ghotistix

why choose? why not 10 explore badges OR 1 explore accolade, like it was? that way everyone is happy 🙂

No, the effectiveness of KB2KD is not affected by the level of the enhancement. What you are likely seeing and calling KB is probably the result of momentum. If a target is already moving when they are affected by either KD or KU they will continue to move in the direction they were going. Because with hurricane enemy targets are constantly being repelled back they are already moving when they are affected by KD and are still sent away from you a little rather than being repelled and then flung away violently like they would without the KB2KD enhancement.

Nature is great on a MM, I've got a few and i really enjoy them specifically because of entangling aura, but we'll get back to that in a bit. First, you're questions: Which are the key, bread and butter powers to be used in every encounter? Which are the powers only worth using for Boss fights? Which are powers the skippable? Does Rebirth have any use when playing solo? Where do Blooms fit in this? Do they really matter? Your "bread and butter" powers really depend on if you team or solo more. On a team, most of the enemies die so fast that there isn't time to really set much up, so I use Wild Growth and Wild Bastion to keep the team pretty safe while tossing in a Regrowth every so often and hitting Overgrowth whenever it's up or save it for the AV if I know one is coming. Now, if you are solo, or even on a team if the fighting gets really tough, things change a bit. Spore Cloud can be annoying to use sometimes but with it's -tohit and -dam it can really take the bite out of boss or AV and it's -regen can help finish them off faster. Lifegiving Spores can also be a true game changer. It gives everyone in it both health and end, it's super cheap to run and can easily give you more end then it costs making it free end for you too. You can also toss in a Panacea +hit point/endurance and it'll have a chance to affect everyone in it every 10 seconds. Now, when it comes to Corrosive Enzymes, you have to take it, might as well toss it on anyone who you really want dead faster. The only power I would call skippable wold be Rebirth and that's because it is of zero use to you when solo. You can't use it to rez your pets (they're not smart enough to accept it when the prompt pops up) and some people don't like taking powers that are only of use if someone on the team dies. However, if you're someone who likes taking Vengeance it is encouraged that you also have some way to rez them after, it's polite. From what I can remember, all Blooms does is give bonus healing to Regrowth, so, the more you're healing people, the better that heal is. Useful, but not something to really worry about one way or the other. And now we get the the best part of nature affinity, Entangling Aura. It is amazing. Every 2 seconds it pulses out and tries to hold everyone within 15 feet of you for a base of 4 sec. This power is autohit, so you don't need to worry about accuracy. In practice, this means that I run into a group of enemies and hold about half of them right off and since it stacks with itself, 2 seconds later almost everyone else is held too. By enhancing the hold it can lengthen how long it affects anyone which increases the chance that it will build up enough hold to lock them down while also making sure that once they are held, they stay held. It is basically a permahold, autohit, toggle power that gives major survivability to you pets by simply taking almost every enemy out of the fight. Is it perfect? No, but it is so good that it might as well be. If your pets are in bodyguard mode you'll survive the alpha strike while they attach everything that isn't locked down until you have to manually make them attack targets who are just standing there, struggling to get free. Now, how well does this pair with your primaries? Ninja/Beast/Necro/ are mostly melee, so you're going to want to be almost in melee anyway, might as well use that to take out half the enemies yourself so the pets can take it easy killing off the stragglers Thugs/Demons/ are mixed melee/ranged so you can be further back from the action but still close enough to hit them with Regrowth heals, and the +resist from Wild Growth stacks nicely with the Demons/ inherent resist. Bots/Mercs/ are ranged pets so there is no real need to engage the enemy at melee range. That being said, the Assault Bot gets Incendiary Missiles which drop fire patches that the enemies will run out of, unless they're tied up in vines, that is. Now, you can keep them in place with an aoe immob, but then they'll still be able to shoot back, better to just hold them all so they don't cause as much trouble. As for Mercs/ um, well... the only real strength, if you can call it that, of Mercs/ is that they are very ranged. They really have no reason to be in melee and you probably don't want them there, so it might be better to use GoTo to position them nearby and then still run in and lockdown the enemies for them to pick off, slowly, one at a time, eventually. So, those are my thoughts on Nature Affinity and how to use it with MMs. If you skip Entangling Aura the set plays more like a standard healing set. Buff you team and heal when needed, but, my advise is, if you have access to a power like Entangling Aura, take it, use it, love it. It feels to me like one of those powers that you take the set for. If you just want to be a support/healer there are other sets that might work better for you, but, ultimately, take what you want and play it how you want to. This is simple A way to play the set, not THE way.

