lobster
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Posts posted by lobster
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16 hours ago, JnEricsonx said:
Nature is good, but end-heavy.
You can slot lifegiving stores for recovery. I didn't notice any end issues until 35 (when it is expected), and i haven't slotted numina, miracle or perf shifter proc yet, so I think it will work out fine.
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On 8/1/2019 at 9:19 PM, SmalltalkJava said:
Yeah, Does Soulbound Allegiance affect the pets? If so.. Imagine if the MM was a Thugs/Kinetics. Fulcrum Shifted Posse + Soulbound Chance for Build up + Overwhelming Force knockdowns. Would be fun to see.
From what I've heard it's not difficult to cap damage with /kin, so that portion of the soulbound proc is wasted.
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11 hours ago, Sinfinite said:
Very well written and provides lots of food for thought. I've always been a player who loves finding synergies between power sets as well. I'd be interested to see some of the DOM power sets you think synergize best.
Thanks again for taking the time to write this!
Hey thanks 🙂
I can tell you which ones I think synergize well for me - but the kinds of things I consider playstyle synergy might not appeal to everyone SO...here are some random ones, they are going to generally revolve around utilizing the aspect of the secondary that makes it most unique:
- Dark & Icy Assault : I would (and will, I haven't yet on HC but I'm working on concepts for it) pair it with a primary with a pbaoe aura (elec, fire or ice) and skip the cone power and just stay in melee to capitalize on the pbaoe. These builds can be annoying solo before perma-dom with all the enemy mezzes.... For dark, I'll consider if there's a way I can get close to some capped defenses with the inherent -tohit on the secondary as well. Alternately, the pbaoe could be skipped and the set paired with a primary that lines cones like mind, plant or dark (dark/dark makes for a good ping-pong (in and out of melee) too if you like being that active, but icy really wants to be in melee. I loved my elec/icey on live.
- Earth : Basically the same as fire, with the exception that earth has no cone to skip so I would be in melee 100% and capitalizing on the knockdowns & aura. Earth is also pretty end heavy, so will have to build taking that into account. One thing I'm not sure of is the interaction between tick timers in mud pots & static field : do they go in and out of sleep, or does mud pots just keep those within it permanently awake?
- Elec : Honestly elec never jumped out at me. It's obviously going to pair well with the elec/ primary for the extra end draining...but you know, it's just kinda meh as far as the rest goes. To me, it pairs about the same with all the other primaries. I would most likely take the Mu power pool with it to get ball lightning & power sink (and the pet :P). I think it works a bit better for me including those... The caveat here is that if the Sentinel does more damage than I remember, it may be pretty solid because that damage is fire and forget, which gives you more time to do other things.
- Energy : You have to have a plan for the KB. Either lots of movement to keep things positioned, or maybe hovering and being above them when using the heavy KB blasts. Depending on which one of those you like (or a mix...) that will affect primary choices. You may also just take a primary with -kb in its aoe immob (dark, earth, fire, ice, plant according to MidsReborn) and ignore the KB. Looking at it now, I like dark and using the fear lockdown followed by the immob, then just picking things off one by one (since energy heavily favors single target damage). I might even skip the cone and consider taking energy transfer instead of the snipe at 35 (this is something *I* probably wouldn't do, since I always take the patron pet on doms).
- Fire : same basic idea as dark & icy.
- Martial : I'm playing grav/ma right now for a heavy single target ranged damage focus (envenomed blades boosts lift & propel too) and that seems to be working out. The melee options are bad, but the ranged attacks can be used in melee so you're pretty much free to be wherever you need to be. In this case I'm focusing more on the power of near-perma Envenomed Blades (and thus near perma insta-snipe) than I am on capitalizing on the damage portion of caltrops - I'm using it for the control aspect, to keep things away from me or running around randomly. Without the Grav/ attacks it's harder to build as good of an attack chain, but you can use one or both of the melee attacks with other primaries. It also pairs well with plant because confusion+caltrops is always fun. Also pairs well with mind/ do to the strong single target focus - you can sleep or fear and pick off the stragglers.
