Neiska

You know what? ......Fair! A Very fair observation! Does dying a little inside or loosing a bit of faith in humanity count?

Hi forums, So, I finally have my own @Snarky pug story to share. I finally decided to do my very first mothership raid. The leader did a good job at organizing and explaining things. Mentioned in League chat there were a few first timers, explained the pylons and bombs, the bowl, to stay with the murderball, etc. And everything went great. I only died once due to the bombs, but that's because I wasn't sure where I was going and was lagging behind the group to follow them. So, I think that's not bad for my first time. Once we got to the bowl, things went smoothly. The War Priests went down fast, and we chipped away at the GM. Things went well until the GM went down. Then suddenly the League chat went from normal Raid chatter and took a wild left and suddenly out of nowhere three people began to rant about Incels, and essentially how they are to blame for all of society's woes. I won't repeat what was said here, but it's no exaggeration to say it read like the worst of Reddit. And their diatribe rant continued during the rest of the mothership raid, for the full 20-25ish minutes of "farming" the spawns, almost constantly. Post after post after post, sounding very much like the worst of a certain stereotype, essentially treating the league chat like their very own personal soapbox to rant to the masses from. For the record, I don't personally care about the opinions of random strangers on the internet. I just don't care to see it in a hobby or entertainment. I always question if they are trolling or seeking a platform simply for attention. If people wish to discuss things, then fine. Discuss it with people who share your views or opinions. But throwing out into a public forum, and then ranting when some disagree, just reeks of baiting or a complex. Anyway, that's my pug story. My first Mothership Raid included some loudly toxic self-proclaimed dictators of morality. I just hope this isn't normal for Raids. If it is my Ignore list will grow larger. Speaking of which - is the ignore tool character or account specific? Not sure on that one. I think to date I have only ignored 2 people a few years ago? Now, by the accumulated power of Greyskull, Friendship, and 1000 crazy cat ladies combined, I summon Snarky! Nosferatu! I choose You! Lets hear what you think! Included is a live pic of Snarky's last PUG.

@Linea Agree with most of your points, respect the ones that are personal like disliking crab legs. About my accuracy comment, if you click the misc buffs tab it will show your total bonuses, such as Tohit, Accuracy, Damage, etc. You have a bit of ToHit but zero accuracy, so yes Global Accuracy. Not a build-breaker, just something I wanted to point out in case you overlooked it. Much as I like the pets, they don't survive well on +4/8 solo. They do okay on teams to lessen the pressure on them, but alone they just aren't durable enough. Personally, I tend to have 2 builds on my crabbers - one for solo and one for teams. Like I said, good build! I just have other things I like too.

@Snarky

Looked at your latest build you posted, and some thoughts. First, you have a PSI hole, but that isn't uncommon for ATs. Not a make or break by any means, just pointing it out. Second, you picked Soldier attacks over Crabber, which is fine. But your damage output is, well, lacking, even for a Crabber. You have - Single Shot, Burst, Heavy Burst, Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade, and Web grenade. None of them hit particularly hard. I know this is a theme build, but I think you may struggle solo with higher difficulties. But it should perform just fine on +2/8. But if that's your goal, you hardly need 55% Melee/Ranged/AoE DEF. I just think you might be putting too much into just DEF, especially with your resists being so-so. While your DEF is impressive, you are giving up quite a bit to get it. If you pushed DEF so hard because you lack DDR, there's always Ageless. Your END looks good, which is always nice to have on a Crabber. I expect you will be popping a blue now and then, but again, not a build-breaker. Oh, and just noticed - you actually don't have the shield wall Unique, so that's an easy 5% all resist. The last thing I noticed, is that you have 27% ToHit, but 0% Accuracy, which might cause some issues vs some enemies. One thing you might try is adding in Bile Spray and Artic Breath from Levithan Pool. They interact wonderfully with Venom Grenade, due to all the -toxic res debuff stacking, which does more damage than indicated in MIDs. I only just started pushing with them and its been fantastic. Overall it looks pretty good! Just a bit too many "eggs in one basket" for my taste. I like to build my crabbys to be tough and durable too, but I also like to include other things like damage, buffs/debuffs, resists, so on. Here's a snip of my latest build if you want to compare - So side by side, You have more DEF than I, but I have DDR to compensate. I am running double assault toggles and have both spiderlings and reinforcements. But my Resists are much higher than yours, and not just during a RoP but constantly. And I should do much better damage, with the Venom Grenade - Arctic Breath - Bile Spray combo. I will likely take out Spirit Shark (at least the slots) and move them elsewhere, as I am not personally impressed by it. It feels clunky, and it takes quite a bit to get the full 5 stacks of Hunger, where one stack of Arcane Power for Arcane Bolt does almost the same damage, and you might get 3 or 4 empowered Arcane Bolts off in the time it takes to get 1 fully charged Spirit Shark off. So, still making fine-tuning adjustments there. But yea! Great Build Linea! You may not kill stuff fast but you are one tough cookie!

