Spicing up Bots/FF

[khy]

Back on live, my main MM was a Bots/FF from CoV release till the day the servers went down. Unfortunately towards the end I had moved on to other games, so I had never really done much with the Incarnate system - until now.

 

Now I've got my level 40 Bots/FF back and I'm thinking of how I want to spec him out. In the past I always took the personal attacks and Repair, which now feels like a mistake. Instead I drop those attacks for Medicine, and skip Repair because the cooldown is crap. I take AO, AS, FM, and Rez from Medicine - FM mainly to make AO less obnoxious to use, and Rez to be more useful in my teams. With my current build, I still end up with 4 slots at the end of the build I'm not sure what to do with.

 

In the past, I went with Mace Mastery since the +def from the shield synergizes well with the rest of the build, and it feels like it fits more thematically. Also I could use Power Boost to make my bubbles that much better, and my bots that much sturdier against tougher enemies with more +tohit. The downside of course is that of all the abilities in the Mace set, only 1 does damage and it's pretty mediocre. While the hold is a strong slow as well, it just feels lacking for a villain to be using so many non-lethal attacks.

 

On the flip side there's the Leviathan mastery which has tons of very, very villainously lethal attacks with great damage. The tradeoff of course is the armor is much less impressive, and sharks don't really fit with the rest of the character's theme.

 

For a technology Bots/FF Villain, which do you guys think you'd go with and why?

[Force Redux]

Anything with an immobilize. The more you can keep them together the better your damage. That and an IO to convert knock back to knock down in Assault Bot.  Huge QoL improvement.

 

Outside of demons or beasts yeah, the personal attacks are lacking. I slotted the hell out of Force Bolt with procs and that was satisfactory.

[WumpusRat]

My current bot/ff mastermind went with Scirocco's pool for a couple reasons:

 

1) The Scorpion shield doesn't actually do anything for me. I'm already capped in all positional defense, so just raising a couple of specific typed defenses wouldn't do anything useful, while having capped smash/lethal resist and ~50% energy can help out if something gets past the defense bubbles.

2) I didn't want to have to pull out that clunky mace. While you can (I believe) set it for no redraw, I still don't like the mace weapon.

3) The lightning cage immobilize does damage, while the web grenade doesn't, so I can just slot it for damage + procs.

 

I also have Repulsion Bomb, since I use it for additional cc and a bit of damage. But essentially lead with the lightning cages, sic the pets, toss repulsion bomb. Pack of pinned down mobs melt into nothing. Move on to the next pack, and the cages + bomb are recharged by the time I engage them.

[Dixa]

My current bot/ff mastermind went with Scirocco's pool for a couple reasons:

 

1) The Scorpion shield doesn't actually do anything for me. I'm already capped in all positional defense, so just raising a couple of specific typed defenses wouldn't do anything useful, while having capped smash/lethal resist and ~50% energy can help out if something gets past the defense bubbles.

2) I didn't want to have to pull out that clunky mace. While you can (I believe) set it for no redraw, I still don't like the mace weapon.

3) The lightning cage immobilize does damage, while the web grenade doesn't, so I can just slot it for damage + procs.

 

I also have Repulsion Bomb, since I use it for additional cc and a bit of damage. But essentially lead with the lightning cages, sic the pets, toss repulsion bomb. Pack of pinned down mobs melt into nothing. Move on to the next pack, and the cages + bomb are recharged by the time I engage them.

 

never plan on doing dark astoria or incarnate trials? cause unless you at 59% you ain't capped yet, cupcake.

 

the damage on electric fences is pretty tiny even with damage procs.

 

would like to see this resist capped build.

[WumpusRat]

 

never plan on doing dark astoria or incarnate trials? cause unless you at 59% you ain't capped yet, cupcake.

 

the damage on electric fences is pretty tiny even with damage procs.

 

would like to see this resist capped build.

 

Nope, I don't really plan on doing anything major with the character past 50th, since /FF is boring as hell and I'm not a huge fan of it, but I wanted to get her up to 50th and fully kitted out.

 

And yeah, I know the damage is low on it. But the difference between "tickling damage" and "zero" is enough to make me want to take it.

 

It's really easy to cap smash/lethal on a mastermind, since the cap's only 75%. Tough + the patron shield is enough to get within a couple percent of capped, and set bonuses pushed it up to about 5% over-cap.