nihilii

To be fair, a fire/rad/psi has to hop in melee to use Mind Probe. A claws/bio/soul stalker with AS would spend the same amount of time in melee, and throwing AS into the mix should significantly boost DPS. With my current build, I'm being dumb for the sake of being dumb (and intend to keep at it until that stalker is all T4ed out). But there might be something legit to be made out of the silliness. 🙂

Correct. To some people it's an acceptable tradeoff. Personally, I even see it as a boon. I like reliable behavior above situational. So, I'd rather have the same Opportunity all the time, rather than fiddle around with which power to use (which may or may not be recharged) when my Opportunity bar is full.

Great writeup! Epic Dominate is truly the big winner of the current PPM system, what with its fast cast and convenient 16s recharge.

After a long and fruitful discussion with @marcussmytheon highend solo challenges, we* naturally concluded the new meta for these endeavors would be fully ranged stalkers skipping Assassin's Strike. *half of our PMs were lost in the forum migration, and I picture Marcus as a sophisticated gentleman type too polite to correct my delusions. Ergo, I built a claws/bio stalker running Focus - Shockwave - Dark Blast - Focus - Shockwave - Moonbeam, with a Night Widow pet on call. Apocalypse in Moonbeam, Decimation in Dark Blast, Assassin's Mark in Focus, Stalker's Guile + Annihilation -RES in Shockwave. First attempts with Hybrid Assault T3 (active), Musculature T3, Degen T3 (-maxHP): 4:24 = 273 DPS 4:57 = 256 DPS A bit hectic as I was building muscle memory for the attack chain... and having heavy end problems. This won't do. So I got one end accolade, swapped 2 damage procs for plain endurance reduction IOs, threw some boosters at the build whenever applicable. 3:13 = 326 DPS 3:12 = 327 DPS Without the Night Widow 4:56 = 257 DPS Still got some end woes, to the point I'm running without Tough and Maneuvers which feels a little stupid. As much as I wanted to go Barrier (and went and got the full T4 crafted...), perhaps I should just bite the bullet and grab Ageless, which would plug the Moonbeam gap as well. Shadow Meld stacked on /bio might be good enough mitigation for hard content.

Wow! This is a mindblowing resource. Nitpick: 90% in resistance isn't a soft cap, but a hard cap. Additional resistance will do nothing for you no matter the enemy, save for the rare enemies with resistance debuffs (and because resistance resist resistance debuffs, it will take a lot of them to hurt you if you're at 90% res). Also, that hard cap varies per AT. Only Brutes and Tankers can reach 90%. Epic ATs (kheldians, arachnos soldiers, widows) can reach 85%. All other ATs cap at 75% resistance.

Possibly the most destructive piece of conventional wisdom of these times. Progress, progress, we must move forward... all the way to the edge of the cliff, and beyond. :) The sluggishness has definitely decreased my enjoyment of the forums. Probably for the better, I spend too much time on here.

I think the plan was to "nerf" Dom snipes specifically - that is, to lower their recharge and their damage scale. Which might make them more usable as part of a regular attack chain, but will decrease their DPA, ergo their overall efficiency for a Dominator who had already his hands full (and let's be honest, with a clicky primary and a clicky secondary, that's most Doms).

2, and before reading all other answers (but after voting and seeing the post results), I was about to ask whether right-handed people were more likely to pick 3. 🙂 Interesting...

Between WP and Nin, I'd go WP just for the convenience of an aggro aura. With those slow TW animations you really want to keep everything glued to you- it's no fun to waste Momentum chasing a runner.

I haven't bothered to test it specifically, but I assume the absorb cap is equal to your base max HP (which is indeed 1874 for a tanker).

