Proc and Scourge Monster - Please advise

Blammo · February 12

Normally I research the forums till my eyes bleed, but I need real world advice from those who might know first hand.

Can Nature be harnessed with IOs that proc often? I like the set and it sounds pleasant when playing.

Is Fire and Ice roughly the same when it comes to proc opportunity?

I'd like to start a super proccy and scourgey Corruptor.

Am I to look for a better combo? Doesn't need to be extreme damage, I find I am more entertained with setting off procs.

Before we worry about cost - it is no issue, I have a farmer..who also procs teehee 🙂

Thank you for your time. Much obliged.

Carnifax · February 12

In Primaries Ice > Fire in terms of procs because the single target blasts can take Slow sets + you have two very proccable Hold-Attacks. Holds get lots of Proc options. Water is pretty proccable as well and very Scourgy (Whirlpool is a Rain).

Nature isn't particularly proccable I'm afraid (I've a Fire / Nature corruptor and a Zombie / Nature MM), there's not a lot in Nature that's worth / capable of proccing up. Still a great set though.

Proc secondaries I'd lean towards Trick Arrow (Ice & Acid Arrow), Time (Time Stop & Slowed Response). Time is also handy in that it boosts Def & Recharge by a lot, giving you more space for procs over sets. Maybe Marine too (Whitecap is stupidly proccy).

I've included my Water / Trick Arrow (which is a very fun combo) build here. You could probably lean in even heavier on them if you liked.

Corruptor - Water - Trick Arrow.mbd

Edited February 12 by Carnifax

tidge · February 12

Mileage varies, but my experience with Corruptors is that they generally perform better with set enhancements and minimal %procs... but I'll try to offer a suggestion to the question as asked, let me get this out of the way

I see two main reasons to pursue %damage, and neither is "because I can"

The primary/secondary isn't bringing enough variety in damage types (ur-example is Psychic damage, which gets highly resisted by certain enemy types especially end-game)
There are powers in the primary/secondary (or pools!) that will reliable do more damage (on average) to more enemies than just slotting those powers with damage enhancements

In other words:

If you want to leverage %damage on a Corruptor, as well as see some benefit from Scourge, I think you want to focus on the Secondary and Pools (probably Epic/Patron) for the %damage. I think Marine Affinity is a strong candidate.

T1 Shoal Rush is a large AoE that can get both accuracy pieces and several %damage.
T3 Toroidal Bubble is a good mule for useful pieces, and it comes early.
T4 Whitecap is a fun PBAoE attack power that can also take Accuracy/Enurance pieces and many %damage options.
T5 Tidepool shouldn't be slotted except maybe for Endurance Reduction.
T6 Brine will mesh well with all sources of damage, including Scourge.
T7 Shifting Tides is a surprisingly good AoE %damage power (when spawn sizes are increased)
T8 and T9 Barrier Reef and Power of the Depths are solid.

If you %proc out the secondary, and set-slot the primary you likely won't have many slots to add to Epic/Patron powers. I rather like Soul mastery for %damage but I don't think you would need it with Marine Affinity.

Onlyasandwich · February 12

19 minutes ago, tidge said:

The primary/secondary isn't bringing enough variety in damage types (ur-example is Psychic damage, which gets highly resisted by certain enemy types especially end-game)

There are powers in the primary/secondary (or pools!) that will reliable do more damage (on average) to more enemies than just slotting those powers with damage enhancements

I would add a few more!

If you can focus on procs without sacrificing other goals, why not? For example Time with power buildup can easily hit softcap, and also has some baseline tohit in their kit. This allows them to slot attacks such that they both maximize ED and proc potential with extremely minimal trade-off.
If you are on a heavily team focused build and less concerned about personal defenses for soloing, you have more freedom to make room for procs in your attacks, as you are less reliant on offensive power IO sets for defenses.
Similar to the above, if you have many lotg and FFback opportunities, this mitigates the need for global recharge from IO sets in attacks, allowing you more freedom for proc focus.

All that being said, ED is important! When choosing your procs, check to be sure there isn't greater return on further ED, or something "close enough" that mixes Damage/Endredux.

tidge · February 12

24 minutes ago, Onlyasandwich said:

If you can focus on procs without sacrificing other goals, why not?

One reason I don't typically add %damage to single-target attacks (if not in a set I will be using anyway) is that often the extra damage in the single-target attack isn't helping me (or a team) clear large spawn sizes faster or with fewer clicks of attacks. For an early career character that can take some level 10 %damage pieces in a single-target T1... sure, that speeds up clear times at those levels, but for DPS-focused ATs such things become far less important with slotting and more attacks.

