Onlyasandwich

The latest build in my post above has kismet. I could shift slots towards tactical training, but the return is not incredible, and still these are slots spent - so at best a wash with the slots in weave/manuevers. The slots in the defensive powers are meaningfully nudging my softcap totals as well. WAWG here is mostly present as an incredible mule for 7.5% aoe defense. There is no better slot for slot return on aoe defense than a full set of Frozen Blast! The other set bonuses are decent as well. It helps that the power has a use case as well (locking down a whole spawn from runners). Your build is a little more balanced between traditional slotting and a few key procced powers. Mine is all-in on procs for every primary power in my rotation, (Bash is filler/not very proc worthy anyhow) which necessitates a greater commitment to global acc. Placate is a power I've grown to learn and love on my Stalkers! I truly appreciate all it can do both defensively and offensively. I wonder - what powers do you usually save it for in practice? For single target, the best use case is Shatter, which effectively returns ~230 DPA on the placate usage, which is about as good (or a bit less than) just throwing another power in my ST rotation unless that power would be Bash. It looks like Placate may be best reserved for big aoe hits or as a defensive tool, or as a setup tool when I'm closing range. I could probably move things around to replace Shatter with Shatter armor. I have no doubt this would be very strong in some situations! Probably not an ideal trade though, as my overall attack chain would suffer, especially at lower levels. I would also lose the FFback opportunity in my ST chain. I like to keep it rolling no matter what the target saturation! Poisonous Ray is another potential swap, but I like the bit of range, and its DPA is rather excellent even without counting how it leverages the extra -res to toxic damage from Venom Grenade. I feel like all of these are probably about equal choices in the long run.

Thanks for taking a look, folks! @tidge The 4th lotgs for both powers are there for the Global accuracy. I have leaned into procs here, and these bonuses keep me at max hit chance against +3's on all powers. If you see a more efficient path to maintain accuracy without losing damage, I'm very open to further optimization! If I'm going to overslot something in pursuit of accuracy bonuses, doing so in my highest return defensive powers gets me that much closer to my softcap goals as well. Speaking of which, placate is already at max hit chance even as is. Although there are some nice sets for threat/placate, they don't serve any specific goals in this build, and the recharge/acc are sufficient with the one slot. I would have to tank my global acc or sacrifice procs to invest the slots. To @Maelwys, Shatter Armor is a nice power, but what would you drop, and where would the slots come from? The slots in the maneuvers and weave are serving global accuracy needs to enable procs, and I also rely on the melee defense bonus in unbreakable from the T1 armor to softcap melee. Even then, every other attack power is already 6 slotted and maximized for procs - do you see any missed targets where I didn't optimize for procs with this slotting? I'd love to find a spot for the PM proc, as I agree it's very effective but don't see any easy flex slots to pull from. My latest iteration does not include damage procs in Surveillance, and I've made further adjustments to balance the return on procs between shatter/pulverize. Build: Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training) less sl.mbd Text: Picture:

I did some messing about to optimize damage in Shatter. Lost 3.75 S/L res, but a fair trade in damage with F/C resist alongside. Build: Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training).mbd

