tidge
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Posts posted by tidge
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3 hours ago, Frostbiter said:
I know how to do it, go test more and then get back to me.
I don't have to do any more testing, as I ran Crimson's arc(s) and got the Monkeywrencher from all the Herc's that combined for me!
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Just now, Frostbiter said:
On the subject of badges; there seems to be something wrong with the way Hercules titans combine into Zeus Titans. Even when two spawn in the same group they are not combining. I only saw it once when hunting for the Monkeywrencher Badge. Also can we visit that name? It should be just Monkeywrench.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the Hercules -> Zeus. As near as I can tell, the following have to happen for them to combine:
- Both Hercules must be in the same spawn group. I think this requires a x3 setting, not sure. You can't drag one Herc to another and get them to combine.
- The Hercs AI has to be at the correct part of the algorithm. Hercs will always open with their long-range missiles. Don't kill them too fast. If they aren't close (because one is running away, or trying to run towards players) there will not be a merger.
- At least one Herc must have 'significant' damage.
- Unverified: I believe the second Herc must have some damage (i.e. not 100% Health). I was trying to see if I could trigger a merging this past weekend (using snipes, and single-target attacks) but I was being sloppy. I saw at least one merger where the second Herc had miniscule damage.
I'm happy with the badge system. I enjoy the badges that just sort of crop up during play, such as healing, dealing damage, etc. I think the exploration badges are fine, with the only caveat being those that require Echos/Ouroboros to collect seem odd.
There are a few villain groups/types which don't have 'defeat X' badges, but seem like they should (Hydra).
My biggest complaint about the badge system involves the badges with misleading (or missing) text describing how to get the badges. The "Defeat 100 Circle of Thorn bosses" is the one that comes to mind.
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10 hours ago, Dr Causality said:
And you can use the Buildup Proc from the Purple pet set for your pet that does the most Damage.
I always slot the Soulbound Alliegence Build Up Purple proc in pet powers which spawn 3 pets (the lowest tier). Each of the pets will trigger the proc, and (as it triggers) it helps them hit the higher level mobs more reliably. Obviously for VEAT this advice only applies to Crabs.
For my Fortunata / Widow I don't bother with the Patron pet. Those toons move so fast (and are self-defense capped) that the Pet has trouble keeping up. My Bane has the T2 pets, but despite all my build efforts (including Provoke, and AoE) without true MM commands it is extremely difficult to get the pets to focus fire where needed (and thus allow me to keep aggro).
My Crab went Mace Mastery for a full suite of Arachnobots. The Patrol Arachnobot Blaster is somewhat better behaved (i.e. stays close to me) and thus stays alive for the entire 3 minutes. I should note that my Crab has perma-hasten and I have timed the recharge of the T2 and T3 Arachnobots to expire shortly before 3 minutes is up. This allows me to monitor how much life I still have on them. The T1 recharge much faster than that.
Final thoughts: Ultimately you need to decide what the pet is going to do for you. If you run x1 or x2 content the pet(s) will be focusing fire, so you can run higher (+N) missions. If you are running x8 content, the VEAT pets will essentially be grabbing aggro that you would otherwise have focused on you.
Respecs are easy to get, so I encourage you to try different approaches.
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On 3/20/2020 at 7:34 AM, WillowManson said:
Agreed. I am constantly posting stuff to sell only to see it has been selling for higher values than what I listed it at. For example I had a purple recipe drop and when I listed it their was no history no matter what bid I placed so I listed it for 20 million and it sold for 15 and then the history finally pops up and says the last few sales were in the 50 million range.
I am really curious: what Purple IO recipe were you trying to list? 50 million strikes me as being far too much for any Purple recipe.
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4 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:
I'm not saying that listing for one is merely reasonable. I'm saying it's clearly the only morally correct thing to do.
According to your sense of morality: What is the correct price to bid?
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15 hours ago, MTeague said:
But on the flip side.... Presence? Is... um... well.... chock full of fertilizer... but one or two of my characters have sucked it up and dealt with it, because character concept demanded that they have a self-rez on tap, and they had no other to get one on a short enough cooldown to satisfy me.
I have a great appreciation for the Presence pool, even though only three (different) powers from the pool will be useful for most of my toons. My complaint is that in order to get both the final two powers it is necessary to pick up two other powers. If my toons can take aggro, the AoE Provoke is better than some primary/secondary taunts. Alternatively the Pacify works wonders in tough 1-on-1 fights when toons that aren't so tough need a breather. The PBAoE Invoke Panic is a great control for toons in the middle of large groups. Unrelenting is crazy good, especially for characters with high +Recharge. The sad choice is the single-target Intimidate... it isn't terrible when leveling up, but by end game (like many single target immobs) it is generally a waste of slots (and clicks).
