MM Trick Arrow Slotting Tricks and Strategies

[Dr Causality]

 

So it's looking like I'll need to roll a Ninja/TA MM as that's what leading as worst MM combo poll.     So I'm starting to work on build plans and testing for any proc slotting tricks that can be leveraged.   

 

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I'm fairly new to /TA having only played one back on Live and some here on Beta:

 

 

What strategies and tricks are there for /TA MM's to use?        

 

How do you prefer to initiate fights?      

 

What powers work well in tandem?  Including with those from Power Pools and Epics?

 

Etc.

 

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In terms of just procs IOs and powers here's what I have so far regarding TA:     Am I missing anything?

 

Entangling Arrow

 

Power- Long Immob on low cooldown should allow to stack significant singel target Immob.  

 

Procs - 4s Cool Down and 1s Activation mean procs chances won't be great.   Looks like 29% for 3.5PPM.    Could use 1 x Immob Dmg,  1 x Slow Dmg, and 1 x Immob Purple Chance for Hold.     But that's only an avg of 20.9 dmg per proc on a single target and 29% chance for Mag2 Hold.  Not worth slotting unless I end up with slots to spare.

 

Flash Arrow

 

Power- The -Tohit portion is a small -3.75% that won't be very impactful or worth enhancement slotting.  But maybe there are some tricky strategies or combos that can exploit the -90% perception?   I haven't used -Perception Debuffs heavily before, so I'm not all the clear on how it works once you have aggro.   Seems to just entirely stop working once you've pulled aggro.  If that's correct then will only be useful to get closer to mobs or help prevent unintentionally pulling nearby mobs. 

 

I could see skipping this on a tight build, but in tests was useful for /TA's shorter ranges, in additional to helping avoid the accidental aggro that MM's are so prone too.  But if you skip, you'll basically be be limited to taking an early single target MM attack in it's. place.   For Ninjas the best of the two is Aimed Shot which still relatively low dmg and with a 4s cooldown won't be very proc-able.    

 

Procs -  Massive 35' Radius creates low proc chances dropping 3.5PPM down to 18.9%.   Can only slot 1 dmg proc.    The other options 'Chance for -25% Rech' and 'Chance for +Tohit' are not very impactful.   Probably not worth slotting for procs.  Slotting even one proc means this power is no longer aggroless, severely limiting the utility.   

 

 

Glue Arrow

 

Power- Very strong Slow Movement that can reach up to 179% over a large radius.  This power could prove very useful in strategies that kite and keep enemies at range from your MM.

 

Procs -  Long 60s Cooldown with zero recharge slotting makes for strong 90% chance on 3.5PPM despite the large 25' radius.   But can only slot a single Dmg proc.  And one 'Chance for -Rech'  It's not going to be a great proc power, but that one proc will get 3 chances to proc over duration.  So if you're going to use it regularly anyway for the massive Slow, then might as well get the free dmg from that one proc. 

 

Ice Arrow

 

Power - With global recharge and some hold enhance can easily be made into a perma Mag3 hold.   

 

Procs -  Longish 18s Cooldown on single target makes for strong 90% proc chances.  Can take 5 x Dmg procs turning into a respectable attack.   With 0% Rech the Lockdown 'Chance for Mag2 Hold' still has an 82% chance turning the power into a fairly reliable Mag5 hold.   Superior Entomb 'Chance for Absorb' proc even with the it's 23% recharge enhancement still has a 81% chance. That Absorb might be a useful little bit of sustain.  But this won't be nearly as useful while leveling since the standard Entomb with it's 2PPM value will only have a 51% chance.

 

Poison Gas Arrow

 

Power - Strong -18% Dmg debuff over a wide aoe.   The Mag2 sleep is much more impactful than I expected on paper as it seems to keep re-applying the sleep, so even attacks don't necessarily wake enemies backup.  Unfornately, many of the other debuff powers and pets continually interrupt the sleeping making this not as useful a control power.   Oil Slick's KD's wakes up enemies, as does the DoT from Acid Arrow.  And some of the pet powers significantly work against the sleep too.  For Ninjas the culprits are the DoT's like Oni's RoF, Jounin's Caltrops.  

