Sir Myshkin

I suspected this was likely the ultimate issue when you brought it up, and checked what was on Test once I was home and able to do so. In-game is lists as Mag .67, but it isn't hard capped, and increases mag against lower level (the further down I went, to 35 in the RWZ, the further it tossed the targets). I had originally been testing against 42-43 cause they're, you know, safer, but I went and dug up some 50's (surprisingly sparse in RWZ), 50 Underlings, 51, 52, and 53. 50 standard and up, all KD, 50 Underlings and less, KB with varying degrees of "a couple feet" to "are they going to stop flying?" (okay, not that bad, like 15-20 feet max, but still funny). I specifically wanted to find a multitude of those ranges to see where it might be problematic being level shifted by +1. Went back onto the test server and popped Hasten and Ageless Core and fired off as many 1-2/s recharge boosted Jolting Chains as I could against a singular primary target, and it is definitely either A). Unaffected by a secondary activation, or B). 3.25/s immunity and not 5/s. I can say definitively it is definitely not a 5/s window as I was more than capable of blasting the same original target repeatedly within >5/s windows. I would ultimately need another coordinated player to try anything sub 3.25/s to really know for sure if there's a global immunity on multiple applications. There's just not enough recharge in the world that'll let me get there on my own (with a 2.24/s animation and all, just isn't happening). If the cap duration is 3.25/s, then this would make sense how you could eventually cycle back to the original target within a singular activation of JC. As a side note about this testing, first: I don't care how AoE centric JC is, that thing hitting with a load of procs is just about as worthwhile a ST attack as Arcane Bolt at this point, when trying to just randomly supplement a build. When I went to spam-check JC for triggers on KB/KD (and cycling in general), I did it on squads of 53-54 Rikti, originally thinking "ah hell, here we go again" I boosted up Fade and went in, dropped Darkest Night... I mean, they're +3 Rikti! It was Combat! It was not combat. It was not fair. For them. I bunched them up, had Conductive Aura on, and put Jolting Chain on auto-fire after hitting Chain Fences to keep them in place for 30/s. And then I proceeded to watch their end bars slowly fade away as JC knocked them over, and over, and over. Eventually Fade wore off, and it became the longest AoE-based kill-fest ever against the last 3 bosses, but I could've went AFK and it wouldn't have mattered. They had no endurance to attack me, couldn't stand long enough to run away from me, and slowly died while I watched proc triggers on Jolting Chain. It was kind of sickening in one of those amusing "lul, wut?" kinda gamer ways. I also went and took a whack at a Pylon after everything cause I was like "eh, why not at least SEE if I maybe could." I think it's feasible with Electric, but circumstantial. I really needed Power Boosted Fade on the Gremlins and Dark Servant (he kinda sat as my heal bot) to keep them from getting nailed with KB. Un-boosted Fade just wasn't enough to limit the amount of times they got thrown back. In the initial 60/s burst I packed in enough damage to bring the Pylon down about ~20%, but then the Gremlins started getting beat like Pinatas at a 5 year olds birthday party and things kinda of progressively hit a brick road. Pretty much, if it can't be done in 5:00, it's kind of a non-starter, and at 3:40 in of summoning a third set, I called it a failed effort as I'd only managed to recover and stall into ~30% at that point. I really needed another third attack (the ST immob proc-loaded, or an Epic that I could get within 5/s recharge), and that was just because I had my own personal 1/s downtime in between JC and TC. Not a lot, but something that could've been better applied than wasting it. If I were to reapproach the attempt, it'd likely be with PB on a shorter cooldown, and then trade for full Clarion for added longer mez protection. Fix the gap in the chain for one more attack since I'd've lost a lot of epic crap, trade slots over to Synaptic and a replacement attack.

I tested Enflame when I worked with Defender sets to try and patch up a lack of damage in certain areas, and also worked with it testing Ill/Storm, but both of those powers are taking investment away from other areas within a Primary/Secondary, and unless there's a substantial reason to go after them, they're not always going to be the best choice. Taking Elec/Dark as an example. Slotting was already super tight in trying to find places to maximize all options, and honestly if I wanted to try and balance all of the AoE fun, I just couldn't. After a certain point, if all we're doing is filling up on okay-but-interesting proc-filled pool powers, we're not really bending the truth of a given power set, just modding it into something different, which massively defeats the purpose. This got brought up in the Defender thread as well, and like @Hjarki said, Cloud Senses is the one that makes the most sense (aha) as it impacts everything instead of just one or two specific abilities. Honestly, no, building towards Ranged isn't easier as it forces me to sacrifice slot options in other powers in order to chase set bonuses, which kind of defies the whole effort of the experiment in maximizing what--and how many--procs we can fit into an individual ability. Just like what was discussed in the Storm Summoning thread, in some cases a sacrifice has to be made one way or the other, and in the case of Ice/Storm Corr, I could pack all of the necessary bonuses to get S/L/E and Ranged, but it was in no way a total Proc Monster because of what was sacrificed to get there. It has and uses Procs, but not to the fullest extent. But that really just comes down to a specific play style choice more than anything, and I've seen your builds for it too. To keep to a plug-and-play style though, Scorpion is just the fastest, simplest way to get immediately to the 45% S/L/E target with just one power stacked on Weave and the two 3% IO's. It doesn't really require any further thought beyond that. I spent more time focused on Jolting Chain than any of the other abilities I tested, and for that power it (as I saw it happening) was ST on each hit, but knowing how the pseudo pet functioned, my guess was it hit the first target, created an aoe field check for nearest targets and spread two pets, repeating this process (as already mentioned eventually in this thread), but the key was that each hit acted as a ST event and proc'd accordingly. Aside from the FF+Rech, I felt pretty comfortable in that the events were proccing at a reasonable expectation. As for cycling on itself, I never saw a repeat trigger from the same activation, however I did basically auto-fire JC into a group and that did impact uniquely of the previous one and didn't cause any hiccups or missed chains, so if there is a unique identifier to stop repeating on a target, it either dispels quickly, or is unique to each activation of Jolting Chain. I would think it makes more sense for it to be unique to each activation given two players firing the same attack would cancel each other out, but I didn't really experience a failure of the attack when I looped it within a 5/s window. I have to inherently disagree with this over just one power, given that Agility impacts the entire build, not just this one singular attack, so that Recharge Enhancement is weighing against everything, and can be potentially detrimental in certain cases that currently have a high consistency, and don't need the added reduction. Without looking too specifically into it, when I was on test it was tossing mobs all over the place so I figured the mag was a bit higher, maybe not enough to warrant KB on things with some resistance, but it was all over the place. That's why I tossed it in, and everything went from "super fly!" to "sit down." I never once (prior to placing the SA KD) saw anything less than KB effect, never KD. I did not look into it any further than that.

Fun Note: Of all the different builds I went through, I got really attached to the idea of a TA/A Proc Monster, and decided to build on on the normal servers. She's 45 right now and only missing the level 50 Purple sets and catalysed ATO's. Having a blast running around and also finding new ways to light Oil Slick! Discovered Explosive Arrow is a pretty reliable way to do it alongside a Proc'd Acid Arrow. Disruption > Acid > Oil > Rain > Explosive > Fist > Next Spawn. Wait for the rest of the team to realize the Defender just cleared a spawn in less than ten seconds. Was joining AV (Maria/Unai) teams. Someone commented about how they hated fighting the "tougher" ones, and then we shredded through Diabolique in >30/s and they were like "WTH, where'd we get debuffs from. Trick Arrow? Seriously?!" One Proc Monster at a time.

