tidge

If nothing else, the FREEM! popup lets players know if they'be been hit by a high-magnitude KB, and if they don't see the pop-text it almost certainly means that the KB they are experiencing is something they explicitly forgot to account for in their build. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of players shocked to find themselves suffering KB have been skating by on nothing more than high (positional) defenses. If someone took a Tanker without an Alpha slot on Apex/Tin Mage, I can completely believe that the character was "ragdolled".

I've often observed teams of players fighting nuAdamastor ignore the warning to back away just to watch it heal back up to full health. Most of the time this simply delays its defeat... but every so often I'll be with a team that is clearly struggling to make damage stick to it and the play behavior is indistinguishable from "facerolling on keyboard". Soloing Giant Monsters isn't IMO one of the things that should be common for most builds. I dare say that most builds can't tackle GMs solo without Incarnates and/or temp powers, and if we are talking about Defenders, I think those are probably among the least likely to be able to solo a non-Holiday Giant Monster... maybe Kheldians would be worse?

Please share the Tanker's primary/secondary, because... FREEM! (IIRC Magnitude 20KB) can catch everyone by surprise, especially resistance-based ATs that have no meaningful KB resistance or KB protection. I haven't played a Fire Armor set, but with Dark I typically build for 14 points of KB, as it is easy to get 2 x +3 (set bonuses) and 2x +4 from unique enhancements. 3x +4 is pretty much as viable from 3 uniques... I just feel like I get more mileage from the PVP sets that offer 3-piece +3 KB protection, and usually want that 3rd unique mule slot for something else. With 12 or 14 points, the SG base buff can put me at 22 or 24 points, which takes FREEM! off the table. IMO It's crucial for Dark to build for KB because of the PBAoE powers, including the self-heals. This is IMO just one of those lessons that has to be learned, it isn't the Homecoming Devs being out to get players!

There is quite a bit of mental-modelling in Homecoming that relies on half-formed memories of Live and/or "player guides" from (different eras of) Live. I can believe that the pre-crashless nukes may still be affecting certain players' thoughts. Just to pick something different but tangentially related to this topic: "hoverblasting" still gets a surprising (to me) amount of advocacy.

Vigilantes can solo/lead the Synapse TF.. so they presumably can exit the mission into a Red (or Gold) Side. I typically spawn the Ambush Babbage in Steel Canyon, as there can be three NPCs to help right near the base portal. Usually I use LRT, but in the past it has worked by exiting the mission to a SG base and then zoning into Steel Canyon.

FWIW: The ambush Babbage from the Synapse TF can also be spawned in other zones. I keep meaning to see if I can get one to spawn red-side.

No thanks to the suggestion. Catalysts are a direct reward for playing, and can be earned via Merit conversion or purchased via the AH. Anyone who would be "happy" to pay more for an attuned can buy a Catalyst from the AH, often for less than 1 MInf.

Fast Snipes get a bonus to damage (up to +22% damage IIRC) for +ToHit; whereas Slow Snipes do not get that bonus. Most of my Blasters rely on the Fast Snipe as part of a regular attack chain, falling back on the slow Snipe only if circumstances are right. Snipes are a single-target attack, so only relying on the Slow version would be IMO limiting DPS after the character reaches a certain level.

I would only consider playing "Iron Man" rules if I were playing exclusively with like-minded friends or playing exclusively solo. I've been on too many open-world PUG leagues where the league leader moves 50s onto teams lead by characters too low for the zone. On a single team with the difficulty turned up? That doesn't bother me as I have some agency. Dashing through Peregrine Island and finding yourself at level 20... not cool.

While I don't quite align myself with the OP (because not all Controllers get pets), I have long felt.... since the days of Live... that Controllers were on the losing end of "the game is balanced around IOs" philosophy/paradigm. There are IMO many ways to see this... see the post above by @Riverdusk ... for myself I always felt the disparity between a Controller and other ATs when facing large spawns (solo, or on teams)... because the Controller can trivially get the attention of a large spawn using its "nuke", but is then faced with: The aggro of all the non-controlled critters "What next?" for all the controlled critters (start spamming the single-target controls, Bob!) I've long been in a headspace where I believe it is only through crafted enhancements (especially %damage, and set bonuses) that can make Controllers capable of handling content like other ATs can handle content. As I have often written: The game's reward system is for defeating enemies. This is IMO a fine way to have rewards (I can't think think of an easier, more straightforward mechanism that we players know works), but for ATs like Controllers, it is pretty much only %procs (specifically %damage procs) that keeps the reward scales-per-unit-time within an order-of-magnitude of other ATs.

