WumpusRat

Another thing you can do is work in a few sets that have +end as a set bonus. The more end you have, the more powerful your recovery becomes. I have a few builds that have over 130 endurance at 50th level with all their set bonuses and such. Without any incarnate finagling they tend to have around 4.0/sec recovery. That allows for a pretty heavy end-burn during combat that can keep going for a long time, especially if you've got a panacea and performance shifter proc slotted. But always slot attacks for end reduction, especially the high-end cost ones. And when you're building set bonuses, check to see what the end reduction of the set is before you fully commit it to that power. Some sets have really nice bonuses, but only have end reduction in pieces that have 3-4 modifiers (and thus end up with only around 20-30% total end reduction), so use those on lower-endurance attacks, and sets that have heavy end reduction on the powers that eat a lot of endurance. My health slotting on all my characters is panacea proc, numina's unique, miracle unique. Stamina is performance shifter proc + 2-3 more slots (4 slot stamina if it's a really end-heavy build). Because if you run out of end in combat, you're kind of hosed. So I do everything I can to make sure I never do (though I still do now and then).

There definitely are. I ran a Numina tf last night, and enemy levels were all over the place, even in the same mission. I was 38th and leading it. I had it set to +2. On the first couple missions, everything was either -1 or +2. Then the mission to go into Oranbega, suddenly the mobs were -2. 36th level mobs, when we were all 38+ running at +2. Wtf?

Do you run story arcs, TFs, SFs, trials, kill giant monsters when people call for groups for them, etc? Because all of those will give you merits. Precious, precious merits. Heck, even just running around grabbing the exploration badges nets you merits. Merits can be turned into cash VERY easily. Use your merits to buy enhancement converters or enhancement boosters. 5 merits gets you 1 booster, or 1 merit gets you 3 converters. Converters tend to sell from 50-70k each, and boosters sell for 1-1.2 mil each. I tend to use boosters because the price doesn't fluctuate as much. Generally my goal by 50th level is to have gotten 1000+ merits. Because that turns into 200 million or so. Which, if you're being frugal and using some converters to switch things around and craft some of your own stuff, is enough to put together a decent set-based build at 50th level. You won't have all the fancy bells and whistles like 5 LotG procs, full superior ATO sets, purple sets, etc, but that's something you can work towards. Though with some canny converting you can turn random recipe drops into really nice stuff, too.

To be honest, this really sounds like you're just trolling. Which, to be honest, I don't really appreciate. Arguing for the sake of arguing just bogs discussion down. You're coming across as incredibly condescending, especially with the "you're just not using your pet right, hur hur" post earlier in the thread. Because, after all, pets have a 1-second cooldown, so you can just re-summon them for every spawn, right? Or perhaps you simply take your time and spend 2-3 minutes killing each group of mobs, so that your pet is ready to re-summon for the next group. Who knows. You don't agree because ... you just don't, I guess? Fine. You don't agree. Your disagreement is registered. You can stop trolling the thread now.

Ah, okay. I'll take a look when I get home from work and give a couple a try. And 5-slotting boxing and brawl? Yeah, that qualifies as "wonky" to me. 🙂 But I guess if it works!

I'd be curious to see some of these builds. Because without any recharge bonuses from attack sets, it seems like you'd have to have really wonky builds to get 70-80% global recharge. I mean, I guess if you were using only defense-oriented defensive sets so you could easily stack 5 lotg's as well as other stuff it would be easier, but it still seems like it would require kind of a weird build. <edit> Oh, unless that 70-80% includes the ageless bonus. That would be easier, definitely. <edit2> Also, I'm not trying to go "boo, you're doing it wrong" or anything. I've never actually focused on procs before. I'm too much of a fan of set bonuses. So I'd be curious to give one of these builds a try on test compared to my own builds, to see how mine stack up against them.

Interesting. Are you running every build with hasten or something? Because unless you're stacking tons of global recharge, it would be a bit rough to maintain an attack chain with no/very little recharge in attacks. I guess I just don't get the whole "proc meta" thing.

