally, I view brutes more as slightly tougher scrappers than as offensive tanks. My tanks are tanks because I wanted a tough as nails meleer who is first in, last out, and protects the squishies to the end. I want to beat things up too, but for a tank, foremost I want to hold aggro and survive. To make a brute tough enough to fulfill what I want from my tanks would take too much investment for my tastes - I prefer characters who can do what I made them for with frankenslotting and without sacrificing my actual powers for things like the fighting pool.
So for my playstyle, brutes compete with scrappers, not tanks. And in that comparison, scrappers win by a landslide simply because I hate chasing a fury bar. Brutes may or may not be numerically 'better', but their playstyle just doesn't fit me. I'd like to have the freedom to pause for a second to check my inventories, survey the next group of foes, recover some end, or simply look away from the screen for a moment without my damage dropping through the floor. -
Yeah, crowd control gets a 1 foot deeper cone and 5 more max targets than pendulum, at the cost of only being DS 1.6 instead of 1.9 - although crowd control does have a 100% chance for knockdown instead of 50%. Shatter has a 'shadow maul' cone (45 deg, 8 ft) vs cleave's 'headsplitter' cone (20 deg, 10 feet), but is only DS 2.28 instead of 2.76. That said, whirling mace is inexplicably DS 1.12 compared to whirling axe's 1.0, which is odd since the powers are identical otherwise.
I decided that mace would probably be slightly better AoE overall, and I thought the faster recharges would likely be enough to offset the higher damage, since I'm not going to IO her out to the point where the DPA on the aoes becomes super important. The differences really are pretty minor though. Mostly I just wanted to hit things with a big beatstick. -
I've got a shield/mace that's getting almost to those levels, and I can't wait to start laying out the AoEs too. Mace basically has all the same stuff as axe, and it's looking really quite juicy from my perch at level 25.5. She already hits pretty dang hard in ST, and once my attack chains tighten up I'm gonna be dishing out a heck of a lot of carnage. And I find it funny to be looking forward to fighting council robots for a change.
SD in general is pretty dang amazing on tanks. I personally find SD on scrappers or brutes a bit squishy for my tastes as I don't have the resources to bling them out, but SD on tanks can hit the softcap with practically no investment and lay out damage like there's no tomorrow to boot. Only drawback is the build can be tight, but it's not insurmountable, and a small price to pay for this much awesome. -
My personal philosophy for earth/TA is that multiplicity of controls is not a bad thing. This character is for controlling (and to a lesser extent debuffing) things into smithereens, and that's what I spend my power slots and in-battle time doing.
Powers like glue arrow and poison gas arrow are often suggested as skippable, but I personally wouldn't. The way I look at things is: how many ways can I neutralize a spawn? Stalagmites + stone cages will do it. Volcanic gasses + quicksand will also. EMP arrow will do it, etc, etc.
Notably, though, some of your spawn neutralizers are soft. Earthquake, OSA, and volcanic gasses don't utterly prevent a spawn from attacking - they greatly reduce the frequency of attacks. For those powers, I find layering poison gas arrow on top to be helpful, since it cuts the damage of what few attacks the foes do get off. It's probably not necessary, but I think it helps.
Similarly, I find glue arrow helpful for some tasks because of its differences from quicksand - notably the sticky debuff and -recharge. Between poison and glue, you can significantly cut damage from one spawn without actually using any controls on them, which could come in handy at some point.