Wish Granted. Here is a 100% Authentic picture of @Snarky's Exalibonk.

One thing to keep in mind @Snarky is that like any other activity, different people will have different approaches to hardmodes. Some people will want to complete with the character they enjoy, even if it isn't minmaxed to the umpteenth degree. Others will want the easiest, smoothest ride possible. I was in one pug where one person threw a tantrum when it wasn't a "flawless" run. Different people have different priorities. Personally, I would rather run things with people whom I enjoy playing with, even if its more difficult to complete the activity. We have yet to come across something we haven't completed or finished. Sure, people may die a lot, and we may have to step back and regroup. But honestly, how often does a team fail and everyone quit and leave? I am hard pressed to think of when that has happened to me. I can likely count on one hand how many times that has happened to me in 4 years of HC gameplay. If you aren't a minmaxer, then don't team with minmaxers. I am sure you will find people who don't mind you being a dark/dark tank or something else. Though to be fair here, I have yet to finish a 4 star with my crabber. I've done 2 star stuff, but most pugs who do 4 star want "only the best" ATs and powersets. So perhaps find a group of friends or SG mates who share the same approach to activities?

Average male height in the US is 5 feet 9 inches. The whole "short" topic makes me more concerned that people who are typical or average, are suddenly considered sub-bar or below, despite being average by definition. The sort of thinking that if something isn't exceptional, than it's trivial.

Every Hardmode I have been on included at least 2 cold corruptors to stack debuffs, and half had Ageless for the debuff protection, the other half had Barrier. Both would be juggled. -Tanks varied, but they were either absorb tanks like Rad or Bio, or tanks with inherent -def debuff protection like Shield. - Ice/Ice corruptors were popular. -Someone with Nature affinity for +dam and absorb. The rest varies, but those were the trends. I run with a SG where there's a signup for them. And once the must-haves are filled, there is wiggle room for other things. But it also sort of depends on the difficulty. The harder the content the less wiggle-room there was. My biggest gripe about Hardmode is it kind of screws over a few ATs, like VEATS and HEATS. I don't see many Controllers, Dominators either, or Masterminds. I see a lot of Tankers, Defenders, and Corruptors. Honestly my favorite playstyle is crabber, but I have yet to bring one to any hardmode, 2 star or no. Simply because anything I could do, someone else could do better, and also bring more, be it Debuffs or whatever. And most groups I have been a part of that tried to be "meta" seem to favor high DPS with strong Debuffs as a focus. I am not against there being a "meta", there will always be a "meta." I just wish the "meta" changed from TF to TF, so the same setups aren't the top-dogs for all of them. They all seem to revolve around DPS and -Def protection. I hope the Dev's make TFs that have like, -Resistance as a thing, or -tohit, or other mechanics that aren't similar to the TF hardmodes we already have. Just to mix it up a bit. Maybe have a TF where hard CC is required. Or where its not a question of surviving bursts of damage, but a long duration fight where the waves don't stop and you have to constantly fight on the move, or something. Or maybe HUGE burst damage, where maybe even a team of 2 or 3 healers are needed to heal through it. And so on. This is just my personal experience mind you, I am sure others will vary.

