Frosticus

June 5

+2x8 Penny Yin TF

No insp/amps/temps/click accolades
No deaths

Pretty easy +2x8 clear of this tf.

It only got sketchy at one point where a whole bunch of bosses started to squeeze through my choke point and I stood there waiting to see what would happen. If I'd fallen back to the next choke point sooner it would be super easy.

Why is this TF important?
Penny Yin is the perfect level range to showcase the strength of your primary and secondary choices because you have access to all t9 powers, but it locks out epics and incarnates, both of which can pretty dramatically alter the outcome. Her radiation attacks remove all "luck" from the fight because you won't dodge her.

What’s going on here because I heard arsenal control is really bad?
As with many things, people have a personal bias that they develop. Some let that cloud their opinions that they feel compelled to share for whatever reason.

In reality Arsenal is having an easier time with this content than my Earth dom and that earth/psi sits at the pinnacle of S tier control.

Arsenal control is better than Earth is a lot of situations and worse in some too

For reference here is the vid of my earth/psi running this at +1x8 (I consistently failed at +2x8), whereas this was actually pretty “easy” at +2x8 for arsenal.

Spoiler

*fwiw I think a better earth/psi build could succeed at +2x8, but I just take my lvl 50 build in.

Ok, but you built for this encounter!
Nah, this is a lvl 50+ content build, it just exemplars well. If I’d built for this TF I’d have x-ray eyes and electron haze to make it way, way easier.

Video is kinda boring and hard to see much combat
Ya, at this level my damage output is really low so I have to rely on the aoe confuse to clear the spawns. It is a finicky power (great at times) but a +2 freak tank can nearly 1 shot me in melee, so I have to play carefully. That means leaning into two core strengths of arsenal:
A/ choke point control - Both arse and earth are phenomenal if they have a choke point to leverage
B/ fighting around corners. This set has a lot of target location powers. You don't need to have line of sight to use them.

Strategy
Make the ambushes travel through as many patches as possible to soften them up.
Use tricannon as a last line of defense. It has a taunt aura, so ideally only a few enemies eventually pass through all the patches which are then taunted by the cannon. Ambushes are different than regular spawns because while they obey certain aspects of aggro rules they stay focused on you even though they far exceed 16 targets. They keep coming after you, so the onslaught is relentless and is part of why typical control strategies fail and persistent patches work really well.

Tricannon taunts the AV well enough, so kill her. Just mind she has quite a bit of aoe attacks

Do you need chokepoints for Arsenal to do well?
Not at all, but if you are facing an ambush of 60+ enemies it is probably required.

Pfft this isn't +4x8 so it doesn't count!

Give it a whirl with your own dom (or whatever character you like) and see how it goes...

June 3

On 6/1/2024 at 10:05 AM, plainguy said:

Very impressed...

I was expecting to see some defense cap but you have none...
As I am a big defense cap player on everything.. This is impressive and nice eye opener..

IMO defense doesn't make a lot of sense for most doms and really cuts into their damage output to achieve it.

Even more so for a melee-centric dom because you can't chase r/m/aoe which basically leaves you going after s/l, which only works sometimes.

June 3

I don't think there is a large enough community to support so many divisions, so it just becomes drowned out.

IMO make 2 divisions.

Div 1 - real honest attempt at measuring dps that can be extracted to longer fights where dps actually matters.

- no insp/temps/amps/lore (probably sounds familiar)

*powers like patron pets are used in good faith. Some buff/debuff sets absolutely can utilize them well in difficult situations. A stalker probably can't keep 3 spiderlings alive tho...

*endurance consumption is also assumed in good faith. If you can't last an ageless cycle you are just fooling yourself by failing to factor in that period of 0 dps you'd be doing (fwiw most current div 2 builds fail this check).

Div 2 - Hidden or on a separate page.

The "fun" division where signature summons, daggers, geas, and whatever else people use to game the encounter are used.

I personally have zero interest in what lord Recluse can do, or in watching someone spam daggers, but it is your inf to spend as you see fit and your collection of data to shape.

June 1

8 hours ago, plainguy said:

Would it be possible to see the build?

Dominator (Arsenal Control - Psionic Assault).mbd

May 30

1 hour ago, StriderIV said:

Brilliant. This is what I’m looking for with FF in dragon’s tail. I wasn’t sure if it could be achieved without Burnout or not.

I do run agility and ended up over slotting retsu for recharge. Agility might not be needed though given the ffback and if you took ageless (I did not because clarion radial and /nin are great together).

May 30

4 hours ago, StriderIV said:

I’m currently working on a MA/Nin combo that cycles Nin’s T9 and Unleash Potential. The hope is that it will be a Scrapper that hardly ever goes down 😂

This is what my Stone/nin does. It ends up being super easy with all the ffback going off in fault+tremor. Pop unleash just before the crash and retsu is up again before unleash drops.