In addition to the drawback of having to pick 2 of Pacify/Provoke/Intimidate in order to get Invoke Panic and/or Unrelenting, none of the first three power choices offer good IO mules or even particularly great set choices. The lack of good IO choices for the first three powers is one of the reasons I wish we could get a PVP or Purple IO sets for Taunt and Fear which include some sort of proc other than "% Damage". I will say that 5-slotting the Fear sets isn't bad, but the real gem is 6-slotting Preventive Maintenance is Unrelenting.
Zepp's suggestion (allowing the 4th pick with only 1 previous power, and the 5th pick with only 2 previous powers) is music to my ears.
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16 hours ago, ABlueThingy said:
But I think the community needs to decide what the pool powers... are... or should be. Decide and go from there. Otherwise a lot of these discussions are not very fruitful.
My thoughts about Pool powers vary depending on the character I am designing. Often, I am looking for a supplemental power that fits the need or concept. Occasionally I am looking for an extra attack. Many times I'm simply looking for powers to act as mules for IOs.
I can't decide what I want (in general) from the pools, but I know what I like when I see it.
The only coherent thought I can muster is this: I like that the Pools (including Epic and Patron) offer a 'taste' of other AT power choices to builds that would otherwise (for most characters) not get that taste.
A bonus incoherent thought: The biggest outlier (right now) for the power pools is IMO Teleportation. Long Range Teleport had become worthless *before* instant access to SG bases, and Team Teleport would probably more disliked than Group Fly (if possible)... if I ever saw anyone use it. What really makes it an outlier IMO is that the sole PvE power of Teleport Foe is so... (at best, depending on the situation) blah. It has a relatively long animation time (with a To Hit check) with no extra effect whatsoever.
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1 hour ago, Grouchybeast said:
Yellow salvage would be a terrible point to try to choke the supply. There's a basically unlimited supply of yellow salvage capped at 100k, which adds the value of approximately 1 extra enhancement converter to IO roulette. If anyone actually thinks they could affect the amount of rolling going on like that...well, good luck to them, I guess.
As I wrote, it seems more likely that farming habits have changed. But is there a better point? We have seen the price of yellow salvage going up by a factor of 10x (or more). Salvage is one of the few areas where you can neither make the exact one you want or easily convert into one you want. (I suppose some folks are sitting on loads of Brainstorm Ideas?)
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6 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:
I think the choice whether or not to skip and AoE hold largely depends on the primary chosen, for some it is absolutely vital and for others it is largely skippable. Highlighted in blue are the "best" AoE holds, red being don't pick it unless you have a set mule for it, yellow being "most of the time skipped, but not horrible," and the rest being "sometimes" cases.
-Fire's AoE hold is 100% skippable, flashfire + fire cages is legitimately the same effect as the hold, and then you have bonfire with kb-kd, makes the hold really redundant, also is a PBAoE, negative IMO. It is almost never taken for anything beyond a set mule. Not a bad power, just not needed by any means.
Perhaps ironic, perhaps not... but I didn't opt to take the AoE hold on my Fire Dom until the lvl 50 respec.
I agree with the logic presented above, but when I'm running my Dominator through the early Dark Astoria arcs, I will throw out Cinders to shutdown the army of healing Tsoo Sorcerers at the points in my attack chain when I can't out-damage them.
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On 3/16/2020 at 1:07 PM, siolfir said:
Don't forget that you get some scaling resistance from the passives in your secondary, and with the scaling resistance IO and some set bonuses I've found that my melee Fortunata doesn't need more than that. I built for softcap defenses without Mind Link, so I can pop it for extra "defense debuff resistance" - simply by being over the cap so the next debuff misses.
I agree. The ONLY time I missed having actual resistance is when I (foolishly) try to TANK(*) an AV or a GM. My Fortunata can stand being swarmed by groups of Minions, LTs, Bosses and even a couple of Elite Bosses (because of Defense values, Scaling Resistances, and Unrelenting) but against foes with BIG HARD HITS (ehem, Lord Recluse in Ms. Liberty TF) she'll fold.
(*) IMO Tanking also includes grabbing and keeping aggro. With the Presence pool and AoE controls my Fortunata can grab a lot of initial aggro, and can rescue a few other squishies that are focusing fire, but I would never consider that Tanking.
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On 3/11/2020 at 2:00 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:
Starting new post after the one on General got derailed. Your thoughts?
