Redlynne

Stock and standard answer for this question is ... whatever makes you happy. No seriously. Not everyone plays the game with the same playstyle, or is "going for" the exact same cookie cutter end state for their character(s). You're really better off deciding what works best for YOU and then investing in that direction. Take a good look at what the different Incarnate slots "do" for your build, based on the way you like to play it, and then start whittling things down towards what you'd want to have in your build. Research the end state slotting you want to have for each Incarnate and then work your way backwards to figure out how to get there. The actual "getting there" is left as an exercise for the disinterested observer ... ^_~

Yet another evolution of the Time/Dual Pistols/Soul build ... this time taking advantage of the advances that Bopper has been making with research into PPM for procs. Also, since we now have Spoiler tags to help collapse these long form posts in these new forums, I'm going to be making use of that added functionality here. The changes from previous builds of mine in this thread is relatively minor, but with some rather profound implications. Again, the purpose of this build isn't to reach for a pylon killer, but rather a soft (verging on hard?) controller-ish performance profile that leverages movement slowing, recharge debuffing, and full on mezz capability in addition to the tohit debuffing and defense buffing to achieve relative safety. The nice thing with this mix is that it's multiple layers of response, such that if a $Target is immune (or even just highly resistant) to a control effect, they almost certainly won't be immune/resistant to the entire mix of effects arrayed against them by this build to neutralize them. The first change that I made from previous iterations of this build was to take a slot from Hasten and Power Boost (each) and redeploy them within the context of the build. One slot went to Chrono Shift so as to slot in the Performance Shifter proc (which will have a capped 90% chance to proc due to the long recharge time), which will substantially mitigate the cost of casting Chrono Shift. The other slot went to Hail of Bullets so as to slot a Force Feedback proc into this power, thereby helping to increase the opportunities to use Hail of Bullets in shorter time frames. To compensate for these shift of slots, Hasten and Power Boost now each have common 50+5 Recharge IOs slotted into them. The other major change was a "reshuffle" of enhancements slotted into Pistols, Dual Wield and Executioner's Shot, done in a sort of "fresh cup, move down" kind of way so as to slot a non-Defender ATO set into Pistols. The purpose behind slotting a 5-piece Decimation set, with the Build Up proc, into Pistols here is to leverage the "low end" minimum proc chance in Build Up so as to achieve more procs per minute than Pistols "ought to" be capable of producing in a pure single target attack chain that is using Pistols, Dual Wield and Executioner's Shot repeatedly. Specifically, with a 1 PPM on the Build Up proc, this means that in order to hit the minimum chance to proc of 6.5% on a 1 PPM proc (see Bopper's research on this subject if you want to know where that computation comes from) the power in question needs to have an animation plus enhanced (by slots and incarnate) recharge time of 3.9 seconds. Subtracting out the Arcanatime animation for Pistols of 1.118s, this leaves a recharge time ceiling of 2.782s after enhancement from slots and incarnate sources (global recharge modifiers "don't count" for this). Starting from a 4s base recharge time, to get to 2.782s on slotted enhancements and incarnate sources alone requires a mere +43.8% recharge reduction from enhancements and incarnates. Note that this build, according to the version of Pine that I'm using to make this, has +52.66% recharge reduction slotted into it, meaning that without global recharge modifiers Pistols would have a recharge time of 2.62s which is less than the 2.782s required to reach minimum proc chance per use of Pistols. Now what makes this build choice seem so irrational at first (but wait for it, I'm getting there) is that because the proc chance gets "floored" at 6.5% every 3.9s on a 1 PPM proc like Build Up, this means that if the recharge continues to drop below this floor, the chance to proc stays fixed at 6.5% per use of the power, but the power can wind up getting used more often ... essentially giving you "extra bites at the apple" (so