WumpusRat

I've never really had a "main" character in any MMO I've played. I have characters that I play MORE than others, but they tend to shift around based on whatever mood I'm in, and if I've fallen in with a regular group. Usually I just keep thinking up new ideas, and go "Ooh, I really like this!" and play the heck out of it, and by the time I'm in end-game and finishing the build up and stuff, I've had another idea and that becomes my next big project. I think my highest vet level is around 15-16 on any character because of it.

I think I have one angel character (a demon/thermal MM), because I liked the idea of this constantly-frustrated angel shepherding a bunch of unruly demons. I have one demon character (who's also a demon mastermind) who gets into arguments with her minions about who's the most powerful. And among my D&D adventurers, I have a tiefling and an aasimar, though I don't know if they really qualify, since they're based on D&D demons/angels rather than Christian ones.

Demons and Thugs definitely don't really need much "upgrading", just an overhaul to bring them in line with the other pet sets. Beast Mastery definitely needs a thorough overhaul, though. Particularly the set's damage output needs to be decoupled from relying so heavily on the Fortify Pack passive. The fact that it's nothing more than a mule power for LotG (and maybe Kismet, a KB IO, etc) is sad. The passive is the only real benefit of the power, as triggering the active dumpsters your pets' damage output for the duration of its effect. IMO, what I'd love to see for Beasts is to put Fortify Pack on a swing-toggle like Staff Mastery has. So that you can give your pets more tactical orders. Fight Aggressively: +crit and +damage based on stacks of Pack Mentality, like it is now. Fight Defensively: +def and +resist based on stacks of Pack Mentality. Fight Tactically: +to hit and %chance to knockdown based on stacks of Pack Mentality.

Same. Since I run mids on another computer, I can have the mids window open on one monitor and the game running on my main machine, and just glance back and forth to verify changes I make. It becomes fairly easy, and the whole process takes less than 10m.

Depending on the archetype I'm playing, I'll do anything from 0x2 to +1x4, while leveling. Anything beyond that becomes a bit too much of a slog, since I'm generally running story arcs for badges and merits, rather than just raw exp, so I want to get to the end and get my rewards. If it's a story arc I haven't done before, I'll usually stick to minimum to run it the first time, so I can focus more on the story, maps, etc, rather than grinding for exp.

CoH's rng has always been loopy. That's why they added the streakbreaker in the first place, because you'd often see 6-7 misses in a row even with a 95% to hit.

Tested it on my shield/axe tanker, bots/ff mastermind, elec/elec defender, and dark/dark sentinel tonight. Tanker, MM and defender did just fine on +3x8, though the defender had a couple rough moments in big packs. Sentinel got her hiney spanked a few times, since they were doing enough damage to overcome my regen/healing, especially when warwolf bosses were mixed in.

I'm really keen to try them out now. Once I get home from work I'm going to take a few of my characters through some missions with CoT and Council and see how they do.

Demons, thugs and beast mastery all need to be updated. I was hoping it would get done by this issue, but no such luck. At this point I'm guessing it won't be for another year or so.

I occasionally did some PI groups that specifically went after Malta and Carnies, since people tend to avoid them like the plague. And it was always a fun time introducing some people to Carnies' giant weakness to lethal damage, and watch them just tearing through missions like a chainsaw through cotton candy. 🙂

They definitely struggled a bit early on, since it takes a while for Empathy to really reach the point where you can start juggernaut-ing your way through stuff on the power of fortitude and regen aura. My goal for this particular build was to get as close to the recharge cap as I can, to leverage Regen and Recovery Aura as much as possible. I'd tested the idea out a few times with other pet builds, and it worked pretty well, so I was curious how it'd do with ninjas, since their damage output is so high they can chew through enemies in seconds. Overall, the only time I really struggle is against particular EBs or AVs who can one-shot the pets despite their defense, or ones who spam caltrops or other such things (I'm glaring at YOU, Silver Mantis) since that's always been a huge issue for MM pets in general. A lot of times I don't even bother putting fortitude on all of them since mobs die so fast and their defense without it is enough to that most mobs can't get past my healing. I generally only NEED fortitude against EB/AVs. And yeah, if I want to keep fortitude on all of them it DOES require tossing it out pretty often. Mine's on a 17s recharge, so I've got a bit of leeway in terms of "must cast on cooldown". But if I'm trying to keep it going on all of them I have to pay attention to the cooldown pretty closely. Though the oni can definitely get along fine without it, as he's got 43% m/r def and 68% aoe before fortitude. The damage buff is nice though. It's definitely not my strongest MM build, but it's a lot of fun and Empathy is actually a decent choice for soloing as a MM, as you have a premade team with you to benefit from the buffs.

