tidge
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Posts posted by tidge
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What is the current breakdown of Defenders at level 50 versus Blasters at level 50?
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40 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:
Farming for drops is just kinda a waste of time. The lost influence difference doesn't make up for the difference in clear time and thus drop rate.
I was thinking that the hypothetical AFK Mastermind Farmer would be possible (even if not lucrative) by turning down the difficulty on enemies.
40 minutes ago, Mr. Vee said:any mob 47+ can drop a purple. but yeah bad idea all around for the reasons already listed.
Exposing my ignorance, but I'm not sure if a 50(+1) character still gets Inf from a level 47 enemy or not. I do know that it is necessary to earn XP from a defeat in order to get a recipe/salvage/enhancement drop. I'm pretty sure the lowest level character I had that got a purple recipe drop was lvl 47, doing Unai Kemen missions at standard (enemy level +0) difficulty.
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1 hour ago, TheSpiritFox said:
Most MM sets won't survive in a farm unless the farm is a normal like 1 group at a time outdoor map or you're not running at max (and why farm at all if you're not running at max?)
While I agree 100% that MMs would make terrible AFK farmers if the reason for farming is recipe drops and not Inf, it makes no difference between lvl 50 and lvl 53 enemies. As far as very rare (purple, not PVP) recipe drops, you might be able to run a farm as low as level 48 and still get one but I don't know that to be true (I have no experience with farming such content).
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15 hours ago, Darmian said:
For now @cranebump's suggestion is as near as you're going to get it. Other than that you're looking at a customizable MM wish list thing!
Perhaps not... exactly... the only way to come close to the OP request.
We have seen in several missions that 'duplicates' of the player (or entire team) at mission instancing appear as enemies, perhaps a slight step in the requested direction would be to have a mission where the duplicate of the mission holder (or team) appear as Pets/Allies instead?
It certainly isn't going to pull characters from the database that aren't in the mission (upon instance) but it would a nice change of pace.
I'll add this: on some of the missions where a duplicate of your character appears, I've changed (mid-mission) my build and costume to take them down with the alternate build... which is why this feels a little bit like getting other characters from my own personal roster.
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Where did all the accuracy on Seismic Smash come from?
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I don't power-level my characters, although I will make use of double-XP for ATs with similar power-sets that I have played before... such 'near duplicates' have been slight tweaks on other characters, so I don't feel the need to take leveling particularly slow.
On all my characters I try to get as close to completing the respective accolades before level 50. In certain cases, I'll take things slow to avoid out-leveling certain content. I'll use Ouroborous and join PUGs as necessary for certain tasks. I enjoy playing with PUGs, but watching my XP can become a chore!
At level 50, I typically embrace PUGs. I prefer content below level 45... my character is almost always slotted the way I want and Incarnates aren't a thing. I have the set bonuses I want and I'll have the powers I want for all lower-level content.
I will almost always slot the Alpha (eventually to +1) but on about half my characters with many dozens of veteran levels I don't bother with other Incarnates unless the mood strikes me. If I feel like doing Incarnate content I'll pick up the other two level shifts, but usually I am in no hurry.
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2 hours ago, Gentoo said:
Why must we always fight??? WHY WILL THEY NEVER REASON?!
You do know I'm an incarnate, right?
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13 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:
Yeah I don't deal with advanced IOs until 50. Until then it's just common IOs, SOs and regular set IOs.
I seriously doubt most players are dealing with ATOs until much later in their superhero/villian career.
I can only speak for myself, but until around level 30, I don't have the SLOTS or set bonuses to franken-slot attacks (or controls) to get reliable uber-offense from anything other than non-%proc pieces. I will however, typically try to leverage at least one ATO set.
Are some folks considering the 5 P2W 'universal damage' %procs that conk-out in the 20s to be part of the 'problem'?
