Sir Myshkin

This should give you that extra touch of defense debuff room, minor change(s) but it balances defenses:

It should be, yes. Going to take a leap and assume you're talking about the Purple Sets in this case, which not all of them pack a +15% Accuracy adjustment and many builds will find it hard to collect five sets into one build that still maintains logical slotting choice. For Defenders specifically, Apocalypse (Ranged Purple) doesn't have this bonus, and already puts that notion at a disadvantage. One of the Defender ATO sets does have the bonus, but is a set commonly broken into 3's for its 10% Rech value, meaning the 4th set bonus (Acc) is never achieved. Typically a build is likely only to get one or two of those +15% values, if even that. I pulled up my own TA/Arch (relevant to topic with Parabola), and it only has 24% Accuracy bonus. I did the "math" on what it would take to achieve a successful accuracy hit on +4, 75% Global Accuracy and 15% +ToHit to achieve the ability to not slot any accuracy into an ability (95%), assuming it starts at default value. To accomodate +3, either 45% Global Accuracy and 20% +ToHit, or 60% Global Accuracy and 15% +ToHit, or the more sane choice of just putting at least 30% Acc Enhancement into the power and have 30% Global Accuracy and 15% +ToHit. All of these circumstances require taking Tactics, and any other AT besides a Defender having to also taking Kismet +Acc (ToHit) to get to the 15% marker. When it comes to a proc-focused build it's rather unlikely for the build to carry five full Purple Sets, some compensation has to be made either in minor slotting, or taking an Alpha Incarnate that boosts accuracy. One reason they work as well as they do on a Defender is because of how much +ToHit Defenders can squeeze out of Tactics that gives them a ton of breathing room, but it still doesn't change my original suggestion to Parabola to check it. To avoid any accuracy slotting at all, and expect an ability to hit +4 is asking a ton out of a build. You'd need 22% +ToHit out of Tactics and Kismet +Acc combined plus 60% Global Accuracy for Acid Arrow to fire off at 95% against +4's, assuming you're not using an Alpha like Nerve to fix your accuracy.

Side thought(s): I always felt Alkaloid should've been a splash AoE Heal with +Mez protection (Sleep, Stun), main burst on target with overflow to surrounding team mates, like throwing an actual vial of liquid out there, or a 'chemical' balloon. Also plays into theme with other abilities causing similar style trickle-effects in the set. Antidote should be a ST Heal with +Mez protection (Hold, Fear, Confuse, Immobilize), make both powers reasonable, purposeful, and unique in their delivery of status protection (within theme). Neurotoxic Breath should have been a Fear based ability in my opinion (could still keep -Rech/Slow). Far too many otherwise-psuedo-holds in the game (and we can't even slot hold enhancements for it, which that alone would give it more utility with procs), need more diversity. In fact, lets just all-out change this to a 'grenade' or something tossable to get a TAoE in the mix, make it cross-useful with Venomous Gasses without being a cone. Neurotoxin Grenade. Fix the animations to be more "on brand" ... if that makes sense. Entirely opinion, but they feel like they're too all over the place. Poison Trap looks like a science-crafted tool, but several of the abilities are just a quick gather-up of globby-gooey and chucking it, and then the "wrist shot" sort-of projectile? I'd have loved to see a vial or something for Alkaloid/Antidote be thrown, or Elixir of Life include drinking out of one as the character stands (and give relevance to a later-on puking)... anything to give some flair to an otherwise somewhat (again, opinionated) bland set. Animation qualms aside, I feel like these three things would move us in a direction that folks would take more than four powers out of the entire set (and not just to mule them).

So I'm on the hunt for a new build that plays around with a self-contained singular-purpose "Assassin" that completely neuters its target, and then ruthlessly kills it. Ideally I'm boxing this into Corruptor/Defender (most likely Defender) for debuff, and trying to come up with with the best combination that's a bit off from atypical choices, but can hammer down a target quickly. Lead me into starting with a test on Poison/Sonic, and what better way to test speed than a Pylon? T4 Degenerative Core T4 Ageless Core (was on the fence about end, probably didn't need it) T4 Musculature Radial T4 Melee Core (slotted, all it does it passive regen when not activated) T4 Vorpal Radial (yeah, I used it) Multiple runs, my average time was 6:30, Best of 6:15, worst of 6:45ish (didn't write them all down, just noted out of game capture time stamps) I gotta say this was actually super disappointing. I really expected a better swing despite Sonic not really having a very impressive ST chain. Stacked -Res were excessive: Envenom (40%), Venomous Gasses (25%), Shriek and Scream (20% each, 40 total), Weaken Resolve (proc'd out did same damage as Shriek with Apoc+PvP, 10% base, brief stack of 20%, and Achilles for another 20%, basic avg of 30%). Total of -135% Resistance Debuff, beats my Trick Arrow/Archery by (iirc) ~55% additional. Despite all of that, the Trick Arrow is 30-45/s faster. Tried with Shout in there as well since its debuff lasts longer, but the 2.9/s animation is ridiculous. If that one power could get its animation time halved and keep its damage, Sonic would have at least a smidgen of hope. Even went out and tried fighting against 52 and 54 Rikti and the clear speed of a single mob was a drag. Poison easily stripped the threat out of the fight, but trying to clear a spawn of 10 took just as long as clearing one Pylon when trying to utilize the two cone's. I was really hoping for a better result, but am left massively underwhelmed by Sonic. Definitely not a combination I've seen more than once (personally), wanted a better result to make it shine. Time to visit the next choice of Rad/Psi...

