Moonlighter

My problem with building for Ice Armor is that I don't know how to deal with the Fire hole. S/L can be capped, and usually E/N can be capped although since SJ doesn't have a PBAoE that needs to be massaged, and cold resistance is capped, but Fire sits at ~30% defense in my builds and I can't find a way to plug it. I am used to typed defense sets have the pure Psi hole, but not fire.

Isn't Tab (the soda) being discontinued?

The other interesting about regen is it favors the exact opposite of many other sets in groups; at higher levels defense and resistance buffs offer less to high end builds and healing is very strong, where as Regen gets much more from resistance and defense buffs but it is really hard for healers to offer significant benefit to Regen because they are competing (essentially) with Regen's main form of mitigation.

There are a couple of issues with Regen. First, any mitigation based on health recovery creates an immortality line; the line under which they just don't die. Resistance sets also create immortality lines because they have health recovery, but because they have active mitigation they behave better as your drift from that immortality line. When a set is *so* reliant on health recovery (as Regen is) it tends to be polarizing; you literally can't die until the incoming damage crosses the immortality line, but then it drops off steeply as compared to the other sets unless you spend a tremendous amount of time building more layers of mitigation from IOs. This polarizing effect also polarizes the community since small shifts in playstyle and difficulty preferences can give such a large swing in experience. Mitigation based on resistance and defense tend to provide a smoother and more gradual time to kill once incoming damage becomes much higher. The other thing about Regen is that when it is played well it really eats into your DPS because there is a lot of animations that eat into your chain. Willpower may be "boring" but it isn't constantly ticking down your DPS as you go along. Having a secondary that eats animation time is actually a bad thing if you are a damage dealer since it detracts from your main role by stealing bits of animation time. Part of the above issue is that Regen is reactive; yes other sets have clicks but many have things you do when heading into a fight, or things you do once and then enjoy 90 seconds of uptime.

Martial Arts/Ninjitsu! Which is new for me, previously I was /Shield and /SR but I like /Nin better. Although I miss that Shield damage bonus.

I have moved to +4/x8 for most content. I have to admit, being able to run Vanguard missions with the settings that high is satisfying. I am also doing Dark Astoria on these high settings. I can do Nemesis, and did a few missions successfully, but wow they are annoying. Not even that tough, just annoying. And Devouring Earth emitters are still painful. I was hoping that active mitigation would be a big factor and it really is. Having a 4:10 time on pylons (without Lore) makes me sad, though. I will see how I fair when I get my -Res proc to tier 4.

While we are talking about claws, has Bill (who is arguably the one of the most knowledgeable about the set) or anyone else gotten a high damage Procpocolypse build to work with claws?

Not looking at mention animation times is an oversight. I am sure the newer formulas take that into account. Especially with the high levels of recharge we can achieve. It's great that claws recharges faster, but that's only useful if they have select high DPA attacks they can leverage, or in claws case a stacking damage buff. A bad attack recharging very quickly is still a bad attack. Claws has three advantages; the stacking damage buff that gets better with recharge (to compensate for Build Up), Focus, and the fact that Shockwave is part of the single target rotation if you can handle the endurance cost. The other thing about Claws is that its advantage, the stacking damage buff, is also a disadvantage since it means attacks in the set tend to have lower damage numbers and that damage buff dilutes and is diluted by other damage buffs. (I don't know how you can say Shockwave is "down" since it's DPA is on par for a single target attack.) Edit: I spaced and didn't acknowledge Spin as an advantage of the set. It is very good, especially with the damage bonuses.

I now have tier 4 alpha and tier one of a few others. I am not at soft cap for incarnate yet, but if I am reading Mid's correctly I can hit 59% with Melee hybrid. RIght now I am running +3 x4 on the Dark Astoria arcs so I am almost there to +4/x8. I can take out large groups of banished pantheon as long as I kill the radiation ones without sucking the defense debuff.

I haven't done 801 yet on any difficulty. How useful is active mitigation in that content?

If any set doesn't need a snipe, it's Titan Weapons. I wouldn't give up too much to fit the snipe in there.

I start out every character with 8 hours of all three when it's only 1000 inf per. Sometimes I forget and level first, and it instantly becomes 4 times as expensive. (I leveled my alpha to third tier. I am using Agility, even though I *really* want to use Musculature.)

Interesting. I have no incarnates yet. I am soloing on +2/x8 regularly, although the Maria Jenkins arc is tough because the resistance group just kills me dead on higher difficulties. I have problems with Devouring Earth, but probably because I haven't macro'd the emitters and trying to select them in a crowd is tough. I could go up to +3 or +4 but it take a long time to kill stuff. How much power does incarnate add? Playing with Mid's I am going to have to change up my build to hit incarnate soft cap, but I don't know what content requires that. Is that why the resistance enemies are hitting me so easily? I need 59%? (Also, I am looking at hitting soft cap with just passive buffs.) (Also, I really hate dying so my tolerance for higher difficulties might be lower than other people.)

Shocking no one, the set with over 30% bonus damage feels better. (At least the bonus damage is somewhat diluted on a Brute.)