In terms of builds, I can see that Local has the expensive side covered. So for another viewpoint, this is roughly what I'd do for an SO build:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
earth-ta: Level 48 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Earth Control
Secondary Power Set: Trick Arrow
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Stone Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Fossilize -- Acc(A), Acc(3), Hold(5), Hold(7), RechRdx(9), RechRdx(34)
Level 1: Entangling Arrow -- Acc(A)
Level 2: Stone Cages -- Acc(A), Acc(3), EndRdx(17)
Level 4: Glue Arrow -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5)
Level 6: Quicksand -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(7)
Level 8: Air Superiority -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(17), Dmg(37)
Level 10: Ice Arrow -- Acc(A), Acc(11), Hold(11), Hold(25), RechRdx(25), RechRdx(34)
Level 12: Stalagmites -- Acc(A), Acc(13), Dsrnt(13), Dsrnt(15), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(34)
Level 14: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 16: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 18: Earthquake -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(19), RechRdx(19)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(21)
Level 22: Acid Arrow -- Acc(A), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(23)
Level 24: Fly -- Flight(A), Flight(40)
Level 26: Volcanic Gasses -- Acc(A), Hold(27), Hold(27), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(31)
Level 28: Disruption Arrow -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(31)
Level 30: Poison Gas Arrow -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(31)
Level 32: Animate Stone -- Acc(A), Dmg(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(33)
Level 35: Oil Slick Arrow -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), Dmg(36), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37)
Level 38: EMP Arrow -- Acc(A), Acc(39), Hold(39), Hold(39), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(40)
Level 41: Fissure -- Acc(A), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), EndRdx(43), RechRdx(43)
Level 44: Seismic Smash -- Acc(A), Dmg(45), Dmg(45), Dmg(45), EndRdx(46), RechRdx(46)
Level 47: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(48), RechRdx(48)
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
The last power and last 6 slots are up for grabs. The choice of ancillary pool is variable, as well - while earth/TA isn't a big damage dealer, I like to make a contribution here and there, so I grabbed /stone and a pair of attacks. If you want even more AoE, you could go /ice and grab ice blast and the pair of AoEs. -
Local, I believe you've miscounted. Through level 40, you get 20 power slots. If you skip 3 powers between your primary and secondary, that leaves you with 18-3=15 powers used there. 3 for stamina, 2 for a travel power, and you're at 20. So if you want stam, hasten, and then a separate travel power, you'll either need to skip 4 powers instead of three, or else put off one power into the 40s.
Ademia, we didn't mean that you needed to skip three powers from *each set*, we meant that you needed to skip three powers *total*, adding together the ones you skip from both sets. For example, I was suggesting that you skip stone prison, salt crystals, and flash arrow, for a *total* of three powers, not 3 from each set. -
Nononono, you want stone cages (the AoE immob). It combos well with stalagmites to prevent the foes from scattering after they're stunned. The one you want to skip is stone *prison*, the single target immob, because you're already forced to take a ST immob from your secondary and there's no reason to have two.
To reiterate, skip stone *prison*, take stone *cages*. -
The tohit debuff on flash arrow is a measly 5%. Even slotted up to about 8%, I wouldn't really call it a strong debuff. It would make somewhat of a difference, but not *that* much of one.
Meanwhile, if you want stamina and a travel power, you will need to skip 3 powers from your primary and seconday. Stone prison and salt crystals are two obvious choices, but what about the third? If you don't skip flash arrow, you'll end up needing to skip one of the other good TA or earth powers, or put off something until the 40s. Neither sounds like an especially desirable option to me.
Basically, flash arrow is a minor debuff. It does have some uses, but in my opinion it's not worth using up the power slot when you've got to fit in stamina and a travel power. -
I would *not* suggest an elec/ blaster as Roderic is. The ST damage is just not going to be there without the ability to use blaps to back it up. Char is not a blast, and it comes in the 40s anyway. The OP mentions that he has an elec/MM and notes the poor ST damage. My vote would be for fire/ or arch/ primary with /devices, /ice, or /MM secondary.
Fire is, simply put, the highest damage primary. Since forgoing the melee attacks means that the primary has to do most or all the damaging, fire/ is a good choice for that. Archery doesn't have the ST oomph of fire (although it's still no slouch), but has probably almost as good AoE thanks to RoA, and its tier 3 blast has the full 80 foot range if that is important to you.
If your secondary isn't for ST damage, then it ought to help keep you alive and support your ranged abilities. Devices doesn't do much on teams, but solo it has a fair amount of utility. Mines and caltrops prevent mobs from closing to melee, targeting drone allows freer slotting options, and stacking minefields can really put a dent in tough foes. No buildup, though, and effectively no team utility. Ice has a lot of mitigation for a blaster secondary - ice patch can be both a barrier for melee foes and a form of mitigation as they fall down, and shiver is a slow with a gigantic area, strong effect, and quick recharge. It also has build up, a hold, and a sleep (albeit those last two are melee). MM has the extra cone damage, a 'get away from me' KB power, build up, and then some melee range stuff, the only one of which would probably be important to you being drain psyche.