I'm slow-walking a Plant/Marine Controller right now. As I make more progress I'll post my build(s). My personal focus is on solo play, and it is looking pretty good at this (similar to my Mind/Poison), yet... I can definitely see how the Marine Affinity blooms into a team-focused power set. I personally find it hard, despite having multiple builds to choose from, to sacrifice solo clear times to build for predominantly team support... I eventually do this, it's just a gate I have to open and walk through. So many players can build for self-sufficiency that I find the latch on the gate to be stiffer every time I approach it.

I have Burst of Speed with 3x Blaster's Wrath (the Recharge pieces, including %Fire) and 3x %Damage. It is a reliable source of damage on top of popping into combat. I have Inner Will 2-slotted with Heal/Recharge, no set bonuses. This is the power I keep on Auto... sometimes it is "overkill' on the mezz recovery, many times it is not. I find that it is rather trivial to maximize Global recharge on Blasters without worrying about Hasten, I also picked up Rune of Protection as the backup mezz protection.

My BR toons are mostly on stand-bye these days, but from memory, my Sentinel's attack chain is: Distintegrate -> Lancer Shot (same Target, to spread) -> Refractor Beam (or another AoE, even Piercing Beam which it is possible to get good at positioning for AoE). After this, it is usually alternating among (Disintegrating) targets for the ST attacks. Sentinels can leverage Vulnerability more-or-less at will, so when compared to my Defender BR I find myself focusing much more on spreading Disintegration than any other tactical choice, especially considering BR debuffs. Annihilation in Piercing Beam is a slight compromise as it is %-Resistance along with the set's inherent attribute boosts.

Maybe I don't understand this post. It reads to me like this is saying the CoX Giant Monsters are too hard, which I don't think is true. In my experience the CoX Giant Monsters have a floored 1-in-20 chance to hit most player characters, and I am pretty sure all of the GMs shuffle between single-target and AoE attacks. If the characters have any sort of resists.. or ya know... have a strategy that involves getting the GM to focus fire on a character with resists... then the limiting factor for GM defeats becomes dealing damage (to overcome the "sack of HP" -> Regeneration, plus whatever resistances the GM has)... as was noted above. The one giant monster that seems to catch some players defense values by surprise (in my experience) is the Arachnos Flier; because this spawns in a level 50 zone and spawns its own varieties of (lots of) minions, players fighting the flier have to be prepared in ways they don't exactly need for Kraken, Paladin, or Babbage. My personal experience has been that most random pairs of level 50 ATs with incarnates) can handle most any of the nu Giant Monsters... and a single level 50 with debuffs can lead a small squad of lower-level characters with any sort of attack chain to whittle down most Giant Monsters that are not in level 50 zones. Different ATs have to change things up of course, and some will be relying on Lore pets for the necessary damage. Standing in place and button mashing may not work for nuEochai for example. For the most part, I think the nuGM changes were pretty mild... mostly added resistances, some health boosts for low-level zone GMs, and in rare cases some long-timer AoEs. Those aren't particularly problematic for veteran level players, especially if they are willing to change up tactics. AFAIK, the only open-world GM with an "unavoidable damaging attack" is Eochai's Pumpkin Patch, which is a location-based AoE. I suppose folks can argue about Paladin's Pulse, but I think that attack is avoidable... if not it is at least possible to get out of its range. Circling back to the debuff: Anything in the game with a large sack of HP will regenerate significant HP via the regeneration formula... just like players do. Debuffing giant monster regeneration is important! Raising the base health of some of the GMs was a good idea IMO, but this was more of a way to draw out the length of GM fights (for small teams) than it was to make the GMs particularly dangerous. Longer fights only make them more dangerous because of RNG and streakbreaker.

Here is a single macro to do what @Yomo Kimyata suggests, to self-target, just make sure there is no trget selected in the reticle. I picked Tar Patch, but any power (and macro image) can be selected. /macro_image "DarkCast_Aim" "TARP" "powexec_location me Tar Patch$$powexec_location target Tar Patch"

Personally: I think Iron Man rules are somewhat silly, as all players can choose to take self-rez powers from pools. There is also the "all it takes is a sloppy league leader to murderize anybody" effect. by the common assessment of the silly Iron Man thinking: I'd say you were dead, Kev.

The -Regen effects of some Beam Rifle attacks are good, but I think they are not nearly as important on a Sentinel as they are on something like a Defender, because of the wide difference in (ranged) damage scales between those AT. I'm sure there are some corner case content where the BR -Regen can manifest itself, but for most play I'd focus on Sentinel DPS.

Players may want the loot, but they don't always want to make sure the events respawn. As long as it is more common for multi-boxers and "dedicated monster hunting teams" to leave extra spawns around, I see no reason for solo GM hunting to be considered taboo.