Stage One Electric Control I don't know if there's enough time or testing in the world to fully cover the proc-brilliance of this set. I started with Electric because the chain mechanics sounded the most interesting to explore, and would be the one thing to deliver the most unique and early bang-for-buck time investment if they worked out positively. I do want to say, the way I've approached any of these Proc Monster builds was to initially look at the build collectively under the impression that everything would work as imagined, and try and fit it all in. Then, if it does, great! If not, then I've got slots to play with! I might have partially shot myself in the foot by trying to do this test with Electric AND Psionic Mastery at the same time, however, as I wanted more slots to play with, but I knew if it didn't all work, I'd have at least five to move around to new homes, so I was thinking pragmatically. Jolting Chain Lets be honest, this is the power we're all here for. I did some initial testing, and then went back and collected some of the actual raw damage from in the game to post in here. This first spoiler block is on spawn densely packed level 43 Malta, and the second spoiler is against just a single 43 Gunslinger, for comparison of AoE v ST. AoE: And ST: One thing that's a tad frustrating is that the Force Feedback +Rech proc shows up under "Healing Delivered" in the combat logs, which is also what Panacea floods every ten seconds, making watching that window kinda frustrating unless you take that proc out, but given that, I did get that proc off against the Gunslinger 1 v 1, once in that string, which is nice. JC does all its checks on the first target for the player and it was still pretty good odds to get that proc to fire. I never saw a subsequent trigger on any following chain, but of course plenty of damage proc hits as those are baked into the chain pet each time it transitions. Initially I tested this with three +Dam and the FF+Rech, under the impression that in a real-world scenario I'd likely have the AoE to help stop the bounce effect, but Electric doesn't actually contain a -KB component, so things just ended up scattered and incapable of regrouping. Lame, but also probably best to force me to scale back how much I was breaking this power. Yeah, Procs break this power. I tossed in KB/KD Sudden Acceleration and... it's absolutely hilarious to see this power cycle through a mob and just plant them all within ~2-3/s as it swipes left through the group. Worth pointing out too that the initial damage (even under containment) of the ability was far surpassed by the proc damage (by at least 2-3x more, if not 4x for the purple proc). Inherently is it better to slot five procs and a +5'd Accuracy, or do what I did with Acc/Dam and Acc/Dam/End Sup Winter's in the off-chance you don't get a proc on a chain, it at least does somedamage (9 v. 15). Synaptic Overload So, interesting power. I initially plugged it with the Controller ATO +Dam (set), but it has room for two +Dam IO's in the Confuse sets, so 2-3 potential options. The thing that ultimately hung me up is that I needed/wanted to pull for global recharge, and needed to look for solutions to that regard too, while testing. I ended up being mildly intrigued by the result. Keep in mind that the core of this power is to confuse a spawn on itself, so not only are they going to take damage, they're going to deal damage... to each other. The only downside here is that the power still has a lengthy recharge and I was reducing it down with enhancement to 15/s. With one proc: With three: One was a nice bonus, three, well, by the time it spread through the mob of 43 Malta, and got to the last one, the first minion in the group was dead from friendly fire, and by the last of it only one Gunslinger was left alive after 15/s. This power is a good place to get some otherwise unconsidered damage utility, but is typically a power set-muled for +rech, so it makes it a hard call. Still possible to drop the Superior Will set in there with at least one other damage proc (for two total), but it costs six slots to get there. With a bit more global recharge in a build, this isn't a bad place to grab a rather effective mass-confusion tool that does some bonus damage for the xp-credit-points. Psionic Tornado This ended up being a pretty straight-forward expectations test. Everything performs as anticipated, plenty of proc opportunities. Toss in whatever you can fit in the power as there's quite a few options. I went KD/KB, damage, and +Rech. Between this and JC, should be a lot of AoE potential and +Rech activations to keep the build as a whole pumping out a steady stream of global. World of Confusion Alright, everyone put on their conspiracy tin-foil hats for this one. I learned a new trick and it's kind of gross. So, we all know that damage aura for a non-mez-protected toon can suck, because the toggles will get shut off. Well, I was out testing this thing with a full load of procs, and I got mez'd (just for a blipping second, but it happened). I waited the few seconds for the power to kick back, and turned it on again in the spawn, and I got instant proc gratification. I was like "huh, that's odd, so many procs at start up?" So I turned it off and went in to the next spawn, and turned it on again. Bam, instant proc gratification, again. Toggles have an activation trigger of 10/s for procs to fire. Its baked into their formula so that no matter what, anything that responds as a "toggle" effect, will be on a 10/s trigger regardless of the actual activation periods for the power itself. When I let WoC go longer than just turn-on-shut-off, the proc triggers didn't come off as being nearly as clustered up front as when I turned the power on. Now this is somewhat of a "duh" situation because "of course, it has an initial tick to proc" but how often are any of us knowingly entering melee at the appropriate tick point, and how many of those toggles can get reduced to sub-10/s recharges? Well, actually most of them. Some are a trade off of Rech/Animation, but on average probably around 4-5/s, maybe 6/s on the longer side of total time. My mindset on toggle AoE's has suddenly shifted in an odd way. For a power like this, with an incredibly tight radius, but huge proc-ability (I have 4 in it, it can fit 5), I'd want to be able to control that effect is closely as possible, especially considering WoC causes things to wander in fear/confusion once the mob figures out what's going on. If I don't have them locked down or tightly packed, I'm not likely going to want to just leave that errant firing off, but I can cycle it very quickly. In fact I can cycle it faster than the toggle countdown (6.378/s to rech+anim). Is that worth the hassle? Well, guess that's not really up to me to decide, but Electric doesn't have a ton going on in 6.378 seconds of AoE besides two primary powers, and I only really need to find 1.848/s to fire WoC off every 4.58 seconds to make it worth the effort. It's an interesting thought pattern. Gremlins I wanted to do a more closely monitored watch of the BU proc on a pet, just out of curiosity. And I wanted to see how impactful the Gremlins would be having the Overwhelming Force KD proc. For those that may not have known, the Soulbound +BU proc can stack on itself (apparently). I dragged my two Gremlins throughout the RWZ for a bit and watched one of their combat windows and caught the trigger often enough, and then to my surprise, stacking on itself a couple of times. I feel like, in retrospect of MM's and their pet tiers, the data from setting these two procs into a t1 pet should logically come back as better than in the t3 pet. If I could get two Gremlins to trigger at least once every 10-15/s on average, with KD effect on nearly every single attack they performed (and on average two attacks on follow up for +BU), that's both an overall increase in damage and survivability. Something to think about down the road. Conductive Aura Tried out the performance shifter proc in this aura. It's a pretty gimme-free kinda toggle, wanted to see if the proc could/would be decent here. Strangely, out of sitting around in the midst of useless Rikti or Malta, or just about anything, I didn't really see it go off. The power saps down whatever you're surrounded by so eventually you can kinda just sit there for eternity waiting for something to happen, but I only caught it like twice in about five minutes in a group of 4/5, which wasn't great odds. For the single inherent slot for this power, figuring an End Mod is probably just a better option as I was getting more endurance return from sapping than the proc at that level. Dark Miasma Side Notes Two things here. When I first tested Dark Miasma on Defenders there was one thing I kinda glanced over with Howling Twilight. That ability can take a handful of procs (Positron and Impeded). I mean, who'd think to shove them in that power in the first place, but it can be brought down, and if you're firing it off anyway, what kind of odds does it get? Well, whether this is broken or not, I went around and fired it off on a bunch of mobs throughout the RWZ and you know what I got back? This: I got some really good averages of at least one proc per target, but quite often it was two, and always more procs than targets. If you've got the slots, free damage is free damage at that point. In a lot of my overall attempts at that power, I was nearly getting double procs on the entire spawn, more than anything less. As an opener into a spawn that causes mass stun, 100-140 damage is 25% of a level 54 minion, that's a great start to kick off an entire group solo. Drop a crazy-chain after it, and Tesla on the Boss... Gremlins do the rest? Seeing some pretty good choices there. The other thing that was different about this Dark Miasma, and worth talking about, was/is Fade. I went Clarion Radial with this test so I could play with the Power Boost like effect. Fade is on a very short 60/s timer, and this set definitely needs more leveraged global recharge to get that power down far enough, but if it has access to PB every 60/s, between that and Indomitable Will, I think Dark on a Controller can get away without relying on a specific Destiny choice. Popping Clarion and then Fade, as built, jumped me to just shy of 45% defense to everything. If a bit more global can be squeezed into the build, with some kind of reliable ST damage, I might be able to get a Controller to perform at, or possibly better than the Defender variant. Plus, that Fade effect adds a little S/L resist, and it can all be shared with pets. Also comes with a bit of DDR, which is a nice touch too. And a +Regen, +Recovery PBAoE? I feel like there's a glitch in the Matrix... Overall Impressions & Build: Overall Jolting Chain is just a monster. The repeating proc capability there is just really good, better than I'd maybe expected. Recharges quick, has reliable utility, and really turns that power into a hard hitting, fast cycling nightmare for enemies. Tesla Cages and Chain Fences all perform as expected when proc-loaded. Tesla hits like a truck with five procs and a Acc/End packed into it. I definitely want to try and find a way to pack more global into these builds, especially just for Dark Miasma as I think this will be a really good secondary to carry into the others with its more diverse tools. I'll post the current tested build, and eventually put an updated one in the final posting. There's also several more epics to test and try and find the best choice to pair with these Proc Monsters. Indomitable Will is a nice tool, but a faster firing Power Boost would be a better choice for Fade. Side Note about Illusion Control While not inherently part of testing for this thread specifically, I did do some stupid-aggressive short-term testing with Illusion/Storm in response to a build (I think it was Maxzero's? It's a bit late trying to remember) posted for getting a Pylon time down to the near-minute mark, and I spent some time messing around with it and looking at how it bent procs. Illusion doesn't have a crazy assortment of potential for Procs, but packing Blind and Arcane Bolt together alongside with all the insanity that is Storm Summoning, its a very busy combination that does a lot of fast damage, but is fickle in its ability to keep Phantasm in the fight (and suffers from loosing it). I had originally put together an Ill/Traps to consider testing for its ability to keep Traps alive and stacked behind Phantom Army, but the possibility of PB boosted Fade is also something I might consider as an opportunity too. Not quite as much total defense, but might be enough (overall) that Twilight Grasp can help keep the Phantasm alive and see what kind of performance a non-storm Illusion can do. Hey, guess what, my first test was Electric! 😄

