Siolfir

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Actually blizzard going away when you die make sense. You are no longer there to control and direct it, so it dissipates. The same could be said about sleet and freezing rain. Though I see your point on oil slick.

BTW, Lightning rod is limited to 400% damage because it is a pet.

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LR: +300%, 400%; to-may-to, to-mah-to; the limitation makes no sense there as the only ATs that have it have +400% and +750% caps.

Not being there to direct Blizzard: So? It's started already - I don't have the endurance to direct it after it was started in any case. If it was supposed to be directed, make it an expensive toggle. For every valid point about "not being there to direct it" that makes sense, there's an equally valid point about "I've already spent the time 'directing' it by summoning it in the first place".

Using Blizzard to start fights against dangerous spawns: Would you expect a Dominator or Controller to use Ice Slick on a dangerous spawn? Blizzard has an Ice Slick built-in. It can be dropped from outside of line of sight. Not using it when you expect trouble with an alpha is more of a problem than using it - there's a reason that having it stick around after dying would've only helped me a few times.

None of the servers are very active... they just kind of sit there in the same spot all the time. There was some talk about putting them on an exercise program during the Monday and Friday maintenance periods, though.

Then again, if they were more active, then the players wouldn't be able to find them to log on!

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Now, if you're arguing that it should get the same exemption as gang war and WS fluffies to allow it to persist after the caster's defeat, you can do that.

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I thought that was the whole point of the thread...

I wouldn't mind the change, but the number of times it would have made a difference for any of my characters can be counted on one hand.

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Yes, but doing this consistently solo is impossible and difficult to maintain on all but multiple-kinetics teams.

[/ QUOTE ]It's not difficult to maintain if you're on a full team, even if you've only got one Kin. Especially on difficulties 2 and 4.

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* - unless you're a Brute, or the Kinetic is really on the ball if you are.

+750% is much harder to hit, even with Fury, than +400%.

Energy Aura on Stalkers does reasonably well; given the "only matching set" criteria I'd recomment EM/EA Stalker over a DM/DA one as a general case.

The reason resistance sets don't do as well as defense sets for Stalkers is partially due to hidden status dropping when you're hit so you end up with fewer guaranteed criticals in certain situations (such as player-targetted ambushes or runners that come back and find you later), and partially because they have the same 75% resistance cap that squishies have, along with lower hit points (Blaster level) and a lower hit point cap (1606 at cap) than any of the other melee ATs. There's not as much leeway, where with defense you've always got that chance to get two-shot but the actual number of hit points matters less. You can still make resistance sets work for you, but they're at a disadvantage.

Also, if you want to try out the new Dominators, the changes are on the test server currently - you may find that you love it, you may find that you hate it. There's a mixed bag of reviews in the feedback thread from people that have tried comparing their Dominators on live vs on test (and a lot of doom from people who haven't tested). I'm disappointed that many of the AoEs were deliberately gimped (as in, lower damage scale but higher endurance cost and recharge; and I'm not talking about PSW either) and that the thing I liked about Electric Assault (that it followed the Blaster Electricity Manipulation setup for the melee attacks) was altered. But Energy Assault looks to be much nicer now.

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Does Fire dmg not scale well with recharge?
I mean if it is the "highest" dmg in a single target situation wouldn't the same amount of recharge grant the same damge increase as other brute primaries?

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Not really, since it's based on how often you can use your best DPA attacks. If there's a significant difference between in DPA for the attacks in a set, more recharge will help that set since you can use the best DPA attacks more often. It's why Energy Melee picked up so much with Energy Transfer having a one second animation, despite a 20 second recharge.

If you get the recharge down on Stone Melee enough, the higher DPA of Heavy Mallet and Seismic Smash will have it doing a bit more damage. Dark Melee with saturated Soul Drain on high recharge is even higher. You can see the results BillZBubba calculated from the chains provided in the high recharge link in my sig.

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This thread proves there is something wrong with the primaries. Fire melee should no doubt be number one in overall damage as it offers zero protection. If it doesn't, we need a balance pass.

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it is the highest.

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Correction: it is the highest, provided that you're not looking at things like AoE areas and conveniently ignore that it's not the best at single target damage on high recharge builds either.