I smell an SG cooking.

Just keep in mind the value of the accuracy you are floating out there. It's somewhat difficult to get a sustained amount of accuracy (globally) that allows you to successfully hit a +3, let alone a +4 enemy without some accuracy in the power itself. Typically global accuracy and +ToHit from Kismet/Tactics (depending on the build) will only carry an average ability up to +2 at best.

WindDemon21 Build w/ Agility Adjusted Build w/o Agility, (Musculature), w/o Hasten -Recovery 106.8% -Recovery of 126.7% Energizing Circuit pops for 125% recharge over 5/s, its own effect would cycle it in the adjusted build at ~9/s-9.5/s. Shock > Discharge > Energizing > Shock > Discharge will be nearly seamless as a first straight cycle, carry about a 3/s gap and be cycled again. The gap makes a perfect spot to cast Rejuvenating Circuit or an Empower refresh, or a Faraday refresh. Overall I didn't move any powers, I just took out Hasten and put a travel power in its place. I did move slots because what it gained was 12% S/L, 6% F/C, 20% E/N, and 10% T/Psi Resistances, while maintaining 45% S/L base and 42% Energy base, and opened up the ability to push damage from the bots even further by taking Musculature over Agility. The alteration to Energizing Circuit by adding Power Transfer +Heal also ups survival by imparting a (currently) stacking heal on the player. I wouldn't call any stretch of that a "MINOR" difference as it maximizes all aspects of survivability both from damage performance, and damage prevention. There's nothing "preference" based there. Yes I removed Hasten, because it doesn't add significant value to the build beyond marginal half second gains on off-cycle abilities, or two seconds on an AoE attack that's unlikely to be spammed in the first place. To actually include the ability would entail an actual preference. Either way, all it boils down to is the difference of putting it back in its place over Speed of Sound and it doesn't even need a second slot to be perma so long as Energizing Circuit gets used three times in a minute. Anyway, my point in doing this was to demonstrate that each player will have their own approach to exploring build design, and that your build may never truly be the best comparatively. Power for Power the adjusted build I posted does have better performance and survival prospects. /em shrug

There was room for improvement: I still don't get why folks are bent on including Hasten into Electrical Affinity when it has no appreciable value to the set. At best it shaves one or two seconds off 90% of the sets powers when paired alongside 80-90% additional global recharge, and the kicker is that many of those powers it does impact none of them can be stacked. The above build is 77.5% Global w/o Hasten, and if Energizing Circuit is spammed every 15/s, that's equivalent to 40% additional global on long-cooldown abilities... which the only power that even matters on is effectively Defibrillate.

That ability only has a 5% duration, and the endurance grant is immediate. It's not possible to get the recharge on that power down far enough you'd actually be able to stack it, let alone keep it constant.

It only impacted me. Monitored pets for the buff for 15 minutes with Empower on auto and didn’t get anything on them. Had that been the case I’d have definitely made a slot room for it.

It definitely feels like it shouldn’t be WAI, but at the same time I feel like it’s a nice kicker for Electrical Affinity to keep its caster alive. I’m going to have to try slotting it into Ball Lightning and see if it causes a similar feedback, which would be a pretty big nail in the coffin of “broken or not” I think. I could totally see it being an Affinity-Only feature. I did test out Sandman in Defibrillate before and it was a one-off heal with Power Transfer, but might just double check now that it’s live. So far this is looking to be a pretty hard thing to achieve. Did a quick Yon last night and didn’t catch a ton of double stacking, but admittedly I wasn’t 100% focused on watching it because we were moving pretty quick. Still looking at this.

