roleki

OMG, Ice Mistral's Torment! I have been lamenting the... unimaginative design of the Slow IOs since day 1, and here you've gone and fixed EVERYTHING in one shot! This is awesome, no lie. Finally getting a Schedule A End/Slow enhancement! That is fantastic, I'm going to craft maybe a billion of those things. Would loved to have seen an Acc/Slow/End so the set could be two-pieced into non-damaging slow powers, but don't see how that could be accomplished in a 5-aspect set with a proc. That said, it's a set with a proc AND an End/Slow, so there's your two pieces right there (in many cases). Right out the gate, this could (should?) be the mere mortal's go-to for Hot Feet, splitting the difference between Multi-Strike and Superior Avalanche in terms of End/Dam and set bonuses, but with a damage proc thrown in to boot. Next, going to go test-up my Ice/TA Controller with this thing... uh, any chance this set could be exempted from the Rule of 5?

True, but every time I run that map, an alt lives a little on the inside.

I've got a Fire/EA/Stone... EA is very helpful at keeping Imps alive, and since it isn't very slot-hungry allows you to go 6-wide wherever else you need to in the build. That said, when running it, it feels like the sum is less than its parts, somehow. Can't quite put my finger on it, though... you're never in danger of dying from anything, but, you're also not wiping the floor with everything, either.

SJ is still my favorite travel power, but Speed of Sound is so much more practical I end up using it on just about everything. Attack from range, then Jaunt into the mob and start delivering the PBAoE stinks. Farmer running out of nerds to punch? Jaunt to the next mob, let the stragglers catch up to you. Teammate getting murdered somewhere out of your line of site? Target them, then Jaunt over and dump the green on them. Have no idea how to get from where you are on this infernal DA map to where all your teammates are? Target a teammate who looks like they know what they are doing, Jaunt to them.

I thought that sounded weird, but I guess Corruptors get the same version of Dispersion Bubble as controllers (7.5 +Def, 10.38 Mez) vs Defenders (10.0 +Def, 8.65 Mez). What a weird thing, for Defenders to be less effective on one side of the power.

I'm going to have to give that a try; I used to slot a bunch of purples and procs everywhere, but somewhere along the line I just started doing really vanilla builds that focused on one particular bonus or another, bolstered by the uniques everyone runs in the usual places. Maybe that's kept me from falling in love with one build over another; truth is, I feel much more affinity for my weird-slotted Grav/Storm who dies if the slightest thing goes wrong than I do for my unkillable Brutes who rarely take damage and when they do, only 10% of it gets through. Some people are religious over attack chain efficiency, and my hat's off to them for being able to invest that much CPU into such things. I'm too much of an altoholic to get that far down the rabbithole; so long as the character can clear a map without me wondering what the hell is wrong with it, that's fine by me. I make tweaks as I go along, but, that's almost like a job to me. The less time I have the Enhancement Management screen up, that's more time I can flit around flattening things with my Fire/FF controller or whatever. On that Inv/Rad Tank I mentioned, the +6.7 Res(All) is a nice bonus, considering I've already got fairly decent resists out of the primary and set bonuses, but I can see why an SR tank would be downright enthused about the stacking Res(All). In that context, that IS a pretty powerful 1-slot.

Gotcha, and especially dumb on my part NOT to put two and two together because I spent a lot of last night moving that proc around in my Inv/Rad tank, trying to figure out how to get it stacked more consistently.