- Psionic : ping-pong. This can either be pairing with a pbaoe toggle bearing primary like I mention with dark/icy/earth, but it heavily favors actively jumping in and out to cycle between the aoe and the cone as the single target damage isn't amazing. This means you can put it with pretty much any primary and excel. Honestly I don't see a stand out primary set for it - I played ice/psi and dark/psi on live and they were solid. To me maybe grav and mind would be the worst pairings (but still quite good!) grav because it has no reason to be in melee, and mind because with all the aoes you can't capitalize on aoe sleep in the same way.
- Rad : I'm still working my way through this one (playing elec/rad right now), but I feel like it's similar to earth, except it doesn't really have a signature "Thing". The one attack that is sort of weird is Radiation Siphon with the unreliable heal...but that's not something you build around at all. So, barring that, what it has is a very good melee attack chain, so that's what I'd focus on. It does have a cone, but the melee options are heavy enough that you want to spend most of your time there.
- Savage : its a good set for jumping in and out of melee since you can just teleport right back in, but in practice the jumping in and out is a bunch of work and I'm old and lazy, so I'll favor melee.
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Thorny : I like the synergy between caltrops and slows, so fire/ and ice/ are my primary choices here. Fling Thorns is probably the best of the cones for using in melee - which, in practice, means it (along with Psionic) is one of the cones I'd actually take (I often skip the cones on doms for the reason I mentioned above - too tired for the ping-pong playstyle these days). I just rolled up a fire/thorn last night that I'll get around to leveling eventually.
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17 hours ago, William Valence said:
*NECRO*
This is and easy one and a lightweight one. Lich is fine as a control boss, and Grave Nights are ******* baller, however it's base survivability as a set is low, and zombies are probably the worst T1 minion. Take the Cloak of Fear icon, recolor it Necro colors, and give the following to Zombies on their T2 upgrade:
DEATH RATTLE: Passive - 15' radius -5% tohit, -10% damage, 3% chance to mag2 fear 10s.
Against an even con enemy that would be -12% tohit and -24% damage if all three affect the target.
This looks like a solid suggestion without complicating them (adding more to the attack chain). It would be nice if there was a faint visual to the aura as well. My only worry is that it wouldn't offer *enough* protection vs. the equivalent of +3-7s or whatever you are fighting.
You should be able to cast Soul Extraction on a living pet and have it just kill the pet and make the ghost, the price you pay is the lost recharge/waiting. Easy fix, and suddenly a really good power (it was already OK).
Quote*NINJAS*
For a Melee pet that has no resists and only defense, them having less defense that Probot buffed bots or Enforcered Thugs is pretty bad. All three ninja types should have their defense upped to 16% (All) at least to match thugs. With no resistances to layer with their defense they should get defense debuff resistance (25% base + 25% per upgrade max 75%)
Jounin should lose the Poisoned dart power, and gain a passive Poisoned Blades power that adds -regen to its existing attacks.
Oni is a hot mess, and needs to lose and replace some powers. Drop the fire sword attacks. Whenever I played my Ninja/Time I noticed the Oni had issues bouncing between the sword attacks and other attacks. Move Fire breath to being a starting power, and char to the T1 upgrade. This would put both control powers on the same upgrade and open a spot on the T2. Give the Oni Incinerate on the T2 upgrade to make the difference on the loss of the two Sword attacks without adding another weapon draw animation to juggle.
Smoke bomb should be infinitely better without poison dart to **** things up, but maybe allow it to accept recharge intensive pet damage sets just to ease some of the burden of slotting.