If I were trying to understand ebil, while wearing a tin-foil hat:
SpoilerMy thought would be that the price jump on yellow salvage is due to a very small number of users who are motivated to pump the brakes on the rapid accumulation of INF by other folks buying yellow recipes and crafting them to be converted into rare IOs. The Uncommon salvage would be the easiest point to try to choke the supply (for arbitrary values of "rapid"):
- I believe that recipes are pooled within a set, but not across different sets. It wouldn't be impossible to tie up all the uncommon recipes, but it would involve an extra layer of work/clicking to go through all the categories. There would be extra pain 'waiting' for the orders to fill.
- I believe that salvage is pooled within a rarity. This makes it much easier to simply place bids on only one type of uncommon salvage as buy orders will 'always' fill as long as the salvage is being dropped into the pool.
- All uncommon and rare recipes require at least one uncommon salvage (as do many enhancement buffs)
I do recall that there were a few periods over the summer of 2019 where yellow recipes shot up by a factor of 10x to 50x. At the time I associated those swings to 'classic Ebil' marketing by folks wanting to make their Nth billion inf, but I suppose it could have been an early effort to try to slow the Market, until someone with too much inf (and time) decided to try to put the choke on the salvage instead of the recipes:
The 'going price' for most of the first year of homecoming compared to the 'seeded' price was roughly
- common 1:20 - 1:100 - 1:1000 (500 inf v. 10 inf v. 1 inf)
- uncommon 1:100 (1K inf)
- rare 1:2 (500K inf)
The common drops are so plentiful that the observed wide swings in common prices speak to there being too much fluidity (for too little return, if 'return' is even a factor) to make it worthwhile to try to pinch off the supply of commons.
The rare drops are so close to the seeded price that for folks (at most) 3 rares to craft a lvl 50 recipe the extra 1.5M inf wouldn't be that much of an extra cost for crafters, but would be significantly more INF used to try to move the market a relatively small amount (before the seeded cap is hit).
If I remove the tin-foil hat (never ascribe to ebil, that which is adequately explained by farming):
SpoilerThe supply of cheap uncommon salvage could have dried up simply because AE farmers may have switched their INF-making tactics to use the AH instead.
IIRC the common: uncommon : rare ratio was 22 : 5 : 1, which may imply that yellows have been bargain priced for a long time!
My personal thought is that it would take a lot of effort (in buying them) or apathy (from not bothering to list them) to dry up the supply of commons, and rares are already in the ballpark of the seed price... so if the largest source of salvage (AE farmers) switched tactics I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see yellow salvage in the 50K - 100K range.
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I like the Dominator Orb and Controller Font because they will draw aggro from mobs that I've just immobilized. According to the buff icons, it also looks like they are applying Interface effects as well (but I have not verified). Not the best pets, but they are actually doing something.
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39 minutes ago, Vea said:
On paper I can't justify suppression. The only saving grace I can see is the Achilles heel which should proc frequently on groups of mobs.
I have Suppression 6-slotted with Annihilation, which includes a -Res proc. This wasn't my first choice for this set, but it is what I ended up using.
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I will comment on a couple of your early powers for the time being.
I avoided all Soldier attacks.
I use Longfang, simply because I hate having to run after mobs to make melee attacks to finish them off. My build's big melee attack is the patron Mace attack, but otherwise it is all range for my Crab.
The arc of Suppression is wonderful.
I have Frenzy, but I really only use it in two cases. The first is when melee mobs are actually around me (this is uncommon because of positioning for range attacks). The second is when I am focusing fire on a ranged Target but something has wandered close enough to be hit by Frenzy when I get a break in the attack chain.
My Crab has permahasten and I have made sure that the pet recharge is just under the pet duration. This makes them 'perma' (if they live) but I like having the timer tell me how much time they have left.
The main issue my build has is that the positional Defenses are all in the mid 30s
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9 hours ago, Harakh said:
None the less, you've found me 1 slot to play with.
Thank you Much!
You are very welcome!
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I'm curious if the extra Def/Recharge in Mind Link is doing that much for your builds? I don't play against 54 AVs, but for most (incarnate) content I don't even use Mind Link when I am solo. I don't use it to hold Shield Wall, so I am just 3-slotting it: Adjusted Targeting: Recharge and 2x LotG; Def/Global Recharge and Def/Recharge. After those 3 I don't see significant improvements in Recharge time. My slotting has Defense bonus at 31.9%, which translates to +13.19 Defenses. On my build the positionals are the highest with 64.8% Melee, 61.1% Ranged and 54.8% AoE (no Winter Sets used, so AoE could be boosted by 7.5 if desired). I'll also note that I don't use Hasten in this build, and the recharge time for Mind Link is 106 seconds.
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I am also annoyed about the limited choices of where to slot MM ATOs.
