MirrorDarkly

Thanks, Shifting is an odd power. I think it would only go off on corpses if a power that targets them goes off in the area. But some powers like Soothing seem trigger it twice per cast per (alive) enemy in the area.

Do you normally try and get your Mercs to close with the mobs and fight in melee with Tide Pool covering everything or do you have some other strategy?

Usually I miss the window, but this time I was able to donate. Thanks for everything team!

Very impressive! Is savage significantly better to pair with arsenal or do you feel like most secondary's would be able to perform at a similar level?

Whitecap I always slotted with 5 Armageddon (leaving the pure damage enhancement out) plus Fury of the Gladiator Chance for -Res. Tide Pool was just the base slot with Ice Mistral's Endurance/Slow Shifting depends on AT and bonuses I want.

I love Theft of Essence and if I were having End issues slotting it would be the first fix I tried. Since I use Vigor Core that's not been a concern but with a different Alpha slot I could see using it. I may give that a try on a Defender and if I do I'll let you know how it goes.

For that test it was mostly benefiting from Vigor Core Paragon (+45% healing) and it also had an Acc enhancement. The huge cooldown reduction comes from all of my pets generating Shifting Tide stacks for it to consume, and the rest is my global cooldown. On some of my defender tests I've invested more slots into Brine and even at +127% "healing" if doesn't feel much different to use. When I took that defender against a level 54 Infernal I was not able to budge his health. However, as a solo defender I was also not able to generate enough stacks to keep using it every 5 seconds. So it's possible on a defender that slots it and on a team constantly giving them shifting tide stacks to burn if performs better.... but that's a lot of conditionals that I have not been able to test.

The latest patch allowed me to test the updates to Brine on My Illusion controller, vs a lv 54 Diabolique. Unfortunately the -hp is still not doing much, even with a 5 sec cooldown and hitting it every chance I could get. Most of the fight Brine was reducing her hp by -666 (or about 2.775 hp/sec off her regen) and the highest it ever got to was -888hp. For reference one stack of Degen is -650 hp. For this test Brine had a 95% hit chance and +45% healing. I'd still take the power for the -Res, but I think as it's designed trying to stack the -hp is a waste of animation time (at 2 sec a cast) unless you literally have nothing else to do. Edit: As a thought experiment on a Defender that slotted it to +95% heal, that would work out to -1,191hp most of the time with a peak of -1,588hp ( -6.61 regen/sec). So again even with their low damage values I'd think the cast time would be better spent on attacks as long as you maintain the -Res debuff.

I can't speak to 4* but once you get Clarion Marine defenders can absolutely run many groups at +4/x8. Here a Marine/Water defender vs the new Council at that difficulty (and I made the mistake of not putting down Tidal Pool until most of the first group was defeated). For Incarnates I used Vigor Core Paragon and Clarion Core Epiphany, so no Judgements, Lore or Hybrids. I've also done Carnival of Shadows, Malta, Devouring Earth, Talons of Vengeance in DA and hordes of demons at that setting. This set up lacks the single target damage to take down an AV (at least one at that difficulty) but I tanked Infernal until I got bored when testing it. The one group so far that has been a hard counter to my Defender is the Seers, between all Psy damage, staying at range and near immunity to knock back they shred me. The only Marine character I've been able to fight them at +4/x8 and consistently win is my Illusion controller.

Having gone back to do some testing on my Marine/Water defender one thing that I really noticed is that I miss the noisier Barrier Reef much more that I thought I would. Those two power sets together with the constant "whale songs" really felt like I was surrounded by, and in control of, a vast ocean. It was evocative in a way I've rarely experienced in a video game. I realize that was toned down due to feedback and that at least some people disliked it as much as I enjoyed it. So I was wondering if it would be both possible and relatively easy to include one customization option which is both the model and sound from patch 1? It could be called "Undersea Songs" or something like that to let people know it is louder than the other options. Anyways that is purely a personal ask. Overall I think the set is in great shape and I have three names reserved for parings I 100% know I'm going to make with probably many more after that.

I tested Brine out on my Marine/Water defender and the changes felt *very* good.

On my Illusion/Marine controller I'm not seeing the new cooldown reduction when used alongside Rising Tide, despite having a lot of stacks. With no slotting in Brine and Rising Tide OFF I'm seeing a cooldown of 21 seconds. When I fire it with Rising Tide stacked I'm seeing a cooldown of 18-20 seconds. That very small difference is almost certainly the global recharge Rising Tide grants. If I we're getting 45 seconds off the base recharge Brine should have somewhere around a recharge of 5-6 seconds(!) when it eats 3 stacks. Stacks are building and falling off so fast with this combo I cannot tell if Brine is consuming any. Also there are still a few odd endurance costs between ATs. Shifting Tides (it seems like those should be switched). MM: 0.60/sec Cor: 0.78/sec Def: 0.78/sec Power of the Deep MM: 26.00 Cor: 26.00 Def: 26.00

Brine update bug: I'll post in the bug report forum as well but on my Illusion/Marine controller I'm not seeing the new cooldown reduction when used alongside Rising Tide, despite having a lot of stacks. With no slotting in Brine and Rising Tide OFF I'm seeing a cooldown of 21 seconds. When I fire it with Rising Tide stacked I'm seeing a cooldown of 18-20 seconds. That very small difference is almost certainly the global recharge Rising Tide grants. If I we're getting 45 seconds off the base recharge Brine should have somewhere around a recharge of 5-6 seconds(!) when it eats 3 stacks. Also there are still a few odd endurance costs between ATs. Shifting Tides (it seems like those should be switched). MM: 0.60/sec Cor: 0.78/sec Def: 0.78/sec Power of the Deep MM: 26.00 Cor: 26.00 Def: 26.00

I would love an original color option for this power too! I didn't realize we could go back to the no crystal version, and while I don't mind the crystals I thought it was about perfect before.

