Arsenal Domination - Tricannon's current taunting capacity?

[Maelwys]

OK. So I've been playing around with rolling up a new /Psi Dom; and I'm torn between Earth and Arsenal.

I used Earth Control extensively on live (albeit as a Controller; not as a Dominator). I tended to lean into Stalagmites and/or Earthquake plus Stone Cages and/or Quicksand for its bread-and-butter CC, saving Volcanic Gasses to use situationally; and I know how hardy Mr. Poo (aka 'Animate Stone') can be and how his taunt performs versus your average Archvillain or Giant Monster (e.g. fantastically). My Earth/Thermal was at one point my best "no external support required AV tanker".

However I'm much less familiar with Arse Control (must... resist... toilet... humour... puns...) - after a bit of a poke in Mids/CoD and a brief fool around on Brainstorm; it seems Smoke Canister pulls most of the weight for reliable AoE CC (and Confuse is a very good one!) with Liquid Nitrogen essentially taking the place of Earthquake/Quicksand. Sleep Grenade is... decent damage when procced I guess? (I'm not overly fond of CC that breaks on damage). But the Tri-Cannon pet is the real unknown for me.

It's ridiculously resilient, which is fantastic. But its taunt mechanics appear rather convoluted - they're wildly different depending on whether the target has the "Raid" flag or not.
The "Tri-Cannon" power itself takes Taunt Enhancements; and these inherited by its one attack "Tri-Gatling Gun" but the taunt component within this attack only kicks in versus PVE foes that DO NOT have the "Raid" flag (and there are a rather large number of difficult foes which possess this flag). 

if !target.HasTag?(Raid) && (target>enttype eq 'critter')

It also has an 8ft PBAoE Taunt Aura which pulses every two seconds. The taunt component of this aura kicks in versus PVE foes that DO have the "Raid" flag. (The power is also flagged as autohit for PVE foes even though a ToHitRoll is mentioned in the taunt component; which complicates matters even further!)

if target.HasTag?(Raid) && (@ToHitRoll + 0.2 < @ToHit)

if target>enttype eq 'critter'

At first glance - great! A hardy pet which can taunt most foes either with its attacks or by being parked on top of Raid-flagged foes!

...but that Taunt Aura does not inherit Taunt Enhancements, meaning that it'll remain at its base 3 second duration. With the Purple Patch that duration will get cut drastically against higher-level targets, so it'll start to wear off before getting reapplied by the 2 second tick rate against a +3 foe or above. And it's only Mag 3; which is enough for most AVs (3), but not some EBs (6).

It seems a bit of a shame that the Taunt Aura can't inherit Taunt Enhancement (and also that its effects are set to "replace" rather than "stack"; since that'd let it hit Mag 6). From reading the test forums, there's been a bit of a bargy about the whole "Raid flag" business and how it affects the Gatling Gun attack and the Aura differently.

So I wanted to throw the question out there for any active Arsenal Control Doms - how are you currently finding the Tri-cannon's taunting capability versus tough targets like AVs/GMs?

Thanks in advance! 🍻
 

Edited May 20 by Maelwys

[Spaghetti Betty]

I haven't played an Ars/ Dom yet, but I have done a lot of testing with a controller!

 

If I had to sum up Tri-Cannon's taunting ability in one word, I would call it...

 

Annoying!

 

I'm constantly having to TP it around so that it isn't taunting mobs out of my patches. As far as AV taunting goes, it's not the best. Even at point-blank range, AVs will still turn around and take a potshot at me if they aren't held (which is often).

 

My advice would be to open the encounter by TPing the Cannon into range, then lock down the AV yourself as fast as possible!

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Does the tri-cannon do better at holding an AV's attention with one or more taunt IOs slotted into it? Does boosting damage also help it (ie: the pet build up proc IO, or perhaps the perfect zinger damage proc IO)?

Haven't seen any posts connected to that, but perhaps asking those specific questions will lead to a response from somebody who has tried them out. 

[Spaghetti Betty]

25 minutes ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Does the tri-cannon do better at holding an AV's attention with one or more taunt IOs slotted into it? Does boosting damage also help it (ie: the pet build up proc IO, or perhaps the perfect zinger damage proc IO)?

Haven't seen any posts connected to that, but perhaps asking those specific questions will lead to a response from somebody who has tried them out. 

