MonteCarla
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Posts posted by MonteCarla
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I vary from one Dominator to another, Starseed.
I've played some Dominators where its a key part of who they are, give them softcapped Defence and S/L resists, and they confidently tank on Task Forces. (Pink Topaz, my Green Lantern like Earth/Energy was a definite case of this approach.)
My current Arsenal/MA Dom doesn't take Fighting, but I think still has a bit of Leadership.
What do you tend to take instead?
One thing I've found with Dominators, is they share the "most clickiest" award with Blasters, since both powersets give you active powers rather than toggles or passives. Couple this with the fact I'm chasing high recharge, I doubt I could pick any more powers to actively use due to animation time and available slots, so having a few toggles is good in that way too.
(Plus Weave, Manouvers and Vengeance are all LotG mules)
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I think its pretty close, to the point of not worrying about it.
A Corrupter does 3/4 of the Res debuffing of a Defender.
Say you're blasting/debuffing away at an AV as a Defender, you have 12% + 4 times 8% from Sonic Blast, 40% from Envenom and 25% from Poisonous Gas = 110% -Res Debuff from your powers.
A corrupter only gets 86% -Res debuff.
A Defender gets +30% Damage from Vigilance.
Corrupter base damage is 1.15 times Defender base Damage.
Scourge makes you do 1.25 times normal damage on a big target, as the bonus tapers from 0 to 100% over the second half of their health bar.
Corrupter 1.15 * 1.95 (Damage slotting) * 1.86 (Res debuff) * 1.25 (Scourge) = 5.21
Defender: 1.0 * 2.25 (Damage slotting + Vigilance) * 2.10 (Res Debuff) = 4.725
The Corrupter will do about (5.21/4.725) = 110% of the Defender's damage when soloing an AV.
That's soloing an AV. The Defender will amplify a team's damage a bit better due to the superior -Res debuff, even though their own damage will fall a bit. So yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. Go melt those AVs!
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Fire/Rad Corrupters are my number 3 choice, Scarlet! 🙂
See my big first post above for why.
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Storm Defenders and Dark Defenders would do some nice force amplification, but they don't buff each other's recharge, or provide any endurance tools.
In both cases you get 18% more defence and 50% resistance to 3 exotic types via the stealth auras, and the same level of AoE -Res that Time gives, but with no -Damage.
3 Sentinels will just add together, no multiplication. And they won't be any sturdier than 3 mutually buffing Corrupters.
These are all excellent solo choices.
You'd still have a good time with three of them, but they don't super-mesh the way Time, Empathy and Radiation do.
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You slot them for Recharge. +100%.
You have double Adrenalin Boost +200%
Hasten gives you +70% recharge
That makes them recharge in less than a quarter of the time.
So AB recharges in 60 seconds... Ahh, I think my maths is off. Sorry. You can't have double AB up all the time on an Empathy trio.
The Auras will recharge in around 120 seconds, so you'll maybe have two of them out of three up at any time if you stagger them.
That put Empathy down a little bit more over Time.
Time is really easy to play, just gather to Chrono Shift/Farsight every two minutes, Temporal Select each other when its up, and blast away.
You really will die of boredom 🙂
I've played two Empathy duos with friends in the past couple of years and we abandoned them in the 40s because nothing was a challenge!
And yeah, these sets will all function very well with just SO's as you level.
PS Experimental Injection is probably a great idea for Time to give you that mez protection and some more +Recovery
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Fire Corrupters is probably the best choice for blast sets and archetypes. You leverage Scourge and put out more base dmage than anyone. And you dont need any more debuff effects with the right support sets.
All take Assault (+45% Damage) and Manouvers, slotted (+12.5% Defence)
My top three contenders in order are:
3 x Time Manipulation
+50% Damage from double Temporal Selection
+60% (double TS) + 150% (triple Chrono Shift) = 210% Recharge.
+300% Regen from TS
+45% Defence +30% To Hit from triple Farisght
A bit of patchy +Recovery from ChronoShift, probably best to stagger this.
No mez protection beyond rarely getting hit.
-66% Res debuff from Slowed Response, up every 20s or so, add another -60% for Achilles Heel procs. (Do they stack from different casters?)
-60% Damage debuff from Triple Time's Juncture
-- Safest, with best +Rech and better damage boost than Empathy
3 x Empathy corrupters:
+35% Defence, +50% Damage, +30% To Hit from double Fortiitude
+200% Recharge from double Adrenalin Boost.
