Should I go DP/Time or DP/FF?

[StrawberryWitch]

Hello! So I was thinking of making a Dual Pistols hero and not sure if I wanna go Time Manipulation or Force Field as her secondary. Any recommendations? What are the pros and cons for them?

 

I mostly do iTrials, mishes, radios, or farms. I rarely solo if at all.

[Without_Pause]

At the end of the day Time offers more utility than what FF does. Yes, FF offers more Def, but since players are already building for that, I would rather take something with more options.

[StrawberryWitch]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

At the end of the day Time offers more utility than what FF does. Yes, FF offers more Def, but since players are already building for that, I would rather take something with more options.

Thank you! Ok Time it is. 

[Zect]

Both time and FF are high-defense (softcap all without fighting), moderate -res support sets.

 

Time offers heals, offensive buffs of rech, tohit and dmg on top of the complete standard debuff suite of -def -res -regen -tohit -dmg -rech. FF offers mez prot, complete debuff resist, -special on enemies, repel and knockdown. While they both offer strong utility, time is more offensive and FF more defensive.

 

Time is best played at close to medium range because of its strong debuff aura and the fact that all but one of its powers are pbaoe. FF is comfy at any range unless you want to use the repel aura.

 

Time requires a medium to high amount of rech. Basically every IO'ed time out there will want to get ~85% global rech plus hasten for perma-chronoshift. FF can be played with very little rech since its -res powers do not have long base recharges. In practice this means FF has much more room to explore unconventional hasteless and low-rech builds. It is one of very few powersets of any kind that do not derive a significant benefit from global rech.

 

FF does slightly more -res against a single target, but time does more aoe -res.

 

 

[Heatstroke]

Time... hands down... 

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Heatstroke

[Without_Pause]

11 hours ago, Zect said:

Time requires a medium to high amount of rech. Basically every IO'ed time out there will want to get ~85% global rech plus hasten for perma-chronoshift.

FYI, to make CS perma in the builds I have been doing Mid's shows global recharge in the area of 200%. I have three purple sets in my Fire/time Controller and I need Incarnates to hit actual perma CS.

[Bellicose]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

FYI, to make CS perma in the builds I have been doing Mid's shows global recharge in the area of 200%. I have three purple sets in my Fire/time Controller and I need Incarnates to hit actual perma CS.

 

Doesn't Chronoshift provide +50% recharge?

[Hedgefund]

18 minutes ago, Bellicose said:

 

Doesn't Chronoshift provide +50% recharge?

It does.  I actually find perma CS so easy to achieve many (not all) of my Time toons only slot one lvl 50+5 IO in Hasten to get perma hasten + CS, no incarnate boosts needed.

[Without_Pause]

Build isn't done as I even have one slot to place, but here's an example of one of my Time builds. This currently uses two purple recipes and 2-slotted Hasten in order to get CS's recharge down to 90.84 seconds. I can swap in another purple set to get it under 90 seconds, but I'm not sure using purples is what I would call 'easy.' That's potentially adding about 200 million to a build just right there, and I tend to aim for 500 total. At one point the build had CS's recharge even lower, but I keep tweaking things. 

 

 

Irradikate - Defender (Time Manipulation - Radiation Blast).mbd

[Zect]

13 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

FYI, to make CS perma in the builds I have been doing Mid's shows global recharge in the area of 200%. I have three purple sets in my Fire/time Controller and I need Incarnates to hit actual perma CS.

 

To make CS perma for any build you need +300% rech enhancement from all sources.

 

95% ED-capped enhancement (assumed)

70% hasten

50% chronoshift itself (I assume the user knows chronoshift itself gives rech)

85% other global rech

= 300%

 

My intent is to convey an impression of how difficult it is for a build designer to achieve perma-chronoshift by stating the amount of rech that needs to come from set bonuses or incarnate build capacity.

 

Though, looking at my original quote:

 

On 9/9/2023 at 10:32 AM, Zect said:

~85% global rech plus hasten for perma-chronoshift

 

That is ambiguous because it is not explicitly stated what is and is not being included. So, ignore that and refer to the calculation above.

[Without_Pause]

I got 73.78% Recharge on my slotting. One could simply add in a Recharge/End Mod on the build I posted to calk walk making it perma. You could likely lose about 10% recharge and still be in the clear. One still has to aggressively pursue Recharge bonuses though. I have yet to find a way to make it perma on my Fire/time Controller without Incarnates in a way I am happy with, and that's with 3 purple sets and two slotted Hasten. I haven't found a 6th slot I'm happy with to give it the possible recharge, and I'm doing the same Alpha anyway.

[BrandX]

Time likes to get into the mix with that -ToHit Aura.  DP likes to get into the mix with that AOE Nuke.

 

Go DP/TIME!

Also, in my own testing, using Time Crawl on hard targets, while a weak -Regen, still helps with DPS.  My Time Crawl does have damage Procs in it to give it some damage too tho.