I can't personally say for sure. My experience is against +4 AVs where a ton of Taunt is needed to keep their attention. Maybe it's a bit much to ask for an uncontrollable pet to do that, but it really isn't doing much else!

 

Mine is slotted for damage, with the Soulbound proc thrown in. I tried adding the Perfect Zinger proc, but I found it was giving me less return than a single damage IO.

[Frosticus]

I have it slotted 4 expedient, 1 BU proc, 1 +5 taunt.

 

Here's arse/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king (+3 with level shift)

 

 

Takeaway: he targets me ~6 times over the 6.5 min fight. 1 attack and then back to the tricannon. Easily covered by my resistances and the moderate regen of drain psyche.

 

Here's earth/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king.

 

 

Takeaway: he targets me ~12 times over the 6.5 min fight (once stoney joins the fight). At one point he chained 3 attacks in a row. Plus he nearly killed stoney at another point. Still a very easy fight all things considered.

 

Conclusion: I've done a lot of lvl 54 AVs (and various other +3 and +4s on my earth/psi. It takes a lot of effort to keep stoney alive, Void Judgement, barrier, spirit ward, and sometimes support hybrid and/or paralytic interface. He holds aggro quite well while alive and I don't feel he performed his best at tanking in this vid. 

 

I haven't tested tricannon (and arse) enough, but I am confident it still takes a ton of effort, game knowledge, and build specialization to make it excel against +4 AVs as a dominator (excluding use of insp/temps/lore of course). Even with a taunting pet you still take a lot of damage, so plan accordingly. 

Edited May 21 by Frosticus

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, Frosticus said:

I have it slotted 4 expedient, 1 BU proc, 1 +5 taunt.

 

Here's arse/psi/psi vs +4 psychic clockwork king (+3 with level shift)

Takeaway: he targets me ~6 times over the 6.5 min fight. 1 attack and then back to the tricannon. Easily covered by my resistances and the moderate regen of drain psyche.

Thanks for this!

The CWK video is particularly interesting, as it appeared at first glance that the ranged Taunt from the Tricannon's gun attack was actually kicking in despite the fact that the CWK has the "RAID" flag.

I've just retested this one myself on Brainstorm (albeit as a +1 AV) using both a VEAT Widow pet and the Tricannon.
I dismissed the Tricannon midway through the fight to "shed aggro", then resummoned them a short distance away to see if the gun would "taunt".
It didn't. So I was still getting pummelled.
However as soon as I lured the CWK within a few feet of the newly-summoned Tricannon; it instantly peeled the CWK's attention off me and the VEAT pet and kept it.

The King also nearly downed my Tricannon a few times, despite the capped resists. Definitely needed the Spirit Ward on them + Panacea helped several times... 😁

 

[Frosticus]

The "raid" tag issue was supposed to be fixed a couple patches ago. I know when I tested it out I saw an immediate difference* in the ranged performance against Nighstar. That said, it isn't an awe inspring taunt that's for sure and you can definitely peel aggro off of the tricannon.

*CoD still shows it as broken, but at the same time it doesn't seem to indicate that Tri-cannon gets containment damage for trollers either, so I dunno what to think?

Honestly, it shouldn't even have those conditions as no other taunting pets do...

 

Some lvl 54 AVs can dish out like 500-800 dps, so you definitely need something in addition to the innate high resistances of tri-cannon to keep it going past the 15 second mark. Spirit ward, or aid other is probably required as a dom. FWIW, i've had AV's literally 2 shot Stoney when I have to resummon him mid-fight. Those fights usually don't go well for me ha. 

 

I don't think there is an easy answer for doms (if you don't use lore pets) when it comes to tackling lvl 54 AV's. They don't have the tools like an illusion controller, or the ability to neuter damage output like the debuffers, or the survivability of the melee AT's. 

 

Some things that probably don't help the pet taunt:

It's only mag 3, ranged, low damage, no additional annoyance, pets only have a 1.5x threat modifier and it is requiring an additional tohit check against "raid"

[Maelwys]

Yeah there were two patches that made it to live that tweaked the taunt vs RAID/non-RAID IIRC - March 12 and March 19.

