Arsenal slotting ideas?

[ZorkNemesis]

It's been a little bit, now that we've had Arsenal Control in our hands for a time how are people slotting it?  It's such a quirky set that a lot of my normal slotting practices don't seem to work and i'm genuinely not sure if I should slot the control effects or the debuffs in some of them.  Take Smoke Canister for instance, I originally wanted to slot Confuse like normal but the Confuse seems to go away just after the smoke clears so I opted for a ToHit Debuff set instead.  Also procs seem to not work in the patches either thanks to pseudopet mechanics.  Sleep Grenade and Liquid Nitrogen also have me wondering about idea slotting, and while I've got a Hold set in Tear Gas I wonder if the damage would be worth boosting.

 

As of now i'm only confident with my slotting for Flashbang and Tri-Cannon.  What is everyone else putting into this set?

 

Also, extra question concerning Liquid Nitrogen.  Since the damage is triggered by knockdown, does the damage occur only from LN's knockdown effect or will any other source of knockdown deal damage within the patch too?  I have Arse/TA and i'm wondering if stacking LN with Oil Slick is causing LN's damage to trigger more often.  Of course they're on fire anywau but more damage is more damage.

 

Edited March 25 by ZorkNemesis

[Hjarki]

Let's start with a brief review of the powers:

• Tranquilizer. Sleep with no miss chance always has fringe applications - think about toggle dropping a Personal Force Field - and this power is somewhat decent as a basic nuke. However, Sleep isn't very good at setting Containment since it drops immediately on damage. Since the Sleep is already far longer than you need it to be, slotting for pure damage via Apocalypse and various procs (depending on secondary, Call of the Sandman might be appropriate) seems the way to go.
• Cryo Freeze Ray. This is one of the weaker Holds available. The supplemental effects aren't really of any use and it has a relatively long activation time. I suspect that most of the time, the best answer will be to slot it as a damage power, potentially with multiple procs including Unbreakable Constraint.
• Sleep Grenade. Static Field is one of the most powerful control effects in the game. This is not Static Field. It has considerably less proc potential and you can't use it as a heal/endurance engine. It doesn't debilitate the spawn so that they can't fight back effectively once you break the Sleep. And, of course, it doesn't self-stack, so you lose most of the virtue of a Sleep field. This is probably the best place to dump Will of the Controller even though putting a damage proc in a Sleep field is dumb - the proc rate is so low that you won't wake up enemies very often and it doesn't matter because you weren't depending on the Sleep field to keep them controlled in the first place.
• Liquid Nitrogen. This checks every 0.2s. There is an 8% chance that it deals a small amount of damage and knockbacks the target, with a 4.5s lockout. Overall, a thoroughly unimpressive power. You can slot this with Ice Mistral's Torment if you need AE defense but don't expect the proc to do anything useful.
• Cloaking Device. LotG mule.
• Smoke Canister. Coerceive Persuasion is the obvious choice here. However, the proc will rarely be useful and the power itself is significantly less potent than click powers like Seeds of Confusion. To compound this, it has a debuff component (making enemies do less damage to one another) and you need to keep attacking them to activate the Confusion.
• Flash Bang. My gut instinct is Cloud Senses here. It's a pretty standard Disorient with uselessly low damage. It can be proc'd out for AE damage, though.
• Tear Gas. As with all the AE Holds, not much use except muling sets.
• Tri-Cannon. I actually like this pet due to its combination of operating at range, taunt and near-invulnerability. It can be proc'd with Perfect Zinger but the fact that it only has a single attack means that doesn't add much damage. You can use the Soulbound Allegiance set but you're probably not building for Psi defense and the pet doesn't do enough damage to justify the proc. So I'd say the standard here would be Expedient Reinforcement. Call to Arms is also a decent option if you need AE defense since the unique is slightly better for a pet that has tons of resist and no defense.

However, it's important to remember that how we slot is dependent on what our secondary set is. For example, I mention building for AE defense. But this isn't a realistic option unless you're playing a set like Traps or Force Field that gives significant defense buffs.

 

 

[evetsleep]

Just wanted to add that while sleep canister isn't static field, it does work in a similar way where mobs that wake up can (and do) get put back to sleep as it's a pulsing sleep.  One thing I've been doing to squeeze out as much AOE damage as I can is open with smoke canister, then flash bang to set up containment and then used sleep canister as an AOE damage power.  It works quiet well once recharge is in a good place in a build (and macros set up).   It's no nuke, but it does respectable SAFE damage on my arse/kin controller since I can drop smoke canister, run in and fulcrum, then pop out and drop flash bang and sleep canister.  What is left is cleaned up pretty quickly between me and the Tri-cannon (which gets containment damage boosts too!).