Man, my first mm (first one to 40 too, I think, but I don't think he made it to incarnation) was nin/poison...talk about squishy! They definitely *need* a defensive upgrade, especially compared with the three sets that were added afterwards. Given them some sizeable passive regen alongside the +def might help. Maybe something weird like an inverted scaling resist: basically 25% of your life total% (so 25% at full, 1% at 4%, etc.) to help avoid alpha one shots (but not do much to save them from the second hit)?
I'm fine with jounin losing the darts....giving them lotus drops as a replacement would be cool, and help to push them up towards the top of the damage sets (which they should be fore how fragile they are).
If you're going to remove the oni's two melee attacks - why give him another one? I'd say just give me a ranged attack (Blaze, or maybe even something like Hot Feet to keep enemies away from him) instead and make him a 100% ranged pet.
Quote*MERCS*
Honestly the pets themselves I don't even know. They seem over stuffed with kit they won't use right and may just need to get trimmed up a bit and focused. However I've thought a lot about Serum, and here's what I'd do with Serum if possible.
Make it and enhancement mule. You can stick any enhancement you want on it and that slotting will apply to your target, like a form of super soldier serum. When you use the power, for the duration, it gets the full benefit of the slotting with the kicker that it is unaffected by Enhancement Diversification, similar to Alpha slots. There would be no crash, it would have a constant recharge unaffected by recharge modification, and it could even mule aura IOs.
Mercs absolutely need streamlining and shifting. Yep, kill the medic's bomb. Yep, give the T2s some aoe and shorter recharging controls. Maybe give the medic a long recharging rez that works on the other pets - that would be something unique and cool!
I'm hopeful something might happen, but I haven't been paying attention enough to know if the HC team is actually going to do stuff like this in the future?
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Background:
- The original draft of this is up on reddit, but I figured not everyone is on reddit, and I DO need to start posting here more.
- This is NOT be a detailed power-per-power analysis. This is more HOW TO PICK a secondary based on how it will feel to play than HOW TO PLAY it.
- This is math light - I've purposely abstracted most of it out, and am not addressing DPA. Players that are interested in DPA usually know their way around a build and won't find much in a guide like this. 🙂
Dominator Secondary general info:
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Most sets have the following: a weak ranged attack, a weak melee attack, a mid-damage ranged attack, a mid-damage melee attack, aim/buildup/power boost/etc., a cone attack*, a pbaoe, a snipe or utility and a heavy melee OR heavy range attack.
- The caveat for cones is that there are a couple things I treat as cones that aren't actually cones but that function the same way in play and have similar damage #s : earth's short range aoe Fissure and Martial's Trick Shot.
- Psi, fire and thorns have a faster animating and recharging T1 that does less damage than the other sets.
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Insta-snipe:
- Domination: All sets with snipe can have access to insta for the first 15 seconds of domination (+25% tohit, you only need +22%).
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Outside of Domination:
- None : Fire and Psi will need to rely on Domination and some combination of team buffs/tactics/yellow inspirations to get insta-snipes.
- Aim (Savage, Thorns) : Neither of the sets with aim have a snipe.
- Power-Boost/Gather Shadows (Dark, Earth, Energy, Ice): Earth and Ice lack a snipe. Dark & Energy can get insta-snipe during powerboost by slotting tactics with 1 SO (20% tohit) and using the Kismet +6% proc.
- Build-Up (Elec, Rad) : Will require +tohit slotting (>30% worth) or Kismet +6% tohit proc to get build-up (and Rad's Fusion) up to 22%.
- Envenomed Blades: MA has what looks to be an OP version of fiery embrace that provides a base of 12% tohit that can be made very close to perma. With ~35% tohit slotted and the kismet proc, MA can have insta-snipe almost permanently.
The Secondaries:-
Dark Assault
- power-boost with a damage bonus, two medium blasts (exact same damage), one of which has a small heal on it, and a heavy melee, and a snipe with access to insta. It does not have a medium melee attack. The secondary effect of -tohit can be useful if you are close to the defense cap, or keep it stacked heavily with the aoes.