 

Since there no useful procs for this power, If you were going to build around it, then optimal use would probably be maxing recharge enhancement and global recharge to allow some double stacking the sleep patches and then use when Oil Slick is down or to deal with extra mobs being pulled.    But it will mean carefully not using other powers like Acid Arrow, and even then your pets will likely use a DoT power.  

 

Procs -  I was curious what the mechanics would be on the Heal proc given that this seems to summon a psuedo pet.    In my tests it triggers once on cast, but due to the psuedo pet it does not have a chance to proc more than a single time because it's procing on summon, rather than per enemy.   A single 5% heal on long cooldown isn't worth the slot.    The Psuedo pet means the 'Chance for Placate' proc does nothing.   (This is really a shame because there's a super cheesy mechanic that I've been wanting to more thoroughly test when you have both an aoe taunt and aoe placate....taunt forces enemies to attack you, but placate means they can't....)

 

 

Acid Arrow

 

Power - Small Radius, but good -Res debuff that doesn't with duration equal to cooldown meaning it doesn't need any any recharge enhancement to maintain.

 

Procs - Low cooldown but relatively small radius make for acceptable proc chances in a power that's up frequently.  Can hold 4 x Dmg and 2 x -Res procs.    Might be worth taking an Alpha with Accuracy just to be able to 6 slot procs in this power. 

 

 

Disruption Arrow

 

Power - Small Radius, but good -Res debuff that doesn't with duration equal to cooldown meaning it doesn't need any any recharge enhancement to maintain.

 

Procs / Slotting - No procs that can be slotted.   Needs some Recharge Enhancement to make perma, but it appears not to stack so not much value in having it up more than its 30s duration.

 

 

Oil Slick Arrow

 

Power - Long Cooldown, but large radius and strong mitigation with KD.   When ignited Burning Oil Slick can do signficant damage. The Ninja's T3 Pet (Oni) can reliably ignite the Oil Slick with it's Rain of Rire, but that's on a long cooldown, so it's very random it will land at the right time.   MM will it's own source of Fire or Energy Dmg to reliably light the patch.  

 

This is probably the signature core power for /TA.  But you'll need significant global Recharge to be able to use it every spawn.    Since the proc chances are already fairly low, it might be worth giving up on procs and slotting for Recharge Enhancement. But despite the low proc chances, given the duration you should get at least 2 - 3 chances to proc depending on when the patch is ignited.  So not proccing is definitely giving up some damage against large mobs. 

 

Procs / Slotting -  Proc chances seemed rather low in my tests.  From @Bopper's PPM thread it sounds like Oil Slick with 3.5PPM should have around 15% chance to proc, which is not great.  But in my few tests seems possibly even worse than that.  From reading through other forum threads it seems like the two psuedo pets have separate chances to proc the different procs types.  *Edit* [So with a helpful clarification and correction from Bopper]  It seems that procs from TAoe only proc when the patch is ignite.   But procs from Def Debuff and Slow should fire in both Psuedo pets, making them obvious better proc choice. 

 

Overall, I was not impressed by the proc results I got, but I probably need more testing before a final decision.   If  slotting for procs it seems that Slow and Def Debuff procs should have priority and TAoe procs only slotted if excess slots were available. 

 

 

EMP Arrow

 

Power -  Looks like a ranged, but otherwise much worse version of /Rad's EMP Pulse.  300s Rech means it won't be up enough to use as part of your rinse-repeated fight strategy.   The MM massive 29 Endurance version will make the -1000% Recovery even more painful to work though.   Would be nice to have against robots and machines, but I'm thinking overall very situational and skippable.  *Edit* it does have a -1000% Regen, but at only a 15s duration not sure how valuable that will be.

 

Procs / Slotting - Could certain be procced out at 90% chance, even when slotted way over 100% Recharge Enhancement.   But at 300s base cooldown, you just won't be able to use this very often and when you do you'd have to be prepared for the -Recovery debuff.   I'm going to be running Manuevers, Tough, Weave, Epic Shield, and maybe Assault and/or Tactics.   That will be a lot of toggles to survive through the -Recovery...

 

 

 

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Overall Level 50 Solo Strategy

Working in Mid's it became apparent that without any Def or Res buff from the 2ndary, I simply wouldn't be able to hit the good soft capped numbers I'm used to without very significantly undermining slotting in other powers.  /TA is just not going to make the in your face Tankermind type of MM I usually build towards.  Even getting more limited Def numbers gave up enough global recharge that Oil Slick will probably be more like every other spawn.     