If you're looking for a ranged blaster, I'd look first at combinations of those. Honorable mentions might also include ice/ and /em - ice has holds, and /em has some self-buffs and another 'get away from me' KB power. -
For dual blades, the two biggest considerations are, in my opinion, the fact that you'll likely end up wanting 7 or more attacks from it, and that having lots of click powers could possibly interfere with pulling off combos.
In general, the two combos most often focused on are attack vitals and sweep. Blinding feint -> attack vitals -> repeat is one of the better DPS dual blades attack strings that doesn't require obscene amounts of global recharge (128% total in blinding feint and 109% in sweeping strike - SR and elec can almost pull that off on SOs), and sweep provides some helpful mitigation as well as a bit of extra AoE damage.
However, between those two combos and blinding feint (which you should always take, regardless), you need every attack from dual blades except nimble slash - and nimble slash is requred for the other two combos, so you might even want to take it as well if you plan to exemplar down below the level of the other two combos often. So, dual blades generally demands that you take 7 or 8 powers from the set.
Also, if your defense set has a lot of clicks, you could find yourself in the situation where you have to interrupt your combos in order to fire clicks to keep yourself alive. Now, those clicks don't *end* the combo, but they do make it less likely that you'll be able to execute the next attack before the combo times out.
So if you're concerned about overall efficiency, I would look for armor sets that either a: allow looser builds, b: have relatively few clicks, or c: both.
Several armor sets fit one or the other criteria. Regen, fire, and to some extent dark (and electric if you're willing to skip stamina) can leave you with a couple of power slots to burn. SR, invul, and shield are all relatively passive secondaries, allowing you more time to get your combo on. But in my opinion the best fit is the secondary released at the same time, willpower. The last two powers in the set can be skipped, and you can also skip stamina if you so choose. It's also got exactly two clicks, and one is a self-rez while the other is the 'godmode'. So I would probably suggest willpower as one of the better secondaries for dual blades.
Now, of course, that's absolutely not to say that you couldn't have a perfectly good scrapper with other secondaries. Tight builds and defensive clicks can both be worked around by careful planning, and they aren't deal-breakers even before that.
With scrappers more than probably any other AT, it's *very* hard to put together a broken power combination. You can still *break* any combination by taking bad powers and not slotting well, but no combinations come 'pre-broken', as it were. Dual blades/anything is still going to be a scrapper, and as such, assuming you put together a decent build, it will still flip out and kill things pretty darn good. -
Most AVs aren't weak to confuse, the purple triangles protects AVs from all mezzes except sleep and immob, neither of which are very useful for these purposes. Most AVs are capable of shooting your face off as easy as tearing it off in melee, and you kinda need to do damage to them, so sleeps aren't very useful.
The thing about /earth and seismic smash is that it's a melee power. While you're trying to get the initial hold stack on the AV, he'll still be active, and going into melee with an unmezzed AV sounds to me like a quick trip to painville. It could be useful to help maintain the holds once you've got him down, but not really during the trickiest portion.
Now, that's not to say it's a bad set, and the good ST damage will likely help the 'defeat' part of the fight with some added safety from seismic smash, but I'm not sure the utility would be enough to offset the superior AoE and also very good ST of fire for general play.
Choice of secondary, though, is definitely much more personal preference than the primary anyway. If it's at all possible in the first place, it'll still be possible with either secondary (or even other secondaries entirely).
Now, of course, if doms had illusion, it'd be perfect for this. 3 illusionists would be able to keep one set of PA out permanently with just SOs, and that would take care of controlling the AV all by itself. Illusion is by far the best control set in the game at dealing with AVs, simply because 'traditional' controls are so ineffective against them. Unfortunately, doms don't have illusion... at least not yet. -
Well, you can't start any of the villainside SFs with only 3 players. You can get padders and then have them quit once the TF starts, so you can get around that, but it's something to be aware of.