One aspect missing from this discussion so far is duration. 180 seconds > 120 seconds > 60 seconds, as tough spots where you need a T9 are likely to last long and activation time is a constant. Then we've got Icy Bastion and MoG, their use case being more along the line of alpha strike absorber and/or a breather click. In a sense we have a blueprint for soft crashing T9s if you look at Zepp's chart, and that blueprint roughly says: - less uptime - lower duration - less of a defensive buff I feel so much time has been spent balancing the game with godmode crashing T9s it'd take significant rework to make a crash removal balanced. EA and Invul are on the sturdier end of the scale, for example. A hypothetical crashless Overload would let EA run at capped HP most of the time with ludicrously high defenses, with all the other nice tools EA has. Where does SR (or even Nin) fit then? Psi? Even the Nin <-> SR comparison becomes iffier, as the DDR advantage from SR pales if characters are running at 100%+ defense for most of their gameplay. So, if you remove the crash but keep the duration you end up with plain overpowered options. If you lessen the duration or the strength of the buff, you're falling afoul of the cottage rule - and this is not a "victimless" change, I have a friend who systematically takes T9s on his invuls and energy armors, *and* use them with amazing results in a pinch. Tanking massive +3/x8 adds in mayhems with no help on SOs at lvl 40. Taking on the final LRSF 7 with no support, while the clock is ticking, only to hop out for a moment when it's about to pop, retoggle, and come back in the fight. Moments that, frankly, make him seem like a god and would be a shame to lose. :D Crash management makes for that, too. I think the next best thing would be to soften the crashes to something that is still more punishing than lower duration/efficiency T9s, but not AS dramatic as they are now. Endurance crashes could be -80% rather than -100%, with -recovery. Giving a chance to avoid detoggle, but you can't just turn your brain off and keep spamming attacks as you crash. HP crashes... That's a tougher one. If it crashed to 50% HP, it might end up *restoring* life, which is what we see with AVs sometimes. But then, would that be such a problem? A crash to 50% HP and -80% end seems fair enough. You're still going to have to watch your endurance consumption and manage your now lowered mitigation. Possible balance problems: - EA has incredible endurance management tools and would laugh at this new crash. Pop Energy Drain and you're good. Small price to pay for capped HP. - Elec could do the same in theory, but in practice is highly limited by the resistance cap on Sentinels and Scrappers. On the flipside Brute will enjoy capped resistances, gaining even more ground on Tankers. - Invul would gain a lot on all versions, but once again Brutes would gain the most of all thanks to their higher resistance cap. Further trivializing invul tankers. - Nin is supposed to be SR-light with toys, but might become SR-plus with toys on Sentinels and Scrappers as they have a free clickie to regain endurance. Poor Stalkers are left in the cold. All in all, no matter what, the changes would have repercussions. It's not as straightforward as crashless blast nukes which are mostly just added damage - and even then, crashless nukes *have* posed threats to the relevance of AR, Archery and DP.

I grabbed some boosters and the missing purple set, and gave the rad/fire scrapper another go (same conditions as two posts above). 2:15 = 411 DPS 2:11 = 420 DPS Then, I made a new build dropping Atom Smasher (who needs AoEs when stuff dies to Burn and auras while you whack the bosses?) and Consume (I'd rather manage end passively) in favor of Vengeance and Confront, for a little bit extra recharge. Confront should be a nice addendum for AV soloing too, stopping them from running willy-nilly; and now the attack chain is gapless. 2:09 = 425 DPS 2:06 = 432 DPS 1:55 = 461 DPS No hybrid 2:15 = 411 DPS This could use more runs for the sake of hard data, but when it comes to personal standards I'm confident going with "oh yeah, this scrapper is packing some heat." 🙂

Trying my new toy, a rad/fire scrapper. Attack chain is Burn -> Devastating Blow -> Radiation Siphon -> Radioactive Smash -> (gap) Currently that gap is fairly long, I haven't bought needed enhancement boosters. Incarnates: Musculature T4, Hybrid T4 doublehit (in use), Degen T3 (-75% max HP), Barrier (unused) Hecatomb proc + Achilles Heel -res in Devastating Blow, Obliteration proc + Fury of the Gladiator -res in Irradiated Ground, Armageddon + Critical Strikes procs in Burn 2:57 = 344 DPS (only Degen T2, then noticed I could craft the T3) 2:59 = 342 DPS 2:21 = 399 DPS 2:33 = 378 DPS This build is still missing one purple set. Also thinking I've made some weird choices in misc slotting (this was a build made a month ago). So, pretty happy about the potential here. Provided someone else is keeping mobs nice and tight, the combo hits like a truck in teams: Burn procs the ATO 90-95% of the time, and is then followed by a Fiery Embrace-fueled Devastating Blow. Fun.

