Advice on a Bane

[LKN-351]

I'm pulling this guy off the shelf after two years, trying to respec him and make things better. I'm not going all out, but getting a road map set up.

 

If you look at the build in mids you'll notice some empty slots. I'm not sure where things are gunna end up so far, but I have a couple ideas. I thought about 3 or 4 slotting LotG but I highly doubt I need the accuracy so probably 3. I thought about 3 slotting Impervious Skin or Unbreakable Guard, I know with multiple Impervius Skin Status/regens I only get the regen once but I get the status every time but do I need more status resist for the things that aren't covered? I thought about getting rid of some of the ranged attacks, but I'm not really sure which ones to lose to pick up at least tough. Should I even take Weave, if only just for a 5th LotG recharge?

Since Banes don't have DDR I was thinking I should stay away from adding in Def, but maybe I have the wrong idea.

I have the two ATO procs but they're on my Crab toon, which is also slated for a respec, would those procs do better on the Bane instead?

 

Yes yes lol lots of second guessing and indecisiveness going on here.

 

Black Bullet - Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training).mbd

 

[KaizenSoze]

25 minutes ago, LKN-351 said:

I'm pulling this guy off the shelf after two years, trying to respec him and make things better. I'm not going all out, but getting a road map set up.

 

If you look at the build in mids you'll notice some empty slots. I'm not sure where things are gunna end up so far, but I have a couple ideas. I thought about 3 or 4 slotting LotG but I highly doubt I need the accuracy so probably 3. I thought about 3 slotting Impervious Skin or Unbreakable Guard, I know with multiple Impervius Skin Status/regens I only get the regen once but I get the status every time but do I need more status resist for the things that aren't covered? I thought about getting rid of some of the ranged attacks, but I'm not really sure which ones to lose to pick up at least tough. Should I even take Weave, if only just for a 5th LotG recharge?

Since Banes don't have DDR I was thinking I should stay away from adding in Def, but maybe I have the wrong idea.

I have the two ATO procs but they're on my Crab toon, which is also slated for a respec, would those procs do better on the Bane instead?

 

Yes yes lol lots of second guessing and indecisiveness going on here.

 

Black Bullet - Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training).mbd 40.85 kB · 0 downloads

 

I few suggestions

• You have no DDR as you said. So, maximize defense.
• IMO you have too few attacks below 20. If you run a Posi 1 or 2. You'll have three attacks period.
• Venom, Frag, and Wide Area Web nades all have mace versions now with page 7
• Venom nade is a must have for any kind of Bane
• Wide Area Web Nade is amazing now. Huge radius and target cap
• Mace Beam Volley is still not good
• Mace Beam Blast is still lite damage, but 100% chance of KB. You should pick it or Frag nade, but not both.
• In general you should look over the powers as they have changed a bit in page 7
  • https://cod.uberguy.net/html/archetype.html?at=arachnos_soldier
• You need to decide if you are primary melee or ranged. You'll never use all your current attacks you in most play

[LKN-351]

 

Maximize Def? I'm guessing so I have less a chance of being hit by a power that would strip defenses?

 

I actually should check and see if I've already ran Posi 1/2 on this toon, then adjust accordingly. I THINK I may have, but its worth a check. I tried to pack all the armor powers down low soI wouldn't lose them when exemplared, but that is a good point.

 

The P7 changes where why I didn't put much stock in any pre-existing builds lol granted I didn't see any that caught my attention either.

 

I've always heard Venom was a good debuffer but like I mentioned I wasnt sure which ranged attacks to lose. I'll drop MBV to take Venom. Probably 4 slots, but I'm not sure where to move the other 2.

 

Through leveling I seem to remember I ended up using a lot of the ranged attacks while I was waiting for something to recharge and/or before I had placate. Granted, I moved things around so that the ranged where later in the levels but unless whichever power still has a long recharge since P7 and with all the LotGs I'll likely still use some ranged. I thought about doing two builds, one ranged and one melee, cause sometimes it just strikes me to melee and sometimes not. It also depends on the team buildup and what we're fighting, cause AoEs keep you out of hide and if thats the case I can attack from range and still be in the fight. I'm not opposed to either/or.

 

Also, on the other side of things I know some of the powers have KD and some have KB, MIDs is rather vague on which is which and I don't remember off hand but I want to change the KB to KD. I know Blast has KD so I obviously slotted it to just KD as I was leveling.

[KaizenSoze]

1 hour ago, LKN-351 said:

 

Maximize Def? I'm guessing so I have less a chance of being hit by a power that would strip defenses?