As far as actually doing TFs, the main issue is dealing with AVs. Normal mobs and even regular EBs will be nothing more than a speedbump for 3 doms at once, simply because nothing will ever shoot back. Doms, in general, are very good at working through regular content, and the bulk of most task/strike forces still consist of regular mobs. I'm not really familiar with the details of any special tasks the villain strike forces may ask of you, but the regular foes shouldn't be too much of a problem. AVs, though, can be a bit trickier. They have very high magnitude protection to most types of mez, most of the time. It will be possible for 3 doms, working in concert, to bust the PToD, but it'd take some stacking and firing your ST holds continuously will cut into your damage output.
Math digression... Dominator ST holds last 17.88s base at level 50. Let's assume a base case scenario of plant's ST hold, which has a 2.24s animation, and 80% hold and recharge enhancement, so that nets you a hold with a 6.69s cycle and 32.184s duration. You will be able to cast about 5.8 stacks of the hold before the first one starts to wear off, so you'll alternate between stacking mag 15 and mag 18, with mag 18 in effect 80%ish of the time. So in this relatively non-extreme case, 3 doms will be able to stack between 45 and 54 mag. Coincidentally, mag 54 is exactly what you need to hold an AV through the purple triangles.
Now, this ignores the effects of lag, any endurance issues, and the reduction in hold duration on higher level AVs, so in normal cases I wouldn't expect consistent holding with that setup. However, that also ignores the effects of domination. In this situation, hitting domination should allow the dom to lay an additional 8.2 mag 3 stacks, for an extra 24-27 magnitude (24 most of the time).
So if you have three doms and you rotate so that one of you has domination in effect at all times (easy to do with the base 200 sec dom recharge, let alone any recharge bonuses), you should be able to stack about 70ish mag and hold an (even level!) AV through the purple triangles. However, to stack mag this high will require somewhere over 40 seconds of non-stop casting of holds. If you *can't* hold him, any AV will rip squishies like doms to shreds. However, there's still nothing to stop him from doing that while you are stacking hold mag.
So, you need a way to hold off an AV long enough for you to stack mag and hold him. My best guess would be to toss pets at him. Tougher pets such as stoney or singy might be able to withstand an AV long enough for him to get held. The problem with that is that the sets with tough pets (earth, grav) also have the longer casting ST holds, which makes it harder to stack mag. (For comparison, using fire/'s 1.32s hold, a single dom can stack about 2.5 mag more, 6 more in dom.)
However, earth also has volcanic gasses, which when slotted for max hold can lay on another mag 12-15 or so for one minute. With max recharge slotting two earth doms can alternate and have one VG out at all times. So my pick for trying to kill AVs with three doms would be to have 2 earth/ doms to distract the AV with their tough, taunting pets, and then one more dom of the mind/ or fire/ variety to help stack hold mag with their fast activating hold. This will also ensure that you have considerably more than enough control for normal content - in fact, I'd vote fire/ for the third dom simply for extra damage, since the extra control of a mind/ dom would be mostly wasted. As for secondaries, Jam is certainly right in that you can't go wrong with /fire's high damage. My only other real suggestion there is that it might be useful to have one /psi to debuff the AV's regen with drain psyche after he's safely held. -
It is a bug. If I remember correctly, BABs fixed it some time ago internally, it's just waiting to actually get to live. It was fixed in the dual pistols beta version of the game that was on the training room recently, so it should be fixed once that build goes to the live servers. Since they're planning to allow those who pre-order GR to use the pistols starting with this double XP weekend, I would imagine that training room build should go live this week.
-
The APP are pretty good for controllers, I'd definitely take several powers from whatever pool you choose. It's not like scrappers where you'd often only want one power.
