Bots/Dark/Soul or Mu

[NiyceOne]

I wanted to share my final, or damn near final, build. I'm going to include reasonings as well. Full disclosure - I am no a number cruncher. This is all experienced based. So here we go:

 

Battle Drones/Assault Bot: Copy and paste from a build I found. Damage is a little meh. 

Protector Bots: First 4 slots are copy and paste. Last two allow me to self soft cap all positional defenses. Damage also meh. 

Twilight Grasp: Fat heals and small end boost. 

Tar Patch: Stacked as much slow as possible. Set bonus also contributes to capped S/L Resistance.

Darkest Nights: Self explanatory. 

Hasten: Self explanatory.

Howling Twilight: The damage here is good. However, its on a long CD. Not sure how I feel about the D-Syncs as this build is already oppressive enough. 

Hover: BOZ helps with hover speed and set bonus. KD reduction is nice. 

Shadow Fall: Self explanatory. 

Fearsome Stare: This is my favorite ability. I find it better to 5 slot with Glimpse vs. 4 slot it with Cloud Senses. Glimpse has a tad more CD reduction and the fear lasts through its cooldown. 

Petrifying Gaze: Set up for boss control

Dark Servant: This is the best slotting for me that I've found. I ran with it 6-slotted with 2 heals. My heal is plenty with how little anything gets hit. 

Tough/Epic Armor: Capped S/L and E if Mu is taken. Really good Neg and Toxic is Soul is taken. I like Soul better and the resists are probably overkill anyways between all the -To Hit, heals and BG mode. 

Weave: Self explanatory

Mu/Soul Immob: Stuck in Tar Patch all day

Mu/Soul Hold: More boss control

Fly: KBR mule

Group Fly: KBR mule. Useful on ranged farms for "hover blasting" and in content when I don't want bots following me on the ground. 

 

I love this build for group content. With that said the def/res is overkill in a group but I do solo and I hardly had to go out of my way to achieve soft caps. I play close. BG on the way in Immob -> Fear > Tar Patch -> Pet Damage -> Howling Twilight -> Control Bosses -> Clean up.

 

I'd love some feedback, critiques, suggestions, whatever. Specifically on how to increase pet damage. Hopefully, I inspired some of y'all to dust off you Bots/Dark MM's and mess around with it. 

 

I almost forgot. I was trying to fit in Pulse Rifle Burst for FF proc. Thinking more Howling Twilights. Thoughts? 

 

Darkreach.mbd

Edited October 10 by NiyceOne

[Meknomancer]

12 hours ago, NiyceOne said:

I wanted to share my final, or damn near final, build. I'm going to include reasonings as well. Full disclosure - I am no a number cruncher. This is all experienced based. So here we go:

 

Battle Drones/Assault Bot: Copy and paste from a build I found. Damage is a little meh. 

Protector Bots: First 4 slots are copy and paste. Last two allow me to self soft cap all positional defenses. Damage also meh. 

Twilight Grasp: Fat heals and small end boost. 

Tar Patch: Stacked as much slow as possible. Set bonus also contributes to capped S/L Resistance.

Darkest Nights: Self explanatory. 

Hasten: Self explanatory.

Howling Twilight: The damage here is good. However, its on a long CD. Not sure how I feel about the D-Syncs as this build is already oppressive enough. 

Hover: BOZ helps with hover speed and set bonus. KD reduction is nice. 

Shadow Fall: Self explanatory. 

Fearsome Stare: This is my favorite ability. I find it better to 5 slot with Glimpse vs. 4 slot it with Cloud Senses. Glimpse has a tad more CD reduction and the fear lasts through its cooldown. 

Petrifying Gaze: Set up for boss control

Dark Servant: This is the best slotting for me that I've found. I ran with it 6-slotted with 2 heals. My heal is plenty with how little anything gets hit. 

Tough/Epic Armor: Capped S/L and E if Mu is taken. Really good Neg and Toxic is Soul is taken. I like Soul better and the resists are probably overkill anyways between all the -To Hit, heals and BG mode. 

Weave: Self explanatory

Mu/Soul Immob: Stuck in Tar Patch all day

Mu/Soul Hold: More boss control

Fly: KBR mule

Group Fly: KBR mule. Useful on ranged farms for "hover blasting" and in content when I don't want bots following me on the ground. 

 

I love this build for group content. With that said the def/res is overkill in a group but I do solo and I hardly had to go out of my way to achieve soft caps. I play close. BG on the way in Immob -> Fear > Tar Patch -> Pet Damage -> Howling Twilight -> Control Bosses -> Clean up.

 

I'd love some feedback, critiques, suggestions, whatever. Specifically on how to increase pet damage. Hopefully, I inspired some of y'all to dust off you Bots/Dark MM's and mess around with it. 

 

I almost forgot. I was trying to fit in Pulse Rifle Burst for FF proc. Thinking more Howling Twilights. Thoughts? 

 

Darkreach.mbd 47.05 kB · 2 downloads

 

Still a top combo. I have 3 on HC. Spent yesterday soloing event gm's on Indom with one. Easiest way to bump pet damage is to toss an explosive strike proc in each pet. You'll have to give up something for them though.....

 

And leaderships assault, small though the bonus is it all adds up in prolonged fights.

Edited October 10 by Meknomancer

[Maelwys]

14 hours ago, NiyceOne said:

I'd love some feedback, critiques, suggestions, whatever. Specifically on how to increase pet damage.

First, swap to Musculature Core Alpha. Because the outside-of-ED damage boost it grants is pretty major.
After that; pick up Assault and preferably Tactics from the Leadership pool.