There's an "Add-Infinitum" joke to be made here, but my wit fails me. My ancestors look on in shame. Forgive me.

Thank you for the feedback and input. Was unaware how much they changed soul extraction, may have to see if i can slot it for damage. The rest of it looks great, i just wasnt sure what was worth slotting for damage, and where the strange interaction of both nature and necros healing-proc or effects should go, or even what all applies to pets and so on.

I foresee absolutely no way this could possibly backfire. 🍿

Just so you know, Power Boost from Mace epic pool boosts Farsight significantly. Its actually fairly easy to softcap DEF with a time MM, but especially a Robots/Time MM. FYI and such. So if you have Power Boost you might have even more slots to spare.

Hello Forums, I made a Necro/Nature to play with a friend. I have never had a fully kitted out Necro or Nature before, so both are new to me. And I know slotting for both can be different than usual. This is my first pass, please feel free to correct any incorrect unique/proc slotting. I remember seeing discussions about slotting Necro and Nature here on the forums, but I couldn't find them, so I'm not sure what all Necro pets will/will not benefit from unique-wise from Dark Empowerment and Enchant Undead. Included screenie for convivence. As far as overall slotting goes, I tried to focus on +recharge bonuses to get Overgrowth up as much as possible. It's not perma, but its down to 77s recast. Sorcery pool is mostly for Enflame and RoP. Gloom and Arcane bolt are both obligatory power picks. And all this is without any incarnates, as I have no idea which Alpha and such I should go for as a Necro/Nature MM. I could take Agility for recharge, Muscled for damage, even Spiritual Core with 45% recharge and 33% healing looks good. Input and feedback from someone with experience in these two powersets would be appreciated! Thanks bunches in advance. NecroFlora - Mastermind (Necromancy - Nature Affinity).mbd

MM pets can have the same DEF and Resists as Tankers do, but have far fewer hitpoints and no aggro tools. You "can" tank or swarm with them, but its a lot of work for dubious returns doing something that other ATs can do better and do it far easier. If you try to tank on a MM you have only provoke as an aggro tool, where even a Bio Scrapper will peel enemies off you, much less a brute or tanker, or even a blaster going full burn. And that's not talking about pets and AoE's either, which is the MMs big weakness. But some MMs can be made fantastically durable, equal to many brutes or tankers in terms of what they can endure damage wise. But I wouldn't recommend trying to hold aggro with a MM in a standard group setup no. Your pets simply won't keep the mobs attention. But I wouldn't call MM pets paper thin either. Honestly it really depends on what you are fighting and the difficulty, but I have MMs that can skip through +4/8 with ease, far easier than my Widow or Scrapper.

I started with robots, but I dislike the changes done to them. These days I tend to favor Demons. I am leveling up a Necro/Nature MM now, but its not to farm with, its to play with a friend as well as check out the new Necromancy. But I don't play robots much anymore, because my robot farms actually take measurably longer than they did before. They were 4 or so minutes before, now they are around 7 or 8. I tend to favor Meteor maps for MM farming. But if I want a more relaxed MM farm I do city map too. I did write a guide on MM farming. I am not sure if I "invented" the idea, as I imagine it may have been done on live, well before my time. But when I invite others I'm often told people never seen MMs farm before.