- It seems to favor being in melee and using your ranged attacks there, or going in and out if you use the cone (which is very thin).
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Earth Assault
- power boost, TWO heavy melee attacks, a short range aoe that works great in melee, and an aura that slows and does damage.
- This set heavily favors melee.
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Electricity Assault
- build-up, a faster/weaker weak melee, no heavy ranged attack, the weakest heavy melee attack (with a small pbaoe damage component), a snipe with access to insta, and the voltaic sentinel pet. Aside from pairing with elec/, I haven't found much use for the end draining secondary effect.
- It seems to slightly favor melee.
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Energy Assault
- power boost, the strongest heavy melee attack, two big range attacks, snipe with access to insta with tactics+proc during power boost, and no cone. Must love KB.
- With insta-snipe, it has 3 very powerful ranged attacks, and lends itself best of all the dominator sets to being ranged.
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Fire Assault
- fiery embrace and consume, the strongest heavy range attack, a snipe with NO access to insta, and trades the secondary utility effects on powers for slightly more damage on all attacks.
- It favors melee, or moving in and out if you take the cone.
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Icy Assault
- power boost, its mid strength range attack is faster and weaker than normal, a heavy ranged attack [edited], NO snipe, and a slow aura that does no damage.
- There doesn't seem to be anything special about it beyond the aura (and good DPA), so I would only play ice if I were going to take Chilling Embrace. The secondary slowing effect does exist, but takes several hits to be noticeable (and, in my experience, generally isn't except for the occasional boss).
- It favors melee (imho) due to chilling embrace.
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Martial Assault
- a weird fiery embrace clone that seems to need balancing/nerfing, its weak melee attack is a cone "for free", trick shot instead of a cone, a snipe with the best access to insta, a heavy ranged attack and caltrops. Maybe the lack of secondary effects is why Envenomed Blades is so strong?
- It lends itself very well to ranged play, or melee play using ranged attacks.
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Psionic Assault
- drain psyche instead of buildup/etc., TWO medium ranged attacks (one of which immobilizes), the largest cone, the best pbaoe (same size but 16 targets instead of 10), NO heavy melee OR ranged attack, and a snipe with NO access to insta. Like Icy, the secondary effect of -recharge can be difficult to observe in action, but it's there!
- This set favors moving in and out of melee to maximize - you want to take advantage of the cone, pbaoe and drain psyche since your single target attacks are lacking.
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Radioactive Assault
- a version of build up with much less ToHit (not super relevant), faster/weaker weak melee, TWO heavy melee attacks, the heaviest damage pbaoe (if the #s are correct), and a snipe with access to insta. The secondary contamination effect is "free" damage, and the -def on all the attacks is always appreciated.
- It favors melee.
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Savage Assault
- aim, improved weak and medium melee attacks (if the damage #s are correct in game), a self heal, a heavy ranged attack, and a second medium melee attack that teleports you to the target with bonus damage based on distance (??).
- It favors melee and gives you a great tool for jumping back into the fight if you have jumped out to use the cone.
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Thorny Assault
- aim, a short, wide arc cone, a heavy melee that is a cone, a heavy ranged, caltrops and extra damage (like fire, from dots).
- Somewhere between Earth and a set like psi or fire that favors actively moving in and out of combat.