What is a Proc Monster? A build type bent on maximizing proc opportunities within a singular AT through specific sets that have the most potential for proc chances. Typically this would narrow down to sets that can bend at least 2, up to 5, procs in a singular power to exceed the normal limitations of that power, and do this with multiple powers within a given set. Each AT has a handful of sets that provide the most opportunities to do this, and through this path will carry those sets to a new level of performance outside their original design. We do this by maximizing global recharge, and minimize enhanced recharge by as much as possible. The proc formula was studied by Bopper and he has the formulas posted here. Where Do We Begin? At this point I know that the thread I started in the Defender's sub section has been circulating around to more and more people, so some [many] will be familiar with the concept of what I started working towards there, when I say I'm moving to Controllers to look at doing the same thing. For those unfamiliar, please start there as it will have a lot of relevant information pertaining to the support side of things for Controller secondaries, and the first batch of testing towards how those sets work with procs themselves. I'm basically the guinea pig testing all these different events and triggers based on the info we have about the formulas, and discovering how those interactions work in the game, and their consistency. The break down is simple: explore and analyze the Proc options within the Controller AT and find the key sets that are optimally capable of bending Procs to their advantage in the fullest sense. For Defenders much of what I tested there is easily applicable to Corruptors since they are fundamentally the reverse of Defenders, and much of the blast set analyzation is relevant to Blasters. For Controllers, sharing their secondary with Defender primaries means I've already gotten half the work done since I know what Buff/Debuff sets are going to be best suited for bending Controllers towards Proc maximization. Dark Miasma Time Manipulation Traps As a technicality, I did give Trick Arrow an honorable mention (when paired with Archery), but at the necessity of needing Scorpion Shield to have any level of reliable defense, and it is a very thin margin to reach that 45% S/L/E. Controllers will suffer the factor of lower base buff levels on these sets being their secondary, but they should have enough over head to still work out in viability. Storm Summoning also has a unique place here as it is a proc-monster in-and-of-itself, but needs Scorpion Shield as well to patch it to a decent defense performance, but that set out puts an insane amount of raw damage for what it is. Dark Miasma is also a little different for Controllers in that it has Fade and Soul Absorption, which the Defender version doesn't, and Fade can be bent to a Controller's advantage just like Farsight can in Time Manipulation. In many of the Defender builds I took a good chunk of the Leadership pool because it helped patch a lot (Defense and To-Hit), and were also pretty valuable as team buffs in the event of teaming coming off a Defender. Controllers, depending on how tight some of these builds may become, will likely end up passing some (or all) of that pool given they're flexing a different approach to combat.f The Primaries: Since I know what secondary options I'll have to work with, lets talk about Primary, and the fact that Controller's have a much wider spread of options for their Epic pools. Nearly all primary sets have a core fundamental structure of ST Hold, ST Immob, AoE Immob, AoE Hold, and a Pet, but the powers in between, and what total sets we can slot across those powers, are the key element of bending Controllers into becoming Proc Monsters. I did the math for us all, these are the sets in order of Proc-capable powers (I sub-noted the ones I'll be focusing on, and why): Dark (9) A lot of variety, nearly everything takes the Cloud Senses proc, and the pet gets some bonus procs. Gravity (9) Variety of proc options, and bonus options on the Pet. Mind (7) Plant (7) Unique mechanics in a handful of the powers here, like Carrion Creepers, and how those ultimately trigger, their consistency, and the Pet also gets bonus options. Fire (7) I want to test Hot Feet as a damage aura bent on Procs instead of enhancement, and Cinders as a very straight-forward Proc AoE. I admit this one is a personal investment, as I really enjoy Fire and want to try and find some solutions to bend this set more effectively, so I'll be sharing those theory crafts just because. Electric (7) Chain Mechanics! This is a unique and interesting tool that Electric does in several of its powers. Earth (7) Quicksand, Volcanic Gasses, and Animated Stone. All three have a huge variety of proc opportunities that might deliver a handsome level of damage to Earth if they work. We might be able to bring this set out of the stone ages! Ice (5) Low priority, but Arctic Air has proc potential, and paired with what can already be added into the standard set of powers for Ice, these might be enough to give Ice a decent level of damage performance. Illusion (4) I theory crafted an interesting build for Ill/Traps during my Defender testing, and at some point (unless someone would like to try the build themselves for me) I may get around to dropping it. Now for this, I only focused on powers that have a relevant assortment of procs, can take multiple (towards several) procs, and proc utility. I did not account for powers in sets that were restricted to one set, and/or any proc of consideration that was just part of the sleep or stun sets as there are no damage procs there, and their secondary utilities have a low(er) PPM value, lower Mag value, and/or don't significantly alter or enhance the impact of a power when multiplied against its inherent purpose. These were fundamentally already tested with Defenders in their Blast sets (procs like Entropics +Heal, Gravitational Anchor's +Hold, etc). The Epics: For Epic sets, since my primary focus is on powers that have the most variety of proc opportunities, and come with interesting secondary mechanics, or the potential to considerably increase performance, I've narrowed down the choices to a select few. Since most of the sets have a handful of blasts that don't have more than a 1 or 2 proc variety, and we already have a good idea how these are going to work, I'm skipping a lot of that. I'm going after the weird stuff I can "break." Fire Consume, I want to test how this triggers, consistency, and trying the Performance Shifter proc's flex in this ability (odds on low-body count performance). Psionic World of Confusion, Psionic Tornado, plus Indomitable Will would be a great inclusion to any combination if the recharge can be pulled through. Earth Fissure, Seismic Smash Leviathan Better testing on Water Spout and the Coralax Pet Mace Poisonous Ray and Disruption value with Procs, look into the consistency of the Spider pet -Res utility. Soul Dark Obliteration Some of the epics have general patching that can help performance like Endurance issues, or boosting secondary effects like Power Boost, so Fire, Primal, Mu and Soul all have value there. Defense wise, shoring up even just S/L to passable softcap is harder and only available in Ice, Stone, and Mace (with Scorpion Shield being the best of the three). These are important to consider when trying to build a Proc Monster without Time, Dark, or Traps. Incarnates: Incarnates can help patch up short comings, or improve general performance in some key areas like Recharge, Endurance, or Mez Protection, but if possible the goal is always to find the best paths to do these things before getting to Incarnates so we can have more options instead of pigeon-holing into just Ageless or Clarion. For most of these builds I will most likely consider Intuition Radial the optimal Alpha Slot as it has a wide array of things it impacts, with Damage and Range being the most helpful. A secondary consideration would go to Nerve for pure Accuracy and Defense patching. The reasons we wouldn't want to go for things like Agility or Spectral are because those contain recharge enhancement, and that negatively impacts our Proc-ortunities. Testing Path: I'll break each test event I perform into an individual follow-up post in this thread, and at the end I'll put a capstone conclusion into this main topic with the results. My goal is to find the best primary Proc Monster that Controllers can provide. For Defenders that landed on bending the given Buff/Debuff sets when paired with Dark Blast, Water Blast, Dual Pistols, and Assault Rifle (as an AoE focus). This will take