Crysis

I’ll never understand a MM player who skips attacks and/or buffs to the henchmen that improves their damage output. The whole point of this game is taking out your enemy as quickly as possible. Smoke Flash is what Ninja MM’s get instead of gang war (moar damage), hellfire (moar damage) etc. If you ignore it I really have to ask why you are playing a MM.

I’ve played Dark attack characters across the spectrum, and am currently leveling a DM/Shield scrapper. Had a DM/SR scrapper back on live for many years as well, as well as DM/Regen back when those were all the rage. Survivability isn’t an issue at +4/x8 even in your upper 30’s or low 40’s, with a few exceptions for Def Debuffing enemies. But I never feel like my kill speed is fast enough with Dark Melee. The heavy hitters just don’t seem to be there for the set and I always feel like I’m missing a ‘finisher.’ A lot of this is illusion as with high recharge you can Soul Drain frequently but since my kill speed takes a bit, I often find myself “herding” several groups (AAO does this nicely), ducking around a corner and trying to keep a pile on me so I can get the best use of Soul Drain repeatedly. Hoping having Fireball slotted out soon will help alleviate this for me.

Occasionally I’ll make an alt without having a bio/costume first, but that’s very rare. Usually just a placeholder all single color costume and a name that I’ll come back to later. But that’s pretty rare for me to have the character before the bio. In 99% of the cases of rolling an alt, I’ve got a conceptual idea in mind for a character, bio/background included. I need a “reason” for their existence. They have to have an origin story for their powers. Then I’ll try to find a way to tell that story in 1024 characters or less. Then I’ll work thru dozens of names. I’m a history buff and often pull from history that can easily thread its way into their bio to create a name. Then its time to decide powersets to match the bio/origin/reason for existence. Costume often comes last, but there are times I’ll see a great costume posted and it will inspire a story and from there the character creation process. The hard part for me is often the 1024 character limit. How to tell their story in so few words. Not coincidentally, I created PnP RPG characters the same way for many, many years. Used to write full backstories for many of them, which helped to role play them. In AD&D I couldn’t create an alignment without that backstory since it spoke to the why they were the way they were. Old habits in an older gamer I guess.

I’ve done this but never sure if it works better there or in Health for me. Just doesn’t seem to proc much in Beacon.

I have several Thugs/* builds where I almost always take dual wield and cross punch. Duel Wield more for the FF+Rech proc and a few others, but Cross Punch does really good damage and it's a lot of fun to follow the Bruiser and do the beat downs together.

Thank you kind hero!

Hey @Bopper maybe I'm just not following your OP with all the updates, but the last build description listed in the OP is for a "Siren's Blood: Proc-Heavy DPS Fortunata." But I don't see a build posted at the bottom of that description like I do for all the others. Is that build posted elsewhere in this thread because if it is I can't locate it.

Ditto this. COX is also a pretty old game that was already outdated by the time Live shut down in 2012. Thus it likely appeals more to the retro gaming crowd than hardcore MMO players at this point. We are niche players playing a niche game from a niche historical segment of the MMO landscape. I doubt that more than a handful of WoW refugees will be attracted to COX as anything more than an interesting experiment on a rainy weekend. We just don’t have much to offer the hardcore gamer. This has always been a game for casuals and now it’s an old, lower population game of retro casuals.

Can I have a gift receipt at least for….reasons? Im sure it took some effort to come up with these stats the first time, and I’m equally sure the total player pop is significantly less than when these stats were first produced. Even still, a smaller population somehow makes updated stats even more interesting. So count me in as someone who would love an update even if I don’t expect one.

Meant to come back and reply. No, still doesn't work. Slot removed, do Auto-Arrange, that completes. Still can't place the slot. I'm sure Powers/Slots is toggled on and it clearly says I have one slot to place. But only way I can do it is to save the build, exit Mids, come back and instantly....I've got a slot to place somewhere. Very repeatable.

@plainguy is the crazy petless MM. I’ve tried it and ended up respeccing into full MM builds it as I just didn’t like the feel of playing a MM minus pets. But to the Endurance issues, I just stocked up on recovery serum, the Survival Amplifier, refreshed my base recovery empowerment buff frequently and also took a secondary (three different ones for three different builds) like Kin, Time or Cold for the +End. On Cold, Heat Loss slotted up on a high recharge build is dang near as powerful as Destiny Ageless by itself. Endurance was very manageable that way. The Victory Rush power is also useful. Endurance isn’t a huge issue in HC due to all the buffs available from different sources.

I was running several missions with my Arch/Nin last night and the Crits are frequent enough and solid enough that I honestly felt like I was playing a scrapper on a “slow” night. I’d certainly take more frequent crit chances but if too much more it will definitely infringe on Scrappers inherent.