I haven't tested it rigorously, but I am running Eagle's Claw - Storm Kick - Crippling Axe Kick - Storm Kick on my MA scrapper with the proc in EC, and in every instance where the proc goes off + I correctly queue SK, it crits. So, +1 to phocks' numbers.

Screech Shriek Scream Shriek is a great and easy to attain attack chain, and Screech Shriek Scream should be attainable on high recharge builds (Shriek Scream takes 3s to animate, so you need 400% rech in Screech - 100% from slotting, 70% from haste, that's +130% from other sources, set bonuses and whatnot). Probably worth building for Screech Shriek Scream Shriek, then skip one Shriek whenever there's extra recharge from outside sources. Going to STRONGLY second throwing Shout to the garbage bin and never looking back. :D

Numina has a couple Mind Control powers, which completely ignore positional defenses. So you were essentially naked against half of her attacks. Good job teaching her cheating doesn't pay off. :)

Personally, I like to not aim for either exclusively, and instead get the best "bang for your buck" option for individual slots. Which translates to ~20% def to all (steadfast, gladiator, weave, CJ, maneuvers, full gaussian set), 8% res to all and rising (Shield Wall, Reactive defenses), probably 30-40%ish S/L res through Tough and bonuses and some decent F/C res through purple sets and winter sets. Building this way gives you a lot of potential upside with powers like Barrier, purple and orange inspirations, team buffs, and so on.

Perhaps you have the "Hide: recipes missing ingredients" setting on by mistake? Very Rare recipes are still available (I'm ingame right now and on the merit vendor window).

Few more runs on fire/rad/psi sentinel: Ageless Radial Epiphany, Melee Hybrid (wanted to see how'd that go / if it might be an alternative to Barrier + Assault Hybrid) 3:08 = 331 DPS 3:15 = 324 DPS 3:22 = 317 DPS (so, probably not) Ageless Radial Epiphany, Assault Hybrid, Pyronic Judgement (makes for a great DPA attack to replace Flares... once every 2 minutes) 2:20 = 401 DPS 2:51 = 352 DPS 2:13 = 416 DPS 2:25 = 392 DPS 2:21 = 399 DPS This is increasingly "pylon" DPS as opposed to "real" world DPS, as I wouldn't use Ageless in hard content, but it makes for an interesting insight as to what extra recharge can bring to my attack chain given its gaps. Also interesting to see the variance. That 2:51 run had no player mishap, just plain bad luck with misses on high damage moves. Some more runs with Ageless Partial Core (not enough materials to craft the leftside T4 yet) 2:29 = 385 DPS 2:21 = 399 DPS 2:28 = 386 DPS 2:32 = 380 DPS 2:26 = 390 DPS I'm thinking that's about as high as this character will go. From a supposed attack chain of Blaze - Mind Probe - Flares - Blaze - Dominate - Flares, what I'm actually running at this point is something closer to Blaze - Dominate - Mind Probe - Blaze - [do something], when "[do something]" is Ageless, Pyronic, Flares if the opportunity bar is up, Aim + Inferno if ready, and so on.