Hi there folks! It's official - Arachnos Soldier is the only primary or secondary I have never made. It's time to get dirty and join the baddies! At some point I'm going to spool up a Crab build of some kind for an alt build, but Bane looks like a fun place to start. I've reviewed lots of builds and seen many excellent options, but always prefer to spin my own take on things. I'd love your feedback! My goals: Max hit chance against +3's. I'm okay relying on global bonuses to get there. Go crazy with procs - optimizing for maximum overall damage first and foremost. Drown in FFback as much as possible, layer on global recharge where I can. Softcap all positions, reaching for a bit of extra pad where there is no big trade-off to do so. Maximize resists across the board, especially S/L. Slow resist - as much as I can sqeeuze in! Thematic considerations: All mace! I don't want to pop out the gun or spit any epic attacks. There are plenty of great attacks in the pools and initial gun attacks of course, but they are not for my macey guy. Self-contained - no summons. I know call reinforcements is a great power, but unless I'm summoning a mace that floats around and beats things at my command, it's not for this build. Power considerations: Web Envelope here is mostly a mule, but it still comes from the mace, and I can see double stacking immob coming in handy. Surveillance. I had this procced out originally, but chose to steal these slots to maximize S/L resist (5th slot in lotgs). Do you feel it was a worthy trade? (7.5% S/L res vs ~120 damage on this power) Poisonous Ray seems like a potential drop/swap. However, the DPA is good procced out, and it's nice to have a little bit of a ranged option. Do you like it on your macey builds? Without it, I think I'd have to rely on Bash a little more often than I prefer to round out ST. Leadership. I don't have it! How much of a miss do you consider this, since VEATs have such excellent modifiers? I have the in-set powers of course. I originally had it, but retooled for tough/weave, which seem pretty important to achieve softcap goals and add a layer of meat. I could swap combat jumping for maneuvers, but it would put me a bit over the line in end consumption for my preference. I feel like I would probably prioritize this more on a future crab build with summons. Knockback protection. I have 7 points, which is decent but not ideal. I'd like room for one more KB prot IO. What would you swap for it? Note that I have all FFback powers toggled off for procs. Toggle on one at a time to see true damage totals (mids gets wonky with multiple FFback on). EDIT: Updated build. Build: Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training) less sl.mbd Picture: Text:

Yep! I had realized this later on. The latest build I shared just has base slot in fortify.

Indeed it's fun how much -res you can stack readily on this combo! Achilles - 20%. Annihilation - 12.5% Sleet -22.5 Heat loss -22.5 I didn't pick any candidates for the Fury of Glad proc, but an inspired person could squeeze it in with cross punch or something. 🙂 I decided to leave the achilles to my own application, popping it in Infrigidate. It will be active basically all the time on targets that really matter. My T1's use the 2 -def damage procs. I wanted room for the KD proc from Overwhelming force, as it makes a pretty big impact here. You're right though - it is an especially synergistic combo. Of course, /Cold dom is pretty amazing on any combo where the pets provide a bit of baseline defense.

I definitely don't consider the combo overall to be bottom barrel! I was more referencing the consensus that Beasts, though decent, is more or less the lowest performing primary at the moment. Even so, I love my beast/cold so far! You're right - they are a shredding blender of claws and fangs. I feel like the array of damage and tohit buffs they can pop are perhaps a bit underrated. They are also one of the few sets that includes not only good baseline defense to all positions, but also a solid spread of baseline resists.

For sure, don't sleep on Unleash! Often times all I need on a dom is something to keep me rolling when things get messy. I can lean on control most of the time, but if I smell a mess, I can pop unleash to smooth things out. Rune also works for this to some degree. The difference in damage when damning the torpedoes and going for proc-focused offense is pretty big, especially for single target powers and proc worthy controls. That being said, I definitely have doms that are a challenge to solo because of my general avoidance of a softcap focus! Part of what I like is that it forces me to consider my engagements more carefully, and gives me a taste of danger, while being a more effective cannon on teams. However, this isn't for everyone! Going ranged softcap is absolutely easier to solo in the majority of content.

I'd love to see whip melee across all melee ATs! Such a beautiful set of animations - sad to see the limited just to MMs, many of whom don't even take them. As far as porting existing sets, I agree with you on War Mace. If they do, gotta get a blackjack option for the Mace in there 😄

Taunt is definitely better than provoke for all the reasons outlined above. However, if you're going in for Unrelenting or other powers that require a prereq pick in the pool, I would just use Provoke and save the power pick. It's adequate.

