KaizenSoze

A lot of people have complaining about feeling useless in high teams. A lot. I rarely join PI radios, because they are so boring. What fun is being able to fire only 2-3 powers per spawn. There is another round of unofficial PI radio beta testing tonight at 7:30 EST. Every test we have run 4-5 50s can *still* rip through pretty any group in terms of speed. The only difference is that player say they actual have to play attention now. Use more of their powers. Depending on your AT/build they are noticeable harder solo. Folks might have to turn down difficultly. I have been comparing my Fortunata against Council live vs beta. Live Council is a joke at 4x8. Even solo. On beta I actually have to think a little.

Pointing out that Mercy has that horrible Lt. Harris arc. Where you help him stalk and kill his ex-girlfriend which directly helps Arachnos. That arc and the Striga arcs are optional.

As far as I know VEAT Soul Mastery is not getting nerf. If you're going to play ranged. Gloom and Dark Obliteration are good range attacks Mu has nice AOE attacks, but they are low damage by Epic standards. You do get a lot of AOE though. Reasonable choice. IMO Mace has too much KB tax Leviathan on live isn't very good due to the cone cast times. Page 7 version is much better. Look at the Page 7 Night Widow show case to see two of the cones in action. Arctic Breath and Bile Spray. Psychic Scream isn't great on Forts, it's much better on Night Widows.

You can have capped defense and decent resists for most types. It is expensive. My page 7 Bane build (Text and data chunk versions):

I'm planning on running another round testing tonight on "Open Beta". Starting at 7:30pm EST (US East Coast). If you have some sub-50s you want to test, bring them. We can also go GM hunting at sub 50 by starting some TFs which will lock us into a lower level.

One thing about going full ranged. You're going to have to be in melee range anyway due to Psychic Wail. And Forts get both Aim and Follow up which makes being in melee even more useful. Also, most Fort attacks work in an out of melee ranged. And to be a bit more on topic, Scramble Minds now being a quicker casting, damaging, 4 mag stun, makes being in melee even safer. I slot Scramble for stun duration, the damage in just gravy. Then CoT boss cannot nuke you, throw debuffs, or run that shield power. Council bosses cannot transform, etc.... Fate sealed is nice to have if I when running my ranged 4* Hard Mode build. Fort a just too squishy to live in melee in 4*, at least in Aeons. Night Widow AOE are mostly cones are not as easy to use in melee. Unless you use the Epic pool AOEs. Psychic Scream was a horrible T9, now it's decent. Combine Psychic Scream with new Leviathan and now you have a very viable AOE chain.

Since, I spend a lot of time with VEATs. They are very difficult to balance, because it would be really easy to make the overpowered. This is always an issue with hybrid classes, plus the limited amount of powers available to VEATs. For instance, Forts didn't get much, because they are ridiculous good now. Smaller incremental changes let the devs avoid having to rip them over later. Night Widows are just one or two full crits powers away from competing with scrapper/stalker DPS. SoA are already better than most Sentinels. It's very tricky, so slow is a good approach. Side note, my understanding is that the code around VEAT costumes is bad, very bad.

The Widow AT is really weird in the sense that game really doesn't understand very well that there are two very different ATs under the term "Widow". I think the devs are simply hamstrung by the code in this case. You are right Night Widows, are not controllers.

I think how MMs perform against 4x8 Council solo is going to vary widely depending on power sets. I took my Ninja/Trick Arrow/Mace for a spin. Lost about 5 minions in let's call 7 fights. Two of those fights had double Galaxy bosses. Which accounted for 4 of the 5 minions deaths, never lost a LT or Boss, it was close once or twice. The major damage was caused the Galaxy auto hit boss rezes. I couldn't get the pets out the way in time and two rezes pretty close in time. But Trick Arrow is a very good debuff set, it has -dmg and resists. Plus, it goes well with Ninja's high pet defense and Flash Arrow -toHit. Also, my incarnates is heavily focused on protecting the pets, using Barrier and Void Judgement.