My BR Sentinel went with: T2 Single Shot, 6x Sentinel's Ward T3 Cutting Beam, 6x Ragnarok T4 Disintegrate, 6x Opportunity Strikes T5 Aim, 6x Gaussian's T6 Lancer Shot, 6x Apocalypse T7 Refractor Beam, Centriole, Guidance, 4x %damage T8 Piercing Beam, 6x Annihilation T9 Overcharge, Frozen Blast +Javelin Volley (Acc/End/Damage/Recharge) + 4x %damage Because it is such a single-target focus of the set, and with a Sentinel's choices for secondary being what they are, I felt like I needed all the attacks after the T1/T2 choice (plus Aim). I didn't feel like the character really came together until I had Refractor Beam (slotted).

I can answer part of @Rudra question about henchmen and nuGMs. For most GMs, it is exceptionally rare that I lose more than one henchman at a time to any GM attack... and I'd say that 80% of the time I resummon a henchman right at the feet of a GM... which is not smart, but I've got a LOT of the aura thing going on. I'l target another nearby henchman or pet, and cast the defensive/resistance buff on that, as soon as I see the new henchman appear in the pet window. Some fraction of time, the new henches are defeated, but it is uncommon enough that I haven't changed my strategy (for most GMs). The hench buffs act like AoE casts, so I can get the newly summoned buffed before I can select them (watch the pet window to see this work). There is one other thing I try to do with GMs... I try to make sure that they have something to hit so that their streakbreaker is less likely to come up in one of the GM big attacks. This isn't a particularly well-considered strategy, but it's something I'll do, often by having a simple buff pet out to be hit by the GM. The other reason I don't try to summon new henchmen away from the MM (when fighting GMs) is because most MM henchmen will immediately move to be adjacent to the MM... and my MMs are almost always in the thick of it, base-to-base with the GM anyway. I may as well get the MM auras on the henches ASAP.

Knockback is an effect that gets magnified by level shifts, perhaps this is what you are seeing? If not facing something that already suffers more KB (e.g. Clockwork) an enemy that cons less than white will take KB instead of KD (with no special IO slotting).

As with at least one of the other recent 'spreadsheet' efforts (the "why don't I ever see six %damage"?), I think this question about trying to spreadsheet individual MM+henchmen survivability misses the point. The henchmen aren't a player class, the henchmen (can, if directed) increase the survivability of the Mastermind and/or (can, if directed) increase the DPS of the Mastermind. As with the previous %damage spreadsheet effort, this ask is simultaneously too complicated (for many reasons, including the presence of the MM, and whatever the MM is doing) or would too simple to be meaningless (because henchmen, even if not in bodyguard mode don't go off on missions by themselves). My PoV is that this question (second quote box) is missing a lot of fundamental mechanics about not just the MM class but also the game environment, some as detailed by @Rudra above. My own experience is: MM's are perfectly capable of surviving content, but they have to: Build for it, Defenses first for themselves and the henches Use Bodyguard mode and keep henches nearby to have "MaxHP Pool" Don't ignore resistances of the Henchmen... to a point Adjust tactics as necessary

"Disappointment" is a good way to describe my experience with Water Jet. On paper, it looked like it would be a key attack for Water Blast, but in practice it always disappointed. I kept it in my build for (what turned out to be) far too long in an effort to make it work. There are a few higher-tier powers that have had similar outcome for me... sometimes using such a power a different AT can make such a power work better, but I don't think Water Jet falls into that category.

I tried it, and found it lacking. I also had better power options to support the playstyle I wanted, and I already had a single-target attack from the Water Blast set. The Devs did fix one problem that it used to have: consuming Tidal Power on a miss, so it is improved.... but like I wrote: it requires both the use of Tidal Power, and the first use to hit, and the second 'enhanced' use to hit in order to see benefits.... and that assumes that the player is waiting around for the stars to align for both Tidal Power and Water Jet to be ready to even consider using them... which often means trying to juggle the other attacks so as to NOT consume Tidal Power. If the Enhanced Water Jet wasn't tied (tide?) to consuming Tidal Power, and was more like Arcane Bolt's "Arcane Power" effect (which is a standalone) I'd be personally less bothered by trying to juggle maximizing its potential... but without the (unreliable, and attack-chain-pacing) Enhanced effect, I felt like I was doing less DPS with Water Jet than without it. When I team with Water Blast users I keep an eye out for "ENHANCED!" and I simply have yet to see it occurring often enough for me to change my opinion.

Excellent graphics, but I found it to be a mediocre attack... and the Tidal Force (which is what allows "Enhanced Water Jet" to occur) is IMO better used on another attack. For build-crafting purposes, I also don't find a late-choice non-snipe to be the best place to look for enhancement set bonuses, except to possibly swing into Winter's Bite.