A good start here may be to examine power selection, as it looks like you're still feeling out how these sets play, and settling into some of the conventions of how to slot powers on a fundamental level. In Necro, you are highly encouraged to take every single power. Previously it was easy to skip a few of the blasts, but now that they proc a temporary summon (1 per blast), they are much more powerful. If I were to skip one, it would probably be Dark Blast, though I take them all. Similar story for your secondary. There are very few skips in time. Absolute core powers include Temporal Mending, Farsight, Slowed Response, and Chrono Shift. Good powers that you probably don't want to skip without excellent reason include Time's juncture, Temporal Selection, and Time Stop. Time Crawl isn't a bad little debuff, but is the easiest skip in the set. There's a lot more to be said about how to actually slot these powers of course. Rather than pick every detail here, I would suggest taking a look at some of the builds out there and understanding the targets folks typically shoot for, and how they usually enhance these powers. On a broad note - the Medicine pool is generally quite weak. You would normally only consider taking it on a character that lacks heals, and really needs to heal something. Even then, it's not a great use of resources more often than not. The heals are weak, expensive, and interruptible. Time already has a good heal, and plenty of defensive powers to keep your pets safe. You don't have to limit yourself to looking at Necro/time specifically. Review how folks use these sets in other combos and steal ideas that you like. Pay close attention to what they focus on in enhancing their powers though, and use this to inform how you enhance your own. There is a pinned post with a variety of /Time combos here, though the slotting from the Necro end of things is a bit dated, as it was before the major updates. The slotting on Time should be relatively portable. This post has a more recent discussion with some decent builds that use time. Necro is a very popular primary, so you'll see quite a few threads to review builds. Here and here are some good examples. They key here is your friendly forum search! It may be hard to evaluate what build is good and what is silly, of course! Review the discourse and check out a variety of builds to decide for yourself, but most importantly play your character and test things out for yourself. From where you currently are, the most important elements that determine your success will be: Power choice, and enhancing the most useful elements of those powers. Your ability to control your pets, ideally implementing some basic key binds or macros. You don't need to implement a complicated array, but having one for attack (aggressive mode), attack (defensive mode), follow (defensive mode), and a goto bind of some kind for your pets is a game changer. More experience! There are a lot of little things you can do with how you position yourself and fuff around with the AI that will help you survive in this game. Not some sort of genius complicated hack of course. Simple things like knowing what power to open with, when to pull vs dive in, how to use line of site to your advantage, when and how to hide, jousting, etc. There are resources in the forums for some of these, but they are best learned through play. Make sure you understand the limits of Enhancement Diversification (ED). Link here. After you have this in hand and have saved a bag of influence, you can upgrade to an IO set build! There's a world of optimization to play with. Influence is easy to come by in this game, but it may take a bit to get your first pile going unless a kind stranger dumps some on you. Here is more or less how I would approach this build if putting it together for my own purposes, with my own bankroll. Mastermind (Necromancy - Time Manipulation).mbd Note that Power Boost is uniquely strong here. Normally it is only a temporary buff. However, it can buff click powers, and the click power retains this stronger value for its full duration. Power Boost+Farsight = loads of defense and tohit for you and your minions/team. As a result, this build is not only able to softcap defense to all minions, but also Smashing, Lethal, and Ranged defense for yourself. It also includes some important features like knockback protection, max hit chance against +3's, and proc optimized attacks. Again, I don't know that starting with this type of build would make much sense. Even if you have the bankroll, part of the joy of this game (at least for some of us), is understanding why we make these choices, and further optimizing them towards our goals! At minimum, the power choices and enhancement totals can guide you in some way.

Did you share a build somewhere? I'd be happy to review. Necro and time are top tier sets, so it's hard to go wrong.

Pretty much any EA build that slots the secondary well will end up pretty tanky. Mine wasn't exactly focused on being as tanky as possible, but as long as you keep Faraday Cage out and spam your buffs, you can endure pretty much anything. Defib and Discharge here are mostly a gimmick, but I have fun with them. You could easily swap them for anything else. I haven't revisited this in a while, and would probably change a few things in a rebuild, but it plays well! electric necro mk5.mbd Here's a tiny rework that swaps defib for another epic attack, with some extra -res to boot. Honestly EA is so busy that I wonder how much I'd get to rotate it in. electric necro mk5 discharge static.mbd

For anyone curious, this is where I've ended up with the build: Mastermind (Beast Mastery - Cold Domination) no fortify hlchange.mbd There are still quite a few flex slots that could be moved around. I've contemplated dropping the extra IO end support in favor of pursuing further S/L resist and/or defense bonuses, but after running it up on live, think having the baseline outside of Heat Loss is very nice, especially when exemping.