I'm curious, though. Aren't those charts based on the fact that the characters had tons of procs in nearly every attack? Procs aren't affected by +damage, as far as I'm aware. So by going with lots of procs, wouldn't brutes be kind of nerfing their own damage, when they're running at high fury, or with lots of red insps? <edit> Come to think of it, scrappers would too, since procs can't crit (again, as far as I know). So putting lots of procs in attacks benefits ... tankers. Which might explain why they were doing so much better per those charts. Or am I simply misreading it?

Something I've noticed lately while leveling up my newest gravity troller -- the singularity is SLOW. Jebus, he falls behind so easily, even when I'm just jogging along. If I take off and fly, he'll end up miles behind me. I've heard the reverberant pet is the same way (likely uses the same code for speed/pathfinding, since they're very similar). Maybe buff up their flight speed a bit, to let them keep up with their creators more easily?

I've noticed that a lot about the singularity lately too. It's so insanely slow, and gets stuck on all sorts of things. I wonder if the pathfinding AI is just borked for them (they likely use the same one). Maybe I'll toss up a suggestion on the forum to improve the flight speed of singy and reverb. Because it's annoying how easily singy falls behind, even when I'm not moving quickly.

I'm more or less the exact opposite. I love pet classes. Always have. Probably why masterminds are my favorite AT. But I don't think a pet "defines who you are". Certainly for MMs they're the vast majority of your damage, and your defense (bodyguard mode), but you have control over them. With troller/dom pets (other than illusion, since PA is one of the key features of the set), I treat them as just bonus stuff going on. On my grav trollers, singy is basically just a floating "get the eff off me" zone that hovers around me. I don't pay much attention to it, other than to occasionally snicker as I see helpless enemies floating around, or go flying away. I don't go out of my way to bring it into combat, since enemies always end up charging me, and thus singy just starts slapping stuff around on its own. Essentially I treat the pets as a "bodyguard" of sorts, who just hangs around me and engages anything that gets close enough to be a threat. I rarely use lore pets except against big bosses/GMs/AVs, so when they come out they're already going to be engaging something. The only time I really work to position my pets is with PA, since they definitely seem to have a very short tether. But I tend to always build for perma-PA, so once the fight is over and I'm moving on to the next one, it's about time to summon another set anyway. And I always try to pick lore pets that go with my theme. If I can't find one that does? Ehh, I don't bother to use them. Am I "nerfing" myself by not getting them? Sure, probably. But to me it's "form over function". As far as the symphony pet goes, I haven't tried that set yet, as I just came back to the game a couple months ago after other stuff kept me busy for a couple years. I'm curious to try it out, as I have a "D&D Bard" concept that I think it would work for. Thinking symphony/kinetic troller. Though everything I've heard says that symphony is kind of an iffy set in general, and the pet is even moreso.

I generally keep track of: Current HP (I like knowing the number, since there's no numerical display on your hp bar) Recovery rate Endurance spend Resist (usually S/L, though sometimes energy, psi, or something else) Defense (smash/lethal, ranged, positionals, etc, depending on what sort of character I'm playing) Exp to next level Influence

I use AE tickets to stock up on rare salvage all the time. A lot of times I'll level a character up through arcs into the teens, and then use AE to grind them up to 22nd so I can slot 25th level IOs. I probably have tens of thousands of tickets lying around, and a crafting area in my supergroup base with salvage bins for everything. 15-20 of every common, 6-7 of every uncommon, and 5-6 of every rare. If I ever need to craft something, it's all right there to do.

I've seen some odd level disparities in TFs of late. Just last night I ran a Yin with some people, and in the SAME MISSION I saw -1 minions, even-level minions, and +1 minions. So no difficulty changing was going on. On a Numina today I watched enemies change con mid-fight. Looked into a room, saw a bunch of red-con minions, then when the team ran in to fight, they were suddenly orange con. Weirdest thing.

She's not my main anymore, but she was for a while. My darkside tanker Maxima (she's more of a rogue, as she occasionally forays into doing something vaguely noble out of self-interest, or just to mess with other villains). "Only a Lad" by Oingo Boingo. I have the lyrics to the song in her bio, with some slight changes to turn it into "Only a Lass" (her real name is "Jane", so instead of the song saying "Johnny" I replaced it with "Janey", and of course all the he/his/him's with she/her.