Time for me to learn something... describe this Triple Stacking. If by "triple stacking" you mean splitting a set across 3 powers so that each gets 2 pieces, you only get 12% damage off Sup Might of the Tanker that way. In that arena, splitting a set into 3, I would argue that Corruptor's Superior Scourge set split into 3, which nets you 10.8 endurance, would be the 'best' ATO split that way, followed by Sentinel Strikes (30% Range) and Dominator's Grasp (24% Mez duration) if the value of what those bonuses contribute to the performance of the character is considered apart from the impact of the unique from a given set. If you split a set into two, sliding 3 pieces into two separate powers, Tanker's SG Fist gets you 20% Mez Resist, 12% Resistance to E/NE, and 7.2 Max End, and that's pretty good. Might of the Tanker split that way just nets you 70.6 Max HP and 8% Max Damage, which is kind of meh. I would argue, in that scenario, Superior Scourging Blast is way up there in terms of value, netting 20% Recharge and 7.2 max endurance. Kheldian Grace split that way nets 30% Accuracy, 20% Mez Resist, and 12% S/L resist which is also pretty good. But when I consider EVERYTHING an ATO set does, I still believe that Scrapper ATOs are the best in the game - whether you slot them 6-wide or break them down into bonus mules - mostly because their uniques are just so damn impactful. In practice, changing your odds of a Critical Hit 3x a minute, from a 5 or 10 percent chance to 50% is just bonkers, considering what a crit adds to your DPS. Adding 3 or 6% chance to crit from the other unique is nothing to sneeze at, because it essentially doubles your chance to crit on every swing. Maybe 'reliably predict' is too strong a phrase for increasing your chance to crit by 900% vs minions (from 5% chance to 50% chance) and 400% against higher level targets (from 10% chance to 50% chance) but in practice, it FEELS reliable. As @Pzn mentioned, placement is key, both in what power you put it, where you fire off that attack, and what you follow it with. I would have to do some data logging to back this up with numbers, but, on an Energy Melee type, if you put the Superior Critical Strikes set/proc in Total Focus and fire that off as a setup, I would say 8 or 9 times out of 10, you're getting the Critical Strikes cue. You then have ~3.0 seconds to fire off another attack and it will crit... if it's Energy Transfer, you just killed a boss in two clicks. If it's Whirling Hands, you just killed 80% of the minions surrounding you. ETA: to your observation that Crits usually happening when an enemy is already close to death and it usually being overkill, that's been my experience as well, and another reason why I prefer Brutes overall... dead is dead. If there's two dudes lingering around at 200HP and my Brute hits one for 300 and your Scrapper hits the other for 600, sure, you out-DPS'd me, but they both were defeated, and I resisted 15% more of the incoming fire. Also, I'll hit the next one for 310 or so, and it's a toss-up whether your Scrapper will hit for 300 or 450 or 600. In the grand scheme of things, I prefer consistency.

I stand by it, and I would gladly tell a newb the same. Roll a similarly-kitted Scrapper, Brute, or Tank without ATOs, and run around with them. Then slot the ATOs. The Brute and Tank, eh, ok, nice little perks. The Scrapper turns into a capital 'g' God. The ability to sometimes get a little Absorb or a little spike in Fury is insignificant next to the ability to reliably predict when you are going to crit. In comparison to every other ATO special, it is damn near broken.

Has anyone asked Daryl Hall and John Oates what they'd put on this list?

Not sure if it led to its "downfall" but as far as Controllers go, Fire/Kin was just godawful boring to play... and that's coming from someone who has earned nearly 16000 incarnate threads on the same map.

I knew it. They're washing the RAM.

And in some cases, TWO unslotters, if'n you're popping out something you want to keep in order to catalyze that bad boy. It adds up!

Far out. I dump stuff on people at random all the time, sometimes just to get it out of my tray, other times for my own inscrutable purposes. It's amazing how many times I get tells "Why did you give me this? I can't use this!" Like, get mad that you have to sell something for free inf, why don't you?

Amazing how many of those end up in my builds, as well. PS - the Reactive Defenses unique starts out at 3%, then as you lose health scales to 10%. As for @Marine X's initiative, I would suggest handing out attuned PerfShifts and/or Numina's/Miracles - just because, not everybody can slot a Kismet or UGuard, but ever'body got Health/Stamina. I may even be able to help you build stock, once I truck some reward merits around.

I've got a build for a Fire/TA somewhere, will have to dig it up. I do know that I skipped Hot Feet on account it was the only melee-range power in the stack; without Hot Feet, the character could work completely at range. Pair that with the fact that /TA needs a lot of endurance, and HF really was a luxury that I couldn't afford. For what it's worth, at the same time I rolled that Fire/TA controller, I also rolled a Fire/TA corruptor, and preferred the Corruptor version so much that I've rolled more on other servers, whereas I only take the Controller out for a dust-off once a month or so.

