Riverdusk

Well, they may be ranked last to probably most people now, but I'd disagree that I wouldn't recommend them to anyone and that they can't be 'satisfying'. It wasn't like they were actually nerfed (that I'm aware of?). They are only last now because of buffs to some other sets and people used to find them plenty satisfying before other sets got buffed. On some of the old rankings and testings of actual kill speed and safety they were often A or B tier back in the day. Can't deny that necro is my favorite now, but beast MM's can still hold up just fine and can be a lot of fun. I'm definitely not against them getting some love for sure. But I also think how 'bad' they are has become a bit exaggerated.

Very often, although I prefer to do a lot of it outside of Oro while leveling up as it feels more 'natural'. Impossible to do even close to everything without it though unless you turn off xp gain all the time. Also virtually almost always solo. They are hard to recruit for since they are run like task forces and for that people generally just want to do the regular task forces.

Oh, and don't forget Croatoa. It was like the devs said, "Oh, you don't like zone specific hunt missions? Now we're going to give you neighborhood specific hunt missions, take that!" Luckily they don't tend to be too bad. I only remember sometimes having problems with one fir bolg one where they didn't seem to gen much in the right neighborhood and I often have to find some and drag them to the right area (which also thankfully works.)

Also a caveat to doing it this way is if it is a hunt mission that is linked to immediately go into a regular instanced mission. Unless they fixed that bug, if you do the entire hunt inside a radio instance it will bug out and not bring up the next linked mission. I always do radio hunts like that until I have one left of what I need and then exit and hunt that last one outside, just to be sure.

I'm still of the idea that necro/sonic is the ideal pairing with /sonic and the one I have, the synergy is very nice in a lot of ways. Interesting to see it tried with other sets though, it is a rare support set to see. I skipped sonic repulsion myself, the set already has such endurance issues. I'd also be curious as to how that works out for you though. I'd almost think you'd need incarnate endurance help to run it along with everything else. Have also heard it can be quite audibly obnoxious, not sure if they fixed that, but it also turned me off of it. And yeah, really really wish they'd re-evaluate liquify's recharge time. It's recharge needs to be cut in half imo to really be decent. An epic pool power - bonfire, as someone else mentioned is the superior power and it only has a 2 minute recharge instead of 5 minutes. Always gets me that so many control type powers have 4 or 5 minute recharges when nukes that recharge in 2 minutes are out there that just flat out kill everything instead. Always seemed backwards to me, but that's a whole nother argument.

Only /sonic I ever enjoyed was a necro/sonic MM. Going all in on the resistance buffs it turned the zombies into absolute tanks (80%+ resistance to most things), they had their own tohit debuffs for defense, and their own healing as well as me getting my own heal. Disruption field worked well on a grave knight. I found it very impressive, and that was even before necro got buffed as a set. Fire/sonic might work well though, especially if you have multiple like you said.

Dark/cold would probably get you the most potential damage of those choices. Definitely the most damaging primary out of those. Cold then gets you a proc'd out infrigidate for another 'attack' and the very nice resistance debuff from sleet, and the AV killer called benumb if you want to hunt those.

LoTG's +7.5% recharge piece is a set bonus to me, and that is all. I think calling it a "global" actually just makes it more confusing. The game itself calls it a set bonus. You can go to Menu-Personal info-Powers tab. LoTG +7.5% recharge is listed right there as a "set bonus" on your character info. It acts as a set bonus in every way, it is just a special one that is a single IO. I guess that is the part that confuses people. How can a single piece be a "set" bonus. But that's really what it is in every way that matters. Basically think of it that way and if you know the rules to how set bonuses work, that's how that piece's +7.5 recharge works.