to speak) in a way that can potentially RAISE THE PROC RATE above the default 1 PPM(!). Specifically, with the build I'm presenting here, the animation time for Pistols is 1.188s and the recharge time (with Hasten and Chrono Shift boosting recharge) falls down to 1.09s, for a grand total of 2.208 seconds of animation plus recharge time. Compared to the 3.9s "floor" time for a 6.5% proc chance, this hasty animation and recharge time means that (theoretically) you can "squeeze in" what amounts to 106 seconds worth of chances to proc at 6.5% into a 60 second window for a 1 proc per minute rate, thanks to going "past the floor" of the minimum recharge time. Essentially, you can make 7 attacks at 6.5% proc chance rather than merely 4 attacks at the 6.5% proc chance "level" dictated by the recharge formula. At a very granular level, this means that you're functionally looking at being able to make "2 attacks for the price of 1" on proc chances in that ~4 second window ... and by getting 2 chances to proc at 6.5% each, instead of just 1, in a give time frame you are looking at an increase in chance to get 1 proc per 4 seconds (or so) of up to around 10-12% or so for 2 proc chances rather than one (see Chuck Lots Of Dice! reasons for why this works out this way). Essentially, this means that ... ideally speaking ... you can functionally increase the PPM on the Build Up proc from a mere 1 PPM to what amounts to something more like a 1.75 PPM at the most. Now, of course, in actual gameplay, it isn't going to work out QUITE that ideally ... but that at least gives you a starting point to work from when thinking about this issue, because one of the first things you're going to do with Pistols once you really get going on slotting out a build is "weaving" Pistols between other attacks to as to fill in the gaps and dead spots. Since a LOT of the other attack powers in Dual Pistols take 1.848s to animate, with a 1.09s recharge time on Pistols you can easily pull of an attack chain that cycles like this against a single target: Pistols -> Dual Wield -> Pistols -> Executioner's Shot -> repeat Total animation time = 1.118 + 1.848 + 1.118 + 1.848 = 5.932 seconds This means that you'd be using Pistols essentially once every 3 seconds ... AND ... if you manage to proc Build Up at any time from Pistols during this sequencing, so long as you're queuing up attacks while the previous attack is animating, you'll be able to get the Build Up proc to buff FOUR attacks in a row(!) because 1.848*2+1.118=4.814 seconds and the Build Up buff lasts for 5.25 seconds(!). Also note that Empty Clips and Bullet Rain also share a 1.848s animation time, meaning they can be "substituted in" for Dual Wield and Executioner's Shot in the above rotation without disturbing the "balance" of the total animation time ... however the longer recharge times for Empty Clips and Bullet Rain will mean they can't be used repeatedly in succession unless Force Feedback procs in either Empty Clips or Bullet Rain, but if Force Feedback DOES proc it too will last 5 seconds, which is shorter than the animation time needed to "wrap back around" to get back to either Empty Clips or Bullet Rain again on the attack rotation. So essentially, so long as Pistols is getting used once per 3.9 seconds, the chance to proc Build Up is "floored" at 6.5% chance to proc. However, when cast repeatedly in an attack chain that activates the power that the Build Up proc is in every 3 seconds repeatedly (okay, every 2.966s, but who's counting?) over an infinite span of time you wind up with an "effective" proc rate of ~1.3 PPM rather than a mere 1 PPM thanks to "going past the floor" of how fast you can go on recharge with the Build Up proc. Oh and just in case anyone is wondering, I've calculated that the (relative) damage increase over the Pistols -> Dual Wield -> Pistols -> Executioner's Shot attack chain using this build when Build Up procs at being almost +150 damage from the output of getting "four bites at the apple" due to being able to squeeze animation times into the 5.25s window of opportunity after Build Up procs, so ... not too terrible. For anyone who wants to compute chances/odds to get 1 proc out of multiple attempts, simply do the following: 1 - (1 - proc chance)^number of attempts So for 2 chances to proc, the odds you're going to get (at least) 1 proc is ... 1-(1-0.065)2= 12.5% in 6 seconds After 3 chances to proc, the odds you're going to get (at least) 1 proc is ... 