I don't know much about mental and energy for blasters, so I won't really talk about those. I will, however, be talking a bit about Dark and why it is not as bad as some people seem to think. First, theme. The whole theme with dark is that any powers that buff the player have to drain the enemies for them to work. This is seen with every dark power set in the game so it absolutely makes sense that it would need a "living" enemy to use. Just look at 'Soul Drain' the only 'Build Up' power that needs enemies to work (i think) so it makes sense that other player buffs also need enemies. Second, dark has not ONE but TWO different powers that provide endurance. Touch of the Beyond: provides a standard regen and rec bonus in line with the other sets. It has a 10 sec. recharge with 2 min. duration while also providing a -to hit and a fear to single targets. Dark Consumption: on the other hand does have a long recharge of 3 min. but it also does some damage. Also, instead of adding +rec it instead gives (at base) 25% +end, that means if it hits 4 enemies you can go from zero end (sorta, it does cost 0.52 end to activate but that is almost zero) to 100% end. This can be considered more of an "oh crap" power for end then a true sustain, but since it already has a sustain in TotB, it doesn't really need this one to be used all that often. Also, I don't know, with that long recharge you could probably put some of the slower procs in it for some added damage. So, in conclusion, yes, you have to click on live targets for the sustain to work (as fits the theme of dark) but you also get a really nice "oh crap" end power on top of that. Also, a lot of people who want to use this set at range may not want to take Death Shroud and shifting the sustain over to that would make it essentially mandatory to take.

Yes, yes it would, just like ice/*, fire/*, and water/* are the only suggested primaries for corrupters now. How are you "defending" your team when you focus solely on weakening your enemy? You're not, you're "corrupting" the bad guys. Part of the point of my suggestion is that, yes, some sets would no longer make much sense to use on a defender, just like so many don't benefit from being on a corrupter now. And then, sets like */rad and */sonic, that are split between buff and debuff, the buff part would be better on a defender and the debuff part would be better on a corrupter. This would give each of these classes a specific and distinct role in the current version of the game instead of corrupters being mostly "not as good as defenders in most cases but almost better in a very few" like we seem to have now.

OK, so, I get it that when CoV hit, if you wanted to play a red-side defender you had to roll a corrupter. And that's fine. At the time, I liked that the red-side version was a little more offense and a bit less defense, That works with the whole "villain" thing. Now, however, things are different. First we got "going rogue" and now we can just start anything blue-side and so the balance might need to change a bit. My suggestion, rebalence all the defender and corrupter sets so that defenders get better buff numbers and corrupters get better debuff numbers. That way the only question is "do I want to help my team stay alive longer, or help the enemies die faster?" If you want to help the team live, make a defender. If you want to help the enemies die, make a corrupter. I don't know about anyone else, but I've always felt like making a defender that had no buff powers was wrong, but the numbers are just so much better for them that I have a hard time making them as corrupters. This rebalance would help create a specific role for both defenders and corrupters (buffers vs debuffers) instead of what we have now which seems to be "defenders are better, except for these few combos that work better for corrupters." What do you guys think?

go with ill/poison. the debuffs from poison will make the PA do more damage. 🙂

Are there not 3 different epic power pools (Charge, Heat and Mu Mastery) that contain multiple powers that will ignite the Oil Slick Arrow?

