Coyote

Fire Controllers are terrible on Endurance until you get a way to solve it with the secondary. Fortunately, Dark gets the solution at level 28 rather than waiting for Transference or Heat Absorption.

You can do Incarnate Trial missions through the AE? Or is this specific to the Siege BAF mission?

It comes from the unspoken assumptions about the type of characters that the posters are talking about. Dominators can't compete with Blasters. Without a top-shelf, expensive build, or a really good player who can rotate Domination, Hasten, and Power UP for each fight. But with a great build or really good gameplay, they can do very well. But often that's not the situation that the complaining poster is talking about. Non-Blaster ATs are doing too much damage. If you know how to make some really tight builds, leverage extra damage out of IOs while minimizing the defensive losses of set bonuses, and play a high-defense character like a Tank or a Time Manipulation Defender as examples. Nobody is arguing that an Empathy/Electric Defender is doing OMGWTFbbQ damage as the reason why damage procs make low-damage characters into BlasterBeaters(tm). It's about the examples that people are arguing over. Top end builds, or average? SOs or IOs? Specific sets or generally applicable to everyone in an AT. Most posters have some limitations in the situations that they complain about, but don't take the time to clarify exactly what they are, and what they are not, complaining about. Oh, and nerf TW

Two things: 1) I only assume about 3-4 stacks of TG, but that's 60%. However, Dark Servant stacks his own TG for almost 2 stacks, and runs his own Darkest Night for another 30%. So he puts out about 50%. You can get around 100% more easily out of Dark Affinity without spending as much animation time. 2) However, you also get the bonus from having Tar Patch's -Resist, which boosts the effects of -Damage. So if you average -30% Resist from Tar Patch (average stacking, though you can probably do better), then you're up to about -130% from Dark Affinity. Note, BTW, that I think Fulcrum Shift's debuff will stack and you can probably average -30% out of it over the long run. But with the -Resist, Dark is still ahead a bit, and it's far more efficient because spamming Twilight Grasp also adds -Regen (same values as Transfusion, as I recall). It's hard for Kinetics to spam Transfusion for the -Regen, Siphon Power, keep up with Siphon Speed and Fulcrum Shift, run Transference once in a while, and still manage to attack. But that's another topic, to be fair... on the topic of -Damage, I still hold with Dark.

I find Synapse to be an OK TF to respec back to at 50... kill alls are a lot less annoying when you're effectively farming for Incarnate Threads on your way to a Notice of the Well. It is really annoying on the way up, though. The Shadow Shard TFs are some amazing zones, but as TFs their design is like deliberately the worst way you could design TFs. And it was because at the time, the thinking was that you needed to provide long, grindy end-game team content in order to keep grind-oriented players interested. Nowadays we see that players much prefer shorter TFs with fewer missions and interesting unique maps/end fights, but at the time, people were complaining that there wasn't enough content for 30-40 and then for 40-50 characters, so they put in content that was long, repetitive, and grindy.... thinking that this was what the players would be happy with. Boy, was it the wrong choice, heh. Usually I'm an apologetic for the Dev team since I've been there, but this... there's nothing good that can be said for the TFs except maybe a bit about the story. And frankly, even there it's not the hotness.

Regeneration is a very click-oriented defense set, and not only reactive clicks. For example, I had a Regen character who had planned a "defense rotation" mix of IH, MoG, Melee Hybrid, and Shadow Meld to fill holes. All my other melee characters just toggled armors on, and occasionally ran a self-heal... but the self-heal was reactionary to attacks. I never worried about what defensive rotation of powers I would use to have some kind of varying improvement to my baseline survival, on other armor sets. And that's without even counting in Dull Pain and Reconstruction, which were reactionary. Running a defensive rotation side by side with an offensive rotation made things much more complex, which made it more interesting for me than Invuln or Willpower: toggle up and don't forget to hit Dull Pain when it recharges. Dark Armor is very oriented on enemy position. Not only for the self-heal, but also for Stunning the enemies with OG. And if you add in stun effects from the primary, you can keep Bosses stunned. But this means that you have to chase them around. While this happened at times with melee characters with Stuns from the primary like Stone or Energy Melee, having so many dazed enemies staggering around (and depending on that as a major part of damage mitigation) played very differently than the usual "I plant my flag HERE, Taunt you all, and all of you come and Burn" of a lot of other melee characters. I also like it more because it requires paying more attention to mob positioning than just throwing out a Taunt and expecting the mobs to self-arrange around me for the beat-down.