Hello Spock, Here's a breakdown - Necro - is regarded as one of the strongest, if not the strongest. It boasts a lot of -tohit from the pets, who can also heal themselves a bit, they can be loaded with damage procs, and also have a unique advantage over pet sets in that you can equip them with health proc effects. Also your grave knights eventually have a damage aura. And as a neat bonus, your personal attacks can summon bonus specters. The specters don't do much damage by themselves, but are great to tie things up. I am currently leveling a new Necro/Nature MM myself. Demons - Demons advantage is its sort of a "shotgun" style of attacks - lots of different elements, a few different attack types. They have res buffs, one pet has a damage aura, and the other t2 can heal. Its perk is it has a power that can act as a mule for the pet auras. Thugs - thugs can hit hard for a MM. Arsonist and your pocket Bruser in particular. It also has Gangwar, which if you take burnout from speed, you can use "twice." It also has a mule power. The downside to thugs is that the enforcers buff the thug pets... but not you. So you are more or less left to your own defenses. Ninjas - I have heard ninjas are quite offensive, but a bit fragile. I have never leveled one myself but have heard good things. Your personal attacks give your pets a chance to crit. Mercs - Mercs are well balanced. They are an all-ranged pet set, that can get very good resists from serum. And since they are ranged you can abuse group fly to have an all-flying strike team. Flying makes quite a bit of difference in pets surviving, as not many enemies have full ranged attack chains, and even fewer have -fly abilities. Which means fewer attacks are even attempted against your pets to begin with, before all other considerations come into play. This isn't foolproof or a fix-all, it varies from map to map and enemy to enemy. Some enemies like Arachnos have a lot of ranged attacks, and maps with ceilings means you cant hover out of melee range. But it makes a difference in most situations. Secondaries - For raw DPS, storm is the go-to. But it takes a bit of getting used to, and is a bit chaotic. You effectively make AOEs and more quasi pets that do their own attacks. Not many buffs or defenses to speak of specifically. It has a heal, and steamy mist for defense, but thats essentially it. Kinetics is also a good option to boost damage. The issue with Kinetics is that's essentially all it is - speed, recharge, damage, recovery, etc. No defenses, no resists. It does have a heal but that is all. So your pets may hit hard, but won't have much defenses. Pain, Heat, and Nature all have +damage buffs. Though damage is not their specialty. So any of those pet sets mentioned, with any of these, will have damage boosts. An important note though, is even an MM made to focus on Damage, is only sort of middle-ground compared to other ATs. They can put up decent enough numbers, but the problem arises later down the road on higher difficulties, particularly with pets being susceptible to AoE's. But if raw damage output is all you are concerned with, then any of these pets with /Storm or /Kinetics will have good damage, at least for a MM. Hope this helps narrow it down a bit for you. Mastermind well and prosper!

Chip can refer to electrical or stone, so electrical or stone armor can fit. But it can also be manipulation as well, Electrical or Earth manipulation. Shot can be any of the ranged powers - beam rifle, archery, dual pistols, etc. Alternately, you could combine both and make a Seismic Blast based character, as in "shooting stones."

I respectfully disagree. They listened, "to some." And often, those "some" are the same people listened to, on other various changes. I respect your opinion. I just disagree with it.

I agree with the point that critiques and feedback should be clear, and should not only criticize, but also offer possible solutions. I am not against change, I am simply against change for the sake of change, or "favoritism change" - IE the changes that certain (or the same) groups of people want. And I did not insinuate that a change was rushed, or even malicious. I only remarked on my single experience and found it so unprofessional and distasteful that I have yet to partake in another more than 2 years later. If it was up to me, there would be a signup process involved, or some control measure. So the developers would not keep hearing the same opinions from the same people each time there is a beta, but that's just me musing. I don't feel that the dev team is malicious at all, or even the change in question in my example was malicious at all. Only the tone and how the discussion/disagreement about that change itself went, was. Hope that clears things a little.