Maelwys · February 12

A lot of powers on a lot of ATs will gain more "additional average damage" from slotting a damage proc than from slotting a regular damage Common/Set IO.

Whitecap from the Marine Affinity set is a very good example of this - whilst it deals damage; the base damage is so poor that focusing on enhancing it is practically worthless... but it takes multiple flavours of damage procs. Fully enhanced for damage aspect Whitecap deals ~20 damage. With procs? >250-300 easy.

The only times I won't intentionally veer towards damage procs is if the power in question has such poor proc activation chances that the above is not the case (typically in these cases the power is coded as a "toggle" or has extremely fast base recharge) or if I desperately need to slot more IOs in an attack than is "locally optimal" (for example: when I'm pursuing a particular set bonus that requires slotting multiple pieces of a Set which doesn't contain any procs). Much of my build-poking stems from trying to coax as much average damage (via both procs and damage aspect slotting) out of my attack chain as possible whilst maintaining a 95% hit chance on +3 enemies and whatever level of damage mitigation and recovery I decide the toon "needs".

Maelwys · February 12

2 hours ago, tidge said:

If you want to leverage %damage on a Corruptor

Just a thought... but I strongly suspect that using "%damage" as shorthand for "damage procs" might be rather confusing for anyone who doesn't understand all the ins-and-outs of this stuff yet... because it's not procs but instead regular Damage Aspect-boosting Enhancements that affect the damage percentages within the Enhancements display.

I think @Carnifax is on the right lines with their recommendation for Ice Blast or Water Blast - both those get lots of Proc opportunities (due to their attack secondary effects allowing the slotting of procs from non-standard IO sets) plus at least one "Rain" power (which work very well with Scourge because they check enemy HP on every tick). Fire Blast also gets a rain power; but its attacks don't get access to any procs outside of the regular Ranged Damage or AoE Damage sets (not that "Blaze" needs any help to deal sky-high damage, but still!)

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I think Marine Affinity is a strong candidate.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement! 😁

My own personal observations on Marine's powers:

T1 Shoal Rush is a large AoE that can get both accuracy pieces and several %damage. IMO Shoal Rush is by far the most skippable power in Marine Affinity at present; providing you have other opportunities to slot the Achilles' Heel proc. However it's not a bad power by any stretch so if you have room for it, great.
T2 Soothing Wave - This just wants Healing aspect enhancement and possibly some Endurance reduction. You can get by with just the base slot if needed; but I typically 2 or 3-slot it. The main thing to remember is that it's a cone heal which does NOT automatically cause you to face towards anything before it triggers. So if you want to use it to heal a particular ally; you'll want to "/face" them first (including "$$face" within your targeting keybind can help here!)
T3 Toroidal Bubble is a good mule for useful pieces, and it comes early. I don't think there are many useful procs you can stick in Toroidal. However it's indeed a great place to put the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor +Def Globals. ED-cap it for +Res and maybe stick a +EndMod in there too if you regularly exemplar low enough to lose access to Power of the Depths.
T4 Whitecap is a fun PBAoE attack power that can also take Accuracy/Enurance pieces and many %damage options. As mentioned in my earlier post, Whitecap is absolutely brilliant when procced up. I'd go with: 1x Accuracy (or Acc/EndRed) + 3-4x Damage Procs + 0-1x Force Feedback Proc + Fury of the Gladiator -Res Proc.
T5 Tidepool shouldn't be slotted except maybe for Endurance Reduction. Stick with the Base slot and some combination of Endurance and/or Slow. IIRC slotting Accuracy does pretty much nothing.
T6 Brine will mesh well with all sources of damage, including Scourge. Brine needs Accuracy; if you have any spare slots then go with buffing its Healing Aspect and Recharge Rate. The main purpose of the power is inflicting -Res; which doesn't stack; but the -MaxHP debuff is a FLAT value (so it'll all but delete most low-rank critters you use it on) and will stack with multiple applications.
T7 Shifting Tides is a surprisingly good AoE %damage power (when spawn sizes are increased) Shifting Tides doesn't proc very well since it's a Toggle; so IMO this one is best used for muling some set bonuses unless you really don't need them.
T8 and T9 Barrier Reef and Power of the Depths are solid. Barrier Reef wants ED-capped Defense and Healing aspect... but it can also take a LotG +7.5% Global Recharge IO and is an absolutely fantastic place to stick a Panacea Proc (because its effects will apply to every ally buffed by the Reef)... so optimal slotting is something like LotG + Def/EndRed + Def + 2x Heal + Panacea. Power of the Depths just wants ED-capped Healing and Recharge Aspect; so is typically the best place to put a 6-piece Preventive Medicine set.

