Banana Man

Woahhhhhhhh. Insane, dude.

Ice primary is really good. Ice primary is probably not great unless you're talking about pre-level 50 stuff or just want to be ice/ice for thematic purposes. I'm not a big fan of temporal. It's nice in that it's pretty sturdy and gives you some extra recharge, but (if we're talking max level/IOd out gameplay) outside of the pbaoe attack, it sometimes feels like you don't have a secondary, as the melees are pretty terrible. /Martial isn't like a min/max set, but it has a bunch of AoE, and Ki Pushing someone into Eagle's Claw is absolutely hilarious and never gets old to me. I really enjoy /fire for a secondary. It's a strong mix of insane AoE (which means you can play basically any primary you want and not worry about it not having enough AoE) and has some powers like Burn which do pretty good single target damage when proc'd out, and make your single target moves do more damage (pretty much always procs the glad fury chance for -20% resist. I have and ice/fire and it's one of the blasters I enjoy most in PvE. Really good single target, unparalleled aoe... you know, the things blasters like. Fire (does everything) and psi (good single target, nice for certain AVs) are also really good primaries, but keep in mind that psi is taking a nerf because its snipe animation is being "fixed" with the new snipe changes. For sheer survivabiliy, I'd assume mental is the best by far for the regen, but it doesn't bring much damage to the table. I feel like dark is kinda slept on for a secondary, because soul drain is kinda nuts with the right primary. /Elec has some pretty strong single target potential too. @Ghost Logic might be a really good one to ask, because that dude plays nothing but blasters, and while he does care about sets being strong, I think fun is also his primary goal.

When we last spoke about this, you suggested that you were clearing cave style fire farm maps at +4x8 in a little over an hour on what I'm assuming was your arch/nin. An ice/fire blaster was clearing the same map in around 28 minutes. Cave style fire farms emphasize group-to-group killing ability. Archery is very likely the best (and if not, one of the best) sets for this, due to the insanely fast cool-down on its nuke, and having other fast animating aoe in it's pbaoe and cone attacks. Ice blast, on the other hand, is one of the worst primaries for group-to-group farming. Blizzard and Ice Storm only shine when far over the agro cap, and blizzard has a longer than average cool-down, even for a nuke. A /fire blaster (using possibly the worst primary for job) was between two and three times more efficient than a /nin blaster (possibly using the best primary for the job). /nin is not an efficient set for farming when compared to other blaster secondaries, mostly due to its low AoE potential. /nin has worse than average AoE damage, and worse than average single target damage when compared to other primaries. Also, side note: The way you have your decimation proc slotted, it only has an 8.5% chance to activate. Here's a cool resource that really has helped me when build making: PPM list PPM calculator To the OP: As you suspect, the set is not optimal, or anywhere near it. Luckily, CoH is a game where having sub-optimal builds seldom matters, so unless you're really looking to min-max, don't let that stop you from playing a set you like. I have fun on a /martial blaster, and it's not a min/maxy set either. One thing you can do for the lack of damage in the set is slot Golden Dragonfly with very little recharge, and then slot both chance for -res procs in it, giving you a potential 40% -res debuff... which is pretty crazy on a blaster with the right primary.

I like that idea.

Ice/fire can perform slightly better, it just takes a good deal more work.

Playable and good are not the same thing. This game isn't hard. Just about any build spec'd right can clear a fire farm at +4x8... and just about any blaster secondary will do it more efficiently than /nin.

There’s no trick. The Lts are named “boss” because they are normally bosses. He’s just set to not solo bosses on that character. It’s pretty obvious from the video that he could solo bosses pretty easily, it would just take a little longer. I don’t know why he doesn’t solo bosses... that’s his own prerogative. Maybe it’s less efficient or something? I don’t know. It isn’t my character. I was aware that they were lts and not bosses the first time I watched it, I assumed everyone else was aware, too. Bosses or not, I don’t think any other dom combos will clear that map as fast - even IF they can, that clear time is still really fast, which means that as the poster originally suggested, plant/martial is indeed a strong combo... ...which is all the poster was saying in the first place.

YOU ONLY VOTED FOR 6

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13

Yes. If you like katana or just want thematic synergy, you can get away with it - but if you're looking for a "good" build it's pretty terrible. Golden dragonfly tickles, Shinobi is basically useless except for saving slots to get instant snipe, the placate doesn't reset the hide mechanic, and the minus res on it is too small to make it worth the cast time.

Unless I'm really missing something watching this video, he doesn't use confuse a single time. It has a 60 second base cooldown (so, what? 15ish seconds enhanced?), and the video is pretty short. Skipping through the video a few seconds at a time, it'd be pretty easy to notice it on cooldown, and it never is. I don't think he's claiming plant/martial is the end-all be-all dominator build. People were talking about strong dominator builds, and the poster mentioned plant/martial as one of them - which it very clearly is. Plant is good for obvious reasons, and martial for what looks to be really good AoE potential and the extra damage from Envenomed Blades, which lets increase your damage even if you're damage capped.

Here are mine. PvE Build Farm Build

I don’t see this being a great combo. If it seems fun to you, by all means, don’t let me stop you. If you play it well, you can probably turn it into something a little better than average. Fire’s main issue in PvP right now is that it doesn’t proc very well. It could be a decent 1v1 set f paired with something like plant. Atomic doesn’t bring much to the table in PvP. It’s an ok pve set, though. Check the PvP boards for a link to the PvP discord, there’s tons of people in there that can help you with builds and will reply faster than on here.

I have a few ice/fire builds. Are you looking for a farmer or general pve character?