about a week or two for me to run through as time allows, but I have six build plans to analyze and test. Unlike with Defenders, however, I doubt I will pull Pylon Runs. We'll see. Controllers still lack (comparatively) the level of ST function that Defenders are capable of, and are much more crowd-centric in their powers, but a few excel at single target capacity, and those would be the ones I'm most likely to at least attempt a run on. Topic Update We started this journey back on August 12th, we're closing the end of the month nearly two weeks later, and pretty much right on the coat tails of how long I expected this journey to take. A lot of interesting information to take in, a couple of surprises that I didn't expect, and the comforting knowledge to know that Procs, just like they did with Defenders, have the ability to stabilize under-performing sets, and also give a considerable amount of power to already strong(er) sets. Right off the bat, I want to say: Any Controller has a reasonable amount that can turn it into a Proc Monster. Some of the Primary sets lack a lot of inherent options to maximize the effect, but if you take the core of the idea and apply it where you can, it'll undoubtedly enhance even the lowest-base performers to some degree. There are, obviously, some that handle this scenario better than others. Given that, it'd be hard to really give an order of champions among the sets unlike how I could with Defender's with the Blast sets. Control effects, especially damage built ones, have a lot of slotting options at their disposal (unlike the Blast sets). What I can do, however, is break them down into classes of opportunity and discuss any positives or pitfalls in them: High Capacity Dark All powers work as expected. Shortcoming in the fact that there's generally not enough slots in a build to really bend every power in the primary to its fullest. Gravity Interesting effects: Dimension Shift and Wormhole can be used into each other to displace enemies in interesting ways. Shift also has ability to take a couple of damage procs. Propel ends up being the worst power in the set when Proc focused, leaving GD, Lift, and Crush as the better primary ST attacks. Plant Huge volume of impact, becomes difficult to fully maximize every possible power in the set, and may result in forced-exclusion of several that would otherwise be a good pick. Highly dependent on Alpha slot to fix a potential short coming (Acc, Rech, or Dam, where it may apply). Mid-Range Capacity Fire Procs are just transforming an already strong set into something even more violent. Electric Procs have the ability to bend some of this sets AoE centered focus into strong ST capabilities. Jolting Chain is, *ahem* off the chain. Earth So many abilities that can be loaded up with Procs. Quicksand unfortunately is not one of them (it doesn't reflect any proc triggers). Volcanic Gas was a big hitter for damage and effects. Stony holds up well with proper protection and Earth can collectively do a significant amount of damage with Procs loaded up into all of its abilities. If paired with Stone epic, it'll do some serious harm. The set goes from being the worst in damage, to easily mid-pack. Mind Mind has a lot of proc-potential, but not a lot of proc-damage-potential. There are a lot of secondary effects in the abilities, and a lot of proc options floating around there, but most of them are status based effects that are not all situationally impactful, or necessarily game-changing in their effect. The biggest aspect for this set is that Confuse and Mass Confusion can be 2x-3x slotted for damage/effect stacking, and that can be huge to improving the sets general performance of two key powers. Low Capacity Ice Only five proc-pacting attacks in this set, the only thing that can be said is that the few that can be maximized, should, and it'll help scale up the sets performance. What's interesting is that this sets lack of proc-dealing capacity is turning it into the least-damaging set because it lacks opportunities. It may thematically look cool, but Ice needs a generalist face lift for one or two abilities because a proc-world makes this set suffer. Illusion Illusion itself doesn't have a lot going on for proc options, but Blind and Confuse can both be loaded up, as well as Flash. The biggest thing is that this set can pair incredibly well with the grand-daddy of proc-hungry secondaries (Storm), and create (one of) the fastest ST killing machine(s) in the game. I also have high expectations that an Ill/Traps/Stone could be a heckuva damage dealer in its own right. Epics are in a similar boat of "some have, some don't" but there is a lot of niche filling with the Epics that a player has to decide what they want/need to fulfill in their build. So for that, I'll simply break them down into categories of relevance for "fixing" or "powering up": Endurance Fixing Fire Primal Mu Soul Easy Defense Ice Stone Mace This Epic has the ability to easily patch S/L/E defense as well as add a significant ground work for Resistance Debuff, a reasonable AoE KB/KD attack, and another Pet that can also take the -Res proc, which is hugely beneficial. High Yield Performance Stone Between Fissure and Seismic Smash, this set has a huge out put in bonus damage. Smash alone is dong 500+ points of damage. It's a massive game changer. Leviathan Water Spout not only can add two -Res procs, but the power itself does a bunch of raw damage which can dramatically scale performance both ST and in general play. Primal (Dark or Time Pairing) Torrent with a FF+Rech proc is a fast firing KD field that can be reapplied constantly. It's both a great "soft" control, and a way to maximize the FF+Rech proc to speed up a build. Power Boost has a lasting impact on Fade or Farsight when used prior to cast of either as the effect stays the entirety of either power's duration since it's a cast effect. Now of course, throughout this thread are the individualized testing results of a few of these combinations. Test #1 Electric Control Test #2 Earth Control Test #3 Gravity Control Test #4 Plant Control Final Follow Up And of course the discussion never stops at the end, there's always more to learn and explore! From all the studies that were done, looking for the things that don't work, or any interesting mechanics that existed out there, builds got created, broken, and rebuilt. For that I have a library of options for others to continue exploring on their own based of these testing adventures. I'll include them below, but do remember that these were built in Mids Reborn 2.73 and will need that edition or newer to open up as it is the most current with the state of the game on Homecoming servers. Dark/Dark/Primal: Dark/Time/Primal: Earth/Dark/Stone: Electric/Dark/Primal: Electric/Dark/Psi: Fire/Dark/Psi: This one was built to break-test Hot Feet and World of Confusion as proc-packed toggles. Fire/Force Field/Flame: Gravity/Time/Primal: Illusion/Traps/Stone: Plant/Dark/Leviathan: Plant/Dark/Mace: Plant/Dark/Soul: Notes A few things about these builds that some might notice after digging through them a bit: I found the best choice of slotting on the pets to be a 4-pack of Expedient Reinforcements, the Soulbound +BU Proc, and the Overwhelming Presence +KD as it gave the pets themselves the most damage potential, and soft-control effects by turning all of their attacks into a KD effect, maximizing their safety potential. This was expounded by pet powers that summon 2-3 versus just one. Some pets, however, were able to pack a -Res proc, or some other +Dam altering proc that realistically provided a more consistent level of damage spike versus just utility soft-control for the pet to own. The Procs almost always outweighed the alternative of the KD unique, and the -Res over the +BU as that benefited everyone, and not just the pet. For anyone who opens the Dark Control builds, they may notice the mass AoE Immob is missing. That is intentional. I mentioned that a couple of the sets may find themselves in a situation of having "too much potential." Dark is definitely one of them, and with the path of charging into Primal to balance the secondary and the overall build, Torrent found its way in. I used Torrent back with Defenders (Dark Blast) and it is an incredibly effective flipping power for stacking KD on a group, plays well with Dark Controls cone-centric abilities, and gives access to the FF+Rech as it goes off, oh, and another and, it does collectively more damage than the Immob anyway. I did not include Illusion/Storm into the mix as the base that I personally tested for that build was not my origination, but someone else's. As such, I wont include it here unless they want it included.