You were probably seeing double stacked Toroidal Bubble, besides resistance it grants about +20% End recovery.

By far the most effective combo that I have tried so far is an Illusion/Marine Controller. The two sets were practically made for each other. With Marine's slows, KD and damage providing the AoE Illusion lacks and Illusion taking care of most of the weaknesses I've encountered with Marine. They both really benefit from high recharge and Phantasm's AI traditionally annoys me but with this character he's the perfect Shifting Tides anchor and is very tough when supported by the rest of Marine.

Of the two I like it more on the Def. I feel like the higher buff & debuff values are always going to be relevant for this set, where as on a more focused set both ATs will get you to your soft or hard cap and then anything more is largely wasted. Also while leveling getting Tide Pool early makes a huge difference.

If you're willing to load it up with procs you can do so pretty much as soon as they become available (three starting at level 7). It's one of the few AoE powers with an accuracy bonus which makes it a very good proc mule. I doubt that was the intent but it is what it is... Now having said that I agree Whitecap is the much more valuable power if you are choosing between them.

Love these new changes! I think the new synergies will help immensely, and thank you for Barrier Reef. 😄 Also someone upthread mentioned Fire Control with this set. I finally got around to trying it and... I mean.... just.... it's... just so very.... I didn't feel like I was fighting so much as standing in the middle of a rolling apocalypse.

Humm, not sure? Here is a short vid of me fighting with the build up proc in Shifting, maybe you can see something we're doing different. I got mezed at the start of the fight so the toggle dropped. When I reactivated Shifting Tides within a second or two Gaussian proced, dropped of then proced twice more to double stack all within 21 seconds. For this test I had two end reducers and the the Build Up proc is Shifting Tides.

Wellspring is one of the strongest powers in the set, if not the strongest. I would think turning it into a toggle would make the mez issue worse not better unless it also gained extremely robust mez protection as part of the deal, which seems unlikely.

Agree that the -hp part of Brine is largely useless as stands, and I don't think doubling it's effect is unreasonable (and perhaps even that is not enough). Let me explain why. In normal gameplay you start of with AoEs to drop the weakest members of the group so by the time you get around to using Brine everything has already lost more health than the -hp will drop its max leaving that part wasted. The exception tends to be if you are trying to lock down or one shot a particularly dangerous enemy like a Sapper which Brine also does not help with. On AVs or GMs it's simply to small to notice. With Vigor and 1 healing SO I get it to about +90% effectiveness and it still needs to be stacked to equal one Degenerative proc. Given recharge time and timing I find that is about what it adds under the best case, 1/4 of what I get from Degenerative starting a 40 second to a minute into the fight (because again it needs to stack to even get that). So if you want this to be the primary draw of Brine then it needs to be *a lot* better. Otherwise remove the decay on the -Resist and leaving the minor -hp as a flourish to make the power feel a little more unique. But like Trickshooter said overall this is a great, and extremely evocative, set that I would absolutely play live if it were releases as it.... I just wouldn't invest much in Brine. Edit: Another idea would be to increase the duration of the -hp so that given enough casts it could eventually stack to a significant degree. If, for example, the -hp was increased by 50% and the duration doubled to two minutes I bet it would end up feeling a lot better in long fights.

Here is my level 50 Marine/Water Defender taking on a couple of packs of Infernal's guard on +4/x8. I have to say the two sets together do an amazing job of feeling like you're in control of the oceans. When not CCed into a stupor the set is very fun and effective: This build used Core Paragon Vigor and purple sets but no other incarnate abilities, temp powers or accolades. I was able to face tank AV Infernal indefinitely but I couldn't do enough damage to overcome his regen. As expected Brine was much to small of a debuff to matter.

Shifting Tides. When I first tried this power on my defender (solo) I was not impressed. I was getting between 3-4 stacks per fight for something like +9-12% damage, +3-4.5% to hit and +7.5-10% recharge and extra attack was going off at most once per fight. Since it's not a cheep power to run it was a real toss up as to if that was worth the end and time to manage. Then I tried it on my MM, and it's a completely different experience! I put it on my Bruiser, forget about it and my bar fills with stacks with the extra damage happening every few second. The way I think it works is that every time a friendly character or pet uses any power within Shifting Tides radius everyone gets a stack. These stacks last for 8 seconds and do not refresh existing stacks, so your ability to stack it depends on how many actions you and everyone else in it takes in 8 seconds. I'm not sure there is a limit to the number of stacks it can generate but only 10 seem to count at any one time. With my defender values that's +30% damage, +15% to hit and +25% recharge to everyone near the target at max stacks. The attack part of it also has a higher chance to proc the more people in the area but I'm almost certain there is some sort of lock out where it can only happen once every N seconds. In a group I feel this is a core power of the set but solo it's very marginal. Finally it does take melee damage procs but even on my MM I'd almost never see them go off, maybe once every 3rd fight. The one exception I found was Gaussian's Chance for Build Up, which happened so often on my MM that it wasn't uncommon to have it double stacked. Now on a MM that doesn't mean a whole lot but it might be worth exploring on say a corruptor that mostly runs with full groups.

Thanks for the explanation!