Justisaur

I too started up a grav/time a bit ago, I haven't played it that much, but it's one that's often on my mind. I had a hell of an experience at low level (early teens?) running missions as leader starting with just a blaster and I think a scrapper and me. There was a lot of dying by the blaster of course, I was probably about tied with the scrapper, maybe slightly ahead. I was kind of ghetto controlling single target cycling controls lift, propel, and gravity distortion trying to keep the incoming damage down, I hadn't picked up my heal because I wanted all the attack powers first. After I remembered between missions I picked up my heal and tried to heal the blaster, but she just liked to zip around and get killed, still I managed to help a little with that. I finally filled out the group and somehow found myself last one standing against either an EB or an AV Skull and I couldn't hold him so it was time crawl, and that really messed him up, and I was able to slowly whittle him down, run away and rest, get up and repeat when time crawl wore off. That felt impossibly great for such a low level!

From the patch notes, red mine: Martial Assault: Shuriken Throw: Was doing less damage than intended. This has now been fixed. Thunder Kick: Recharge increased to 7 seconds. Damage increased to 86.4. Spinning Kick: Recharge increased to 10 seconds. Damage increased to 78.4. Envenomed Blades procs now ignores damage buffs and enhancements Will this make Marital Assault no longer good?

The prices of things have mostly dried up, it's small margins on most things now. The only thing I've seen hold it's price are LotGs and most of the defense and resist ones, it's not really worth trying to convert to only those though. Converters have come down though, so if you're buying them I've seen them as low as 77k, so that helps the margins a bit. I'm still making money, I think, but it's a lot more time to make much any more. I'm thinking of taking up farming myself, but I can do marketing when I'm waiting for a team to fill out, especially after I bought the P2W crafting table.

Perhaps he's seeing the dot from Insight on Mass Levitate and thinking it came from GPB or got the two confused?

TL:DR = For fire dot take T3 Total Radial Conversion - or -take Degenerative Core for -hp, resist & regen. Everything else is broken. Everything's broken, just some things are less broken than others, and some of the broken is more that the actual proc is nearly worthless or worthless compared to other procs. The first number is checked, if it fails you don't get a chance at the second effect. So core with most is somewhat working as with Reactive you get 75% chance of -2.5% resist. Then if that succeeds you get 25% chance of the fire dot (really 18.75% since the -resist has to hit) (Edit - see my later post, even 75% is procing more like 50% so the numbers are all off and probably lower than what I stated in this thread) Radial doesn't really work as you have a 25% of -resist then if that procs you get a 75% chance of the fire dot (18.75% so the same as core, just with less -resist) So it's objectively worse than Core. Either way -2.5% resist isn't much for either, max of -10% total, but I believe that's still resisted by AVs, so you're really only getting -1.5% or less resist on them. (Edit: -resist should work at full against AVs since procs are cast by the target on themselves apparently.) Oddly if you just want the dot, you're better off with the T3 Total Radial Conversion as that just has a 75% chance, so doesn't need to check for the -resist first, of course that would need testing to make sure it's not 0%. I'd definitely be interested in that, though of far less use on teams. (edit: post below - procs about 50%) Same goes for Degenerative really, you want the Core, as Radial still gives you the same chance of toxic dot with 1/3 the chance of the -hp. However my understanding is the -1000 hp isn't resisted by AVs, so you can get -4000 hp, and that also affects what you need to kill them as well as their regen, or in the case of EBs or lower you can get up to -14% hp, which is better than -resist as it does the same thing as -resist but also lowers their regen and % based healing and is a higher number. Unfortunately everybody and their brother probably took Degenerative, and I think it's 4 stacks total, so that's going to be maxed out real quick on most teams, but is good for solo. Diamagnetic core would be better since it has a 100% chance of the -5% to hit, however it also only gives a piddling 15% -regen which on an AV is going to be -1% or less, (Edit: again procs aren't resisted even by AVs, I'm not sure how effective even 4 stacks at -60% is going to be though) and doesn't matter on anything else except GMs, and just how often do you fight GMs? -to hit might be nice, but almost everyone at incarnate levels is already at defense caps, if you aren't then Diamagnetic is probably better for you. Cognitive and Spectral are really broken because of that 25% or lower on the top number and no option without that number. Their effects are too short to stack to affect bosses too and on average you'd have to somehow get 8 attacks in less than 4 seconds to stack an immob or confuse with them, they may be barely infintesimally useful if you already have immobs or confuses that you want a chance of stacking occasionally. The other ones are really only useful if you think what they provide on that first number is worth something, but I don't see any that look of any interest to me.