Yup. And I dug around in the archives a bit trying to see if it was on the surface somewhere, but searching through those archives is quite a task when the actual forum search function doesn't really work. Going page by page is an incredible chore, but IIRC it gets mentioned somewhere in the Pylon thread for Scrappers, but that thing is like 300 pages long and covers a lot. All I can say is I don't remember seeing a link to it in the last ~20 or so pages when I went there looking for something else a couple months ago.

There used to be a program floating around back in the old days called "NoChain," but I can't for the life of me find the zip library for it anymore or where it was originally linked from. That program would pull the highest DPA attack and try and cycle down the list down to the most optimal chain right out of the gate. Pretty neat tool. If anyone still has a packaged version of that, we should get that back out into the wild again.

No, you're right, I'm thinking of so many different powers at this point. Slowed is a targetted AoE. Doesn't really change my thoughts on keeping the ability though. The only focus I had in this thread was for testing Defender options, so there's no (real) Mastermind discussion here. There is a thread in the MM subsection that a few folks have dabbled a little bit in procs with their pets, but it's been a while since I looked in on it since it looked like they sorta slowed down a bit. Eventually I'll get there myself in reviewing each of the primaries for options, but it's a bit far off on the list. My next project is already in gear for Controllers.

I saw this creep back up, should've posted in it a couple days back and forgot to, but for all of you folks out there trying to bash Trick Arrow/Archery, or just Trick Arrow in general, here's 6:15 of Yolks-On-You: The actual Pylon take down occurs about 40/s in, I was going a bit thematic with the monologue 😉 But that first Pylon that blows up is the one I took down first (one then the other), I just clipped out the first one's full run, I just wanted that tail-end of a "this isn't a fluke" demonstration. The build, along with a lengthy post about testing Procs in TA specifically can be found over in the Proc Monster thread, page two (at the top). Highlights: Ice Arrow is my second highest-damaging attack next to Ranged Shot. No, that's not a typo. Oil Slick (lit) does 600-700 damage before any -Res debuffs for anything that gets stuck inside of it on a 56/s recharge. There's a reason it shouldn't be shorter cool-down. Acid Arrow doubles as a minor AoE now instead of just a Debuff w/ tickle. Rain of Arrows is on a 17/s cool-down and hits an entire spawn for nearly as much as my ST attacks. A small side note: EMP Arrow does have a -Regen component. -1,000% for 18/s. It isn't a crazy amount, but it is there, and it does have it. Just saying. Trick Arrow isn't the strongest of the Proc Monsters, but it is definitely not a slouch, and it can do better than your standard [solo] Defender any day of the week. /em Drops mic.

I had terrible luck with Distortion Field, but Bopper did a ton more testing with it filled with 4-5 procs and had a lot more success with it hitting and being a relatively solid add-in for the extra damage. Either way I don't know that I'd necessarily trash DF if you can avoid it just because it helps keep things inside Slowed Response's field.

So far in all of the builds I've put together, I focused on Intuition Radial over Musculature. There's enough secondary effects occurring for most of the abilities in the builds that Intuition has more overall benefit than just focusing on damage alone (Dam, Range, -Def, Hold, -ToHit, Slow). As far as damage enhancement is concerned, depending on the power, most only get three procs, and three slots is more than enough to try and get a better balance of damage, accuracy, and some endurance into. Sadly endurance is probably the one thing that often suffers the most depending on what sets can be packed, but typically Acc/Dam/End and Dam/End are available in quite a few, and the third is usually Acc/Dam when trying to avoid sticking any kind of Recharge enhancing unit in there. The powers aren't at a total loss for enhancement, and Intuition does help get those into the 100-110% range for sure, but even then, yeah, +Dam boosters in general--on Defenders, due to their lower damage modifiers--have less overall bang. I tried experimenting with Hybrid's Assault Core and Radial. When I ran Core, I only saw a 20/s reduction in time on a 5:00+ Pylon run. That power runs for a considerable length, and I ran it twice, and its appreciable difference was tiny, and in a couple of runs, I actually ended up completing the run at the exact same time that I did when I didn't run it, so missing some procs killed me more than anything. The Radial, between the two, ended up being a better choice because instead of trying to enhance my meager damage, it doubled what I did have which was a higher net value (over all). The interesting aspect is that if you look at this scenario on Scrappers, +Dam% = higher returns, Double Damage = smaller comparative returns, but this is flipped for Defenders, and that makes total sense given. And yeah, you already edited in the realization that Agility would be a negative impact on the proc returns here, and not worth using.

I remember the days when you would bring a Force Field user into the Terra Volta trial and have them port underneath the reactor and turn Force Bubble on. Of course the GM's didn't look to kindly on this exploit, but it sure was funny.

Forgot to add this to my last mass-reply, but about mid-to-upper of page 2, I already did the Traps testing, Time Bomb and Trip Mine regrettably don't do anything with the procs. I didn't go super crazy on Time Bomb, but when you run your fifth one in a row without even one single proc at all on 10-16 sized spawns, that pretty much shows there's just no return value. And Trip Mine was an easy thing to test by just stacking a dozen, walk a mob into it, and repeat. Could get a shot of 20 done in a quick hurry and repeat it over and over, just never got anything back. Instead I just got really confidant in my ability to sap the Trip Mine for FF+Rech. I used stacking those to super-recharge Time Bomb :3

Just because it was super relevant to this thread, after putting it together based on all the testing I did for "Proc Monsters", I thought I'd post this specific build here. I pulled all the trick-kits of Storm, and Proc insanity of Dark Blast and popped them together. Lost Dominate/Char in favor of having SOME kind of reasonable defense with Scorpion Shield, but Softcap to S/L/E with a quick small purple off Ranged might be an okay consolation. I see this build as being a solid "Universal" Stormer, gets some good damage out of Gloom and Moonbeam in between all the other chaos of the Primary, and gets access to a mass Immobilize to help contain things, which is one of the biggest holes in being a Storm player (in my opinion anyway). Isn't this spoiler field thing just the most unironically useful thing for build dumps?