Okay some notes from this discussion: Slash has a -Def that can trigger enemy run behavior, and the -Res proc will also do that. Since /Nin doesn't have a Taunt aura you won't be able to have nice tight packs. Claws does have knockback powers (which you will convert to knockdown) between Focus and Shockwave so that's less of an issue. Farming will just be messier and require a little more work. Claws is a set that builds power over time, because its damage comes from hitting and eventually stacking Follow Up, and that doesn't play well with /Nin. First, /Nin doesn't have any damage aura to boost with that sweet damage buff. Second, /Nin provides an occasional up front damage boost out of stealth which works best for front loaded sets. It's a fine combo, just be aware. To comment on how the stealth damage buff works; the damage buff seems to have an internal cooldown of 30 seconds. So any time the cooldown is over and you go into stealth the damage buff will apply to your next attack, and then the cooldown will restart. You don't have to be in stealth for 30 seconds, rather the first time you go into stealth after the 30 second cooldown has passed the damage bonus will come up and apply to the first hit. So if you are used to opening up with Follow Up, which you probably should be, then that will be less effective for you. If I am being honest this perk is hard to use and not up that often in high end play so I wouldn't worry about it, but I can leverage it in missions by opening up with a heavy attack or my AoE when it comes online. Ninjitsu has mediocre defense, but an admittedly good heal. If it had more DefDebuff resistance it would be much better in terms of raw defensive benefit. It also has no offensive perk like +Dam, +Recharge, a damage aura, or some weird -Res field. The mini-Ninja Run is a nice perk, because if you like Ninja Run you don't need to take another travel power since they stack and you save a power choice. Plus you have half stealth and it is simple to stack a stealth IO or Super Speed. The Endurance click a good for leveling, but it costs DPS and at the high end you would need to solve that issue anyway so I wouldn't call it a great benefit, just a nice QoL thing. The place it does shine, however, is that you can take your last defensive power, and use your Endurance click and Conserve Power to recover from the End crash fairly smoothly which allows you to use that more often. I know most high end players skip those because they are building the defense into the build, but you can use it to combat DefDebuff cascades and recover the end crash so that's an advantage of the set, if a costly one in terms of powers. But the real reason to take the set is to leverage Blinding Powder. If you aren't going to try to do that, and its fairly difficult to get right, then there are better sets. To define Blinding Powder, it is a medium cone that is a mag 2 Sleep and a 50% chance for a mag 2 Confusion. It is *terrible* unslotted, and it is hard to use and line up until you are used to it. Worse, the sleep component actually makes it less useful because the minions that do get confused just stand there and don't do anything because they are probably also asleep. So at first it is pretty bad. So to get use out of it, you need to slot it up, throw the cone, and then use an AoE to get the minions to start punching each other in the face. But all is not lost. First, you can get most of a pack once you get good at lining it up. Second, it doesn't seem to break stealth so you can throw it and still follow up. Third, it is good at mitigating a return alpha strike. Finally, the goal is to get the Superior Purple proc slotted into it to multiply the confuse effect. So if you run up to a huge pack of Romans you can get a bunch of them in the confuse, and follow up with an AoE and they start throwing defense debuff attacks at each other. That provides significant mitigation and provides extra damage once you are 50. You confuse some portion of the pack, concentrate on the bosses, and let the minions beat on each other as you cleave them down. I can't say that's a better power than, say, just using Shield Charge to alpha strike a pack but it's really the only real offensive perk of the set.

First, go to Combat Attributes and add "Last To Hit Chance" to your little tracking window. Sometimes RNG is just messing with you. Like missing three big attacks in a row is a 1 in 8000 chance, consider how many attack cycles you might do in a week that is likely. So you can sanity check by keeping as eye on Last To Hit Chance to see if it is below 95%. Tip: If you want to get through the early levels without going crazy, I generally buy 8 hours of all the buffs from the P2W vendor at level 1 when it only costs 1000 Inf for each hour and grab Accuracy from DFB. (As an aside, I rarely play stalkers because missing opening Assassin Strikes irritates me so much and there is always a 1 in 20 chance of it happening.)

The Tsoo and Cot are aready designed that way; they have high rewards for mez by having mobs with protective fields that can be stunned to drop them. Enemy groups have been designed this way forever; it is just a matter of intensity and the ease at which ranged characters can ignore them.

You are so awesome Bopper, this is fantastic. Thank you so much!

Yeah I don't have 50s yet as I just returned, so I am not in testing phase yet, much less full incarnate.

I was thinking just straight up multiplying proc chance by animation time would probably be 95% okay, but I don't know if seeing Shadow Maul proc abuse would make be happy or sad. And I don't think I want Flurry to be ab actual DPS contender.

Also the proc changes could massively affect this thread. I am excited to see the changes and how it shakes up everything. I just hope it doesn't reinforce a lot of the less intuitive build practices, and actually shakes things up. It would make me sad if the end result is that most attack chains end up being three attacks slotted out with procs and a snipe.

I don't know that any one armor set needs or should have a damage boost, -regen, -resist, and an AoE DoT all in the same set. The saving grace here might be that its a hybrid set, so building is tricky. It is in part a resist set, so scrappers have a harder time getting the maximum defensive value. And the damage boost is diluted on Brutes.

I understand TW will see balance changes, but I assume that issue 6 will also include nerfs to Bio? I mean, you can't do a set balance pass and leave it as is, can you?

Does anyone have data on the various snipes? In particular, I am looking for: ~ Animation times (regular or Arcanatime) of shortened snipes. ~ Damage at level 50 of combat snipes. ~ How much ToHit adds. Is the damage increase directly translated? ie. does 20% ToHit now add 20% damage, or is there a conversion ratio? I have searched the forums but can't find actual numbers, and the regular long snipe times obscure the numbers.