Ideal proc slotting for Volcanic gasses?

[Onlyasandwich]

I'm putting together a rather proccy Earth/Thermal, and see that Volcanic Gasses has fun pet power spam behavior similar to Carrion Creepers, and is ripe for proccing.

 

However, it looks like Hold damage procs are likely to be much more effective given the way these entities work. Has anyone done any testing on how Ranged aoe procs stack up in comparison? My current slotting maxes out on the hold procs, but I'm weighing how worthwhile it is to fill the remaining slots with others. Thus far, I'm not seeing any such results in the forums, but perhaps one of you has some first-hand perspective!

[Carnifax]

I don't have experience with it but you can do what I did with Creepers. 

 

Open CoH (or Beta). Switch on logging, edit the Combat tab to include the "Pet" channels. 

Edit your build to include a mix of Hold and Damage procs

Then run a +whatever*8 Council mission or two in PI.

 

Then log off (or make a copy of the log file) and upload it to https://www.carnifax.org and with under the Volcanic Gasses you should see the hit and damage rate for the procs (procs in pets are logged in such a way that they can be grouped inside the pets damage, unlike direct attacks). 

 

That's the best way I've found to get actual stats from procs. 

[Carnifax]

So I went and tested it. Used an Earth/Fire domi I had lying around.

 

Soloing x8 Council theres basically no difference between normal Hold procs and a proc from the damage sets. They ranged from 42 to 47 hits and damage for all 3 "normal" procs was about 3,000. Purple was best.

 

Overall the damage from Gasses ended up about half that of my AoEs and Stoney.

 

Then I went off to rwz to take on a pylon. In this case the Hold procs pings much more. Damage was meh compared to Fires blasts.

 

So on a controller, as a source of damage, it's probably well worth proccing up. And hold procs have a slight advantage where they are few targets but it's not going to solo an av for you.

 

Edit : Here's the link

https://www.carnifax.org/?uuid=210755c6-1c41-4f27-85f7-34aa54156940

 

First one (combat_1647049551000_2022-03-12 01_45_51.0_Initial.txt) is the Council Radio run.

 

Last one (combat_1647050970000_2022-03-12 02_09_30.0_Pyroclastic Surge.txt) is the Pylon run. Got him down to about 30% then he got lucky (and me unlucky, was 1.4 seconds away from Hoarfrost being recharged). 

 

Note that gasses, for some reason, is parsing out under 

• Voltaic Geyser for the Geysers, you'll see the Hold procs in here
• Voltaic Sentinel (??) for the patch. The Posi proc from targetted AoE damage is in here. 

 

Overall you need to remember these are "best case" scenarios for the procs. Gasses takes so long to recharge that it would be constantly get left behind on fast moving teams (one reason Creepers so is much better for procs, it runs after you and spawns new tentacles at the next mob). 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Carnifax

[Onlyasandwich]

Thank you kindly for the data, @Carnifax!  You are a champion.

 

This is super helpful. The immobile nature of Volcanic does indeed limit it in comparison to Creepers, but I suppose it's too much to ask for any power to measure up to that level of perfection. 😃

 

I suppose the next question I need to ask myself then is how much baseline rech/acc/hold enhancement I am willing to sacrifice in exchange for more procs. Part of me was almost hoping ranged aoe procs would come up short here so that would be an easy choice! I'll have to put both strategies into practice and see first hand.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Onlyasandwich

[Carnifax]

37 minutes ago, Onlyasandwich said:

Thank you kindly for the data, @Carnifax!  You are a champion.

 

This is super helpful. The immobile nature of Volcanic does indeed limit it in comparison to Creepers, but I suppose it's too much to ask for any power to measure up to that level of perfection. 😃

 

I suppose the next question I need to ask myself then is how much baseline rech/acc/hold enhancement I am willing to sacrifice in exchange for more procs. Part of me was almost hoping ranged aoe procs would come up short here so that would be an easy choice! I'll have to put both strategies into practice and see first hand.

 

 

 

 

The slotting I tested with was 2 Acc/Hold/Recharge IOs and the rest procs. If I was slotting for real I'd probably go 3 procs (especially the purple), 2 Acc/Hold/Recharge and one whatever to max out hold & recharge. 

 

For me the testing confirmed that Domis are neat but still not my thing (I've two at or close to 50 and was considering Earth/Fire but they still feel too "caught between two poles" for me. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Carnifax

[Onlyasandwich]

3 hours ago, Carnifax said:

For me the testing confirmed that Domis are neat but still not my thing (I've two at or close to 50 and was considering Earth/Fire but they still feel too "caught between two poles" for me. 

I had this a bit at first. Whenever I had a concept for a domi, I just ended up going controller instead.

 

The first domi that really clicked for me was grav/energy. Part of it was just that this was the first time I played with tp other and singy, but the much higher ranged damage modifier for enflame helped as well. 

 

Honestly my Plants/fiery dom is now my current overall favorite character! It has more lockdown power than most of my controllers, and the damage is much higher and less conditional.

 

I feel like most of it for me comes down to executing on a particular character concept in the most satisfying way, and what types of powers match that fantasy.

 

My ice/savage domi suffers very much from what you describe here though. His assault set damage just doesn't bridge the loss of a powerful support secondary. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Onlyasandwich

[oedipus_tex]

Thank you for the testing of VG procs!

 

I think Volcanic Gasses is a YMMV power. On a top end build it should be up a little faster than 70 seconds. On a Dominator, that probably tracks with about how long it will take you to solo a x8+4 pack, assuming you're willing to start moving to the next pack with a couple of survivors left over. The patch lasts 60 seconds, which is an eternity in CoX time. On a very very fast moving team or if only fighting small groups of enemies you might only be able to drop it every other pack or so, but in my experience it's not a power that "feels" limited the way some other powers do. For sure when I'm soloing on a end game build, it feels like there's a VG patch underfoot more often than not.

 

Part of the wonderfulness of VG is how it picks its targets. It's not a completely random die roll like Arctic Air, Choking Cloud, Entangling Aura or even the Dark Control AoE hold. Instead it's a guaranteed pet-of-my-pet summon that will always pick a target from among the critters left alive in the cloud. That means that once you are down to only a couple of enemies, the cloud will begin to focus fire those couple of folks, spamming its holds on them over and over. The hold stacks with itself, so this will hold bosses.

In the past I've tried the Chance for Mag 2 Hold proc in VG and found it just "okay." It does fire every so often, but not enough to make it worthwhile to me. Loading the power up with damage procs might work better, but I'd make sure to get the power's recharge under control first. The real beauty of it is unlocked once you reach perma-Hasten/perma Dom levels of recharge and can have it up reliably. A night and day difference IMO and part of why Earth Dominators in particular are so scary (not because the power can Dominate, it can't but in combo with the rest of the Dominator kit it delivers).