Edited February 12 by Maelwys

tidge · February 12

6 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Just a thought... but I strongly suspect that using "%damage" as shorthand for "damage procs" might be rather confusing for anyone who doesn't understand all the ins-and-outs of this stuff yet... because it's not procs but instead regular Damage Aspect-boosting Enhancements that affect the damage percentages within the Enhancements display.

I use %damage because it wasn't all that long ago that it wasn't uncommon for folks to refer to global enhancements as "procs", and there are other categories of "procs" that are almost never what folks are referring to in "proc monster" type considerations. I can't help if other people are confused, but my use of %damage is to make it clear that *I* am referring to enhancement set pieces that include a PPM damage chance.

For "Damage Enhancing" in the context of slotting I just use the words "Damage", just like I use the words "Accuracy", "Endurance Reduction", "Control Duration", etc.

My suspicion is that many people go right into "procs for damage" without even considering something as basic as Accuracy slotting, and you won't find "%Accuracy" used by me in any context (except to explain I won't use the term).

Maelwys · February 12

2 minutes ago, tidge said:

I use %damage because it wasn't all that long ago that it wasn't uncommon for folks to refer to global enhancements as "procs", and there are other categories of "procs" that are almost never what folks are referring to in "proc monster" type considerations. I can't help if other people are confused, but my use of %damage is to make it clear that *I* am referring to enhancement set pieces that include a PPM damage chance.

For "Damage Enhancing" in the context of slotting I just use the words "Damage", just like I use the words "Accuracy", "Endurance Reduction", "Control Duration", etc.

My suspicion is that many people go right into "procs for damage" without even considering something as basic as Accuracy slotting, and you won't find "%Accuracy" used by me in any context (except to explain I won't use the term).

Fair enough. Just as long as you're aware that the term %damage could easily be misinterpreted as "percentage of additional damage enhancement" rather than "percentage chance for additional damage" by the newbies! 😉

These days I generally try to use "aspect" as a catchall term whenever I'm referring to enhancing one of the base stats of a power; since as far as I'm aware that's how the devs have always referred to it under the hood. (So an Acc/Dam HO buffs both "Accuracy Aspect" and "Damage Aspect", etc). But it's soooo easy to unconsciously slip into unintelligible shorthand and OMGWTFBBQ acronym soup...

Carnifax · February 12

24 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Shifting Tides is a surprisingly good AoE %damage power

In case anyone is wondering "surprisingly good" = "Did as much damage as Hotfeet + Fire Imps added together on a LGTF during the week". All while buffing the teams Acc, Dam and Recharge a bit.

It'll also trigger the Chance for Damage proc a fair amount of the time on teams, you'll notice your damage bonus is frequently around 110 from Shifting + the proc + Tidepool . It's a tad strong.

Edited February 12 by Carnifax

Maelwys · February 12

7 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

In case anyone is wondering "surprisingly good" = "Did as much damage as Hotfeet + Fire Imps added together on a LGTF during the week". All while buffing the teams Acc, Dam and Recharge a bit.

AFAIK the bulk of the benefit comes from the power's inherent 25% chance for "Rising Tide" Cold damage (which applies to every. single. attack. made on the affected target, regardless of whether it's from a player/pet/pseudopet... 🤩 ) so it's an absolutely crazy source of additional damage on teams or for soloing pet builds (especially MMs) but I haven't noticed it triggering "IO damage procs" particularly well/frequently (e.g. about as much as any other large-radius toggle)?

Edited February 12 by Maelwys

tidge · February 12

10 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Fair enough. Just as long as you're aware that the term %damage could easily be misinterpreted as "percentage of additional damage enhancement" rather than "percentage chance for additional damage" by the newbies! 😉

It is impossible to predict what preconceived a random newbie will think about anything. As long as you are aware that you are coming across as wanting to be the word police, also fair.

Maelwys · February 12

Just now, tidge said:

It is impossible to predict what preconceived a random newbie will think about anything. As long as you are aware that you are coming across as wanting to be the word police, also fair.

tidge · February 12

37 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

My own personal observations on Marine's powers:

T1 Shoal Rush is a large AoE that can get both accuracy pieces and several %damage. IMO Shoal Rush is by far the most skippable power in Marine Affinity at present; providing you have other opportunities to slot the Achilles' Heel proc. However it's not a bad power by any stretch so if you have room for it, great.

T2 Soothing Wave - This just wants Healing aspect enhancement and possibly some Endurance reduction. You can get by with just the base slot if needed; but I typically 2 or 3-slot it. The main thing to remember is that it's a cone heal which does NOT automatically cause you to face towards anything before it triggers. So if you want to use it to heal a particular ally; you'll want to "/face" them first (including "$$face" within your targeting keybind can help here!)