I definitely referenced your build when I was reviewing the forums on my own! This was one reason I decided to go all in on procs for the T1 pet. I struck a bit more of a balance on the other pets, as I wanted to work in the pet uniques. My build has strong offense overall though - plenty of procs to go around in the pets, and especially in my personal attacks. The KD is more of a happy side-effect of the particular combo at play.

Anything ea works great. Necro is an excellent pairing.

I don't think you're totally off base to worry here, as both Hot Feet and Shifting tides are pretty expensive, and you'll be throwing plenty of pricey clickies. However, between Toroidal, Depths, and IO end support, I think you'll be pretty workable. Marine's end tools are not exactly Kin or Cold, but pretty strong. Upside to earth - more spots for FFback, and therefore more uptime for Depths!

I agree with @tidge on Earth - you could probably recolor it to be sort of like hardened wax (maybe not all their wax is molten yet? :D). There is good merit in the extra resist stacking from a resist shield. However, barrier reef also provides a meaningful baseline to make rock armor more impactful, especially if you hit a few extra S/L bonuses throughout. The attacks are my favorite out of any controller APP. Fire would be pretty thematic, but the only star here is Fireball. The shield is fine, Rise is neat, and Consume is very much a side-show. Hardly worth investing procs into it or even relying on it for end given the super long recharge. Leviathan could also go in theme quite well in a similar vein to the Marine powers (swirling molten wax). The resist shield is pretty standard, Water Spout is outstanding, and Bile Spray would look super cool (spray all that wax everywhere!). There's something very viscerally satisfying spitting my attack out of my mouth. Hibernate is an excellent one slot wonder that can mule your PM proc if needed. The Coralax is also one of the highest damaging pets out there if you can keep it alive, though it would be a bit of a stretch to call it a wax creation. Mu is always good for the reasons you noted. Theme might not be strong here though. It's sort of my default when I'm not super inspired elsewhere. Psi could stretch to the theme pretty well I think. I'd skip the blast and just go for indom will, mind over body, psi nado. Indom will is the real difference maker here, especially if you're juicing recharge through FFback. The extra lotg doesn't hurt either. The main draw of Soul Mastery for me would be Soul Drain. This pairs nicely with the fact that you're splashing in with whitecap and have hot feet rolling anyhow. Dark Consumption is rather like Consume for me. Not a priority pick, but a nice button to hit once in a blue moon if I need a refill. Nothing to be relied on. I see your Soul build skips Soul Drain. In my opinion, this misses the main strength of the pool. You could easily swap Dark Consumption for it. Even if you are leaning on it primarily for procs, it will rotate in more often, as well as provide a strong buff thereafter. It's a hard choice for sure! If it were my own build, fire would probably be the lowest of the options above. I'd probably end up with either Leviathan for wax spewing fun or Soul for the damage buff. Mace is cool and fine. I almost never take it these days unless I'm not wanting epic attacks, as the theme is just super limiting. I wish there was an option other than saluting the universe with a big stick. If you're incorporating Arcane Bolt as I see you are, it's a shame not to lean on it for procs as well, especially FFback and the Purple damage proc.

As @Maelwys says, some folks still go for an all-in defensive strategy, but it comes with some major trade-offs - namely in proc damage potential and global recharge. Even the baseline power of blaster attacks is pretty great, so this is by no means bad, but not necessarily the best approach. If you do choose a defense to softcap, I prefer ranged defense these days. You can avoid melee attacks more often than not with jousting and controls. Personally, my survival strategy is in pretty much this order: Positioning first - learn how to joust. Combat Jumping is especially useful for this. It looks like you are familiar with the concept. Combat teleport is a great engage or disengage, and excellent for putting you in the right spot at the right time, but not necessarily a jousting tool. Take a look at @Nemu's tips here for a more direct illustration. Damage. Focus on taking the right targets out, and the right rotation to nuke the biggest sources of damage quickly. Controls. Blasters have pretty solid control powers in most sets! DP/Nin has two holds between sup. fire and Choking powder. Proc these up and focus them on the nastiest target (can even lock down bosses with both) and a lot of your troubles will go away. If you are going Arsenal Mastery, you even have a third! I don't know that I'd necessarily pick all three, but you can mix and match the best. Resist armor. If I'm not pursuing softcap, a resist armor provides a reliable baseline of surety for any hits that do get through. Don't chase other resist bonuses heavily, but grab any low hanging fruit like the resist uniques or easy set bonuses. Any defense you can get without sacrificing other build goals. Short of softcap, getting to ~32ish is pretty nice, as it's one small purple away from softcap. Alternatively, just grab the defense uniques, and maybe go for tough/weave if you have room in your build, then be happy with what defense comes out the other end. This will make a difference when solo, and gives you a stronger baseline to stack on for meaningful results when under team buffs. And yeah - if you go for an epic with one, I actually rather like the self-rez options. They can be a good one slot wonder for the preventative medicine proc, and are useful to keep tempo going if something messy happens. Also it's fun 😄

