Frosticus

Indeed, what I actually like about proc builds (or at least mine) is that the sacrifices you make result in some very tangible holes in the build. You spread yourself pretty thin chasing procs. So when a buffer shows up, their impact is felt to a large extent. Counter that to my more traditional builds that really couldn't care less if someone gives me some defense, or tohit, or recharge, or endurance. Just put down your -res and get out of the way. My proc builds love buffers because they are usually just hanging on by a thread with just enough recovery, acc, etc to get by. I'd be sad to see that go, but would ultimately just switch back to more solo-centric do everything exceedingly well builds if neccessary. It will be interesting either way though.

The logic and way you guys debate is why things like the changes to dark melee were abandoned almost immediately. I feel bad for cpt powerhouse. At any rate my takeaway is: 1. defense doesn't matter because everyone has it 2. dont touch the defense of farsight because it matters to some people (see 1) 3. Procs tho!! (does anyone put procs in farsight?...I thought not) 4. Buff sentinels - even though they apparently buff/debuff as well as support ATs and do nearly blaster damage according to Infinitum (this must be specific to /nin? cause my beam/bio definitely doesn't) I'm not sure you will convince everyone, but I'm sold. Have fun guys, that's the main thing.

probably dark/nrg might work for you. dark works well with or without domination up. Nrg offers good ranged and melee damage. Power up (a few sets have this) does wonders for your controls and boosts the tohit debuff.

exactly. sav offers up a few good spots for ff +rech as well. And blood stacks contribute good rech over time. my dark/sav was a very easy perma by the late 30s and probably my cheapest character for that amount of power.

both are really solid pairings. dark is a bit slower and methodical but has a ton of control as well as soft control. It has an answer for nearly everything and enough control to answer everything again on the next spawn. plant is fast. It is sort of a one hit wonder set, but it is a great hit. If you miss with seeds you might not do well. Plant has other tools but you can become so dependent on seeds that you either dont take them (aoe hold, aoe sleep) or forget you have them haha. Savage is a ton of fun.

True. Good thing time has strong self healing ability, an aoe damage debuff, can floor an entire spawns recharge and movement speed and also stagger their output with an aoe pulsing hold. But yes, if you just expect to cast farsight and pew pew like a sentinel you might run into issues at times. Not sure if most of you play other squishies, or have at least looked at them, but few get to softcap def to everything. Let alone with just SO's. Even less get to softcap def and also get a resistance epic. Even less get to softcap def, have strong resistance, plus layer that with an auto hit aoe damage debuff to further their resistance and get any kind of self healing ability. I'd counter with saying that if you feel you "need" pb+farsight to play a support character then your expectations might be set too high for the buff/debuff AT's. Force multipliers are a tricky subject. Before time manipulation (and dark affinity) they have historically taken on some harsh restrictions because of their ability to affect so many people/enemies in such drastic ways. That's what makes them a lot more unique than the "damage" AT's. I don't want my empath to be able to cast fort, cm and adrenaline boost on myself. That seems silly to me I get that everyone builds for solo and then teams together with all the cohesion of a charity all-star game, but that isn't how forcemultipliers are balanced throughout the history of this game. I'm not sure if you are being serious, but if you are... A beam/nin sent brings literally nothing to a team compared to any buff/debuff set aside from mediocre damage. I would hope that it is more hardy than a character that can drastically improve 1-255 allies and drastically weaken 16 enemies at a go. All while being able to stack multiple mobs to improve team kill speeds. They are worlds apart in their capabilities. A sent may well solo better than x/time. It probably should because that's all that sents do well. There isn't a team configuration that wouldn't benefit more from having a /time join than a beam/nin sent. So to correctly answer his question - no sentinel can compete. They aren't intended to. The fact that any buff/debuff can approach a sentinels' survivability (and time can, maybe not yours, but it can) should be concerning to anyone that understands why that creates a problem. Can you make a sentinel that could even hold a candle up to the buff/debuff capability of any set, let alone time? What's next? pb+farsight doesn't hit as hard as headsplitter so that makes it ok?

I know this is "common forum knowledge", but I can tell you it simply isn't true. What is true? - yes defenders are much easier to build due to higher defensive modifiers - yes some (and this number is much smaller than people think) defenders can out-damage corruptors in a solo setting in some scenarios -defenders can self buff better, but external buffs and even shared buffs, help corrs more What is also true? - corrs do way more damage on teams with a much higher damage cap at their disposal and scourge. Oodles more sometimes. Oodles - In low buff teams, corrs do more damage than defenders as vigilance drops to 0 - corrs get access to attacks much earlier. I know nobody thinks sub 50 matters, but it does. Some of the lower level task forces see corrs eclipsing defender damage. I'm down for improving corrs a bit and have advocated for it with clear examples in the past, but their issues have almost nothing to do with procs, or a handful of solo builds where defenders edge them out. With regard to procs: -I've build a lot of proc builds, imo the only issue I have with them is how they behave with some epic powers due to their longer base recharges. That I can turn epic dominate into as high a damage power as a t3 attack could be problematic at a glance. Again though, I can't touch the recharge on dominate, whereas I can fully enhance the t3and get it cycling 2- 3x as fast as dominate. I forgo all set bonuses in the epic hold, but not in my attack. Plus, as soon as buffs start flying around t3s greatly overshadow epic holds as the hold has negligible base damage to enhance. So epic holds are a knee jerk reaction imo, that shine while solo, but fall behind quickly when buffs stack up.

