carroto

The HC devs have maintained the OG devs' tradition of being pretty cagey and limited in their community interactions. I'm sure there must be a reason why but I can't help thinking there are missed opportunities there. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic but I'd think this could be crowd-sourced. Ask the community to come together and derive a standardized map of descriptors as well as apply them to power sets. Then the work for the devs would be plugging in the values when they happen to be working on a power set.

As long as you're not in "buy it now" mode it's rarely an issue. I tend to plan ahead on my crafters and put in bids for common salvage well below 300 and it's extremely rare to not have them filled by then next time I log on that character. Now uncommon salvage on the other hand, it's going for an order of magnitude higher than it used to regularly and that's apparently the new norm. It's surged up for a while before but did eventually come down. It doesn't look like that's going to happen this time. I don't know if there's been discussion about why or if anyone knows the reason. My best guess is that it's mainly fallout from the farming nerfs.

Aside from the great slow and -fly, it's one of the better T1 secondary Blaster powers in terms of DPSA (tied for 3rd place). Better than some T1 and T2 primary powers, so may be worth slotting for damage. Not only that but it's energy damage too, so depending on your primary it may actually be a welcome attack.

Blaster tier 1 powers (usually immobilizes) DPSA (based on Arcanatime) Electron Shackles : 60.56 ( 1.19 s) 4 Penumbral Grasp : 33.85 ( 1.85 s) 4 Toxic Web Grenade : 39.50 ( 1.58 s) 4 Stone Prison : 43.09 ( 1.45 s) 4 Electric Fence : 47.40 ( 1.32 s) 4 Power Thrust : 37.45 ( 1.19 s) 6 Ring of Fire : 72.99 ( 1.32 s) 6 Chilblain : 47.40 ( 1.32 s) 4 Ki Push : 52.66 ( 1.06 s) 4 Subdual : 33.85 ( 1.85 s) 4 Immobilizing Dart : 29.17 ( 1.72 s) 4 Entangle : 43.09 ( 1.45 s) 4 Sonic Thrust : 37.45 ( 1.19 s) 6 Elec. Net Arrow : 52.66 ( 1.19 s) 4 Time Wall : 30.09 ( 1.85 s) 4 Time Wall isn't the worst, but it's close.

I do consider damage type and resistances when thinking of rolling up a new character but it's more of a subtle factor. It might nudge me in a certain direction if I'm not sure which character to roll up next, but I don't know if it's ever caused me to avoid a power set altogether. Then again I have very few characters with lethal-only power sets, so maybe it influences me more than I realize. As some others have said if some of my powers have a commonly or heavily resisted damage type I'll usually try to include some attacks with another damage type. Psi is heavily resisted but I can't think of a single psi power set that doesn't have some attacks that also do other damage types. I guess Psychic Blast only has TK Blast, but that smashing component will be very welcome against robots.

The standard if you wanted to be sure you'd successfully complete the RSF was nukes + shivans for the final mission. I failed that SF more than once with PUGs that just couldn't get past the FP. The "Master of" RSF badge was a real accomplishment. I remember being quite annoyed by the state of PVP at villains launch since as a villain player with a level cap of 40 and no way to get Hamidon enhancements, the heroes had a significant advantage in how they could slot their powers.

Ouch. Use lube next time. This provides a good illustration of a feeling I've had for a long time, going back to pre-shutdown...it's always seemed like the devs were overly concerned about Doms being overpowered, or maybe stepping on the toes of other ATs, leaving them relegated to a "Jack of all trades, master of none" role. That was more fine back in the earlier days, but it seems like the more the game progressed, the more Doms got left behind.

Hey just want to say again thanks for sharing your build ideas. It inspired me to re-roll my old Earth/Sonic Controller on my current server. It was always a lot of fun and stoney was pretty tanky with the sonic shields, but still took more damage than I'd like in some situations and just wasn't all that I'd hoped he could be. I remember an EB that took him down twice in a row while leveling, greatly disappointing me. I looked at his stats before deciding on the combo and figured his innate resistances along with sonic shields should make a solid performer. As I said, I was pretty happy overall but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for in the planning stages... For some reason I'd never even considered Spirit Ward. Just got into a rut with my builds I guess. Now at level 26 with stoney, Spirit Ward, and the shields barely slotted he's already doing pretty well. I think that was the missing ingredient I needed to make it work the way I'd always hoped for. Thanks.

