Meknomancer

With burnout as an option its hard to see what can be done with gang war after such a long time, how long would they have to change the recharge on it to 'nerf' it.....and how many would complain, or do they limit the number of the spawn. How much - res do demons do in comparison to something like a mercs/bubbles when you toss in the mm's personal attacks on top of the bubbles attacks that do - res?

My list tends to be...mercs...mercs...mercs...necro....everything else but i have fun with all the pet sets i never played another game with anything like them. Hard to imagine demons and thugs getting nerfed, they are pretty good but surely the dev's would bump their upgrades to match the other sets which would only make them better, what do they then do to keep them in line with the other sets?

I remember playing them the day they came out and i still see them the same way, 3 beast mm's on HC hasn't changed my opinion especially since the page 5 changes. I tried them with /nature first and they took 2-3 times as long as anything else to clear mobs so i went /kin next and they were still significantly slower than all the other pet sets. Even prior to page 5 i enjoyed mercs and ninjas over beasts. Its great having a set thats so different from the others, the problem is those differences are telling. They are fun and tanky with fortify pack they just take forever to take down mobs compared to every other set, i am curious as to how you'd rate the pet sets since page 5. If beasts aren't dead last what is?

Soul extraction pops a bunch of spirits, pretty much doubling your pet numbers and dps....provided you click on the right pet and the others are close by. I usually save it for clicking on the Lich when all pets are in melee, i have accidentally clicked a t1/t2 a few times before the rest of the pets caught up and it only popped a couple of spirits which is a total waste. The personal attacks from the mm have a % to spawn a spectre which has a taunt aura. dps is almost non-existent but it will hold aggro for you. Taking personal attacks is totally up to you/depends on your playstyle/secondary/how many slots you have available/power picks left. With necro i always try to fit in at least 2. I use macro's to control the pets, i hear keybinds are far superior and infinitely more flexible but i just like having a button in the tray i can click to put the whole bunch of pets in specific areas to avoid mass aoe's or just to stay nearby for buffs.

Rule no. 1 when teaming with a controller, never ever open up with your aoe immobilise. You pin everything down outside of melee range which seriously annoys tanks/scrappers and brutes who then have to run around using single target attacks on every enemy and will most likely lead them to just ignore the mob and run ahead to the next one leaving you to attempt to mop it up alone. And the blasters will (most likely) go with them as their aoe's become just as useless. Don't see a lot of builds posted for this combo, only decent one i found was @Coyote (just noticed it had barrier running and doesnt have crushing field so it may need some tinkering to suit your playstyle)

Really late here so i'll just point you in the direction of the build's @FUBARczar posted here:

Damage? Commando. With no buffs/secondary powers all the melee pets just died, Lich is running controls and Oni just scattered the mobs with RoF til they were out of its radius before turning and humping it. AB with 0 buffs, so feeble defensively/resists wise it doesn't even have time to open up with an attack. Commando just opened up with a big gun and killed....a minion. Which is more than the others managed. Survivability and Controls and Synergy and Theme (possibly also no.1 for needing the most help, bit of a toss up between this and anything that came from beast mastery) ? Lich. It runs life drain, has more controls than all the others combined (in exchange for all its damage), keeps stuff in place for the rest of the necro set and its undead, not many things are more thematic than that. Beast Mastery is a set that needs the most help so Dire Wolf in that department, page 5 really seemed to help out Lich and tbh it wasn't that bad before, necro has always been a good set. Potentially, Dire Wolf. But that is totally dependent on what the Dev's do for the remaining pet sets next time. Hard to see thugs/demons getting much better. Fortify pack is as good as serum, if the pet upgrades got heal/resistance they'd potentially be as survivable as the other pets. There's so much room for improvement in beast mastery they have by far the most potential to be better than the dead last bottom tier set it is right now.

I haven't tried the combo, if i did i'd probably go something like this, ranged def, high s/l res, some e res, perma PA, ignore the bubble attacks (i know they do - res now but with PA its not really an issue) and just sit back and let the pets do everything for me. With perma PA you instantly get options in your alpha- you aren't force picked into agility/spiritual, now you can go musc/intuition for extra damage for pets. Bubbler's with all those toggles tend to have end issues so i take power sink, endurance issue instantly solved and now there's options with destiny- not force picked into ageless, you can go barrier/incandes/clarion etc. instead:

I'm guessing it was an old build, afterburner in mids is evasive manouvres now and gets a luck of the gambler+rech slotted in its place. There's only 6 available incarnate picks, the others never got finished when the game shutdown and the only missing 1 i can imagine is the hybrid assault. I haven't looked but there are about 20 fire/fire blaster builds posted (at least) although many are out of date now, most seem to be running mace/ice epic for s/l defence, i haven't seen many firex3 posted but if you tossed the powers you wanted into mids and post it here you should get some responses, its difficult to make builds for other players without at least seeing what powers they picked as this will tend to show how a player like to play the game. Are you strictly a hover blaster? Do you refuse to melee even if it means not nuking? Fire/Fire has a lot of options for playing up close that really increase its damage output especially in the secondary. Chuck your power picks in mids, give us an idea of which direction your going in.

