Shotty Mario's Mind Control/Psionic perma-Domination build

[Mezmera]

27 minutes ago, Machariel said:

So... PPM definitely does NOT mean that "it has a chance of firing 4 times in a minute so if you use it on a power that takes 4 minutes to recharge it will proc 16 times, QED." This is emphatically not how procs work in this game.

 

The PPM value means, basically, "If you used this power on cooldown, and only factored in the base recharge, enhancement value slotting, and animation time, how often would you see it go off?" 

Under these conditions, and in a single target power, 3 PPM means just what it says and you'll see it about 3 times a minute.

In a power that affects multiple targets the area factor comes into consideration to reduce the proc chance per target, but overall you should see it MUCH MORE than the 3 times per minute - but maybe you'll shoot the power at 16 duders and only see it proc 3 times.  This definitely does not mean that you won't see it proc again for the next 58 seconds because you already hit the "3 procs per minute".

 

You are correct that, due to the area factor, the proc chance, per target, is lower in an AoE attack than in a single target attack. 

However, it is still very possible for that proc chance, even after being reduced by the area factor, to be over 90%. 

This is very easy to do in Vines or other AoE holds because their recharges are incredibly long.  In fact, as I mentioned in my post above, you can shove enough recharge in these powers to be ED capped for recharge and still have a 90% (maximum) proc rate.

The base recharge of Fireball is high enough that procs slotted into it can ALSO have a 90% proc chance.  But, because its cooldown is so much shorter, this proc chance plummets dramatically as you start to slot recharge into it (from 90% down to 35% to 40%). 

 

Ordinarily you would want to slot recharge into Fireball because it is an incredibly good attack and it would be insane to use it only once every 32 seconds (it's base recharge).  But if you're a pimped out Permadom who sits at 175%+ global recharge 100% of the time, slotting recharge into fireball takes it from about 11.5 seconds to 8.5 seconds - so you save three seconds but cut the proc chance by almost 2/3rds.

 

Before typing this I took my main into a Battle Maiden map and threw out a Vines at a spawn.  As expected, I got the single damage proc to go off on basically (it may have been literally) all of them - not unlikely with a 90% proc chance.

Then I threw a Fireball at the same spawn and was pleased to see the Positron's Blast damage proc ALSO go off on every target (as well as the Annihilation Proc, but less often! Yay!)

 

tl;dr I'm not sure what your math is but the 90% proc chance, per target, predicted both by Mids and by a basic bit of algebra that you can verify for yourself, seems to be correct and there's no fundamental difference between 90% in an AoE hold and 90% in a Fireball.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120906114927/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=4215135&postcount=208

 

3) Procs will have a maximum chance to trigger. I'm leaning toward 90%. Someone mentioned a minimum chance to proc. I really like this idea and I am thinking about this value being 10%, but I'll have to test this internally to find out if this breaks anything.

 

Procs have a maximum chance of firing of 90% for anything that goes above the calculation up and to firing 100% of the time.  

 

a power with a base recharge + activation time of 12 seconds will guarantee a proc every time it executes, even if the power's final recharge is less.

 

Slotting a power for recharge doesn't affect the ppm, only the base recharge and activation time have an effect on ppm.  

 

BUUUUTT I did see this bit at the link so I'm a little uncertain it made it in since it looks like he was getting pushback on it so not sure what these Devs did in this regard.  

 

2) Change the Base Recharge in the formula to your actual power's recharge. This is the part where I think a lot of you are scared. I'll show you an example of how this will actually play out in game later in this post so you can decide how much this will actually impact you.

Edited October 29, 2019 by Mezmera

[The_Cheeseman]

Direct recharge enhancement in a power, such as through enhancement slotting and Alpha abilities, does reduce absolute proc chance under the PPM mechanics. Global recharge does not.

Edited October 30, 2019 by The_Cheeseman

[The_Cheeseman]

3 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I'm doing quite better with Total Domination slotted with Constraint with the bonus damage proc than having Terrify as I had it.  You do come off as contradictory, on one hand you're all about dps and saying your controls need to be controlling but when pointing out the AoE hold is a much better control with the added benefit of more damage than the power I'm replacing all of a sudden I'm supposed to be only slotting my "attacks" with damaging abilities.  

