Crysis

Just adding....Devs thought they addressed this several months ago for Katana animations, but mine remains totally borked for Katana scrapper as well as Ninja Tools on a Sent. I don’t think we should expect to see this fixed any time soon, if at all.

This entire thread is sooooooo 2006 for “LOL PVP” grins and giggles. Thanks all. Also explains why all the fancy people were running around PVE doing /macro Lame “em liedown$$em score7” or whatever while delivering PBAoE nukes from range.

I’d wondered about that....seems the whole EA set is following different rules?

Nah y’all don’t understand. FX mod or no, Katanas are invisible to all but the wielder....briefly visible during attack animation. Literally invisible to all other players. It’s been bugged like this since last summer.

Became very depressed when I realized that to everyone else watching my bad-assed sounding and looking lightsaber swinging saw me dancing around with an invisible katana. Maybe someday all these bugs will get fixed. And, I’m sure, replaced with similar annoying ones.

I now have three different /Electric Armor brutes. I see a lot of people abandoning them in the upper 30’s and low to mid 40’s because they are rather weak to Arachnos and Toxic ranged damage. But once you power through those levels, they are literally almost unkillable in the late game with capped S/L/E and Melee defense and very high resists.

Never got a peep. One guy sent me a note saying it was his but didn’t have the exact number anywhere near where it should be (actually had a string of ones in it, indicative someone fat fingered it). I still have it in case someone else comes along. Nothing left to spend money on anyways.

I’d argue you are almost better off just resummoning your Bots than you would be taking and using Repair. Almost.

According to the beta bugs forum, Elec Affinity for MM’s may actually be using LESS Endurance than intended. It sounds like that may be true on Beta as well as on Live currently. CaptPowerhouse acknowledged it, meaning I’d not get too comfortable that /EA MM’s are by any means going to be fine after this gets corrected.

You can’t really “replace” Scorpion Shield with anything else. It’s that good. Closest you could come to achieving the posted builds’ stats and stay blue side entirely would be Cold Mastery/Ice Armor but even then it will only boost your +DEF to S/L. Attacks that contain Energy are quite plentiful in the 40+ game, inclusive of iTrials, and Scorpion Shield is just overall a fantastic +DEF buff to S/L/Energy. If you really are opposed to taking the single trip to Redside for role play or thematic purposes, why not just weave it into your bio as you undertook a secret undercover mission to infiltrate Black Scorpion’s organization and managed to “liberate” the armor for testing by blue-side superhero scientists or something. Seriously....it’s worth bending the narrative to get Scorpion Shield.

If you look at most /Storm MM builds, you’ll find that O2 boost isn’t in there. There is a play style mindset for MM’s that think keeping the henchman alive is the goal. For a damage-oriented mindset, It’s not. The goal is putting down the enemy and keeping them distracted so your henchmen just don’t take that much damage that requires healing. While this varies by type of henchmen (Demon/Storm is far sturdier than Thugs/Storm, and Bots/Storm is likely the most sturdy of all), it’s “common play style” to try and keep the henchmen alive via heals. The power of Storm is that stuff is all being occupied, ESPECIALLY if you build for high +Recharge. I routinely am running my /Storm MM’s at around 235-280% Recharge (150+ from slotting and then a ton of FF +Rech procs going off all the time). This is another “common knowledge” thing that most MM’s don’t understand. They don’t build for Recharge because it doesn’t work for the henchmen. It doesn’t, but it DOES work for the MM. And as for pylons....I’ve done them and have impressive kill times to show for it. But when I can get 3 Tornado’s and two Lightning Storms out at once, I don’t worry about the “stationary” impact of LS in regular PVE play. There’s two LS out all the time with a huge radius. I generally just stand under one and nothing gets to me at melee while it keeps stuff on their back. And with Burnout in the build PLUS natively high recharge, I’m double Gang War or double Hell on Earth about every third spawn and they continue into the 4th. And in the 40’s you’ll have a fully procc’d out Mace Volley for impressive MM self-damage along with a great AOE immobilize. O2 and Hurricane are just wasted power picks. You don’t need them. You need high Recharge and a LOT of +END for /Storm on a MM. And with both, you are the team and everyone else is just support. /Storm is most definitely top tier if the goal is DAMAGE. If the goal is longevity of henchmen....there are other secondaries that do that job better. But I don’t think that’s how a MM should be played. Your opinion certainly may differ and that’s fine because there’s lots of ways to play this game.

Well you can but.... On Thugs and Demons, you’ll likely be 6 slotting all henchmen and the bonus HOE or GW. On Storm, you’ll six slot Tornado and LS. And throw a couple/few slots into FR as well. Steamy Mist often gets at least for if not six slots also. On Mace Mastery most common is at least 14-18 slots between Envelope, Volley and Scorp Shield. Add in several more slots for Fitness, travel, Leadership, Fighting etc pool and ultimately Gale is going to be starved for more than two slots. For me it usually gets a Hami, KB to KD and a FF +Recharge if I can afford three slots. And that’s max. I just think there are better places to invest slots and procs.

