nihilii

My baby inv/db took on her first ITF today. Following the footsteps of our resident bearded master of zany survivability feats, make that a solo Master ITF at +4/x8, with buffed enemies and insps disabled. Man, invul is tough. I did use amplifiers. On the other hand, incarnates are only T3. Sometimes I question my choices. Namely, should I have made that tanker WP instead of Invul? More endurance, more regeneration. S/L would still be capped, I'd get mez protection to everything, psi res/def, and the lower side resists can be propped up with Strength of Will for a while, or Barrier (instead of Rebirth on the invul). But soloing an ITF really puts front and center the strength of Invul. Invincibility gives such a large buffer with a crowd around you, and that buffer comes in handy with the constant flurry of defense debuffs (and Invul has superior DDR to WP, too). Using Experienced charges through the TF, I think I got no less than 5 veteran levels. Maybe even more than that. Also got Gaussian's chance for Build Up in Invincibility to doublestack with itself at some point. That was interesting. Me being me, I probably clicked Void Judgement instead of making good use of it.

Generally, whichever alt I play. They get a billion or so to play with, buy their IOs, flip and convert at the same time to maintain that billion seamlessly, then pass it off to the next alt of choice.

I find Mu Fences slotted for damage/procs to be good enough at immobilize against regular mobs, and that's despite a 10' radius. It lasts maybe 11 seconds against +4s, but then it recharges in about 6 or 7. So I even get some doublestacking action for bosses and AVs, intermittently. Fire Cages and Chain Fences (from Elec Mastery) are proper controller level immobilizes with long range, huge radius, fast animation. Will get the job done for sure even on base slot, if you're willing to sacrifice animation time.

I will take Build Up and stick a Gaussian set in it if I can use the +2.5% def to all. It's useful against high defense enemies or while tohit debuffed, it can be used without rooting so that's "free" animation time while hopping from group to group, and more often than not burst damage matters more than sustained DPS. But it's definitely not necessary on a Brute by any stretch of the imagination. Easy skip if you'd rather have something else.

Same with Warburg nukes. Once upon a time (pre-IOs), this was a thing in LRSF runs with weaker teams.

I've always felt something was wrong with Cobra Strike specifically. It feels much longer than 1.848s. I attribute it to the look of the animation. Maybe there is something else there. How would we go about testing animation times? /demorecord and then parsing the resulting file for tics between activations?

The overall consensus is that Blasters have enough survivability at level 50 and that the damage difference is enormous. I completely disagree with that above opinion. IMHO, Sentinels deal ~80% of the damage Blasters do and boast roughly 400% of the survivability. About the same ratios as Scrappers vs Tankers. Of course, in itself this statement doesn't necessarily disagree with the former statement. A Sentinel could have 400% of the survivability of a Blaster, but if the 100% Blaster survivability is enough, then all the extra survivability is overkill. It then depends what your definition of "enough" is. There are plenty of scenarios where Blaster survivability can be arguably enough. Say you play full teams exclusively, you hover at range, or maybe you wait for teammates to grab aggro. Or you survive on a steady diet of amplifiers and inspirations - sky's the limit with that. Fire/Fire blasters have soloed the Miss Liberty Task Force in less than an hour. But... if you like to turn your brain off, if you enjoy taking on +4/x8 solo, if you don't want to rely on inspirations, if you simply yearn for an extra cushion of safety to take things nice and easy, a Sentinel can make sense. I'm of the opinion having more native survivability is just an excuse to chase damage. Your typical Blaster gets Clarion or a Rune of Protection and Melee Hybrid combo to fight mez effects. The counterpart Sentinel can get Ageless to get more recharge and forget about their end problems entirely. Your typical Blaster aims for softcapped S/L defense or ranged defense, which typically requires full sets in attacks. The counterpart Sentinel fills up their attacks with as many damage procs as they can take, content with their secondary mitigation. It's not a 1:1 mapping, but if you build a Sentinel for damage and a Blaster for survivability, you might end up surprisingly close - in both damage and survivability. The Sentinel is probably ahead in that scenario, actually.