Video of Mace Beam Blast in action. The amount of damage mitigation 100% KB->KD is useful.

I should also switch to my non-VEATs. They are all in their final build form. Thursday 7:30pm EST is my next available time.

I like the new Mace Beam Blast. A 100% KB chance with the same radius, faster recharge, but alas lower damage than Frag, works well for keep mobs clumped up for Crowd Control. I agree Mace Beam Volley is pretty meh. Give MBV a 100% KB chance and it becomes more interesting.

It's the recharge, dots, and debuffs, which is why it's such an issue for VEATs. Placate aka Ghetto taunt, will a lot of the time cause mobs to stop running, switch to walk mode, or stand still. At least long enough to hit them again.

Overall nice mission. A few notes: The NPC is a bit fast, especially with the slang. Text is hard to read with default setting. This door looks off. I can clip right into the door.

I generally don't play all ranged Forts, but it's more viable than ever. If you skip the controls, but take Scramble Minds, it does decent damage now, you are un-killable Psi blaster. Actually, just between Dominate and Scramble you still have better controls than most ATs. Use the Leviathan pool and you have all the AOE you need. Arctic->Psychic Scream->Bile->School for example. Or go Soldier, lots of ranged attacks, use the pets to make up for the poor single target damage.

There are rarely more than Super Stunner in a spawn. I run a lot of PUG Yins, so I have lots of experience. My pets rarely get hit by Super Stunners, the result of recall binds and situational awareness. Council, especially galaxy only spawns have multiple rezers, some Lts, some bosses. It is much harder to guess when pull the pets back in that kind of fight.

Another round a Beta PI radios completed tonight. Plowed through mostly with just 4 players. I do think the galaxy rez AOEs should *not* be auto-hit. As Coyotedancer noted it's really hard on pets. To be clear they should continue to rez as design, but the damage portion should have a chance to miss.

Thank you who attended tonight. If there is interest I'll run it again Thursday. We could use more support/control chars for testing purposes. We were very melee heavy tonight. No serious issues with the new mobs.

Ran some 4x8 PI radios tonight. Never had more than 4 players at a time, but it was a good test. We didn't see any double tar/earthquake patches. The team mostly plowed through them. There I would guess around 10 death over 10+ missions. I will say that the controller was having some issues, because they were playing in close and were getting hit by the nukes. This was true for Council too. Team: Night Widow/Bane Stalker Controller Tank Scrapper

IMO Pain Tolerance mostly fixes the 1-2 shot issue for Night Widows. Between that and the scaling resists it's pretty hard to kill even my general content NW build. I dropped Smoke Grenade for Pain Tolerance for general content build. An easy trade in my book. Banes on the other hand need all the resists they can get, because they have no DDR (Defensive debuff resistance).

Pain Tolerance is quite nice, easily add around 300 HP with 5% resists. Also, widows don't need any more toggles, they have enough end issues. I would like to see Eviscerate improved. Especially, now that it full crits. It is somewhat useful solo, but in teams I don't feel I can hit enough targets to make it worth the selection.

The mob AI is really dumb, but double patches are not supposed to happen. In my experience double tar patches or earthquakes are rare, but they can happen.

I think Koopa covered most everything. I helped test the Night Widow, Fortunata, Bane changes quite a bit. It would be extremely easy to make widows in particular overpowered. That said the changes are huge boon for Night Widows. Banes got a very nice damage boost and lost a lot of their attack jankiness. Forts got a modest buff, because they are already by far the strongest VEAT and one of the best ATs in the game. The placate change is massive for Night Widows and Banes. I think it will take the player base a bit to understand how useful it is now. Side note: Previous to page 7 there are Night Widow builds that are extremely tanky. Now, they are even more durable.

A little trick for Galaxy Arachnos. If you have a ranged attack, whittle them down and kill them with a ranged attack and break LOS. There is a .5 sec or so delay before they rez, which gives you time to break LOS.