Sir Myshkin

Even if I counted it on a MM where Discharge is an actual ability and not baked into a Sentinel, that leaves two powers at 10/s interval averages, one at 15/s, and a heal every 4/s. That still leaves me enough time to attack 5-6 times depending on which attacks I might choose. In the case of Discharge I don't even use it personally because it takes at least two applications to actually matter, and at that point the spawn is pretty much toasted on most teams so there's not much point in it, thus I'm not down to Energizing, Rejuvenating, and Insulating. If Absorb is still stacked, then I'm not even hitting Rejuvenating. Again, to me, that's a LOT of idle time. And if I'm the Tank, then I honestly have even less to worry about because I'm diffusing damage across Bodyguard through my high (capped on most) Resistances, and my Demon's who break 60-75% at a minimum to nearly everything. Different experiences for each, but this is ... definitely not what I'd consider "busy." Edit: Don't get me wrong, I get why folks would feel this way compared to something like Force Fields or Sonic, but any set that involves a consistent heal method for mitigation is going to be more active by comparison. Empathy and Pain aren't much different in contrast to Electric when it comes to the immediate list of "regularly cast" abilities. What I don't agree on is the set being so demanding that one has to complete give up their other set because they don't have time for it.

I feel like the odd duck out on this jury call, but maybe that comes down to methodology of play style or something, but I (me, myself, as an opinion) don't find Electric Affinity so busy that I can't engage in combat like any other build. But, I am also marginally insane and tend to play character builds most others find too frantic or difficult to keep up with. Of all the options that exist, and as many others have suggested, given the above, I would say that Electric Affinity leans to favoring Masterminds the most as it allows some freedom from the offensive side of the equation and how chains can stretch beyond a typical AoE field. For me, playing this with Demons/ElecAff, even still taking multiple attacks and Provoke I find the occasional moment of standing there thinking "Well... okay. What next?" In regards to the chain effects though, and really the point of why I'm even posting, you have to be mindful about where you start your chain from. As was explained during the beta testing, the chains will follow priority effect based on whether you start with a pet or a player. As I have seen with my own Demons/ElecAff MM, eventually the chain can and will make it back to me, but I'm usually last depending on how things cycle through. If I start with a player, and the chain can go far enough, the pets will be last (if in range at that point). As such if you're using the Sentinel as your point-man, you can inadvertently be doing yourself a disservice. The chain has priority, and cascading effectiveness as it chains, so giving the Sentinel priority (thus 'Pets' priority) the trickle effect can skip the strong peak on a wasted target(s). You'll also want to try and either be mid-range, or in Melee to be in the best place for chains. In the pack, or somewhere between two points (range players v. melee) in order to be that anchor between them so a chain can flow backwards. Electric Affinity is definitely not a "back of the bus" support set. Reinforcing what Linea said about setting a Macro to target, this is probably the most important thing to have in your tray as an ElecAff user. Make a Macro that targets the Sentinel in an emergency, and also one that targets a player (or get in the habit of Shift+Num from the top row to select a teammate).

Full honesty, as much as it sucked and I joke about the struggle of it, walking into those missions at +4/x8 after countless level 50 missions, Incarnate DA missions, and iTrials barely clicking Shadow Meld or MoG, never using Reconstruction, knowing that the "normal" game couldn't touch me at just 66 HP/s regen with middling 32.5% base defense... And jump into that first mob, aggro the second on accident, and die realizing my regen percent was negative? I was like:

