Nemu

Ice Manipulation is really good now. I hesitated to make one on live because it had too many skippable powers and it was also too single target focused. The change to frozen aura is HUGE. This new AoE capacity and the 3 relatively fast animating single target attacks and the powerful mitigation tools in it's toolkit makes this secondary one of the premier melee blaster secondaries once it goes live.

I'd rather some of these control powers get the sonic deafening wave treatment. Chance for low mag mez, usable multiple times per fight instead of every or every other fight, and does damage. This applies especially to those secondaries that lean more towards melee. It's not like the ranged crowd will ever pick up a weak pbaoe mez or a short range cone mez based on the feedback I'm seeing on entangling arrow. Melee blasters certainly don't need or depend on those for survival either, but making these powers do damage with a chance for mez at least gives them some pause in the thought process to weigh in the opportunity cost of taking such a power in place of something else. Last time I checked, options are a good thing, but on the other hand, having options that no one takes is bad design.

Only one way to find out, give them a captcha test and have them point out all the traffic lights. If they fail - ROBOTS

I think they are just weak to energy damage if that's what you are hinting at.

No longer Irresistible isn't the same as missing. It just means mobs will resist the effect to a certain degree, so that the perception debuff is only 50% as effective, for example. I don't play /TA but isn't flash arrow autohit? And also why would you open up a fight with entangling arrow when you have more damaging and longer range options available?

That's how I feel about most of the T8s AoE CCs regardless of their mez effect, and I especially want to challenge this notion. I'd like to understand the rationale behind this that's not tied to spreadsheet numbers that cares only about damage/recharge formulas and the like. What makes a mag2 aoe hold so powerful compared to a mag 2 aoe stun/confuse on blasters that warrants bumping up their recharge to 180 seconds which is comparable to blaster nukes? Is the end result not the same that you prevent LTs and minions from attacking you for a few precious seconds? I get that you can stack holds easier because single target holds are more prevalent across blaster primaries and most of the secondaries with such AoE holds also have a single target hold to supplement that strategy but I don't see how that use case singularly propels AoE holds into the "broken" category to justify such treatment.

I posted that comment without doing any math but I can takesies backsies. Yes you are correct, 20% is around the ballpark. I think it's the visuals display of consecutive crit messages that made me feel like it was doing more. Time to stop feeling.

That part I completely get and I can get onboard that. I've expressed several opinions in this thread if you care to read through them. I don't want to keep repeating the same things over and over, I'm not that old... yet... 😄

I offer a team up so I can see where you are coming from and you can see where I am coming from. Offer's on the table, global @Nemu and I have Jezebel in my sig on torch, everlasting and excelsior. Same offer goes to @Placta and anyone else that dislikes TS and FOT.

Onto plant manipulation. The cast time reductions are good, Thorn burst still lags behind similar PBAoEs like combustion in both damage and recharge and it could use a slight tune up. For a T9 pick it feels even more lackluster than if it had been sitting in it's original slot. Am I reading it wrong or is ESD arrow the only T8 AoE hold that's still on a 90 second timer? I get the mathematical rationale of increasing the recharge on AoE holds seeing that controller holds such as cinders have a 4 min recharge. However controllers also have other control options and their CCs last longer. Rather than looking strictly at numbers and formulas, consider the human element and look at how people build blasters: I doubt many will find these 3 min cooldown AoE holds with their low duration (especially against higher cons) useful enough to invest in them. There is an opportunity cost associated with picking up non-damage powers for blasters and this treatment of AoE holds renders that cost too high.

Seems to be triggering off certain procs. I noticed the animation going off every time a FF proc triggered off golden dragonfly, as well as defiant barrage proc, guassian's proc and I bet any of the other procs that grant a passive buff. On the other hand /Nin feels very good now for melee blasters now that the damage is balanced against blaster formulas. The 20% chance for critical might be a bit overtuned when applied to all attacks, Might want to consider relegating it to /nin attacks or upping the crit rate on select sword attacks to add more incentive to go into melee.