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2 hours ago, Apparition said:
Slotting one or two damage procs in attacks isn't what's happening though. There are Defender builds where most attacks are slotted almost entirely with damage procs, and thanks to the higher Defender defense numbers from the primary and pool powers still remain at or above the defense softcap and have very high global recharge so there's no real sacrifice nor compromise made. This allows them to both have higher defenses than a Blaster, and have nearly equivalent damage. There's no real justification for that, IMO.
I'm not ignorant of putting many %damage procs in powers for low-damage scale ATs, I do it myself on some builds. Those builds end up sacrificing something, and typically do not sustain the damage numbers of a DPS for lower endurance costs at the same accuracy.
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42 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:
I can understand why people would think procs aren’t ok right now, but it’s not like they don’t come with a sizeable cost. Good luck slotting ~25 damage procs and all the other goodies AND playing the high +recharge + soft capped defense forum meta all on the same build.
(Proc monster tanks are an outlier to this statement here since they can’t exactly be squishy)
I agree. There are compromises (for all AT) to be made when choosing to slot %procs: It could be sacrificing Global +Recharge or +Accuracy or Endurance (MaxEnd, Recovery, Discounts)... It's just my suspicion, but sacrificing those sorts of common (and useful!) set bonuses for more %damage dice rolls is often covered by Incarnate choices... and I don't think anyone should be considering balancing the ATs with Incarnates (or Accolades) in mind.
I don't think it is worth getting upset because an inherently-low DPS AT has the capability to 5-slot a Very Rare set (with a %damage) and then add a sixth slot with another %damage.
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3 hours ago, CaptTastic said:
Reading this thread it appears many are suggesting Dominators are changed simply because they don’t personally like playing them. I find that odd.
Well written. I'm even more perplexed by posts along the lines of "I mostly play Dominators but I wish they were more like other ATs".
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42 minutes ago, Rejolt said:
We need more options for ATO, VR and Winter Set bonuses and procs.
I can only support this in specific ways:
- There are a handful of sets (e.g. Fear, Taunt) that have neither PVP or Very Rare enhancement sets that could use some love.
- Some specific ATO pieces are lackluster, or only have the ability to be slotted in relative few powers (ehem, Masterminds)
Specifically for Dominators, I don't think this request scales particularly well, because (generally):
- Dominators want Global +Recharge before all else, and (after LotG) many-piece set bonuses are key to perma-domination... so in general there aren't going to be many places to put %procs.
- Many %procs are extra control effects... which Dominators don't really need.
Of course I am ignoring %damage procs, but again... because of the chasing of set bonuses do we really need more %damage? A pure Hold already has the option to slot seven different %procs!
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I have reviewed the data in the OP:
On 1/22/2021 at 12:36 AM, Galaxy Brain said:The AH is cross-shard, so looking into active bids on commonly sought-after IO's can give us an *idea* of how popular the IO system is, if we try and correlate 1 bid per player:
*LotG I divided by 5 as folks usually try to buy as many as they can
I could add more and more, but in my experience these are some of the most commonly slotted IO's across many builds...
It conclusively proves that I need more Auction House slots to satisfy all of these eager customers.
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The last few times I used Windfall, I was unimpressed with it. The scenario:
- level 50+ character (the test character had a +3 level shift, but drops are independent of level as long as there is XP)
- running Heather Townshend's Dark Astoria 1 arc (via Ouroboros) at +0/x8, defeat everything.
- The character did have 'patrol XP' to burn, but not a massive amount.
- The only 'reject' option chosen from P2W was on resurrection (my choice) and dual/team (default) inspirations.
Recipe drops are how I evaluate runs on this arc. On average, the arc takes my DPS characters (with some AoE) 30 minutes to clear all 4 missions. Two runs back-to-back will almost always result in a Very Rare or PVP drop. I vendor the common recipes (~100K each), craft the uncommons, and I have an ad hoc approach to the rares (I do various things, trying to avoid taking up space in personal inventory).