Best way to add survivability to a blaster: kill everything really fast. No, I’m not kidding. It’s pretty easy to soft-cap s/l/e, and if you really want, you can softcap fire and cold too - but softcapped or softcappable* s/l/e is usually the standard. After that, build for damage. Slot procs in the right places, build a high recharge and damage bonus from IOs, and it makes a world of difference. I can post some sample builds later if you want. If I only have 40 def and someone else has 45, but I kill the 54 boss attacking me while only letting it attack once, but they take longer to kill it so it attacks them three times, my 40% becomes better than their 45. *softcappable meaning maybe you slot 40% def, but you buy a survival amp when you feel the need for the extra 5 - or that cheap kinetic dampener temp.

Before I put a vote up, does anyone know where I find that ruined cimerora map?

It's more about the speed. There are not many things in this game that will clear that map in 3 minutes, friend.

You don't need it, but I like it. It basically gives you the fly and TP temps for free, and a useful buff for allies. For pure healing, emp/water or emp/dark are your best bets, because you can slot more heal bonuses, and defenders get power boost now. Ill/emp is still fine, though.

Congrats to Flamethrower and MJB for taking 1st place. Xhiggy and NKL took second. HP came in with the clutch ski race to put him and his partner over fellow finalists Void and Dark C, clinching 3rd. Thanks for everyone who game out. Hit me with feedback and other events you want to see.

signups closed

Nah youre good, get in the discord

PICTURES

The general consensus is that something like PvP should have an even playing field, where what you're playing and how you play it is more important that how much time you have to grind for resources/accolades. From the perspective of a competitive player from other games, I do agree with the general consensus.

I have some opinions on this, both from a PvE and PvP perspective. PvP first. I think people have some misconceptions on the relevance or implications this IO set and mechanic have on PvP. No one in their right mind will be slotting anything in this set other than the proc, here’s why. 1. The set has no interrupt reduction. While the damage modifier increase shouldn’t matter in PvP because of the PvP damage formula, slow sniping in PvP is/was a thing, and requires the slotting of interrupt so players can a. Not get interrupted while sniping, so they don’t completely give up pressure and eat a bunch of free damage while dealing no damage themselves b. Jump the snipe after the shortened interrupt time to pass the line of sight check on targets that are moving, which is every target that isn’t trying to eat your snipe for free. 2. The set bonuses are pretty bad. The range bonus is smaller than other PvP IO range bonuses for the same number of slots, the accuracy bonus is smaller than the one from Adjusted Targeting, the HP bonus is negligible, and perhaps most importantly, the recharge bonus is not achievable without slotting the entire set, and slotting the whole set would be a terrible build choice. Slotting the whole set is a bad build choice because of the reason I mentioned earlier (interrupt), but most importantly, because you’d be losing out on the whole point of instant sniping in PvP - which is NOT leading with the snipe for a bunch of damage (because that’s not how it works). The only real benefit to instant snipes in PvP is that they can accept more procs than most normal ranged attacks, and also have a longer cooldown (and thus a higher proc rate). Instant snipe is most beneficial to sets like fire blast, or psi blast (sets that you can’t slot many procs in) and basically just get used as a better version of their low tier abilities like flares or psi dart. The only thing this change really does is for PvP is reduce the range of instant snipes, while being a slight buff to sets like fire blast or psi blast. As for doms, I’m not really sure if it’s a buff or a nerf yet. On the one hand, they can snipe more regularly - on the other hand, their snipes will now proc much worse because of the recharge decrease. PvE implications: Really doesn’t do much, seems like we’re messing with some values unnecessarily. I get the idea. People are already building for instant snipe anyway, so you might as well just make it a more streamlined thing. Slow sniping in PvE definitely needs some love, too, because it’s not currently a worthy investment of time for the amount of damage it does (in the majority of situations, especially at max level). I agree with that stuff. I don’t feel like you need to mess with this many values (that aren’t broken in the first place) to work toward fixing that. Here’s the beef I have with this change in PvE. 1. The out of combat duration is too long to be useful. 2. The range decrease really doesn’t seem needed. 3. It nerfs blaster single target damage, because while the 15 second cooldown will make the snipe proc better, with the exception of the rad snipe (and the achilles heel proc), it’s not intuitive to slot for procs on blaster t3 and snipe attacks, and is better to just slot for recharge to maximize the number of times you use those attacks (and slotting for recharge hurts proc rate). Blaster single target damage is already a joke in the world of scrappers, and I’m not just talking about the outlying sets like TW. I don’t feel like the recharge change or a nerf to blaster damage is something needed. 4. There’s no reason at all to slot the proc in PvE. If base range for instant snipe is 80, I can just open with something other than the snipe that also has an 80 foot range (blaze, tk blast) and then instant snipe anyway. The only thing slotting the proc does is make it so I can never slow snipe, it’s not a benefit of any kind. 5. I don’t feel the animation change to Psi Blast is warranted. TK blast already does less damage than other similar powers. Will Dom tickles. The set has certified 'hot dog water tier' AoE damage. The damage type is super hit or miss. The only thing psi blast had going for it from a high end PvE perspective was that it was the top set for single target damage (TK blast + Psi Lance is better DPS than Blaze + Blazing Bolt). Increasing the cast time just feels like another really random, unnecessary change to values. If tweaking values is the priority, why nerf a set that isn’t even an outlier in the grand scheme of things instead of say… Making AR or Elec better? Or Tanker/Brute Energy Melee? Thanks for the work you guys are doing, and for the chance to give out feedback.

I heard X-tinction agenda is gathering their forces.