Nothing I have said is contradictory. I have repeatedly emphasized that Terrify is an AoE attack/soft control hybrid power, not a pure AoE hard control power. Terrify and Total Domination are not exactly comparable powers, they serve different functions. I would be happy to see whatever math you can use to demonstrate Total Domination out-damaging Terrify. I just plugged it into Pines, and with the everything else being the same on my build, Terrify (5x Posi w/proc, OF KD proc) deals an average of 140 damage and recharges in 17 seconds, while your slotting on Total Domination deals an average of 161 damage with a recharge of 81 seconds. That's ignoring Terrify's ridiculous AoE range, as well.

For reference, Fireball (6x Ragnarok+5) comes out to 150 damage with an 11 second recharge.

Unless I am missing something vital, Total Domination doesn't appear to be in the same league as either of those attack powers.

[Mezmera]

Do you man.  Like I said come along and show me how it's done.  If you can out dps and survive better than my dom maybe I can be swayed by that uber /fire goodness but it's gonna be a tall task though.  

Edited October 30, 2019 by Mezmera

[The_Cheeseman]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

Do you man.  Like I said come along and show me how it's done.  If you can out dps and survive better than my dom maybe I can be swayed by that uber /fire goodness but it's gonna be a tall task though.  

I have no interest in competing with you, it would accomplish nothing. As I have said, I don’t particularly care how you choose to play or slot your character, I am only interested in discussing Dom build optimization for the benefit of whomever comes along to read this thread. May I assume from your last response that you’re not interested in further supporting your arguments? If so, I don’t feel the need to continue this conversation.

[Mezmera]

7 hours ago, The_Cheeseman said:

I have no interest in competing with you, it would accomplish nothing. As I have said, I don’t particularly care how you choose to play or slot your character, I am only interested in discussing Dom build optimization for the benefit of whomever comes along to read this thread. May I assume from your last response that you’re not interested in further supporting your arguments? If so, I don’t feel the need to continue this conversation.

Okay then end of conversation.  You're the one insinuating your Mind/Fire is far superior because you're playing the fotm of doms using a cookie cutter mids build assuming no one can grasp the concept of not aggroing a mob and "I can do this on a solo TF blah blah".   It's like in the NFL combine a player performs so well in all these technical aspects then you put them into the game under practical situations and a lot of their shine fades.  

 

Since when is Terrify not directly comparable to Total Domination since we had been touting which is the better to have in your build?  Seeing how they are both AoE and meant to control the incoming aggro the only thing is Terrify doesn't stop the targets from attacking your way so sometimes you'll then need to use another AoE control like Mass Confusion.  Whereas with having two hard rotating controls for every mob the aggro management is far less time consuming thus you can focus on your dps along with the superior set bonuses available to you and the bonus damage from having procs in the two.  

 

Like I said before I had Terrify the first month we came back and it's a useful power no doubt.  Since I've spec'd out to Total Domination instead I've not found myself wanting at all.  

Edited October 30, 2019 by Mezmera

[The_Cheeseman]

4 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Okay then end of conversation.  You're the one insinuating your Mind/Fire is far superior because you're playing the fotm of doms using a cookie cutter mids build assuming no one can grasp the concept of not aggroing a mob and "I can do this on a solo TF blah blah".   It's like in the NFL combine a player performs so well in all these technical aspects then you put them into the game under practical situations and a lot of their shine fades.  

 

Since when is Terrify not directly comparable to Total Domination since we had been touting which is the better to have in your build?  Seeing how they are both AoE and meant to control the incoming aggro the only thing is Terrify doesn't stop the targets from attacking your way so sometimes you'll then need to use another AoE control like Mass Confusion.  Whereas with having two hard rotating controls for every mob the aggro management is far less time consuming thus you can focus on your dps along with the superior set bonuses available to you and the bonus damage from having procs in the two.  

 

Like I said before I had Terrify the first month we came back and it's a useful power no doubt.  Since I've spec'd out to Total Domination instead I've not found myself wanting at all.  

Where did I mention mind/fire at all? This thread isn't about powerset combos, all we've talked about is comparing powers within the mind control primary. You're the one who brought up Fireball (which is an ancillary pool power, anyway).

