Hjarki
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Posts posted by Hjarki
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I think it helps to start with determining what your goals are.
Bio on a Tanker will never be a 'true' Tanker in the sense of being able to withstand any enemy. The resists are simply too low and the lack of DDR means that the defenses will fail under certain circumstances. It's more of a 'Scranker' set where your goal is less to be impervious to all harm than be impervious *enough* that you can deal with 99% of content.
As such, I tend to build Bio as an either-or affair. For any given damage type, I either have hard-capped or nearly so resists (S/L/T) or I have soft-capped defenses (E/N/F/C/P). This doesn't meaningfully change my ability to survive but it makes the build significantly easier since I'm no longer wasting slots on sets like Kinetic Combat.
It also means I have a real option for my resist toggles: Impervium Armor. Unlike my other options, it gives me a meaningful set bonus while also improving my powers. So I'd set up a power like Hardened Carapace with 3-set Impervium and then 2 set Gladiator's Armor (unique + Resist). Evolving Armor might be 3-set Impervium with Steadfast Protection unique. And so forth.
For the rest of the powers:
- Inexhaustible. This doesn't need any slotting most of the time, but it's a decent place to plant Healing/Endurance uniques.
- Environmental Modification. At least one slot needs to go to LotG global recharge. Other than that, our defense powers need to find a place for Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall, both of which have better set bonuses that LotG for most purposes.
- Ablative Carapace. 6-slot Preventative Medicine is the obvious choice here.
- DNA Siphon. The best way to think of this power is purely as a -regen tool. So if you can get something out of slotting full sets, go ahead. But otherwise it really just needs recharge/accuracy (and it may not even need accuracy depending on your build).
- Genetic Contamination. 6-slot Might of the Tanker is the obvious choice here. It has set bonuses you want and having the proc just operate passively saves a lot of hassle.
- Parasitic Aura. I don't find this power useful either from the standpoint of the power itself or the slotting opportunities, so I generally don't take it.
For Dark Melee, I don't much like the pairing. Dark gives up damage in exchange for Siphon Life. This trade-off can be critically important with primaries that don't have health/endurance management. With Bio? It's almost pure downside.
But with that in mind, our single target rotation will be Smite/Siphon Life/Smite/Midnight Grasp. We either need excessive recharge or another power to close the gasp due to Midnight Grasp's long recharge, so we'll pick up Gloom from epic pools.
Since Bio doesn't have a good reason to split Gauntleted Fist, we can just use 6-slot Gauntleted Fist for Smite/Midnight Grasp and 5-6 slot Hecatomb for the other (depending on how much you care about capping Toxic resist - the 6th slot could also be any of a number of procs).
Touch of Fear is our primary AE, so that's a good place for Armageddon. If it's 5-slot, then the unusually low radius makes Fury of the Gladiator proc a solid choice.
We'll need a touch more E/N/F/C defense, so doing a 3/3 Eradication/Avalanche split for Shadow Maul and DNA Siphon seems a solid choice. 6-slot Mocking Beratement in Taunt gives us fantastic set bonuses as well.
I'd probably use Siphon Life as a proc attack - just enough damage (and no recharge) to get near ED caps with some variety of available procs filling out the rest. With accuracy bonuses from sets and potentially Tactics/Kismet, we probably don't need to invest in accuracy at all.
Shadow Punch and Dark Consumption don't have any purpose for the build, so skip them.
Soul Drain is a debate. We can't make it perma and it has a significant activation time - an activation time where our damage isn't very good. Against a single target, we'll lose about 6% of our damage to get a buff of about 12% of our damage (with +100% or so global recharge and the rotation outlined above). That's not very impressive so I'd skip it unless there's a good slotting opportunity.
In terms of pools, we need four defense powers ideally:
- Fighting (whatever/Tough/Weave). Environmental Modification, Weave and Maneuvers are better than other defense toggles so when we're grabbing set bonuses (and thus over-slotting +defense), those should be where we concentrate.