Entirely solo. I have soloed missions and TFs before, but it was entirely all me where I could control the flow. I have never multiboxed MMs in a pug/other player environment that was not an AE situation. Other people have jumped in and helped, but honestly its just one giant ball of enemies taking damage that who actually has aggro on which mob is largely irrelevant, so long as everyone involved (enemies and allies alike) are clustered togeather in range of buffs/debuffs/heals. And pets have the same caps as tankers do - can still softcap defenses, and get 90% resistance. So the question of if a pet has the aggro, or the tanker does, really doesn't matter anyway. I do wish to add that I would consider multiboxing MMs in a pug environment a bit of a Faux Pas. Even when controlling the flow by myself, it's difficult and challenging to do, without other people also doing their thing. Not to mention it would likely frighten most pulling so many at a time. Most people simply do not play that way. But I play on Everlasting if you wish to see it in action sometime.

I am surprised I have not seen any mention of a different answer. For those unaware, pets also have their own aggro tables. So if you are referring to who can actively engage the most enemies at a time, its a Mastermind, or other pet class. I even made an entire post about MM "en masse" style of farming. The TLDR is that each pet can aggro "around" 6 mobs each. This is in addition to the 12 mobs the mastermind themselves can engage. So, 6 pets at 6 enemies each, that's 36 mobs. Plus the 12 for the mastermind, is 48 mobs. In theory. I 3 box Masterminds and farm using this principle. And what actually happens is I engage all the enemies capable of being rendered at the time. And I know this because I see different groups of mobs being rendered on my different MMs. (One MM will see a pack where the other two will not, and they will both see other packs the first will not, and so on.) Essentially, 3 masterminds can fight more mobs than the game can place in front of you at a time. When some die off, more suddenly appear where there were not any before. But hey, self-pulling mobs I consider a pleasant surprise. Now, my damage per mob is nowhere near a brutes, but I engage so much more of the map at once that its still a fast farm. Simply because where the brute is fighting 12, I am fighting 40+. I quite regularly pull nearly the entire moon map at once, save for 3-4 straggler groups. It takes me longer to hunt down stragglers and chip away at running EB's than it does to bulldoze the map. So, even if I am doing only 1/4th of the damage the brute is, I am "still" ahead, when considering the map as a whole. So, you want to fight the most mobs at a time? Try a Mastermind. The question then becomes, how do you and the pets survive it?

Quite a bit to mentally digest in this thread. And after some reflection, two thoughts to add - 1. The first, is that most voices here I believe have played if not this game for a long time, than many games for a long time. And perhaps with the passage of time, that we ourselves have changed just as much as those games have. It's okay to have changes in what you like, enjoy, or find interesting. Thats how we grow as people. Tastes change. It can be argued that not all change is good, but at the same time, more than 1 thing can change as well. 2. Regarding the brief point regarding feedback - given the past few years of changes, I steadfastly am convinced that not all voices are equal here. Either intentionally or unintentionally, the game seems to be heading a certain direction despite what we say. Farming gets reduced. Enemies change to be harder, more difficult. Combat mechanics change, to make it harder for certain setups while boosting and propping up others, and more. Now, if these changes are good or bad, that depends entirely on whom you ask and what you use as a measuring stick, so to speak. But one thing I have noticed is that where beta/testing/feedback is concerned, is that it does seem that the powers that be play "favorites" with feedback and changes. And even if it's to the contrary and untrue, it certainly appears otherwise. Taking myself as an example, I only ever took part in one testing period, and found it to be so toxic and unpleasant that I doubt I will ever do so again. It wasn't the change itself that I found so distasteful, rather the discussion that took place. If you were "against" the change, it got quite personal and even insulting in nature. So personal in fact, that a staff member also took part. But not here, but in the Discord. And which I have never received an apology for. So to be blunt, I find the notion that all voices and critiques are considered equal, to be a little insulting. Because they most certainly are not. And for at least a portion of the community, it doesn't matter what we say, (for or against) any particular issue. I believe the majority of feedback is read, by someone, sure. But if it's the right someone or passed onto someone who can actually make a difference one way or another, or if it immediately goes into the trash, we shall never know.

Yea, that's quite a bit of difference. But on the positive side, pretty sure PBs and WS have never had any hard changes or tweaks, just the toggle thing, so maybe they will be next to be looked at?