As others kind of brought up, damage debuff isn't affected by AV debuff resistances. It is only resisted by resistance (and purple patch). So, if a particular AV has a lot of built in damage resistance they'll resist a lot of a damage debuff, but they don't get a flat 85% resistance (at level 50) to it like they do for most other debuffs. A level 54 one though, if you are level 50 would still resist half of it right off the top I believe. Per the wiki "Archvillains are also noteworthy for having strong debuff resistance that scales by level. As of Issue 9, this resistance applies to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery. In general I agree with you about the power. Being single target it doesn't usually make a noticeable impact outside of maybe some AV fights. Corrosive could use something else imo. If not -defense then maybe a slow, an immobilize, or something. It is kind of sad that it doesn't take any IO sets at all. Luckily it is skippable for everyone now and we aren't forced to take it anymore even if you have it as a secondary. If I have room for a one slot throw away power it is okay, but not something I feel is a must power for the set.

That one I can definitely get behind and have mentioned it before myself. Radiation infection got its horrendous 3+ second cast time reduced to 1.5 seconds. Darkest night and spore cloud are similar toggle powers and could use a similar reduction (even shaving them down to around 2 seconds would feel a LOT better).

I'd also love to see some -defense added to the power, but I think you lost the argument when you said the whole point of it was to just allow IO proc slotting. That's a really bad justification for it.

I'd think DM would be better on a scrapper or tank. Soul drain's +damage buff just seems more impactful on either of those and is a big part of the set.

Ah, the end point of all the AT debate threads, we've reached it already. If you want to use that criteria the majority of the game's AT's are "sub obtimal" in a completely min/maxed team. Best example is the thread about it in the controller forum "what's the point of controllers at level 50?" I know it isn't the only AT forum to have such a thread. I know tanks used to have one as well, but now I think it's moved to brutes too.

One neat trick if smoke plus flash really does give you full invis would be that you could click glowies (which normally surpresses your stealth) in complete safety. Would be nice for when you want to speedrun a hunt glowie mission anyway. Just thought of a perfect place for it as matter of fact. That one mission on Posi where you have to click all the bombs that are surrounded by clockwork and inside by CoT. You'd be the hero on that one. 😁

Not anymore it doesn't. RI's animation time was shaved a while ago. More than twice as fast now. Would be nice to see darkest night and Nature's spore cloud get the same treatment.

Do sentinels really do that much less damage than a blaster now a days though after the upgrade? Their ranged damage modifiers are now extremely close. In exchange they get a lot more survivability. Also, too often I see these arguments only looking at end game and to me that is far from the whole experience. At end game almost everyone is a tank and everyone is a nuker anyway, AT's in general lose their distinctiveness to a big degree. So to me the bigger difference is the leveling up experience. Sentinels level up with a very different feel than a blaster does imo. Closer to a scrapper, but still a different feel there as well. So, I think there definitely is a point to them existing as they are currently. I think giving them more melee would make their leveling up experience even closer to a scrapper to me. I'd be very much against that.

Just as an aside: the various epic pool's energy torrent is only .67 knockback by default, so knockdown in almost all cases. I take it often on my scrappers and controllers, never had to worry about knockback.

Agreed on provoke and I would go ahead and try that switch. I was never a fan of that playstyle, but I think it has fallen out of favor for MM's generally. I'm sure some people still do it, but I don't hear it talked about nearly as much as it used to be. Demons are one of the tankier sets from my experience anyway. Once you have all the resistance from the pet special IO's and the resistance that pain gives along with their own resistance, and combined with some healing, they should be pretty sturdy. I was going to suggest diamagnetic interface as my usual goto for even more tanky-ness (pets can give everything -20% tohit with it pretty quick, which means still about -10% even against +4's), but I see you went paralytic. It's damage debuff might work out to be just as good. Might want to eventually try both and see if one works out better than the other.

I'm actually surprised by how many didn't seem to know pet attacks benefited. Don't really even need to dig into combat logs as the most common interface choices have pretty obvious graphic effects on enemies when they trigger. But I guess you have to actually play a pet class (and probably solo at that), to notice and know for sure it is the pet doing it.