What's interesting is seeing some raw math on what "should" be happening, versus what plays out. When I did all the Tanker testing, I did trial both Core and Radial, in fact I started with Radial because (at the time) I had started before the buff on some preliminary testing, and then did bucket loads of testing after the fact. Multiple different Melee sets, Radial always produced an average result less than Core. I didn't scour the combat logs for proc chances or success of those chances, I only had raw times to go off. In the realm of Radial versus no-Hybrid, the differences in timing were often "small", 15-20 seconds, sometimes a bit more (30/s at best) in those scenarios were I was taking the Pylon down in 2:30-4:00 minutes. If I switched to Core I was shaving time much more aggressively, more consistently in that 25-30/s offset. I'd have to really dig for the posts about it as I don't have my sticky notes anymore, and its been like six months, but in a case of something like the Bio/SS testing, not using Core I was floating around like 2:40-2:25 I think, and Core turned on I could hit 2:00-2:05 without even thinking about it, Radial I couldn't break like 2:15. In those time constraints we're talking about... like 40 DPS (minimum) offset, that's definitely not coming from just Genetic Contamination. I also know I'm not the only one that's ever seen that clear disparity between the two on higher-modifier damage sets as there are many over the last year who've tried both and the common theme is Core for Melee/Blasters and Radial for Support. When comparing on the Support sets Radial always tested better, and those sets get such a lower return from Core so it made sense that I'd get more from proc'ing 60 pts to 120 than trying to boost 60 pts on a bad modifier to try and get 80 or 90. I'll be honest, I've never seen the math broken down, so that's curious.

With the adjustment to the damage scale, Core's +Dam has far more impact than Radial's +Proc. That really comes down to just... traumatizing levels of Tank testing. If you've got Gaussian's BU in Rage then offset stack. 60's, crash for 10, then reapply Rage and get the bonus BU through Gloom, Dark, CP, KO (big fat orange numbers). Unfortunately it does require a tiny bit of focus on when the crash occurs, watching for when it dries up, and recasting Rage. Being in Granite will make it a lot harder, but on Bio/SS with the added push, and a little extra sprinkle of +Dam in a few areas, between Assault Core and Bonus Rage I could very nearly touch the damage cap for that brief instant. If you've got Perma Hasten you definitely have the ability to "double stack" Rage because I can do it with 136% global and FF+Rech firing off nearly every KO Blow. Also, since the -Res proc in Cross Punch is doing about the same amount as what Evolving Armor does correction FotG is greater at -20%, depending on its consistency I do think you can break 2:30, possibly even better. When I tested Bio/SS it was without Cross Punch in the cycle adding another -Res vector, and another player posted a time in this thread somewhere with Cross Punch included and easily dipped below 2:00. For your Granite and the damage offset you'll still be behind the marker a tad bit, but I'd imagine you could easily get 300% damage going, with that BU proc getting you even higher. That's what makes test so nice to have! It makes it easy to take a completed build and tweak it temporarily without worrying about investment and time 🙂

I could assume as I know it still can be with the Granite debuffs, but you are double stacking Rage, yeah? Mostly a curiosity. The inclusion of Foot Stomp, do you still have a gap in there even with FF+Rech in KO Blow that you're filling, or is that a "just because"? From an AoE inclusive aspect that's still a strong display of damage either way, but if you don't need that filler you should get a reasonable bump without it in your cycle (from a ST perspective). Also try doing a couple tests with Hybrid Assault Core active if you're up for it, you should be able to brush 2:30 at a minimum if you're already overcoming into 3:00 without a hybrid active. Given how much you're compensating for the debuffs as-is, I'm curious how close you can get to what a Bio/SS can breaking under 2:00 without having Cross Punch's -Res. Was this a Live test or Brainstorm test? Try without Total Focus. If you dove into Fighting Pool and can swap in Cross Punch by porting the character over to trial it in your build for the -Res proc (if you pick up, don't need to slot, boxing and kick, CP will be a pretty solid attack), and swap to Assault Core instead of Radial, should get better times. Total Focus is such a time-sink power when it misses and it really kills performance when there's two attacks in a single chain that are over 2.5/s in animation time and either one (or both) miss. Total Focus proc'd out and appropriately damage enhanced is probably doing... 700-800 damage (three procs on average, probably 740ish)? Energy Punch proc'd in the same fashion will do ~210 (average of one proc per hit), over 3/s total time 630 damage, at 3.5/s 735 (matching TF time). Cross Punch's damage with Boxing/Kick in the build isn't as good a DPA as Energy Punch, having the -Res proc in CP will pay out dividends to the rest of the build's abilities.

