Crysis

For clarity , you mean slotting the Kismet -into a henchman slot- rather than into the MM's powers, right? Because Kismet Unique only affects MM, not the henchmen since its not really a "set" bonus. Or did something change again and it now applies to henchmen in addition to the MM if slotted anywhere appropriate? While feasible, I've never quite understood this argument. Statistically, the active number of Tankers at any given time is significantly higher than active MM players. If anything, I would have expected them to be far more cautious about buffing Tankers than in buffing MM's. MM's just will never be game changing unless they totally turned us into tank mages. Given our AT damage modifier.....this nerf to lower-henchmen To-Hit makes very little sense. If anything, it turns T1's into not wasting slots for damage of any kind since they will be unlikely to land many hits at all. Just keep them for additional Bodyguard +RES....disposable damage sponges IOW. Some of the theory crafting I'm doing right now has me only throwing maybe 2-3 slots into the T1's as they just don't matter for DPS unless you are really slotting up for +Tohit across the set.

It won't matter so much about your power choices, but I've got a LOT of +END/+Recovery/-END slotting on my various MM's mainly because I've always pretty much taken at least two of the primary attacks. I mean Demons is the only way to get Whip attacks/animations in the game, so I've got all the attacks on my Demon/Time, Demon/Storm, Demon/Traps, Demon/Marine, Demon/Dark, etc etc. I think I have over a dozen Demon builds and none of them have fewer than two whip attacks. My Demon/Storm may even have to run all the iTrials again to get different T4 choices as that particular pairing is VERY END-intensive (Storm always is) and so I went Cardiac and Ageless when I could now choose Musculature Radial and maybe Barrier instead. Lots of new build possibilities with the second pass of tweaks. But that's kind of why I'm going to wait until they are done "tweaking" the AT overall. MM's are pretty slot hungry as-is, and now that we can put the ATO's into our main attacks, get some -END and our set bonuses get shared, that opens up a lot of additional slotting opportunities I couldn't justify in the past. I'm not happy with the whole treatment up to this point, but maybe things will improve when they are "done for now" versus what got shoveled over the line in November.

Considering one of the next tweaks to MM's is a fairly substantial reduction for End costs for personal attacks, I'm still keeping all of my MM's on the shelf until they are done with the changes for a bit. I'm a bit fussy about my respecs and I already spend way too much in Mids and in-game doing them so I'll just target January for next time I work on MM's. But you do you man.

Appreciate you spelling this out for us. I was in middle of trying to read this entire thread to better understand this. MM’s are so slot hungry (as are EATs/VEATs) that I see this overall as a big plus up for the AT.

TLDR; “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”

I’m assuming this patch was the “bedlam” you inferred when discussing the MM fixes?

Depends on the following conditions: 1) It’s a backhanded slap 2) It’s accompanied by the phrase “Dammit Janet!” 3) I’ve gotten into someone elses personal space (I swear to god, the pets shoved me, it wasn’t of my own doing!) Any of those apply…..well, I’m being reprimanded. Otherwise, it’s an open invitation to ERP. And depends on if I’m in the mood…..

By almost every experienced MM players definition, yes, in fact, at +0 you are going to worse than you’ve ever done before. In particular, if in the past you were already building for offense and had henchmen sturdy enough to solo +4/x8 while keeping them pretty much full time Aggressive/Follow, you will most assuredly notice that you now solo +0 -objectively worse- than you ever did before. Then again, you were doing +4/x8 so…..sort of a straw man argument.

Honestly….I don’t like these changes. At all. So I’m just going to keep my MM’s shelved for this update and bring them back out once they’ve adjusted-the-adjusted-adjustments they just made. Otherwise, I’m doing like a dozen respecs just to turn around respec again. While I’m encouraged to see them addressing MM shortcomings, it kinda feels like they just gave us even more shortcomings for some unknown reason out of fear of making the MM class “too good.” So for now, other AT’s to play through the content updates. MM’s, I’ll come back to later.

can you elaborate by providing a few examples? That’s what the beta is for….Id like to better understand your experiences that leads you to this conclusion.

MIDS or whatever it’s called now has this feature already. Yes it takes some work but you can compare builds to see how different slotting and IOs will impact overall stats. But I do hear you. Most RPG’s quickly tell you if a weapon drop is going to have higher damage output or whatever stat with simple green/red +\- stats. But realistically the permutations for IO set bonuses, especially when ‘combined’ with other totally different set and AT/power bonuses, is far more complex than is this sword better than that one. That said….respecs are a PITA. On average, and depending on the severity of the changes, they can take me an hour or longer to complete in-game…and that doesn’t even include the MIDS planning time.