Yes. Defender Faraday Cage starts out at 15% whereas Corr/Cont/MM 11.25%, which isn't a huge difference. There are, of course, the considerations of the heals and endurance mods being different too, but across the board it's not a huge variance. When I tried maxing potential on F/C/E/N, I ended up with 25-30% in bonuses for those values, which is more than Faraday itself even gives. At max value with same slotting, Defender hit 23.6% where the counterparts hit 17.7%. For Defenders I was able to get up to 61% F/C/E/N Resists, and by using Mind Over Body, cap S/L/Psi. Thus far on one MM build I've managed 55 F/C and 50% E/N for one build, and by taking Charged Armor on another, cap S/L/E and thanks to Ember Shield off Demons, cap F/C, and those are working from a technical deficit when compared to Defenders.

Updated this information in the Defender Proc Monster thread, but it is pertinent here (I feel) to point out specifically some MM benefits on what I was testing. Energizing Circuit: I had first looked at this power as being a straight-forward shove-a-rech-in-it-call-it-good power, but I wanted to see what'd happen if I stuck a couple of specific procs into the power, and I got back a result I wasn't expecting. The Power Transfer: Chance for Self Heal, upon each trigger opportunity it will report back and fire-off on the caster. With just MM pets summoned this could be two or three hits pretty easily. I sat around in Atlas Park and fired it off a few times into the crowds to see what would come back and I got values from two hits up to seven hits, and they stack pretty fast. At just level 34, seven hits came in at 31 HP a piece for a 217 point self-heal. From a Bodyguard perspective this is pretty huge to be able to fire off a team-effecting circuit and get back an instant report heal limited only by the number of chain chances, and isn't reliant on the chain coming back to you like Rejuvenating Circuit. Given that these types of effects are based on max HP, it makes it worth investing in getting access to whatever one can that boosts HP. I also dropped in Performance Shift +End, and this was also a pretty positive result that ends up benefiting anyone whom the chain hits. The proc grants on the target hit based on their own max endurance. Had this chain strike Ms. Liberty for an 80 point boost, interesting to know she has 800 endurance I guess? Max tap-out for a MM is about 47-50%, the shift proc adds another 10% kick onto that pretty nicely. Empowering Circuit: This find would've actually been a lot neater if it meant a MM could really do something more significant with it, but did toss in the Gaussian's +BU proc. The proc will go off, got some stretches where I'd not get anything, and then go 10+ triggers getting the Boost effect. What was interesting was really down to body count. If I just bounced off my pets I'd get something like 50-60% overall effectiveness over time. If I grabbed a few more bodies and added them to the pile my odds got a lot more consistent (more bodies, more trigger chances). What made this a real interesting find is the fact that if I got into the 10+ range I was able to see a stack of Boost effect. I haven't done a terrible amount of additional testing on this yet to see how many I might be able to stack. Just seeing it drop twice was interesting alone. Sadly not a ton a MM is going to output in that 5/s window, but it is definitely a nice potential perk for Def/Cors with a wider array of options to use that buff on.

This looks to still be possible. Tested a bunch of the uniques just to see for myself what was and wasn't going on with the chain effects. Only thing I haven't tried out was Panacea because I'm budgeting the character out. Updated my previous post with inclusions, but specific to your post the Gaussian's still goes off. Ran across two interesting things when testing the procs... First is that this is just one sample of having the Power Transfer: Heal proc in Energizing Circuit. It's trigger chance is occurring per target hit, back on the caster for a heal. What was the more interesting thing I ran into, however, was back to the Gaussian's thing: Yes, double proc on a single activation. So long as I had a couple of non-pet bodies in the mix, getting at least one was fairly consistent, the double aspect I'm going to explore a bit more and see what I can push with chain counts.

A lot of stuff under the hood got stealth adjusted, whether knowingly or not, that changed the dynamic of quite a few powers, Rains being one of them, between July and October last year (2019), I don't recall exactly when, just that there were quite a few tests that were done and certain results came out differently in between there. A lot of what Bopper tested was around that time as well, which sounds like probably happened after what you tested. It'd probably be worth going back and re-checking your experience. I don't personally have a */Time Character without having to roll up a test character just to look at that one thing. Already have some stuff slated to check on Heal procs in Electrical Affinity that I've been trying to get around to for the last four nights.