Who uses Flurry? You monster! Says the guy leveling a fighting pool Defender...

And yet still, my Regen can't go above +2/x8 in any of those missions because you gave them that forsaken and wretched -Regen Debuff. 😠 I know, small complaints to the guy whom others wise runs the rest of the game unscathed. And Crimson Prototype. That "AV" can burn in a volcano.

This kind of proves the point that the drones aren't really doing an effective, versatile, or generally useful job if you're using them to just soak an alpha constantly because they lack any other form of worth based on their current design (limited damage and debuff). I played a BR/Traps Corr on Retail, and am working on a Traps/"AR" Defender currently here. In the former build I took the Seekers for RP aesthetics, and the Trip Mines as a gag for when teams had waiting lulls between tasks and I'd just sit and see how many I could stack before we moved again. In the later build I skipped all three of the last abilities because they just lack function and realistic use. I'd sooner take Weaken Resolve to at least pump up team damage with the -Res (and in fact, I did). I mean... seriously Caltrops with three damage procs is better damage performance than Seeker Drones, Trip Mine, or Time Bomb.

For what it's worth, I'll throw my vote on these: Triage Beacon should be a one-out-only drop with the same cooldown as FFG making it easy to replenish at every spawn. Time Bomb should be a gun drone that sacrifices itself like a seeker drone after 60/s but with a 90/s duration to make sure a player can take advantage of it. Things I personally find less than useful: Trip Mines - they take too long to utilize, they should be TAoE mines we can "toss" within a small range (10') within 1.188-1.32 seconds. I see this as "line the hall as I run through in a hurry" kind of tactics, and if it still carries a recharge that forces 5-10/s cooldown, that's manageable. As it stands right now, with a FF+Rech in the power and a small consideration for Global Rech, I can sit and stack Trip Mines indefinitely until about ~45-50 of them are sitting on top of each other. It takes like two minutes to do it, but whatever. Up the damage a bit, shorten the "set" time, make it viable to drop a couple of these per spawn as quick little "boom booms". Seeker Drones - I've never seen these as anything more than decorative flair. Their explosive qualities are "meh" at best. These would be much better suited as some kind of group buffing utility like a Tactics/Assault combo that spreads to the any team mate within a fixed radius (20-25'). In this thread alone I'm not the only one who feels the Seeker's are a "meh" choice, but my consideration for them is a bit abnormal in wanting to turn them into a buff tool instead of a rather weak bomb. +10% ToHit, +15% Dam, +Perception Actually, giving it a bit more thought I think it'd be kind of neat for there to be three drones that float around the caster within 5-10' based on qualifying power choices. Knowing that the functionality exists due to Fighting Pool (Boxing, Kick, Cross Punch being stronger based on power selection), then have one of each qualifying drones spawn from "Seeker" ability based on correlating picks. If FFG is taken, get a defense-augmenting drone (3%-5%), if Triage is taken get a +ToHit and Perception drone, and if Trip Mines are taken, get a +15% Dam granting drone, all team based.

There's some level of irony in your situation. While you do not know it yet, your "friends" have left you on the doorstep of the greatest community ever to be birthed from the gaming world. The server you're playing on will be the most relevantly useful info to start as each has their own chat channel you can talk to others on across the entirety of the server (and not just in local, team, etc). Many servers have large Super Groups active which are always open to new players. SG's are a way for a collective of folks in particular mindset to team and play together. There are corresponding forums here, but poking about in your chat channels will help you get a bigger picture of who's out there as well since only a portion of the player base regularly check the forums.