Then look at your pet slotting... here's an example from one of my Bots/ MMs for some ideas:





Assault Bot and Battle Drones can both use an Explosive Strike Damage Proc - if you only have room for one then put it in the Assbot.

Make sure all pets are ED-Capped in Damage across the board and remember that since your T1 pets spawn at -2 to you they need considerably more accuracy to reliably hit enemies. Change the combo box at the top of your Mids window to "Enemy Relative Level: +5" and strip out your Kismet IO and all your Accuracy set bonuses to show what your Drones will actually be like vs regular +3 enemies - at present it's only listing a 68.33% hit rate even with Nerve Core Alpha; and you really want that to say 85%+ (so 95%+ with Supremacy). Slotting Tactics and using Support Core and moving the Soulbound "Chance for Build Up" Proc into them can help. Your Protector Bots are fine at 89.68% (vs "Enemy Relative Level: +4"), as is the Assbot.

Tar Patch - leave the two End/Rech/Slows (or switch one or both of them to Lv50+5 Recharges) and swap the other slots for Impeded Swiftness and Ice Mistral's Torment Procs.


I'd be very tempted to proc-bomb Electrifying Fences too.


Another consideration will be Lore and Hybrid incarnates. The best all-round Hybrid for pets is Support Core (even if Assault Core can provide a much higher damage spike if you time it right it's very fiddly to leverage reliably). Best Lore IMO is Banished Pantheon for pure damage (via lots of -resist debuff and raw attacks) or either Talons or Arachnos for survivability (with Arachnos acting as a single-use 90s AoE +Defence panic button compared to Talon's much smoother benefits to +Defence, +Resistance and +Healing over their entire summoning window).
 

Edited October 10 by Maelwys

[TheSpiritFox]

Couple of things. 

Might want to consider sacrificing group fly for rune of protection. Dark has zero real protection for the MM besides -tohit, a built in breakfree is extremely useful. 

And then similarly, Dark is busy enough that you don't really have a need for further tools. Your tool is -tohit. You stack the ever loving shit out of it. Bots bring defense for you and them, you make up the gap with tohit debuffs flying thick and fast. Fearsome stare is great, fear to reduce incoming damage, and more tohit debuffs. Rather than further tools I would take further defenses. Top picks are either fire for fire shield and rise of the phoenix, or Scorp for the shield. Bot shield plus scorp shield is softcapped to smashing and lethal damage. I like rise of the phoenix though. Invuln is long enough to summon a pet and cast darkest night on something, get the -tohit flowing. Or to run and resummon at a distance. 

The way to increase pet damage?

1) Tactics. Minions and Lts are a level down, that comes with a tohit loss. Even with 99 accuracy you can miss higher level stuff a good bit without some help and since Dark doesn't do defense debuffs, taking and putting a few slots in tactics so you can afford to keep it going pays off. (make sure you slot a ton of accuracy too)

2) Perma hasten or as close to it as you can get, and two +5 50 recharge IOs in tar patch. 

3) Musc core alpha

 

4) Use howling twilight on EB and above enemies to cut regen. Its a higher -regen debuff than most powersets get. Twilight graps helps a little too. 

 

5) Third option for epics would be mu. Electric fences slotted for damage does halfway decent damage, and itll help corral stuff for burn patch missiles, though tbh those aren't what they used to be and the assbot fires them way less often now. But in tight groups, electric fences can help increase damage a good bit. 

 

 

Edited October 11 by TheSpiritFox

[DocMidknight]

4 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Couple of things. 
Top picks are either fire for fire shield and rise of the phoenix, or Scorp for the shield. Bot shield plus scorp shield is softcapped to smashing and lethal damage.

 

    I don't believe the heat/fire epic offers fire shield on MM's, unless there was an update I'm not aware of.

[TheSpiritFox]

6 hours ago, DocMidknight said:

 

    I don't believe the heat/fire epic offers fire shield on MM's, unless there was an update I'm not aware of.

Youre right my brain is slow today

[tidge]

On 10/10/2024 at 12:11 AM, NiyceOne said:

I'd love some feedback, critiques, suggestions, whatever. Specifically on how to increase pet damage. Hopefully, I inspired some of y'all to dust off you Bots/Dark MM's and mess around with it.

 

IMO: The number one way to increase the damage out of henchmen is be applying (AoE) debuffs to the enemies.

 

Tar Patch is aces for that, although the recharge time on it, even with leveraging every trick possible to reduce it, is still not going to have it be available enough to see much of an improvement.

 

I suggest slotting the Annihilation %-Res in as many powers as possible, and use those powers. This is an AoE, so you don't have to worry too much about which target is getting the %debuff. Photon Grenade (from Robotics), Nightfall / Soul Tentacles from Mu, you should be getting the picture. The piece won't self-stack, but it will extend the duration of the -Resistance if it is reapplied.

 

No need to try to %damage proc-bomb, just slot 5 or 6 of the Annihilation set, or use the %-Res piece as the 6th slot behind another set's 5-bonus.

 

With Dark secondary, you can "cheat" and put some of the Global pieces that otherwise have to go into the henchmen into Dark Servant. Personally, I wouldn't go to hard into single-target controls for a Mastermind, so even though I like to include a single H-O Accuracy/Control in Dark Servant (behind 4x Expedient Reinforcement) I'd take a good look if I could get away without it (for MMs). You will have Maintenance Drone as an incredibly reliable henchman heal, so I wouldn't sweat the healing that dark brings, YMMV.

 

I wouldn't put any KB->KD pieces in any of the robotic henchmen. They will still do KB on some attacks, and against lower-level critters, but that is a waste of a slot IMO. They will be doing enough "knockdown" that you will barely notice you haven't slotted it. That thinking is a leftover need... it does something, but it does very little of it.