arcane

I’m shocked the difference isn’t more like double, because the Creepers effect on the meteor is everything to me. BTW this fellow quoted here is the guy who inspired me to make a farm build on my plant dom 🙂 I freakin love it BUT I would play it more if I wasn’t so attached to its name. Because I refuse to change it, it can’t come to Excelsior 😞

Plant is light years ahead of Fire on the meteor map. Because Creepers breaking the aggro cap is THE best thing a Dominator will EVER be able to do in a farm. Heck it’s probably the best farming trick in the game outside of being able to leave Burn on auto, take a break and run some errands, and come back with 20 mil plus drops. Not that Fire/Psi is bad, but Plant is ***easily*** the optimal choice. My Plant/Psi definitely clears meteor maps as fast as my 6 Fiery Aura characters or my Fire^3 blaster, and probably noticeably faster than my Fire/Kin/Fire controller. All 9 aforementioned characters have 45% fire defense and easily survive the meteor map at +4x8, because why wouldn’t you...

I made my Traps/AR do pretty insanely well on the pylon test for a Defender (~2:10 average I recall). Sure fighting a stationary target with Traps/AR is cheating, but still... thing out DPS’s most of my Blasters in that setting after I rebuilt it. I think you want Dominate. AR S/T damage is miserable. Though Corruptor variant will be a smidge more bearable so you do you. Also I would’ve 6-slotted Poison Trap, mostly with procs. Testing dictates Caltrops, Acid Mortar, and Poison Trap are the three Traps powers that leverage procs best. Among other things. Our builds are way different but that’s ok.

Well it’s certainly enlightening data. TBH I went straight from no procs in this power to 6 the first time I tried it with procs. A user here claimed that he tried to swap in 1-2 IO’s with accuracy and felt he lost DPS due to the significance of IG’s broken proccing power. I never really questioned it because all three aforementioned characters shred mobs like mad... but that’s not necessarily meaningful evidence of anything.

It works well as a proc bomb on my Traps characters (can slot 5 damage procs, 1 -res), but whether or not that’s the optimal path for a Stalker is another question.

But the procs basically happen at the *start* of every fresh patch so is it material that the buff drops off *after* the start?

Ok sure but it’s really easy to build for 95% chance to hit +3’s *without* accuracy enhancements so if you definitely like the proc damage, why not. Unless what you’re saying is the pseudopet’s accuracy is not buffed by ToHit buffs or accuracy bonuses, in which case yes it would fall short. Is that the case? I haven’t done combat log analysis but I have 3 characters with 6-procced IG and I don’t recall seeing a lot of “Miss!” But maybe pseudopet tech doesn’t show that either? EDIT... read more... posters do indeed seem to be alleging those patches aren’t receiving all those buffs.

My understanding is that they regard it as a microaggression to not acknowledge that there are in fact 10 of them.

I don’t think non-Brutes/Tankers with 45% defense are particularly balanced. They seem like they’re in god mode to me. That being said, you’re absolutely off your rocker if you don’t see how much more prevalent defense debuffs are in this game than resistance debuffs. Defense is constantly under pressure and requires constant monitoring whereas Resistance basically never moves outside of very specific content. Brutal Justice is not so off base that his proposal has zero common sense to it... but he seriously lacks nuance and no balancing effort is going to work under those circumstances.

I am in favor of minimal FX proliferation and animation alternatives up to a point: In favor of: 1) more effective ways to disable *all* power FX around you with a singular setting. There are options to do this, but posters allege they don’t always work as intended. I can’t confirm that but I’m in favor of such a feature working properly. This is for people that have a hard time staying in control when surrounded by animations. Most of us know how to Tab+F when things get hairy, but I get it. If people are willing to turn off *all* power FX stuff, they should be able to just like they should be able to turn down their graphics. 2) targeted options left to personal preference for excessively graphically intrusive sets (Earth Control, Seismic Blast) and inherently blocky/asymmetrical stuff many find ugly (Bio Armor, Ice Armor, Stone Armor). I am not in favor of: 3) Mass proliferation of minimal FX options or alternate animations to every single power just because a player wants the mechanics of X with the looks of Y. For instance, I would be against letting Street Justice and Martial Arts use each other’s animations. I think a set’s unique look should stay with that set. If you want those animations, you should have to play the set, and if you don’t want those animations, the game is abundantly generous at giving you other sets to play. This suggestion sounds most like (3), so no thanks for that reason.

I’m sure I’ll be dismissed per usual for using IO’s and Incarnates or not testing on the Aeon SF or Rularuu or Carnies yet, but my latest Regen reboot has been nothing but positive so far. Running off solo over and over in KM ITF’s, I am easily able to handle +4x8 groups. Sure it’s easier content but it’s notable that I was scarcely tested enough to even pop an insp. I popped a few insps approximately once or twice per TF. This basically only happened when I did two Nictus/Cyst groups solo right next to each other and in rapid succession. The first time this happens, Burnout is enough and I still don’t need insps. If I double up on soloing too many nictus mobs in mission 2 within Burnout’s fat recharge time, though, I needed 2-3 greens to survive until my next MoG/etc cycle. Is this testing up to scratch with the MLTF-soloing power squad here? No. Do I sense the set is in a horrible place that is beyond saving if you manage your 4 click powers appropriately? No. This was with Ageless Radial fyi. All other Incarnates are ofc for offense.