After a quick search I didn't see this suggested before (please let me know if it was) so I though I'd toss it out there and see what people thought. What I'm suggesting here is a PURELY COSMETIC change to the powers in the fighting pool. Basically just alternate animations of preexisting powers to allow any character to have any melee style attack with the associated weapon model options. For example, choosing the "1 Handed Weapon" animation option would give access to all of the 1 handed swords, maces and axes from those powersets. This could also included things like having animations from the Martial Arts kicks or the Kinetic Melee strikes. Also, it would be nice if, by taking any of the fighting pool powers, you were also able to change the look of brawl, since it already is modified my taking those powers. This would require the devs to choose a light, medium, heavy and cone attack animation from each of those animation sets for us to use. I see this as a way to, without changing the way the fighting pool works, add an enormous amount of additional character customization to the game. This could change having to take Punch or Kick in order to get Tough and Weave from "God, I hate being forced to take this." to "Hmm, how can I use this to make my character more fun?" Anyway, those were my thoughts, what do the rest of you think?

while it would be helpful to see exactly what you entered, there are some things i can tell you now. first, this method only works with two powers (one at keypress down and one at keypress release) so if you are trying to use all three powers, that's not going to work with this (although, the method mention at the beginning of this post will work with any number of powers, it is, however, a bit more work to setup). second, for whatever reason, all commands in this game (weather binds or macros) are read right to left. whatever is listed last will be the first thing the game tries to do. so, if you want power boost to happen last, it needs to be listed first.

neither did i, and i only thought to try it because of the wording you used to tell me my original idea wouldn't work. so, yay, everybody wins 🙂

so, i was able to get in game and test it and MunkiLord was right, it doesn't work, but i know why. for whatever reason, the bind you would need to use is: /bind [key] "+ $$powexec_toggleon build up$$powexec_toggleon aim" yes, i know those powers arn't toggles, but it does work. you do still need to press and HOLD the key until aim starts to active and then if you let go build up will be queued. however, this only seems to work if aim is not currently recharging. anyway, there is that for what it's worth. hope this helps anyone 🙂

i can't test this in game right at the moment but, i've been using the bind: /bind [key] "+ $$powexec_toggleon enervating field$$powexec_toggleon radiation infection" to turn on both /rad toggles with a single, long, key press. as long as you hold the key down long enough for radiation infection to actually activate before letting go, it'll activate enervating field also. in theory using the bind: /bind [key] "+ $$powexec_name build up$$powexec_name aim" should also work, but again, you'd have to hold down the key long enough for aim to actually start casting before letting go. i'll test this in game later today to see if there are any issues.

no one seems to have mentioned it yet, so i'm going to go ahead and throw out there a /radiation. for those who aren't very familiar with /radiation, let's look at what it gives you: a PBAoE heal - this kind of heal is especially useful for a MM in bodyguard mode for any damage you take personally that spreads to you pets. two auto-hit AoE toggle debuffs - while a few other sets have one of these that makes the enemy less of a threat, these work together to make the enemies easier to kill also (which really helps the lower necro damage). two additional AoE debuffs - in addition to the other elements of these debuffs, they both include fairly strong -regen, something else that can make tough enemies easier to kill. a PBAoE toggle hold - now, while this is realistically only going to hold some of the minions some of the time, this allows you to focus attention on taking out the hardest hitting enemies first. a PBAoE team buff - even though the +recharge doesn't affect pets, the rest of it can really help them with the +damage and +mez resistance. also two abilities that only work on dead teammates and not on pets, so, who cares? 🙂 look at all those AoE powers. /radiation seems to really shine in a play style consisting of being right in the middle of the action with all of your pets being right in there with you, something that necro/ seems to want since they have a lot of melee attacks. is necro/rad the strongest MM combo out there? i'd guess no, but it does seem to synergize well with itself and adds a lot to help keep you undead horde just a little bit more UN-dead. any thoughts?

you might also find this useful. there is an interesting property of the + that can do some cool things. as is relevant to this thread i present this: /bind [key] "+ $$powexec_toggleon enervating field$$powexec_toggleon radiation infection" what this does is when you press and hold your [key] it first activates radiation infection, then as you release the [key] it queues up enervating field. all you have to do is hold down the [key] until radiation infection actually starts casting before letting go and you'll get them both to cast with a single (long) [key]press. however, this can still only be used to toggle on two different powers. one when you press down and one when you release. hope that's helpful.