What have you slotted for that turned out to be useless?

[DougGraves]

I've been reviewing my characters and doing respecs.

 

I have played little with symphony control but like it.  One thing about symphony control is that many of its powers do damage that wouldn't do damage in a normal control set.

 

Somehow I saw numbers that said that the single target confuse did good damage.  Better than the first attack in my dominator secondary.  Although the description says it does minor damage (not sure of the exact word) but we all know the descriptions are not very accurate.

 

Realizing I could turn it into a meaningful damage power, I respec'd and 3 slotted the confuse for damage.

 

Then playing with it, it didn't do much damage.  I looked in the combat log and it did half the damage of the single target hold and less than half of my secondary attack.

 

So I must have read the numbers wrong somewhere or looked at the wrong number.  So I had to respec again to take the damage out of my confuse.

[Captain Fabulous]

Slotting for secondary effects is usually a pointless endeavor, e.g., -tohit in dark powers.

And before some yahoo chimes in with "ackthulllly, slotting for -end in electric powers is awesome", 1.) I said "usually", and 2.) only useful if you can fully drain them and keep them drained.

There are many cases where adding a 3rd slot of something can be mostly useless, for example, low % +defense powers. That extra slot might only give you an extra 1% or so, and you'd be better off putting that slot somewhere else. Hasten is another good example. That third slot of recharge reduction only saves you ~10 seconds with level 50 IOs, which for most builds isn't worth the slot.

Slotting up Fitness powers is also of questionable use if you're just gonna drop in common IOs or SOs. You get a far better return on those slots with useful global IOs.

 

[TheZag]

I took the presence pool and slotted provoke for taunt but it wasnt powerful enough to hold any agro over a tanks gauntlet inherent ability.  I play tanks alot and having a click ability be crappier than an inherent or auto ability seems really strange to me.  Enemies are attacking you because you hit their friend but i targeted and taunted you annnnnnnd....nope you just keep attacking the tank.

 

I was making a non tank/brute that was gonna tank for itrials because why not.  Its easy for them to not use taunt but when they cant even attack because provoke is too wimpy is an issue.

 

At any rate,  provoke isnt useless,  its just almost useless.

 

[Decision]

back in 2004 i wanted to Fly REALLLLY FAST and 6 slotted fly. 

[wolfshadow31]

15 minutes ago, Decision said:

back in 2004 i wanted to Fly REALLLLY FAST and 6 slotted fly. 

I remember 4 slotting Hover back in the good old day,  in the Hollows to make it easier to move around.  It was faster than Sprint in those type zones. 🙂

[Shred Monkey]

This one time, I made a defender...   ...useless.

[Snarky]

I am the idiot that adds some -to hit debuff slotting in Dark.  But it is very critical to look at the power in Dark and what function that fills. Dark powers almost always do 3 jobs but really function at about two of them as “core” and the third is a “hey i do this too”.  Fear stare on the Corruptor.  To hit debuff.  The Vampiric heal powers?   Tend to be massive attacks with a good heal as a strangely powerful afterthought.    Heck, I have double slotted one of those with +end procs on my Corr while leveling.  Heavy attack with a heal and quite often recharges my end bar….Dark is just too oddball to use “one rule” that fits across all of it.  
 

I overslotted and built for too much Accuracy on a lot of my stuff.  Many of my builds still have vestiges of this….which is not bad as a “does this as well” and not a primary goal.  Get some +to hit on the build and carry a yellow.  You’ll be happy.  

[Captain Fabulous]

On 2/15/2023 at 1:30 PM, TheZag said:

I took the presence pool and slotted provoke for taunt but it wasnt powerful enough to hold any agro over a tanks gauntlet inherent ability.  I play tanks alot and having a click ability be crappier than an inherent or auto ability seems really strange to me.  Enemies are attacking you because you hit their friend but i targeted and taunted you annnnnnnd....nope you just keep attacking the tank.

 

I was making a non tank/brute that was gonna tank for itrials because why not.  Its easy for them to not use taunt but when they cant even attack because provoke is too wimpy is an issue.

 

At any rate,  provoke isnt useless,  its just almost useless.

 

The Presence pool as a whole is pretty damned awesome. An underappreciated gem. But yeah, you're never gonna out-taunt a Tank or Brute (or even a Scrapper) -- it's what they do. Even tho the MAG level of Provoke is the same as Tank/Brute Taunt and Scrapper Confront (MAG 4), Tanks/Brutes get a MAG 3/4 taunt aura and Tanks get Gauntlet (aka Punchvoke) that gives them another MAG 4 AoE taunt on every attack. Slotting Provoke with taunt enhancements doesn't increase the MAG level, only the duration, so that's not gonna help.