I think you might have missed the aspect where this set is designed to support a team experience, and MM by default are their own team. There's also a built-in mechanic called Static that amplifies the amount of standard targets your chains will bounce to, which makes it incredibly easy to not only hit you, your pets, and the rest of an 8 person team, but upwards into crossing over an entire 40-character league. Yes each of the chains has an initial taper down, but its overall power at base is still good. The incentive is for you to prioritize immediate need while everyone gets touch-up coverage. As for Faraday Cage, it has a similar radius to many other abilities in the game following a similar algorithm for its size. Comparably its just like Sonic Dispersion. Dispersion Bubble (FF) has a slightly wider equator, but is shorter at its poles than compared to the other bubble-style shields. Until it (potentially, hopefully since it was discussed) gets changed, the visual effect of Faraday Cage is actually 4' total width short of its actual diameter coverage. So all around the edge there's a 2' distance from bi-sliced by the field to where the effect actually stops beyond it. Makes it seem like it is smaller than it is actually designed to cover. So far I haven't really had any trouble keeping Demons covered by it.

Maria Jenkins arc is an easy way as Redlynne pointed out, if you're at least 40 (I think), there's also a couple of test AV missions on AE but I don't remember their Arc ID, try searching "AV" or "AV Test" might show up. The lame-duck test would be to try and shoot down a Pylon in the RWZ. It'd at least tell you if your DPS is there, but more curious about the running aspect with an AV moving around and having varied attacks more than anything.

A reasonable portion of the player base still use the SO system, especially for leveling up, and in some cases just to enhance a low-use character once it hits 50. How so? A new set maybe costs 1-3 million every... what six levels? I mean, I'll be honest, I haven't used an SO since 2007, but even at ~45,000 INF average per SO, and 67 max slots, that's just a hair over 3,000,000 total investment, which isn't what a player is going to average leveling up, each replacement threshold. If they start at 20 (23), and +3 every... lets say five levels 25 (23, -2), that's six resets with level 20 being 720,000 (again at ~45k a hit average since they're all over the place as you level). I'm going to really simplify this breakdown to 51 slots over 6 sets, 8.5 added per shift (which is downward shifting a lot of cost earlier than it should be): 1,102,500, 1,485,000, 1,867,500, 2,250,000, 2,632,500, and lastly 3,015,000 for a grand total of 13,072,500. That's cheap. Heck, if a player came up to me right now in the game and asked me for SO money, I'd probably give them 2-3x that amount without a second thought. Edit to add, on relevance to the patch: If this gets in and works, I'd actually consider revisiting SO's just for simplicity sake. Right now I bend the P2W buffs and the DFB buffs until a character hits 26-32, if I could get some of those early level SO's to fill, and boost them in batch? Yeah... I'd actually probably start using them again.

I'll be upfront when I say this: I have nothing on topic that is useful to add (that hasn't already been said), but I couldn't resist posting this after seeing the title: Hopefully it was worth a smile 🙂

EM can do so much more! Granted I did the test with Bio Armor so there's the added -Res and +Dam into the equation, but running Energy Punch (2x), Bone Smasher, Gloom, Energy Transfer, I got a base line between 3:00-3:30 straight up, and 2:25 as a best time with Hybrid Assault Core. I didn't even blink at skipping Total Focus because its animation is just too long, and having another attack already at 2.9/s was a gamble, if ET and TF both miss back to back, that's 6.4/s of 0 DPS (ouch!). ToD, Mako, Glad, Zing procs in ET and BS Maki, Glad, Zing, Heca in EP (primary filler, repeats a lot) Apoc, Cloud, Glad procs in Gloom Energy Punch w/ Procs is minimum 200 DPS on its own! So good! Took down a 52 EB Heavy Assault Unit in less than 30/s. Ditch TF, get Cross Punch with the -Res proc, go nuts! I like Energy Melee >_> I have waaaaay too much stupid time testing Hybrid Assault Core v Radial. Tanker, Brute, Stalker, Scrapper, Blaster: Go Core, better return. Defender, Corruptor, Mastermind, Controller: Go Radial (if even Assault at all). Fuzzy in the middle based on build: Dominator, Sentinel, (V)EATS With the Tanker buff, Core just does dramatically better, and I tried that across a couple different melee sets for Tankers, it just never came out well with Radial.

I was curious, have you tried taking on AV's successfully with just the Assault Bot? Not even necessarily a 54, just a basic level 50 AV. I know Traps is generally capable of making this possible, but from a damage perspective do you and the Bot alone provide enough? Curious on the idea of making an alternative build for Robotics/Kin with just the Bot, and really pour in survival on just the two of us. I know that collectively the Kin is able to mass-unload from nothing summoned to a dead AV in about 7-10 minutes, so that's where I'm going "??? Is the Assault Bot enough?" Cause boy-howdy, I might try and make it work.