 

What I end up settling on and what's worked best so far strategy wise was,

 

• Building for one sm purple insp away from soft cap of Ranged/Energy/Negative Def, and getting S/L Resistance capped at 75%.  This combined with Bodyguard mode, and TA's soft control mitigates most of the damage my MM takes
• The opening fight strategy is using debuff patches to open  and keep enemies in place
• Then use Provoke to keep the enemies stuck in the patches and attacking my MM at range, while the Ninja pets run into fight at melee. This seems to keep most of the damage off my pets.
• At this point use Epic aoe Immob as needed to keep enemies in place in the patches
• If enemies begin to escape patches, then you kite to the side of the patch using Provoke to get them to chase you back into the patch to their doom...

 

I'm having a really tough time settling on Power Pools.   I think I simply have to have Manuevers and the Fighting Pool for suvivability.   Beyond that

 

• Hasten with Global Rech gets Oil Slick cooldown low enough to use every spawn.  
• Medicine would be great for healing away dmg, and topping off pets between mobs.  
• Hover would be very helpful for staying at range against AVs.

 

But I can at most take two of those pools.    I'm leaning towards Medicine being the one to give up. It needs 3 powers and even then the animation times of Aid Self and even Aid Other are terrible. Since Aid Other is single target it's much too slow to keep all pets healed in battle.   And Aid Self with it's 4.48s animation is even pretty bad for a self-heal.    Probably better to accept some pets will die and use Insp combining or Destiny Rebirth for heals.

 

I need to test against some AV fights, as that will be the real struggle.

  

Edited February 23, 2020 by Dr Causality
Oil Slick Proc correction

[Dr Causality]

**This Section Reserved for a future leveling build posts**

Edited February 23, 2020 by Dr Causality

[Coyote]

Flash Arrow is aggro-less... the +ToHit proc isn't affecting mobs, maybe it remains aggroless if that's slotted into it? That could be a free to-hit buff at the start of the fight, if that's the case.

[Dr Causality]

7 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Flash Arrow is aggro-less... the +ToHit proc isn't affecting mobs, maybe it remains aggroless if that's slotted into it? That could be a free to-hit buff at the start of the fight, if that's the case.

That's good trick!    Would be really good combined with Snipes.  

 

I guess I'm wondering how useful the +Tohit procs will be on a MM?   It won't go to your pets and with the short 10s duration you wouldn't even want to count on it for Accuracy of your /TA powers.  

[Coyote]

Only real use I can think of is to allow Acid Arrow to 6-slot with procs, because after it hits the enemies have their Defense debuffed, and you could use Flash Arrow midfight to re-boost if a new pack aggros.

 

I don't really think it's worth the effort or idea, just a thought to consider... but as you say, personally I'd go for either a lot of set bonuses or an Alpha with Accuracy.

[Dr Causality]

2 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Only real use I can think of is to allow Acid Arrow to 6-slot with procs, because after it hits the enemies have their Defense debuffed, and you could use Flash Arrow midfight to re-boost if a new pack aggros.

 

I don't really think it's worth the effort or idea, just a thought to consider... but as you say, personally I'd go for either a lot of set bonuses or an Alpha with Accuracy.

That's an interesting idea in that, if a single power was coming up short on Accuracy, then your trick could be used to fill gap.    Or if you needed to overcome a debuff.   Worth keeping in mind.

[Sir Myshkin]

Early proc testing was done for all the relevant support sets in this thread, and more specifically posted about Trick Arrow on this comment if you want an idea of what you can get away with (there's updated tid-bits with a current TA/A build on that first post). You should be able to apply most of the logic to a Nin/TA build. There's also a thread here where a player broke down Oil Slick's ignition cases if you're curious about what's under the hood of the effects (mostly a data-dump thread, but if you're curious it shows the under-the-hood Oil Slick ignition stuff, so relevant). Another thread that you might find relevant is one Redlynne posted a while back about Nin/Time, the "Nin" portion might be worth reading a bit as far as a bit of research in slotting up those pets more specifically to a proc build, and does some number crunching on the Ninja-side of "Archery."