You have to pick either Shoal Rush or Soothing Wave, I recommend Shoal Rush, especially if someone is trying to "proc monster".

40 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

T7 Shifting Tides is a surprisingly good AoE %damage power (when spawn sizes are increased) Shifting Tides doesn't proc very well since it's a Toggle; so IMO this one is best used for muling some set bonuses unless you really don't need them.

See comments by @Carnifax. I didn't think it would be a good source of %damage, because "toggle", but I tested it (solo) and found that it was an extremely reliable source of %damage, even after an enemy was defeated (assuming they left a body behind). My final slotting for it was:

Positron's Blast Accuracy/Damage/Endurance Reduction 50+5
Annihilation Accuracy/Damage/Endurance Reduction 50+5
Javelin Volley %Lethal
Bombardment %Fire
Positron's Blast %Energy

It works just fine on an ally modulo how close they are, but solo on enemies (at relatively low level) is how I tested its proof-of-concept.

Maelwys · February 12

14 hours ago, tidge said:

See comments by @Carnifax. I didn't think it would be a good source of %damage, because "toggle", but I tested it (solo) and found that it was an extremely reliable source of %damage, even after an enemy was defeated (assuming they left a body behind). My final slotting for it was:

Positron's Blast Accuracy/Damage/Endurance Reduction 50+5

Annihilation Accuracy/Damage/Endurance Reduction 50+5

Javelin Volley %Lethal

Bombardment %Fire

Positron's Blast %Energy

It works just fine on an ally modulo how close they are, but solo on enemies (at relatively low level) is how I tested its proof-of-concept.

My reading of Carni's log snippet is that it's the Shifting Tides power itself that's contributing damage rather than external IO damage procs (there's a separate line for the Armageddon Proc), I remember testing damage procs within it a few months back and they had a fair chance to kick in on cast and every 10 seconds thereafter, but not for every hit of Cold damage... which roughly corresponded to the predicted 25ft Radius Toggle = ~15.3% activation chance for 3.5PPM procs.

I've just performed a very quick + dirty test on Brainstorm to see if anything's changed... with 3x damage procs slotted in Shifting Tides and repeated castings on groups of eight enemies in PI. Twenty applications saw an average of just over three-and-a-half damage proc activations per casting... and 3.5/(8*3) = 0.145833 or 14.6% activation rate; which is close enough to the expected 15.3% for government work. I did see some "wasted" procs kicking in on the dead bodies after the ten second mark which might be inflating the logs a bit (I'm guessing they can't shift its 'Entities Affected' to "Foe (alive)" due to the need for an anchor...)

So yeah, whilst you certainly can slot IO damage procs in it; from what I can tell it's not activating them any more regularly than any other 25ft radius toggle.

Edited February 13 by Maelwys

tidge · February 12

Shifting Tides is a "set-and-forget" power that hangs around for a long time and that will be used anyway, with a rather large AoE. I'd keep the %damage in it before I swapped any into single-target powers.

Blammo · February 13

Wow! Thank you all for offering insight and ideas. I'm learning lots.

Proc monster isn't only damage, could also be soft controls, or accuracy, endurance, etc. The damage is necessary if I need to solo due to lack of teaming. Also, I love scourge. It's fun to watch foes melt.

I thought Nature would be good due to Ice, Nature and TA being the top 3 sought after for those iTrials.

On live I had a bots/ta that was ridiculously fun. TA is amazing and I am enjoying seeing all the love for it.

I have a Water/Fire blaster built specifically for AE farms from Psycop (spelling) and it's crazy good for that specific scenario.

I haven't taken Marine too far yet and will give your ideas above consideration.

Really appreciate all the feedback and exchange of thoughtful ideas. Thank you very much.

Carnifax · February 13

8 hours ago, Blammo said:

On live I had a bots/ta that was ridiculously fun. TA is amazing and I am enjoying seeing all the love for it.

I've always loved TA (even the Live version) but the version on Homecoming is even better. Got some great buffs throughout the set.

Works well with a Corruptor / Defender (I've one of each, plus a Grav/TA controller) because a lot of the big debuffs are quick to cast. So it flows in between the blasts really nicely. Plus it really doesn't care if you're pure ranged or want to be in close (Water/TA works as nicely as a TA/Elec Defender who gets in quickly beside the Tank to drain & debuff things).

Sign In

Proc and Scourge Monster - Please advise

Recommended Posts

Blammo

Carnifax

tidge

Onlyasandwich

tidge

Maelwys

Maelwys

tidge

Maelwys

Carnifax

Maelwys

tidge

Maelwys

tidge

Maelwys

tidge

Blammo

Carnifax

Create an account or sign in to comment

Create an account

Sign in

Browse

Activity

Game Account

Wikis