First off, appreciate the OP sharing their opinions on ranking of secondary sets. However, I think it's important that anyone reading this understands that the secondary choices get stronger/weaker depending on the primary chosen. And, perhaps even more importantly, get stronger/weaker depending on playstyle preferences, experience playing MM's in general and what you are trying to accomplish. Simple example: If you really want to solo +4/x8 from about 41-42 onwards, your secondary choice will greatly permit/restrict you in/from doing this. Likewise, secondaries like Storm can be played in a number of ways. I never take the Heal/02 Boost, Hurricane, and barely slot Gale, on any of MM Stormies. /Storm MM's are primarily about maximizing DPS and damage output. Thus, the issue raised about Knockback annoying teams and the lackluster heal of 02 (both valid criticisms) really ONLY apply to someone trying to play /Storm MM's like a Defender Stormie. That's certainly viable to do so, and I'd likely put Storm Summoning in the same tier as the OP. But if you want to maximize your DPS as a MM, you aren't playing it that way, don't take most of the Storm powers and you focus instead on high recharge and a primary that works well with the -RES debuffs and high native DPS (Demon or Thugs). I think one of the biggest mistakes most MM players make is trying to play their secondary like an equivalent Defender, Controller, Corruptor, etc. If you view the secondaries through these kind of lenses, you'll end up with under-optimized MM builds.

Powerboost only affects powers you cast. For example, if you toggle off Scorpion Shield and then trigger PowerBoost before toggling on Scorp Shield again.....it will slightly boost your defense bonus from Scorp Shield. But that’s kinda worthless to do as you’ll have to toggle off/on Scorp Shield and boost only lasts 10 secs or so. PowerBoost does boost things like defense bonuses from your secondaries. It works very well with /Time MM’s.

The hallmark of Bots/Time/Mace is that you can easily softcap DEF to pretty much everything. The downside is that it’s hard to slot in all the MM pet uniques, but then again, you don’t really need to on the DEF side. Time doesn’t augment damage really, but the high DEF, the -TOHIT from Times Juncture and boosts to END and Heal means you are perfectly situated to take some of your primaries AND Mace Volley and frankenslot them with procs to actually assist with some decent damage output, being able to do so frequently and mitigate all the native MM Endurance penalties. I suggest you take a look at this thread.....lots of ways to build out Bots. But you =WILL= need to take and slot your attacks and use them or you’ll find whittling down spawns to be a chore. I play mine at +4/x8 routinely and do so quite safely, and I tankermind (not using Provoke pool, but just native Times Juncture, which pulls MASS aggro onto me). Your build isn’t too far off from those shown in this thread. I keep tweaking mine from time to time, although I mostly play other MM alts these days.

I was under the impression that Market Crash was supposed to only award one Purple recipe per player, and only once per individual player playthrough, meaning you can run Market Crash all you want on any particular character, but you’ll only get the purple recipe drop as a reward the FIRST time you play the TF, then no more? I’ve now run it 5 times on one character, and have received 4 purple recipes as rewards, +1 purple recipe drop randomly (during the sky raider cave mish). I’ve also been on missions with SG mates who ran it for the first time and did NOT receive the purple drop reward. Is this WAI?

To be clear, I didn’t delete mine in the 40’s due to lack of durability. Bots/EA is pretty durable, and I have many Bots/builds. It’s at least as durable as Bots/Time. The issue was lack of damage multiplying powers from /EA and pretty much everything else about EA made it fairly weak FOR DAMAGE OUTPUT AUGMENTATION. I prefer MM builds where all my pets + Secondary effects combined have decent DPS to bring down opponents. Bots/EA isn’t going to do that. I’d argue even Demon/EA, which are sturdier still than Bots/EA, isn’t going to do that. /EA just isn’t that set. It’s far more akin to /FF than anything else.

Am I mis-remembering, or did +Recharge used to affect controller pets? I seem to recall in the very early days when you could literally get out 3-4 instances of flaming imps that applying speed boost to the throng did actually speed up their attacks as well. Been forever ago though. At any rate, I’m not sure I’d classify lack of +Recharge having any effect as a ‘bug’ as much as a design issue, since what it does if allowed today it’s screws up pet AI.

You’ll just have to get used to puckering up when facing +4/x8 Arachnos. Depending on the primary, it’s possible to get your /Elec Brute up to decent levels of Ranged DEF, at least within a small luck of softcap. But you’ll still find the debuffs landing and starting a cascading failure. What works well for me with Arachnos is herding. That pulls the ranged attackers in close, makes it easier for me to kill them along with everyone else.

I deleted my Bots/EA in the 40’s once I realized it was pretty weak relative to other MM sets.

Don’t agree with the MM example, as I routinely solo most of my MM’s on +4x8 and while my pets sometimes do die, it’s certainly not against every boss.

But with the extended maintenance window today.... Did you stop all the dupin’ of rares?

Maximum reward for maximum effort. Anything else is just not acceptable.

I’m going to preface this with the clear statement that this is totally subjective and based on my personal play style preferences. Unless the AT delivers measurable and noticeable (subjective) damage I just don’t/won’t play it. I did on Live and had at least one AT of everything at 50, fully incarnated. But on HC I’ve stuck to only what I like and thus have only one Controller (a Fire/Kin I rolled only because I knew it could run fine on SO’s for PL’ing my other alts I wanted) and everything else is a Dominator, Corruptor, Blaster, Scrapper, Stalker, Mastermind or Brute. Ive thus far avoided Defenders (have a lone ‘proc monster Offender‘ perma parked at 46), Controllers and EAT/VEAT’s and have a tank or two stalled in their 20’s but mostly because I realize all of those AT’s peak in team utility in the 30’s and then just diminish in value in the 40’s and late game relative to the Buff/Debuff from other AT’s becoming “plenty enough” when coupled with serious and sustained DPS. I will only play something that continues to improve overall into the 40’s. All those support AT’s just peak out at 40 and then everyone else gets so much better that relatively speaking the contributions of Controllers and Defenders just stall out to minimal contributions. And EAT’s/VEAT’s just have never been my thing. I clearly prefer direct damage AT’s that can buff /debuff what they put out themselves and the efforts of others.