I'm also unhappy that the Tanker ATO only exist for the secondary set, and that the set bonuses aren't particularly exciting for tanks that want to focus on the primary set. Surely something could have been developed to help both Defense and Resistance based tanks? I feel like I'd almost rather have one ATO for each than what the Tanker gets now.
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7 hours ago, Frosticus said:
And NO, hami's do NOT improve the recharge of mind link. Only IO's do.
6 hours ago, nzer said:Something's definitely unintended here, but I don't think it's that defense/tohit IO sets with recharge reduction affect the recharge of mind link. Again, IOs were added in issue 9, VEATs were added in issue 12, and the game shut down during issue 23. What you're calling an "oversight" could have been fixed before VEATs shipped or at any point in the four years after they shipped, and it wasn't.
Hami-O's don't buff Recharge in Mind Link for the same reason Hami-O's don't buff the non-boostable attributes of other sets that don't take those specific IOs. That is: the game won't allow a ToHit buff boost (from the same Hami-O) in a set that doesn't take ToHit IOs but does take recharge. Originally this is how Hami-O's worked, but it was not what was intended(tm) and was changed.
It is possible to boost the recharge time of Mind Link using the pure Recharge enhancement from Adjusted Targeting. My preferred slotting for Mind Link is attuned 3-slots: Adjusted Targeting: Recharge, LotG:Def/Global Recharge, LotG: Def/Recharge. Any (good to lvl 50) X/Recharge Defense or ToHit used in the third slot will get you almost maximal performance. You can eek out a little more, but Enhancement Diversification eats into the time more than it is worth using a fourth slot. YMMV, but that's all I've ever needed.
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A few weeks back I used the second build of my 'Crabbermind'/'Craster' to try out a tanky Bane ('Banky' ?). It has very solid defenses across the board, with middling resistances... but the offense is slower (and feels less effective than) my Energy Melee tanker. The activation times on the mace attacks take longer than the recharge times, even without Hasten! It literally feels like the toon is simply standing around waiting to make attacks. This makes it very boring to play a mace-based Bane.
I can tolerate having a tank that doesn't do so much damage, because Tanks get a better Taunt (than the Presence pool's Provoke), and generally get some sort of Taunt aura as well as punchvoke... but I'd like a viable under-lvl-32 mace-build that showcases the Mace as much as the Crab-pack can be used at lower levels (after the initial respec of course).
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1 hour ago, Neiska said:
So how do people softcap defense? I assume with barrier/support incarnates?
You can eek out some more defense for the Crab pets by different slotting in each Maneuvers, and IIRC Grant Invisibility also has a base 5% bonus. I think the actual answer is to team with other players!
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11 minutes ago, Neiska said:
to add to the conversation, is there any way to calculate pet defensive values like defense and reistance? if not in mids i cant find their values listed anywhere. Would be nice to figure out whats required with various setups to softcap them. everything i try they still get steamrolled on 4/8.
The Spiderlings have inherent 20% resistance against Smashing, Lethal. and 30% resistance to Psionic
The Disruptors have 10% resistance against Smashing/Lethal, 20% against Energy, 30% Psionic
The Blaster has inherent 20% resistance against Smashing, Lethal. and 30% resistance to Psionic
Expedient Reinforcement gives 10% resistance across the board.
All spiders have 0% inherent defense, so this is easy to figure out!
Edict of the Master gives 5% defense (all)
In my build, TT:Maneuvers is providing 15.75% defense (6-slotted with Reactive Defenses) and Maneuvers (2-slotted with LotG) is providing 4.95% defense.
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18 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:
The Overwhelming Force proc is a good call in the Spiderlings, but I am not a huge fan of the BU proc because they are not that great of a source of damage. They are -1 to you, so running at +4/8, they are -4 to the enemy even after accounting for the Incarnate shift. That extra level drop over the other pets means they do ~75% of base damage in comparison. The level differential means they are not going to do a ton of damage, and they only have 2 attacks, so in a single attack rotation, they'll be lucky to make use of the 5 second buff on a single attack. Most of the time, they'll proc it on Burst, then spend the 5 seconds of BU waiting for Burst to recharge or use it to run in and claw the enemy.
(snip)
This gives me 2 Defense auras, a Resist aura and maxed damage and recharge, as well as plenty of accuracy to make sure they actually hit. With double manuevers and Support Hybrid running, the pets are basically defense capped. The Disruptors and Striker are perma with more than a few extra seconds of leeway and the whole crew does a great job of spreading aggro while basically never getting hit.
Thanks for the feedback!