I don't use keybinds, i have way too many alts to try and remember which key does what after i switch. My necro/dark runs about 3-4 macro's and 1 of those is the /macro DANCE petsayall <em dance> and the 1 of the others is a pets dismiss. There's enough powers to take up 5-6 trays as it is.

I'm guessing experimentation is themed otherwise that'd be out, if your chasing perma PA and the defence numbers you'd be better off with fighting so you could toss the +defence pieces in tough, i'm not sure you need all the s/l defence, maybe better off with a res shield and just hitting 45% ranged. If you don't mind giving up some procs and shuffle some stuff you can pretty much hit perma PA. Agility/spiritual/ageless are the easy options but just by moving some sets around in your build it can get to .32 seconds off perma although you lose a tiny bit of s/l, you can remove the ff+rech in force bomb if you wanted:

Darkx2 blaster, doesn't get touched 300+ days offline and counting Darkx2 stalker ,same as the blaster Darkx2 fender, same as above but only because... Darkx2 corr, awesome combo Darkx2 troller, barely gets played despite my love for DA on trollers because.... Darkx2 domi is epic Darkx2 brute, can't make my mind up on this one Darkx2 tank, same as brute Darkx2 sentinel, so so so so very very very bad Darkx2 scrap, surprised when i realised i haven't tried this yet Necro/dark mastermind, does this count in the conversation? , if it does its the no.1 dark combo by miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiles.

I'm no expert on this combo (or any other tbh) but i'd make a couple of changes. First turn everything off, i looked over the last few posts you put on and all had melee core running. Dump the pvp set in cobra strike for a 2nd ToD set, you'll get the same s/l res bonus which i assume was the point of it and gain a small amount of e/ne res. 6 slotting stuff for the sake of 6 slotting stuff makes 0 sense to me, slotting for aoe/f/c bonuses from winter sets is a good example/purple sets that give toxic/psi res bonuses is another. If you slot those and you hit the heal your still only getting about 30'ish toxic res which i don't think will make a lot of difference and thats assuming you remember to hit the heal. 6th slot with winter sets i think benefit more from something useful like a proc or ff+rech. Not sure about consume slotting i'd try to find way to get 6 synapses shock in, or possibly just 3 slot it and find a way to make up the s/l def somewhere else. Change manouvres slotting, i did end up shuffling stuff and lost the kismet + acc, but the e/ne res bonuses make up for it, you can dump a proc/ff+rech and throw kismet back in cj. Its basically the same as posted build but you probably get slightly better dps/e/ne res and keep roughly the same def+s/l res:

Its not that thermals a bad set, although i do consider it a bad set in comparison to just about anything else mostly because the other secondaries will do whatever thermal does but better, its just a middling set. Yes it has heals and buffs and debuffs, its just that the heals arent as good as pain/emp, the buffs arent as good as cold/ff (especially now we got those page 5 changes to some mm sets) and the debuffs are just not as good as any of the other sets that debuff, cold/dark/traps/trick arrow- i'd even put storm and time above thermal as a debuffing set. So its left sitting in the the secondary pack as a sort of good at everything but not great at anything set. I have a demons/thermal and necro/thermal, necro pulls ahead now that page 5 changes are in but they are both good for solo/team play and if you get stuck they can take on av's/gm's/tf's if you are alone, they just don't do it as well as anything else. Thermal just feels a little awkward to play, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your playstyle-it forces you to play at the back and send pets in as it has nothing like arctic fog/steamy mist/shadowfall/force field gen to bump your own defence and resists. As a player that wants to jump in and take the alpha in place of the pets and sit in the middle of the mob and spam attacks thermal is completely counter intuitive to the way i play so in that respect it is a unique set and i do enjoy it occasionally. I just wish the debuffs had a shorter recharge on them so they could be used more often, i think that would push the set up to match the others.