 

I actually should check and see if I've already ran Posi 1/2 on this toon, then adjust accordingly. I THINK I may have, but its worth a check. I tried to pack all the armor powers down low soI wouldn't lose them when exemplared, but that is a good point.

 

The P7 changes where why I didn't put much stock in any pre-existing builds lol granted I didn't see any that caught my attention either.

 

I've always heard Venom was a good debuffer but like I mentioned I wasnt sure which ranged attacks to lose. I'll drop MBV to take Venom. Probably 4 slots, but I'm not sure where to move the other 2.

 

Through leveling I seem to remember I ended up using a lot of the ranged attacks while I was waiting for something to recharge and/or before I had placate. Granted, I moved things around so that the ranged where later in the levels but unless whichever power still has a long recharge since P7 and with all the LotGs I'll likely still use some ranged. I thought about doing two builds, one ranged and one melee, cause sometimes it just strikes me to melee and sometimes not. It also depends on the team buildup and what we're fighting, cause AoEs keep you out of hide and if thats the case I can attack from range and still be in the fight. I'm not opposed to either/or.

 

Also, on the other side of things I know some of the powers have KD and some have KB, MIDs is rather vague on which is which and I don't remember off hand but I want to change the KB to KD. I know Blast has KD so I obviously slotted it to just KD as I was leveling.

Less chance of getting hit with -defense and more buffer to absorb the -defense and still be ok.

 

It's a bit tricky to find the right balance between melee and ranged on a Bane. I would suggest testing things on the beta server. So, you can respec at will.

 

Here are my page 7 VEAT builds.

 

 

Sometimes I lead with AOEs. If the mobs are getting packed together nicely, then sometimes I go in stealthed for a Crowd Control hit.

[LKN-351]

I looked through the post you linked last night, the builds are nice but more expensive than I'd prefer. I'm still trying to recoup from my permadom.

 

For now I just need to get rid of what I don't need and add things that are better and more useful. I'll change some things around on the Bane and post it up later.

[KaizenSoze]

58 minutes ago, LKN-351 said:

I looked through the post you linked last night, the builds are nice but more expensive than I'd prefer. I'm still trying to recoup from my permadom.

 

For now I just need to get rid of what I don't need and add things that are better and more useful. I'll change some things around on the Bane and post it up later.

My suggestion if you have a tight budget is go ranged for now. Add more melee later. 

 

Huntsbanes are quite effective even on SOs.

[LKN-351]

I wouldnt say tight, just budget friendly lol

 

I may do the second build as an IO ranged though.

I'm not gunna head for this build specifically now, but I'd like to respec him and leave slotting for this if this seems decent for the future. By the numbers it seems stout, but i'm still learning.

 

Black Bullet - Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training).mbd

[Burnt Umber]

On 5/16/2024 at 5:50 PM, LKN-351 said:

I wouldnt say tight, just budget friendly lol

 

I may do the second build as an IO ranged though.

I'm not gunna head for this build specifically now, but I'd like to respec him and leave slotting for this if this seems decent for the future. By the numbers it seems stout, but i'm still learning.

 

Black Bullet - Arachnos Soldier (Bane Spider Soldier - Bane Spider Training).mbd 41.37 kB · 4 downloads

 

Respectfully, I think you made a few missteps on that build: namely you've heavily over-slotted the passives which, in turn, starves your other powers for slots.

 

You might be better served dropping most of the Unbreakable Guard set from Wolf Spider and Bane Spider Armors, streamlining them to only have the Glad. Armor +Def unique, the Steadfast +Def unique, the Unbreakable Guard +HP unique, and possibly the Steadfast KB protection proc in both.  Similarly, you might want to cut out the Heal enhancers from Health, leaving only the +Rec uniques, and you might want to drop Kismet set pieces from Combat Jumping and Combat Training, replacing those with a single LotG defense enhancer.

 

In fact, you might be better served getting rid of all the LotG pieces, and putting Red Fortune fully in Cloak and Maneuvers, leaving and defense set uniques or generic defense IOs in the remainder.  Furthermore, rather than dipping into the Fighting power pool, you might want to just double up on Leadership toggles, specifically Maneuvers. It's, ultimately, a loss of less than 3% defense, but it frees up power picks and doesn't leave you a dummy power in Kick/Boxing.