1-(1-0.065)3= 18.2% in 9 seconds After 4 chances to proc, the odds you're going to get (at least) 1 proc is ... 1-(1-0.065)4= 23.5% in 12 seconds After 5 chances to proc, the odds you're going to get (at least) 1 proc is ... 1-(1-0.065)5= 28.5% in 12 seconds ... when using the parameters I've laid out in the above explanation for Pistols when using Pistols every 3 seconds with a 6.5% chance to proc per attack. Oh and just for completeness sake ... 1-(1-0.065)10= 48.9% in 30 seconds ... and 1-(1-0.065)20= 73.9% in 60 seconds ... Bottom line here is that using the Chuck Lots Of Dice!! strategy can work in your favor, even when the odds are low, so long as you keep on chuckin' dice pretty quickly. Anyway ... I did all that Decimation proc option stuff simply because the alternative was ... the Entropic Chaos proc ... and I figure that between the Defender ATO proc for a PBAoE Heal and Temporal Mending there just wasn't enough "demand" for a healing proc in the build at that point. So I went with Decimation rather than with Entropic Chaos in Pistols. However, this was done so as to open up the 6th slot in order to put Winter's Bite into this last slot. Now, according to the information that Bopper as dug up, there's an unvetted assumption that Winter's Bite has 4 PPM on the basic proc and 5 PPM on the superior version. Put THAT into Pistols (and using Pistols once every 3 seconds!) and suddenly you've got a pretty significant perma movement slow and recharge debuff going on for your $Target, in addition to everything else that the "No Escape" build is doing to them to ruin their day. And while stacking EVERYTHING this build can do to debuff a $Target onto your "main" $Target that you've got selected is probably going to wind up in "overkill" territory (except against the highly resistant types), I still think it's a good idea to keep all of the recharge debuffing in the AoEs of Time's Juncture and Distortion Field so as to affect more than JUST your $Target with these kinds of debuffs. That way, you can achieve a "soft shutdown" of entire groups of $Targets via slow movement and recharge debuffing in a way that Fear and/or Endurance Draining might not be able to manage, while reserving an even stronger "nearly hard shutdown" of your primary $Target that prevents them from attacking you all that much (and if they don't defeat you, you can just heal the damage right back up and keep pounding away at them). Anyway, here's the results of that effort. Feel free to poke holes (again) in what you see here. That's what these forums are for, after all. Level 50 Technology Defender Primary Power Set: Time Manipulation Secondary Power Set: Dual Pistols Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Concealment Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1545;761;1522;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EF74A6E09452A81479BF1FD207532A88AF8589A04623A61| |1E2CE3405A6303ACC349DA9CAD2855F40176870A16E8C1B8DA86070E55730C8435D| |9AF8445DFB1A4FEF39C0249D64F2BB3DF7FECF39F73FF776E4EAB0FFD1C96B47991| |018D2D396951A5633AA31A9E67C63EAC4B461EAE6D42C2B3CA5F0B66C4DA68EE533| |19654C9B5153236943CBE6F5B4AD9946E3F6FCB9B431A54E2AC3F9B49E4A6A966DE| |A162B4B9AA6AE9CD0B5A969DBC7C7A359559D0CF2E129E3B26669E39AAED9B37E5C| |A8D9866A590DC7B3DA843264E672F9AC6DE652A3665E87A296ADE6666BA1A718BC2| |B21468FC3583D2021B144E576CCCBE600F512F3DC22DE464AF3C43BC05A89953C90| |F8EF7DA015482B4430561245EE8A117B913E851847F6835624AD3800281159E5161| |7B0B7DD0F05E46364E8BA87B190C46430D92BE03EBCD502EFE94D08BD2FE42BFD24| |F21AA1CFC83D5F885F91B5DF889BC801E84546ADB30A79CA30B7B76CD1C3E7EB978| |82F908DCBC497D84FF30208AA24B606DA72F2B77C047BDE0FB92BA8AF8AA7E863F3| |33E27364EB22718948FB5C877C41D2068FA0376D5B7C22F0B56D54BB63033432F01| |7B049628350B78A7AA91A44CD06E4ABC69858BD827BE8584576AE11D7916F616D0D| |FAE0A9398CFA4E623779FE0ED6D4613EA1EEB587EFB7FB15F67100EA3750EF0D17D| |1E7EE4BC8BD3A71866820C326B21D3E64137DDFA668E12CC8EC3DD46AA17E5A2816| |BE89BD86E7D0AF8350B39D6AB693D711F23A425E47C8EB18791DFB2872FF0E81B68| |BB45DBF215F33CCFD41F6FE25FE233AC8387DA72B90A2879F3EC7DB43DA3869E3A4| |4D903641DAC4BCC4FDFAE0672C4A7B8DD2BECA219542DF4E21AF0310EBA3581FC51| |AA5E2FB1C71C71C78585F51245114E92F8A0CB823BD98FB8C3B26C33E02123B5B88| |61FF4E52DAFE3F60421435F2CE3D77367D304F7B1528E78F9D98476813F9D9F19FC| |633ED3F2FF0B3FCDDADEB41DD4FB7AE1563811B781E02741EEEC2E591A9B77BC19D| |3B7EDF354EFA0AA717C7175CE3B46B3CEE1AFF074E40F1D8| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Hero Profile: ------------ ------------ ------------ Set Bonus Totals: ------------ Set Bonuses:

Even unvetted for Homecoming, that's still a useful resource for having a place to start. Please put a link into your OP for that reference. I'm thinking you could do this:

Has anyone ever compiled a list of the PPM for each proc is, so we can plug that info into formulas for answers? I'm having to rely on digging through posts to try and find things like the Force Feedback proc is a 2 PPM, while others get mentioned (very occasionally!) as being 3.5 or even 4.5 PPM and so on. I'm thinking that we need a ... repository ... of PPM values for each proc that is easy to find (and easy to use?). Reason being is that I'd like to be able to include accurate(ish?) PPM values for builds as part of my data dump for how my builds work in future update posts.

Oh man ... you could have had Fauna R. Cook DD instead ...

/em polite cough

They're there ... but they're underwater. You have to get them all in order to get the badge that they add up to.

Enflame is starting to look like it might be useful ...

Bowling alleys are just physics demonstration labs.

How is that working out for you? I've honestly been curious about how to best employ and slot Enflame as a possible way to achieve clever use of game mechanics results. There seem to be "a lot of those" cropping up in these forums for some reason ... No no, don't tell me. I'll figure out why eventually ...

I'll just leave this here, in case you ever need it (for reference purposes) ... SR/MA ... NO GET HITSU!!

For simple reference ... Bodyguard Mode.

Once you've changed the chat bubble setting in the options menu, you need to click on the Apply button in the bottom left of the window to effect the update to the color changes.

An armed society is a polite society. Uh ... wrong. An armed society is a PARANOID society, just waiting for Murphy's Law to have some random fool start killing people.

Counter-proposal. Choose Athletic for Female. Leg height to minimum. Shoulders, Waist and Hips to maximum so as to counter the "wasp waisted" default settings. Chest at medium or less. Set height after setting the above parameters. In the actual costuming itself, in the Head open up the Shape menu and choose Youthful so as to achieve a more "juvenile" (ie. lower) head to overall height ratio than you would have on an adult. The Youthful head will the "bigger" than the default adult head, to help sell this difference in apparent age (children have a larger head relative to their overall body size). After that ... you're on your own.

Ah, that would make sense. I advise keeping XP Gain turned OFF until you're turning in the last alignment mission to the contact (which will then bump you up to next level with XP Gain turned on at that point).

I wanted to use the numpad for my bind files, but for whatever reason my game client wouldn't recognize the difference between the numpad keys and the number keys above QWERTY ... so I had to scrap that plan. What I ultimately wound up using was a modification/extension of my Kheldian form binds. T Y U for Tier 1 G H for Tier 2 B for All Add shift to the above to address a single pet individually (so Shift+B for the Tier 3 Pet) Z X C for the Attack, Go To and Follow commands Shift + Z X C for the Aggressive, Passive, Defensive stances V for the Tier 18 power, programmed to automatically cast onto the highest Tier of Pet available at the time There was some additional functionality built in beyond that in my bind files (which have continued to "evolve" with more playtime since I posted them), but that's the basic gist of the layout I wound up using. It keeps everything within easy reach of my left hand on the keyboard such that I can rely in muscle memory to hit the right keys (with sufficient practice). Side note, instead of using the more common WASD for movement keys, I instead "invert the T" so as to use WERD for movement ... with the E key being forward and using the W and R keys as strafe left/strafe right so as to do all my "driving" using the mouse and keyboard without needing to look down to see where my hand is. On my keyboard, the F key has a raised bump at the bottom of the key for easy tactile feedback, and my index finger just naturally comes to rest on the F key while my middle finger sits on the E key of my keyboard for forward movement. Doing this shifted my hand position 1 key to the right (from W to E) and therefore made access to an extra key to the right an easier stretch. This means that I can reach from the tilde to 6 keys without looking at my keyboard while holding down the E key for forward movement, and can do the same with the F1 to F5 keys with little difficulty, making the 1-6 and F1-F5 keys the "prime real estate" for keybinds that address my power trays.

Elaborate. According to the wiki page for Chance McKnight his mission range is 8-15. I take this to mean that so long as you're still Level 15 at the time you're doing his missions/arc, including the alignment mission at the end, you won't outlevel him.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Water_Blast http://web.archive.org/web/20140705002348/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/archetype.php?at=3#Defender_Ranged.Water_Blast https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Defender http://web.archive.org/web/20140705002348/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/archetype.php?at=3 https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dominator http://web.archive.org/web/20140705005558/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/archetype.php?at=11 Purpose of request: To make it possible to play an Ice/Water Dominator.

