Smoke Flash on Ninjas/Cold/Chill?

[cohRock]

I am building an MM -- Ninjas/Cold/Chill.  He is level 10 now.   How useful can I expect the Smoke Flash power to be?  It feels very situational.  With the buffs and debuffs available from Cold Domination, I'm not sure an AoE placate would add much.

 

The build skips all the primary bow attacks already, depending on three prestige attacks for direct damage.  He is taking all Cold Domination Powers, though.  This set of powers leaves a lot of room for pool powers and Chill Mastery:

 

* Flight:  Hover

* Fighting:  Boxing (two slots, Acc and Disorient), Tough

* Leadership:  Assault, Tactics

* Speed:  Hasten

* Chill:  Flash Freeze, Frozen Armor, Hibernate

 

If he chooses not to take Smoke Flash, alternative choices wold include Air Superiority and Maneuvers.  AS would allow him to drop the occasional foe who comes up to melee him in the air, or drop any flying foe, really.  Maneuvers of course would add to everyone's defenses, including his own.  With Flash Freeze offering an AoE sleep, the AoE placate from Smoke Flash seems even less important.  (Admittedly, it doesn't come up as often, though, and is probably not as effective on Lts and above as the placate.)  The point is, there is a lot of large-group mitigation already inherent in Cold Domination, with a little extra from Chill.  What do you think of my analysis?  Would you trade out Smoke Flash for something I have suggested, or maybe something else?

[Frosticus]

I haven't played ninja MM in a long time (back in the days of live), but iirc smoke flash is cast upon one of your ninjas. He then uses it and starts critical attacking like mad.

 

Given you are a /cold with unlimited endurance I'd say spam it as much as possible, it should increase damage a significant amount.

[kelika2]

Ninja/ff and ninja/dark experience and no.  I had it for awhile and its best used on the Genin who are constantly attacking but overall its just too much end cost, animation and waiting.  and as you may or may not know, sometimes pets just stare off into space

[cohRock]

@Frosticus, It appears you are telling me that I'm focused on the wrong thing.  Instead of the debuff aspect of Smoke Flash (emphasized in its description), consider the buff aspect, which is the 12 seconds or so a ninja gains of critical hits. It is certainly an aspect worth thinking about.  I know the Cold Armor set allows essentially unlimited endurance via Energy Absorption (60 sec base recharge), but the closest I see in Cold Domination is Heat Loss (360 sec base recharge).  I'm wondering if you were confused, or Cold Dom. offers some other method of +Recovery or lowering of endurance cost.

 

@kelika2, Yes, granting a short term temporary ability, and having the ninja use it at max effectiveness, are two different things.  As I understand the placate mechanic, foes would only stop attacking the one ninja and still have free rein to attack everyone else.  I may have to play with it, though, to see if the +crit bonus works out as Frosticus points out.

[nihilii]

12 minutes ago, cohRock said:

the closest I see in Cold Domination is Heat Loss (360 sec base recharge).  I'm wondering if you were confused, or Cold Dom. offers some other method of +Recovery or lowering of endurance cost.

The endurance buff part of Heat Loss lasts 90 seconds. So essentially, at high level it is either perma or close to perma - and the endurance buff is so significant if you hit more than one target, you will likely have a full blue bar when it runs out, giving you some leeway to handle the gap. Doubly so as you plan to use Hibernate!