I just finished leveling up and incarnating my shield/axe tanker (she's a D&D fighter portaled into Paragon). The taunt is pointing your weapon at them and shouting, then smacking your shield with the weapon repeatedly until you get interrupted or do something. And backhanding people with the shield is why brawl is still on my hotbar, even at 50. I put an acc/dmg in it, and use it to finish off enemies that are clinging to life by a thread. Either slap them with the shield, or if they're down you kick them in the face.

Well, you have to remember that powers aren't meant to be balanced around having all sorts of IO sets and procs. They're meant to be balanced around SO slotting. So saying "I do fine with them with my fully loaded IO'd out build and incarnate powers" doesn't really say much for actual balance. I was mowing stuff down with my fully built mercenary/traps build before the changes as well, but that doesn't mean the mercs weren't in dire need of adjusting. Also, as I said, the set's damage hinges almost entirely on Fortify Pack's passive bonus -- the ability for the pets to crit. If you actually use the FP "buff", your pets' damage will drop drastically, as they lose +20% damage and the ability to crit for 60 seconds. Which is why most people (myself included) only use it as a mule power, and not something you actually want to USE, which is a terrible point to be at for a power in the kit. Apparently their goal is to revisit Thugs, Demons and Beast Mastery in the same vein that they did for the other sets, so we'll see what happens when they get around to it. I'd really like to see Fortify Pack simply done away with, and the +damage/crit from it shifted over to the Pack Mentality stacks, so that power slot could be used for something actually useful that you'd WANT to use, rather than just a mule power.

Beast Mastery needs some attention. Right now it's absolutely the bottom-tier of MM sets, and the only thing that keeps it slightly viable is the crit bonus from Fortify Pack. And honestly, an entire set's performance shouldn't hinge on a single power. The easiest way to test this is to create a Beast Mastery MM on test, kit them out however you want, and kill a few groups of mobs. It'll likely go just fine. Then use the Fortify Pack "buff", and watch your damage PLUMMET. The problem is that the defense buff wipes out your Pack Mentality stacks to turn it into defense. Which, in and of itself, wouldn't be a huge deal. The problem is it also "prevents the pets from gaining Pack Mentality while it is in effect". So for 60 seconds, your pets lose +20% damage and the ability to crit. The cooldowns on the various buffs/debuffs/heals they have need to be drastically lowered, as well, especially given that they pop them on-cooldown even when not in combat. And the lioness puny +6% defense for 15 seconds buff is on a 120s cooldown. That's nuts. I'd like to see Beast Mastery, Thugs and Demons get the same overhaul that the other sets got. Resist/defense buffs in the first upgrade, and something specific to those pets in the second. The tier-1 thugs could likely use a bit of buffing as well on the defensive end. They have even less defense than the ninjas do (tier-1 thugs have zero resists, zero defense, only the pyro gets some fire resist). Demons are very solid, but streamlining them to bring them into parity with the way the other MM sets work now would be good. Personally, I'd love to see Fortify Pack just nixed entirely, and give Pack Mentality the innate bonuses that FP gives them. Then change Fortify Pack into something different, that could be unique to that set.

One thing I noticed after testing out a few things is that the numbering system breaks down once you get past about 23 pages. The number of dots on the bottom doesn't change, but it will skip a few numbers. And even scrolling back and forth won't actually show you the correct number. To test it I just kept shifting a character further and further right to extend the number of tabs of characters that it would have to jump through to get to her, and the numbers started vanishing. It would go "page 1, page 2, page 4, page 5, page 7", etc. And even if I manually scrolled back and forth, it would never show me the proper number. So if you reach a certain number of pages, you lose the ability to quickly jump to that page of characters. That's most likely due to the fact that the code never imagined people would have 200+ characters, I'd guess.

Mastermind powersets are the most difficult to add, from what I understand. Because what the power summons is hard-coded into the power. I recall the original devs saying that's why they couldn't (easily) do pet customization. If the Homecoming devs can create new MM sets, then it shouldn't be much of a leap to simply re-create the existing sets, allowing them to disentangle the static pet summons and opening up more options for ALL sets. Arachnos, Council, Family, Longbow, Carnies, Circle of Thorns, etc, etc, etc... So many interesting flavors of Mastermind potential.