- Leadership (Maneuvers/Assault and maybe Tactics)
- Leaping (Combat Jumping)
For the fourth, I think Hover is the best option. It gives you additional always-on defense and doesn't carry the threat penalties of Concealment. It's also not a pure mule like Vengeance. Hover is also useful on a Tanker, especially one with Cones, because it allows you to compress the spawn more than standing on the ground would.
We already committed to Gloom, so that means Soul Mastery. Gloom itself can be 6-slotted with Apocalypse to give us recharge, a proc and Psi Defense. The rest of Soul Mastery isn't all that impressive, but Obliteration can be nice since we can slot it with Ragnarok and the proc is nearly auto-fire.
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On 3/6/2024 at 7:09 AM, Sovera said:
Because of TF's long recharge there is a lot of downtime to fill before it is available again.
Total Focus has twice the recharge of Energy Transfer. Since the slow version of Energy Transfer is still the highest dpa attack in the chain, you should be casting two ET per TF. This also means your primary concern isn't the recharge of Total Focus but the recharge of Energy Transfer - you need to pack in 3 - 4 seconds of something between your fast and slow Energy Transfers.
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58 minutes ago, Carnifax said:
I'd lean towards Rad with Sonic, for the simple reason that Poisons best debuff is the Tier 9 PBAoE aura and it won't linger on the enemy long enough for you to pull back to fire off Sonics range of cones.
I'd pair Poison with something like Fire, Rad, Elec, Ice or Dual Pistols. All of those either like being in close because they have a PBAoE of their own or don't care (Fire and Ice mostly don't mind, Rad, Elec and DP have PBAoE attacks). I don't know enough about Seismic or Storm blast to say where they work best.
If he insists on Sonic, it would probably be easier to just skip all the AE in Sonic except for the ultimate. It's not like they're particularly good AE even without the issue of the Poison T9 and Poison has a quasi-AE in the trap anyway.
Indeed, I'd argue that one of the strongest Poison pairings is actually Dark despite it's similar emphasis on Cones. With the latest patch, you can run Poison/Dark/Dark. You've got the ultimate/trap for AE, Life Drain to cover health/endurance management and you can even double stack Disorient fields with Dark Pit and Oppressive Gloom - and you get the Aim/Build Up that Dark is missing for the ultimate. Dark is also nice as a Defender because it gets two of its three single target attacks within the first few levels and the rotation is almost entirely medium recharge, proccable powers.
Seismic is really a purely ranged set and it's major virtue is the self-recharge on the powers that gives it probably the best ultimate in the game. While I suppose you could run in while the meteor is falling to the ground, it's a lot easier to just use something like Sleet/Freezing Rain while the animation is ongoing.
Storm is likewise a set that gains no real benefit from being up close. It's also a "screw it... I'll just play Traps" set due to having to wait for Storm Cell to slowly drift to where you need it to be.
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Shield has no endurance management. Neither do Fire Melee or Martial Arts. So you'll be gasping for end with those combos. If you're planning to do Shield, I highly recommend a secondary like Savage, Energy or Dark that mitigates your endurance issues.
Radiation is probably the most generally powerful armor set available to Tankers. Rad/MA is arguably the best farming build at the moment and it's a strong build for general play. I don't like Fire nearly as much - while it eventually does pretty well, it's a painfully long slog until you get all the key powers at the end of the set.
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7 minutes ago, Gamma XIII said:
People still do that...? 😄
Once you brush off all the dust, they still work for us just like they did for our ancestors.
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On 1/26/2024 at 8:11 AM, balor said:
Do you have your Time/Seismic posted anywhere?
No, but it's fairly easy to build. Seismic's recharge reduction on all powers coupled with Time's ability to cap defenses trivially means you don't need any particularly difficult build constraints.
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It really depends on what you mean by 'solo'.