😄 I noticed the % numbers on your thread in the MM are lower than what I've got, I assume that's because the way it's effectively 'rolled' on each chance, so yours would be correct on a binary 'did it proc' or not, so you won't actually have it as often as I stated, but since it apparently can have more than one up the overall effect on DPs should be the same - unless you're hitting damage caps. I'll agree with the damage cap being too low. I'm sure I'm usually capped if I'm on a team especially with a kin. Yeah I'm considering dropping Build Up now on my Bane, really I was already almost like 'aw man it's up, I'll work it in' as it feels like it's slowing me down a bit. I tend to VG a lot on teams to lead with, and the VG is for the -resist, which makes everyone hit harder, probably much more effect than wasting that second to cast Build Up on myself and perhaps missing enhancing other's first strike, or at least that's how it feels. I suppose it's still somewhat useful when I occasionally solo for first strikes - but then I have to remember to lead with pulverize or crowd control instead of VG, and VG probably gives me as much or more damage than Build Up from the -resist, or the rare instances when something's got shields and I actually can use the +to hit (but being in tactics would have the same or better effect if I'm on a team.) I can't believe I'm considering dropping Build Up, I never would've considered it before!

My bane's at 78% s/l resist, and it still feels overkill (you can see mine in the ultimate control/support bane thread) I've been thinking of shifting around some of the bonuses, but I still want the positionals, and it appears s/l comes with most of that. I can solo cysts in ITF if I burn a couple inspirations, and didn't die even on +4x8 ITFs doing that, the rest of the mobs are easy. I haven't tried herding on the mothership, but rikti aren't something I worry about, the things I worry about are hammy in LGTF, Knives, Tsoo and banished in DA higher than +0, and Rularuu in that one itrial (I forget what it's called.) There was some mob I ran into in a pickup group awakened or something, and carnies, I'm about 99% sure none of that is because of S/L.

Most of the interface are broken, degenerative seems to be one if not the only one that works right. ]

You can get different origin attacks though through P2W. I've taken to just choosing natural for just about everyone as anything else can be fit into it. Natural talent... with magic, naturally gets powers that would be considered mutations. etc.

Stalker Psi/ any number will work, my personal favorite is /ice as the -recharge stacks and it has very good defenses otherwise, it's the only secondary I tried on justin I could handle 54 rikti with. My first was a /ninj which is nice for the early heal, but found the set underpowered and most of the utilities useless otherwise. I tried a /bio which was quite good, much better than /ninj but no where near as good as /ice, I've heard it's great, but it requires some arcane knowledge of how to build I just don't have, and no one seems to be talking. I've also heard of good results with /ea /rad /sd /sr. /rad sound particularly interesting as it has an earlier PBAoE attack/debuff reasonably early (AoE is a bit lacking in /psi) and I have it on a brute and find it very sturdy, though the stalker version is missing the -to hit aura PBAoE which is concerning. /sd also has it's teleport AoE, but it's the last power, small area, small damage and can't crit. Psi/ is really good on a stalker because it has some very heavy attacks, which do huge damage when critting from hide. It does have issues with robots/tech based and a lot of AVs and bosses end game. If you're in a team your friends can deal with those targets while you deal with others - or ask for help or lower difficulty when you run across them which is what I did. Psi does have a few end game targets it really hurts which can be barely touched by others - Minotaurs & Cyclopses in ITF for instance, is supposedly goes through MoG like butter, I haven't tested it there yet, but it'd be fun to kill Valkyrie while she's otherwise untouchable. If you do go psi you definitely want to pick up some attacks from a patron or epic. I rather thought moonbeam the soul snipe was really fun with it and can crit from hide, and great if you're soloing to help overcome those resistances, since it's negative energy it will hurt most things pretty well. If you team you're probably better off with an aoe of some sort though. I've also seen it suggested to try to get cross-punch from the fighting pool for some more aoe / non-psi damage too, though I don't think you can crit with the regular pool attacks.

I have a bots/cold but only IOs I just slapped him together and he works fine, he's around 40, I stopped playing him because he's kinda boring, he probably does better than any of my other MMs were at that level, though. I did take repair so I'd be able to help keep my bots up, and I found taking one of the attacks useful as I otherwise had nothing else to do.

I played my Necro/Poison on live, but I only played him to the teens I think. It was much slower and harder than my other MMs, it could even be one of the worst characters I played. For all that I enjoyed playing him. It's better now as the powers have a half power (small) aoe, but really it's best for single tougher targets, and probably works better in teams that can get you to those harder targets. /kin is also fun as you end up with rage zombies, and works fairly well in teams, much better combo with necro than poison, you could always color it green and call it poison. I understand /dark works really well with necro, if you find /poison doesn't suit you, though I haven't tried that combo, you could also color /dark green.