Testing out sonic manipulation made me take a step back and look at /Elec as a whole and FOT's role in it on live. Ignoring the sustain part of it and focusing solely on the control aspect of FOT. What makes it so attractive on Live to melee blasters is due to the fact that /Elec is very single target focused. Therefore FOT in conjunction with Thunder Strike work well together to limit incoming damage from the adds surrounding the primary target. Dynamo can't do it alone, but if the splash damage on TS is increased by 300-400% it would surely increase kill speed and compensate for the loss of a consistent way to cycle KD. Even so, powers like ice patch from ice manipulation and even bonfire from the fire epic provides constant KD more efficiently and I see no reason that /Elec shouldn't be able to do the same with more effort and more risk.

Overall the set has a good feel speed wise, no animation is too clunky and the attacks flow well. Melee blasters like myself will enjoy this set. Here are some comments: Strident Echo's DOT takes too long. You can typically get Strident to under well under 5 seconds recharge and the overlap will waste the remaining dot. Recommend shortening the DOT and upping the front loaded damage. With the rest of the set thematically wrapped around hold as a secondary effect sound cannon seems out of place. I get that in RL thematically loud sounds disorient but this powers offers no synergy whatsoever with the rest of the set. I skipped it in my melee build because no synergy and ranged cone. Given the uproar over the range reduction on electrified net arrow with TA, I imagine having this tied to a 45 feet cone with no synergy with the rest of the set means that the ranged crowd will most likely skip this too. The absorb on sound barrier is negligible and makes no difference whatsoever for those versed in melee blasting. I don't know how the devs would feel about combining the effects of disruption aura into sound barrier. It's not like there is no precedence for combining blaster sustains with debuffs/damage auras...

I have a feeling most of the posters rooting for Dynamo replacing FOT are of the hover blasting crowd (don't get all triggered, read further below). I have absolute confidence the pure ranged crowd would skip FOT if it went to live regardless of whether it got modified in it's current beta state or not as long as the PBAoE tag sticks. Dynamo is a QoL improvement that both ranged and melee blasters can benefit from. FOT only benefits the melee crowd. Having said that I tested FOT with a few +4/8 PI radios. I had it down to about 30 seconds recharge so yes it's available every fight and it reliably triggers the FF proc. The stun on fodder lasts about 7 seconds, and I have not been able to stack stuns on bosses so far with thunder strike, as I have from time to time on live. The stun gives you enough time to take out a troublesome LT like a tarantula mistress but that's about it. Without the ability to cycle KDs like we can on live the incoming damage will be increased by magnitudes for melee blasters. The risk vs reward ratio is skewed towards mostly risk and negligible reward for those that make their home in melee range. While veteran players with softcapped builds and knowledge of how to play melee blasters can most likely get by with this change if it goes on live, those that don't build for softcap and there are plenty out there, and the more casual blasters will find little benefit to this power. I anticipate that they will most likely mark this as a skip just as the pure ranged crowd does. Radioactive Cloud is the closest comparison to FOT. In a vacuum they carry the same amount of risk with the PbAoE tag. However RC is a hold, and can stack with positron cell a lot more reliably than the FOT/TS interaction. In addition blaster primaries have quite a few damaging attacks with a hold component that can also stack with RC and PC. That secondary also feature beta decay which debuffs to hit, and metabolic acceleration provides more defensive benefits than Dynamo. /Elec has powersink but that in itself is not enough for an end drain strategy, and the end drain that dynamo does is not immediate and/or large enough to synergize with powersink. In short /Elec lacks the toolkit to back FOT up in its beta state. As I said before, if you can rotate energy torrent and explosive blast for the KD mitigation with less risk, there is no reason why we can't have the same interaction with TS and FOT with their current recharge timers on live. Change the recharge of the new FOT to 30 seconds, remove the stun, or keep a small chance to stun if you are feeling generous. That will make both the ranged crowd and the melee crowd happy with the changes to /Elec.

I get that, I'm way past the sustain part of FOT as it relates to any comparisons. I'm strictly focusing on the soft control/recharge time component of FOT. The whole bringing Blaster T8 AoE CC powers does have it's holes no? Where does that leave burn? I can accept having FOT at the T8 slot, but the new FOT doesn't NEED to be a clone of other T8s. Keep the 30 second recharge and the KB, remove the sustain and heck remove the stuns too, and I'll accept that. But the garbage of an auto-skip power on beta right now? NOPE.