Yes, that's the thing. Most "traditional" builds are objectively stronger than proc heavy builds in many measurable ways like having more global recharge, better attack chains, requiring less attacks to fill attack chains, and often way better def/surivability overall. Proc builds definitely hit harder though, but often do similar dps. Of course when a proc build gets buffed up by outside sources well that is when they greatly exceed tradition build conventions. Corrs just need their ATO to improve scourge and maybe a tiny bump to their base damage (like 0.05). Scrapper and Stalker ATO's have improved those AT's tremendously (not that they needed the power increase heh, but the ATO's make them more fun) and play super well into their inherents. Corrs just need more scourge. The AT shines so bright when you start to get into that sweet spot.

I dont think it kills PB but rather makes it the way it likely should be. A brief, but large boost in power. Time would still get a drastically improved tohit debuff from juncture and bigger heals. It would still be one of the best benefitting sets even if farsight were excluded. Honestly, this is the route I had carved out for my time/fire. Time is one of the safest sets to hang around in melee and even without PB just farsight with juncture and some IOs gets you floored enemy tohit chance in most scenarios. I chose posion/fire though which is a set that "needs" to be in melee to not suck, but has extremely limited tools to hang there. If I lose my 800 damage proc'd dominates I will switch to perma soul drain.

This is indeed a hard pill to swallow. I'm not sure what proc changes are coming other than the nebulous "nerf" that people cite, I can relate to spending many hrs testing and tweaking around them. It will be a sad day. But will also bring new opportunity. I actually dont really care about farsight, other than it is a pretty big outlier. If other buff/debuff could all do similar it would be great. Case in point PB does nothing for traps despite farsight and ff-gen filling much the same role. Same with storm and hurricane. I love the cane, PB only gives me 10 seconds of greatness, but gives time 120 seconds. To me that isnt synergy, it is just poor design. Maybe some sort of diminished returns are warranted on buffs as they are already in place on debuffs. That way the scrapper that is already ultra hardy doesnt get further buffed into the stratosphere. But the dominator that focused on being a good mezzer rather than capping defenses would gain a lot of the buff. Then again I hate DR in pvp, so it would have to be different than that.

I think we should lower enemy base tohit chance because defense doesn't matter because everyone has it, but don't lower the defense of farsight because defense doesn't matter.

Yes everyone runs +4. are they actually +4? Not in any content that has a level shift. They are +3 for combat modifiers. Hence why I said +3 which is what I'd harbour a guess 90% + of lvl 50 content is comprised of. ya incarnate +4s give time opportunity to use the "radiation" side of its abilities that were listed before and would hold a team up better than just a ff if for some reason everyone was stripped of their own abilities. Oh well.

This thread is about farsight and fade. Fade has been fixed. Not about energy melee, which the devs have stated they will be looking at soon(tm). Which brings us full circle to more of this 👋

Oh now guys, you should know better. This thread has been discussing time with relation to powerboost right? Let's look at vs +3's Tohit debuffs stack with defense dontcha know? 3 slot Times junk + PB'd farsight = 24.7% (65% effective) + 32.1% = 48.155% vs +3 enemies. AKA softcapped. With just SO's. Perma. Not a single IO was used. A PB'ing FF could put you in a similar position with ally only shields and the big bubble. 53% def actually. Like I said, time is basically able to cast that upon themselves. But time still has all this jazz going on below / / / Rad vs Time equal resistance debuff similar def debuff greater heal in time chrono is as good as AM Better area slows in time similar damage debuffs way less -regen So ya, it is like combining rad with FF, losing the -regen and mez protection, but being able to cast shields on yourself. But keep waving those hands.

it kind of is. It's like if you combined the entirety of FF with the entirety of Radiation, leaving out only the powerful -regen of lingering rad. Ya you lose the mez protection bubble, but instead get to cast the FF shields on yourself too. It is pretty powerful. Now, a lot of that power may be considered overkill and unneeded in today's game, but it is there no matter how much handwaving people do. I'm over here playing the heck out of poison to 50 again heh, so don't mind me.

