TygerDarkstorm

As noted though, they were performing this behavior without those types of flee patches; had I thought it was something like that I wouldn't have commented since I know those have a fear effect. Only effect kind of like that being used was hurricane, but they behaved in this manner regardless of it running or not. Further, they were doing it as part of their normal attacks, that why I asked specifically about a lower level range, because some of the behavior seemed to be them repositioning to use their ranged attacks instead of prioritizing their melee attacks. I didn't have this issue on my MM that has both upgrades, that I can recall.

Anyone else playing a level 20 (or maybe even lower level) ninja MM and noticing that the henchmen are behaving kind of oddly in combat? Or maybe it's just because I'm doing that Tsoo chain in Steel, but I'm noticing my ninjas behaving rather strangely in combat, even when they're not being hit by things like hurricane. Where like, I have them engage a mob, and they run away all crazy before circling back to attack. I don't remember them behaving this oddly when I tested my level 27 ninja/cold, so I'd figure I'd see if it's WAI or wonky AI behavior.

Yes, so far Seismic Blast is delightful on a sentinel. I need to put more time in on mine but so far I enjoy Seismic in general with that good, crunchy feel to it. Needing to be on the ground for some of the powers doesn't bother me. Can't say I've encountered anything unusual with it yet.

I fired up a Bots/Cold on Brainstorm and bumped her up to level 30 and slotted her with some IO's. Much better experience so far compared to my Bots/Nature; granted, I kept my diff at +0/x4 and wasn't fighting Malta. I can definitely see the improvement in the Bots' damage now--took them to Croatoa to do missions there. I've had other AT's doing that first kill all Tuatha in the sewers just crumple, but the bots mostly held sturdy. Had a couple of issues where it didn't seem like the maintenance drone was making a point to heal the bots that were taking damage. I took the AoE pulse blast just because I don't like being bored and my recharge is still fairly slow. Dunno how much of a difference it made, even with a proc plopped in it, but like I said, I don't like standing there doing nothing. I also noticed something interesting with the maintenance drone and wanted to see if it's WAI or not: Maintenance Drone can have the cold shields and frostwork applied to it (idk if Frostwork actually boosts its health or not, but figured it worth mentioning).

Think you answered your own question there, mate. 😛

You're missing out by not taking Serum on beta. It's a truly wonderful addition to what your mercs can already dish out.

Samesies. It's quite amusing with Titan Weapons, especially for those into anime lol.

I have some misses with it on my Mercs/Traps MM, and that's just minions and LT's. Now, I don't think I will need an alpha shift and ult insp's to make it work better as the poster you replied to is implying. And even if I do miss some of the spawn, the power is still worth having for the way I like to play that character; I end up with plenty of mobs who get ported into my doom pile.

Oh dear, I think Snarky slept through the Page 4 changes. 😛 @doc_miller you can see the option Shadeknight is referring to in my screenshot. Click that so that the swords are crossed will show the weapon sheathed on your back.

Seeing the other feedback here from people saying they've noticed an increase in performance from their Bots MM's tells me that it's pilot error on my end that I had borderline opposite results, lol. It probably doesn't help that I don't have a lot to compare my beta attempt to from live since I haven't played that toon much since it hit 50. I am thinking that while Bots/Nature is decent, it's probably not the *best* performing primary to pair with Bots in terms of soloing large spawns of more diff mobs or something (e.g., trying to go x8 on Malta even with a level shift). So far the main benefit I've had over some of the other reports here is that, so long as I didn't get mezzed and could keep the faerie patch up, place my bots on go-to in it (I have it slotted for end mod), they didn't seem to have quite the endurance issues. I feel like with how good maint. drone is, that the baby Bots/Cold MM I have on live will become more potent; might be one worth testing and bumping up on beta to see if it feels better to me. And heat loss should help the bots w/ endurance.

Perhaps I am just a terrible bots player, but I don't know how I feel about the changes. I copied my Bots/Nature over to beta and equipped her with some IO's since she's not built at all on live and got wrecked on the final mission of the Scorpion arc - mission was level 46 and I had left my settings at +4/x8 from radios I had been running (and I have a t3 level shift thingy). Decided to leave it since the Malta inside were then even level to me. I didn't take any of the personal attacks as I just wanted to see what the DPS of the bots felt like. I got my ass beat... handily. Now, I'm not gonna say it's because of the lack of -regen from the AssBot; I'm fairly sure it's my lack of skill as a player and not knowing how to build a toon. I thought I had built in some decent mez protection in my set bonuses, but I was constantly being mezzed and frantically trying to keep my bots up on their feet, leaving barely enough time to use my attacks from my epic pool, let alone if I had had any of the pulse rifle attacks. I kind of sort of got a strategy going, but if I got mezzed at all, even the second or so needed to pop a break free would be enough to start causing cascade failure for my pets to stay up. I ended up giving up because I need to go pick up my daughter and to let some of my frustration cool down and come back to rethink my diff settings and strategy. I couldn't tell if my bots' damage had increased or not; my fault for not playing the toon regularly on live I suppose. Slightly more relevant feedback: I like the new Maint. Drone dude. I dislike that he can't obey any sort of pet command and thus follows me when I'm trying to go pluck a mob and dart back to my faerie patch/bots setup, but that's a minor issue. His showing up in the pet window doesn't bother me either because I'm used to using that window for many other pets that function in that same manner (e.g., Illusion pets, Traps "pets"). I use it to monitor how the drone is faring so I know when I need to resummon it. Slotting definitely still feels tight, especially for someone like me who already struggles figuring out where to put things. Reading the feedback, I thought it would feel more opened up, but oof, it's still tight without maintenance drone being able to be used as a mule like in some of the other sets. I tend to be more of a team player than a soloist, but I will come back to this at some point and see if I can't get it working as I like to learn. I don't like to do AV/GM solo stuff typically anyway, so I feel I will probably be okay with not taking the personal attacks and losing the -regen there if I can get my bots to stay on their feet and do damage.

