Patron Powers theme for Soldier

[ajchvy]

I'm a bit sad that there are no options for powers from Recluse as I feel the 4 available powersets won't vibe with my Arachnos Soldier. Would I be nerfing myself too badly if I didn't take a Patron Power?

I'm heavily leaning into Crab with pets and group support, so my thought was to take Mace but only use the summon power.

[Maelwys]

Soul Mastery is mechanically very powerful for a Crabbermind and is my usual goto for any Soldier. Both Gloom and Dark Obliteration when procced give very nice DPA and inflict substantial -ToHit debuffs; and the Widow pet also deals quite high damage and possesses enough inherent defense to let your leadership buffs push them to the softcap (although they "prefer melee" and tend to guzzle endurance). You can also choose to pick up Darkest Night as an additional debuffing support power.

 

Mace Mastery is serviceable if you opt for Shatter Armor, but none of the prerequisites for it are particularly good. The Blaster pet is by far the best of the two "prefer ranged" pets and as such is a reasonable balance between damage output and survivability.

 

Mu Mastery boasts Electric Fences and Ball Lightning. Both are good DPA AOEs, although neither is quite as good as Dark Obliteration. The Striker pet can fly and is very well behaved, staying at range consistently... although they're about as damaging as a wet noodle and slotting a Power Transfer Proc into them unfortunately will NOT let them self heal.

 

Leviathan Mastery has Arctic Breath which can technically inflict -res on up to 10 targets... although as a 30 degree cone it's tricky to do that consistently. The other two Cone attacks aren't worth picking up, but Spirit Shark deals pretty decent single target damage as long as you're spamming enough other attacks to build up Hunger stacks. The Coralax pet prefers melee but lacks much in the way of additional survivability buffs... if you manage to keep it alive then it'll deal reasonable damage; albeit less than the Widow.

 

Edited November 4, 2024 by Maelwys

[Two Dollar Bill]

My current Crab build doesn't have a patron pool. He's mostly focused on being durable, which the patron pools don't particularly help with. Though, I have used Mace Mastery in the past, and gotten some use out of Shatter Armor and Summon Blaster.

[tidge]

On 11/4/2024 at 10:44 PM, Two Dollar Bill said:

My current Crab build doesn't have a patron pool. He's mostly focused on being durable, which the patron pools don't particularly help with. Though, I have used Mace Mastery in the past, and gotten some use out of Shatter Armor and Summon Blaster.

 

My recent Bane/Wolfsman also ended up not using a Patron pool. The 30+ power selection went (upon respec, powers were taken in a slightly different order while leveling):

 

30: Surveillance

32: Shatter

38: Combat Training Offensive

41: Combat Jumping

44: Tactical Training: Assault

47: Maneuvers

49: Aid Other

 

The 41, 47, 49 are all essentially mules. I dislike taking Shatter so late, but for concept reasons I was delaying all of the Mace attacks. My original plan was to use the Fighting pool for melee, but it simply felt wrong to handicap by not using VEAT Placate or Buildup (because Mace) and burn at least three picks for Boxing/Kick/Cross Punch.... and still have Cross Punch come so late in the build. The Bane's synergy with VEAT powers was simply too good to pass... and for concept I can believe the gun gets put away to SMASH with the mace. None of the Patrons were going to preserve that illusion for me, except possibly Mace Mastery, but I'd be burning a power pick to get Shatter Armor, and that would only come at level 41.

 

On my other VEATs, I definitely have used Patrons... but for those I didn't mind until waiting to end-build to have the powers I wanted.

[KaizenSoze]

My Banes do not use patron powers. I don't have the power selection or slots for it.

 

My Huntsbanes do use Mace Mastery: Web Envelope. Combined with the awesome Wide Area Web Grenade I can pinned spawns as well as any controller and then pummel them with AOEs.

[Neiska]

I use Levi for my crabby, as that -res stacks with venom grenade and having a lot of cones evaporates groups. Still a little meh on single target but that’s kind of crabbys downside overall.

[Psiphon]

On 11/4/2024 at 10:44 PM, Two Dollar Bill said:

My current Crab build doesn't have a patron pool. He's mostly focused on being durable, which the patron pools don't particularly help with. Though, I have used Mace Mastery in the past, and gotten some use out of Shatter Armor and Summon Blaster.

Same with my crab, nothing seemed to fit themetically or add anything that was worth dropping other powers for. 

As it is, it's survivable and does nice damage. 

[FupDup]

I wish that VEATs had something like Body/Energy Mastery, at least in regards to the endurance sustaining auto powers (I feel indifferent towards the laser eye beam stuff, maybe replace with shurikens or something). This would be on-theme for the highly trained human soldier thing they got going and fill a gameplay niche that none of the patrons really touch on. 

Edited December 24, 2024 by FupDup

[biostem]

I went Leviathan on one of my "Crabberminds", for the cones and boss-tier pet...