Doesn't have to be if they kept the recharge time on the new FOT and to hell with the stun component. Again, let's not focus on the sustain part and make this a Dynamo VS FOT discussion. This should be an Old FOT vs New FOT discussion. You and I are on the same page about this, we just have to focus on FOT itself 😁

I'm fine if dynamo makes it to live, I'm not fine if the new FOT makes it to live, for reasons I have stated in my previous posts.

The bigger issue is what they did to to the new FOT. Let's not warp the focus onto whether Dynamo is better than FOT as a sustain. That doesn't matter, focus on the new FOT itself. Devs talk about incentivizing blasters to go into melee, and FOT as it is now is at a good place with risk vs reward. It worked well with thunderstrike to provide consistent mitigation for blasters that live in melee. This is no different than cycling energy torrent and explosive blast on an energy blaster, and the latter carries less risk due to it being ranged and the two powers cycle faster than FOT and TS. Now you turn FOT into a late pick with a 90 second timer emphasizing it's ability to reliably stun. That's a huge nerf to FOT as far as myself and some others that have posted here are concerned. If you want to nerf FOT take the stun component away from the original version and I'd still prefer that to the new version.

The latter is probably more relevant than the former. I just ran around PI with dynamo on and played around with some level 43 mobs to get a gauge of how dynamo contributes to my damage. Against a level 43 minion it takes 2 flares to kill it, with dynamo on it still takes 2 flares to kill it because I don't have time to wait for Dynamo to do its thing. Against real threats kill speed matters even more. I'm sure AoE starved blasters will appreciate damage auras if they have the nerve to go into melee, but most blasters have enough AoE to wipe out fodder. And if we are talking about going toe to toe with multiple bosses, it will take a lot of ticks to to match the amount of damage you can throw out with a fireball, and the reality is that you will still use blaze to kill off that boss with 60 hp left instead of of giving it 2 more seconds to kill you. I can see the spreadsheet warriors talking about how auras contribute a significant percentage of damage on farms/etc but the reality is that we ain't got time for dat. Whether you agree with me on this or not is inconsequential, I think we both agree that the changes to /elec is not good and that's what matters 😁 I'd much rather Dynamo had a useful secondary debuff effect than damage. But I'd much prefer if they just put FOT back in that slot and make it a toggle sustain with a click component to satisfy the camp that dislikes FOT for being a click.

So rather than ramble on and complain about the change to FOT I'm going to offer a suggestion The primary complaint from players about FOT is that it's not a toggle and have to be activated regularly So make it a toggle, but once toggled on provide a click for the pbaoe KB power on the same 30 second timer. The tech is there already, at least for the click part. I don't know how it would affect enhancement allowance though.

FOT had a unique sustain mechanic. More importantly if the premise is to buff /elec then the FOT change is a nerf. I'd rather have 2 pbaoe knockdowns on a relatively short timer than a pbaoe stun on a long timer. The patch notes about blaster secondaries mention giving blasters incentives to go into melee, this change takes away some of that incentive. Compared the other ranged 90 second control options in other sets a pbaoe stun on a 90 second timer is vastly inferior. It's much easier to stack holds than it is to stack stuns, and most single target stuns from blaster primaries don't do any damage so they are instant skips, just like FOT will be if the changes make it to live. Regarding dynamo, most players don't take blaster damage auras. There are some that do, but most players don't play melee blasters and melee blasters don't take damage auras because they already have enough damage and they don't want to deal with re-toggling when they get mezzed. Adding a pitiful amount of damage to a toggle sustain is not a buff. It is unnecessary in the first place. /Elec is a melee blasters set and the way it works right now compliments that playstyle perfectly. I was ok with the 3.3 second animation time on TS, but I'll take that buff. The FOT change though is utter junk.

Patch notes had me at the first half talking about Electric Manip being under-tuned and then I see the change to FOT. Please don't touch my FOT, it's fine as it is.

15 minutes.