Each pool includes a ST blast and an AoE blast, both of which are usually good (hurl boulder a bit less so maybe as the animation is long) and which I would definitely take. Each pool also includes an armor, which may or may not be desirable for you depending on looks (they're all a bit obtrusive) - I don't think they're mandatory though. The last two powers vary, but generally are all at least decent. Fire gets an end recovery power and a self-rez, ice gets hibernate and an extra AoE, energy gets conserve power and power boost, psi gets world of confusion (which sucks) and a click mez protection (which is awesome), and stone gets an absolutely beastly ST melee attack and dull pain. In general, I could easily see taking 4 powers from each of the pools, except maybe psi if you don't want the armor.
So, in my opinion, it's probably not a good idea to skip the epics for more primary/secondary powers, but that's OK because you can pretty easily fit in all the good primary/secondary powers before the 40s anyway. As Local mentioned, to fit in a travel power and stamina, you'll need to skip three powers between your primary and seconday. If you want hasten, unless you're willing to use super speed you'd need to skip one more power.
Finding three powers to drop is pretty easy, in my opinion. Salt crystals is a no-brainer - it's a mediocre PBAoE sleep in an entirely ranged-focused combo that's already overflowing to the brim with AoE controls. Flash arrow is also a power which I haven't found much use for. It's tedious to use it on every spawn to try and stealth, and the debuff is very minor. It might be useful if you're worried about aggroing a second nearby spawn, but you're an earth/ta - just lock down that spawn too! Finally, stone prison is skippable since you're forced to take entangling arrow - it's a better power than entangling arrow, but I've found that entangling arrow is good enough to get the job done in most cases. That's the three you need, and that leaves plenty of room for APP powers.
I wouldn' skip any of the rest of the earth or TA powers - not poison gas, not glue, not quicksand, etc. On my earth/TA I've found uses for all of them, and frankly there isn't really anything else that would be especially important to take anyway. If you absolutely have to to skip one more power to take hasten, I would probably pick poison gas arrow, but I'd really be loathe to do it. -
Of the two primaries you have mentioned, ice control would be better suited to a (PB)AoE style, because of the presence of arctic air. Mind is somewhat more suited to a ST playstyle, as AoE damage doesnt' play nice with some of its staple controls (mass hypnosis mostly, and to a lesser extent terrify).
The top three AoE damaging dominator secondaries are /fire, /psi, and /thorn. Any of these paired with ice will work well enough. However, my personal pick would probably be /thorn.
Ice control by far works the best inside the spawn, where AA can be leveraged to best effect. The AoE of /fire and /psi, though, consists of one PBAoE and one 30 degree arc cone each. From experience with my ice/ice (which also has a 30 degree cone, frost breath), I find that such narrow cones aren't especially easy to use with the melee-centric playstyle of ice control. I also find that I like having a secondary which can assist in mitigation, since ice's mitigation, while plenty acceptable, is more of the soft control variety. /fire has no mitigation, and /psi, while slowing targets and having drain psyche, also makes you wait on psychic shockwave until 38.
Thorny, by comparison, has one PBAoE and one 90 degree cone, which should be much easier to leverage while also remaining close enough to the spawn to use AA. Both AoEs are available by 20, and the set has some mitigation in terms of knockdown and avoid. Fling thorns also has a quicker animation than psi scream or fire breath, which should make it even easier to use. Also, don't discount thorntrops. While the numbers floating up are small, they do add up. If it hits the foes for 10 seconds, it'll do about 40% as much damage as thorn burst, which is pretty good given its low end cost, reasonably fast animation, and 15 foot radius. (It's also helpful against single tough targets if you can immobilise them, doing about 125 damage unenhanced over its 45 second lifetime. That's slightly more than your tier 3 blast, for much less end.)
For the mind/ dom, I'd actually suggest a ST melee-centric secondary, simply because mezmerize and levitate are pretty good ST ranged attacks in their own right and can easily fill in for a secondary with less ranged ability. In this case, I'd probably pick /elec or /stone - both of them have strong melee attacks and are light on ranged powers. They are also both relatively ST focused, which will be great for solo work combined with mass hypnosis. -
The proc will have a chance to go off:
1) Every time he uses twilight grasp or tenebrous tentacles
2) Every 10 seconds on targets within the range of his chill of the night aura
3) Every 10 seconds on whatever target he has darkest night toggled on
That said, I don't think this particular proc is worth slotting. The effect is a 20% chance for a 25% recovery debuff, which is effectively nothing. Lower grade mobs have attacks which use very little endurance, and seldom have very many attacks. This means that they're not going to run out of endurance even if the proc affects them. Some bosses have more end-hungry attacks, but they also have larger endurance bars, and without another way to drain their endurance or debuff their recovery, they're not likely to run out either. And AVs and EBs which are downgraded AVs (although not regular EBs) have strong resistance to endurance drain and recovery debuffs, which means that the proc won't be doing anything to them either.