FF+Rech doesn't 'stack' per se (you won't get 200% +Rech if two hit consecutively) but they DO stack duration. I've found that 3 FF+Rech in an attack chain will pretty much make it perma+100 during combat.

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely love the resulting character BECAUSE it is so much of a kludge, but of the half billion builds I've run, none have had more "why am I doing this to myself?" moments than an Ice/Trick Arrow controller. Massive amounts of slow to dump on an enemy coupled with agonizingly low DPS ensured each encounter dragged on for an eternity. Top it off with no native way to ignite OSA, and, in days past, if it WAS ignited it would scare away your own pet... ah, good times. The TA revamp has helped a bit, but still, the overall theme is just... slow.

Not for nothing, Ill/Dark is very easy to perma-PA on account it has extra slots for LotG and you get them by 20, plus Dark Watcher -ToHit has +5% Rech in four pieces (Cloud Senses Accurate -ToHit has 6.25 in 4 pieces) and you can put those in almost everything in /Dark. Doesn't hurt that /Dark is just about a perfect secondary from level 1 through 50+.

Really? That's cool, I wasn't aware that was even getting a look, let alone a repair. That changes things a bit!

Thanks for the great feedback! This looks great, can't wait to try it on the test server. I also appreciate sticking with the power selections; I could probably solve a few problems with the right Patron Pool but then I'm robbing slots from other areas and I'm not keen on that. I'll have to wait to get on a machine with Mids, but I appreciate your sharing this! The only 'bad' thing about the Power Transfer proc is that if you have one in multiple auto powers, no matter if all of them hit, you only get the one heal. The workaround would be one in an auto, another in a click, which I could certainly do here.

I usually don't run Scrappers (more of a Controller/Corruptor type myself) but in throwing this together, I find that I really love the way MA/Nin does business. Unfortunately, in getting the positionals capped, I didn't cap any resistances and so far on the Test Server it chews through endurance like it's insulted by the color blue. I was hoping to take Barrier as opposed to Ageless, but even with Physical Perfection, all three +Recovery procs, two straight EndMods in Stamina and two PerfShifts, I still have to lay on S.Kyoyo quite a bit more than I'd like. This is the build so far: Numbers are like this: Ranged Def: 51.05 Melee Def: 54.81 AOE Def: 51.99 S/L Res: 58.54 Endurance Consumption: 1.86 w/all toggles/SoS running Endurance Recovery: 3.41 I think I can get rid of the third slot in Weave and take the Power Transfer proc out of Stamina if I need to slide stuff around, and I can probably short-slot Bo Ryaku if I need the slots elsewhere. That said, I would appreciate any advice on bumping up the S/L Res (if not more) and suggestions on how to keep it from inhaling all the endurance I throw at it.

Say you run into a Dark Ring Mistress and she hits you with Petrify, a 10s Mag 3 hold on a 16s recharge. Without Acrobatics (and absent any other Hold Resistance) you're down for the full 10s of being Held, come out of it for 6s, then get hit again. If you had Acrobatics with its 48% Hold Resistance, you'd get Held for 5.2s, come out of it for almost 11s, then get hit again. Two players side-by-side equipped as above may feel like the other spends a LOT/NO time held.

I rarely see it over 85 in content, but in a farm, it's rare to see Fury below 92, and it's usually in the 95-97 range. This is where Speed of Sound adds to DPS... soon as I'm down to bosses in one spawn, I Jaunt to the next and proceed to beat the tar out of them... wash, rinse, repeat. I don't give the Fury Bar a chance to back off in between mobs. I understand *why* Fury isn't easy to get to 100, but it kind of sucks that you have to go into a completely artificial situation to even see it hit 100, and even then it is only there for a fleeting second or two here and there.

You may be right, but that's not how I remember it. Also, if you look in Combat Attributes, you'll have base 0.0 Hold Protection, and subtracting whatever Hold protection you DO have will leave you at 0.0, not 1.0. You can also watch your Hold Protection get dinged by jerks in PvE, so like, if you had 2 Hold Protection and get hit by a Mag 3 hold, you drop to -1.0 (Held) and not 0.0. ETA: I monitor Hold Protection on all my characters because I used to do a lot of MSR and in my experience, Hold Protection was a better indicator of your health than HP or whatever.