+4000% Regen or something crazy from triple auras and double AB, and more Energy than you can possibly consume.
Full mez protection and +Perception from Clear Mind
No - Res debuffs.
-- Very safe with decent damage output boost
3 x Rad Emission
+60% Damage from Triple AM
+90% Recharge
+90% Recovery
-66% Res debuff from 3 x Enervating Field, fast cast toggle
-100% To hit and -Def on Rad Infection, slow casting toggle
Mez resistance - mezzes wear off ultra-quick but still interrupt.
No defence bonus
Choking Cloud x3 is awesome "passive active defence"!
Empathy and Time will have you dying only of boredom as you rarely take a hit, and heal instantly. Time has better damage output due to the -Res.
Build up and Nuke from 3 Fire Corrupters opening every spawn will be pretty amazing at that Recharge.
Empathy is safer and gives mez protection, Time give you the -Res debuff.
Radiation Emission is not quite as good, requiring a bit more active defence. But everyone will be held pretty quickly by Choking Cloud. It's weakness will be AV's - the holds wont work and the -To Hit gets taken down a lot by purple triangles. And you get a slightly less stellar +Recharge, translating into a 10 second or so further wait for your nukes to be back up?
3 x Nature, since it got a mention
+53% Res to all (3 x wild Growth)
+200% damage (3 x Overgrowth)
No +Defence, no +Recharge, but heals and absorbs
-66% Res on a single target (corrosive enzymes)
It would be very good, but not as stellar as Time, Empathy or Rad.
VEATS give you an extra +45% damage, some -Res and more +Defence than you ever need?
No +Recharge or +Recovery though, and less base damage than a Fire Corrupter.
(I love overthinking this, @Clave Dark 5 🙂 )
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I love buffing.
The 4 minute ones (Sonic Shields, Thermal, Ice Shields, Force Fields) don't take a lot of attention since the devs wisely made them AoE, and I'll tend to do a couple of random teammates every two minutes. If I'm good, I'll try to catch everyone just before entering a mission and just before leaving for a bit of double stacking. (You count as a separate person every time you zone, so you can stack your buffs).
They're not a great deal of fun, beyond the warm fuzzy glow of knowing you've transformed your team from a little bit to a lot.
Empathy is where the real fun begins.
At high recharge, Fortitude is up just about enough to cover all 7 teammates. Doing this requires probably more concentration than anything else in the game, certainly more than scratching enemies with your claws ( to quote Magneto in X-2 🙂 ). Especially if you want to keep attacking. I learned how to target through my next ally on the Fort rotation to keep blasting and made teleport binds to select teammates for when we split. Doing all this while spot-healing, keeping my favourite Blaster AB'd, and all squishies Clear Minded was an absolute joy because it was so difficult. Oh, and I'd be watching the minimap for finding just the right time to let off your auras.
Buffing is like PVP in that you're chasing unpredictable moving targets compared to attacking AIs.
Kinetics is a whole other thing too - two one minute buffs and your whole team is faster than you thanks to one of them!
Being a badass buffer (ie one who also attacks) makes you split your attention between the game world, Team HUD for buff timers and the minimap. I come away from a session doing that a little bit wiped and very satisified.
Playing a Energy Melee Stalker or damage aura Tank is how I relax in comparison.
I also love being buffed, and totally change my playstyle if someone's made me temporarily invulnerable of superfast or whatever.
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I'd cast my vote for Teleport Target.
Being able to stealth to the end of a mission and then pull your teammates there is really useful.
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One Good Spider - one of the level 40+ Hero Alignment missions, is a real favourite of mine.
And I've recently been playing through the "Who Will Die?" Signature Story Arc. That's been good fun, and can't wait to do the last arc which has some pretty special maps, if I recall.
And don't neglect the Bank Missions - you get some pretty decent temp powers for them such as Summon Teammates in the low 20s
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Hey Nostromo!
The most expensive sets are:
- Ascendancy of the Dominator (8 mill each, do 48 mill) gives you +8.75%
- Luck of the Gambler +Rech (4-5 mill each, so maybe 20 mill for 5) gives you 5 x +7.5% = 37.5%
You can definitely substitute Ascendancy for something cheaper to score +6.25%, like Mailaise Illusions, Trap of the Hunter, or Call of the Sandman?