I’ll dig up my old one….pretty solid for all Incarnate stuff up to +Hard mode. But with the incoming changes to MM’s and Thugs on Beta…..times are a’changin. MM’s are gonna SLAP.

Er…twas a joke. AE = FIre Farms, phat XP, etc etc. What’s the arc name/number? I’ll be sure to check it out when your done. On my Spines/Fire farmer of course.

Is this a Fire Farm arc? How's the XP?

Have this combo on all melee sets.... Stalker>Scrapper>Tank>Brute

Many good points made about the OP nature of T4’s in the Incarnate system, but nobody mentioning how T3 Level shifts impacts the post 50 game for incarnate content. This is in my opinion what really amps up steamrolling teams.

I have one alt with a dual build (a Widow) where I played her through so many vet levels that I made extra T4 incarantes for Agility, Destiny and Hybrid. I have several others where I’ve made both Destiny>Barrier and Destiny>Clarion just so I have the antimezz to swap in/out for certain TF’s. But honestly, I seldom if ever actually find the need to switch between the “bread and butter” of Alpha>Agility, Destiny>Barrier or Destiny>Ageless and Hybrid>Assault. This game is all about max damage and the endurance reserves required to get there. I think that’s the primary complaint about Incarnates really. If everyone takes the same things, everyone pretty much is at max output of what their AT can possibly do, and possibly even eclipsing other AT’s “roles” to the point where EVERYONE is just a steamrolling DPS machine.

I ran one with you recently on one of my alts. Nobody was singling out the surgeons because we were steamrolling everything anyways. Going after the surgeons really only matters if the team isn’t steamrolling in the first place. Live and let live man. Oh wait, it’s Snarky. Live and let die man.

It does very well as a pairing. I think Mercs/Marine is slightly better but I loved leveling my Ninja/Marine this time last year.

Way too many to list for fave combo’s, but maybe the ones I’ve played the most over the past year or so…. Necro/Marine Necro/Storm Demons/Storm Ninja/Marine Mercs/Marine Mercs/Cold Demons/Cold Demons/Marine Ninja/Time Bots/Time (my first MM ever back on Live) Bots/Marine Thugs/Time Thugs/Storm Marine likely has replaced Time as my favorite secondary. Storm secondary is just all about more damage really, pairs really well with just about any henchmen type as long as you realize it’s “just” adding more damage and you build for high +Recharge to get out triple tornado and double LS every spawn.

The technical term is "a loose nut behind the keyboard."

forgot about that change!

Enflame procced out for damage, is surprisingly good +DPS for a MM given that the proc chances go up as it spreads. I apply it to the boss of each spawn as it lasts longest that way. ROP is up pretty frequently with high recharge builds but if you go Destiny Barrier you’ll not need it. Good leveling power though, especially for tankermind playstyle.

Perhaps not exactly what you mean, but I’ve multiple characters I rebuilt as different powersets to replicate a lifelong “progression” of powers. Often I’ll address this in the alt bio’s. One is a cybernetic character that keeps “upgrading” herself with these various upgrades providing her all kinds of new persona. This is represented kind of like Tony Stark’s various suits as Mark 1-Mark VII and so forth. So in one incarnation, an Arsenal controller, then in another, an assault rifle blaster, etc. I’ve also done some “reincarnated” alts, where in one life the character was a Broadsword/Regen scrapper and then reborn after demonic takeover as a Broadsword/Shield stalker. So many damn alts and different ways to make them, I find it fun to “continue my character arcs” via just remaking the alts. Oh and I almost never go back and play them once retired, nor will I have two versions of the same character “alive and active” at any given time. Just a quirk of mine. **EDIT** I lied, I do have some “twin” alts across two of my accounts. An Illusion/Savage Dominator and an Illusion/Storm Controller. Twin costumes, twin/shared bio’s, shared primaries but different secondaries (that fits the bio/backstory). I found both of these to be very active playstyles however, so have only dualboxed them in teams a few times as it’s just hard to control both of them well. Was a lot of fun when I did though as they create quite a bit of chaos on the playfield when unleashed together.

Honestly, at least on HC, not wrong. On Live, I had very few characters pre-Incarnate that could solo +4/x8 across every PVE critter in the game. A few that could do most but had holes in their defensives (usually lack of status protection), and only 3-4 full IO’d out toons that could do +4/x8 against anything and everything. Then came Incarnates, especially Destiny and Judgement powers. Getting level shifts meant fewer critters conning purple as well. Today, it’s the rare toon that -cannot- solo +4/x8 across the PVE spectrum by levels 45-50. Even poorly built and/or non-optimized alts. Challenge isn’t what the players of this game want I suspect. Variety yes. Challenge….no. As is evidenced by entire wastelands of higher-challenge mobs, Hard mode anything and the Labyrinth of Fog is already all but abandoned.