Not sure how difficult it would be to accomplish this, but something that would be kind of nice (especially for those of us with tons and tons (and tons) of alts) would be to make a label for each page of characters. If you mouse-over the page icon at the bottom it just says "Character Page #". If you could name them, that would make sorting characters so much easier. "Masterminds", "Blasters", "Fantasy Adventurers", "Genetic Abominations", etc. I know I'd love to sort mine by the various groups I have for them. I have several pages that are for my D&D adventurers, my alien race, my 'evil cabal of villains' group, etc.

Beast Mastery suffers from two major issues, imo. 1) The buffs/debuffs the pets have have cooldowns that are far, far too long. And the AI will cast buffs whenever they're off cooldown, making it spam their abilities every time they recharge, even outside of combat. Given that the buffs are short duration (15-20 seconds) and have 90-120s recharges, it means you're not getting anywhere near the use out of them you should be. 2) The set is completely reliant on the passive bonus of Fortify Pack. Without the crit bonus, BM's damage is miserably low. And if you ever USE Fortify Pack to give them some bonus defense, they lose both the ability to crit and the +damage effect of Pack Mentality for 60 seconds, in exchange for a defense bonus. So you have to choose damage or slightly higher defense. You can't have both. The power shouldn't have such a massive penalty. Overall, the set needs a lot of work. Cut the cooldowns of the various buffing powers the pets have in half, or more -- the set is all about pure melee damage, after all, so it should be the best at that. The lionesses and the dire wolf need a couple more attacks to give them a proper attack chain, and the heals need much lower cooldowns (60s for a 120ish heal is pretty miserable). Then Fortify Pack needs to be retooled. The set shouldn't be so reliant on this one power, and it shouldn't have such a massive penalty to use. What I'd like to see is changing it around to function more like Staff Mastery, in that you have several toggles you can switch on to direct your pets to fight in various ways. Make aggressive and defensive stances just provide bonuses, not penalties, with the ability to switch between the two as necessary. Could even add a third or fourth one if you really wanted to. Maybe 'Harrying tactics', where they slow, trip, and cause bleed damage. But the set definitely needs some work.

While I've definitely run a lot of builds that have serious endurance issues while leveling, honestly I think part of the fun for me is reaching a point where I can do all the stuff I was doing before, and not run out of end. It's a big sense of accomplishment for a character when I've gotten my end management "just so" and can still fight my way through stuff effectively and conserve my endurance at the same time. There are always solutions to end costs: slot more end reduction, both in your toggles as well as your attacks. Does it mean sacrificing a bit of damage or defense in order to do it? Yep. But learning that balance point is important.

Considering that the "Ninja Tools" epic pool exists, you could easily create more within that sort of theme. Archery Skills -- give a few ranged attack options, so you could have (say) someone who uses swords pull out a bow to fire off a couple shots at range. Magic Staff -- allow someone to pull out a staff, ala Scorpion's mage, and use some magical powers through it (though this would be nice as an entire set) Throwing Knives -- for 'vigilante-types', who have some various thrown blades on them (standard, poisoned, etc) Apprehend -- non-lethal takedown tools (slapping cuffs on someone, boloing their legs, etc) Sidearm -- pull out a gun and shoot people, or pistolwhip them with it

It was my understanding, based on both what I read as well as what I observed, that their taunt was a magnifier for the damage they dealt, to create a larger threat score for the spectres. If that's not the case, then that's fine, I'm okay with being wrong -- I'm just coming back to the game after a two year hiatus, so there are likely a lot of things that have changed. In my experience, after around 30th level the spectres weren't being very useful. It might simply be that the secondaries I have for my necros (Nature and Electric) weren't condusive to carefully studying what the spectres were doing, as I was usually busy firing off abilities, and there were so many graphical effects going off that the spectres aren't very visible among it all. And I was never saying they had to be "max slotted". 3-6 slots was among all three powers, so each one would have 2-3 slots in it. I just have difficulty squeezing that many power picks and slots into my builds, which are usually fairly tight to begin with, mostly because a lot of my slotting aims for set bonuses and the like. But this has gotten far off topic.