Thank you - much clearer than my off the cuff explanation 😄

Kismet is sort of like a "power" in that it affects you like a buff. Said buff lasts for 120 seconds, and is applied upon cast at 100% chance. In passive or toggle powers, it will be refreshing every 10 sec, so always on as long as that power is active. Because of this, it can be inherited by a minion. Not if you just cast a regular power on said minion (ie kismet in deflection shield), but if the minion has its own power that can benefit from it. When you use the minion upgrades, they grant the minions powers. These powers belong to the minions themselves, and are not coming from you when cast thereafter - they are coming from the minion. So Minion now has a passive defense power granted by your upgrade power, said passive defense power is able to trigger Kismet, minion benefits from Kismet. Steadfast is a set bonus. Set bonuses only ever effect you. It is not a buff, but treated the same as any other set bonus. Minions don't even get our accuracy set bonuses! Boo, but there you go. I'm not 100% certain why some powers are treated in this way (Not counted as set bonuses but effectively as buffs). I might venture that it's due to the fact that tohit is not an option for set bonuses, so they had to implement it as a special sort of buff instead. Other IOs that operate in a similar way include Miracle and Numina uniques, as well as Regen tissue and impervious skin regen. Their trigger conditions are basically the same as Kismet. If you were to put Miracle in a clicky, it would buff you for 120 seconds after casting the clicky. Procs that benefit you (Panacea, Perf Shifter) are a bit different. They are not set bonuses either, but are instead basically little powers (procs = processes) that run when you fire a power. If a minion has a valid power that could take that category of enhancement, said power would benefit from these procs if slotted in the upgrade power that grants the power to the minion. For clicky powers like drain life from a minion, it would have a %chance to proc with every click. For passives or auras, it would have a %chance every 10 seconds to fire.

As a final share - here is the iteration I landed on which incorporates Kismet into tactical upgrade. This did require moving slots around to maintain personal accuracy. I lost an E/N bonus (not a biggie), and the Achilles in Weaken Resolve. Honestly that probably wasn't doing much anyhow. I imagine any scenario where I'm popping Weaken Resolve (AV fights mostly), the T1s will have Achilles up most of the time. As before, procs in FFback powers are disabled - toggle on one at a time to see average damage. I welcome any other feedback you might have! I'm really happy with the impact @Xandyr's suggestion made. One big concern I had was tohit chances for the T1 and T3. Mastermind (Mercenaries - Force Field) unleash version w kismet alt.mbd

Scratch that - it looks like it doesn't even need recast! I guess the minion powers refresh a little different than a normal clicky given their indefinite duration.

For anyone who is curious, I tested and what @Xandyr said is correct - Kismet does affect your minions when slotted in Tactical Upgrade. Note that it has a 2 minute duration after cast, so you'll need to recast Tactical Upgrade every couple minutes to continue to benefit from the effect. This is half the duration of your shields, so you'll need to be mindful of cycling it intentionally. Even so, I think it's worth it. 6% tohit across all your minions is very strong - basically like 2/3rds of tactics all by itself. The T1's especially will appreciate it.

Both are excellent combos. I'd say tomato potato. I might venture that /dm is a better secondary by a small margin.