Look no further than @Darkir's build. It's got survival covered. I'd do a few things differently. I'm firm believer of slow resistance for high end high budget builds. As a blaster player I am also a firm believer of anti-mez powers and I'll always take those. Steam Spray doesn't jive with the melee-centric playstyle so I skipped it in this build. It's a toss up between paralytic poison vs alkaloid but paralytic won out because of LGTF. This build won't have softcap level melee defense but Range defense is more important of the two, you have VG and weaken to debuff the things around you but it's the ranged stuff outside your debuff zone that will kill you. Besides VG has a large radius, if you do micro movements after each power to stay just outside of mobs melee range you will be fine. Movement: it's underrated and the secret to survival. I chose agility as the alpha because the build could use the recharge, you could just as well swap it out for musculature though, a half a percentage shy of ranged softcap is good enough. If end management becomes an issue vigor is also a good candidate. Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.7.2.10 https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Mutation Defender Primary Power Set: Poison Secondary Power Set: Water Blast Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Fighting Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Envenom -- AchHee-ResDeb%(A), HO:Lyso(15), HO:Lyso(17) Level 1: Aqua Bolt -- SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg(A), SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(3), SprVglAss-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(3) Level 2: Weaken -- CldSns-ToHitDeb(A), CldSns-Acc/ToHitDeb(9), CldSns-Acc/Rchg(17), CldSns-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(37), CldSns-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(40), CldSns-%Dam(40) Level 4: Water Burst -- FrcFdb-Rechg%(A), Ann-ResDeb%(5), Ann-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(7), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(9) Level 6: Super Speed -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A), WntGif-ResSlow(50) Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Ksm-ToHit+(40) Level 10: Whirlpool -- Artl-Acc/Dam(A), Artl-Dam/End(11), Artl-Dam/Rech(11), Artl-Acc/Dam/Rech(13), Artl-Acc/Rech/Rng(13), Artl-End/Rech/Rng(15) Level 12: Antidote -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A) Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43) Level 16: Tidal Forces -- GssSynFr--Build%(A) Level 18: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Rct-Def(19), Rct-Def/EndRdx(19), Rct-ResDam%(21) Level 20: Dehydrate -- SprVglAss-Dmg/Rchg(A), SprVglAss-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), SprVglAss-Rchg/+Absorb(23), TchoftheN-Acc/Heal(23), ThfofEss-+End%(25), HO:Nucle(25) Level 22: Boxing -- Empty(A) Level 24: Tough -- HO:Ribo(A), ResDam-I(50) Level 26: Poison Trap -- FuroftheG-ResDeb%(A), ScrDrv-Dam%(27), Arm-Dam%(27), Erd-%Dam(29), UnbCns-Dam%(29), GhsWdwEmb-Dam%(31) Level 28: Water Jet -- SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg(A), SprDfnBst-Dmg/Rchg(31), SprDfnBst-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), SprDfnBst-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), SprDfnBst-Rchg/Heal%(33) Level 30: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(34), ShlWal-Def(34), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(34) Level 32: Venomous Gas -- HO:Enzym(A) Level 35: Dark Consumption -- PreOptmz-Acc/Rech(A), PreOptmz-EndMod/End(36), PreOptmz-EndMod/Rech(36), PreOptmz-EndMod/Acc/End(36), PreOptmz-EndMod/Acc/Rech(37), PreOptmz-EndMod/End/Rech(37) Level 38: Geyser -- FrcFdb-Rechg%(A), Artl-Acc/Dam/Rech(39), Artl-Dam/Rech(39), Artl-Dam/End(39), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(46), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50) Level 41: Dark Embrace -- GldArm-End/Res(A), GldArm-RechRes(42), GldArm-RechEnd(42), GldArm-Res/Rech/End(42), GldArm-ResDam(43), GldArm-3defTpProc(43) Level 44: Soul Drain -- Erd-Acc/Rchg(A), Erd-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Erd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(46) Level 47: Paralytic Poison -- BslGaz-Acc/Hold(A), BslGaz-Acc/Rchg(48), BslGaz-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), BslGaz-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48) Level 49: Elixir of Life -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Quick Form Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- UnbLea-Stlth(A) Level 1: Vigilance Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Mrc-Rcvry+(46) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A) Level 1: Combo Level 1 Level 1: Combo Level 2 Level 1: Combo Level 3 Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 50: Agility Core Paragon ------------

I don't want no D, much less Ds... 😝 @Darkir Yeah I would build for survival but I don't think most of the posters here are the min/maxing performance chasing type. So I offered critique based on their build and what I saw as their preferences. Not everyone has the same outlook on performance, but I'm sure when they are ready they'll come back and seek feedback.