Please help optimise my Necro/Dark/Build

[Two5boy]

Hi all, 

 

I'm working on my endgame Neco/Dark/Soul MM and need some advice on optimizing my slot configuration and power selection. My build is the result of reading many forum posts and incorporates ideas from various builds—special thanks to @StrikerFox for the minion and dark empowerment/enchant dead suggestions.

 

What I am not sure about is how powers like dark empowerment/enchant undead slotting transfer to the minions - do they take on unique like Impervious Skin, Numina and even Steadfast+3% Def?

 

Are there any other strategies or tweaks I can use to boost performance or conserve slots while achieving the same effects?

Thanks in advance!

 

Mastermind (Necromancy - Dark Miasma) NEW.mbd

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Two5boy said:

What I am not sure about is how powers like dark empowerment/enchant undead slotting transfer to the minions - do they take on unique like Impervious Skin, Numina and even Steadfast+3% Def?

 

The short answer is "it depends". 

 

To gain the benefit of a Special IO; the pet summon ability needs to accept slotting it and the pet themselves needs to possess subpowers that also accept slotting that flavour of enhancement. And the Special IO itself needs to be coded as a proc (rather than as a set bonus) and have effects that are capable of affecting non-players (most of them are flagged as affecting "self" with no restrictions on the entity type, and so will work ok if they're slotted in the pet).

 

More reading here:

 

 

[Two5boy]

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

The short answer is "it depends". 

 

To gain the benefit of a Special IO; the pet summon ability needs to accept slotting it and the pet themselves needs to possess subpowers that also accept slotting that flavour of enhancement. And the Special IO itself needs to be coded as a proc (rather than as a set bonus) and have effects that are capable of affecting non-players (most of them are flagged as affecting "self" with no restrictions on the entity type, and so will work ok if they're slotted in the pet).

 

More reading here:

 

 

Thank you for linking this tread. I would have never realised you talked so much in depth about procs and minion enhancement. 
 

So am I right Panacea, Kismet will affect the minions because it’s down as “others” but miracle/numina/impervious skin will only affect you even though it’s in an enhancement power because it’s set as “self only”?

 

 

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, Two5boy said:

So am I right Panacea, Kismet will affect the minions because it’s down as “others” but miracle/numina/impervious skin will only affect you even though it’s in an enhancement power because it’s set as “self only”?

 

Panacea/Miracle/Numina/ImperviousSkin are all Procs rather than globals, which is a good start.

 

The "others" flag in Panacea means that it can kick in on other targets. So if you slot it in a regular power that affects someone else like "Aid Other" it'll get a chance to activate its effects on the person you're healing as well as on you. This becomes particularly powerful in some pseudopet AoE powers like Triage Beacon and Barrier Reef.

 

Putting procs in a summon pet power is a little more complicated. Each of the pets conjured into existence by that summon power will have various subpowers (their attacks, passives, toggles etc) and each of those subpowers will automatically attempt to inherit whatever enhancements you have slotted in the 'parent' summon power; and the same goes for any extra-ability-granting pet upgrade powers. Each pet subpower can accept different types of enhancements; so you'll need to carefully check through your summoned pet's list of available subpowers in CoDv2 to see exactly what each one can inherit. This is how people work out what damage procs are good in what pets (e.g. a pet might have multiple subpowers that inflict -defence but only one that inflicts hold - in which case they'll get far more milage out of a TouchOfLadyGrey damage proc than a GhostWidowsEmbrace damage proc!)

It might help to imagine your summoned pet making multiple copies of any enhancements you give them (including procs) and then trying to see if they can "slot" these copied enhancements into each of their own subpowers.

If any of the pet's subpowers ends up successfully inheriting a Proc then any "self only" effects of that proc can kick in on the pet (because effectively that pet is activating a power that belongs to them and which contains a proc!)

 

As an example... if you put a Panacea Proc into Mercs Summon Soldier then whenever your summoned Medic activates their Med Kit subpower (which inherits Healing Enhancements) that subpower will be treated as if it contains a Panacea Proc; and the Panacea Proc's effects will get a chance to activate on both the Medic themselves as well as whatever target they're healing.

 

Likewise slotting any of the Healing Procs such as Panacea or Numina into the Necromancy 2nd upgrade Dark Empowerment will make those Procs inheritable for all the extra new pet abilities that are granted by that upgrade. One of these abilities is a Passive subpower (which is confusingly also named "Dark Empowerment"!) that buffs each pet's Maximum HP... and since this passive subpower inherits Healing Enhancements, it will successfully inherit any Healing Procs. So every pet technically ends up with a passive 'auto' ability that contains an inherited copy of those Healing Proc(s), and which will happily continually reapply the effects of each of those Procs on that pet every few seconds.

The upshot is any healing procs you slot in the Dark Empowerment upgrade power will continually kick in on all your pets, separately.

(However IMO the only one really worth slotting in it is Panacea, because the Base Regeneration and Recovery rates for henchmen are tiny!)




Also I already pointed to this at the bottom of my post in the above linked thread; but because a picture is worth 1000 words...


 

Edited February 2 by Maelwys

[Two5boy]

18 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

 

Panacea/Miracle/Numina/ImperviousSkin are all Procs rather than globals, which is a good start.

 

The "others" flag in Panacea means that it can kick in on other targets. So if you slot it in a regular power that affects someone else like "Aid Other" it'll get a chance to activate its effects on the person you're healing. This becomes particularly important and powerful in some pseudopet AoE powers like Triage Beacon and Barrier Reef.