[Redlynne]

On 12/14/2019 at 8:54 PM, Redlynne said:

Trick Arrow: Entangling Arrow

  Hide contents

Debilitative Action (3.0 PPM), Trap of the Hunter (3.5 PPM), Gravitational Anchor (3.5 PPM), Impeded Swiftness (3.5 PPM), Pacing of the Turtle (3.5 PPM)
3.0 * ((4 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1) / 60 = 25.00%
3.5 * ((4 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1) / 60 = 29.17%

 

The proc chances for Entangling Arrow might be low, but you can use Entangling Arrow A LOT if you aren't doing other things.  The problem is, you almost certainly ARE going to want to be doing "other things" than just spamming Entangling Arrow all over the place.

9 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Another thread that you might find relevant is one Redlynne posted a while back about Nin/Time, the "Nin" portion might be worth reading a bit as far as a bit of research in slotting up those pets more specifically to a proc build, and does some number crunching on the Ninja-side of "Archery."

Having played both with and without the personal attacks as a Ninja Mastermind, the difference is basically one of these kinds of comparisons ...

 

 

That's night versus the photosphere of our local star (also known as the nearest continuous fusion reactor), for those who aren't that interested in astronomy. 😎

 

The problem with using the Mastermind personal attacks in combination with Trick Arrow is going to be that they're ALL CLICKS.

The Mastermind personal attacks using archery are all Clicks.

Your Trick Arrow attacks are all Clicks.

That's a problem since it means that you can only animate 1 Click at a time and so you've got all of these powers "competing" for animation time.

 

Having played Ninja/Trick Arrow back on Virtue ... I STRENUOUSLY advise you against playing the combination, except as an indulgence into masochism.  Your Ninjas will fold like cheap pre-creased origami rice paper if something even BREATHES in their general direction.  The only strategy that will keep them alive is to PREVENT them from drawing aggro, which basically means Tankerminding in order to keep them alive.  You're not going to have any Healing capabilities beyond Aid Other, and that is SO NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH during combat that I hope you enjoy resummoning defeated Ninjas (and re-upgrading them).

 

Pretty much the only way to play Ninja/Trick Arrow "successfully" when solo is to open with (an aggro-less) Flash Arrow and then try to single pull $Targets from range into the meatgrinder of your Ninjas.  Use the personal attacks to whittle them down while your $Target(s) charge towards you so the Ninjas finish them off faster.  The combination of Flash Arrow debuffing perception ought to make it "easier" to single pull $Targets so as to defeat them sequentially rather than in parallel when using your personal attacks since the archery personal attacks will often times produce a "smaller aggro shout" behavior which combined with the perception debuffing will make it more likely to pull single targets and pick apart spawn groups.

 

The biggest danger to a Ninja/Trick Arrow build is ... numbers.  It is VERY easy for you to get overrun when you pull too much aggro, which will defeat your Ninjas in next to no time flat and you'll be left with a Petless Mastermind and a secondary that can barely mez and lightly debuff whatever just devoured all of your Pets and is now trying to OM NOM NOM on your Mastermind.  Sometimes you'll be able to disengage and retreat ... and other times you won't and will faceplant ... so play in a cowardly/cautious manner if you want to live longer than your Ninjas (and they won't last long, you'll be resummoning and re-equipping them A LOT!).

[Crysis]

On 2/23/2020 at 11:00 AM, Redlynne said:

 

 

The biggest danger to a Ninja/Trick Arrow build is ... numbers.  It is VERY easy for you to get overrun when you pull too much aggro, which will defeat your Ninjas in next to no time flat and you'll be left with a Petless Mastermind and a secondary that can barely mez and lightly debuff whatever just devoured all of your Pets and is now trying to OM NOM NOM on your Mastermind.  Sometimes you'll be able to disengage and retreat ... and other times you won't and will faceplant ... so play in a cowardly/cautious manner if you want to live longer than your Ninjas (and they won't last long, you'll be resummoning and re-equipping them A LOT!).

Yes, because playing in a “cowardly manner” as a Mastermind is a great way to feel like you are playing a superhero/villain game.

 

Not snarking at you.  Snarking at Nin/TA.  Or even just /TA.  I’ve been terribly disappointed with all of /TA on a MM and have tried multiple combos.  Some T4’d fully via Incarnates with billion dollar builds just because I was CONVINCED some new proc or slotting strategy would make it almost as effective as a Thugs/ or Bots/ build running on SO’s.  