Most of the game is simply grinding xp/inf. While no Corruptor is particularly good at this (compared to melee AT or even Blasters), there are certainly builds that are better than others. Techniques like */Time + Soul Drain or */Kinetics would tend to fall into this category.
The other part of the game is what might be termed 'achievement' - you're trying to beat difficult enemies, normally AV/GM. Here, the debuff-centric sets tend to be the best for the simple reason that they're better at keeping you alive and can leverage the power of abilities like -regen.
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Dark has a decent diversity of abilities. However, the main reasons I don't like the set much:
- Lack of any truly top notch abilities. There are certain abilities like Fulcrum Shift or Tornado that can carry an entire power set. Dark really doesn't have anything like that.
- Dark is painfully slow. You'd be forgiving if you check your watch waiting for the abilities to animate. Almost everything Dark does takes a lot longer than comparable abilities in other sets.
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10 hours ago, roleki said:
That's only because they neutered Singularity to be much less durable than it used to be, otherwise THAT would be the best thing about it. Pull effect versus repel effect is a tactical wash, in terms of advantages gained and lost, but if you spent years running Singularity the old way, its new behavior can take some getting used to.
I disagree.
Conventional Repel just isn't all that useful. If you want to maintain range, options like flight and Immobilize already work just fine. Repel, on the other hand, has a tendency to scatter mobs - and there's rarely ever a good result that comes from scattering mobs.
Negative Repel, on the other hand, concentrates mobs. When it is attached an ability - like Singularity - that can place the center of the effect somewhere other than the player, it accomplishes everything normal Repel would ordinarily accomplish. Drawing mobs into a central point is incredibly useful - it's part of the reason you want a tank in your group - in a way that pushing them away from a central point is not.
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I tend to straight slot Preemptive Optimization for 3.75% recharge and 3.75% Ranged Def. Drain Psyche is mainly a -regen power, so I don't care all that much about boosting it.
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11 hours ago, pawstruck said:
But then it might as well not even be a power. It's just a thing that's always effective, always hitting everyone?
It would be a power just as much as any sort of toggle damage aura is.
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8 hours ago, pawstruck said:
Storm Cell is an excellent mechanic that feels great to have up but isn't intuitive to use. If there was a solution to that, I wouldn't mind the objectively middling damage of the set, just for thematic/aesthetic reasons.
When the set was being developed, I suggested the set would be far more fluid and 'fun' if Storm Cell were simply a large radius PBAoE toggle. I still hold that view - if you could just zip around, certain that everyone in your vicinity was in the Storm Cell, it would be a far more effective/enjoyable spec to play.
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On 8/7/2023 at 1:17 PM, honoroit said:
mmm, it -tohit rubbish?
In general, protective debuffs are weaker than protective buffs because you need to hit with them. So if you're relying on that -hit to keep you alive there are many times when it will just fail you.
The purple patch also cuts into such debuffs, meaning that they'll be running at 65% effectiveness (+4 w/alpha level shift).
However, what really cripples them is the way they fail utterly against AV/GM. At the top end, they'll be reduced by a further 87%. This effectively renders them worthless at the very moment you need them the most.
The same sort of calculus applies to control effects. Your ability to lock down an entire crowd is great. Then you apply that purple patch and it's still decent. Then you face that AV/GM and it fails utterly.
There's also the larger issue of "who exactly are you helping?". Being able to lock down an entire crowd really isn't all that helpful when your team (except you) is already tough enough to wade into them.
That being said, not everything is +4/x8 TF with an AV/GM at the end. If you just want to do a natural leveling progression and aren't worried too much about 'end game' (whatever that is in CoH), then you should do fine.
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3 hours ago, Lockpick said:
What is the Fire rotation?
This is a non-editable version of the spreadsheet I use to play around with various sets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSXnW5bbWLXeZUblluSb5E8jo79coHN3AYqVxtgDYdkOox6T6-cR1HbkgNnOtVP7yWM_g6Fivg5iAWL/pubhtml?gid=1339529025&single=true
The 'uses' column is the rotation. While it doesn't describe the order, it describes how many times you use the power in the rotation. The green box indicates the dps of the entire rotation.