This is at times quite frustrating for me. There are people who love a certain set and if they perceive you to be criticizing it they will go hard into defensive mode to the exclusion of any semblance of reality. You do you, play what you want, but you don't need to clog up my thread with your looniness. I get it, you like the set and it can do no wrong and has no flaws in your eyes. Sorry didn't mean to rant.... This seems to happen any time I say I don't like /EA or /Ice because of their gaping holes. The most common refrain is that they are "easy" to plug with IOs, as if those slots couldn't be put to greatly effective use elsewhere, making a build without those holes that much more powerful... Anyway it's fun to see some of the things you pull off with oddball builds. I never looked at Overload to notice that it has high psi def. Seems a bit surprising that it would get that given the reluctance the devs seem to have to granting it to some sets in any form. It's nice that /EA has some answer, unlike /Ice. Icy Bastion provides nothing but some regen, which lasts 30 seconds and won't save you in a psi-heavy environment. I don't think I'd enjoy dealing with the Overload crash all the time but like I said, it's fun to see what's possible. As an aside, and i don't mean this as a criticism, but in that other thread you said you fire AS as soon as it's up, but in that video it looks like you're waiting for a full stack of Assassin's Focus.

That's one of my two and it was glorious when I played it before. I haven't tried it since the Burn nerf though so it might not be all that it was.

Are there any videos out there showing the mad skills these Hurricane users have? Because whenever I used it I just created scattered mobs. I know push them into a corner, but there's often not a corner available. Push them into a wall and some go left, others go right, and even with a corner some will run right through the Hurricane and get pushed out the other side, creating more scatter. The tick rate on the repel is too low. If we could have the original version of Hurricane with the much faster tick rate, from before it was lowered for PvP reasons, I'd probably take it and love it. The version we have now is more skippable for me. Teach me senpai.

Just curious how others approach this. Ice Melee seems to be pretty popular. I've taken it to 50 twice and one thing that always made it feel a bit "off" is how it seems to struggle to build Assassin's Focus. I can fill in with Frost against single targets, but it's a bit slow. I skipped Frozen Fists naturally. More than other sets I want to fill in with an epic attack, but then I don't get many critical quick AS's. With some other sets I can do a nice quick 3-attack setup and then a crit AS fairly reliably. Ice Melee feels very different to those. How do you handle this? Just fire off AS when it's up whether you have 3 stacks of AF or not? Use Frost a lot? Take Frozen Fists?

One thing you'll need to grapple with if you want to optimize your slotting is Enhancement Diversification (usually abbreviated as ED). To simplify for this discussion on damage slotting, any damage enhancement value over 100% is mostly wasted. You get diminishing returns on slotted enhancement values increasingly starting at 70% and radically increasing as you reach 100%. So slotting 100% damage enhancement will net you 95% actual enhancement value. Slotting 133% will net you 99.5%. So it's not really worth it to go past 100% generally. If you look at the totals for one of that ATO sets, you'll see they go well past the 100% ED diminishing returns limit, so they have a lot of extra wasted value. Not a problem if you want the 5 or 6-piece bonus, but no you're generally not going to get significantly better values from slotting generic enhancements. If you total up the enhancement values of all aspects of a multi-aspect set IO, you'll see that they add up to more than a single-aspect's value. So for example if you look at the Obliteration set, the damage enhancement at level 50 will give you 42.4% damage enhancement. The 4 aspect Accuracy/Damage/Enhancement/Recharge gives 18.5% to each. So 42.4% is way better than 18.5%, right? Well the 4-aspect enhancement is giving you a total of 74% enhancement. So if you want to increase multiple aspects, you can do it in fewer slots with multi-aspect enhancements. Doing this without regard to set bonuses is usually referred to as Franken-slotting. Slotting most sets up to 4 or more pieces will often get you a nice mix of enhancement to many different power attributes, but there are certain sets that even fully slotted will not increase everything as much as you'd like. ATOs usually boost the main attribute (damage usually but not always) past the ED limit, as well as recharge. Anyway, point being you're not losing out on damage by slotting an ATO set in an attack.

I've usually seen people quit the league, go run the tip, than ask to rejoin once they're done. Occasionally someone else will ask to tag along for the tip.

Okay so I tried it out on the test server and when surrounded by enemies it seemed to proc pretty reliably every 10 seconds. I believe that puts it at twice the rate it gets in Stamina, so a clear winner there. Definitely losing a slot somewhere else to make room for this one.