Here's a really rough guess with sets, recharge bonuses and rough cost in millions of inf to buy the sets up to the recharge bonus level.
Throw in the +20% Empowerment buff, and you will easily be hitting perma-Dom with manually activated Hasten
(never played /Thorns, so guessing some powers)1 Strangler Bas.Gaze 7.5 8
1 Skewer Decimation 6.25 10
2 Roots Positrons Blast 6.25 6
4 Fling Thorns
6 Hasten
8 Seeds of Conf Malaise Illusions 6.25 5
10 Impale
12 Combat Jump LotG unique 7.5 5
14 Manouvers LotG unique 7.5 5
16 Build Up
18 Vine Bas Gaze 7.5 8
20 Thorn Burst Obliteration 5 10
22 Carrion Creepers Positrons Blast 6.25 6
24 Tactics
26 Fly Trap Expedient Reinf. 6.25 8
28 Ripper Obliteration 5 10
30 Vengeance LotG Unique 7.5 5
78.75% 86 mill
The LotG's are pretty good bang for buck still, and I think relatively cheap at them moment. If you're looking to save money, skip the Obliteration sets first-
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9 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:
We were our own worst enemy as it turned out. We bored ourselves to death and as a team we didn't get past 30th. I think only my Sonic/Dark reached 50.
I've been part of three Empathy duos and the same thing happened. Just with two (IO'd out) Empaths buffing each other. All three duos stalled in the 40's at the point where everything stopped being a challenge.
That's how good stacking support powersets is! -
With super-teams in general...
I theorycraft and play in them quite a bit, but sometimes pause to remember that there's basically three things that support powers do:
- Our health bars are not moving
- Our blue bars are not moving
- The enemy are dying really fast
A Leadership or VEAT team do the first and last, but don't have any group endurance tools (and kinda need it to run all those toggles). Adding in a team end manager like Kinetics, Empathy or Rad Emission will help out a lot.
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The values vary between Archetypes.
Defenders get the highest numbers. 8 Defenders running the Leadership toggles give you:
Manouvers: +28% Defence or 44% slotted (practically soft-capped)
Tactics: +100% To Hit (unslotted). Yeah, you won't need to slot for accuracy 🙂
Assault: +150% Damage
( 8 Defenders would do so many other good things to each other that dwarf these numbers...)
Blasters, Stalkers and Scrappers have the lowest values. They would get:
Manouvers: +18% Defence, +29% Slotted (almost softcapped with a small Luck)
Tactics: +80% To Hit (Still don't need to slot for accuracy)
Assault: +84% Damage
So a mixed team will have values somewhere in between. It will be good, but two or three support characters with the right sets will completely overshadow Leadership, as they should.
And it gets really interesting with Arachnos Soldiers and Widows. They get Defender values plus their own duplicate sets of toggles (colloquially known as "Spiderbuffs")
Tactical Training Manouvers is +10%/+16% Defence per character!!! (so over 3 time normal)
The other two are the same. So 8 VEATS get:
+172% Defence! (In practice you wouldn't bother running your normal Manouvers, so "only" +144%)
+200% To Hit!!
+300% Damage!!!
I've seen all-VEAT Task Forces advertised, and can understand why 🙂
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10 hours ago, Psyonico said:
I'm still waiting on my always asked question on "should scrappers/brutes ignore their armor because it's their secondary and therefore not good enough"
OMG, this, so much!
No other archetype has people saying you should neglect your secondary the way Defenders do.
I've hardly ever made a Scrapper, Brute, Stalker or Sentinel without the Fighting pool, let lone slotting my secondary armors.
If a Controller, Corruptor or Mastermind rocked up and said they hadn't taken their Force Field buffs, or even hadn't slotted them, they'd get a certain amount of side-eye.
A Blaster with no melee attacks from their secondary is a bit of a concept build, to say the least
Thanks, Psyonico, for articulating this so clearly.
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Well said, mechahamham!
Talk to them before the mission, and avoid acronyms and abbreviations.Even asking at the start of a TF: "Is this anyone's first time" or "Want any tips on how to get through this?"
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Doomguide! Moonsheep! 🙂
Interesting. There's a few cases where I'd slot an attack for secondaries rather than damage.
-Short Circuit. It does hefty -End (35% , 70% slotted). In practice I've usually ended up with +80% damage or so anyway thanks to Frankenslotting.
(Other Electric Blast powers like Ball lightning do like 7%, slotting them to 14% isn't really worth it compared to doubling their damage.)