Currrently the Tricannon Gatling Gun attack's Taunt seems to not be autohit (just like the attack it's attached to!) and it only affects "non-Raid" foes (e.g. most things)
However it does inherit Accuracy Enhancement and Threat Duration Enhancement; so it's pretty unlikely to miss.
Honestly, I think the way you've got it slotted (1x level 50+5 Taunt Duration IO) makes the most sense, because that means even vs +3s it can still miss two attacks in a row without the Taunt effect dropping off (assuming it's constantly attacking a single target).

The Tricannon 8ft Taunt Aura only currently works against "Raid" foes.
The power is flagged as Autohit (foes)... but the code of the Taunt component within that power is checking for a ToHit check; which *might* be overriding that...? In-game once it got within 8ft of the drone the even-level CWK didn't turn around once for me, but the Drone was getting double-tactics (from me and the VEAT Widow) and there would have been only a 1 second downtime on a single miss.
It does not inherit Accuracy Enhancement or Threat Duration Enhancement; which means we're stuck with its base tohit chance and taunt duration (although you can always layer some Defence debuffs on your foe or ToHit buffs on the Tricannon pet I guess... so Soulbound Proc and Tactics might actually help slightly?)

For raw damage the Tricannon seemed to perform a smidge better with Perfect Zinger: Chance for Psi Damage than with the Soulbound Proc.; but neither kicked in very often. Probably skippable.

[EDIT - The Power effects breakdown here was based on CoD which is currently outdated, see replies below!]
 

Edited May 23 by Maelwys

[Frosticus]

Yes I'm familiar with the patches as I'm the one that did bug the report and petitioned the devs to fix it initially.

 

Is there a chance CoD is out of date because it is showing the exact same code that it showed when it initially went live. I dunno what to say, but you can see it taunting a "raid" target from range in the vid and it used to not do that. Before the second I start attacking they'd go after me unless you smooshed them into a corner together. 

 

At least against Clockwork King it seemed to tank and taunt better than Stoney which actually surprised me.

[Maelwys]

13 hours ago, Frosticus said:

is there a chance CoD is out of date 

 

That might be a good shout, it's usually pretty quick to update, but the timestamp for the two databases are currently showing "Brainstorm-20240301_5940" and "Homecoming-20240227_5928". If neither of those include the changes in those mid-March patches then all the entries for the Tricannon powers are likely inaccurate.

 

Looks like Uberguy last updated the CoDv2 thread at the start of March so perhaps something may have come up + updates are halted at present?

 

RE Tricannon's in game performance, the somewhat inconsistent taunting behaviour is still throwing me a bit... but it's nice to have a viable alternative to Stoney. And if it turns out most of the time I can get away with 4x Expedient, the Soulbound BU Proc and Perfect Zinger Proc, fantastic.



----- [EDIT] -----
I had a scan through the in-game power data and did another CWK test or three on Brainstorm.

The short version is that the Tricannon's "Tri-Gatling Gun" attack *DOES* appear to be capable of taunting RAID-flagged foes now, contrary to what the
(apparently outdated!) CoD entry says.

But it's not doing so reliably.


Looking at the Pet's stated powers in-game (a bit light on detail; but the only accurate info we have available at present. Don't even get me started on Mids):

For the Tricannon's Tri-Gatling Gun power; in order for the Taunt Component to actually kick in against RAID-flagged targets it's requiring an "increased accuracy check" (this seems to be "ToHitRoll+0.2" like most similar powers out there). However this Taunt Component itself is also set to "Ignore Buffs and Enhancements"; therefore any slotting within the power itself will very likely be doing nothing for it.
The attack has an inherent 1.2 accuracy bonus, but the -20% ToHit roll penalty for the Taunt effect vs RAID foes combined with that "Ignores buffs and enhancements" flag is likely why I'm observing it being so inconsistent at grabbing the CWK's attention.



The Tricannon's Taunt power looks to have a 10ft radius now instead of the original CoD-listed 8ft; and it no longer mentions ToHit Rolls or RAID-flagged targets at all.
Unfortunately there's no way of telling by the in-game display if this power is still flagged as "Autohit" against Foes; whether it still does not inherit Accuracy or Taunt duration enhancements from the main pet, or whether the actual tick rate and taunt durations under-the-hood are unchanged... however I very much suspect all that to still be the case. Testing in fights seems to show it never missing; which suggests it does still have the Autohit flag.
So it seems that the Tricannon now has an automatic autohit Mag3 taunt that affects any 5 critters within 10ft of it regardless of whether they have the RAID flag or not... and which will reliably keep up to +2 foes (with only a ~0.05s gap vs +3 foes) constantly taunted.