I saw no noticeable changes to recipe drops after using Windfall. I used Windfall on three different days. The volume of recipe drops was not noticeably different, nor was the ratio of drops. From the three tries, I only got 1 PVP (no Purple) recipes which is reasonable for 'standard' (non-Windfall) runs. I can't say anything specifically about Salvage drops. I often get around 5 rare salvage drops from such a run, but I don't pay that much attention. I didn't notice my salvage filling up any faster.
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Ultimately "expense" is a very nebulous concept. Any player's first character should be the most 'expensive', but any level 50 can run content with regular IOs (which have an expense, but can be bought on the AH for relatively cheap prices) quickly for both merits and recipe/salvage drops (as well as raw Inf), and those can be used to either (a) build more wealth or (b) used directly on the character. Builds can look 'expensive' but only if you look at a level 50+ build with full suites of enhancements and imagine that you magically appear as a level 50 with nothing but a shopping list.
If the level 50 happens to be capable of much DPS against many enemy targets, there is a LOT of content across all levels that can be 'turned up' to x8 for even more drops/inf. Merit rewards will stay the same.
There are many guides to 'making bank', and there are many different paths to take. These days I start all of my new characters with 200 MInf (although practice shows I could start with much less) to buy P2W items and whatever enhancement pieces I want that haven't been squirreled away in the SG base. As the character levels, I use the market to make back the money spent, so from my PoV most every build 'costs' between 100M to 200M, but it's all made back (and then some) by level 50 with no sweat.
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My character item tab is where I keep a lot of materials for account use. The most 'grabbed' items tend to be unslotters, converters, and merits; it's the newer/low-level characters that make the most use of them. I used to treat catalysts this way, but extras tend to accumulate in SG storage. I did recently burn through Brainstorms, just to make a dent in some of the rare recipes characters had been carrying around.
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The Penny Yin TF occupies a real sweet spot, IMO:
- It's at the level range where ATs have begun to distinguish themselves (by use of their primary/secondary)
- It's at the level range where those who exemplar should still have most of their set bonuses from enhancements
- The missions themselves are "defeat most" (or "defeat necessary", as opposed to "defeat all")
- The maps are well-chosen. I especially like instanced 'outdoor zone' maps, the only map I dislike (by only a small measure) is the final room of mission 2 when Freaks scatter behind terrain.
- It scales for a nice challenge, even mid-mission (because you can always aggro MOAR enemies than you strictly need to defeat)
- Minimal cut scenes, travel between missions is straightforward.
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3 hours ago, Machariel said:
I would definitely like to see improvements in one regard:
Their ATO sets!
Ascendancy of the Dominator is probably OK as is. On one hand it has insanely useful set bonuses when 6 slotted (10% rech and 5% ranged def!) and a lot of the sets that fit into control powers are pretty gross so it's nice to have a set that can fit anywhere. On the other hand, I've never been a big fan of the stacking +damage bonus, because I'm usually not spamming control powers that aren't slotted for damage, if at all. The +damage proc doesn't jive well when it's in control powers that only get used once or twice per fight (Seeds of Confusion, Wormhole etc).
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that +Damage (global) bonuses from enhancement sets only apply to the base damage of all damaging powers, and not the enhanced damage of (all) powers. I'm reasonably certain that and +Damage bonuses don't apply to %damage from procs.
If so, it wouldn't matter if you slot your powers for damage or not.
My apologies if you are specifically referring to the single piece of Ascendancy of the Dominator that provides Recharge/%+Damage. IIRC the Superior version has something like a 6 PPM chance. Even with the uber recharge you are getting from the entire set (97%) if you drop it into a 90 second mez AoE you should get a semi-reliable chance for it to fire. I have the set 6-slotted in my T6 (lvl 12) AoE Mez, and that suits me pretty well when exemplared down.