 

It’s just a poorly designed set for MM’s.  Never again will play this set until it gets some attention from the Devs, and even then I doubt it will ever be anything more than bottom tier on a MM.

[Blackfeather]

3 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Yes, because playing in a “cowardly manner” as a Mastermind is a great way to feel like you are playing a superhero/villain game.

 

Not snarking at you.  Snarking at Nin/TA.  Or even just /TA.  I’ve been terribly disappointed with all of /TA on a MM and have tried multiple combos.  Some T4’d fully via Incarnates with billion dollar builds just because I was CONVINCED some new proc or slotting strategy would make it almost as effective as a Thugs/ or Bots/ build running on SO’s.  

 

It’s just a poorly designed set for MM’s.  Never again will play this set until it gets some attention from the Devs, and even then I doubt it will ever be anything more than bottom tier on a MM.

I can't personally judge - if a person wishes to play in such a manner, then there's nothing wrong with that; they've found their desired playstyle and aesthetic. The superhero/supervillain genre is vast, with room for all kinds of play. That being said, I would not be against looking over power sets and addressing their pain points.

[Crysis]

2 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

I can't personally judge - if a person wishes to play in such a manner, then there's nothing wrong with that; they've found their desired playstyle and aesthetic. The superhero/supervillain genre is vast, with room for all kinds of play. That being said, I would not be against looking over power sets and addressing their pain points.

Don’t mind me, let anyone play however they want.  I’m just bitter because I’ve done /TA MM’s several times, invested hundreds of hours into them and billions of influence just try try and MAKE them perform at some reasonable level of effectiveness.  I’m by no means a perfect player, but they are by no means an enjoyable set of powers for me either.  To each their own.

 

I just remain disappointed because THEMATICALLY the /TA set is just about exactly what I wanted for several of my MM’s.  Now I’d give just about anything to swap it out for something more akin to Tactical Arrow instead.  

[Dr Causality]

11 hours ago, Crysis said:

I’ve been terribly disappointed with all of /TA on a MM and have tried multiple combos.  Some T4’d fully via Incarnates with billion dollar builds just because I was CONVINCED some new proc or slotting strategy would make it almost as effective as a Thugs/ or Bots/ build running on SO’s.  

 

It’s just a poorly designed set for MM’s.  Never again will play this set until it gets some attention from the Devs, and even then I doubt it will ever be anything more than bottom tier on a MM.

Lol.  Pretty sure I won't find anything notably different.  I'm just curious what even admittedly underperfroming sets can do with Incarnates and unlimited IO's.  I'll try to post some results later, so you can (hopefully) laugh at my suffering.

 

*Edit* but I am in a good position in that my expectations were so low, that so far I've been pleasantly surprised. 😋

 

8 hours ago, Crysis said:

I just remain disappointed because THEMATICALLY the /TA set is just about exactly what I wanted for several of my MM’s.  Now I’d give just about anything to swap it out for something more akin to Tactical Arrow instead.  

This is exactly my experience with Ninjas. But the first times I leveled up Bots and Thugs, it was immediately painfully clear that no slotting or playstyle shift was going balance or even significantly let Ninjas catch up.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Dr Causality

[Talionis]

9 hours ago, Crysis said:

I just remain disappointed because THEMATICALLY the /TA set is just about exactly what I wanted for several of my MM’s.  Now I’d give just about anything to swap it out for something more akin to Tactical Arrow instead.  

I totally agree.  There should have been a way to just debuff and still have similar results to the other sets with buffs.  I’ve always thought this could’ve been balanced out without significant power reworks if the numbers/percentages were fixed.  

[Redlynne]

2 hours ago, Dr Causality said:

so far I've been pleasantly surprised. 😋

Ninja/Trick Arrow starts out ... "okay" ... if slightly underpowered ... at low levels.  At high levels is when the lamentations and rending of fishnets/garments begins when you realize that it's NEVER going to get any better no matter what you do ...

[tremor3258]

The big problem for ninjas is the more + levels you add to notoriety, the even less their poor defense does, and the lack of resistance means they can't take many boss grade hits, at all.  Most other pets have some resistance which helps, but ninjas it's a pure binary for all the damage, and the odds aren't especially in their favor. 

 

So definitely less of a problem at earlier levels but as you reach a point most power sets would be throwing a  couple +1s on the enemies is definitely rougher.