Tactics is what I'm after. That plus kismet is about 25% tohit buff. Couple acc bonuses from sets and you can now forgo acc slotting in things, or drastically reduce it. Plus, teams don't wipe often these days, but when they do it is almost always because of arachnos blindness.

take it for the ddr. enjoy it for everything else it does 🙂

Cost may have been an argument that might have held water on the live servers, but come on. Buy cheap def set IO, convert to luck of the gambler, convert to +global rech. WST are the most popular activity, so merrits (ie converters are easy to come by). My fort had it perma (or maybe a couple seconds off) by lvl 40. I gift all my characters 25 mil. Things slip through and remain sometimes. The notion that slotting recharge in mind link is only supposed to be for "people in the know" is a bit silly. A normal user isn't going to make the leap that it can't accept recharge SO/IO's to magically putting in def/rech IO's. Even up above, you yourself didn't realize that it is restricted to one specific subset of enhancements as Hami's don't work despite being multi typed like set IO's. At any rate, OP asked why banes and NW's are less popular than their counterparts. Bugged mind link is maybe a reason. I'd personally vote that they allow all rech enhancements myself and then buff NW's (and banes as discussed earlier).

yes, sorry meant NW and forts. sigh. If you were meant to slot recharge into the power it would take recharge enhancements. Like I said, oversight. It doesn't really matter compared to some things in this game, but it would differentiate NW's and forts considerably if it was fixed. As it is trivial to get the power perma on either right now. And NO, hami's do NOT improve the recharge of mind link. Only IO's do. Still intended?

recharge is not a listed enhancement type that it accepts. Or else youd be able to slot in a recharge SO. You can bypass this thru an oversight via IOs It's not a big issue but it makes the base recharge difference between forts and banes have no meaning. It wasnt intended to be that way.

Exactly. And lots of sets with good -regen didn't even exist hero side like /cold and /traps. Plus dps used to be WAY lower so -regen was of good value in just about every AV fight. Plus I think lingering radiation was unresistable for quite some time, which was bugged and far more effective than intended. It is still a top 3 set for corrs, defs, and trollers. That's a stretch to say the least. And a failed campaign. More likely, is that everyone and their dog has played regen and according to the stats...continues to. It is a middle of the pack popularity for stalkers and brutes. And top 2 for scraps and sentinels at lvl 50. Sooo....

Remove all redraw. Super clunky feeling and annoying. Trim some animation times, even without draw they are a bit slow. Cloaking device should offer DDR (at least 40%), or be more akin to field operative from blaster devices. Surveillance should have an aoe component to the debuff, maybe half strength on the aoe, like poison. Stats display remains on main target. Trim the animation on poison ray and up the range to at least 60. Nightwidows are more or less fine. I'd remove the restriction of choosing buildup OR follow up and allow both, just like on a fort because aim w/ gaussian and follow up is pretty good. I'd also "fix" recharge enhancement affecting mindlink. It should be very difficult to perma on a fortunata, but relatively easy on a widow with the shorter base rech and mental training factored in. Remove redraw on claws.

100% Having enough aoe to vaporize minions quickly while solo can mean that x5 actually goes smoother and faster than x1-3

Yes. Once you add in aoe damage terrify starts to degrade. Especially dot damage like fireball/rain of fire or sleet. Dark has this issue with fearsome stare as well, but dark's version carries a large tohit debuff to compensate. Not an issue against a handful of enemies, but the return fire from a x8 team can be problematic on a low hp AT with limited access to heals. Building for defense can help compensate. Mass hypnosis breaks if you even look at them wrong. It is a great power for halting ambushes or a few corner cases of splitting tough groups. It fails immediately in an aoe environment. Mind basically has to cycle 2 ultra long recharge powers to be as effective as other doms with a single power (ie flash fire, or seeds). Those other sets still have that same aoe hold in their arsenal as well. Every set has some tricks beyond their hard controls, mind's are cool and highly effective at times, or remain totally untouched in your tray in most situations. Even if you build for excess recharge and forgo good proc opportunities to reach a 4x recharge factor (+300%) you still have a 60 sec timer on massconfuse/aoe hold. Alternating them means every 30 sec. That sounds great, but a single aoe stun will be up every 22.5 sec in that same scenario. 1 power instead of 2 being fully slotted out. I value power picks and slots a lot. I think a lot of people rate mind above its station because 1. It used to be really good in pvp 2. It used to be one of the only successful tactics for the LRSF 3. It solo's extremely well right from the start, which used to be more important for various reasons 3. Every power says "dominate" so you feel awesome. I don't need earthquake to tell me it is dominating my foes - I can see it for myself. That isn't to say that a mind dom can't crush content, or keep a team safe. It's to say that just about every dom can.

all doms tend to be late bloomers. dark/fire is a extremely good ranged option and probably one of the highest dps doms you could make. /psi likes to stay close for drain psyche and psy shockwave. mind is a good ranged control set. It may have issues once you start adding in aoe damage from epics like fireball or sleet. But if you just focus on a handful of enemies at a time it is super safe. Plant is probably the primary you want for farming. You likely wont be at range in a farm though, so that runs counter to your ranged preference.