- Dark Blast for -To Hit. I've not actually done this one but I can see it making a reasonable difference.
There's plenty of sets where you can't slot for secondary effects like Sonic and Fire.
I'll always slot my attacks for damage, and to get global recharge and other goodies that make me a better supporter.
Radiation's an odd one. You'd really slot Defence Debuff over Damage in Irradiate?
My take on this - most of the time my team are hitting 95% of the time anyway, especially with unslotted -37.5% defence debuff. In those rare cases that they don't (eg Paragon Protectors who pop their god mode, big Spawns of Nemesis with 4 stacks of Vengeance) we have yellows, Aim and Build Up, Call to Justice and other tricks for temporary boosts, or better tactics like holding the PP's before they pop.
So, most of the time, the extra Def debuff is wasted, whereas the extra damage never is.
A quote I remember from the old Blaster forums seems to apply here: "Death is the ultimate debuff" 🙂
Is this a hard mode thing again? I know enemies get a big defence buff in 4-star mode.
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As an Empath, I always prioritise global recharge, and slot fortitude up for max recharge and Defence.
See the guide in my sig. The thread also contains a really good discussion on Absorb Pain vs Heal Other, which enlightened me a lot.
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It gives you a lot of time to blast. 🙂
It gives you the best self +Defence, just squeaking in on Time there, so it's a good set for building a "Sentinel who buffs" character.
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At level 50, Cosmic Burst does 76 damage unslotted, so 150 damage slotted. You're doing it wrong. 🙂
And your nuke does about twice that to multiple targets.
And lead with Anguishing Cry slotted with a Achilles Heel -Res proc, and you can multiply those by an extra 40% or so.
I've got like 18 Defenders to 50, of all different powersets. Even my Empathy/Archer can solo if I need to.
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As well as comparing Defenders vs Corrupters, you have to compare the Res debuff of Sleet vs those of other powersets.
Should Cold Dom (a bit of a Swiss Army Knife set) have a better Res debuff than say Sonic Resonance, which is meant to have Resistance debuffing as one of its core features? I'd say no.
Buffing the Defender Sleet instead of balancing the other versions would just create another disparity, this time between sets.
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Both Fold Space and Wormhole are listed as "+410% Teleport" on City of Data, so I'm guessing they're equally incapable of teleporting high level bosses and such.
Wormhole is still a AoE Stun though, even when the teleport fails.
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I got my first level 50 by street-sweeping.
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This had me, a veteran player, completely confused today. I used my Mission Teleporter to get there for the Defend the Portal Corp mission, which I had to auto-complete due to the infinite boss spawn bug.
I then gave up when the PTS mission was doing the same for me, and went to do something else.
I'll try using a jetpack and following your suggestion Rudra, but this is far from clear.-
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Hmmm... I'd put Electric Armor even with Rad.
Rad Armor doesn't have a damage aura. I know you can turn Ground Zero into a mini-nuke with procs, but you're missing out on the zero-animation-time, zero-attention-from-you damage field that Elec (and Fire and Dark) get.
I don't have any numbers to back up what the damage aura does when you're surrounded by enemies, but my gut feel is that its significant.
Out of the big 4 exotic resist sets, Rad and Electric have the best resistance holes (Cold and Cold/Toxic respectively) and Dark has the worse (Energy).Any of them can be built to have 90% resistance to most damage types, which is an experience that absolutely rocks!
(See my guide for numbers breakdowns)
What are you planning to do with your Brute? I'm assuming not farming, but what? Soloing AV's? Hardmode Task forces? Soloing +4/x8 missions? That might help determine what's best?
Praising PUGs
in General Discussion
Posted
Yesterday I joined a Posi 1 and then ran a Posi 2 on a new-ish Tank. I had a great team both times. The Posi 1 was one of the smoothest I've ever had, despite us having 4 support characters on the team (which often leads to a bad time with the Shadow Duplicates at the end)
Later on I ran Manticore on a Defender, and had an awesome time once again. I got lucky enough to have I think 3 Controller/Doms, so between that any my own holds and Choking Cloud I think maybe 2 Paragon Protectors managed to pop their god-modes during the entire run. And we had a high level Tank who offered to tank-stealth some of the missions (eg find the computer, rescue Councilman Birch) while the rest of us beat up spawns near the door. He even ATT'd us all to Hopkins for the final mission.