May 26

I like it a decent amount in PSW on my earth/psi. I typically have 1-2 out with occasionally 3 making an appearance while mowing down full groups.

The damage adds up, but it also has a low mag stun which again, stacks with the stun of PSW making it a heck of a control power on top of doing solid damage.

I find it only useful for melee centric doms as they take too long to fly over to the group otherwise.

May 24

Scrapper /nin is one of my fav def sets, unfortunately the stalker version gives up the +end power that gives so much build freedom with an easy 3 eps boost.

If smoke flash put you in hide, or better yet unbreakable hide for like 5 sec (chain crits) you'd tempt me.

Stalker nin is one of the only sets that offers basically nothing offensively. Blinding powders confuse is too weak to use offensively (should be 100% mag 2, 50% mag 1) and caltrops damage is too slow (good defensive power though). It offers no endurance management, +rech, or +tohit, all of which promote offense in their own way.

And as a strictly defensive set it isn't amazing either.

May 23

A lot of my solo builds end up doing rop>melee core>rop. But I'm not big on building squishies for defense unless they already have it in their set (ie traps, time, etc)

I have powerboost on my defender. I also have unleash potential. It's pretty good. ends up being "too good to use" though ha, but sure cures any situation that trick Arrow can't solve on its own.

I cycle unleash as my t9 is about to crash on my /ea stalker and my /nin scrapper. They are both super high rech builds so the t9 is up again as unleash expires. Both those basically feel like you are playing perma t9 mode with a few speed bumps to retoggle every 4 min.

May 23

I like shield and stone armor a lot personally. They both add some offense without giving up being tough. Both are easy to slot and still get a lot of recharge into your build.

I'm on the fence about rad armor. Tons of offense and so far very survivable, but getting +rech into the build is challenging.

If you want to survive almost anything a high recharge t9 /ea build that cycles overload and unleash potential is imo head and shoulders above everything else at this time.

May 23

Much moreso on a stalker than a scrapper.

AS > viscious by a mile.

Savage leap 50% crit from max range > triggering critical strikes and using point blank.

Placate is in general way more useful than confront. Jumping away while placating and savage leaping back in with boosted crit chance is something else.

Buildup > blood thirst

Finally the stalker ATO that refreshes buildup goes off constantly for savage because of the aoes. For instance on my em stalker I almost don't notice it, but on savage it goes off so often you almost get sick of the buildup sound effect haha.

May 22

imo crashes can make sense thematically and be ok game play wise when adequately compensated. Current overload for example is a very good t9. It fills every weakness that energy aura has and then some. It would (again imo) be appropriate to have the 80% crash+10s -recovery in exchange for the 3 mins of near godmode play. You pay a lot and get a lot, but could still build around it as well as the powers within the set support playing through it (energize and powerdrain). The 100% crash is neither fun, nor good design as you point out and is extremely difficult to build around.

The version on test is more like Overclock than Overload and should probably have no downsides beyond being a middling power with terrible uptime.

May 22

I think the reduced uptime of overload (18% out of the box reduced to 12.7%) couple with dramatically reducing the strength of the power is not adequately compensated by the only buff being a slightly softer crash.

The sweet spot for these t9 powers is probably found around the 120 sec duration mark with 720 sec rech. Crash of about 60 end.

Otherwise they are dangerously close to being outshined by powerpool powers like rune of protection and unleash potential.

May 22

Can you give radiation a power like elecs grounded that makes these powers good again?

Like - battling at ground zero causes you to be irradiated and boosts all radiation powers back to what you are used to for the next 60 seconds

Maybe hit stalkers with some +recharge in the set too. They are getting hit hard by this downgrade without having one of the best things about the set.

May 22

This is all great info!

I think CoD is definitely a patch or two behind. It is also missing the updates to Tear Gas (damage to held foes and allowing damage slotting) from that same period.

My original plan was with arse/thorn to plant AV's (impale spam) and go to town while tricannon taunted from range. That didn't work out so well due to me pulling aggro fairly often and /thorny having no recourse beyond rebirth destiny.

I messed around with arse/psi on test (that's where the CWK vid is from) that was a mirror build to my earth/psi. It seemed to work well. If I hadn't already dumped so many hrs into earth/psi I'd give it a whirl.

May 21

Yes I'm familiar with the patches as I'm the one that did bug the report and petitioned the devs to fix it initially.

Is there a chance CoD is out of date because it is showing the exact same code that it showed when it initially went live. I dunno what to say, but you can see it taunting a "raid" target from range in the vid and it used to not do that. Before the second I start attacking they'd go after me unless you smooshed them into a corner together.

At least against Clockwork King it seemed to tank and taunt better than Stoney which actually surprised me.

May 21

The "raid" tag issue was supposed to be fixed a couple patches ago. I know when I tested it out I saw an immediate difference* in the ranged performance against Nighstar. That said, it isn't an awe inspring taunt that's for sure and you can definitely peel aggro off of the tricannon.