I don't usually run at +4/8. When I do, it is with teams and I'm not really relying on the pets for damage. Solo, I'm either running +0/8 or +1/8. I like the drops more than XP, and I'm not looking for uber-challenges at this point in my CoH life!
Having disclosed that, I take your point about the number of attacks in the Spiderlings. I haven't been watching the pet combat logs, but the Spiderlings are crazy about rushing into close combat, and when I just have them out I can hear what attacks they are making so I know they are using both attacks in rapid succession. I can also see the Build Up triggering on their buffs, and I certainly see them knocking down opponents. The question is: would it be better to slot the Build Up proc on the (two) Disruptors instead? I feel like slotting the T1 pets is generally better:
- I have the T1 pets at a lower level when exemplared (only 3 levels lower, so not much)
- There are 3 T1 pets as opposed to 2 T2
- I wanted to boost the accuracy and damage of the T3 pets rather than just incrementing the accuracy/damage of the higher tier pets.
If I had the extra slots, I would definitely consider add the Call To Arms: Defense Aura. I have a question here: The in-game text indicates that this is only 20' (as opposed to 40'), do you find this makes a difference? The Spiderlings activate berserker-mode at times; this is understandable given their attacks. I give some extra boost to the pets via Grant Invisibility, which would otherwise be a mule power for Luck of the Gambler Global Recharge (as is Invisibility, my lvl 50 power choice)
Boring paragraph on personal power decisions hidden:
SpoilerAs I wrote, my build is very tight on slots: Trying to come up with 3 extra slots (to 6-slot all three pet powers) would cost me precious global recharge bonuses (either because I break a set bonus or sacrifice a power that is contributing to Global Recharge) or positional defenses (same effect as Global Recharge). Even sacrificing the single travel power (Sorcery's Mystic Flight, which is where the Knockback Protection is slotted) for a different pool's power (e.g. Hover or Combat Jumping, which could take a fifth LotG) doesn't seem like a good trade-off: I *like* having a true travel power and then the (four) extra slots would all come from a purple set. Three to boost the pets and then the fourth to recover Knockback protection.
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I'm running a lvl 50 Crabbermind with 6-pets: the sixth is the Epic Patron Blaster from the Mace pool. This toon has perma-hasten, and the global recharges are timed such that the T2 Disruptors and the T3 Blaster have recharged in under 4 minutes. My experience at my difficulty settings (usually 0x8) is that the T2 and T3 are reasonably well-behaved in that they stay close to me and rarely get wiped out before their timer expires, so I don't have extra recharge in those powers.
I'm curious to read other Crab's approach to the pets. Here is the slotting I'm working with for these three pets:
T1 (Summon Spiderlings) - 6-slots
Level 35: Summon Spiderlings
- (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge
- (36) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage
- (36) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (36) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge
- (37) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown
- (50) Soulbound Allegiance - Chance for Build Up
T2 (Call Reinforcements) - 5-slots
Level 38: Call Reinforcements- (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge
- (39) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage
- (39) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (39) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge
- (40) Edict of the Master - Defense Bonus
T3 (Summon Blaster) - 4-slots
Level 47: Summon Blaster- (A)Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge
- (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge
- (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Resist Bonus Aura for Pets
The rest of this build is pretty tight; the power choices are getting me the Global Recharge I want and I at most could sacrifice a single Proc slot to get an extra slot for the build, but obviously I can move slots among the pets. How do other Crabs feel about this slotting? The Crab pets are all at level 35+, so 4-slotting Expedient Reinforcement as the core of each tier is the no-brainer given that the 4th set bonus is 6.25% Global Recharge.
My theory is to have the extra Overwhelming Force damage/knockdown and %Build Up in the T3 because there are three of them and they recharge faster than the other pets.
The 40' Edict of the Master Pet Defense (along with my other powers) brings them up to over 25% defenses (from 20% defenses) which definitely feels like it is keeping them in the fight (when they stay close to me!)
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The +Recharge is for the Dom, not the Bonfire. I think my Dom has permadom with Hasten, but IIRC is a fraction of a cast time short of permahasten. The timing of Bonfire is such that every proc fires, so the recharge there closes the gap for permahasten.
Crab Pet Slotting
in Arachnos Soldier & Widow
Posted
I just checked Support Total Core Hybrid and it adds 8.00% Defense to everything except Ranged & Psionic (as advertised). It is also boosting Damage and Accuracy.
My build is really tight with both slots and powers, but I am tempted to respec out of my lvl 49 power (Invisibility, with a LotG +Recharge mule) for pool Tactics to boost the ToHit of the pets by another 13%. I like having Invisibility on demand, but aside from some occasional sneaking I'm not convinced it is getting me much.