That's helpful for auto powers but not so much for toggles. Maybe it's safe to expect it to work the same there. If so then I'd be better off dropping the Regenerative Tissue unique from Health and moving that slot to Lightning Field for a proc there. More effective HP over time. Not only that but it won't be hit by -regen debuffs, which are not all that uncommon.

Well it's a % of the AT's base HPs, so it scales up for higher HP ATs. So it will be sort of equivalent to regen except it doesn't increase with HP boosts. Also it's not an either/or proposition. Once I've slotted the regen uniques and gotten any other low-hanging fruit in that area, I suspect that this proc is the best bang for my buck, and the more of them I can slot the more benefit I'll get. I could be wrong. My subjective experience from using this proc is that it's equivalent to a decent amount of regen over time. Maybe that's a perception error on my part because 5% is a larger chunk of health to get back in one burst than the usual regen tick. Plus it's accompanied by a big green floaty number. It does seem like in combat my green bar will refill noticeably faster when using these procs than without. I'm a fan but maybe it's mostly placebo. I'd love to calculate the regen equivalent of one of these procs but I'm not sure I know the details of how the chances are calculated in auto powers or toggles well enough to be able to do it accurately. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a place to go like the wiki with details like that.

Well it's not unique, so it's possible to use more than one. I almost always have one in Stamina, but it's possible to slot them in other things like say Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection from the Body Mastery pool (not for Tanks though, they only get Physical Perfection). Then sets like Rad armor and Bio have another power in them that can take one, so it's possible to have at least four in some builds. You can get a lot of heal proccage going on. So naturally I was looking for a place to put one in Elec armor and Lightning Field seems like the only auto/toggle the set has as a candidate.

Seems like this should work but I wonder if anyone has any experience with it. I know procs don't have good chances to fire in damage auras but even if it fires off every now and then when surrounded by enemies that seems like it could be worthwhile.

AR will be better for damage without a doubt. DP has more style, AR has more damage. Your pick. Every time I've played with DP in Mids' I end up scrapping the idea. Haven't made one to this day after years of play. You have to want that style badly enough.

If Hasten isn't perma then I'm guessing you have around 100%\-110% global recharge, and you aren't slotting recharge, so running that attack chain with 280% total recharge (100% base + 110% + Hasten) I get this: Energy Punch Pause (1.242285714285713) Quick Snipe Pause (0.846285714285715) Bone Smasher Pause (0.27142857142857224) 73.61346434601549 DPSA over 6.715999999999999 seconds However if you slotted one recharge SO, bringing the total recharge to roughly 310% I see this: Energy Punch Pause (1.0989677419354837) Quick Snipe Pause (0.7771612903225797) Bone Smasher 79.3289137610667 DPSA over 6.232129032258063 seconds Of course none of this applies if you are counting on that FF proc being active, but you're relying on it pretty heavily to bring up your DPS with that slotting and attack chain. Looking at proc chances and the average damage the proc will do at that probability as a percentage of base damage, I see this (at 0% slotted recharge) Quick Snipe : 79.24% proc chance, 23.61% of base damage Energy Punch 64.49% proc chance, 42.45% of base damage Bone Smasher : 90.00% proc chance (capped), 44.66% of base damage I like to look at these number to figure out the value of a proc versus regular damage enhancement in a power. Unless you expect to be damage capped from some source regularly, it looks like slotting damage close to the ED limit in the quick snipe is worthwhile. I'm not sure what to conclude from any of this. Slotting recharge is tricky in the way it interacts with procs versus optimizing an attack chain. However in my experience any significant pause in an attack chain will drag down your DPS. Edit: Forgot to mention that I based my quick snipe calcs on having the Kismet unique as well as Tactics slotted to the ED limit for tohit, and thereby nearly capping the quick snipe's variable damage.

I looked at Kinetic Melee vs. Battle Axe in terms of DPSA of powers and attack chains. First DSPA ( +Arcanatime and recharge) Kinetic Melee ----------------- Body Blow : 54.98 ( 1.32 s) 5 Quick Strike : 49.76 ( 1.06 s) 3 Smashing Blow : 63.77 ( 1.45 s) 7 Repulsing Torrent : 30.67 ( 2.24 s) 12 Burst : 26.93 ( 2.90 s) 15 Focused Burst : 45.72 ( 2.24 s) 8 Conc. Strike : 73.36 ( 3.04 s) 20 Battle Axe ----------------- Beheader : 52.66 ( 1.19 s) 4 Chop : 70.66 ( 1.45 s) 8 Gash : 84.45 ( 1.45 s) 10 Pendulum : 37.53 ( 2.24 s) 15 Swoop : 98.24 ( 1.45 s) 12 Axe Cyclone : 31.60 ( 1.98 s) 18 Cleave : 68.85 ( 2.51 s) 15 Then I looked at a single-target attack chain for a build with highish (but not extreme) recharge. 300% (base + global + slotted). Kinetic Melee: CS -> SB -> BB -> QS -> SB -> BB -> Pause (0.0666666666666682) 62.41532568366083 DPSA over 9.70266666666667 seconds Battle Axe: Cleave -> Swoop -> Gash -> Chop -> Pause (0.6440000000000001) 71.9940463505594 DPSA over 7.508 seconds I can't promise that these are the absolute optimal attack chains for these parameters but I tried. Suggestions are welcome.