But with just SO slotting and no Hasten, it's the highest.

lolDA

The latest numbers I saw had Dominators as the lowest non-epic AT overall, and Defenders as the lowest non-epic AT heroside. It's all the letter D's fault.

Also note that "the latest numbers I've seen" was a post by BAB on AT percentages that Arcanaville quoted, and is well over 8 months old.

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Why so much ranged? Why not lower that to 45-46% and substitute in some more melee or AoE?

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Purely speculation, since it's not my build, but I'm guessing that they figure the tohit debuffs from DM will take care of melee and the PBAoEs - which are generally the ones you'd need to actually worry about. AoEs in general do less damage and are less of a bother, and when in Hidden status you're well over the softcap without trying.

I'm not saying that's how I'd do it, but I can see some form of logic behind it.

Allow me to be the first to offer my condolences.

(I'd actually sign up but my highest hero on this server is level 36.)

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Start up an AE arc so you won't auto-log-off. Stand near the other faction's base in the PvP zone. Go AFK. They'll repeated kill you and you'll repeatedly rez. They get rep. You get a PvP badge and start working toward your debt badge.

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If it's just PvP damage, there shouldn't be any debt.

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We never could beat him - in retrospect, we weren't designed for actually fighting Bat'Zul ourselves. Even with all the temp pets we could call up against it, the horde of Fire Imps it called just kept overwhelming a team of single-target damage dealers...

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Which is a little bit funny since the weakest of AoE attack instantly wipes out all the fire imps.

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Yep! The imps themselves have 4hp at level 20 so they're easily cleared. So long as the person Bat'zul is targetting is in melee range, he won't summon any more. Imps really shouldn't be a problem, since you can always just quickly switch targets and use Brawl to clear them.

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It is pretty expensive to soft-cap them

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Not really.

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Expensive is a relative term. Apparently your threshold for what it means is higher than most of the people who have posted about it in the thread.

...

None of the sets has "fast recharge" and none of them look particularly "speedy" by having quick animations that you can cycle rapidly. But my opinions aside (I'd go DM for fast-looking, "superspeed" attacks) here's the answer for what you asked:

Of the in-primary attacks, Super Strength has recharges of 2, 4, 8, 25, 8, and 20 seconds; Energy Melee has recharges of 6, 4, 8, 14, 20, 20; and Electric Melee has recharges of 3, 6, 8, 18, 14, 90.

The nice part is that it can be stacked... which since it contains defense debuff resistance is good regardless of whether or not you need the extra mez protection.

The bad part is that your mez protection eats time out of your attack chain.

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stone melee is an end pig. it's very difficiult to make it work without being willpower secondary when teamed or during long fights.

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You keep saying that, but that doesn't mean that only Willpower can handle the endurance drain.

Energy Aura and Electric Armor both handle endurance issues better than Willpower does.

Granite Armor will also "help" you out by reducing your recharge - the less often you use those powers, the less endurance you use!

Really, though, an expensive build with lots of +recovery bonuses will let any secondary get away with it. Electric, Energy, and Willpower just don't need to spend as much.

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Elec felt kinda weak until about level 33. Then I loved loved loved it.

Lightning Rod has two AOEs with different radii. Radiuses. Things.

You hit "a lot of spread out people" for respectable damage, and "people right underfoot" for a TON of damage.

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The two different AoEs annoy me, given that Shield Charge does all of its damage to the whole AoE.

Why it "thematically makes sense" for Lightning Rod to have a 3' radius AoE for the full damage but smacking someone with a shield that's usually less than 3' long has a 20' radius... uhh, yeah.

Anyway, Lightning Rod is flashy and fun, but really needs to either have a lower recharge, or it needs to do more damage.

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I concur. PvP-wise, you might want to opt for an ice/cold. The ice attacks nicely minus the recharge time of your enemy and have some decent holds. Immobilise his/her attack rate and speed, decimate his/her defense and resistance, hold him/her, then kill kill kill kill!

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For PvE, this works.

For PvP, the damage in Ice Blast was completely gutted and it's one of the (if not the) least damaging sets. Rad Blast has some amusement value, especially given all of the procs you can load into it and how fast you can cycle the attacks (procs are, the last time I checked, unresisted damage in PvP).

Dark isn't too shabby either, though. If nothing else, it's better than Ice.