As an aside, this is hardly ever a problem on Homecoming provided you keep your liquid inf under 500MM, because the maximum number of sales "Get All Inf" will claim is 32. The most expensive items on the market are in the 50MM range if I'm not mistaken - microfilament HOs. OP is cutting it close with 1B4 of liquid inf, but at the same time he's not selling microfilaments, mostly purps at 18MM a piece. Should be fine. Barely. 😉

Definitely. I'm an Ageless man through and through (and I rely on Recovery Serum charges and amplifiers while leveling). As for resistances, like Haijinx says the key is scaling resists. Coupled with the reactive defense IO, your resistances skyrocket at low life. I think the math goes to something like +60% RES at 1hp? Meaning, at half HP you get +30% RES to all. I could be wrong on the exact numbers. It's also worth noting the Tanker ATO can stack up to 3 times. With a 30s duration and a high proc rate, it's not too hard to get there if the need arises. Here's a SR/TW build I ran last year for example (nothing more recent on this computer = there is room for improvement): At 57.4% ranged and 57% AoE it falls slightly short of 59% defense. But S/L resistances, even at full HP, start in the 50% range, climb to 77ish with Rune of Protection, to 84 with one stack of the Tanker ATO and 90% with 2 stacks. Even Toxic/Psi gets to 60% with 3 stacks. If our HP goes down to 50% and if I'm not crazy with the above scaling res numbers I pulled out of my rear, all resistances would be hardcapped around there.

Demons use AoE heals on their own, which coupled with your Cold shields, the Cold defense aura and every unique resistance and defense pet IO, help them survive a fair bit. I also make it a point to jump in first and take aggro. There are situations where "goto" positioning is inevitable lest they swarm into enemy AoEs. Despite all that, they will still die often. This is where having strong personal damage comes in handy. When all my pets are dead, dealing about 200 DPS I'm basically a slightly weaker Corruptor. Granted, talking about high personal damage and unique IOs is mostly a level 50 thing. But at low levels, if you stick to "reasonable" reputation levels (say, +1 or +2, maybe just +0 for AVs), I feel your pets ought to survive decently. Cold brings defense but also slows enemies significantly. You can crank the rep to x8 provided you don't raise the con too high, this way your debuffs have full effectiveness and generally the mobs you face while leveling don't bring enough damage output to pierce through Cold shields + demon shields + demon heals on their first salvo... and the -recharge makes that second salvo really, really slow to come. I dislike resummoning too, even if custom macros can help. Demon/Cold is one of the combos that felt the nicest on that front for me.

Why am I "speculated"? 😄 @Dark Bladed and @Bloodom are posters worth following for challenge stuff. Speedrunners really, but by virtue of speedrunning being extreme optimization, they knocked out some impressive feats on TW/bio scrappers and fire/fire blasters. Including a solo Lambda trial from Dark Bladed. I think Demon/Cold is a strong MM contender for super hard content. Personal DPS for this combo can reach 200+; with the demons staying alive it climbs to great heights. Demons boost your own resistances to the point it's viable to shoot for high overall res through a Rune of Protection + Melee Hybrid rotation. And if you want to go that route, there's insane performance you can eke out of team inspirations. But this is "mostly" theorycrafting - I have a Demon/Cold of my own that performs well (she can solo Apex for example) but haven't tried pushing her to the STF/LRSF level.

So on that topic, does the Gaussian proc in Invincibility run one check every 10 second per target in range? Anecdotally, I just got 294 DPS on a work-in-progress invul/DB. No hybrid click. Mind = blown. My previous time was 199 DPS running BF AS SS AS, with Hybrid. The big change? Going back to oldschool Attack Vitals combo, no recharge in any attack whatsoever, to instead get the most out of procs. This is working beyond my expectations already. Makes me wonder what a Fire/DB or Bio/DB running Attack Vitals could get to offensively. I expect this invul/DB will reach 350+ DPS once I finish the build/incarnates and click Hybrid. It stands to reason those other two primaries would crank it up to 400+ DPS. Edit: OK, the Gaussian proc question was answered pages earlier. It works well in Invincibility. Thanks gang. 🙂

Stone is incredible in feel. SS eclipses it in performance by a wide margin, and SS has some satisfying attacks in Foot Stomp and KO Blow too. But Stone is all smash, all the time. Stone GFX are somewhat intrusive. SS is easier to make work for any concept.

I pick Ageless and never think about it. 300 charges of Recovery Serum carry me through leveling. Edit: getting my wires mixed up... 300 is the max for Envenomed Daggers. Recovery Serum charges cap out at 50. Which is good, in a sense: I fill up at level 1, and run out around lvl 35-40 usually, so a mere 50 charges last me 40 levels.