[LKN-351]

So what you're saying is the whole thing sucks, trash it and start over? Good thing I used a respec and only have two left 😆😆😆

 

Following on with what Kaizen said about adding a bunch of def and the fact that I really just wanted to make sure I had plenty of slots in the right places and didn't take powers that sucked. I'm not disagreeeing with you, I just feel like I got a lot of def (I still don't know what numbers are 'good enough' or what softcap is, or how much to get to so I can pop a purple and be at softcap) I'm even still on the fence about adding to def with no DDR (Kaizen made sense, but im still *shrug*)

 

Leadership toggles add a bit of extra mez resist/protect which is probably good. I dunno about losing BOTH miracles, but the heal Numi is a slotting I wouldn't mind losing. I just didn't know of a place somewhere else I should put the slot. The primary powers are all as slotted as they need/can be with the available standard IOs, aside from not bein aware of which ones I need to add in a KB to KD.

 

Just so its stated, I'm not disagreeing with you or Kaizen cause I'm sure you two must know better than I but I'm still trying to wrap my head around why to do this thing instead of that thing.

Mock your build up in MIDs and let me look at it. I'll say it again, I have both ATO procs but they're on my Crab. If they'd be better on the Bane I can move them over, the Crab needs rebuilt too. Also, I wont use purples and theres only one or two PVP IOs I'll put in my builds.

[Burnt Umber]

Oh dear, I wasn't trying to say that the whole build sucks. Sorry if that's what I conveyed.

 

Personally, I try to choose powers or slotting that fits a common purpose, and I try to do so without necessarily going wild with expensive pieces.  With that in mind, I attached two mock-ups of you build that I think maintain the spirit of yours.  I also threw in a copy of my own build to the extent that might be helpful.

 

W/r/t defense and the softcap, the "good enough" number is 45% defense.  At that value you effectively floor an even-con mobs chance to hit you at 5%.  (It's technically more complicated but that's the main idea.) Not having DDR sort of hurts, but really, I find inspirations mostly cover those deficits or I was already going to get KO'ed so how fast is irrelevant.

VeneficioHybrid.mbd Black Bullet revised1.mbd Black Bullet revised2.mbd

[LKN-351]

I got done reading your first post and it dawned on me that the stuff you mentioned removing was all the IO sets I had added lol

You didn't say it sucked, but it was implied LOL even if unintentionally

 

I can't look at the two builds you posted cause I haven't updated MIDs yet, which i was putting off cause some had posted in tools that they where having issues with the update. I'm gunna go eat and then I'll update it and have a look.

[LKN-351]

I forgot to mention that it never dawned on me there was no KB protection/resistance lol it has been a long time since I've played my Bane consistently

 

Don't the def numbers from the stealth pool supress when you're out of hide? Granted, so does cloaking device but IMO that would be all the more reason I'd prefer to not take stealth. I'm not sure what the supressed def numbers are but it's lower than when you're in hide thats for sure. That seems like unreliable def numbers to me. Suppression is different than toggling the powers off, but with both toggled off the def numbers are well under 45%. Maybe I'm completely wrong and I'm over-estimating how much def it supresses.

 

Those three you posted are all nice builds, but my goal wasn't a full on build. I just wanted to add to survivability. I see and understand that my def numbers on the second build I shared need more and I didn't think to mess with KB protection so I could do for some changes.

 

I'm dying to play the game for a couple of hours, I'll mess with this more later.

[Burnt Umber]

Ahh, I see how what I said could've implied that.

 

Really, it's not that you slotted bad sets. Kismet is okay and Unbreakable Guard is one of my preferred resist sets. My issue - which might not be an issue for you - is that you slotted passives for recharge and endurance reduction when they consume no endurance nor need to recharge; that seems a bit wasteful when you could be putting slots into your toggles to fill out the sets more fully.  Also, if you're slotting health to boost your regen., you are at best boosting it from 40% to 80% - a bonus half-way replicated by slotting the Numina +20% regen./+10% rec. unique. Those two slots could be used elsewhere, like your TT: Leadership to be able to to slot all 6 pieces of Gaussian's for more defense.

 

Your power choices were also perfectly fine, so it's not like you really were taking any duds.  I personally abstain from using the Fighting power pool just for the sake of getting Weave. It's a good power, but I don't think it's worth getting boxing/kick as a dummy power and having Tough underslotted. Many people are fine with that trade-off, though, so really that's more of a preference than any sort of absolute.

 

Addendum:

 

8 minutes ago, LKN-351 said:

Don't the def numbers from the stealth pool supress when you're out of hide? Granted, so does cloaking device but IMO that would be all the more reason I'd prefer to not take stealth. I'm not sure what the supressed def numbers are but it's lower than when you're in hide thats for sure. That seems like unreliable def numbers to me. Suppression is different than toggling the powers off, but with both toggled off the def numbers are well under 45%. Maybe I'm completely wrong and I'm over-estimating how much def it supresses.