I run a lot of low level team content even after 50, so i don't build purely for incarnate level teams+tf's which is why i'd consider hasten essential, And i find more and more there are teams wanting hardmode builds requiring barrier/rebirth with nobody on the team running ageless and the /cold is expected to keep everyones blue bar full with a perma heat loss. Hasten works from both the low level content to anything in between and up to hardmode. I understand players wanting hastenless builds usually for theme and they do work, but as you say its for teaming and other players expect that heatloss on all the time, and the buffs, and that you will be running a useful destiny-ageless on a cold isnt really useful. But as i said earlier i do love looking at the builds you post, they always offer a completely different approach as to how the game can be played and it fascinates me the way so many different players come up with so many different builds for their own playstyle. I hope you keep posting them and don't take anything posted negatively.

I know insps/amplifiers/incarnate abilities are part of the game now and we should take advantage of everything we can to help, its just gotten to the point where if you run them all permanently theres next to no point in making what you'd consider a halfway decent build as the game gets stupidly easy. If you see the blaster solo everything on a high rep from positron upwards with no need for help from anyone else in the team is it really a team mmo or just a solo experience with the other 7 players just stumbling along after them watching. There isn't another game like this where you don't need tank/dps/support to make teams work but every new buff thats been introduced seems to take away from the teaming experience. I got kicked and told 'they are an inherent part of the game and your an idiot for thinking otherwise if you don't use them' . Sometimes its nice to just have a chat with other players on the teams your on or a discussion about the game, but you often come across players that have a fixed opinion and its 'play their way or the highway'. Arguments can be good for seeing different viewpoints and i like looking at the forums for the alternative builds+playstyles but its still sad to see the community degenerating occasionally to the 'kick the player' because they have a different opinion. I have a feeling i know which player your referring too as well- the player that kicked me lol.

Yup 🙂 It is only executioners shot, 70% is still high. And you said yourself you will be squishy standing mid-mob, it only takes 1 kb'd target to wup you from distance. I was curious why you skipped it in favour of the rez but i'm guessing its for that 1 time when you do kb the target that kills you 😁 And then there's the minor loss of damage. I can see the point of a theorised build like this the same way i'd be viewing the hideless stalker builds. Just me arguing a point for the sake of arguing.....just got kicked from a tf for saying using insps+amplifiers is cheating/means theres a problem with a build, i sometimes think i should just keep my mouth shut.

I do love looking over your builds but i totally disagree here with skipping hasten, you'll have end issues without perma heat loss, especially procced out like that. Without perma benumb av/gm's will take twice as long. And i like my sleet up every 15 seconds for stacking. I rarely come across a mob that lasts 27 seconds in a team they often don't last 8 seconds. Electron haze is a terrible power but if you skip hasten and take it you can at least use an ff+rech in it which may help. Level 53 d-sync provocations in benumb will knock a massive amount of time off its recharge. If your really short on slots toss a couple in heatloss.

If you skip swap ammo on dual pistols you lose the option to turn off knockback in your attacks by toggling on an ammo type. I can see that not being much of a problem with bullet rain and the OF but if you start running st attack chain you'll be kb'ing stuff out of OG.

Am i missing the kb protection? Temperature protection only gives 1 point. How do you stop yourself getting bounced like a ping pong ball?

I have no idea if its a good idea or not to toss it in the auras, i just thought it was an impressive looking build hitting that much recharge and decent def numbers. I don't number crunch i just figure if your in a mob then it'll fire off more often which is a good thing on spines/ice because the single target damage from the primary is pretty much as puny as it gets so you may as well go all in on an aoe beast and melt large numbers. But i totally get that you'd want more control over when it fires off when facing something like an av/gm.

I did find an old spines/ice saved in mids (terrible memory, i like to give credit where its due) but i forget who posted it that looks pretty impressive, looks like ATO sets went in damage toggles which i assume means they'll be firing off way more than any single target when your in mobs:

Have to agree all the way, pretty much stopped playing my /dark /kin /elec in favour of the bubbler. Went a slightly different way buildwise, i started having endurance issues soloing the av's at the end of tf's as i spam the attacks constantly to pop the tanky spectres and have the t1 on auto and run sorcery (had a few issues with pets getting humped by mass aoe's or overwhelmed by mobs) , having spirit ward on a single t2 pet usually buys me enough time to resummon if things go bad. And i prefer the small amount of - res from repulsion bolt on av's over the force bomb application to mobs. It really is a fantastic combo since page 5 rework to necro and bubbles:

Even with energy mastery you can still have end issues, i usually take ageless and carry recovery serums on top, its just one of those sets that eats the blue bar.