[Frosticus]

Just to clear up any misunderstandings:

 

Sleep nade: works identical to static field, but has a bit more debuff and trades minor end drain/recovery for damage. It certainly stacks with itself if you have sufficient recharge. Sleep kicks in instantly after the damage, they both alert mobs. Ice Mistral is a decent choice

 

LN: how the enemy gets knocked on its butt is irrelevant. It's the best knockdown patch because unlike iceslick/bonfire/quake LN has enhanceable slow so +con enemies can't easily run through it. Ice Mistral is a decent choice.

 

Smoke Can: this power is not well understood by a lot of players. It is really cool, but probably has too much going on compared to other things in the game.

- first off, the -tohit is only active IF the target is successfully confused. It will always apply, but it will be dormant until confused. So if you want to use it as a tohit debuff you will need to see those purple bubbles. Interpret that as you will, but I'm pretty sure it is to tame the potency of the power so it isn't seeds 2.0 given it is a huge aoe, doesn't aggro, and shoots around corners. So the -tohit in the power isn't to protect YOU, because it is only active when the mob is confused. That said, it isn't hard to make this power perform close to seeds for clear speed (at least for doms).

- second, the -kb of the power only applies to enemies that are successfully confused and weakens their attacks so they don't fling eachother out of the patch. You can still send them to kingdom come with a power like gale.

- third, the confuse (like the -tohit) will apply, but be dormant until the target is attacked (doesn't have to hit, doesn't have to be you attacking), or it is knocked. It will go dormant again if the mob is left alone for 15 seconds. It won't stick on them long if they leave the patch, couple seconds.

- in summary: if you don't successfully confuse the target(s) the power will only make them blind.

 

 

 

 

 

[Hjarki]

4 hours ago, Frosticus said:

Sleep nade: works identical to static field, but has a bit more debuff and trades minor end drain/recovery for damage. It certainly stacks with itself if you have sufficient recharge. Sleep kicks in instantly after the damage, they both alert mobs. Ice Mistral is a decent choice

This is Sleep Grenade: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.assault_rifle.sleep_grenade&at=controller

While there is a 5% chance that you'll get overpower, the Sleep portion of the power overwrites previous instances.

 

This is Static Field: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pets.static_field_controller.static_field&at=minion_pets

Here, the Sleep stacks with itself.

 

The difference is that while both have a 5% chance to Sleep a Boss, Static Field has a 100% chance to Sleep that Boss 4 sec later while Sleep Grenade does not. So you can just fire off Static Field to essentially put any spawn 'on ice' until you're ready to deal with it. If you need to re-apply the Static Field, you can do so without waking anything up. It's also useful for endurance management.

 

Static Field is so good that you take the set just for that one power. Sleep Grenade is a 'meh' power that you'll rarely miss if you skip.

 

4 hours ago, Frosticus said:

LN: how the enemy gets knocked on its butt is irrelevant. It's the best knockdown patch because unlike iceslick/bonfire/quake LN has enhanceable slow so +con enemies can't easily run through it. Ice Mistral is a decent choice.

 

Bonfire and Quake do not have a Slow component at all.

 

Ice Slick does have a slow component, but it isn't enhanceable.

 

However, both Ice Slick and Quake will knockback at about twice the rate of Liquid Nitrogen due to the lack of a lockout period (Bonfire has an even longer lockout period but Bonfire is almost universally used for damage rather than control anyway).

 

4 hours ago, Frosticus said:

- first off, the -tohit is only active IF the target is successfully confused. It will always apply, but it will be dormant until confused. So if you want to use it as a tohit debuff you will need to see those purple bubbles. Interpret that as you will, but I'm pretty sure it is to tame the potency of the power so it isn't seeds 2.0 given it is a huge aoe, doesn't aggro, and shoots around corners. So the -tohit in the power isn't to protect YOU, because it is only active when the mob is confused. That said, it isn't hard to make this power perform close to seeds for clear speed (at least for doms).

All of the aspects of the power except the perception debuff are linked. They all occur together or not. The target does not need to be successfully Confused (the purple bubbles). It merely needs the Confuse effect on it - if you toss Smoke Canister on a +50 Status Resist AV/GM, you won't see any purple bubbles but you'll still get the -hit.

Edited March 26 by Hjarki

[Meknomancer]

Flashbang/Tear Gas then Liquid Nitrogen/Sleep Nade for the best effects. Firing off sleep nade/LN on their turns out to be a complete waste of time dps'wise. If you want the damage component from the latter 2 it only seems to be effective to fire off one of the first 2 initially.

