Earth/Psi vs Ice Mistral SF - no insp/temps/amps +1x8

[Frosticus]

Final Encounter

Archus AV + wave after wave...after wave of ambushes
Player is set to lvl 40

No Inspirations/temps/amps/click accolades
No deaths

+1x8

 

If you have run this SF you know the final boss is absolute Mayhem at x8. You are at a slight disadvantage at lvl 40 as you will not have access to your final 2 powers and of course, no incarnates.

This is challenging content for most AT's, but is perhaps especially challenging for dominators as it really stresses their ability to control multiple full spawns AND have a dangerous AV biting at their heels the whole time.

 

I'd be impressed to see any other dominator do it, so if you feel your build is up to the challenge I encourage you to try.

 

There are two unique challenges in this SF to overcome:

 

1 - at 75/50/25% health he summons ambushes. Each consists of 3? waves of spawns. They are time based so if you move slowly you might have a LOT of enemies present. If you allow yourself to be overrun by Succubi and Death mages you will probably fail as those are both problematic enemy types for most builds.

 

2 - Archus is a formidable AV. Dark debuffs, dark attacks and psi attacks. Plus he spams his self heal twilight grasp. He also has healing flames. So bring dps.

 

Keys to success (for me):
-Load up on inspirations…ha j/k, I have them disabled, but that will be the typical solution.
-Being able to control entire spawns from out of line of sight. The sheer volume of enemies means most standard controls will leave you very exposed.

-Earthquake and volcanic gases can consistently affect well over 16 enemies.
-Stalagmites gets out faster than other stuns so less incoming damage taken. It makes a difference compared to a slow stun like flashfire, or a pbaoe stun like dark's where you need to facetank for longer.
-Def debuffs. You will whiff when multiple death mages target you. Huge def debuffs of earth keep you powering thru
-Drain Psyche. Lots of targets means huge regen and recovery. I screw up a couple times and fail to get in the middle to saturate it. But most times it is head and shoulders above what other assault sets can offer.
-AoE damage. Proc'd PSW, proc'd psy nado, world of confusion and enflame make the mobs disappear at a good rate.
-Ability to face down a dark+psi based AV and outpace his heal. All else aside, few doms will pass this part of the test even if they could handle the ambushes.

[carroto]

Only about halfway through the video so far but it's a fun watch.  Two things jumped out at me.  First you took Subdue, which I usually skip due to the low DPSA, but I presume that's because you just wanted another ranged attack.

 

The thing that most stood out to me though was how tanky your pet is.  I'm curious how you pulled that off.  I'd have to go look at my Earth Controller's build but I think I recall that I tried to make the pet pretty tough but I'm pretty sure it would be taking more damage than that in a situation like that, and I'm not sure it would survive at all.  IIRC psi is one of the stone's strongest resistances, so maybe that's just a challenge he's well suited to.

Edited August 7 by carroto

[Frosticus]

Subdue is for the dom +dam ATO. While not a great attack it boosts everything else I do including enflame. It was either tk Thrust or subdue in the build (or arcane bolt, but it is way too slow for me).

 

Stoney's a beast. He'll happily tank psi/toxic/fire/cold/energy/negative with the 2 res IOs and spirit ward. Spirit Ward is what you mostly see keeping him going here. If I shut that off he'd go down very quickly (this power works wonders when placed on your team tank too) and the fact that as ambushes they target me above all else.

For the most part he's only dealing with the AV, which is of course very useful.

[BitCook]

Have you shared your build on this?  Looks very solid although from the powers you can't have more than 20% ish to most defenses.

 

Edit: You did in the Ice Minstrel thread.  Thanks!

Edited August 10 by BitCook

[Frosticus]

2 hours ago, BitCook said:

Have you shared your build on this?  Looks very solid although from the powers you can't have more than 20% ish to most defenses.

 

Edit: You did in the Ice Minstrel thread.  Thanks!

 

Yes, I've switched out concealment for leadership since that build, but it is more or less the same.

 

IMO defense on a build with no innate defense or ddr is not a productive path. It works when you don't really need it (ie easier content) and fails when you do.

it is too inefficient to get multi-vector defense on a dom and still have a character that does good control and damage. Single vector defense like ranged def builds have giant holes in their protection. It fails at the things I enjoy doing with characters, though it may be satisfactory to others.

 

The def I have is more or less incidental, or in the goal of boosting stoney's defense. He does benefit greatly from any and all defense on top of his huge resistance and absorb when tanking AV's.

[carroto]

On 8/10/2023 at 12:01 PM, Frosticus said:

IMO defense on a build with no innate defense or ddr is not a productive path.

 

For doing specific challenges with no inspirations for example I could see this, but my thinking for more general-purpose builds is quite different.  Having any kind of base of defense means that a single Cold or FF on the team pushes me into the range where it starts becoming meaningful.  Ditto for inspirations.  The more defense I have, the fewer inspirations I need to soft-cap, and therefore the longer my tray will last me.  I always grab the low-hanging fruit, even when not building for defense.

[Frosticus]

32 minutes ago, carroto said:

 

For doing specific challenges with no inspirations for example I could see this, but my thinking for more general-purpose builds is quite different.  Having any kind of base of defense means that a single Cold or FF on the team pushes me into the range where it starts becoming meaningful.  Ditto for inspirations.  The more defense I have, the fewer inspirations I need to soft-cap, and therefore the longer my tray will last me.  I always grab the low-hanging fruit, even when not building for defense.

That's true enough. I won't pretend that I play the same as most. I rarely team, generally just solo tf's with my own self-imposed restrictions (I hate lore pets so much haha), and only join for the bigger stuff.

I usually find on most late game teams the defense buffs are aplenty whereas resistance buffs are more rare outside of whatever residual barrier is going.

 

So for something like dominators, who have a good modifier on the App shields I strive toward a solid resistance base.

This is my earth/psi with melee core. I alternate rune and melee hybrid, so usually have good resistance going.

One thing most players don't know is that cardiac boosts the resistance of melee core (and barrier), pushing its base resistance up to 19.3% with no targets in range.

In the case of /psi chip (or steady) damage is nicely covered by the regen, whereas spike damage (defense based) can still see you faceplanted very quickly. But that's just my experience.