*CoD still shows it as broken, but at the same time it doesn't seem to indicate that Tri-cannon gets containment damage for trollers either, so I dunno what to think?

Honestly, it shouldn't even have those conditions as no other taunting pets do...

Some lvl 54 AVs can dish out like 500-800 dps, so you definitely need something in addition to the innate high resistances of tri-cannon to keep it going past the 15 second mark. Spirit ward, or aid other is probably required as a dom. FWIW, i've had AV's literally 2 shot Stoney when I have to resummon him mid-fight. Those fights usually don't go well for me ha.

I don't think there is an easy answer for doms (if you don't use lore pets) when it comes to tackling lvl 54 AV's. They don't have the tools like an illusion controller, or the ability to neuter damage output like the debuffers, or the survivability of the melee AT's.

Some things that probably don't help the pet taunt:

It's only mag 3, ranged, low damage, no additional annoyance, pets only have a 1.5x threat modifier and it is requiring an additional tohit check against "raid"

May 21

I have it slotted 4 expedient, 1 BU proc, 1 +5 taunt.

Here's arse/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king (+3 with level shift)

Takeaway: he targets me ~6 times over the 6.5 min fight. 1 attack and then back to the tricannon. Easily covered by my resistances and the moderate regen of drain psyche.

Here's earth/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king.

Takeaway: he targets me ~12 times over the 6.5 min fight (once stoney joins the fight). At one point he chained 3 attacks in a row. Plus he nearly killed stoney at another point. Still a very easy fight all things considered.

Conclusion: I've done a lot of lvl 54 AVs (and various other +3 and +4s on my earth/psi. It takes a lot of effort to keep stoney alive, Void Judgement, barrier, spirit ward, and sometimes support hybrid and/or paralytic interface. He holds aggro quite well while alive and I don't feel he performed his best at tanking in this vid.

I haven't tested tricannon (and arse) enough, but I am confident it still takes a ton of effort, game knowledge, and build specialization to make it excel against +4 AVs as a dominator (excluding use of insp/temps/lore of course). Even with a taunting pet you still take a lot of damage, so plan accordingly.

May 21

I'm using every /rad power. I cycle meltdown and rune of protection as my "god modes". They aren't up 100% of the time, but it works well enough.

May 21

22 hours ago, Blondey said:

Do you have a guide I can follow for Sav/Rad? I noticed you mentioned Sav/Bio and Sav/Shield. Is Rad the ONE for you?

No guide beyond whatever I've posted in this thread.

I'm not sure if sav/rad will outperform my sav/shield. I think they are both excellent combos.

May 19

I had a character that fell in an abandoned well. It came out as poison/water.

May 19

I feel that if you focus on lower level content then it is beneficial to have a second build slot dedicated to that because so many sets look quite different late game. Sav is certainly one of them, but EM is perhaps even moreso in that regard.

I really like icebolt/spear. If I'm chasing damage they are great options, but in the case of my new sav/rad I am probably going to settle for a bit less damage and go with soul's dark blast/moon beam to access shadowmeld.

A few sets really excel at building assassin's focus, namely EM, but the faster sets don't proc it reliably enough for me to count on it. So I just spam fast AS when it is up and it works out well enough.

May 17

Just revisiting Savage with a new build and wanted to highlight a few recent changes to stalkers and one change to savage in particular.

this is once again a must play set.

Savage leap - proc'd out this is hands down the best aoe stalkers get. And now it can crit! That's a pretty significant buff for what was already a great aoe attack. From max range this deletes mobs.

Improved hide after placate/hide proc. You used to end up breaking hide all the time after placate because the dot of savage attacks causes the pacify to end. No matter how good your def was a random attack would spoil your crit at some point. This has been changed, so damage won't break the hidden status for placate.

New epic attacks. It's no secret that hemo is often skipped, so the lack of a good follow up attack after AS can drag you down. 2 new snipes were added and they are both great and open new build options.

May 16

At least for AV hunting you'll probably want:

-More of a st attack chain. I'd add in a proc'd out tranq

-Consider making twilight grasp part of your regular rotation (for AVs), the damage debuff and -regen self stack and can help neuter them. Consider the damage procs for it, if you go that route.

-More recharge in Howling

-Switch cryo to all procs (or as many procs as you can support)

-You prob won't need a 6 slotted spirit ward given the healing and -damage that /dark can do. Nice bonuses for that set though if that is what you were after.

In general:

You need approx 160 dps (as measured against an even con) to break even against the regen of a lvl 54 AV. Your -regen is of course super helpful, but keep in mind it is hit by purple patch and resisted ~87% on top of that. For example, your howling would shave off about 43hp/sec of regen against said lvl 54 AV leaving them with ~60 hp/sec.

May 16

I misread the title. Thought it said "don't underestimate"

Was excited to see another player showing doms excelling. Disappointed.

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