CJ is a given for me always so I pair it with Hover if I'm going to Hover-blast. If I have a snipe that usually means also taking the Leadership pool for Tactics if I want my quick snipe to do close to full damage. That just leaves one pool available, and I always have the ability to stealth missions, so probably Concealment pool. So yeah Hover-Blaster builds tend to be real tight for me without much wiggle room or variety unfortunately. I think it was a huge mistake to tie snipe damage to tohit in the way it is, but that's a rant for another thread...

If that's the only impediment to your enjoyment there are mods that will allow you to either silence the wolf or change the sound of the howls. It was an issue for me as well and I can't begin to understand how any dev thought it was a good idea to have it make those noises with that frequency while standing around. There are something like 5 (from memory, been a while) different howls/barks it makes, so I silenced most of them but left one or two so it could occasionally speak up but not constantly. I did it manually using the instructions here but there's also a modder tool (linked there also) that will do it for you.

According to this guy the best single-target attack chain for a Brute is Chain Induction -> Charged Brawl -> Jacob's Ladder -> Charged Brawl. Stalkers are a bit more complex because you want to build three stacks of Assassin's Focus and then put a fast AS in the mix. Chain Induction has a 100% chance to grant a stack. Jacob's Ladder 90% and Charged Brawl 65%. So you're not going to have a completely fixed and reliable chain because you won't have 3 stacks guaranteed at any point. I'll try to remember to come back and look at attack chains for Stalker Elec Melee in more detail. One thing though is that sometimes the optimal attack chain requires extreme levels of recharge, and you may not want to spend the inf or make the build sacrifices to get there. For groups of mobs of course you'll want to use Chain Induction and Thunder Strike if you have it. Yes Thunder Strike is slow and poor DPS against a single target, but if you have enough of them clustered up it's actually pretty good damage. It only does half it's damage in the AoE, the rest is the primary target only. Still that's better than most other versions of the power other ATs get. Many have a much lower percentage of their damage as AoE. I try to squeeze as many procs in here as possible to increase the AoE damage, and a FF proc to bring all my best stuff back faster (especially Lightning Rod). Procs work in Chain Induction but have a much higher chance to fire against the primary target than the chain targets. I couldn't resist having a bit of fun here and put a KD and hold proc in there and they don't fire a ton but it's funny to see the chain going around and seeing mobs fall down or get frozen in a block of ice. Not the best for performance, but sometimes sacrifices have to me made in the name of fun. Placate has been discussed. Personal preference. You'll probably want to skip one of the first two powers. Havoc Punch has the lower DPSA by just a bit, but it does have an 80% chance to grant Assassin's Focus, so I wonder if it might be better to take the slight hit on damage to have a higher chance to build AF. Might increase damage overall having your fast AS ready to go sooner and more reliably. I don't have a good intuition on that so I'd probably have to see if I could write a crude simulator to calculate the average damage with different approaches. One thing you may be aware of that surprised me a bit (but others were probably already aware of) when I was running some Stalker power set comparisons by calculating DPS of some attack chains, is that the fast AS is a huge part of your damage output. You want to get it ready to go and fire it off as quickly as you can. It's just so far ahead of most other attacks available to Stalkers in terms of DPSA that it tends to dominate the overall DPS of an attack chain. To the extent that the sets with slower animations on their fast AS get their entire performance dragged down by that difference. Fire Melee for Stalkers is not in the top tier for damage, but that's exclusively because it has one of the slower AS animations. Damn shame. Still a good set, but could be so much more. Chain Induction is a great power. Fast animation so it does great damage. Long recharge which is unfortunate, but that means that it will proc well against your primary target. The chain proc chances are not affected by that IIRC. This is one of the least skippable powers for me.