In other words, it's one of the more useless procs in the invention system. Unless you're a defender or corruptor with electric blast, you aren't going to be draining anything of endurance with this proc. And if you do have electric blast, you've already got better tools for doing that (like short circuit's -end and -recovery, and tesla cage's -recovery).
In my opinion, you're much better off simply slotting fluffy for maximum tohit debuff enhancement along with a touch of accuracy so that he can hit stuff. -
I second the medicine pool idea - the tricorder really doesn't fit a lot of concepts.
Another place I really can't wait for some animation customization is spines and thorny assault. They fixed one of the big problems I had with the set when they allowed you to customize the spines, but I'm still not going to play it until I can pick alternates for the ridiculously silly looking barbed swipe, impale, and ripper animations.
Since it shares an animation with ripper, presumably this would also allow claws' eviscerate to get an alternate animation, which I would also approve of. I really don't like that current animation.
I'm not too hot on the total focus (and thunderstrike/tremor/etc) animation either, simply because I think it looks silly to hang there in the air so long. Given my choice, I'd actually swap it for the current energy transfer animation, but obviously that wouldn't work since that would give EM two identical looking attacks. I wouldn't mind being able to use the ET animation on the other powers which share TF's animation, though. -
Well, as Heraclea mentioned, you've cut out 6 of the 8 existing tanker armor sets, so your only choices left are willpower and dark armor - neither are really what I'd choose to pair with EM, though.
Willpower has some synergy, mostly in the fact that the armorset is entirely passive - no clicks. While I'm not as down on energy melee as some, it does remain true that the long animations on ET and TF can get in the way if your armorset has important clicks. Willpower has no clicks at all apart from SoW and the rez, so it doesn't interfere in that way. However, whatever synergy lies there is completely overshadowed, in my opinion, by the one glaring anti-synergy of aggro. Willpower/energy is probably the single worst tank in the game at holding aggro. With an incredibly weak aggro aura and a near total lack of AoE powers to compensate, you'll have to be spreading around your single target attacks and taunting like a maniac to hold aggro on teams, and even then, it'll be difficult to hold aggro as well as other sets can manage with almost no effort. So for willpower, it's more or less a tradeoff between personal synergy and team-oriented anti-synergy. It'd be a pretty good solo tank I imagine, but certainly not what I'd choose to build for a team.
With three taunt auras, dark, on the other hand, doesn't have the aggro problems. It has other difficulties instead, mostly tied to the animation issue. Namely, an awfully large amount of dark's mitigation is tied up in its insanely strong self-heal - which is exactly the sort of protection that the long animations on your heavy hitters can interfere with. There are some advantages to possible stun stacking with oppressive gloom, but overall I'd rather pair dark armor with something quicker animating. It will be significantly better as a team tanker, and I think the negatives are less significant and easier to deal with than will/EM, but there'll still always be the worry when you hit ET or TF of 'will this get me killed by stopping me from hitting dark regen'? -
If I'm 4 slotting a defense power, my default choice is usually serendipity. At 4 slots it gives a touch of HP, regen, and accuracy, choosing all of the pieces with defense gives capped def enhancement and 40%ish endredux (at about level 25-30ish), and it's dirt cheap.
For later on, in terms of getting the bonuses you need to softcap, I'm a fan of the red fortune, multistrike, and smashing haymaker sets. They all provide useful positional defense bonuses, and they're all usually reasonably cheap.
