Arsenal Control vs +4x8 ITF

[Frosticus]

 

ITF +4x8

Restrictions in place:
No Inspirations, Amplifiers, Temporary Powers, Click Accolades

No Lore Pets
No Deaths

*not for the faint of heart - It took me about 3.5hrs of playing

 

Mission 1:
Pretty straightforward. Only two potential failure points. The intersection holding Sybils 4-6 and the Minotaur fight at the end. As long as you don’t trigger the nictus ambush it is a pretty easy mission. Cloaking device means you only have to clear the target spawns as you can stealth between.

 

Mission 2:
You are more than welcome to trigger the ambushes. Arsenal doesn’t have any issue clearing them, but it will slow you down on what is already a lengthy mission. I just use the strategy of leaving each one with a sliver and then defeating all 10 in one blitz. Once again cloaking device makes this so much easier (any full invis can work) because the ambushes can’t find you.

Just don’t bite off more than you can chew because the build has minimal negative resistance, so don’t leave the nictus unchecked.

 

 

Mission 3:
This is where the wheat starts to separate from the chaff. Up until this point most any dominator has the tools to cope. That changes in mission 3 and it isn’t just because of the AV’s, although that is a major roadblock. The all-minotaur/cyclops group (must be defeated) requires more control/strategy than most builds afford and the frequent ambushes mean you need to rapidly deploy strong aoe controls. Last but not least, the computer’s final wave spawns a full group of boss robots outside of aoe control range. Meaning you either put down multiple aoe controls, or you fall back and try to wrangle them into a clump. In my experience the computer is the achilles heel of this mission. You get lulled by how slowly it dies and then the pack of robots punish you.

 

Both AVs are dangerous. They typically bring friends and you either have the tools to deal with them or you don’t. For most dominator primaries the reality is they don’t have the tools to consistently handle the AVs.

 

 

Mission 4:
I personally find mission 3 to be more challenging, but this one certainly takes a long time. I wont go into a ton of detail regarding strategy because every dom (that makes it this far) will have a different approach. For example my earth dom does better “pausing” the fight by immobing Romy and dealing with each ambush as they come. A single target confuse dom will use that while their lore pets carry them. But my Arsenal dom can handle way bigger ambushes, while also lacking said pause button (could do this strategy with tranq tho). So it is better to drag Romy off and deal with the huge wave of delayed ambushes.

 

The nictus are easy and a snooze fest. Plant tricannon in the middle and slowly whittle them down. 

*Do you need to separate Romy from the Nictus?
Probably not, but you definitely don’t want all of them + ambushes.

Edit: yes you will need to separate them. I can't do enough dps, but Tricannon tanks like a champ

Spoiler

 

 

I dunno, it was my first go at the ITF with arsenal (badge at end) and  for the purposes of this challenge you end up playing more conservatively the further you go in the TF (or at least I do)

 

Do yourself a favour and skip part 2, It is ultra boring

Spoiler

 

 

And there you have it. A +4x8 ITF featuring a dominator that actually fights and is not reliant upon lore pets to defeat hard targets. 
 

Edited July 24 by Frosticus

[Frosticus]

The build I'm running now

Dominator (Arsenal Control - Savage Assault energy.mbd

[MirrorDarkly]

Very impressive!

 

Is savage significantly better to pair with arsenal or do you feel like most secondary's would be able to perform at a similar level?

[Frosticus]

10 hours ago, MirrorDarkly said:

Very impressive!

 

Is savage significantly better to pair with arsenal or do you feel like most secondary's would be able to perform at a similar level?

Sav has always been my favorite assault set, but it doesn't do anything particularily special that sets it apart from others imo.

 

It's main advantages are:

-Untethered/unconditional healing (life drain, siphon, and drain psyche all have hoops to jump thru). With insp disabled you likely need some way of recovering hp.

-very endurance efficient damage. Very.

 

But beyond that I've had good results from arse/rad (I just don't like /rad tho) and I've played enough /psi to know it  can do great things too.

[Tsuko]

Back in the day, i tried such a run with my Dark control / psi... and all i remember is pain in my very personnal part of anatomy

 

Grats to you !