I soloed the LRSF today. 🙂 This wasn't a master attempt, but I tried to respect the spirit of it as much as I could. So I didn't use Envenomed Daggers or other disallowed temps, and I tried to play in a reasonably conservative manner rather than rolling the dice. The first 4 missions I've talked about before, so let's skip to the finale. I decided to pull using jetpack and Dominate, setting myself on the city hall side. Dominate is my longest range power at 96 feet, thanks to the Sentinel sets. I figured that extra range might influence the pulls. And I believe it did, because on my first shot, I got Numina all alone. First, I flew high, waiting for Positron and/or Citadel to join. Then, as no one came, I decided to lure her to the city hall. Numina is not especially tough on her own, although there's two things to watch out for: 1) she has a -fly power, so facing her in the sky will lead to you dropping like a rock at some point 2) she likes to use psionic tornado, a long-lasting dot, followed by hard-hitting psi attacks; which can make for a sudden spike of damage She went down easy enough without Lore. Second pull: Citadel. Again, he surprisingly came on his own. I dragged him to the city hall once again. It makes for a nice vantage spot to keep an eye on the rest of the Phalanx, see if they start wondering why their buddy is gone. But they didn't, so all went well. For Citadel I pulled out Lore, as I didn't want to take chances. He's not especially hard, but he has Overload (the Energy Aura T9), which makes him tough to hit near the end. Taking him down took me the full 5 minutes of Lore. For my next pull, I tried Synapse... Why not Positron? I don't know. Positron replacing Statesman and having the central spot, I figured he might jolt more allies to follow; whereas Synapse was on Numina's side, now fairly lonely with Citadel and Numina gone. Well, that was a bad move, because Yin and Manticore were eager to follow Synapse. I didn't try to be clever, and disengaged right away. Instead, I flew to the other side of the globe, pulled Positron and flew up. He came alone... Obviously, being the last flier! BAB wanted to have a piece of me too, but he was confined to impotent superjumps on the globe as I was out of range for him. Positron is a pain in the ass for /radiation. Every one of his attack does about -25% def, and you have no DDR. On top of that, I was in the sky. A REALLY conservative solo Master Of attempt could have waited for Lore to recharge and switched to Storm Elementals, I suppose. But I preferred to power through with luck insps and Barrier. Positron has his own form of Overload, so once again you've got to be ready to whiff. It's all about making sure you get some good hits during your 10 seconds of Aim. Positron went down, and I stepped on the globe to take care of BAB. BAB isn't too threatening. He has strong hits, but slow animations, and no debuffs tied to them. You have to be mindful of knockback in his Energy Transfer, which bypasses normal knockback protection. With the wrong positioning, it could send you flying off the globe. He also has a short version of Unstoppable which resists psionics (unfair!), and a Dull Pain he likes to activates right when you're about to land the killing blow (I'm still sour about it). After BAB, I was left with Synapse, Manticore and Yin. I tried to get a pull on Manticore. He seemed to come with just Synapse this time. Out comes the Lore pets, and we start fighting... Only for Yin to come running, and immediately land a hold through mez protection. Manticore finishes the job, and I'm down. So it goes. This is where our pretend "master of" attempt ends. Never fight Yin with any other AV around! Denied but not deterred, I use the opportunity to refill insps and I come back. I figure I'll try to pull Synapse this time. No dice. Yin comes running after, no matter what. But then, as I bunnyhop back to see if I can keep Synapse and lose Yin, a strategy organically forms: Synapse is fast. I can use his speed to shoot him while hopping away, keeping Yin forever out of range. And so we played carousel in Atlas Park, running more than 2 laps around the map with Synapse eagerly getting shot in the face. This wasn't entirely without risk. Sometimes Synapse would back away for a moment, and you lose sight on him easily with his "blur" effect - it detargets your reticle sooner than usual enemies. Yin got 5 or 6 attempts on me during the whole process, which could have gone terribly wrong had she landed her unresistable hold or even just her terrorize. But it went fine in the end, and better execution could have made this 100% safe. There isn't much to say about Synapse himself. He's fast. He likes to get in melee to do a whirlwind attack that does damage. He has a little bit of defense, but nothing you won't punch through with Kismet and Tactics. So he dies easy. Next, I tried to get a pull on Manticore, towards the steps leading to the globe. Luckily, he came on his own. Manticore is not particularly strong, but he's got one trick up his sleeve. His Teleport Arrow ignores your resistance entirely. So you will get hit for 1300+ damage inevitably, and it's important to be prepared to heal up that damage - and of course, have strong enough mitigation you won't die from a lucky second hit. Manticore went down. Now for the toughest fight: the strongest psychic on Earth aka miss I-hit-for-6000-damage-sometimes, the one and only Penelope Yin. I'm not sure how her mechanics go. It's clear her damage varies, and she's got this pet she summons that does a "psychic link" thing. My working theory is that this is what causes her damage buffing, a periodical damage buff that stacks until it's used. The pet itself has only about 1000hp, so I made sure to clear it quick whenever it spawned. The fight didn't start so well at first. I pulled out my Lore pets, immediately used Barrier, sent them to attack her... and she took down my Cataphract before I was even done with my first Blaze. Nonetheless, I decided to fight on. I think her damage buffing is indeed linked to her pet, because after she made short work of my Lore, her damage numbers were in a reasonable range all thorough the fight (600-700 per attack at most). Of note, of course, is her ability to hold through mez protection as well as fear. Because of that, I made sure to use Particle Shielding and Barrier proactively, and to heal up the second she landed a hit; the hope being I would have enough HP left to survive through being held. I also used a whole lot of rage insps I had left, hoping to overpower her with damage before she got *too* lucky. And what do you know, it worked! After about 3 minutes of fighting she went down, and so I got my new shiny Synthetic Nucleolus (clearly the best part of this whole ordeal 😉 ). All in all it took 1 hour and 40 minutes, and I died once. I feel this could have been a solo MoLRSF without my harebrained notion to stand and fight against 3 AVs including Yin. Plus, I refilled insps only once, whereas I could have taken the time to fill my tray between each pull for safety. In any case, this is really satisfying to me. It seems so far ago now to think of the LRSF release, and teams scrambling to figure it out on both American and European servers. It was a different TF then (8 AVs including Statesman, and all level 54) and a very different game (no incarnates, no IOs, and people barely discovering the new levels 41 to 50 on villains). Fun to reflect. 🙂