Melee attack chain options, vaguely ranked:
The sets with heavy ranged attacks can and should use those, as they do about the same damage as T2 melee attacks. T1 & T2 ranged attacks should be avoided unless needed to fill out a chain, as they are lower damage than T1 melees. Counting heavy ranged attacks as T2 melees (roughly the same damage), and not counting snipes in sets that cannot insta them without insps we have:- Martial: T1, T1+cone, T2, S
- Ice: T1, T2, T2
- Psi: T1+KB, T2
- Fire : T2, T2,
- Dark : T1, T3, S
- Thorns: T2, T2, T3(Cone)
- Elec : weak T1, T2, T3(with small pbaoe), S
- Earth : T1, T3, T3
- Energy: T2, T2, T3, S
- Savage: weak T2, T2, T2+port, T3
- Rad: weird T1, T2, T3, T3, S
Ranged attack chain options:
If you really want to play permanently at range (it's discouraged by many vet dom players, myself included, but it IS viable, and I'm attempting two different pure ranged builds currently), here are the ranged attack chain options:Worst:
- Earth: T1,T2
- Rad: T1, T3, Cone
Average:
- Psi: fast T1, T2, T2+immob, Cone
- Thorns: Fast T1, T2, T4
- Elec: T1,T2,S, Cone
- Ice: T1, Weak T2, T4, Cone
Decent:
- Dark: T1, T2, T2+Heal,S, Cone
- Fire: fast T1, T4, S, Cone
- Savage: T1, T4, S, Cone
Best?:
- Martial: T1, trick shot, T4, S (best uptime)
- Energy: T1, T2, T3, T4,S
It's also worth noting that the Grav primary has extra T2 & T4 ranged attacks (Lift & Propel), not even counting the bonus damage from impact. And Propel has the recharge of a T2… Mind's Levitation weaker than Lift.
Notes :
I have not addressed the epic sets but, especially given you can start them at 35, they can really fill out a hole in a secondary - something like taking Energy Transfer at 35 in lieu of a snipe can make a set that was lacking a solid melee chain work much better, or Bile Spray or Fire Ball instead of snipe on a /psi or /fire to give you a second aoe to fire off before you jump in…lots of options here.
The way I build is to choose a power-set combo that seems to have interesting mechanical synergy or an engaging or fun playstyle - also likely rooted in synergy. Plenty of others go theme or story first, or just pick a combo for the cool visuals - I think all these are great ways to build a character, and hopefully this mini-guide is helpful to some of you.
Background:
On live I played plant/fire, elec/ice and ice/psi deep into incarnate content. All were 100% viable - I used the fire snipe in melee range without insta too! I also had grav/energy, ice/thorn, earth/elec, and dark/psi up to at least 50+1 and some incarnate content.
Currently I am playing dark/savage, grav/martial, elec/rad, ice/earth & earth/energy, all in the 33-40 range.
EDIT: I'll add some thoughts on the beta changes eventually, especially if they go live. I may add some DPA and attack chain stuff then as well, but that's not something I stress about.-
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This is awesome!! Thanks for picking up the torch that already picked up...??
bug: Regen primary on tankers accepts no sets.
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Heya WA!
Yeah I need a machine that's not set up this way to test, but all my machines are and I don't feel like de-configuring any right now (W10 seems to have made it more annoying to do this).
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I'll comment from the point of view of using /elec on a farmer. It's absolutely doable, you can even run the fire farm maps at +3-4/8, but does require a bunch of ios (where a ss or spines/fire can do 3-4/8 with only basic IOs).
SJ isn't the ideal primary for farming, but it won't be terrible, and it's great for everything else.
General thoughts:
* Don't take Lightning Reflexes that late, take it near when it's available, it's very good.
* If you want to focus on the farm part, you want /mu or /fire as your epic.
* You absolutely do not need a second slot in stamina, or to take physical perfection at all IF you use powersink properly. I 6 slot mine with efficacy adapter, but you can get by with far less, like 2 slots as you've done. As an addendum to this, you don't need the recovery procs in health either, but if you have the slots it seems harmless.
* Why did you take hasten at level 4? That's just...it's not going to help you at that point so...why?
* Generally farmers take the buildup analogue (Combat Readiness) and pop that before every other or every 3rd alpha. No slots needed.
* If you want to do the faster farms, you probably want to do the fire ones - the energy ones get annoying with KB stacking, and the elec ones can be annoying with immobilizes and end drains. Fire farms are all just damage. With that in mind, you can get your fire resist to 80% without too much work, and to 90% if you really want.