 

They do suppress, down to about 3% fully enhanced. Stealth and Leadership: Maneuvers together amount to the same defense you were getting from Weave (i.e., 8% defense to all).  I take stealth on many of my builds since it really doesn't require much, if any, slotting to have a nice little defense boost.  Admittedly, I wasn't fully soft-capping the build since you mentioned up thread that you'd be okay with using purples here and there - mostly a close enough is good enough.

 

Stealth itself also has the interesting quality of reducing your "threat level" to mobs, meaning that they are less likely to attack you when you are near. That allows you to better stealth traveling/missions when you want as well as to better position yourself for your stealth strikes.

Edited May 19 by Burnt Umber

[LKN-351]

2 hours ago, Burnt Umber said:

Ahh, I see how what I said could've implied that.

 

It's really fine though lol

 

2 hours ago, Burnt Umber said:

Really, it's not that you slotted bad sets. Kismet is okay and Unbreakable Guard is one of my preferred resist sets. My issue - which might not be an issue for you - is that you slotted passives for recharge and endurance reduction when they consume no endurance nor need to recharge; that seems a bit wasteful when you could be putting slots into your toggles to fill out the sets more fully.  Also, if you're slotting health to boost your regen., you are at best boosting it from 40% to 80% - a bonus half-way replicated by slotting the Numina +20% regen./+10% rec. unique. Those two slots could be used elsewhere, like your TT: Leadership to be able to to slot all 6 pieces of Gaussian's for more defense.

 

I used Unbreakable to try to cut down some of the end usage and some pretty good numbers on the rest of the set, granted I would've liked to 5 slot instead of just 4. Kismet was decent numbers S/L with not much commitment and S/L is usually where I run short on the other builds I've tried to put together and it ends up being a problem lol

It doesn't bother me to have aspecs of the enhanceable stats go to waste if the set adds good bonus and I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure I've slotted pieces that get the main aspect into the green and the end usage as low as I can, but on the flip side of that I don't like gathering set bonus that I dont want like travel speeds... I usually skip most sets if the first bonus is travel speed. Like for example with Gaussian, its first three slots aren't really something I'd find that valuable on this specific character, those would be helpful on like /regen or /invuln but the 5th and 6th are pretty good. Same with Reactive Defenses, the 5th and 6th bonus is great but the S/L numbers are minute and I've been told F/C resist aren't that important cause its barely used by the enemies.

I am gunna move that Numi heal slot from health but I'm still on the fence about the two slotted miracle. In my experience you always need more recovery lol and thats been my go to setup since I started playing HC. When I get this guy to a place I like him and it turns out I have too much recov, then I'll deal with the miracle bit.

 

3 hours ago, Burnt Umber said:

They do suppress, down to about 3% fully enhanced. Stealth and Leadership: Maneuvers together amount to the same defense you were getting from Weave (i.e., 8% defense to all).  I take stealth on many of my builds since it really doesn't require much, if any, slotting to have a nice little defense boost.  Admittedly, I wasn't fully soft-capping the build since you mentioned up thread that you'd be okay with using purples here and there - mostly a close enough is good enough.

 

Stealth itself also has the interesting quality of reducing your "threat level" to mobs, meaning that they are less likely to attack you when you are near. That allows you to better stealth traveling/missions when you want as well as to better position yourself for your stealth strikes.

 

I looked a little deeper into the stealth suppress (which means I looked at the whole screen in mids, doh lol) and it shows the suppressed amount but it adds the full amount to the totals screen. I wish there was something else I could take to add in that def without having to take the whole fighting pool. Although that threat level change is interesting but I thought the stealth powers didn't stack but the procs do.

I'm not a stealther, I'm always in kill all mode lol no one gets out alive.

 

Personally my mind is still boggled by the building up of def at all, I do like layered survivability but I usually go towards the resist side of things. I just played my Regen scrapper and I've been on my human only WS a ton lately and they have some def (11%) but their resists are real high but not capped. Theres a bit of attentiveness with both of them and they both need some more S/L resist (/regen moreso) but they just don't die even at +4

Speaking of my regen toon, that needs adjusted lol

[kelika2]

Venom and Frag from Wolf > Volley and Blast from Bane

Skip pets

Play like a Stalker. 

Slot for defense

The only leadership required is Defense.  I took assault in my 30s, didnt even touch Tactics

Combat Training: Offensive is also not a low level requirement

Mace Beam sucks, Poisonous Ray is ok

Didnt take Fighting Pool until my 40s

Infiltration is a stand alone travel power due to how tight power-wise this was until the 30s