Sounds pretty questionable. If you’re trying to max out dopamine levels they have pills for that.

Obviously Storm/Storm will be the way. The thought of doubling up Tornados and Lightning Storms AND the Force Feedbacks that come with them... I’m guessing that’s easily 6 Lightning Storms and 4 Tornados perma if not a smidge more depending on the impact of the extra FF proc durations.

I sincerely apologize that you’ve been this week’s scapegoat for my ire and angst. Someone’s gotta do it. This post reads like you understand 🙂 This is all relatively inconsequential. I just think the raid issue feels inconsequential too once you take into account the fact that each character needs to make a grand total of one Null trip for the rest of eternity for the Group Fly fix. Even if you miss one raid to do it, in doing so you’re set for life. But I digress.

Now to turn off the sarcasm and give my real thoughts on Gull. I certainly couldn’t care less about “punishing” other players - what a vivid imagination... Here’s the thing about Gull. Gull is an ugly, inelegant monument to this game’s developer’s failures. It is the in game equivalent of expressing that “I can’t fix this, but I can clumsily apply a whole roll of duct tape and call it good enough.” Null literally only exists because the devs had a few issues that needed a fix and they couldn’t make heads or tails of how to do it with the game’s code/settings. If I’m a dev for this game, I not only want there to be no more than one Null, but I’d also kind of prefer he be shoved into a janitor’s closet in Pocket D so the stain on this game is less visible. Null is a last resort that we only barely want to exist, not something to be proliferated and celebrated. Although it is mildly comical that he manifests as a wisecrack bird. I would say P2W Vendor is in a similar boat although its offerings are a good bit more addictive. But I wouldn’t mind changing her name to GameShark or Cheat Code Store so we’re all a little more honest about what we’re doing there. These may be petty reasons to those personality types here that can only ever seem to ask “why not?” when presented with a truckload of free candy, but I think it’s reasonable to want the developers to pursue a product that is elegant. And when I think of all of the ideas to which some can only say “why not?”.... maybe one or two wouldn’t destroy everything, no. But the responsible developer must think what will happen to the game after 1,000 “why not?” ideas are implemented if they are going to rely on that philosophy at all. It’s not a good argument.

“If it doesn’t hurt other players then there’s no reason to oppose it” is a nonsense argument. It’s a variant of the infamous “if you don’t like it you don’t have to use it / participate in it” trope that just won’t die. Let’s just have a dozen Nulls, P2W Vendors, trainers, and merit vendors in each and every zone. It doesn’t harm anyone, and I can’t stand to move more than 100 ft to find any of them. WHY ARE YOU PUNISHING ME. And yes, that temp power that kills every NPC on the mission map too. We need that and if you don’t want to use it you don’t have to. None of this clearly obstructs your fellow player’s experience and therefore it is all a good idea.

I refreshed my Ice/Regen Brute’s build last night. We’ll see how it goes. My memory of past times with it have always been that it’s effectively as good as the next set as long as you’re mindful of cycling all 4 of your Regen click powers. Basically it seems to play like your goal is “MoG->3 other click powers to survive on for ~45-60 seconds until next MoG->rinse repeat.” I snagged Burnout this time as a failsafe for the rare occasion all 3 clicks are not enough to make it to the next MoG. Barrier Core and Ageless Radial both help too, which one depending on the content. Think I’d prefer Ageless Radial since Regen has vulnerabilities to even more than just defense debuffs.

Also would recommend considering the possibility of a +20% recharge buff somewhere since so many sets get that now, but, otherwise, these are the kinds of modest tweaks that would be welcome but not overpowered.

You can pry the current version of MoG from my cold dead hands. It’s one of the two best god mode powers in the game right now, along with Icy Bastion.

Just noting that meta builds were being painted as (1) sticking to SS/SJ/Leadership/Fighting/Flight/Concealment fairly religiously (2) building for defense set bonuses and (3) probably disregarding weak suboptimal powersets. None of those apply to me. I highly value variety in my pool picks, rarely pick up defense bonuses at all, and play everything indiscriminately from Fire Blast to Kinetic Melee, Force Field, etc. IO’s and Incarnates do apply to me, yes. Otherwise, thank you.

You could be quoting “We cant balance the game.” and I can’t see why anything here would change really. It’s pretty much impossible. Be abundantly careful about giving people toys. They will scream armageddon if you try to take one back. Power creep is like heroin.

I don’t really want to continue this little tussle, but I’m very much sick of the seemingly willful representation on particular topics. Half of my posts on this forum are talking about unconventional build choices I like/make, and the other half are defending me from implications that maybe I’d find things challenging if I started liking/making some unconventional choices once in awhile. You can call it ignorance or dishonesty, but it’s definitely one of the two.

Where did I say I have all meta builds with soft capped defense in any of those posts? Interesting to me that Peregrine Falcon has more ranged defense on his one blaster than I have in ranged or S/L defense on any of my ~15 blasters, but I guess you guys know me better than I do, right?

Do you want me to provide a list of each time this tactic was used against me before I got frustrated enough to say something hyperbolic myself? Or can we acknowledge that and move on. Reprimanding someone for something your cheerleaders engage in is not an effective way to convince me of anything.

Please show me your source. Because I think you’re a good dude but you’re kinda making shit up.