Alpha slot wise, it's just whatever you want. For farming it doesn't even matter. For PVE take whatever fills out the holes - maybe you want your end to drain slower, or your end draining powers to drain more, or more accuracy/recharge, etc.
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Another minor data issue: psi melee is including insight bonus damage, making it look stronger than it is.
Edit : Regen primary on tankers is set to use secondary acquisition levels, should be an easy fix...
edit2: OK tank regen is broken in a bunch of other little ways too - many powers not accepting sets, etc.
edit3: Does anyone know how to extract/edit the .mhd files? I'm open to attempting text and numerical fixes myself.
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I'm pretty sure I had this problem on live and I can't remember if I ever found a workaround.
* I can't paste (Control-V) into the game - others in chat said that they could.
The only reason I've ever been able to think of for this (especially given its across multiple machines) is that I use the Dvorak keyboard layout. Note that using both "locations" of the V key ("." and "v") do not work...something like having a different keyboard input set just plain breaks the game's paste function??
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Just an update on the multiboxing stuff: We no longer have Mastermind-specific restrictions. The other rules still apply. Follow them or be forever snapped out existence.
This is wonderful, thank you! :)
I know what I'm (finally) doing this weekend after I get my new computer built!
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Oh that's a big relief. Would Mercs be decent with Force Field as a secondary or would I really want to grab Traps instead to focus on debuffing resistances?
I took merc/ff to 40ish on live. It is perhaps the slowest, most boring (imho) combo possible (for my playstyle!). BUT, like all the other combos, it works. You can get a solid amount of def and status protection, and you have some minor KB control...you'll probably wind up taking medicine, and maybe all the slow medicine pool healing drives you crazy? Or not ? :P /traps will probably be more fun and engaging than /ff.
I took a merc/storm to maxed incarnate, and found that combo plenty strong. /dark is fine as well...I would recommend anything other than empathy, pain, ff and sonic - unless you plan on primarily grouping, those powers all shine in groups, and can drag solo. You have to consider your pets abilities and behavior - merc/ isn't particularly favorable to the /kin pairing, for example, because your heal works best when pets are in melee.
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This is great, thank you!
Just reading it was a nice trip down memory lane, as I'd forgotten the sequencing of so many things.
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You may not multibox on a shard that has more than 1500 players logged in
You may not use more than 3 accounts at once
You may not use more than one Mastermind at once
I'm fine with the naming stuff, and with the multi-boxing stuff in general, with exception to the 1 mastermind limit. Dual boxing masterminds was kind of my thing on live, and I was really looking forward to doing it again.
I haven't even bothered to multi-box yet as I'm still enjoying the leveling experience and trying out new sets, but my real long-term goal was mm duos. Is there any chance this restriction might be lifted in the future? Maybe if we're playing on the lowest population server?
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Excellent job on the transparency guys, I continue to be impressed. Thank you!
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Onward and upward! Or...something.
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Still here, @lobster.
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Dominator Healing Options and Mez Protected mobs during Leveling
in Dominator
Posted · Edited by lobster
I'd say that doms are one of the most complex (if not the most complex) classes to play, so it can take quite a while to find your groove.
More than any other class except maybe blapper style blasters, a good dominator has to be aware of : positioning, recharge times on powers, durations on powers, how many applications of a power it takes to lock a particular monster down, and how many attacks it takes to defeat a given opponent class (min/lt/boss). It's a lot to juggle, and not for everyone. There's also the playstyle changes that come with perma-dom (which you should absolutely aim for as a dominator), which can be significant.
If you really want a heal, you could try /savage or /psi secondary.
In addition to what the others have said, since you are dark, when fighting hold resistant monsters, you could try dropping confuse, then shadow field from around the corner - if you get lucky it will tick on the boss or resistant monster and you can follow up with dark grasp, locking them down. Slotting fearsome stare for -tohit can help too. You can also stack 2 confuses on the resistant monster before engaging.