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5 hours ago, Mezmera said:
Being a Dom main for a long time now I'll chime in here. Leave domination as it is, it's been tinkered with already, this ability is what sets it aside from other easy to play zombie AT's. It's too hard for you and you have problems grasping how to make a good dom and are unable to get a good feel for it, that's fine, but that's not so for everyone that plays this game. I find most other AT's mind numbingly easy to play but I don't go asking for a change to them to quench my thirst for more challenge, I'll just stick to my doms.
Domination should be left as it is, you want to change the fundamental base of an AT go do that for something else. The better thing to do is to modernize their assault sets as they have done some already. I think AT's like blasters and stalkers have just outpaced in their upgrades in comparison to doms so it's not as appealing to play one but you can still be a fantastic animal on one although it's a bit of a challenge.
Before we go asking for a wholesale change if anyone would like to see what a dom is capable of in experienced hands I'd challenge anyone to bring their favorite toon and see if you can keep pace with my dom. You might just find out it's not the dom it's you.
A hard /agree with the above.
The design of Dominators allows a wonderful balancing act of Attack -> -Endurance and Domination -> +Endurance, plus the Mez protection and boost to holds. 'Perma' Domination involves a very different sort of build and play style that rewards player investment (in both build choices and play style) in VERY noticeable ways. There is absolutely no reason to change Dominators and Domination.
Do they need a buff? I don't think so. There are probably a few powers in individual sets that could stand to be looked at, but I don't think that is exclusive to Dominators.
EDIT: I always forget this, but there is ONE area where I think Dominators (and Controllers) could use a 'visual effect buff'. I'd like it if it was possible to have a few different choices (customizable at the tailor) for the ATO-summonned 'Fiery Orb' and 'Energy Font'. The net effects can be the same for all I care, but having visuals that match other power sets would be peachy-keen.
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I have two characters that lean 'heavy' into the mental aspect, and then a third that uses a mental primary, but I don't think of as 'psychic'.
The first is a ranged Fortunata, with none of the melee or dart attacks. She has the Presence pool as well for an extra PBAoE (and Unrelenting). She also has Weaken Resolve, which has a very 'use my mind powers on you!' animation.
The second is a Fire/Psi/Psi Dominator. The Fire primary dominates (hrm hrm) the visuals, but I like having most of the secondary's Psi attacks by level 20 and using the first three powers in the Psi Mastery Epic (Link Minds, Indomitable Will, Mind over Body) to beef up survivability. This is one of the most complementary pairings of identically-themed secondary/epic that I've played.
The Fortunata and Dominator ultimately have similar performance, but they approach mission clearing from different directions. The Fortunata's positional defenses and offense has her leveraging controls (with %damage procs) to disrupt an enemy spawn she's engaged with, while the Dominator locks down spawns first, and then punishes with attacks.
The third 'mentalist' is a Mind/Poison Controller. The concept of the character is that he's basically such a complete klutz that he was always messing up missions (as a villain) and so was forced to go on his own. I picked the Mind/Poison combo to reflect the sorts of ways he would screw up jobs, so I don't really think of that character as a mentalist. Many of the powers on this character are tricked out with %damage procs mostly because of the low inherent damage scale for Controllers, but a little bit because my head-canon for the character isn't specifically about 'control'.
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50 minutes ago, hastened said:
I'm currently sitting on 3 billion influence. I'm not actually going to spend that, becuase I have everything I want. I don't even bother to sell things on the market anymore becuase I have everything and its basically pointless to gather more inf. As long as I never spend it before quitting, that 3 billion inf is essentially gone, plus any more I make as a side effect of playing. There are people with 10's or 100's of billions of inf. That's the real mechanism removing inf from the market, not the market transfer fees, which is why I'm leaning towards agreeing that they are basically pointless.
So if characters being abandoned with all of their wealth is your preferred method of 'sinking wealth', does that mean that you favor 100% inheritance taxes?