The ninjas don't have any resists to speak of (other than the oni), but they have high defense and a self-heal once you get their upgrades slotted up. The Train Ninjas power gives the genin around 17% defense, the jounin 23% defense, and the oni 29% defense, and all get about 5-10% more vs aoe, as well. Combine that with the auras, maneuvers, secondary sets' +def powers, etc, and the ninjas can hit the defense cap pretty quickly depending on the secondary you have. My nija/empathy MM's pets are at 49% melee/range and 70% aoe for the genin, 55% m/r and 93% aoe for the jounin, and 61% m/r and 86% aoe for the oni, due to having enough recharge in the build to keep fortitude on all six pets at once.

Hm. Could have sworn the drones triggered procs. I might be thinking of another power though, it's been quite a while since I played any of my /traps builds. Just popped onto my bot/traps to check though, and you're right. And if you're really trying to squeeze a couple extra points of defense out, then sure, though it's not really necessary depending on your build. And with bots/trap not having any extra pet power to stick the auras in, if you want all 6 you're only working with 4 slots per pet. Adding a +def IO into the prot bots means they're going to be at 3 slots, which is going to seriously cut into their damage output, accuracy, and end management. With my build, between the prot bot shields, scorpion shield, FFG, maneuvers, CJ, weave, and various IO/set bonuses my bot/trap MM is sitting at around 55% ranged/melee/aoe def, 75% smash/lethal def, 67% energy def. Toxic/psionic def are her weaknesses, but not many things are PURELY psi/toxic attack without having a ranged/melee/aoe component as well. The bots are at 43% range/melee and 57% aoe def. So not quite soft-capped, but even losing some bots to incarnate stuff I have enough personal def to get them back up and into the fight without getting shredded. I kind of built her to be extremely durable though, so YMMV depending on builds. 🙂

I was trying it out on the test server, and the damage seems ... very awkward. There's no reason to put a damage set into it, considering the damage only procs when a mob actually slips on it, so it's not going to deal any significant damage at all. Which makes the way it's coded seem extremely silly. 151 ticks of X damage over 30 seconds, but really only ends up ticking a couple of times before the mob dies to other stuff.

Play all of them! You can never have enough masterminds. As for the various setups: End will always be a problem with /storm if you run hurricane. On the couple /storm MMs I have, I toggle it on and off a lot just to use it as kind of a "get out of my face" power, and once they're pushed back enough, I let the pets go to work on them and turn it off. If I really need the -to hit, I'll leave it on and try to converse end as best I can. Though once you get fully slotted up, your end problems can be mitigated a lot depending on build. Necro/Dark is a classic. Generally you want to build for a lot of +recharge so that you can leverage Soul Extraction as often as possible. One way you can really get a lot of mileage out of it is to get the full set of Mark of Supremacy, and at 50th make it Superior. Split it into three 2-piece bits for each of your pets, and you'll end up with 30% global recharge just from that. I don't often use Hasten in builds, but if you like that power you can probably get SE close to perma. Bots/Traps is another classic. Bots can sometimes feel like they don't do damage-churn as well as some other sets, but a lot of it depends on how the assault bot chooses to use its swarm missiles and incendiary patches. Against groups of mobs, they'll melt targets very quickly. One thing to note is that the protector bots USED to do so-so damage, but were good for support, so a lot of people (myself included) would spec them up to add a bit more defense. These days, they're one of the highest damage outputs of the set, so setting them up for max damage is essential for maximum damage output. But they SHRED their end bar. Even with 95% end reduction they'll drop themselves to low end in under 30 seconds. You'll want to leverage Acid Mortar for the debuff, and you can slot Seeker Drones with several procs to turn it into a mini-nuke, too (Positron's Blast, Javelin Volley, Bombardment, and Cloud Senses procs for damage, as well as Annihilation's -resist proc). You can get a mod that will keep them from making so much noise. It's a great help. And Fulcrum Shifted beasts deal ENORMOUS damage. My Beast/Kin goes hunting giant monsters, and kills them with pure damage output, no -regen beyond Transfusion required. She can solo Jack in Irons and Eochai together at the same time. Ninjas are one of the highest damage minion sets in the game. They have a lot of fast-animating attacks with fairly low cooldowns, so they can do some serious damage churn. With /TA you can debuff the hell out of enemies to let the ninjas really go to town. The downside is that you have no healing for them or for yourself, without investing in the Medicine pool. Generally what I do is set up several minion-specific attack commands for my /TA MMs, to keep some pets in bodyguard mode while directing others to attack. You can mitigate a lot of the incoming damage that way. Plus leveraging Oil Slick and EMP Arrow for a lot of extra damage mitigation. Especially if you take a resist armor from one of the epic/patron pools. Once you get rolling with this, they'll churn through just about anything you throw them at. My Merc/FF has incarnate softcapped def for all the mercs, as well as Serum boosting their smash/lethal resist to softcap for a bit as well as boosting their damage output. I picked up the attacks as well just so that I could contribute a bit of damage, as /FF is a pretty passive set overall. And with Repulsion Field you can generally keep stuff out of melee, letting your mercs just dakadaka stuff to death.