Storm and Traps are different. Illusion Control, Mind Control. Psy Melee, Stone Melee. Dark Armor, Regeneration. Psy Assault, Savage Assault. Electric Blast. These have some differences in how they play versus how other sets of the same type play. Usually large differences.

It is because some people think that the role of a Sentinel is the same as that of other characters: Defeat your opponents, survive, complete the mission successfully. And others think that characters should have a specific role on a team... buff, debuff, damage, tank, control, etc. The former like Sentinels because they do the overall job well. The latter dislike Sentinels because they do specific jobs poorly.

Yes, but with Web Grenade you can keep the AV in the gas, which lasts for 30 seconds. So you end up with a 40 second total debuff if you keep the AV there. And often they won't move due to fighting with PA, in any case... you just need to stack 2 Web Grenades in the last 10 seconds of a PA's duration to keep them from moving when you switch PAs. So it's basically permanent Regeneration shut-down. Acid Mortar is destroyable, true, but you keep it a distance away from the PAs and it won't get shot at. With a 60' range or so, it can easily avoid damage, you just have to move in for Poison Gas and out for the Mortar. It's a bit annoying, but with CJ you can jump-shoot Blind or SW while you're changing distances and not lose much damage.

Hehe, if I were younger, I would... now I don't have the time to devote to these kinds of efforts. Doing a weekly TF for a Notice of the Well is probably as much as I can manage on most weeks 😞 That's why I'm a lot more theory than practice 😞

Fire/Dark is my vote. It's by far the strongest defensively, and it's still decent on offense with a good -Resist power. Against AVs it has good -Regen and the best -Damage in the game (well, tied with Dark Miasma, but that's almost the same set). It works pretty well early, and while you have to wait to get your +Recovery power, you wait even longer with Cold and Kin.

Agreed, that's one's terrible. Is that the one where he sends you to a monument to translate a verse... one monument at a time? I was like "just give me the coordinates for all of the monuments and I'll get them in one fly-by around the zone". That's what anyone with half a brain would do, but no... he's supposed to be smart, so's my character, but instead we do this idiocy. And I have to waste my time killing some random Rularuu in the area just so they don't see me or something? Again, a waste of time that isn't relevant to the story. It's long enough without introducing useless time sinks 😞 I also hate the Saga of Ruladak the Strong, largely because of the final map. I hate settings that block my sight, and the dust in that cave is set so strong that you can barely see the ground more than a couple steps away. You can't even see Ruladak if you're a ranged character, just an outline cause by his energy shield, you can't tell distances because you can't see the walls, etc. It takes what should be an epic fight into mindless button mashing because I couldn't actually see the fight. Having a 30' tall AV in a 40' cave isn't very helpful, either... he's so tall that you want to be above him to see him, but that's hard to manage.

Poison Trap does take a while to activate unfortunately, but it's -1000% Regeneration for 40 seconds (30 for the gas, 10 second duration after leaving the gas). So it does shut down regeneration quite well. Acid Mortar is only 20% -Resist, but it lasts 60 seconds with a 90 second base recharge, so it has good stackability. And with a 7.5 second cycle time and only 8' radius, it has a much better chance to proc two -Res procs on a target than Sleet. Overall, I can see the set being a bit slow on a whole TF where you have to go spawn to spawn for a lot of spawns, but for one single fight it should be the best available. Well, except for not having -Special to lower healing, but if constant damage interrupts Khan's Dull Pain cycle, then that's even better.

Why not try Illusion/Traps? Best -Regen in the game, an Immobilize to keep him from moving around, and Caltrops to do constant ticks of damage. Also stackable -Resist from Acid Mortar (but it can be defeated, so I'm not sure it'll survive near him for long even if he's focused on PA). But you can drop Mortar 20' away, then go into short range to drop Poison Trap, then back up to help DPS.

Wait for it, I think it's about to finish the animation!