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It has no AoE damage whatsoever,

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Caltrops!

>.>

<.<

Why are you all looking at me like that?

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Yes, farming is boring.

So is repeatedly running newspaper/police scanner missions against the same tired old groups all the time.

So is running the same arcs for the 50th time on a different alt.

The game play gets repetitive quickly; that's why I like squishies and ATs that have little minigames built in (playing "avoid the mez" or trying to maximize Fury), or simply just teaming with interesting people - good or bad players, as long as they're interesting - to relieve the doldrums of a relatively static world.

Most of the information's already been listed, but clarifying - the altars aren't "anywhere" on the map, there is exactly one spawn point in the back of each of the arms leading off of the main chamber and so there will never be two altars close to each other or near the AVs. Which five of the paths have one of the altars is randomly determined, though.

When you click the last altar, there is a set of three ambushes triggered that heads towards the leader of the team. It's location-based and so can be avoided with stealth, and as is standard for most PvE ambushes if you don't defeat the first ambush the other two waves never show up.

Also, if you're going to defeat Infernal first, keep in mind that when he dies there are three waves of ambushes coming in - for that reason alone I tend to save him for last, because then I can just click out.

Which brings us to another point - Infernal and the Legacy Chain members in his group will attack any of the Bat'zul minions, Circle of Thorns, or Bat'zul himself that get within their aggro radius. As your team has nobody with a taunt, it's unlikely that you'll be fighting both at once if you focus your firepower on one at a time. This behavior can also be used to thin out the ambushes from clicking on altars and the Legacy Chain at the same time - let them run through Infernal's group and he'll slaughter them while they're on the way - but has the chance of scattering and causing Infernal to chain aggro by chasing one of them and get himself killed, causing the other set of ambushes to show up before you're ready.

My personal recommendation, if you can work it (and it sounds like your team should be able to) is to stealth the glowies with the leader being one of the people stealthing. That causes the ambush to head down one of the arms and out of the way.

Then you'll need to appear near the edge of the lava for Bat'zul to rise up out of it - if you remain stealthed the entire time he simply won't show up. I usually just pick off an isolated minion outside of his aggro range rather than detoggling Hide/Stealth/etc. that has a recharge longer than the time it's suppressed.

Then have someone pop a couple of purples to cap defense, launch a ranged attack into Bat'zul, and back up through Infernal's group - there's a range at which he'll summon imps that you need to get through quickly or else he'll block himself in with fire imps, so just don't stop moving until you break line of sight behind one of the stalagmites. He'll jump up, start through Infernal's group, and his first AoE will get their attention on him instead of you, hopefully with Infernal in melee range since if someone's in melee range neither will summon pets.

Once Infernal and Bat'zul are fighting, immobilize them and concentrate fire on Bat'zul. Once he's down, take out Infernal, who will already be weakened and anyone with Air Superiority slotted well can keep from attacking anyway (he has no knockback protection), then exit before the ambushes show up.

edit: the above method isn't the fastest, but is rather safe and effective - the fastest method involves splitting up the team and clicking glowies while killing Infernal, taking out Bat'zul immediately afterwards either in the lava or just at the edge.

I added links to my sig.

Since it gets asked a lot, added links - see signature.

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~ In Wave 2, how do all the MM minions (including the Gang War peeps) have a 30% plus chance to hit a capped character? There was no defense debuff that registered on my defense monitor. Did anyone notice any Empathy types buffing with a ToHit buff maybe? (I am working on kill order and things are too hectic for me to figure our all the secondaries.)



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If NPC masterminds get supremacy just like PC MM's then they would give thier pets a 10% to hit buff - I suppose some combination of stacking supremacy + scaling could produce this effect. Just a thought.

Not sure about any of the other questions - I tried the challenge a long while back when Arcanaville first designed it and decided it wasn't my cup of tea so don't know a lot about it.

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Whether or not the MM mob itself gets Supremacy, Thugs Enforcers have leadership powers including a weak version of Tactics which affect all Thugs within a 30' radius.

Each enforcer grants a 2.5% tohit bonus to each and every thug around them, whether summoned by that MM or no. I (ab)used this on one of my arcs back when minions still got Gang War and every mob was a Thugs/* MM.