True, but by end game, +DEF buffs from others are so abundant that it’s not game breaking for many. And outside of soloing and/or as use for pulling, the long animation time needed for the heavy hitting snipe just isn’t that useful at endgame anyways…stuff dies way too fast. Or, do what I do….carry a bunch of unslotters and just pull the proc when you need the long range snipe capabilities….and then re-slot it otherwise. Enhancements aren’t permanent.

True, best I could come up with is a Demon/Dark for five pets. I’d need to fiddle with my build a bit because I don’t know if Hecatombs 10% recharge bonus is worded same as that of a four piece SCOMM 10% Recharge bonus. The remainder of the SCOMM bonuses aren’t quite as juicy for the slots required, although stacked 4% damage bonuses for 2-slotting would be interesting.

“Uber” is very situational for a Bots MM in this game. It really depends on what outcomes make you feel “Uber.” If you want to solo AV’s, a Bots/Traps is pretty Uber. If you want to dominate PVE, solo or in teams, hard to beat a Bots/Time. Bots/Elec is a good team build, but I find /Elec in general to be lacking the tools to buff up Bots damage. If you want to -BE- the team, try Bots/Storm. In fact, almost any /Storm MasterMind, properly slotted for +Recharge (inclusive of taking and using a handful of MM attacks that can be procc’d out) is a force to behold. You don’t even bother with Hurricane on that build. You just spawn out 2-3 Tornado’s and Lightning Storms and let all that provide significant cover for your Bots to do their thing. It’s glorious battlefield chaos and carnage, and make sure you slot for KB2KD unless you prefer extra chaos with your carnage. I think it was likely /Storm’s performance in the Pylon tests over in the Scrapper forums that got people to understand how pairing /Storm up with Bots/, Thugs/, Demons/ could make for a 4-figure DPS machine. A bit situational and works best against hard targets, but it’s pretty much the best Pew Pew Pew you can get out of Bots/.

I run a plethora of Storm AT’s, across many AT’s. I have an Ill/Storm controller with water spout that can throw out Tornado x2 and LS x2 every spawn due to high recharge and I also have Spectral Terror. The only time I get AV’s running is if there’s a second stormy on the team.

Not my decision but per Capt Powerhouse a couple years ago the entire sets mechanics is going to be stood on its head, scrapped and redone.

I generally keep a big stash of what I consider all my “key” enhancements. Stuff like LOTG’s, all the PVP uniques, Numina/Miracle +RECOVERY, Perf Shifter +END, etc etc. And I have never sold a purple drop, always craft and stash. I also keep a strong inventory of certain ATO’s and WinterO’s. But after all that, I just generally BIN if price isn’t set at too rich of a premium, or buy nearby within set or an adjacent set and convert/flip into what I need. On the rare occasion like you mention that I’d need something that was fodder for converting into something worth more, well, there’s always something else to convert into that category if you are willing to blow some converters. The RNG gods frown on me so often I end up with that trash more often than I’d like to admit. So ultimately, it’s a gamble of whether or not you can convert into that fodder yourself just by luck or you (gasp) actually grab something more premium and down-convert within category to get what you really want. And, for new players, hopefully realize what you are doing and ask yourself why you really wanted the duller penny of the two in first place.

Wow, and I thought I put a lot of work in just tweaking my costumes and finding a suitable name/bio to match! This is crazy levels of effort. Bravo!

I’ll be happy to come back to this thread if the devs ever up the damage/aggro limits of the set. It should play like a (short) ranged scrapper, minus crits. It plays more like an armored Dominator instead. I really have little issue with Sent secondaries. It’s just been unnecessarily neutered in damage. They address that and the AT will blossom.

Rule of 5 still apply?

I often am using a Survival Amplifier while leveling up and don’t always notice when it needs replenishing until I’m gasping for END again. Make sure that’s not the case for you? Secondarily, the recent change to “stackable” travel powers has me now stacking many whereas I used to not bother because they’d toggle each other off. Having Sprint + Ninja Run + combat jumping + Fly all running at once without any ENDREDUX is quite noticeable on the blue bar.

I’ve had this issue for months now, and not sure what’s going on. If I open a build to tinker with it, I can easily remove however many enhancement slots I wish. But I can’t place them without first saving the build (with the slots removed) and then re-loading the build. Once reloaded, I can place the removed slots wherever I wish. I’m fairly sure I’ve got everything else flagged/toggled as required. I’m in Dynamic mode, I make sure Powers/Slots is toggled, etc. And, as I’ve stated, if I save the build, exit and then re-load it, I can place my slots just fine. Just pretty annoying to do that every time.

Posting from the Mastermind forum. This issue has bothered me for a long time so thanks to @SmalltalkJava for the how-to. Felt it should be posted here as well.

Good read on how/why the EM IO proc impacts snipes: In a nutshell, if you slot this Proc you are basically always using Snipe powers as an “in combat” mode, losing your long range snipe damage bonus. Depending on your build though you might it that way.