You're not necessarily missing anything, and I won't try and speak for the masses, or even try and justify their intent, but I can try and explain it so you'll see where they're coming from. On Veteran Levels: As a player "levels" beyond 50 they gain additional Incarnate materials all the way up to 100 which make it possible to T3 (at a minimum) if not T4 with some extra drops each of their Incarnate slots. With iTrials and Incarnate missions (and even general play with thread drops) one can achieve T4 status a lot faster. I think I got my Blaster and Scrapper kitted out before either broke Vet 25-30 with some lucky VR drops on iTrials. Once a character gets past the point of earning pieces from Vet rewards, XP doesn't have any real value anymore, but it's useful to get through them quickly to earn those extra parts. On Incarnate Level Shifts, and what that means in +4/x8: Typically +4/x8 play doesn't kick in for most until 45+ when builds are more (mostly) complete and it is possible to freely play at the harder difficulties in a team scenario. There are of course plenty who try this solo as well, but the same still applies that most builds won't work well without the slots that come from 40-50, but mostly 40-45 where it's harder to pull off. Once a character hits 50, they're complete and can dish out a lot. When you have a team of players with completed IO Builds they can be incredibly strong and plow through content at a rapid pace. When you have a group of individuals who can dish out AoE's that do 200 damage, and a minion melts at max 435ish HP, two players alone are clearing a spawn with minimal effort. As such we have to provide a more consistent experience cause it already moves incredibly quick. The thing that really shifts the goal post is Incarnate Level Shifts. For all standard non-Incarnate content in the game, from levels 45-50, the Alpha Slot at T3 or T4 is providing a +1 shift, which means the game has now changed its max difficulty level to +3 so long as that is slotted. In order to actually get +3, the player must select +4 as their rating. Everything scales according to level, so now those 50+1's are slaughtering things in front of them even faster. In regular content I can take my Ice/Atomic Blaster, who is T4'd in all categories, and carry a team through a level 50 mission at +4/x8 at a break neck speed. He is capable of nuking multiple spawns at a time and only slows down every three-ish groups to finish off the Bosses as they congregate after, barely hanging on. Ranged Blizzard, ranged Judgement, and dual AoE's mean I can effectively take out roughly 35 enemies within approximately 15 seconds. A spawn size can vary, but if we say 12-16, typically max 2 bosses, 4 lieuts, and the rest minions that leaves me 6-10 of them so 18-30 that fall simply because I sneezed. Now multiply my one case of a Blaster into a team of 8. As a side note: The above can only help explain the generality of the mass, but there are some folks who play this game that just don't really understand the dynamic of playing harder content for anything other than their ego, and often struggle for it. For them there is no excuse and I can't help you there. Some folks just want to watch the world burn. No matter what, play the game how you want to play it, in a manner that is enjoyable to your play style, and if anyone else tries to question it, move on and don't linger on it. If you want to enjoy face-stomping at +1 because it's a smoother ride, than you do you 🙂

What exactly are you looking for? The formulas have all been determined and are available here: Mid's has the accurate base values of the damage-based procs if there are any you have a specific question on. The program is mostly accurate on its calculation in its most current iteration with the unofficial patch (there are still a few circumstances were it is incorrect, but they are abnormal causes that won't trouble most).

Now it almost feels like a riddle as I was thinking about whether I could offer a hint that still makes it aggressively random... Hint:

While I agree with you on this, I don't feel that there's ever really been purposeful focus on creating builds specifically for the intention of taking out a Pylon. I used an AV as a wide-scale small-world example, but look at it again from the grand perspective. If every AoE a single player fires off has a chance to drop an Interface effect on each thing it hits, and there's 24 players actively spamming AoE's under this purpose, you're going to get a lot of redundant impact. Even in a case of just an 8-Super team, if just one of those players alone knowingly has the capacity to get 4 stacks of their debuff, they invalidate the other 7 players by consequence. Now obviously we don't want to all shift off the idea of having Reactive or Degenerative on a team as they're just that useful, but maybe we should have better collective thought on the subject as to leaving those Interface to AT's more focused on frontal damage, and start diversifying to other Interface slots for those in Support roles. Even on the case of DoT alone, if we have an 8-stack cap, and we can achieve that with just a couple of players, I--personally--would want to still have a hand in output, so going with a more obscure Interface is going to net me not only that opportunity to for-sure be a hat in the ring, but also bring something fun for the non-AV's out there. I think we've (the entire player base) been too focused on the "MAX" portion of that Min-Max ideal when it comes to each individual build and not looked at the "MAX" portion of what a team can produce. No one has attempted to take a League of players sporting Cognitive Core into an iTrial, but could you imagine just 16 people dropping AoE's that each target hit, gets hit with a 20% chance to become confused? I mean, just imagining the hilarity of the prisoner escape phase of a BAF where they just turn around and start bashing on each other instead of running away? Turnabout's fair play. And yes some of the Interface effects are more significant than others on a small scale (-Regen on tiny amounts just doesn't have much weight purple-patch or not), but we're definitely missing out on the grand-scale. For me, at this point, and as has been for a while now, I've been going after the more obtuse options.

Between this thread and some general rhetoric on the topic of the Fighting Pool, I pulled the trigger on making "The MAN" (as referenced on page one) and... it is just silly and deeply amusing to run around and watch a Defender KICK something and send it flying back a couple feet, then wind up this absurd Cross Punch, toss down some Caltrops, gut punch something else, drop a Poison Trap, things start choking, pull out an assault rifle and go Full Auto for a second, and then back to fisticuffs. And things die get arrested! And no one has questioned it. Many haven't even noticed it. I've had people excited just to see a Traps Defender, and I chuckled at the idea of how non-typical it is. "Oh awesome, classic Traps/AR!" 😉

Fun aside, there's not going to be a realistic difference when Storm is involved. The downtime between keeping up FR, LS, and Tornado is so limited/tight that the best anyone can hope for is just "get a hit in while I can." Given the effect of tidal counts I could actually see Water having a slightly harder time managing itself depending on how things line up. The FF+Rech laced around the build(s) can shave seconds in odd places, so it really is a game of click-the-best-power-now! I remember much earlier on testing an Illusion/Storm long before doing any of the Proc Monster stuff that someone else had taken a Pylon down with just around 60/s. I wanted to see it for myself and the conditions to get there were just intense, and the time to do anything between anything else was a bare-luck minimum of cycling just two attacks a couple of times before being spammed into the next Storm ability. It shows just how strong Storm Summoning actually is on its own, and that anything else a player does is just a shy attempt to keep up with it. The illusion of it was pretty easily shattered when any one piece of the puzzle fell out of place. Storm/Energy is a much more free and (I know this sounds weird) relaxed high-intensity Storm build because it is incredibly forgiving of its own performance and I designed it to function with multiple safety nets, and absolutely void of Incarnate abilities. The beauty of it is that Water Blast, Dual Pistols, and Assault Rifle can all be subbed in under the (nearly identical) slotting method giving considerable variety to one design as any one of the four sets will all shine equally.

How is now one talking about a Storm/Energy Defender? Are all of you MAD?! It is truly the king of Storm builds!

Using the Pylon (originally those many many years ago) was never about it being "difficult" or anything. It was a stationary target that had a mass of HP with a regeneration rate comparable to an AV, and a set base value of resistance (to all) that made it a consistent and easy target to tackle for the purpose of calculating DPS. There were still many many builds out there which struggled with 6-7-8:00 times, some even longer, some that couldn't even manage. Part of it was build knowledge, part of it was progression of IO's. Towards the end of Retail and our continuation here the challenge has become less about "can I do it" and more "how FAST can I do it?" In contextual relevance to the more current topic when it comes to running targets (or variance in resistances, abilities) the sub 60/s times are crazy, but if that much damage can be produced so quickly it still demonstrates a high capacity to likely arrest a target within a five minute window even if it does rabbit on the player. Alpha should apply to any power (Primary/Secondary/Pool) in your build that could take the appropriate enhancement effect it provides. Interface should trigger off any ability that inflicts damage (and this extends to pets as they are a primarily chosen ability, and the interface is like a slotted proc ability in the pet enhancement). Interface procs however have a stacked limit (I don't remember the actual number, like somewhere between 4-6? I think it's 5...) that they can be applied per individual target regardless of the "source" of the trigger. This is what prevents 24 people running into a BAF with something like Degenerative and dropping Siege or Nightstar down to 10 HP just for breathing on them. This same reason is why variation in choosing Interface abilities is so much more important as it opens up the group dynamic impact. Taking Reactive or Degenerative is fun for solo or small group purposes, but they aggressively loose their value in league play since there's a high chance four or five or fifteen other people have that same one (of two common) choice(s).

