finally trying the new pool sets - what is good, what is great and how to slot them if at all?

[Jacke]

12 hours ago, Wintercat said:

I'm wondering, if fly and Mystic Flight can be on at the same time, would that give a massive boost as well? And if you have fly, you have afterburner.... 
And fly and afterburner works with the flying carpet/rocket board/disc....

 

You can run both Fly and Mystic Flight together, but it's a waste of endurance.  The reason the powers can now be run together is that you get the best of the simultaneous similar powers, not their sum.  That stacking was fixed in Issue 27 Page 2, I think.

 

 

9 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I'm going to subtly disagree about Spirit Ward and pets. Spirit Ward is really good at limiting "nick damage" taken by some of the stronger pets like Singularity or the Earth Control pet. It's true that it tends to work best on pets that are already pretty resilient, but it makes a real difference. That's useful on Singularity in particular, because you can't directly heal it.

....

I probably wouldn't take the power just by itself, but the fact that it unlocks the Sorcery pool makes it pretty attractive when I can squeeze it in. I especially recommend trying it on certain popular Gravity builds like Gravity/Storm.

 

I'll back this and others' support of Spirit Ward.  It's a great place on many builds to slot the Preventive Medicine special IO.  You should put that toon on all builds when possible, as it's saved more from defeat than any other single measure.  On my AR/Dev Blaster, I also cast it on Gun Drone to make that tough pet even tougher. 🙂

 

 

9 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I tried to like the changes to stealth pool.  Infiltration in particular appealed to me -- basically ninja run with some stealth added on.  But the fact that half of the defense suppresses in combat soured the deal for me.

 

Infiltration is a sore point for me too.  *ALL* of its Defense suppresses in combat.  And that Stealth now has doubled Defense outside of doesn't matter either, because 3/4 of its Defense now suppresses, leaving it no better in combat than it was before.  Higher Defense outside of combat is almost completely useless.

 

 

6 hours ago, tidge said:

On my characters: Flight + Afterburner + Jump Pack > Flying speed cap.

 

I just tested Mystic Flight, which has a Blessing of the Zephyr or a Winter's Gift special in it, so no speed enhancement.  Mystic Flight + Jump Pack hits the Flying Speed cap.  With Flight, perhaps you could alternate Afterburner and Jump Pack and with just 1 hit the Flying Speed cap for longer.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by Jacke

[roleki]

17 hours ago, Mezmera said:

 

I think you're mistaken about the Defense portion.  It's defense debuffing that gets enhanced if your character has those types of abilities along with the mezzing abilities.  If this gave defense like Unleash Potential I would never touch the Force of Will pool.  

 

Experimentation is a nice offensive pool for those already well situated in their survivability and would like to tune up their offense.  I do find this pool a bit more limited than the other two Origin pools though.  

 

We're both right, kinda.  It's tagged "+27.68% Base Defense, ToHit Strength (self only) for 60s" but players don't HAVE a base defense, so... no boost.  It DOES boost your ToHit Bonus, though.  

[Mezmera]

3 hours ago, roleki said:

 

We're both right, kinda.  It's tagged "+27.68% Base Defense, ToHit Strength (self only) for 60s" but players don't HAVE a base defense, so... no boost.  It DOES boost your ToHit Bonus, though.  

 

I like to get my numbers directly from the horses mouth.  With there being a few iterations of CoV out there all with their own twist on things I tend to make sure to look into the internal power numbers listed for everything in the detailed description, I don't just take wiki or the internets word for it.

 

Adrenal Booster is a quasi power boost and not.  Probably half of the things you'd expect to get boosted from a traditional Power Boost don't get boosted when using this which I don't think they wanted people with actual Power Boost to get jealous of a power with a lot of the same effect that stays active so much longer outside of the Megalomaniac accolade and even that one doesn't allow for defense boosting.  

 

To me they purposely removed the defense boosting portion from it before they brought it to HC.  But yes there are some nice offensive numbers boosted with Adrenal Booster.  

Edited March 15, 2022 by Mezmera

[UltraAlt]

On 3/13/2022 at 6:12 PM, DoctorDitko said:

Sorcery is pure win, IMHO:

 

On 3/13/2022 at 6:12 PM, DoctorDitko said:

I understand the pool has two other powers, but I've never tried them.

 

I really like using the Enflame to set tanks on fire.

 

[Agorazium]

 Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents that Wall of Force is a pretty decent AOE for builds that otherwise lack it. I have it on a few controllers, a Grav/Energy dominator, and I think one tank. Probably not worth taking on a more DPS-oriented AT though. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Sovereigne

[Clave Dark 5]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I really like using the Enflame to set tanks on fire.

I hear that's a popular move in Ukraine as well.  😃

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 3/14/2022 at 4:43 AM, Mezmera said:

 

I'll add on to this one a bit.  I compare this to the Leaping pool.  Combat Jump is nice with the constant 3% defense and movement, instrumental?  No.  Now Unleash Potential nets you upwards of 20% defense well slotted and if you power boost it oh boy.  You're getting high defense/regen/endurance in key moments when you likely most need it for a minute and with good global recharge you can get use out of it quite often. 

 

Unleash Potential > Combat Jump. 

 

Then you have your travel with Mighty Leap which are almost the same.  Also there's Weaken Resolve which is a sneaky good ST debuff, drop an Achilles Heel in there and you have a 90% chance to get your team 25-30% -resistance on an AV.  

 

Most of my characters go with the Force of Will pool.  I slot Weaken Resolve with the Achilles proc, you can add an accuracy but I usually get good global accuracy.  Mighty Leap gets either a 53 Microfilament or 2 of the Winter's Gift for that -rech res if I have an extra slot.  Unleash Potential gets 4 Shield Walls all the ones with recharge and all +5, if this is my only set of Shield Wall I'll also slot the unique somewhere in there or 5th and or add a lotg +rech if I have the extra slot.   

 

Two more things I'll add to this that may be a little esoteric.  

 

Weaken Resolve takes a *lot* of procs.  And you should be pretty much maxed out in terms of activation percentage.  Don't sleep on the two +to hit procs -- they can have some real usefulness!  Just make sure you have plenty of accuracy built in the power in the first place.

 

If you are a knockdown freak like myself, Takeoff (from Mighty Leap) is an auto-hit (I think) knockdown.  It's only available when Mighty Leap is active, but it is quick, easy, and tremendously amusing to click Mighty Leap, then Takeoff, then turn off Mighty Leap and get back to business in the midst of all that floppery.

[Carnifax]

On 3/13/2022 at 9:40 PM, brasilgringo said:

Arcane Ward is a good one-slot power for the Preventive Medicine Unique.  People say Enflame (proc'd) can be really good on Singularity but I've never seen damage reports on what "really good" means.

It's fine. Procs are better than slotting it for damage but not by a huge amount, it doesn't do Containment (if it did dam + procs would be the way to go). I use it on my Ice/Traps since Jack will get into combat. Quite good in a long fight for some extra damage (lob it on an AV). Worked well in the Summer Blockbuster for me for example. 

 

On a low damage character with a pet / pets (Controller & MM) procced version is nice. On a Domi with their decent damage mods just plain old slotting for damage should be better (you can add procs on top of that of course).

 

Arcane is also nice on a low damage set like a Controller. Especially if you can Contain them and wait for the orange circle.