They don't F with the enemy? What do they do, just Tab with them? 😄

Wait, more use for my Controllers and Doms on a team? Make m0r3 pr0c builds, kthx.

Also, to add, they INDIRECTLY affect all of your pets (including pets from other sources). What they DIRECTLY do is to give YOU an aura (40' radius, I think), that acts kind of like Tactics and so on (except that mezzing doesn't interrupt it, so it's more like your Supremacy aura that gives them a to-hit and damage bonus, but with a smaller radius). If you're Phased, they don't get the benefit, and I think that it might be limited to LOS, but I'm not sure about that last.

Not even close, the recharge is 600 like RoP but the duration is only 90 seconds instead of 60. So you can get RoP up about 50% of the time, but UP only about 1/3 of the time.

They get slotted into the MM pet summons powers: The last two IOs for the Demon Prince are Edict of the Master and Call to Arms unique IOs. They can be similarly slotted into all MM summons including temporary ones like Gang War.

if I used Boggle against an AV, and I don't think that this really applies in all of the TFs because of where the AVs are spawned, I'd be alternating targets, and keeping a Boss Confused. Then the question becomes whether the Boss puts out enough DPS to make up for the loss of personal DPS. Also, it would be replacing a filler attack rather than AS-GreaterPsyBlade, so it wouldn't be taking 23% of the average DPS, but 23% of, say, TK Blow's DPA. Another option might be to find a debuffing minion or LT, and Confuse that one, and then use Boggle a lot less. If the debuffs are right, it could be a benefit.

Hold on a second before you pile too much on @Hjarki... the conversation started with the topic of Stalkers soloing. He added his opinion that the special tools from Psy/Nin are useful in some situations for soloing (for the record, I agree). THEN, the situation was introduced regarding soloing the TFs with forced Level 54 AVs... and it was claimed that Boggle and Blinding Powder are not useful. But that's in the context of THIS specific edge case. Hjarki continued to argue that Boggle, BP, and other side powers (Oppressive Gloom as an example) are useful powers. He didn't say "other than in these TFs", but neither did he say "in these TFs". So it's possible that there is a bit of discontinuity in the conversation, where different sides are making argument about different situations, not different opinions regarding the same situation That's actually why I came in with a joke, because the separation seemed obvious to me... I also agree that Boggle is a great power for leveling when it's useful to turn a buffing/debuffing LT on your side. And I agree that it's basically useless in these TFs, other than Contagious Confusion having great set bonuses (though not for every defensive set). So I agree with everyone (because I'm that agreeable :D), and I think the disagreements are a matter of venue for soloing.

Even with procs, the damage from Crushing field is extremely mediocre. If you want AoE damage, do this instead: 1: drop one power. I'd suggest Snow Storm (with an AoE Immob, why are targets moving?) 2: move Tactics up, and get Frost Breath. Remove enough slots from Crushing Field so you can 6-slot Frost Breath. 2.1: slot Frost Breath with max damage procs, and then Centrioles. Look at the damage in Mid's and shed tears of joy. Then use Wormhole and Freezing Rain, and breathe on the mobs before they scatter, and those tears will turn into ice-cold diamonds of exhilaration. Especially when you follow up with Ice Storm and basically 2-shot everything but the Bosses. 3: Throw Tornado and LS at the Bosses while using Gravity's single-target damage. NOW you're a hovering, freezing, death machine 😉 Yes, you should run a completely different build for AV soloing. For teaming against AVs, this should be fine... you have Freezing Rain, you can Immobilize them, you have good Recharge, and you can add some ST damage. On teams you shouldn't need high personal defenses. For soloing AVs, you will need personal defenses, but you won't need powers like O2 Boost and since you can use your normal build to get to the mission you can drop Fly/Afterburner and make room for the Fighting pool.

This seems closer to accurate if sticking only to the primaries. Because there are certainly secondaries that do affect damage significantly. Especially for AoE, but even in single-target damage, there is a lot of difference between /Bio and /Willpower.

The idea that someone can't offer arguments without having done a specific task with a specific build (and, perhaps, being subject to shifting goalposts like difficulty setting) just Boggles my mind. So, you see... there IS a use for Boggle in a high-pressure posting environment 😉 😄