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1 minute ago, Draeth Darkstar said:
I figure my cone aiming is going to be limited by Soul Tentacles' shorter range, so I went more for slotting that one for Range instead. It's still smaller than Psychic Scream, but they're closeish as is.
My attitude is biased/informed by this: I very rarely use Immobilizes, except on Controllers and Dominators. I don't have any on my VEAT builds, unless they are from secondary effects. I can understand how the Soul Tentacles can work for other players but they aren't for me. I also recognize the vale some of multi-piece set bonuses can bring to slotting Targeted AoE powers, so I'd never advocate a particular power/slotting choice over another.
I have found that the cones (Psychic Scream, Static Discharge) and PBAoE on my ranged Fortunata are already 'tricky' to use effectively unless both I and the enemies are mobile. I certainly do end up with runners, but I feel like at least half the time that's because of some inherent resistance to immobilize and half the time it is because of RNG misses... so longer (cone) range helps me target those, at least on certain maps/rooms.
For what it is worth, my ranged Fortunata uses three attacks from the Mu Patron pool (Mu Lightning @6, Ball Lightning @6, Static Discharge @5) and each of them has only set bonuses (respectively: Thunderstrike @6, Annihilation @6, Positron @5). I only mention this to demonstrate that I'm not a complete 'franken-monster'. I want those Endurance, Accuracy and Defense bonuses!
IIRC, my ranged Fortunata also franken-slotted Dominate, but I'm not as big an advocate of this as other players. Dominate is a fast, single-target attack so with no recharge slotting at all: I think it the typical %proc chance is around 60%. This probably explains my slotting:
- (common) Damage IO
- %toxic (Gladiator's Javelin)
- %psionic (Neuronic Shutdown)
- %lethal (Gladiator's Net)
- %negative (Apocalypse)
- %smashing (Unbreakable Constraint)
My global Accuracy bonuses are pretty high, so I don't sweat adding accuracy to the attacks. I'm pretty sure I picked the %damage procs to make sure they work across all level ranges; this is something my picks for Psychic Scream won't do... but choices. I personally don't think that the bonuses from Devastation are all that great (IIRC the damage buffs are only on base damage, not on enhanced or %proc damage) and the level range doesn't really align with the power's level. You can always get some more recharge (from Basilisk's Gaze) in a low-level Hold power.
I have one last piece of advice if you are looking to pick up a single slot. This involves ditching 5-piece bonuses from Red Fortune in Mind Link. My slotting of Mind Link (on my ranged Fortunata) is:
- Adjusted Targeting (attuned): Recharge
- Luck of the Gambler (attuned): Defense / Global Recharge
- Shield Wall (50+5): Defense / Recharge
- Shield Wall: Global Resistance
The first three pieces are, I believe, the most efficient way (fewest slots) to get the most Recharge and most Defense slotted in Mind Link... assuming that you don't have 5 LotG elsewhere in the build. I went with 2xShield Wall here because I wanted to slot the Global Resistance somwhere and I thought I might as well leverage the ability to boost one piece and get a set bonus... but replacing the Shield Wall with an attuned LotG Def/Recharge also works.
PVP piece may look expensive, but if you play x8 content you ought to be getting PVP recipe drops and you can play converter roulette to get the ones you want (or ones you can sell on the AH to buy the ones you want).
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Accurate Healing behave the same way. I have never tried this with level 30 pieces (or those types) specifically (the only level where both sets supposedly exist) but I know that attuned pieces from those two types also don't allow conversions to sets of the different level range.
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8 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:
I'll stand by my presentation, for this synthetic microcosm.
Doubt there's any third participant here who cares about the bloody theoretical details. 🙂
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And what if I wanted to skip the fighting pool...
in Scrapper
Posted
My StJ/WP Scrapper also has Shadow Meld but it isn't a power I use regularly (except as a LotG Mule, of course). It's use is limited to:
I wouldn't say I'm 'tired of it', but if I was trying to use Shadow Meld all the time I certainly would be.