I omit a fair number of mechanics:
- Dual Pistols is fixed to Fire Ammo
- Beam Rifle Disintegrate is ignored
- Storm Blast's Storm Cell is ignored
- Sonic Blast's -resist is ignored
- Seismic's mechanics are mostly ignored and the assumption is that you're only using Stalagmite when it's enhanced.
So if we look at Fire Blast, I'm claiming that 2 Flares, 1 Fireball, 1 Blaze, 1 Blazing Blast creates a decent rotation if you limit yourself to 300% (or so) recharge. Due to the flexibility of Fire's rotation, it actually has a much higher ceiling as you permit more recharge and throw in melee attacks. For example, a rotation of Fire Blast, Cremate, Blaze, Blazing Bolt is around 85 dps (before enhancements/procs).
However, remember this is just a quick and dirty tool for myself, so it relies a lot on knowledge I have that isn't expressed by the spreadsheet.
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Electric would be right around Cold for much the same reason: lack of a decent backup to its primary attack.
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5 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:
I don't suppose any comprehensive analysis of all the primaries sim out with this to see how they all rank?
There are a lot of nuances to this. If I've got the rotations right, the pre-enhancement/proc ST dps of the various sets should look something like so:
Fire Blast: 72.54
Psychic Blast: 70.42
Seismic Blast: 70.36
Storm Blast: 70.07
Archery: 69.95
Assault Rifle: 68.30
Water Blast: 66.54
Dark Blast: 65.08
Dual Pistols: 64.96
Cold: 63.68
Sonic Blast: 61.65
Radiation Blast: 60.53
Energy Blast: 59.32
Beam Rifle: 56.75
It's entirely possible that there are better rotations than the ones I used although it's unlikely that I got the rotations for the top end of the list wrong. These rotations also don't include melee attacks from epic/patron pools. I've got a spreadsheet I use to play with these numbers, but apparently Google Sheets doesn't allow anonymous sharing of such documents.
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2 hours ago, Nemu said:
Someone mentioned mezzes, they might work ok for even con - +2s, When you run at +4 mez duration drops off due to mob scaling, so they are less effective.
I mentioned two specific controls - Screech + Oppressive Gloom and Siren's Song.
Oppressive Gloom works just fine even on +4 - the scaling doesn't decrease the duration below the activation time. Screech less so. Screech has a 5.96s duration, which is barely enough to cover +0 at the cyclic rate you'll be using it. So you're left with three options:
- Boost the Disorient duration via enhancements. This is problematic because Blaster's Wrath (full set) is the almost default slotting for the power due to its exceptional recharge and proc.
- Boost the Disorient duration via Incarnates. While Resilient doesn't work particularly well, Spiritual is actually a strong choice in many cases since it will often add more damage than Musculature (due to the recharge reduction).
- Deal with the fact that your coverage isn't 100%. Bear in mind we're not talking about building for 0% Defense/0% Resist on the premise that our status effects will render us immune to all harm. Even 80% coverage on a Disorient is still a significant reduction in damage.
Siren's Song has a duration more than sufficient to perma-Sleep a mob even at +4. However, Sleep isn't very useful in teams and covering an entire spawn with Siren's Song can be tricky. So it's mostly useful solo and as a conventional ranged AE rather than a Dominator-style City of Statues.
I agree that most AE controls are mostly pointless. I'd extend this to most AE anything in secondary. Blaster defenses simply don't get good enough to wander into a crowd and blast them all without killing any of them and survive. It's one thing to clear the room with Inferno and leave a few stray bosses - but conventional secondary AE is just going to get you killed in non-trivial content. Couple this with the fact that most secondary AE isn't really any better than what you have in primary for Blast sets, there's little reason to take it.
So, in my mind, Blapping is primarily about augmenting single target damage - replacing low damage ranged attacks with high damage melee ones in your rotation. However, the only time you're using those attacks is either when you've either controlled/eliminated all those minions or when you reach that final AV/GM.