I did do some light testing with the power a couple months ago just to see what would come of it. The power will do "okay" for its effectiveness with procs, but it wasn't something that was significantly impressive given that the Vial doesn't dramatically do anything else that screams "take me!" The power at best really only has value on tough targets (EB/AV/GM) where it might balance out long-term to some worthwhile damage, however I doubt that considering I couldn't even get two applications of it to kill a -6 group of Malta. Is it neat? Sure. Do procs help give it some better utility? Considerably. Would I go out of my way to put it into a build? Probably not. Sleep abilities are ... well, they're pretty much useless. Unless you solo and can actually take proper advantage of the effect to help you mitigate/balance a crowd on command, there's not really any greater circumstance in a team that the sleep won't just get cancelled by someone else's AoE the moment you cast it. A crowd control bent on not attacking has never flowed well in CoH. On top of complications with Sleep, there's also the added aspect that several other abilities in Electric Control are just better crowd maintenance abilities that can be reduced to relatively low cooldowns. Jolting Chain causes KD, and Synaptic Overload is group confusion, both refresh pretty quickly, and the confusion effect lasts a considerable length of time. That being said, you don't have to skip the power, you can take it if it suits your play style, you just have to be mindful that it is somewhat situational utility.

Hmm, I dunno. I might say look at Pain Domination or Nature's Affinity for the group buffs. Pain has a toggle heal (regen on MM) on top of an aura heal, a PBAoE debuff, a group +Res/ToHit/Dam, and a strong ST +Regen/Rec/Dam on 90/s timers for the later two. Knowing that I can keep Demons alive with Electrical Affinity well enough with just Faraday Cage topping off their stats and a chain heal, I'd imagine Pain could manage just as well while also giving them that mass buff to ToHit and Damage. Naure's Affinity functions similarly, but that one requires a bit more hands-on to be taken advantage off, but it does have some "lazy options."

Yes, we all know rolling is the superior method of evasion.

The part that was the best for me was discovering, after many multiple attempts while duo with a friend on different builds/ATs, the one thing that absolutely neuters that mission:

Considering the fluidity of users coming and going from the forums, and that (to me at least) it seems we've had a good influx of new forum users, I'm happy to see several of them necroing old posts out of the ashes instead of rehashing topics a second or third or fifteenth time. This isn't the first post to get brought back into the light, and hopefully it won't be the last. It shows that new players are researching and exploring the knowledge base that's already been presented.

It takes very little effort to get Rage to "perma" status with just one rotation of 120/s, so there's no reason not to keep it up all the time and just be mindful of the crash. If you're using Defensive that'll help offset the penalties when the occur in a non-IO'd build. Once you get a more fleshed out build with more recharge in their, you can get double-stacked Rage (really only need 70/'s cooldown to compensate 10/s crash, no reason to execute early during the crash cause it's wasted). With just one application of Rage active Super Strength will perform pretty middle-of-the-pack. If you double-stack Rage, SS becomes the second strongest set in the game (second to TW, marginally better than War Mace), and the absurdity of it is that you can trade out two of its powers (Punch and Haymaker) and use Boxing and Cross Punch instead and end up better for it because Cross Punch is a cone and can take a -Res proc.