For Defenders, the whole concept of creating a Proc Monster is circumventing the damage cap limitation, and providing an entirely different form of damage that does more, and can be bent further. There are minor qualms with flipping any of them over to a Corruptor counterpart, but they can be done, and that shift in potential could be potent, but some of these builds are bending that higher debuff value in a way that they'll statistically do better on a Defender since even the Corruptor can't make those procs have more damage than they come with. Oil Slick can take the... Annihilation (I think, off the top of my head, or FotG, whichever I can never remember which is in which set I checked) and Achilles. But no, it never popped, whether off initial drop nor after I lit the patch, and I did repeated individual testing for it. The combat logs will show when the proc itself goes off with a line like "This power has lowered $target's resistances." It's the easiest thing to watch for besides the actual HIT/MISS indicators for some of those things. I did the obvious Pylon tests, but I also tested against spawns of Malta in the RWZ since they're easy to find large packs of within close proximity, and they respawn fairly quickly too. I went spawn to spawn dropping the Slick, and then also dropping and igniting to see if any feedback happened, and that proc itself I never got a notifier back. The damage procs though, I did get those to prompt back regardless of the patch being on fire. It's possible that the probability for the -Res is just really bad in that, but I don't know, I just never got a notifier on the proc in a large group, nor on a Pylon in ST testing. I read this post while at work and actually laughed out loud. Glad no one noticed. I didn't do my testing with Dual Pistols, but when it comes to Time, the PB+Clarion is a really nice combo, and I had actually even forgotten about the Clarion aspect until Bopper pointed it out to me again. By stacking the two together you can massively multiply not just the +Def aspect of Farsight, but also its +To-Hit, which is huge, and why you might see that kind of build slack on the +Acc a little. When I trialed using different Epics I originally looked at Soul for the Soul Drain, but in testing practical ST damage, that ability isn't doing much, so I shifted to other forms of access into PB (specifically PBU which ended up giving me a +Dam boost there too, a little). Chrono Shift covers endurance for the most part. Period with longer animations like on Hail, it doesn't occur to some that while that thing is firing off its stupid-long animation, you're recovering 3+ EPS. So by the time it finishes that 3-4/s burst, you've recovered everything the power cost you to activate. Since endurance isn't such a huge issue, being picky about the Epic isn't an issue. And as I think got mentioned, with FF+Rech procs scattered about, any one of those activations easily shortens the the minor gap in the status of Chrono and Hasten. It's a bit of a hack/cheat code for almost having perma-anything. And that is why I made an entire thread dedicated to exploring those unique little Proc Monsters 😄

I did say it, and it isn't wrong. It has been tested. It has been proven. Telling someone that they're safe to slot procs into the rain effects is just bad form. I am not the only one who has sat down and dropped Sleet, and Freezing Rain, and Ice Storm, and Blizzard, after Blizzard, after Blizzard watching for a proc, waiting to see the tick occur, and getting no tangible results back that was of any value whatsoever. It's not just bad odds, they're broken. We know what the probability formula is, it shouldn't be floored below minimum. If you want to see the testing feedback, head over to the Defenders forum and pick a thread. There's three talking about different builds, one of which accumulates most of that testing into one.

It's pretty much easier to say Procs wont go off in Rain effects. I can't say they definitively "cannot," but as the game current stands, they are effectively dysfunctional and the probability of seeing a proc go off in a Rain effect is basically 0%. Done the testing on it with a few others, with a lot of time watching combat logs, recording the events, going over the damage ticks, watching Pylon's with Power Analyzers. Procs don't go off in Rain Effects. Rain of Fire, Sleet, Freezing Rain, Ice Storm, Blizzard, scratch them all off your proc list. Damage Procs, -Res Procs, Mez Effects, KD, none of them.

You were honestly probably better served at asking this question in one of the Melee centered sets like Scrappers/Stalkers/Brutes/Tanks where more of those players would've been quicker to answer. Anyway, Radiation Melee's splash effect is a set amount, I just can't tell you what that value is adjusting from. It only occurs on Contaminated targets, and occurs when a Single Target Attack hits that target. The splash (as I've seen) is consistent regardless of which attack is used, but then it's easy to miss and I haven't necessarily done a legit testing on it to be definitive on that. Given the way the effect works, it'd have to be someone with access to the source code to tell specifically where and how that mechanic is pulling its modifiers, because as I'm guessing it was designed, it's most likely creating a psuedo-pet effect around that target that's spreading AoE damage to contaminated targets when they get hit.

General Update Did a mass edit/update to the primary post of the topic to include a swarm of the modified/created builds from throughout this process, and a bit of a topic conclusion. Of all the different varying builds possible I was able to touch on a lot of them. The Primary set was the biggest one to seek out the best way to bend them to benefiting a Proc-focused Secondary, and to see which of them themselves could bend some Procs. While I didn't explicitly test it myself in this thread, I've gotten enough otherwise experience with Dual Pistol previously to be confident in my suggestions with it, and including it in the recommendation of blast sets, and Hjarki had pointed out many of what Assault Rifle does that works for the purpose as well, but I realize I forgot to talk about the fact that Assault Rifle is almost all AoE/Cone centric. A big part of not intentionally testing AR was the fact that it only has two attacks I'd be able to freely use as ST, and be forced to take (and deal with) the "non weapon" power Char/Dominate in order to have a reliable ST chain. As far as "showing off" that set, a Pylon test wasn't the best path, that set is going to be more experiential in missions. After all this, I think I might be off to roll a real Trick/Archery, cause I think that was the one I ultimately had the most random fun with. I might also pull together a couple more videos of some of the other Pylon runs and add them in. For all the testing that I've done, the proc has never stacked on itself. Ever. I have (as Bopper mentioned they have as well) gotten it to continue its time by additive durations. Current max time was 20 or 25 seconds I think? But no, between what I've done, Obitus, Hjarki, or Bopper, whom have all put a considerable amount of time in, have not (that I have seen in any of our conversations) gotten it to stack the +100% buff onto itself (to create a +200% buff). Stacking more -Res can always help, and MM pets in general will have a significant impact on their own just for their DPS as pets. Unfortunate side of the equation is that there's not a lot going on their for the whole Proc concept. A few pets can take and exploit a proc here and there, but Demon/Time wont have a lot of that concept going on I don't think. For me, I'm a bit over-exagerating the impact of having to "click" that power drop. A bind is definitely a worth-while way to go, but in my case I'm using a mouse with a 12-key thumb pad and I line up my primary, secondary, and tertiary use powers on my corresponding trays (1, 2, 3). 1-6 clicks tray 1, alt+1-6 tray 2, ctrl+1-6 tray 3. If anyone watched the video might notice, my cursor stays at the base of the Pylon during the run (for the most part), and anytime I had to rotate through powers like Oil Slick or Disruption Arrow, all I was doing was holding down alt and hitting 4, (click), 3, 2, (click), 1 (Aim), let go of alt, 2, 3, 1. Honestly a stationary run like a Pylon is kind of boring from my perspective because all I'm doing is rotating both my thumbs between a few buttons within a square inch space, and the alt button.