Assuming toggles, weave, and CJ slotted for 55% def and the 3% and phalanx, you'll be at about 43% overall defense. You've got 4 melee AoE attacks you could slot with full multistrike sets, which would be an extra 7.5% melee/AoE defense, leaving you at 5.5%ish over the soft cap to those positions as a nice buffer against debuffs. You could even drop the multistrike set from shield charge in favor of frankenslotting something with more recharge. If you don't end up using multistrikes, putting smashing haymakers (along with some other pieces to round out the enhancement percentages) into your three ST attacks could add another 3%ish melee defense.
For ranged you could do a lot worse than red fortune in battle agility and weave - tons of endredux and 2.5% range def and 5% recharge per set. That would leave you 3%ish over the cap, again as a buffer against defense debuffs.
Also, if you're actually planning to slot out and use tough, I'd give it 4 reactive armor for the small amount of melee and ranged defense. If you find yourself not using the multistrikes, you could even give it a 5th slot for the 1.25% AoE defense.
If you weren't planning to take all of the AoEs, I'd urge you to reconsider. One of the big strengths of mace is its very high AoE potential, and all of the last three powers in the set are pretty good ones. Combine that with shield charge and AAO, and you've got the makings of a pretty darn good AoE damaging tanker. Plus the AoEs give you nice defense with multistrike. -
Quote:Not quite the only player... I love both animations for it, and I fully plan on keeping it all the way to 50 on my MA/SR. At which point I will somehow scrape together the funds to slot it with the purple acc/stun/rech, a normal 50 acc/stun/rech, the KB proc, the touch of death proc, the mako's proc, and the purple damage proc. It will be hilarious, and actually do a non-trivial amount of damage occasionally to boot! I just love the uppercut animation, and this way, it will actually sometimes do the damage it looks like it ought to doI am feeling like the only player who kept Cobra Strike
It is nice to have for the IO set bonuses on certain builds... I keep it mostly for the KB IO Proc.Seeing baddies go flying from CS is funny to me.
I just like mezzes. Making something do the drunk-walk stagger or tremble in fear is just satisfying to me. -
Quote:Ninjitsu would need a couple of changes, which I assume is one of the reasons it hasn't been proliferated yet, but I don't think smoke flash is actually one of the powers that'd need changing.However, Ninjitsu would require some changes for scrappers in order to make sense in that AT. To me it seems that Smoke Flash would have to disappear since Placate isn't useful for scrappers.
Placate is not a stalker exclusive effect - it exists as an IO proc in the purple sleep set, and in a couple of different temp powers. It's not exactly common, but the precedent is there. It might not serve the core scrapper purpose of doing damage, but not every power is required to. It's also thematic as heck. Why should only evil ninjas be able to vanish in a cloud of smoke? Lastly, as it stands, it'd be a skippable power - possibly useful, but not mandatory - and I think it's important to leave some powers which can be skipped if you want. Basically, I don't think there's any real reason it *can't* be there, so I wouldn't mess with it.
The powers that would need to be changed, I think, are hide and caltrops. Hide is obvious - unlike the placate effect, that *is* a stalker exclusive. Looking at the other armor sets, dark armor comes to mind as a precedent. For scrappers, it has a generic stealth, which is replaced by hide on stalkers. I would expect the reverse to happen here - hide would go away and be replaced by a generic stealth.
Caltrops would need to be changed simply because they're already in a scrapper epic. I would swap them for something similarly gadgety, like a sleep dart or similar. Nothing too flashy, just a short range, short duration mez with a minor debuff (-damage?) attached. Again, like caltrops, useful but not mandatory.
With those two changes, I would think the set could be ported easily. -
Quote:To expand on what StormDevil said, the debuff types are different in pretty significant ways against AVs.I'm very new to Blasters. Is the debuff in sonic different than the debuff in rad? Basically I am asking if sonic is better than rad for the job? (I do hate that noise.)
Rad blast debuffs defense. This makes it easier to hit the AV - you will, in general, miss less often. However, there are two reasons why this isn't spectacularly useful against AVs. First, most characters won't have much trouble achieving a 95% chance to hit (the max possible) anyway through simply slotting accuracies in their powers - so the defense debuff is redundant. Second, AVs resist defense debuffs quite strongly - by over 70% in most cases. So, you won't really be debuffing them very much, and the debuff itself isn't very useful.