 

Putting procs in a summon pet power is a little more complicated. Each of the pets conjured into existence by that summon power will have various subpowers (their attacks, passives, toggles etc) and each of those subpowers will automatically attempt to inherit whatever enhancements you have slotted in the 'parent' summon power. The same goes for any extra-ability-granting pet upgrades. Each subpower can accept different types of enhancements and you'll need to carefully check through your summoned pet's list of available subpowers in CoDv2 to see exactly what each one can inherit.

It might help to imagine your summoned pet making multiple copies of any enhancements you give them (including procs) and then trying to see if they can "slot" these copied enhancements into each of their own subpowers.

If any of those subpowers ends up successfully inheriting a Proc then any "self only" proc effects can kick in on your pet (because effectively they're activating a power that belongs to them which contains a proc!)

 

As an example... if you put a Panacea Proc in Mercs Summon Soldier then whenever your Medic activates their Med Kit ability (which inherits Healing Enhancements) that ability will be treated as if it contains a Panacea Proc; so the Panacea Proc's effects will get a chance to activate on both the Medic themselves as well as whatever target they're healing.

 

Likewise slotting any of the Healing Procs such as Panacea or Numina into the Necromancy 2nd upgrade Dark Empowerment will make those Procs inheritable for all the extra new pet abilities that are granted by that upgrade. One of these abilities is a Passive subpower (which in confusingly also named Dark Empowerment) that buffs each pet's Maximum HP... and since this subpower inherits Healing Enhancements, it will successfully inherit any Healing Procs. So every pet technically ends up with a Passive power that contains an inherited copy of these Healing Proc(s), and which will happily continually reapply the effects of each of those Procs on that pet every few seconds.

The upshot is any healing procs you slot in the Dark Empowerment upgrade power will continually kick in on all your pets, separately.

(However IMO the only one really worth slotting in it is Panacea, because the Base Regeneration and Recovery rates for henchmen are tiny!)




Also I already pointed to this at the bottom of my post in the above linked thread; but because a picture is worth 1000 words...


 

That’s awesome - thank you for the explanation. Looks like heal and panacea is all that’s needed for dark empowerment. Saved some spots!

[StrikerFox]

The build could use the Glad Armor +3% def. I don't think hold procs work on Soul Extraction, at least not anymore. I tested it a long time ago and it did trigger at one point but haven't noticed it lately.

[Two5boy]

1 hour ago, StrikerFox said:

The build could use the Glad Armor +3% def. I don't think hold procs work on Soul Extraction, at least not anymore. I tested it a long time ago and it did trigger at one point but haven't noticed it lately.

Ahh thanks didn’t realise. What is the optimal proc to use for soul extraction now? 

[Two5boy]

So I respecced into this build and my End bar is getting smashed after a few attacks of Dark blast/gloom and life drain. I cannot sustain the attack and firing other abilities of dark miasma. Back to the drawing board 

[StrikerFox]

20 hours ago, Two5boy said:

Ahh thanks didn’t realise. What is the optimal proc to use for soul extraction now? 

 

I don't think there are any other options. OF KD proc would be decent but probably only really good if SE is perma-ish. I don't believe SE pets have heals so not sure why Mids' shows they can slot them. I would probably slot a pet aura IO and improve Lich's debuff or mez.

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

 

I don't believe SE pets have heals so not sure why Mids' shows they can slot them.

Life Drain

Their power list is a bit short - they've Ghastly Blast (4s rech, 310ft blast), Life Drain (15s rech, 60ft blast) and Necroplasmic Grasp (15s rech, melee hold).
Note that the first two powers accept -ToHit debuff enhancement; so if you're looking to add damage output I'd stick a Cloud Senses proc in it first.
 

[StrikerFox]

Just did a bit of Soul Extraction proc testing VS a pylon (On Beta). Casted SE 9 times, Unbreakable Constraint triggered 0 times. Cloud Senses 186 times, and Touch of Nictus 92 times.

Averaging that out, Cloud Senses procs about 3.4 times per SE pet, per cast (About 1 proc every 1.45 sec). Touch of Nictus procs about 1.7 times per SE pet, per cast (About 1 proc every 2.93 sec). 

Thought maybe purple procs doesn't work on SE so retested 3 times with Ghost Widow's Embrace and it didn't trigger either.

[Carnifax]

2 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

Just did a bit of Soul Extraction proc testing VS a pylon (On Beta). Casted SE 9 times, Unbreakable Constraint triggered 0 times. Cloud Senses 186 times, and Touch of Nictus 92 times.

Averaging that out, Cloud Senses procs about 3.4 times per SE pet, per cast (About 1 proc every 1.45 sec). Touch of Nictus procs about 1.7 times per SE pet, per cast (About 1 proc every 2.93 sec). 

Thought maybe purple procs doesn't work on SE so retested 3 times with Ghost Widow's Embrace and it didn't trigger either.

 

If you run the log through my parser it should tell you which powers the Soul Extracted mob is using, along with the procs. For example here's Phantasm for Carni. 

https://www.carnifax.org

 

Does sound like it's never using its hold to me though (or maybe the hold is bugged and not triggering the proc)

 

 

[Carnifax]

I'd forgotten I have a level 50 Necro / Nature so I brought her to the RWZ and tested the Soul Extraction. Answer seems to be that the spirits strongly prefer ranged and will never close in to do their holds. Guess they might if something is in their face maybe, but Pylons aren't known for their melee abilities. No Holds = No hold procs. 

 

Given the AI I'd say Cloud Senses proc all the way and don't bother with others (I don't have it slotted because Mombie predates the Necro changes and I haven'ty updated her)