In the former case, being able to go one-on-one with a Boss with little risk of harm is a significant advantage - and one that traditional SLER approaches don't really offer. In the latter case, there really isn't anything you can do but bring someone to tank the AV/GM or fight it entirely at range.
Additional Note: Oppressive Gloom is actually a pretty decent way to ensure you get the mano-on-mano fight I was discussing above since Stupefy is such a strong slotting. While ordinarily this is a massive pain due to the KB proc, the proc chance on a single target (the one you care about) is relatively low and the combination of Stun/KB tends to keep the riff-raff off your back. It still needs to be augmented with defenses/resists, but the total damage reduction is significant. However, Oppressive Gloom only really helps if you got a Stun you're working in conjunction with in primary/secondary.
Additional Note #2: You mentioned Fire/Electric. One of the reasons Electric is such a strong choice for Blapping is Shocking Grasp and its attendant Hold. While you're not going to get the guaranteed sort of stacking with Sonic/X/Soul, you're still minimizing the incoming damage with status effects.
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Psi isn't a particularly strong Blapper primary since it's single target controls are lacking, Psi Darts is probably the best Cone Blasters receive and the entire set is built around long range. Likewise, Atomic has relatively weak melee attacks so it's not ideal for Blapping.
In general, what I look for with a 'Blapper' is the ability to control/neutralize the target I'm melee'ing.
For example, consider Sonic/Ninja/Soul. You've got Screech with a Mag 3 Disorient and Oppressive Gloom to bring it above Mag 4 so most of your targets can't fight back. You've got Sting of the Wasp and Golden Dragonfly - both excellent attacks - and you can slot a purple proc into both (Golden Dragonfly's AF is trivial). While the Cone-centric nature of Sonic's AE is problematic, you can use AE Sleep to neutralize foes and pick apart the spawn one by one if your ultimate isn't available.
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Not taking the three personal attacks in primary is going to cost you a ton of damage. Virtually all Mercenary attacks against a target add 33% for each of Burst, Slug and M30 Grenade you've hit the target with in the past 30 seconds. So you'll literally be doing half the damage you should without those attacks against a single target.
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Your goals and your power selections are at odds with one another. */Devices has no melee attacks so you're not Blapping, no matter what your intent may be. Even if you were using another secondary, Energy is horrible for Blapping since you're constantly knocking your opponents out of range.
You also don't need Hasten for Energy Blast (or, frankly, for Devices). The standard rotation - Blast/Burst/Sniper - runs at sub-300% recharge.
If you want to play a SLER Blapper, you need to pick other power sets. If you want to play Energy/Devices, your overall approach needs some tweaking (different power picks/slotting, etc.)
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When you're running a task force, you're limited to powers you obtained at or before the task force's maximum level (similar restrictions exist for exemplar'ing). So normally you want to prioritize the abilities you really need at low levels.
In many cases, a Tanker running Posi 1 will have a crippled ST rotation and often no AE at all.
In terms of endurance, there's only so much you can do. For sets like Invulnerability, you'll normally want to add some endurance reduction into your toggles. You'll take the uniques like Performance Shifter, Miracle and Panacea in Stamina/Health (Numina's also goes there but it won't work at Posi 1 levels).
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1 hour ago, SwankyBuld said:
Got it. Do you think the atomic aoes are not up to par? I assumed the pbaoe was decent because and can be used pretty often. I also heard that with the recharge proc, energy can have its nova every 30 seconds or so
As I noted, PBAoE on a Blaster is... questionable. It's one thing to use a PBAoE and annihilate every minion (and perhaps even the lieutenants) in a spawn in an eyeblink. It's quite another to stand in the middle of a large crowd mildly wounding them over time.