[NEW DAWN]

I did Ninjas/TA because of course I did, I did every TA, this did boil down to Tankerminding because of course it did, I tanked anything and everything with anything anyway, Glue Arrow + Web Envelope with a come at me taunt. I was full TA for every reason. It was basically as if I was a tanker who preferred to kite and the team had a trick archer who happened to be me too, each to their own.

[StrikerFox]

How would a Nin/TA/Heat MM work out? Build for recharge, try to have Oil Slick and/or Bonfire up every group to knock them down to the floor. Been using similar strategy with Mercs/Storm and it works out well. Though I usually only run +1/x8. 

[Dr Causality]

19 minutes ago, StrikerFox said:

How would a Nin/TA/Heat MM work out? Build for recharge, try to have Oil Slick and/or Bonfire up every group to knock them down to the floor. Been using similar strategy with Mercs/Storm and it works out well. Though I usually only run +1/x8. 

I think you're right that will be the best possible Nin/TA build for Team play and maybe even the best build for soloing standard mission content.    I took Bonfire at 35 while leveling up y NiN/TA and it was a massive performance boost.    I had a similar experience to you with Bonfire being great on my Bots/Kin.

 

It's sad that Bonfire is enough better than /TA's signature T9 power, that the best way to make /TA more powerful is by counting on an Epic non /TA power as your core strategy.  😛     I guess it's equal parts that Bonfire with the KD proc is a bit broken, and Oil Slick's has a punitively long cooldown that's way out of balance against other sets.   Bonfire can be made perma with little effort, but Oil Slick is still not perma on builds that stack Ageless ontop of already perma Hasten.     (Oil Slick would require 500% total Rech to be perma.   70% from Hasten, 95% from Enhancements and you'd still need  335%....)     

 

But at least with /Storm you have some Res and Def from Steamy Mist, plus a single target heal.    And with my Bots/Kin I have an aoe heal and some Res buffs for pets.   But /TA gets none of that so it's even more painful to give up the Epic Resistance or Def shields for Bonfire on /TA when it already has absolutely no heal, Res or Def to offer.       I was able to solo the ITF at +2/+8 on my Bots/Kin using Bonfire for mitigation and the heal for sustain.  But bots have more Res and Def than Ninja and TA has no heal.    Doesn't feel like Bonfire is going to work out well against AVs.   

 

So what I'm wondering is, "Even if Bonfire is better in general,  for soloing AV's and TF's will Bonfire be better than softap ranged Def (with one small purple), plus 75% hard capped S/L Resistance?"               

 

The other rough part is to get even that modest 33% Ranged Def, w/ 75% S/L resistant I had to skip Hasten and make serious sacrifices to global Recharge bonuses, meaning huge gaps in Oil Slick being available.   

[NEW DAWN]

Has it been just like 12 days since you rolled this Mastermind? The best like for like to compare imo is Trick Arrow versus Traps. I skipped half of Traps as it was superfluous but on the powers I didn't skip, Trick Arrows counterparts were weaker but not holes one generally wouldn't be able to fill but shouldn't feel obligated.  For me jumping on a different Mastermind is jumping on a different experience, playing to different strengths and filling different weaknesses by alternative means. If every MM was the same experience with the same niche that's lazy developing. Time on a character can lead to new ideas, and a inarguable inbalance may lead to either Traps getting nerfed etc or TA getting buffed. Actual time on a character allows more thought after more experiences.

 

Edited March 7, 2020 by NEW DAWN

[Redlynne]

4 hours ago, NEW DAWN said:

Time on a character can lead to new ideas, and a inarguable inbalance may lead to either Traps getting nerfed etc or TA getting buffed.

For purposes of that specific comparison, Traps is FINE ... it's Trick Arrow that desperately (desperately!!) needs a balance pass to buff the powerset.

[NEW DAWN]

2 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

For purposes of that specific comparison, Traps is FINE ... it's Trick Arrow that desperately (desperately!!) needs a balance pass to buff the powerset.

As individuals we all have our ideas and specific needs and many balance passes didn't even give players what they wanted back in the day. Powerhouse must have notes as to why there are the limitations they are, often people don't take everything into consideration. Oil slick xp/time maybe a factor. It's a shame I don't have the character anymore. 

