PUG Life: I was the problem

[DougGraves]

time/dual pistols defender does not scratch my itch.  It does a bit of everything but nothing dramatic.  It's hard to tell that the enemies do 30% less damage, recharge 30% less, that my AOE heal + regen is doing some healing to my team, my aoe's are doing a bit of damage, etc.

 

So I switched to kin/dual pistols defender for the siphon speed to make my aoe's rechage faster.

 

And I ended up on a team in the Hollows on +3.

 

And we wiped over and over again.

 

After several wipes, I realized that the leader was using the arsenal control which has an aoe gas sleep that puts groups to sleep over and over again.  Huge groups of them - in the outcast vs troll mission it slept all of the spawns in that corner hallway on the first floor.  And I was waking them all up with my aoe.

 

Basically the entire team quit and we re-filled.  So I can't say it was just me.  But with the new team I stopped using aoe and we slowly picked off the trolls one by one as the rest slept.

 

It was painfully slow taking on +3s as we could barely hit.  But that aoe sleep was a game changer when we let them stay asleep.

 

So now I have to go try the arsenal control.  But I bet my teammates use aoe and wake them all up.

[Clave Dark 5]

That Sleep seems to me to be rife for problems like that ha ha.  Have to say though, I found Time/Pistols on a Def pretty fun, but have never been able to have fun with any Kin - talk about feeling hands off!

[DougGraves]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

 have never been able to have fun with any Kin - talk about feeling hands off!

 

The kin part is mostly hands off with speed boost combined with fiddly needing to redo siphon speed and siphon power frequently.

 

I have not enjoyed it before now.  But I am enjoying it paired with just a few attacks.

[JasperStone]

I have been on a lot of +2/+3 PUGS in the Hollows recently with the same results.

 

It may not be you 🙂

 

Edited February 25 by JasperStone
fixed typos

[tidge]

The AoE sleeps fall into the category of "plays one way solo, plays a different way on teams."

 

I know nothing about the new Arsenal sets, but on my other characters with an AoE sleep... I occasionally take it early to help with solo survability, and on PUGs it isn't often used in heavy rotation.

 

I used to always skip the AoE sleep powers, but I have come to find them to be very useful to help avoid situations going pear-shaped.

[Diantane]

Our team walked into a room with two groups. I put the group on the left to sleep so we can concentrate on the group on the right while the other group takes a a nap. Then some idiot throws an aoe at the sleeping group and both groups wipe the team - UGH !

[ScrewlooseCohh]

On 2/25/2024 at 4:47 AM, DougGraves said:

  It's hard to tell that the enemies do 30% less damage, recharge 30% less, that my AOE heal + regen is doing some healing to my team, my aoe's are doing a bit of damage, etc.

 

 

Back on Live my main character was a Spines Dark Armour Scrapper.  Several friends that I teamed with regularly commented without prompting that bosses and LTs were attacking noticeably less often when I was teaming with them.

So things like Recharge Debuffs can be hard to notice, especially when what you see all the time is the debuffed critters, but they definitely have an impact.

regards, Screwloose.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

[High_Beam]

Honestly your AoE's waking the sleepers, was likely not fully part of your wipes, the ARS player may not have been synergizing their powers well, depends on how low in the hollows we are talking.  ARS Control is very effective when you leverage off of sleep grenade.  Liquid Nitrogen (at 6) dropped after Sleep Grenade plays well so if (when) they are awakened, them falling on their buttocks and taking damage, renders them essentially out of play.  A little higher up in level Smoke Canister (at 12) is great because if they are awakened (I mean when they are awakened) they begin fighting each other and at the same time sleep ticking again.  Its glorious controlled chaos that works just fine in a team, people just need to get away from thinking every control set needs hard locks or immobs to work a group at low levels with ARSC.  I really enjoy the set.

 

Granted, when you get to 18 or 22 you get your AoE disorient and AoE hold so bonus plan there which gives you even more group management until you get your aggro sponge tri-cannon also shooting up your sleepers 😞

 

 

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, High_Beam said:

Honestly your AoE's waking the sleepers, was likely not fully part of your wipes, the ARS player may not have been synergizing their powers well, depends on how low in the hollows we are talking.  ARS Control is very effective when you leverage off of sleep grenade.  Liquid Nitrogen (at 6) dropped after Sleep Grenade plays well so if (when) they are awakened, them falling on their buttocks and taking damage, renders them essentially out of play.  

 

We were level 8.  I don't recall seeing any ice patches

[Clave Dark 5]

13 hours ago, Diantane said:

Then some idiot throws an aoe at the sleeping group and both groups wipe the team - UGH !

My bad, I do that all the time.  This is why no one should be trusting me with a ranged attack, I'm likely to mis-tab and do something stupid like that.