Probably the only Assault set PBAoE I think is really worth it is would be Burst of Speed - because it's basically a second ultimate (especially with procs). You can Aim/Gaussian's, triple tap it, and do enormous amounts of damage in a big burst. It's still riskier than something like Inferno, but it will clear out the room.
You also have to consider that most PBAoE from Assault sets just isn't very good. Atom Smasher, at +200% recharge, deals 8.22 dps against 10 targets within 10 yards. Water Burst at the same recharge would deal 9.62 dps against 16 targets within 15 yards - and does so from across the room.
Now, if your expectation is that you'll always have the perfect Tanker taking the aggro, be backed up by Defenders buffing you, or never leave the fire farm (or similarly content where it's easy to build comprehensive defenses), then feel free to invest in those PBAoE. But for general content? Leaping into that crowd is a glorified form of suicide.
Single target is different:
- Many of the melee attacks are legitimately quite a bit stronger than the ranged attacks they replace in your rotation.
- It's a lot easier for a Tanker to control a single target than a crowd.
- Against non-AV/GM, you can use Disorients/Holds/debuffs to ensure your single target isn't fighting back.
It's also worth noting that fighting large spawns without a taunt can be a major nuisance, especially with small radius attacks.
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Not very well. Energy Blast is a middle-of-the-road damage set and if you're planning to enter melee, you have to slather Knockback reduction all over the place in your powers so you're not constantly chasing enemies everywhere. Atomic has its virtues, but high impact melee damage isn't one of them.
Also, generally Blapping works well for ST damage and not so much for AE effects. Blasters simply don't get the kind of defenses that can withstand being attacked by large crowds. Normally you can expect to soft-cap Renged or maybe Smashing/Lethal/Energy/Ranged, but without status protection. As a result, most of the best Blapper builds I see (those designed for play rather than fire farms or pylon tests) are 'hybrid' builds that can operate completely at range but can also close on a single target to deal more damage if it's safe enough - and they often make it 'safe enough' with stacking Holds/Disorients.
For example, consider something like Sonic/Ninja/Soul. You can happily blast away from range, or briefly dip into melee for your ultimate. But if you do decide to square off against that one enemy where you want maximum damage, you can bring Sting of the Wasp and Golden Dragonfly into play (with the two purple procs they have) while keeping bosses constantly disoriented with Screech + Oppressive Gloom.
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You might consider Psi as your epic pool for the status protection clickie. Fire Control generally wants to be in the middle of things (and on the ground) for Hot Feet. This makes almost any status effect a death sentence as it shuts down all those toggles protecting you.
Blasts are too weak
in Defender
Posted
To put this in perspective, Blasters have a 1.125 scale while Defenders have a 0.65 scale. So even before we get into the details of Blasters having a second offensive set and Defiance, Defenders are dealing a bit over half the damage of Blasters with the same attacks.
This creates a situation where Defenders really need to be built different than other AT to deal remotely decent damage.
For example, I'm currently leveling an X/Assault Rifle Defender. This is how my slotting will look at 50:
Let's consider that first attack (Slug). It normally deals 59.2804 damage in 1.584 sec. With an 8 sec recharge, it has 15.667% * X chance to proc effects. Force Feedback is a 2 PPM proc, Explosive Strike and Gladiator's Javelin 3.5 PPM procs and Apocalypse is a 4.5.
So when I fire the attack, I have 31.3% chance to gain +100% recharge for 5 sec. I deal 59.2804 * Damage modifier + 71.75 * 54.83% * 2 + 107.1 * 70.5%. If my total damage modifier for attacks is +125% (including internal damage enhancement), this would yield 287.57 damage or 181.55 dpa.
A Blaster who just dumped +damage IOs into the attack would deal 230.85 damage or 145.74 dpa with the same assumptions. In practice, most non-support AT use procs opportunistically. A Blaster is almost certainly going to have the Apocalypse proc somewhere, but it will be part of a 5-set bonus rather than being stranded mostly on its own for pure damage purposes.
There are ways around a Defender's overall weak damage, but they are considerably more involved than for other AT.