As for FotM and "cookie-cutter builds", I personally designed my own build over a decade ago on Live, from the ground up. My dom started as a concept character based on the idea of playing a succubus. It has since gone through several iterations as I have tweaked it to optimize the playstyle. If you have seen the build I use posted on forums before, it's because I was the one who posted it.

My suggestions are not theorycrafting, they are the result of playing a mind control dom for many years, having completed all the content in this game at the highest level of challenge. If you can think of more "practical situations" than that, please enlighten me.

I am happy to discuss power choices and slotting, but I am frankly done with whatever personal grudge you seem to have against me. Your hijacking this thread with your delusional vendetta helps nobody, so if you have any legitimate interest in providing useful feedback for prospective mind doms, I suggest stepping back a moment and realizing that this thread isn't about whatever rivalry you imagine we have.

I apologize to anyone else having to read this. This will be my final post on the matter.

[Mezmera]

2 minutes ago, The_Cheeseman said:

Where did I mention mind/fire at all? This thread isn't about powerset combos, all we've talked about is comparing powers within the mind control primary. You're the one who brought up Fireball (which is an ancillary pool power, anyway).

As for FotM and "cookie-cutter builds", I personally designed my own build over a decade ago on Live, from the ground up. My dom started as a concept character based on the idea of playing a succubus. It has since gone through several iterations as I have tweaked it to optimize the playstyle. If you have seen the build I use posted on forums before, it's because I was the one who posted it.

My suggestions are not theorycrafting, they are the result of playing a mind control dom for many years, having completed all the content in this game at the highest level of challenge. If you can think of more "practical situations" than that, please enlighten me.

I am happy to discuss power choices and slotting, but I am frankly done with whatever personal grudge you seem to have against me. Your hijacking this thread with your delusional vendetta helps nobody, so if you have any legitimate interest in providing useful feedback for prospective mind doms, I suggest stepping back a moment and realizing that this thread isn't about whatever rivalry you imagine we have.

 

Since when is Terrify not directly comparable to Total Domination since we had been touting which is the better to have in your build?  Seeing how they are both AoE and meant to control the incoming aggro the only thing is Terrify doesn't stop the targets from attacking your way so sometimes you'll then need to use another AoE control like Mass Confusion.  Whereas with having two hard rotating controls for every mob the aggro management is far less time consuming thus you can focus on your dps along with the superior set bonuses available to you and the bonus damage from having procs in the two.  

I apologize to anyone else having to read this. This will be my final post on the matter.

Read man.  I've been offering advice and alternatives you're the one going in on the attacks and contradicting yourself at every turn.  Time and again I've been saying not for anyone in this thread to take everything said here as gospel including from my side, my playstyle will not match anothers. 

 

I tried to keep my latest responses short and still there's a need for you to cause some irritation back so yeah.  Do you man!

[Display Name]

This might help clarify things:

 

Mezmera doesn't use Pines/Mids/etc.

 

At all.

[The_Cheeseman]

2 hours ago, Display Name said:

This might help clarify things:

 

Mezmera doesn't use Pines/Mids/etc.

 

At all.

Well, that does put things into perspective, I suppose. I can respect people who play the game just for fun and who don’t care enough about build optimization to use third-party build planners, you don’t really need to minmax to enjoy CoH, after all.

 

In any event, it’s no longer my problem, as I’ve already blocked him and moved on with my life.

[Display Name]

On 10/29/2019 at 9:01 PM, The_Cheeseman said:

Direct recharge enhancement in a power, such as through enhancement slotting and Alpha abilities, does reduce absolute proc chance under the PPM mechanics. Global recharge does not.

Quite a few of the sets with procs have +recharge, don't they?  So that means that it's better to 5-slot (max) from "proc'd" sets and use their procs elsewhere?  But then, you would still be limited to proc'ing powers without enh'd or Alpha'd +recharge, right?!

 

Can't...  compute!  Too... much... MATH!!!!  Augh!  (scream chokes off!)

 

But seriously, is that correct?  If you have +rech in an enh in a power then the proc you also put in it is automatically penalized?  This would include IOs, TOs, etc with +rech?

 

So Proc-Monsters/Proc-Stars are even tougher than we dared imagine?