The only way you might pull critters off a Tank or Brute is if you slot it with recharges and spam it.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Slotting Provoke with taunt enhancements doesn't increase the MAG level, only the duration, so that's not gonna help.

 

I mean, it would presumably allow you to stack taunts and up the mag that way.

[DougGraves]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

I am the idiot that adds some -to hit debuff slotting in Dark.  But it is very critical to look at the power in Dark and what function that fills. Dark powers almost always do 3 jobs but really function at about two of them as “core” and the third is a “hey i do this too”.  Fear stare on the Corruptor.  To hit debuff.  

 

I slot the fear cone in dark for -toHitDebuffs.  I use it every fight and the benefit of the small increase in the debuff across every foe in every fight is worth the slots.

 

I also have the dark stealth power that gives def and maneuvers for extra def - but I don't slot those for def as the bonus to those is too small to matter.

[KC4800]

I have a thugs/empathy MM with pacify, provoke and unrelenting. The presence pool is really meant for a Mastermind. I bet an Illusion controller could use it as well to great effect.

[Snarky]

5 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

I slot the fear cone in dark for -toHitDebuffs.  I use it every fight and the benefit of the small increase in the debuff across every foe in every fight is worth the slots.

 

I also have the dark stealth power that gives def and maneuvers for extra def - but I don't slot those for def as the bonus to those is too small to matter.

thats where a kismet +to hit goes

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 2/16/2023 at 1:24 AM, Captain Fabulous said:

And before some yahoo chimes in with "ackthulllly, slotting for -end in electric powers is awesome", 1.) I said "usually", and 2.) only useful if you can fully drain them and keep them drained.

 

[ZemX]

12 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The Presence pool as a whole is pretty damned awesome. An underappreciated gem. But yeah, you're never gonna out-taunt a Tank or Brute (or even a Scrapper) -- it's what they do. Even tho the MAG level of Provoke is the same as Tank/Brute Taunt and Scrapper Confront (MAG 4), Tanks/Brutes get a MAG 3/4 taunt aura and Tanks get Gauntlet (aka Punchvoke) that gives them another MAG 4 AoE taunt on every attack. Slotting Provoke with taunt enhancements doesn't increase the MAG level, only the duration, so that's not gonna help.

 

It does, actually.  Taunt duration is a huge factor in threat generation.  Meanwhile, it's not entirely clear that Taunt mag does anything at all.  The reason taunt enhancers increase duration is because that actually DOES increase threat.  Odd as it sounds, the amount of duration left on a taunt magnifies everything you do to that critter in terms of threat by a large factor.   All else being equal, a taunt with a longer duration will beat one with a shorter duration.  Hence a Tanker hitting something with Taunt will beat a Tanker just punching it with "punch-voke" as the latter is considerably less duration (though a Tanker continuing to punch something will BUILD threat over time and beat out one who just used a single Taunt).

 

There is some information about threat gleaned from an old post by Castle on the Live forums, but even that seems to be a little sketchy to people who have tried to crawl through the code.  Magnitude isn't mentioned in the equation Castle gave us but there's still some indication it does something.  Some people think it's another multiplier for threat since we know even using damage-less Taunt powers generate large amounts of threat all by themselves (i.e. the threat equation calls damage a multiplying factor but clearly doesn't use "0" for damage-less taunt/debuff powers).  If there's any critter in the game that has Taunt protection (not resistance), then magnitude would theoretically matter for breaking through that protection.  But I don't know of one.

 

The main reason you won't pull aggro from a Tank/Brute with Provoke is the AT modifiers for Threat level and Threat mod, which are highest for Tankers/Brutes (and I think Dwarf forms) and second highest for Scrappers.  Lowest for the traditionally "squishy" ATs.  A Tanker using Provoke would beat a Blaster using the same Provoke, in other words.

 

That said, I have Provoke on several Stalkers because it helps keep mobs from running away.  It's also useful on teams for grabbing stray aggro or runners that the Tanks/Brutes aren't handling.  

[tidge]

Slotting single-target and toggle aura Confuses (and Taunts) for %damage is almost always a waste. ST Confuses are better served by Contagious Confusion, Taunts are better with Accuracy (for the non auto-hits, such as from Presence pool) or simply Duration.

 

If confuse or taunt is a secondary effect in some sort of attack, and the AT has a relatively low damage scale, then go ahead and try to leverage %damage from procs. There are a handful of single-target holds and debuffs that have "low enough" damage (sometimes depending on AT) that a %damage proc can make sense, but it is not a sure thing.