Depends on the paired blast set, what type of content you plan on playing, and how quickly you want all of your attacks, or if you'd rather be more support-centric. Electrical Affinity gets most of its sauce by 20 as a Secondary, so you can kind of "best of both" with a Corruptor. Since Faraday and the Epic Shield are the two main focuses of of Resistance, the difference between the two won't be too dramatic, like 4-5%. When I built out for bonuses, nearly 30-35% was coming from IO sets on F/C/E/N. For me that's still enough to warrant personal survival, I'd probably still role a Defender as I still team a lot more than anything else. If you want Solo function though, going as a Corruptor may not be a bad call as it'll get more of that long-term damage from Scourge since there's not really any debuffs to leverage out of EA.

Normally when I think about exemping down it's with the benefit of knowing I'll be carrying a lot of good bonuses to a certain level, and my abilities I picked up early on will be doing tenfold better than when I picked them up leveling since they'll now be appropriately slotted and enhanced. With that particular build all of its "saving grace" is in the 40+ realm when it picks up its three core attacks that are chosen specifically to assist the Ninja's by controlling scatter and aggro via KD effects. Realistically this is more about solo capacity more than it is team play. How self-contained can the build be without relying on additional support like a Tanker or Controller/Dominator to hold enemy spawns in one position so that the Ninja's don't vanish on you. From that, to me the minimum this build really travels down to is 40 (keeps all abilities up to 45), and once it starts dipping below that it becomes more focused on Electrical Affinity than a DPS machine, which I fear is what the majority of its level-up experience will feel like. Right now with Demons/EA I'm feeling a bit more like a support toon with some meat shields than I am anything else. I did finally wrap up a build for that too, so while I'm here I'll drop it in the thread as well. I feel like it speaks to a lot more of my concerns I mentioned upwards and actually has more resistances baked in. I'm not sure that it'd translate well for Ninja's though as they don't have the same internal support system that Demons do out of their T2, it uses a hard Immobilize with some soft-control procs to try and balance the scales whereas Explosive Blast and Torrent are a sure-fire KD system, and that helps mitigate incoming damage by preventing the opportunities for it. Basically, yeah you could exemp down with it, and still get somewhat of a decent bonus carriage downward until probably... 20 or so, but it'll be really focused on supporting a team and (hopefully) keeping the Ninjas alive and well without you as backup to assist them. I just don't know how well it'll play out beyond +0/8 content because my current experience with an unslotted Demons at 27 (so far) is I can barely hold them up against even-con, and that's having taken every single EA ability up to that point. For the general use of the thread, here is where I'm sitting with Demons/Electric Affinity/Mu: There's already discussion in this thread specifically about that combo, and a build for it here. So far no one has documented a significant amount of play time with it however.

The idea is stealing heavily from my time with "Mad King" builds at this point. I fairly certain between the resist values, bodyguard, the insanely spread +Absorb, and the soft control out of the Epic (and a little -Dam from Discharge) that it should work out. The question is coming down to these two things though: Is it going to need Provoke to manage damage point of direction Will the combination of all those effects be sufficient to run +4 content I'm not really too concerned with how it'll play at 0 to +2 as I think that'll be fine, I feel like it'll end up needing to stick with Barrier Core+Melee Core on cycle. It really is a 45+ "End Game" build for sure. It's a lot more than just a resist build, it's ridiculously layered like Bio Armor (er, sans the Def part). I didn't end up rolling Ninja (did Demons for the -Res and that I can manipulate the Whip abilities to act the same), but I keep feeling drawn back to it, we'll see. I don't really want to get stuck with a 50-only character, but I am super curious to how it plays on teams and in iTrials and that's not really something I can bump over to Test and try. If only I could change their dumb costumes >_< "Mad King" builds are maaaassssively busy builds to maintain their survivability, so that's the only other real linchpin in the build. Can't fall asleep at the helm, as it were. If you do take it over to the Test Server, please let me know what your experience was with it. Still toying around with how this will work out for a MM and haven't locked anything in stone on whether I need to really shift into full MKS and grab Unleashed Potential and drive it more like I did Storm/Energy on a Defender.

Patch Update for Electrical Affinity is in the core Defender thread as of... five minutes ago. I'll link here for folks referencing from this thread. Nothing specific in the information that would change anything from a Controller perspective, it's a pretty proc-light set (link goes straight to the post): Side note: Personally I think Fire/Electric is looking to be one of the more interesting iterations since Fire Imps can get buffed and healed in triplicate pretty quickly, and those buffs can come back to the player, and the set is a little self-fixing from an endurance stand point if enough of the +End procs get dropped around. Might finally be able to run Hot Feet! There's also the obvious Elec/Elec combination for a sap-minded build that also has the same effect on Gremlins from a buff standpoint. Definitely not a Fire/Kin, but a bit more forgiving when it comes to Imp positioning and healing.