[Machariel]

10 minutes ago, Display Name said:

Quite a few of the sets with procs have +recharge, don't they?  So that means that it's better to 5-slot (max) from "proc'd" sets and use their procs elsewhere?  But then, you would still be limited to proc'ing powers without enh'd or Alpha'd +recharge, right?!

 

Can't...  compute!  Too... much... MATH!!!!  Augh!  (scream chokes off!)

 

But seriously, is that correct?  If you have +rech in an enh in a power then the proc you also put in it is automatically penalized?  This would include IOs, TOs, etc with +rech?

 

So Proc-Monsters/Proc-Stars are even tougher than we dared imagine?

Yes and no - it depends what the base recharge of the power is. As mentioned above powers with very long recharges can accept a lot of recharge enhancements ( IOs, SOs, etc ) before the proc rate starts to come down. But, of course, they’ll still have a very long recharge (much too long to be part of anything considered an attack chain).

 

in general you are correct - the more recharge you slot in a power the lower the proc rate. Therefore you want to not slot recharge, therefore you want to build for global recharge, therefore you will usually split the purple procs off from the rest of the sets. 🙂

[The_Cheeseman]

While the actual math for calculating absolute proc rate can get complex (especially when dealing with pseudopets and/or persistent ground-based AoEs), I think it's important to note the the entire reason they switched procs to the PPM system was to reduce how much you had to think about recharge concerning proc rates.

With flat proc rates, proc IOs heavily favored low-recharge, spammable attacks (more activations = more chancer to trigger). This lead to degenerate builds that slotted like 6 procs into Flares or something and did ridiculous damage with your super-fun Flares->Flares->Flares->OMGJustKillMeNow attack chain. These were often called, "Proc Chainsaw" builds.

With the normalized PPM system, it matters far less what the power's recharge actually is. As long as you are using the power regularly, you should get pretty much equivalent damage from a proc anywhere within the standard range of recharge values (between like 4-30 seconds or so). Powers with unusually high or low recharge rates can act a little wonky, but those cases generally sort themselves out (I mean, you can't exactly expect a power with a recharge greater than 1min to proc 2x/minute, can you?)

Here are a few simple rules of thumb when considering whether to slot a damage proc:

1) What is your AT damage scale for that attack? ATs with high damage scales (Novas, Blasters, VEATs, Dominators) will get relatively less value from procs, because proc damage is fixed and not affected by such damage scales. This means that procs will account for a larger proportion of your overall damage when your AT damage scale is lower. Controllers benefit a lot from procs, because their attacks do about half the damage of the same power on a Dom, for example. Depending on your slotting needs, you may be better off trying to squeeze out more enhancement values from the power, rather than slotting a damage proc.

2) Are there more important procs for this power? Damage procs are nice, but they aren't generally the most efficient procs you can use. For example, if you can slot a -res proc in the power, you're going to get way more overall damage from that effect than a pure damage proc.

3) Will this power's recharge timer overcap the proc rate? If a power has a very long recharge time (generally greater than around 45 seconds), there is a significant chance that it have gone over the maximum proc rate of 90%. The higher you go over that cap, the more potential damage you are wasting from the proc. Powers that can only be used once every minute are essentially getting only half the expected values from a 2x/min damage proc, for example. This can be okay if the power is a nuke, and you are slotting the proc to get that little bit more damage you need to ensure EVERYTHING dies in one blast, but that's really more or a win-more, and isn't very efficient use of slots.

4) Will I use this power often enough for the proc to be useful? In general, PPM-type procs are great in powers you use on-cooldown, as they get lots of chances to activate. That being said, many sets with procs tend to have their most valuable set bonuses at 5 slots, so including the proc on a situational power may not be worth the slot if that proc doesn't get used often. You're likely better off using that slot to get a more valuable proc/set bonus in a different power.

If your answers to the above questions are amenable, then slot the proc and you should be fine. You only really need to focus on the math when you're dealing with weird powers like Carrion Creepers, or other edge-cases. in 90% of attack powers, a damage proc is going to perform pretty well regardless of how much recharge you slot into it. This is a good thing, as generally, recharge is among the most valuable bonuses you can get, so reducing it just to marginally increase proc rates is not recommended.

Edited October 31, 2019 by The_Cheeseman