Without a CoD update we can't say for sure, however given the above I suspect that currently Taunt Duration enhancements are unfortunately doing bugger all for the Tricannon; and that it'll only be able to reliably taunt higher-level foes whenever it's within 10ft of them. However at least its Taunt Aura thankfully doesn't seem to care any longer whether the foe has the RAID flag or not!

In any case I suspect I'm going to roll up a Arse/Psi - it seems to provide a viable alternative to Stoney tanking as long as you can juggle the locations a bit!

Thanks again 👍
 

Edited May 22 by Maelwys

[Frosticus]

This is all great info! 

I think CoD is definitely a patch or two behind. It is also missing the updates to Tear Gas (damage to held foes and allowing damage slotting) from that same period.

 

My original plan was with arse/thorn to plant AV's (impale spam) and go to town while tricannon taunted from range. That didn't work out so well due to me pulling aggro fairly often and /thorny having no recourse beyond rebirth destiny.

 

I messed around with arse/psi on test (that's where the CWK vid is from) that was a mirror build to my earth/psi. It seemed to work well. If I hadn't already dumped so many hrs into earth/psi I'd give it a whirl.

[Maelwys]

I suspect that Arsenal Control is actually substantially better on a Dominator than on a Controller; since it lacks an immobilise to set up containment but has a plethora of fast recharging and long duration AoE CC; plus a large number of debuffs (-Recharge from Cryo Freeze Ray, Sleep Grenade and Liquid Nitrogen; -ToHit and -Perception from Smoke Canister; -Damage from Tear Gas).

Arse/Psi is definitely an AoE-damage-friendly combination, which isn't the usual for Doms... in fact it's so good that I'm actually veering towards a purely debuff-centric Epic Pool (Dark) rather than taking another AoE attack like Dark Obliteration/Fireball/Ball Lightning/PsiTornado; or even WaterSpout (which is one of my main gotos for hybrid damage and control). Sleet is usually king here; but Tar Patch has no KD to interfere with Liquid Nitrogen and the debuffs from Darkest Night would stack very nicely with Smoke Canister and Tear Gas (for a total of -37.5% damage and -22.5% ToHit unslotted!)

I was especially surprised at just how good of a proc-bomb Sleep Grenade is: mine was actually doing more damage than PSW. The Slow Set damage procs in particular (Impeded Swiftness and Ice Mistral's Torment) both have a chance to repeatedly proc over its duration, not just upon cast... and the way it's coded seems to make it particularly well suited for the Superior Dominating Grasp "Firey Orb".


The builds I've been playing around with on test are below, in case anyone's interested.

Dominator - Arse_Psionic (FlashBang).mbd
Dominator - Arse_Psionic (Subdue).mbd
(A smidge over 1400HP and can technically hit softcap against even-level foes via the ~31.5% ToHit debuffs from Darkest night and Tear Gas... but it's really not chasing much in the way of damage mitigation other than "just CC and kill everything". Procced Spirit Ward is for the Tri-Cannon. Vengeance is just for funsies. Flashbang seems like the most skippable power in the set after Tranquillizer TBH: the -ToHit is tiny, it deals no damage and I don't actually need another Mag3 AoE CC!)

 

Edited May 23 by Maelwys

[Light Petting]

On 5/20/2024 at 11:38 AM, Maelwys said:

 Sleep Grenade is... decent damage when procced I guess? (I'm not overly fond of CC that breaks on damage).

It pulses.  It's easily one of my favourite powers in the set.  Plus if you take the ST sleep, they stack... eventually.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 4:28 PM, Maelwys said:

The builds I've been playing around with on test are below, in case anyone's interested.

Dominator - Arse_Psionic (FlashBang).mbd
Dominator - Arse_Psionic (Subdue).mbd
(A smidge over 1400HP and can technically hit softcap against even-level foes via the ~31.5% ToHit debuffs from Darkest night and Tear Gas... but it's really not chasing much in the way of damage mitigation other than "just CC and kill everything". Procced Spirit Ward is for the Tri-Cannon. Vengeance is just for funsies. Flashbang seems like the most skippable power in the set after Tranquillizer TBH: the -ToHit is tiny, it deals no damage and I don't actually need another Mag3 AoE CC!)

 

  
*Steals shamelessly*
Thanks!