[Zeraphia]

I think a simple strategy to make this combination work a little better (even if slowly) would be to start a mob off with Poison Gas Arrow (try to get this ability so that it permanently sleeps enemies) and then one by one take out the group with your ninjas and single targeting and using Ice Arrow to hold the target. I actually don't think it would be too bad because the minions use a majority of single target powers and the lack of AOE may not wake up the other enemies from PGA.

[Dr Causality]

On 3/7/2020 at 1:34 AM, NEW DAWN said:

Has it been just like 12 days since you rolled this Mastermind?

Yes, rolled just because of the Worst MM combo poll results.   Which since then, oddly has other combos slowly catching up,  so by the time my Nin/TA is fully Incarnate a different combo might have taken the lead as worst.  😏

 

Quote

The best like for like to compare imo is Trick Arrow versus Traps. I skipped half of Traps as it was superfluous but on the powers I didn't skip, Trick Arrows counterparts were weaker but not holes one generally wouldn't be able to fill but shouldn't feel obligated. 

 

But on my take /TA and /Trap are not very comparable.   In additional to good debuffs and mitigation /Traps also has a significant +Def buff, Mezz protection, and an aoe Regen Auro.    /TA has no buffs for self or pet.  There's no way for /TA to fill the missing buffs /Traps gets.     And the cherry on top is as you mentioned /Traps even has some clearly better debuffs, for example to -Regen.  

[Dr Causality]

2 hours ago, 33053222 said:

I think a simple strategy to make this combination work a little better (even if slowly) would be to start a mob off with Poison Gas Arrow (try to get this ability so that it permanently sleeps enemies) and then one by one take out the group with your ninjas and single targeting and using Ice Arrow to hold the target. I actually don't think it would be too bad because the minions use a majority of single target powers and the lack of AOE may not wake up the other enemies from PGA.

 

Ha. Yeah that's what I suspected too.  I think the issues is that Ninjas don't have good aoe dmg, but even weak aoe is still enough to ruin sleep.   And they have plenty of weak aoe:

 

Genin (T1) - Exploding Shuriken which they like to use with before running in...

Jenin (T2) - Have long cooldown Caltrops, with the DoT acting as recurring wake up.

Oni (T3) - Has Rain of Fire, which is another long cooldown DoT.  

 

Even so, Poison Gas Arrow is much better than I remembered or anticipated.   But it's just a Mag2 sleep that doesn't seem to stack with itself and unlike Holds or Confuse there are no procs that let you stack a chance for extra mag of sleep.   So the sleep doesn't work on Bosses.  

 

But something along the lines you're suggesting does work.   If you can leave henchmen around a corner so they don't attack and wakeup minions, then you can Poison Gas and Glue Arrow a mob, so that you pull just Bosses and some Lts around the corner. But like you said it's slow going.   

 

I ran a ranged soft cap, S/L res provoke build against some +1/+8 Crim,  Council and LongBow misions all with bosses on Beta.  All went reasonably smoothly (now that I've accepted that Ninjas are entirely expendable 😋 )      I bumped up to +2 and had a much tougher time.   In fact a doublespawn cluster of Longbow Bosses actually managing to kill me 3 times on the 'Defeat All' mission from Ghostwidow.  Seems like it was a combo of getting mezzed and henchment simultaneously getting taunted by Phantom Army.   

 

I'll hopefully have some time to try versus AV's once I unlock the Epics I actually want....

Edited March 9, 2020 by Dr Causality

[NEW DAWN]

2 hours ago, Dr Causality said:

But on my take /TA and /Trap are not very comparable.   In additional to good debuffs and mitigation /Traps also has a significant +Def buff, Mezz protection, and an aoe Regen Auro.    /TA has no buffs for self or pet.  There's no way for /TA to fill the missing buffs /Traps gets.     And the cherry on top is as you mentioned /Traps even has some clearly better debuffs, for example to -Regen.  

Yeah -regen is a wishful thought on a TA but all the -res and the oil slick kind of means xp/time or meant in the past, as lot of things are different today.  In the past I only noticed xp/time go up when we got to an AV and had a -regen in team, not going through mobs like I would with a TA. Yeah me being able to skip half of traps says something but they were robots not ninjas and that is another thing. Ninjas versus robots that's not even a contest.

Edited March 9, 2020 by NEW DAWN