Traps Testing As planned, loaded up a 50 Traps Manipulation on Justin to give a whirl on Proc possibilities in the set. There are a ton of procs, a ton of powers, and a ton of possibilities. Seeker Drones No Impact. I loaded them up with Gladiator, Clouded, and Apocalypse, and got zero impact back (and that was watching both damage channels, and their general over-head damage dealt). These things also deal inconsistent general damage on their own. Saw them double, then not double, then one double and not the other, but never any proc damage. Caltrops Load it up. Use it. It follows the same standard expectations as any other mob-based AoE. The more in the spawn, the more likely you are you see a proc go off. And I mean any of them. I put Annihilation, Impeded, and Positron's in, and saw all of them proc multiple times. The one thing I did test in here that didn't seem to actual do anything was the Overwhelming Force KD unique. Wanted to try and turn Caltrops into a KD patch, and it proc'd occasionally, but didn't transform the patch effect. Poison Trap I packed this one full of the entire run of Hold procs, they all went off, some multiple times. I'll include a sample from the log of one single Poison Trap event. This was done on an 8-pack of level 42 Malta. Once the trap explodes it has a 10/s lifespan. A lot happens in that period of time! 17 Proc activations, that's at least 2 hits per mob in the spawn. For anyone that wants to super-analyze these abilities. The biggest short-fall with Poison Trap when Proc'd out, a lot of the mobs end up running out of the field reducing the amount of chance to get smacked, so I paired it up with Caltrops to help slow the process down a hair, and pulled the log for both. This following hidden field contains that log of the two for their duration together. Lot of proc occurrences in there! Trip Mine So this is a super-easy power to mass-test with little effort. I loaded it up with every single proc it can take (4 dam and 1 FF+Rech). The FF+Rech did exactly what I was hoping it would. Wasn't 100% every time, but often enough that Trip Mine could literally become a super-charger for getting some abilities back on track if you get wiped out. Stack up a few mines, get 10, 15, 20, whatever seconds worth of +100% you want to get your abilities back on track, and drop a fast-stack of 20+ mines. I dropped huge chunks and then coaxed a mob to walk into them, get my boom, and see what happened. Nothing. Nothing happened. Super let-down. So they only proc that actually did work was the one that impacted me. Take that for what it's worth. Trip Mines are a fun way to stack up a huge pile of damage on a hard target with no effort other than time, and FF+Rech makes that go by in a hurry. Time Bomb We all know this power is kinda lack-luster. Okay-ish boom on a timer. Allows a Traps user to slip in, plant, and move on. Procs would've made this power a blast*, yet I didn't get anything back. Planted two (one each) in a spawn of 10 Malta, and waited. And got nothing but the standard application of damage. What's strange here is that the powers you wouldn't think that would become awesome, do, and the powers you want to become fantastic, can't. Acid Mortar This was my last test for the pile because I had to take it against a Pylon since that's the only thing I could test against that would sit still and accept it. Also, the Test Dummy's in RWZ have disappeared on Justin, so I couldn't give that a shot for proc counts or anything cause... they literally are just gone from the room. Given how many other things in the game that can carry the -Res procs, and how many of them (generally) do well, I was really hoping for better results than I got. Now, we're all going to take Acid Mortar. We're all going to try and double-stack it on hard targets, so that's already -52%, getting that free bump from time to time, maybe worth it enh? Well, I'm a bit on the fence on the value of that slot. I didn't mean to, I had turned on screen capture just for a quick reference later in the assumption it went well, and... it didn't, but now I have 35 minutes of "Will. It. PROOOOC?!" I looked over the combat log for the occurrence hits and there showed more than I had counted visually through Power Analyzer. Not a dramatic amount more (like 2 or 3), but they were there. I also timed the duration of the proc hits and they were falling off at weird intervals. I noticed some snapping away within 5/s of appearing, which isn't the first time I've seen something like that occur, but never so often from one power generating the proc. The interesting thing here is that I also tossed Caltrops with the Annihilation -Res on the Pylon, and it was pretty much a given on each patch that I'd get the -12.5%. Wasn't necessarily at the beginning, but somewhere in that duration I was getting it (7 out of 8 attempts). Closing Arguments! Poor, poor Time Bomb. Alas, we never cared for you anyway. Trip Mine is now my "Super Charge" power. +Rech on demand, and who's gonna stress a bunch of mines all over the place anyway 😄 Most of us get this power anyway, at least now we know that the damage procs don't work (at all), and can just slot it casually as available. Poison Trap performed way better than expected, and really needs some kind of mass Immob to shine. For Controllers (or any blast set that can support the Immob), this is gonna be killer. Clatrops is probably my MVP right now. It all-around ended up doing more/better than I'd anticipated. I was fully expecting it to a) not proc, and b) not proc often if it did. It beat both those expectations. And what's super weird is that now that I'm saying this, I'm having flashbacks to Sunset and having a conversation with folks about PPM changes on i24 beta and them saying something very similar back then. Seeker Drones, eh, see, I used to use these like RP drones, fun to just have idling around and making things look and feel "active." They gave "atmosphere" while I was standing around. And they were amusing when something tries to sneak up and they just zip over and BOOM. But their damage is lacking, and the -Acc/-Percep is somewhat a bad trade for what they are. Since these can't utilize any procs, easily shuffling these back out of a build most likely. At least in the realm of "unless I don't have anything better, I'll get them as a toy power." Acid Mortar... It worked, but not at the level I'd hoped. The proc chances look to scale like they do for a lot of other abilities that create toggle-like effects. One check every 10/s, and the power itself runs for 60 (so 6 ticks). At each tick interval, I typically only tracked one proc, but there were occasionally two, but also some with none, so the average expectation was one guaranteed proc every 10/s, which was a safe bet. All free damage is good free damage. Overall not a dramatic change, places where I'd wanted damage to be available weren't, but Poison Trap kind of makes up for some of that. My dream of dropping 13k on an AV from a stack of Trip Mines has been ruined, but oh well. Overall I did some minor tweaks to the previously posted build and updated for the shortcomings in the procs. I didn't end up taking Seeker Drones out because there's just not many other "better" choices. Could swap in Tactics for the added benefit in teams, but the biggest primary goal here has always been about the Defender first-and-foremost, and that backup-boom might not be bad to keep around for a little atmosphere. Survival wise compared to the previous versions of Proc Monsters, I feel like these have all had a unique way of approaching the attempt at becoming unkillable. With very little effort involved, this set gets to soft cap values to pretty much everything (AoE/F/C/Psi at 43%). Dark Miasma uses Darkest Night to fake its way there, and Time just goes nuts on defense in general. From a debuff stand point, I don't think Traps will necessarily do anything more-or-less different than Dark ultimately did. I feel like Dark gets a leg-up on -Res maximization, but Traps gets a double-shot value of -Regen. Looking at the front-end numbers, -60 (with 15/s intervals of -90) versus -52 (with sparse intervals of -72, -84, or -64, depending if/when something extra procs). From an attack stand point, specifically given I looked at Water Blast, the fact that Water Jet can double-dip on the regular, and trades off against Aqua Bolt and Dominate (in this build), is plenty doable, but not something that would perform much differently than Dark/Dark did, as I see it. What little +Dam different Water would earn, I'd say, is more than passed by the much more consistent larger windows of -Res in Dark. As such, I don't think I will (currently) respec and test the build, but instead shift my attention to the next opportunity for these. A side note that seems curiously interesting to me, not related to Defenders, is the idea of Ill/Traps. Not necessarily so much as a "Lets make this the next Pylon King," but more in the sense of how Phantom Army would really play off giving a Traps user the time and ability to work around a collective mob at their own pace while something Tanks for them. One of the biggest pitfalls in Traps is that FFG, Acid Mortar, those are killable, and also a big part of survival. Phantasm is also a strong aspect of Illusions damage, but he goes off and kills himself all the time. A Tank Protected FFG, with a few of the +Def IO's might be enough backbone to keep that guy alive. This is all just a purely runaway thought I'll probably try and create a build for, but my study of Traps did bring up some thoughts towards abnormal builds we don't normally see, and the curiosity of what kind of output it would have. Anyway, here's the updated build:

Posted this up last night in its corresponding Defender thread, but bring it over here for the fun of it (since it was a legit attempt). Trick Arrow/Archery Defender Standard Rules Apply T4 Degen, Ageless (Cores), T4 Intuition, Hybrid Assault (Radial) I did click the Hybrid for the Double Hit. It's honestly not much, and does barely any more than any of my procs going off, but it was something. The Assault Core has almost zero appreciable impact on Defenders. I know my order of operations in this attempt also need refined, so it's very probable this could get/be better, but best time I came back with was 5:26 (245 DPS) I also recorded it :3

You can see the stack occur in the video, but between the animation time and the fact I have to actually click-drop it ends up being about ~3, so my overlap is only 6-7 seconds long. This isn't a bad thing necessarily but since the window of exchange is so small, sometimes adding what I call "dead" animation time into your chain isn't always worth the expected benefit. Basically is the overlap in that moment significant enough that I would have done less damage if I'd instead just attacked two or three times in that window. Fast Ranged Shot and Ice Arrow would do ~900 damage (give or take 50 points on a proc) if I fired them in that window, am I gaining more than that in the following 7 seconds, or loosing? I also have to look at the order of things. I was usually hitting Acid Arrow > Disruption Arrow > Aim > Ranged > Ice > Blazing. Ice Arrow gets absolutely not benefit from Aim (being all procs). Would I have been better off flipping some of that so maybe Disruption > Aim > Acid > Ranged > Blazing > Ice. Looking back at it, I probably should've done it that way under the assumption that Aim would at least marginally benefit Acid's DoT and leave Ice Arrow until the end so that if something delayed me and I missed a portion of the buff, it wouldn't matter.