Also, this is also a powerset that greatly benefits from the supergroup base buff. +20% recharge for 90 minutes at a time for 3 cheap piece of salvage. I tend to almost always have it going (store some stacks of the 3 pieces of salvage you need in a salvage rack right next to the buff table makes it very easy and quick). Illusion controllers and doms live for that recharge and that base buff helps a ton. If you are rich you can also keep the P2W buff going for another +15%. That and some purple sets and taking into consideration that when exemping you have PA available at level 13 you still have them up a decent amount of time and there isn't much to do under level 13 anyway.

Done a lot of illusion controllers and for the pets I've gotten it down pretty standard I always end up doing no matter the secondary: Phantom Army: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, E/D/R), Soulbound (D/R+5, BU Proc). Gives you 95%+ damage and recharge and 74% accuracy, and the BU proc procs a ton on the army, sometimes even double stacking Phantasm: 4 ExpReinforcement (A/D, A/D/R, A/R, D/E), Overwhelming force (D/KB to KD), Explosive Strike Proc . 95%+ damage, 74% accuracy, and stops the annoying knockback. And of course the nice extra +recharge from the ExpRef sets. Spectral Wounds I end up doing 5 Apocalypse and a proc. The enhanced portion of the damage doesn't heal back and you still get 2 procs out of it. Terror is fine with the 4 cloud senses. Some people put dark watcher there, but if you look at its cloak of fear stats it actually has bad base accuracy so I think it really does need the accuracy. Some also put procs there, don't think I've ever bothered. I always 6 slot deceive with the full purple set, set bonuses are just too good. Deceive I find is really good for when you do exemp down. After the lower levels it becomes more situational but I still use it often enough (use it on certain mobs like ff gens, sorcs, sappers, etc.) You can go either way with blind really, depends what you feel you need. I had arcane bolt from sorcery on mine for another attack, so went with control enhancing for blind. I always skip flash on an illusion controller, the aoe holds aren't great on a controller period and flash is literally the worst of them all (both being pbaoe and an over 3 second animation time). I could see taking it for a mule, but that'd be its only use for me. Another option for HT is to just put the one stun purple in it and +5 it. Gets you about 66% stun enhance with just one slot. Or use the stun/recharge +5 and a regular recharge +5, still gets you to 91% recharge and 42% stun with the same 2 slots.

I assume you've long ago already found some options to try, but going to put my 2 cents in anyway. Bots are definitely a good option as others have mentioned. However, another option that I've recently started and I'm finding good for general play and also pretty good at taking down tougher stuff is a beam rifle sentinel. Damage is good now with the sent revamp and it is very survivable. It also does open up early. Beam specifically as you mentioned AV hunting (something I also enjoy) because it gets decent -regen (-225% worth) as early as level 6, earlier that even most of the debuff sets. People often say "just use envenomed daggers", but I don't like to have to depend on them, and secondly you can still use daggers to add even more -regen, so I still find it a plus to just have some as part of your powerset directly. Probably the biggest downside are the sound effects (more pew pew and less buzzing sounds would have been better), but I can look past that. There are other sets with sounds that bother me much more. And if you are really desperate there are sound mods.

Yeah, thanks for letting me know /showtime exists, sounds pretty cool. I was happy when they added /citytime as well. Not to highjack, but /playtime would be also be a nice one (assuming they haven't already snuck it in as well). Something that shows how long you've played the current character so that I don't have to seek out an NPC to click on who's name starts with an M to get the info. I get curious sometimes as to how long it takes to reach certain goals on each character, and obviously the info already exists. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Civilian_NPCs

Radiation infection is another classic power to use them in. Tohit debuff, defense debuff, and endurance reduction all in one.

Trying to guess at motives here, but I guess the goal was to encourage taking the swap ammo power more? I didn't know that was even a concern. How many people actually skipped it? IMO the better way to have gone, assuming that was the goal, was to just slightly upgrade standard ammo somehow if you take the swap ammo power. Standard now becomes "armor piercing" or something. Considering you are sticking with all lethal, it could have used a slight upgrade to keep up with the other types anyway. Instead it is made even more inferior and you are even more encouraged to abandon it entirely now. Agree that it is unfortunate to see.