Is the new forum software slow for anyone else? I'm getting a little above 2 seconds for each page load, as compared to sub-second response before.

It's worth noting Bobcat becomes super strong if you kill Neuron first, but I'm not sure Neuron gets anything from Bobcat dying first (more clones? More fuel for /bio clicks ;) ). I hovered out of range and her Shockwave and Focus only did 300-350 damage each (on ~70% S/L res).

^^ Destlin says it all. I love radiation too, it's such a well-rounded "convenience" powerset. You've got resistance to every damage type, great regen and recovery, a little absorption, a Quickness clone, Ground Zero can be slotted to fill up your end bar and helps to heal your Lore pets. You have resistance to slows only second to Ice Armor, making it easy to cap with winter sets. On my own build (which is here for reference: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,1253.msg58036.html#msg58036), I'm barely around 20% ranged/AOE. Lucks and Barrier do the job well enough in a pinch. As long as resistance + maxHP (+ absorb) are enough to take a couple hard hits, life is good. I think I'd definitely value more DPS more than extra survivability. 2 lucks can bring any resistance secondary to the defense softcap, and Barrier makes you effectively invincible for 20 seconds; whereas 2 rages cannot double your DPS, and Ageless will not bump you to the damage cap. When tackling the tough stuff, keeping up with their regen is often the real challenge. Start with 300 DPS, you lose a third of that against a +4 AV, you lose another 100 DPS from their regeneration. Any damage mitigation power they have, or any time you spend using mitigation of your own, lowers that figure still. From that perspective, /bio has what it takes to handle incoming damage bursts with Ablative Carapace, Rebuild DNA and Inexhaustible; and then, offensive mode gives you a damage buff, extra damage, a tohit buff, a range buff and a movement buff. That last one might sound silly, but it's a sizeable advantage as well. A /bio sentinel in offensive mode is close to capped run speed *while in combat*. It makes for easier maneuvering and kiting. Regarding Apex pylons, I believe each tentacle has an autohit damage aura. This is what makes them seem hard when you're right in melee whacking on that pylon. On a ranged character, they become trivial to take down.

I couldn't imagine skipping Weave. On a SR or anything. :D +7~8% def for one extra power pick and one extra power slot seems too good a deal to pass up. In the posted build, Elude is taken instead. But I don't know if some end recovery, movement speed and situational defense against the very rare enemies sporting >+30% tohit makes a crash worth it. Taking Weave makes it easy to reach 59%+ to everything, leaving flexibility with the Alpha choice. Vigor for end woes + Rebirth, Musculature for damage, Spiritual for recharge + Rebirth. YMMV!

Incarnate TFs and trials in general almost seem designed with passive aggressiveness. As if the developers in charge of balance were bothered they couldn't fix the supremacy of melee in overall PvE without creating an uproar, so they flat out invented special mechanics to give melee a harder time. I'm using a fire blast/radiation. It's likely fire/bio, beam/bio (as mentioned), sonic/bio would all experience great success. /bio being a minmax darling for offensive mode, but really, sentinel secondaries are full of goodness.