Trick Arrow Tested Archery Confirmed Wanted to do something fun that was low stress and could give me a ballpark idea if I think this might end up being a way for me to return to using Archery. So this is till on the Test Server for now, but I took the previously posted TA/A build and ran its procs through the gambit. Came back with some interesting results, some unexpected, some sadly expected. Rain of Arrows does proc a couple of times, but not any more significantly than I've found with many other PBAoE/AoE style abilities so far. Much of my testing experience with RoA came back acting just like it did when I tested Tenebrous Tentacles. Unlike other "Rain" style powers though, this one is just dropping a patch with a delay that ends up doing a burst of damage at the end of the animation to anything in its field which sucks cause, just like other "Rain" powers, things can run out so...make sure you: Explosive Arrow! Pretty standard expectation on abilities that can take the FF+Rech proc at this point, use it on a mob with 8-10 in it and you'll almost certainly get that +100% Recharge. Something I didn't fully consider when I looked at slotting this power was that the KB is a chance, not a guarantee, and it honestly doesn't happen that often, and I wanted some more for-sure butt-planting, so I ended up pulling Overwhelming proc to this power to permanently give it KD all the time. Doing Explosive right before RoA is nice too, stall out, do that extra burst damage, and pick off the left overs. Between the two powers pretty much any minion in the path should be dead, or close to it. Enough that a quick follow-up of First of Arrows will tag the remainder and leave you down to low-health Lieuts and Bosses at 50%. My two main attacks became Ranged Shot and Ice Arrow. Yes, Ice Arrow, the ability that doesn't even have inherent damage to begin with! The values I got back were just really good, and competed with Ranged Shot for which would return the most damage on any one given activation. Ranged Shot not having more options for Procs really bugs me, but not much I can do about it with Archery's lack of other mechanics. Honestly, there should be something else there. Some kind of bleed out effect, or something. Anything. An "Ammo Round" effect maybe, why not? That'd be pretty cool. I ended up focusing my main cycle of attacks as Blazing, Ranged, and Ice, with Blazing being the best third option, but one where I wanted a shorter animation half the time, but knew trading off Aimed/Snap was a bad call. Acid Arrow is a Proc Monster's dream. It takes both -Res, and has access to three damage procs. Bit of a trade-off considering we need Acc/Dam/End enhancement in there still so we can only put two of the Damage Procs. I feel like their might be a timeout on the procs here though. I didn't analyze the combat data, but it felt like (initially) I couldn't get a refresh of the -Res procs until after I'd cleared the duration of the original proc'ing arrow, but once that passed, I'd get a sure-fire hit on all procs after (usually, again didn't pour over the data). Oil Slick is a monster ability against a non-moving target. It procs well too, but not the -Res one, only damage based reflected. The ability has three ticks (initial, 10, and 20/s), but all these procs only show up as Pet Damage, so that has to be turned on to see it occur. And interesting effect between Acid and Oil. If I drop Oil Slick, give 1.32 seconds for the game to acknowledge the Slick was down, I could then hit the Pylon with Acid Arrow, which would proc an Energy Damage proc, which came out as an AoE, and would spark Oil Slick every time. Took me a few tries to realize there was a delay in the game's response though, but since Acid is so consistent on proc'ing, all I had to do was give a tick in between and it'd ignite the patch for free usually. EMP has a horrible recharge, and its -1,000% Regen debuff only lasts 18 seconds, but it is desperately needed. Well, within marginal reason. The build can run without it, but it does faster/better with it. I gotta say, TA/A was a blast to test out, and I also really enjoyed D/D/Psi too, I don't know if I can house so many fun proc builds. Something I do know for certain with this build is that it is VERY fickle to timing and what/when/how powers are played/dropped. I know Disruption Arrow has a 30/s duration and 20/s recharge, but I kept firing it anyway to make sure I didn't miss/forget it. That might have been a bit detrimental to performance. I mentioned before, too, that this build can run without needing Hasten. In normal gameplay, or with teams, totally viable. In the Pylon Run, not so much. I bottomed out when trying, all my blue went away rather quickly. In order to get a sufficient trial done, I slotted Ageless to get by. I think if a more aware/focused amount of attention was given to power timings and the like, the time to kill a Pylon might smoother out a little better than what I did just trying to balance a general cycle without watching fades off the Pylon directly. I am curious to how much total damage Acid and Oil slick end up becoming responsible for. I don't think I ever had a moment where Acid Arrow wasn't dealing damage/overlapping itself, and Oil Slick once ignited, does an insane amount of burning damage as well. So I had a couple of test runs, one at 6:10, and one done at 5:26. The first one I realized I didn't ever hit EMP Arrow, the second I did (three times I think). I did make some modifications to the build based on my test run, and I also did something fun and new for this one, a video! I wanted to make it a little fun, thematic, so it starts off to the death of another Pylon, follow along with the audio track, it'll be an amusing 6:00 ride 🙂 And updated build:

The original rules were simple: Only use what your character has. Primary, Secondary, Pool, Epic. No Inspirations. No Temp Powers. One straight run, however long it takes. For Pets: Any pet gained as an actual ability within your build (Primary/Secondary/Epic) is permitted. If you include your build and a pet is available, but not used, notate as such. At the onset of Incarnate Abilities, this footnote was added: For Incarnate Abilities, note Tier, chosen installed slot (Tree, and whether Core/Radial), and if click, did you click it. No Lore Pets. These arbitrarily skew damage due to their inherently high DPS and are not a true validation of a build's capacity. So for those that are not choosing to Click the Click, that's their call in how they measured their capacity in that time frame. It is up to you, as the reviewer, to contrast that accordingly. Some will post with the click clicked, and you can see the variance. Having times both ways is somewhat important as it reflects the impact of certain abilities. So long as people note what they did/used, that's all within the standard rules of engagement.

I've come to expect, at this point, that what I get from a Single Target testing experience is going to be far different than a multiple-target testing experience. So things like Caltrops and Poison Trap, and how they create fields, different run of it, yeah? When you did your testing, did you have your pet damage logged? Not all abilities, especially ones like Traps (or just about anything that creates/drops/pseudo-pets a patch wont show up in standard combat logs. Take Oil Slick, as an example. All proc damage and notifiers for that ability only show up as Pet Damage, and that is not (by default) in the combat log. I dropped a couple of procs in the power and could only see the feedback of their damage with that added to the log. For the record, it actually hits decently enough; almost always at the drop, and then once or so after, and for an above-average amount which is a little odd, but works for me. Once I get to it my plan is to really hammer-home of over-loading proc possibilities in all the powers and see which ones stick, and which ones are duds by measure of overall capacity, and their ST capacity.