I did "setdifficultyteamsize -55555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555" just now. It overflows to a number in the hundreds of millions in the display text, but despite my hopes and dreams I wasn't met with a billion enemies once I entered the mission. Just regular x8. However, interesting side effect (maybe?): on a level 41 character running +2, mobs inside the mission were level 44 and 45 (so, +3 and +4). First on a carnival newspaper mission, then on a council newspaper mission. Edit: I switched to +4 x-55555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555, and enemies are now level 46 and level 47 (+5 and +6 relative to my level 41). So @EmmySky has it right - it is a way to increase difficulty, at least while you're under level 50.

Luna in Ourobors will let you trade the threads for higher tier inspirations. Ultimates, in particular, are fairly useful - giving you a full level shift on top of any level shift you already have. And if you don't care for the temporary nature of these, you can find buyers on the auction house who will.

Parasitic Aura also gives you sizeable +regen and +recov. The way I like to use it personally, is to pop Parasitic first whenever up and enough targets are in range, and then use Ablative reactively. Essentially, absorb = healing. But you can definitely get by without Parasitic Aura if you really need the power pick. 1 second drop on Hasten should be impossible to notice, no? You would essentially be running through one more cycle of your attack chain before the need for recharge comes up. I run 10-15 second Hasten gaps on most of my characters, including my Bio/Claws tanker, so what do I know. There's always something extra to click. I would run Offensive Adaptation all the time. The extra damage is just too nice. Tankers are so ridiculously tough even running in Offensive you might find your bio clicks unused.

Shinobi-Iri guarantees your next hit out of stealth will be a crit, so you want to turn that off to get (mostly) accurate damage values for the scrapper.

If I'm not confusing plainguy with another poster, I'm guessing this is about a petless MM. Probably trying to avoid "you should just use pets" controversies, but yeah. The whole secret primary thing is just asking for more noise to be made about it. :P Incarnates + Debuff set + Envenomed Daggers ought to be enough to take on a +0 ITF anyway, even without using a primary at all. Defensive stats posted are appropriate. Healing nictus is the biggest hurdle, and even that can be solved by focusing it down with Lore pets.

SR. Secondary optional. I'm endlessly surprised by the survivability you can get out of a SR Tanker. Leveling? Enjoy softcap and high DDR by lvl 22, which makes you mostly invincible to the content you'll face. Endgame? It's not hard to get to 59% defense without sacrifices, DDR is capped, scaling resistances + Tough + set bonuses + tanker ATO make it fairly easy to reach 90% S/L once the going gets tough, and even other resistances get downright impressive. Throw in a Rune of Protection / Melee Hybrid rotation combo and you can hardcap all resistances at low life. I hopped on my SR/TW Tanker the other day and started soloing Rularuu. On +4/x8. And never felt the need to click an insp. Shouldn't AUTOHIT enemies be the kryptonite to a defense-based powerset?! Modern SR is plain amazing. I just wish we got the Master Brawler treatment from Sentinels, because click mez protection is a bore. Solely because click mez protection is a bore. Tanker SR doesn't even need extra absorb as is, given the state of the game. Cruising on Panacea proc + Power Transfer proc + ~300% regen + the occasional absorb from tanker ATO, you never feel the need for a heal.

You can slot several of them, but as I understand it any extra Power Transfer gives less healing than the previous one.

The P2W buffs will work on TFs even with "no temps" settings. I gleefully use them on my solo Master attempts.

This is confusing. Bill just demonstrated it is not useless. Even moreso on an invul without damage procs. The lower damage you have, the bigger relative boost from Musculature. Really, there's no need to overthink it: Musculature is roughly an extra SO worth of damage that ignores ED. It's possible to subjectively feel extra damage is useless, due to personal build goals or what have you. But objectively, that extra damage will be useful in 99.99% of the game for most players. There's one case where I wouldn't go Musculature: Super Strength. Double stacked Rage already raises your damage% high enough the relative boost of Musculature lessens, and there can be real opportunity cost compared to other alphas.

I make all my Tankers petite girls. The other Tanker who's rocking a Huge costume, manly look, on his Invul/SS with Taunt and few attacks? Yeah, you take point buddy. I'll be over there like my usual hyperactive Scrapper self, with somehow mobs even more fond of me than usual. Seems to work out for everyone. 🙂

It does sound ridiculous if you cut out the part where I decided to run it at +4/x8, solo. 😉 Which is certainly not something I, nor anyone else, *needed* to do. For comparison, a solo STF/RSF/Apex/TinM is significantly more challenging. I am, again, in support of fixing that spawn point simply because it's incoherent and might cause frustration for others. Really, I was just taking exception to the claim it is literally impossible when even a solo player can tackle it on maximum difficulty designed for teams.