The sheer quantity of commands you CAN be giving out to Mastermind Pets very nearly DEMANDS use of bind files ... if only for reasons of logistics. Tier 1 All Tier 1 Pet 1 Tier 1 Pet 2 Tier 1 Pet 3 Tier 2 All Tier 2 Pet 1 Tier 2 Pet 2 Tier 3 Pet All Pets Now combine that with needing to issue each of the following commands to them. Attack Goto Follow Aggressive Passive Defensive Dismiss And just right there you're looking at 9 combinations of addressing your Pets multiplied by 7 commands to give to your Pets and you're already looking at needing 63 macros to hold all of that ... and that's not even including wanting to have quick ways to select a specific Pet as your $Target for buffing (Train 1 + Train 2) powers, which adds another 6 macros ... for a total of 69 macros ... for a FULL 7 TRAYS WORTH OF MACROS ... assuming you can keep them all straight in your head. And if you want to be able to use macros to issue Inspirations to your Pets as well, there's another 7 macros multiplied by 6 Pets adding another 42 macros to your total ... meaning you're now up to 111 macros needed for all the commands you could be issuing to your Pets. You only get 9 trays worth of 10 slots to work with. When you can figure out a way to cram 111 macros (or the less functional 69 macros) into 90 slots ... AND still have enough slots left over for your other Primary, Secondary, Pool, Epic and Incarnate powers into the bargain ... um ... please post your solution. So ... CAN it be done? Well, theoretically speaking ... yeah. Would it be WISE to do things this way? Not really ... not when you can use bind files to do the job for you without cluttering up your power trays with tons of macros.

You're "going in the wrong direction" with that idea. Counter-proposal. What you're really looking for is a way to "clamp" the 50+ factor from Incarnates so as to limit the amount of +Factor (above 50) to achieve the same effect. Basically, rather than just keep raising the ceiling (To Infinity ... And Beyond!) you want to LOWER the ceiling that characters can reach, thereby providing the same effective level differential as difficulty factor(s). Or to put it another way ... Exemplar For Incarnate Levels ... if that makes more sense to you.

My plot to take over the builds forums is thickening ...

Bopper ... I have a curiosity that you might be able to satisfy ... AND ... which would seem to be pertinent to some of your other research on this topic since this might make for a useful test case. Behold ... ENFLAME ... from the Sorcery Pool. Common Enhancement types accepted: Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction, Range, Recharge Reduction Set types accepted: Target AoE, Universal Damage Procs that can be slotted: Positron's chance for Energy damage Ragnarok chance for Knockdown Javelin Volley chance for Lethal damage Annihilation chance for Resistance debuff Frozen Blast chance for Immobilize Overwhelming Force chance for Knockdown plus Knockback to Knockdown Personal note: it would seem to me that slotting both the Ragnarok AND Overwhelming Force procs together in this power would be an example of unnecessary redundancy. This power seems to have all the markers you'd expect from a "toggle that isn't actually a toggle" in that it instead cues up a collection of successively time delayed clicks that spawn pseudo-pet flame patches in the location that the $Target happens to be at at the time (so as to "leave a trail" of them (at 88 mph?)). Now, in the context of this thread about PPM on Set IOs, I have to wonder how the PPM would "work" for Enflame, and if there's a particularly "good fit" for the power from any of the procs that can be slotted into it ... particularly given the fact that the 5s duration on the 3s delays means that you can potentially have multi-stack chances for procs going on ... or it could be a "check once, use repeatedly" kind of multiplier situation, due to how the power is coded to function under the hood (resolve first, animate after). Also, that long recharge time of 90 seconds for the base power, coupled with a 5+15=20 second overall duration for the effects which can be repositioned after casting (!) would seem to me to be something of a prime research opportunity for PPM monsterification of an otherwise somewhat lackluster power. For example, the chance for Immobilize in a "burn patches" power would seem to make for a pretty decent starting point ... particularly if coupled with chance for a Resistance Debuff ... particularly if the chance of getting those procs on the initial casting is high (approaching 90%?) and thereby helping to maximize the damage throughput onto the $Target(s) affected by the Enflame patches. And that's before tossing a chance for Energy and/or Lethal damage into the mix (let alone a chance for Knockdown). Your thought(s) on the potential for clever use of game mechanics ...?

You have encountered the same performance as what happened up to 2012. The best workaround you can do is to write the pet emotes into a macro and have the bind execute the macro(s).