I'm more partial to herring melee, ni assault, and shurbbery armor.

Pseudo-pets can't crit though, so that means no crits on electric's lightning rod, the jumps on chain induction, shield's shield charge, or leaping's spring attack (possibly others.) However none of those will break stealth since technically it's the pseudo-pet's attack, but they will alert enemies and they'll start attacking you which will break stealth if they hit.

The short of this is that Gausian's Chance for Build-Up has a 6.5% chance to proc in tactics every 10 seconds per member of your team including pets! A crabbermind with all his pets out solo would have a 45.5% chance to proc every 10 seconds! Throw in lore pets and you're up to 58.5%! Even a VEAT who teams the majority of time without pets may want to consider putting it in tactics too, as you get a 52% chance every 10 seconds on an 8 person team, higher if anyone else is bringing pets.

Small update, I haven't made much changes yet, I did change out lore from KoV to Banished Radial, and like that much better. I've soloed some DA arcs at +0x8 pretty fast which seems to give far better xp than trying to do AE. I also soloed Mender Silos arc at +2, which included soloing Statesman, Manticore and one of the girl supers all at once. Positron & Citadel (& someone else, forget who) actually gave me the most trouble, I had to kite them around and it took awhile to figure out to take out Posi first, then Citadel was a pushover. I could really see the effects of the -resists in those fights, I tried fighting one of the Heroes without bothering with the -resists as I figured just spamming my melee attacks with build up when up should do more damage, but it was barely doing anything, then I went to my normal teaming vs. av rotation of VG, AB, Pulverize & CC; surveillance and build-up when up and they went down much faster. Edit - Small Updatd #2: Changed out Alpha to Musculature, and Destiny to Ageless (still only T3s for everything, I could probalby get T4s but no rush) I decided to try soloing a pylon just out of curiosity, I didn't use Lore or Judgement or Inspirations, but did use Ageless and Assault. I kept forgetting to click Ageless so I'd run out of end, have to click it, back up and re-toggle all my toggles actually I think it was only twice. No deaths, The pylon only managed to hurt me a bit when my toggles all dropped, otherwise only a sliver of health ever, it took about 10 minutes, and went quicker the 2nd half when I got my rotation down pretty well. VG on auto, click arctic breath, surveilance and build up when up and spam pulverize and crowd control, and the odd bash when there was time. Doing a few missions, I also found I had to remember to click Ageless when it was up, and preferably turn off ninja run, which is a little QoL issue, and am considering going back to Cardiac just so I never have to remember to click Ageless again, or turn off Ninja Run. I ran some solo lower level missions, it was kind of weird, I pretty much just did VG and Crowd Control, I could put in a pulverize or bash here and there, but it didn't really seem to make any difference other than lowering my end faster since between the two AoEs everything would die, except bosses, so I'd just sit and wait for those - except bosses who'd I'd give the pulverize & bash treatment. I also saw VG actually proc the fear often enough and with the waiting saw it be effective, except I didn't care if they attacked me or not since I'm so sturdy, I'm pretty sure I'll put something else in there if I respec again. I'm sure I could make a better solo alt maling build using more huntsman attacks but it's not really worth the trouble or influence it'd require (maybe if I ever get around to making that crabbermind alt build)