 

Currently, I am looking real hard at Water Blast's Whirpool: it ought to be a good place to drop %damage from procs, but much like my previous experience with Caltrops and Bonfire I am beginning to think that it's probably an over-rated place for %damage and that the slots would be better used for set bonuses (such as from Annihilation). Psuedo-pets are always worth keeping an eye on: When I see the %procs trigger it is on the casting (I could be missing some of course), so for high DPS ATs I don't think the little bit of occasional extra %damage is making enough of an impact on clear times to justify the use of the slot.

[tidge]

5 hours ago, KC4800 said:

I have a thugs/empathy MM with pacify, provoke and unrelenting. The presence pool is really meant for a Mastermind. I bet an Illusion controller could use it as well to great effect.

 

I lurv the Presence pool on my Fortunata. Provoke is a bit of a waste(*1), and the ST Fear really only gets leveraged when piling on Fear (magnitude/duration) but the AoE Fear is a wonderful additional source of %damage/control and Unrelenting is a thing of Beauty with the way Fortunata defenses/resists (and recharge times!) can be made to work.

 

(*1) Because small number of targets and ToHit roll required. Just grab aggro from an AoE attack instead.

[Captain Fabulous]

12 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

I mean, it would presumably allow you to stack taunts and up the mag that way.

It has a base recharge of 10 seconds and a duration of 8-16 seconds depending upon AT (ranged characters get 8, melee get 12-16), which will scale down based upon critter level and class. I guess if you really wanted to maximize it you could do 2 recharge reductions and 2-3 taunts.

 

58 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

It does, actually.  Taunt duration is a huge factor in threat generation.  Meanwhile, it's not entirely clear that Taunt mag does anything at all.  The reason taunt enhancers increase duration is because that actually DOES increase threat.  Odd as it sounds, the amount of duration left on a taunt magnifies everything you do to that critter in terms of threat by a large factor.   All else being equal, a taunt with a longer duration will beat one with a shorter duration.  Hence a Tanker hitting something with Taunt will beat a Tanker just punching it with "punch-voke" as the latter is considerably less duration (though a Tanker continuing to punch something will BUILD threat over time and beat out one who just used a single Taunt).

 

There is some information about threat gleaned from an old post by Castle on the Live forums, but even that seems to be a little sketchy to people who have tried to crawl through the code.  Magnitude isn't mentioned in the equation Castle gave us but there's still some indication it does something.  Some people think it's another multiplier for threat since we know even using damage-less Taunt powers generate large amounts of threat all by themselves (i.e. the threat equation calls damage a multiplying factor but clearly doesn't use "0" for damage-less taunt/debuff powers).  If there's any critter in the game that has Taunt protection (not resistance), then magnitude would theoretically matter for breaking through that protection.  But I don't know of one.

 

The main reason you won't pull aggro from a Tank/Brute with Provoke is the AT modifiers for Threat level and Threat mod, which are highest for Tankers/Brutes (and I think Dwarf forms) and second highest for Scrappers.  Lowest for the traditionally "squishy" ATs.  A Tanker using Provoke would beat a Blaster using the same Provoke, in other words.

 

That said, I have Provoke on several Stalkers because it helps keep mobs from running away.  It's also useful on teams for grabbing stray aggro or runners that the Tanks/Brutes aren't handling.  

It's always been my understanding that higher MAG levels also increases threat, but like you said, it's all a bit vague as to exactly how it works.

 

6 hours ago, KC4800 said:

I have a thugs/empathy MM with pacify, provoke and unrelenting. The presence pool is really meant for a Mastermind. I bet an Illusion controller could use it as well to great effect.

I use it a lot on Scrappers and Stalkers. Feared critters don't attack unless attacked first, so it's a great alternative damage mitigator.

[Zect]

I routinely encounter situations where I slotted something or built a certain way and:

• It did not perform up to expectations, or
• I changed my priorities/a more appealing tradeoff presented itself.

This happens regularly, and is part of the normal process of build design and iteration.

 

Truly useless things are very rare; there are a lot of off-meta things in this game but most items have at least some niche use, however small. Even kick and boxing, even intangibilities, even many 1st-generation IO sets.

 

Nevertheless, some make even me wonder. One of the most notorious candidates I dealt with is - brace for it - experimental injection from the experimentation power pool. The power effects are aggressively underwhelming: minor status protection and recovery on a long recharge, but I can deal with that. I did not foresee the real reason the power was unusable: it had a range of... 10 (ten) feet! You try using it on friendlies once fighting breaks out. Even the injection power from medicine has a much more reasonable 40ft range.