[Crysis]

I play Arsenal with Storm, and I have so many knockdown powers in the rotation that LN does a great job as a ghetto immobilize that deals damage.  Heck, I even have the Ragnarok knockdown proc in Enflame to add more injury to the spawns flopping.  Stuff just melts when you are running +250% recharge and have your END under control.  Really have enjoyed this pairing, haven’t had this ability to rapidly clear +4/x8 spawns since my Ill/Storm.  

[SeraphimKensai]

I play it on a domi currently (arsenal/sonic/ice). The character is 50+3 and fully IO'd. I'm still working on finishing off accolades. As a domi, my slotting choices were designed to get permadom, but I also built in soft capped ranged defense into the build.

 

I really dig a proc'd Sleep Grenade. Liquid Nitrogen is kinda meh given its low chance for knockdown and lockout timer for damage. Smoke Canister is pretty effective on my dom using coercive confusion. My current build skips flash bang and tear gas. I've been contemplating ditching liquid nitrogen for flash grenade to be honest. 

 

Otherwise I leaned in pretty hard on the sonic assault and ice mastery.

 

Overall arsenal control seems fine, but like I said I'm probably going to swap Liquid Nitrogen for Flash Bang,once I get around to it.

 

[Frosticus]

19 hours ago, Hjarki said:

This is Sleep Grenade: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=redirects.assault_rifle.sleep_grenade&at=controller

While there is a 5% chance that you'll get overpower, the Sleep portion of the power overwrites previous instances.

 

This is Static Field: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pets.static_field_controller.static_field&at=minion_pets

Here, the Sleep stacks with itself.

 

The difference is that while both have a 5% chance to Sleep a Boss, Static Field has a 100% chance to Sleep that Boss 4 sec later while Sleep Grenade does not. So you can just fire off Static Field to essentially put any spawn 'on ice' until you're ready to deal with it. If you need to re-apply the Static Field, you can do so without waking anything up. It's also useful for endurance management.

 

Static Field is so good that you take the set just for that one power. Sleep Grenade is a 'meh' power that you'll rarely miss if you skip.

 

 

You are right, I thought they updated static field to reapply rather than stack. My bad. As I've said in the past, I'm not personally a fan of sleep nade, but it mostly sits dormant anyway in my tray. Sleeps in general aren't something I lean on often. 

20 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Bonfire and Quake do not have a Slow component at all.

 

Ice Slick does have a slow component, but it isn't enhanceable.

 

However, both Ice Slick and Quake will knockback at about twice the rate of Liquid Nitrogen due to the lack of a lockout period (Bonfire has an even longer lockout period but Bonfire is almost universally used for damage rather than control anyway).

That's my point. +cons can run right through those patches easily, happens all the time to my earth dom as it lacks quicksand. You need to layer, or use other powers on top of them for them to be effective. LN works on its own as area denial and/or to keep things in your patches. It doesn't make popcorn as well as some others, but it is the overall best knockdown patch especially given it triggers interface regardless of successful knock.

 

You are the first person I've heard highlight bonfire as a damage power, but to each their own.

 

20 hours ago, Hjarki said:

All of the aspects of the power except the perception debuff are linked. They all occur together or not. The target does not need to be successfully Confused (the purple bubbles). It merely needs the Confuse effect on it - if you toss Smoke Canister on a +50 Status Resist AV/GM, you won't see any purple bubbles but you'll still get the -hit.

This is not accurate and is exactly what I was talking about when I said most players don't understand the mechanics of this power.

Here's a vid of how the power works, make close observation of the tohit debuff and when it actually affects the enemy.

 

[Hjarki]

11 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

This is not accurate and is exactly what I was talking about when I said most players don't understand the mechanics of this power.

Smoke Grenade has to be triggered by some form of attack. If it has not been triggered, it will neither -hit debuff nor Confuse. If it has been triggered, it will do both (for about 15 seconds) regardless of the target's level of Confuse Protection.

 

What you're observing is the difference between the trigger or not, not the difference between the Confuse or not.

[Frosticus]

11 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Smoke Grenade has to be triggered by some form of attack. If it has not been triggered, it will neither -hit debuff nor Confuse. If it has been triggered, it will do both (for about 15 seconds) regardless of the target's level of Confuse Protection.

 

What you're observing is the difference between the trigger or not, not the difference between the Confuse or not.

sigh, did you actually watch the video?

I'm going to say no based on what you just said.

 

Look closely at 0:24 (takes damage/attack) and then watch the tohit debuff drop at 0:31

That isn't 15 seconds is it? No, but it is ~2.5 sec after the confuse mag dropped enough to no longer exceed the enemy's protection.

 

This is super easy to test. Can you show the power working the way you believe it does?

 

Edited March 27 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

@Hjarki