Check out the huntsman thread for a decent 1-24 leveling build. I've got a 'cheap' build for my "ultimate control/support bane" as one of the posts in that thread, which is a good point to aim for once you get to bane. I actually kept the early ranged attacks for wolf up to at least 32 though, as you can be a bit lacking in bane attacks. The mace ranged attacks are bad, they do half the damage of the wolf ranged attacks, take those instead if you want more ranged. Unless you just want them for aesthetics. I made quite a lot of changes since then, and I'd definitely recommend picking up hasten which I don't have in the cheap build (I do in my current expensive build.) Tips: VEATS are support and jacks of all trades, banes can deal o.k. AoE (relying mostly on wolf powers and/or patron) and decent ST. They'll never be up to a blaster or stalker for pure damage, but they're far better support. Play them on teams and use your strengths of buffing, debuffing, and being tough while handing out some reasonable damage. Playstyle is pretty simple, just stay somewhere near everyone so they're all within your auras and do damage and/or debuff. You won't really feel like you're doing much until you see the team split, and your half is doing fine while the other half is all dead. You can run off after objectives while invis if others aren't doing that and the team agrees. Venom Grenade is a must and your bread and butter on teams and should be your first attack so that -resist lets everyone do more damage, until you've got cloaking device after which it's your highest damage attack against a boss or annoying lt, or Crowd Control once you have that. Don't worry about the animation time switching from mace to rifle or back, it just shifts the attack to later in the animation, it doesn't actually take any more time - I tested this and posted about it in another thread here. It feels like it's taking longer but it really isn't. Double maneuvers is a must, just for your own defense. Double assault I'm on the fence on, it's probably good leveling, but may not be worth the end costs, at least you can always turn off the second assault and/or tactics for a bit - which I often did when eating too much end. I found WAWG and tactics were great leveling, but they dropped off to useless once I had my sets, even exemplared, so dropped those. Tough and weave are nearly musts but can wait until later in your career, or when you respec out of some of those other things above. Placate and Shatter are questionable, Shatter takes too long and stuff's typically dead on teams before it hits, and Pulverize has higher DPA, you probably want to take it until you have enough recharge to chain Pulverize, Crowd Control and Bash. Placate is even more questionable, as it's only a 50% increase in damage on one bane only attack (25% average on CC) and like Shatter I often found leading with it on a new target meant things were dead, and hitting a different power would've done more damage. I'd definitely recommend the pets. They tend to die a lot on +4 but they're still quite useful for cleanup, and teaming up on AVs, and very useful when you get them for leveling. I'm on the fence on web cocoon and surveillance, but they're both of some use especially on ebs/avs, and web coccoon gets you some nice set bonuses. For initial slotting, mostly slot your favorite attacks up, 1 accuracy will be enough, perhaps even overkill if you've got both tactics, as your bane attacks all have 1.05 base accuracy, you could consider frankenslotting a cheap uncommon acc/end or something since you won't even need a full accuracy enhancement. A couple damage and recharge, and you'll want a couple end reductions as you'll be using a lot of end with your toggles up. I went cardiac alpha for that reason, end was pretty difficult to deal with before that, even with sets, I plan to try out musc & agility instead to see if that'll work for me instead and get me a little more damage, but my bane is on the back burner for now as I can't see any more changes besides that that would improve her, though she's still my favorite.

I'll just note since it didn't appear clear in the responses: When you convert out of set by rarity you only get an enhancement of the same level, so you can't get a LotG if you're using an enhancement that's below level 25 since LotGs are from 25-50.

It's funny, but I've looked at that over and over, trying to figure out thwat that was - an orca with some weird skin while she's standing over a pool of blood, a wrecked airplane? Now that you said car it came into focus.

Banished core has the most damage according to that sheet I linked, it also has loads of -resist which will make your damage considerably more if it stays alive.

NB is good, it's got a good deal of small aoe, but you need them packed tight. It's fairly fast too. I'd imagine it'd work best on a team with a tanker who can get all the mobs piled up in a small space for you to cut down. Any of the usual suspects should be fine for secondary - ea, sr, bio, etc.

Psi/Ice, the -recharge stacks from both sets, so stuff you're actually fighting if it survives the psi barely attacks. Psi hits really hard as long as you don't run up against resistant mobs, I hate that, but I just love the way psi looks and when it does work it's great.

Banished invuln has a rain it uses, it's a debuff with minor damage, but it's pretty big and seems to be able to gather up quite a mob when solo. Now there was another thread that had a link to all the powers/effects. I was wrong about the -resist though, all the -resists on banished are only from the boss, who dies on +4x8 almost immediately, the debuff from the invuln pet is only -6% damage, not something I care much about. It does have regen, recovery, recharge buff though, the recharge may be more useful than +dam depending if your build can use it. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tmuk9Jf-NxhSE2P1RB6wRtn-qUDvwqpV_10B9QAAinE/edit#gid=0 Looking over those I can see why longbow is so well regarded, the boss has a -500% regen for 30s with a 10s cooldown so it could stack up to -1500% regen, and the support has fast single target and area heals which could help keep the boss alive. Not really all that useful for farming, but great if you're fighting AVs. The Knives support has 2 +30% damage, but both are up only aobut 1/3rd the time, and it gives recovery & regen too, not a bad choice, but I wasn't really feeling it and she looks like a dirty bird.

Then I got combat jumping, now I'm really hopping mad.

Resistance and defense both work better when near or at caps because unlike almost everything else they have increasing returns. They're worth practically nothing when low, focus on one or the other, whichever is easier/stacks with what you get from your powers until near or at caps. It's however easier to get defense if you have neither, and easier to get defense that covers more. Regen works best with resistance as you can recover more easily from more steady small hits with small heals (regen) than you can with occasional big hits that may occur in quick succession that overwhelms your hp/regen pool. If you don't have either good defense or resistances regen isn't going to do much, unless you have giant oodles of it and some other way to mitigate incoming damage such as controls or someone else taking agro and alpha strikes.