Yeah, it's not the same though. The old port was fairly quick, and would make you vanish just as the animation for the costume change was about to end and shift the costume, so it made it look like you "beamed out". Summoning a base portal isn't the effect I'm after, and the long-range teleporter has a really long animation time, so you'd have to wait and trigger the macro right at the proper moment. It's not a big deal, it was just a cute setup that allowed to look like the characters were being beamed up by the ship.

I was kind of sad to see it go, since several of my characters operated out of a starship, and I had a whole macro set up for doing an emote, saying "Ship, one to transport" and then doing a costume change with a special effect right as they'd teleport to the base.

Oh nice. Maybe I'll try to reprise my starship build high up above the base level, then. I'd scrapped it several times due to constant drifting.

I've played dozens of MMOs over the years. There are a few I still play from time to time, or that I'll drift off of one game and start playing again as my "main" MMO. Currently I'm playing EQ2 again, and still log in to DDO and LotRO now and then when they come out with new content.

I would argue that this isn't really true. On my beast/TA mastermind, EMP Arrow was a very important part of my arsenal against EBs and AVs. Without it, I have zero status protection (other than immobilize, thanks to CJ), and my pets' resists are fairly low, even with all the auras. With it, my pets' damage resistance would get pushed up to the point that it took a couple of hits to drop the tier-1's, giving me time to save them. And since my only healing was a single-target Aid Other, that extra time makes all the difference. Additionally, the status protection means that I can keep using powers without fear of being locked down and having to pop breakfrees (assuming I still have some left) to try and avoid a wipe of my pets and myself. It's not something that you need in every fight, but when you do need it, it's definitely a "thank god I have this" power.

A lot of my current characters are magic origin, as they're D&D characters that were forcibly ported into Paragon and are living here now. Even the classes that aren't inherently magical, like rogue or fighter have the magic origin, because of how they got here, and that they use magical items, etc.

Yeah, I don't use hover for general movement anyway. I just use flight. If I want precise control (like flying around indoors or something) I'll kick hover on as well, so I get all the speed of flight and the control of hover. Costs a bit more end, but I'm generally not doing that for more than a few seconds in combat anyway. Generally hover and EM are just LotG mule slots for me.

Funny, I don't think I've EVER put slots into Evasive Maneuvers. It's always and forever a LotG +rech mule slot, and nothing more. Personally, I like flight because it's the most freeform way to travel. I can operate in 360 degrees and move around as I see fit. Want to go to the top of a building? Just fly up. Want to get those badges high up on ledges and things? Fly up and grab them. With superspeed? Yeah, still need to find a way to walk up there, and trying to move at high velocity on a small ledge 200 feet up is going to end up with me falling off. And superleap doesn't cut it for a lot of places, so you have to jump up to ledge #1, then ledge #2, then to the point you're aiming for. Flight is just more convenient.

Actually this would create MORE abuse, for one simple reason: A couple people could click on doors while your ToT league is parked in an area and anything that comes out you and your league get no inf/exp/badges for. This would end up with people screaming at one another about "this is our camping spot, go find your own", etc. Just like back in the day when you'd get a group and just camp in front of a spawn of mobs for hours on end grinding exp. Personally, I don't really care if someone "leeches" off stuff I'm already fighting, since I only ToT for the badges, and stuff dying faster = faster badges. Sometimes I just want to do my own thing and not worry about being in a group/league, so I can go afk at a moment's notice, look stuff up on the other monitor, or whatever else and not have people getting irate that I'm "leeching while afk". Which is why I almost exclusively ToT solo in Kallisti.

Well of course the doorways are taller, they have to be to account for the fact that there are 8-foot people walking around. Can't make Captain Meltdown, The Easily Annoyed Walking Nuclear Pile have to constantly duck under doorframes, after all. Otherwise he'd eventually bump his head and you'd lose a city block.