[High_Beam]

7 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

We were level 8.  I don't recall seeing any ice patches

Yeah.  Thats a little more tight there.

[Shred Monkey]

Sleep is a great tool for soloing... But on teams it's just much more practical to buff the heck out of your teammates.

[StarseedWarrior]

On 2/24/2024 at 11:47 AM, DougGraves said:

time/dual pistols defender does not scratch my itch.  It does a bit of everything but nothing dramatic.  It's hard to tell that the enemies do 30% less damage, recharge 30% less, that my AOE heal + regen is doing some healing to my team, my aoe's are doing a bit of damage, etc.

 

So I switched to kin/dual pistols defender for the siphon speed to make my aoe's rechage faster.

 

And I ended up on a team in the Hollows on +3.

 

And we wiped over and over again.

 

After several wipes, I realized that the leader was using the arsenal control which has an aoe gas sleep that puts groups to sleep over and over again.  Huge groups of them - in the outcast vs troll mission it slept all of the spawns in that corner hallway on the first floor.  And I was waking them all up with my aoe.

 

Basically the entire team quit and we re-filled.  So I can't say it was just me.  But with the new team I stopped using aoe and we slowly picked off the trolls one by one as the rest slept.

 

It was painfully slow taking on +3s as we could barely hit.  But that aoe sleep was a game changer when we let them stay asleep.

 

So now I have to go try the arsenal control.  But I bet my teammates use aoe and wake them all up.

I do not think the issue is those of us unaware if really the responsibility of the person with the powers, what I like to do when playing kinetics is ill link fulcrum shift for example and let people know about what the icon buff looks like and if they see it make sure to cast your biggest damage dealers, granted it does not always work but this usually works half the time.

 

On my ill/rad controller on live I always had to make macros for target so I wouldn't loose my anchors. When you start making macros its allot more fun to because then teams go so much smoother.

[Zhym]

On 2/25/2024 at 3:49 PM, DougGraves said:

 

The kin part is mostly hands off with speed boost combined with fiddly needing to redo siphon speed and siphon power frequently.

 

I have not enjoyed it before now.  But I am enjoying it paired with just a few attacks.

I really enjoy teaming with my Kin/Sonic Defender.  Teams love speed boosts, and Sonic has some nice debuff for when you aren't making everyone go zoom.  I never feel idle or useless with that character.

 

That character does have Siren's Song, which is a big AoE sleep, but she doesn't use it when teaming (because there's not much point).  It comes in handy when she solos, though.

Edited February 26 by Zhym

[Marshal_General]

I think the sleep patch is a great way to break up the alpha. I was with another arsenal in a Yin TF, and nobody took an alpha. Of course, at that level, we had our other AoEs to alternate.

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, Zhym said:

I really enjoy teaming with my Kin/Sonic Defender.  Teams love speed boosts, and Sonic has some nice debuff for when you aren't making everyone go zoom.  I never feel idle or useless with that character.

 

I have not made a kin/sonic yet.  Sonic is my go to for defender secondaries due  to the debuff.  I really like my dark/sonic defender

[UltraAlt]

On 2/24/2024 at 12:47 PM, DougGraves said:

After several wipes, I realized that the leader was using the arsenal control which has an aoe gas sleep that puts groups to sleep over and over again.  Huge groups of them - in the outcast vs troll mission it slept all of the spawns in that corner hallway on the first floor.  And I was waking them all up with my aoe.

 

...But with the new team I stopped using aoe and we slowly picked off the trolls one by one as the rest slept.

 

It was painfully slow taking on +3s as we could barely hit.  But that aoe sleep was a game changer when we let them stay asleep.

 

So now I have to go try the arsenal control.  But I bet my teammates use aoe and wake them all up.

 

This is the problems with sleep.

 

At some point, I really want to get a "Sandman" team together that uses Sleeps and single target attacks only with everyone attacking through the team lead.

I think I can make that happen as I have a couple of friends that I game with a couple of times a week on themed teams, but I honestly don't know when or if we will get around to a "Sandman" team, but I have always thought that sleep powers could be extremely powerful if they were used by a team that respected the power and utilized it to its fullest potential.

 

So, I guess what I'm saying here, is that - unless you can use sleep to gain containment damage for a controller - sleep powers are pretty useless on PuGs.

[Marshal_General]

The sleep patch that Arsenal leaves is better than other sleeps. Since it is a patch, it's more like narcolepsy gas. They wake up, take a step and fall back asleep. I have found it very useful in a team.

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

The sleep patch that Arsenal leaves is better than other sleeps. Since it is a patch, it's more like narcolepsy gas. They wake up, take a step and fall back asleep. I have found it very useful in a team.

 

I use the electric sleep which does the same thing and it is great as long as the team fights on it.  It is amazing for the Posi 1 City Hall waves of ambush