Depending on the time on Saturday, I could join you guys on Brainstorm for a Yin test as well.

They do; I noted it in my feedback as well. 🙂 Nice visual indication and it looks cool to boot, lol.

You might find it worth your while. 🙂 I certainly found the set far more enjoyable to play and seeing Shocked! start flying around (alongside Scourge if you're a corruptor) gets to be quite fun.

Erm, what? The changes made to Elec Blast recently, especially the addition of the shocked mechanic, has bumped Elec Blast up quite aways. I want to say that on... was it @Bopper's blast comparisons the new Elec Blast moved to like A-Tier? One of @Voltak's top end HM defenders is an Elec/Elec Defender.

Thank you, I suppose damage is the word I am looking for. 😛 It's such a neat assault set, but even paired with powerhouses like Plant, it just plays so... meh. I do wonder if an Ill/Rad dom might be fun though.

I don't have much to add here, but from my brief bit of testing on a level 29 Fire/Rad Scrapper kitted with basic IO's: Thank you for giving this powerset some love. This character has been shelved for a while because it just felt dismal to play even though I liked the concept. Attacks certainly have a bit more crunch/char to them and feel like I'm doing much closer to proper scrapper damage Can't comment to the defense debuffs yet since I don't really have the slots available to mess with them yet, but hope to soon Something still seems a tad off. I feel like the previously mentioned suggestions of speeding up the dots might help this. I feel this will improve the flow of the set (at least at the mid-lower levels) as well as leave out less risk of you trying to determine if you should expend end on another attack or not or if the mob will die from a DoT.

I realize that those of us posting in these threads are but a tiny fraction of the playerbase, the general consensus thus far to the FF changes appears to be lukewarm at best. I have never been much of a Force Fields player, so I'm hesitant to test these changes since I have no real means of comparison for them on live, but from what I'm seeing from many others here whose opinions I respect, these do not seem to be the direction many players wanted FF to go, and I have to agree. I wholeheartedly agree that FF should provide some sort of absorb somewhere, maybe in one of the shields applied to others? Idk, but it seems fitting (having absorb, not necessarily where I mentioned adding it). Adding the DDR component I've seen mentioned somewhere would be great too (or more of it than what they did add). The -res tacked onto Force Bolt and increasing the CD on it feels... idk if lazy is the right word... uninspired? I am of the opinion where I want powersets to have something that makes them stand out some and give you a reason for picking them. Making FF be Cold Dom Lite does not do that. I realize that not every community member suggestion is gold, but there have been some high quality suggestions that garnered a good amount of support for sets like FF that it feels weird to just see them ignored entirely.

This is honestly what I was hoping the single target immob they added was going to be (AoE immob instead of single target). I don't mind keeping the stealth because it has its uses. Though I understand potentially why we didn't get an AoE immob since I do see forumites frequently mention how it gets lower-level/new players killed and messes with clumping mobs around the tank.

I thought about Ill/Martial myself, but /Martial just feels so bad on doms, imo. It's lacking something that makes it feel like it has some oomph to it compared to some of the other secondaries (though it's probably better than /Elec and /Thorny), but maybe Illusion will be the primary it needs to shine a little more.

This is how I'm looking at it. I specifically rolled a Traps Defender on live instead of a Corruptor because I wanted to be able to skip web grenade because it's nigh on useless without the /Devices treatment. This means my low level /Traps MM's can now take Caltrops instead and have something more helpful to contributing to killing/arresting mobs than fuddy duddy web grenade. Though admittedly the addition of powers coming at earlier levels threw me off some on first read. Maybe the people lucky enough to run groups on Beta can hopefully test and report how it feels in the level ranges most impacted? By myself I don't seem to notice much of a difference on the 2-3 characters I copied over in the 26-30ish range. They certainly don't feel game breakingly overpowered--I faceplanted on at least 1 of them multiple times.

No more KB -> KD tax for bots either, which should help alleviate some of the slotting as well. 🙂

Not yet. I need to play around with the slotting some more and maybe respec her. The auto enhance feature is also crap; I did it just to do some fast testing because I need to get some sleep, but it definitely doesn't provide optimal choices. When I have time I'll get in there and swap out those enhancements as well and see if that helps. And hope that others will also test these changes, lol.

My initial thoughts in my brief testing tonight: omg please, please look at the MM end tax, especially for Necro These changes are really cool, even though I didn't have any specters appear that I could tell, but soul extraction has a pretty massive end cost, and we're supposed to be utilizing our primary attacks plus secondaries? Ouch Not all of us gild our alts out with attuned IO's, or even basic IO's and such, so someone that hasn't built up a lot of inf to slot their necro character is going to struggle with balancing the primary attacks with everything else For those who have auditory sensitivities, Necro is now almost as loud as Demons, though only in combat--that life-steal noise added into the second upgrade is pretty screechy The zombies are pretty tough now, but kill speeds still seem a bit slow (granted, that's at level 28 with basically nothing slotted up yet because I hadn't added to the toon after copying it to beta; just wanted to see the changes before I went to sleep). Yes, I know all the sets can't be amazing Overall the changes seem nice, soul extraction is really fun. I look forward to messing with it more.