Sonic blasts debuff resistance, not defense. This doesn't do a thing for your chance to hit, but it means you do more damage when you do hit. Unlike debuffing defense, resistance debuffs will *always* have an effect. If you hit the AV with shriek and debuff their resistance by 13%, every single attack landed by you *or any of your teammates* will do 13% more damage. As a bonus, the special AV debuff protection don't cover resistance debuffs. If you hit an AV with 13% resistance debuff, you will always get 13% more damage (unlike defense debuffs where you might get 3% effect out of 10% applied). Debuffing resistance is one of the best ways to make an AV drop faster, and since it increases everyone's damage, on a big team it's by far the largest contribution you as a blaster can make.
So yes, sonic is almost certainly better than rad for AV killing. It likely has better overall single target damage, and the -resist secondary effect will greatly amplify the rest of the team's efforts.
On the other hand, whether sonic is better than fire is more debatable - fire does *so much* damage that it'd be harder for sonic's team boosting contribution to cancel it out. I still think that on a large team sonic would be better, but solo or with only a couple others, fire might match it. You'd have to ask one of the number crunchers about that comparison. But in terms of sonic vs rad, there's no contest. -
I would expect that it'd probably be a sonic/something, simply for the stacking -res debuffs in the primary. Sonic won't have as much personal ST damage as fire/, but your overall damage contribution should be significantly higher thanks to amplifying the rest of the team's damage with your debuffs. That is, if you don't mind the sound effects of sonic - I personally don't care, but I know some find them objectionable.
-
Some of the ones I've been wanting for a while are:
Fire blast for defenders. In most cases, they get relatively strong debuffs in their blast sets, but a lot of the time those just aren't needed. My dark/psi, for example, couldn't care less that his secondary does -rech - everything is already trembling in fear, debuffed into smithereens, or both. So a blast set where the secondary effect is 'moar damage!' would be very welcome for soloing purposes. Not to mention that I've got a couple of different concepts that would really fit fire blast well.
Illusion for dominators. No fancy concepts here, I just want this awesome set on my favorite AT. It would be a hell of a novelty to finally be able to fight PToD bosses without using a tray full of purples. It's also just a fun set.
Stone melee and energy melee for scrappers. I just want these fun offense sets on an AT where I can go nuts without worrying about fury. Stone melee is the smashiest, funnest melee set in the game for me, and I want it on my favorite melee AT. And I'm going to make an EM scrapper, stick knockback procs into all the attacks, and run around laughing my head off whenever something goes flying.
Ninjitsu for scrappers, simply because I'm tired of trying to make SR 'work'. 'Soft cap or bust' as the only real option gets really annoying after a while when you're poor. Ninjitsu is a much more well designed set in my opinion.
I never thought I'd say this, but spines for tanks, simply because the idea of an ice/spines with three aggro auras sounds hilarious. Now that you can customize the looks, I might actually consider making a spines or thorny assault character someday - once animation customization reaches the set and you can change the ripper and impale animations, anyway! -
Quote:Wow! Finally someone taller than Sister Flame!I brought out Midnight Guard the II just to try this arc at low levels. Loved the disco trolls!
<pic of character and Sister Flame>
I ran another of my lowbies through Sister Flame's arc yesterday; Nova Rising, my level 18 shield/mace tank. Her offense isn't very well developed yet, so just like my FF defender, she was quite happy to run point for Sister Flame's fiery justice.
On the usual note, tall Sister Flame is tall.At least she's not as ridiculously oversized as Doc Delilah, though, who my tanker had to babysit earlier that day...
-
You could get things like dual blades, MA, kat, perhaps, but they'd still have to fit within the 'manipulation' framework, so you'd get some of the melee powers and then the rest would be self buffs/soft controls/etc like usual for blaster secondaries.
I've long wished for the 'body manipulation' MA/other stuff style secondary as well. MA is just so pretty, and the thought of having some of those attacks on the sort of scale blaster melee attacks tend to be on makes me drool.