Ideas for two Time Defenders

[MunkiLord]

Inspired by this thread, a buddy and I are making two Time Defenders to run together to destroy content. I'm Time/Sonic and he is Time/Dual Pistols.

 

Before I put together a build, I'd like some ideas on what we should go for as far as set bonuses and Incarnate abilities are concerned. We're building these assuming that we'll be playing together, which means we'll easily soft cap our defenses and be able to make Hasten perma. We'll still want some global recharge, but defense set bonuses will be a low priority. Do yall think we should try and get some +Damage bonuses, or is there something else we should focus on?

 

What about Incarnate powers? I'm thinking a high DPS choice for Lore is probably best? Since we'll be doing a lot of -res to enemies and AVs, perhaps Musculature for Alpha and Assault for Hybrid? I know Defender damage modifiers are low, but with extreme recharge and -res perhaps the damage boosting Incarnate powers will shine?

 

And with such a combo, what powers do you think are must-haves and which are skippable? Should we slot a few of them with a ton of procs?

 

The eventual goal is a hope for us to be able to complete the STF as a duo, like we did with Scrappers.

[Bopper]

There really is no single right way in this case, there are so many options. You should design for how you would like to play. Personally, I would probably have both of you pursue the Soul epic power set, as you would each get a pet for added DPS (should not be hard to perma, and you would get power boost which synergies perfectly with Farsight (as a duo, we're talking about 25% more defense and ToHit for you and your pets. Plus you get Soul Drain which you can proc the hell out of and gives a nice damage boost to Dreadful Wail and Hail of Bullets.

 

For Incarnates, I might recommend Clarion for the status effect protection (the one think lacking with Time). Alpha, I think Musculature Radial works well with Time (extra damage, endurance mod, tohit debuff and defense debuff, iirc).

 

Skippable powers, it all depends on how you want to play. As Sonic, you'll be the ST AV debuffer, so you'll likely want Screech, Shriek, and Shout at the very least (you can achieve over 90% resistance debuff with an attack chain of Screech-Shriek-Shout-Shriek). If you get super elite recharge, you can maybe go with Scream instead of Shout for a few more % points, but the difference in my opinion isn't enough to make it a build goal. I think for Sonic you can skip Siren's Song since Dual Pistols is an AoE monster that will wake them, and Aim (assuming you take Soul Drain), and you can skip Scream (or Shout, but take one). Shockwave, if you take it, put in the KB-to-KD enhancement in.

 

For Dual Pistols, I skipped Dual Wield. I preferred Piercing Rounds over it because of the -res and potential for hitting multiple targets. You could skip Suppressive Rounds, but since you'll have Screech already, stacking stuns could be useful. That would allow you to both skip Time Stop if you need to.

 

Honestly, though, I think the skippable powers will be from your power pools. You don't need Leadership, as Farsight more than makes up for Maneuvers and Tactics. If you need LotG slots, might I recommend taking Stealth and Grant Invisibility. It gives you both some defense, gives you the +Rch from LotG, and you can ninja missions if you need to.

 

You might still want Tough, but you can skip Weave. You might want to try out Sorcery pool. Rune of Power is a 90 second mez protection with excellent resistance to all types of damage. Absorb helps eachother. And Mystic Flight could be your travel power that you put the knock back protection in.

 

Honestly, there is so much you could do.

[MunkiLord]

These are good ideas, thank you! I don't think the extreme recharge you're talking about will be an important goal, but likely might just be a product of various buffs and spending on sets. Since we'll be at perma-hasten or near it before sets, I don't think it'll take too much effort to get to ridiculous amounts with a few powers.

 

The way we'll play this is likely going to extremely aggressive. Think of Scrappers that run off to solo the world and die, Blasters that try to stand toe to toe with Lord Recluse, Leroy Jenkins, and trying our best to make sure the most aggressive Brutes can't maintain fury. Tanks are going to hate us. The goal won't be to piss off those people or kill a Brute's fury, just throwing out examples of how aggressive I want this duo to work.

[Bopper]

I don't have Mids with me to look at builds, but if I were to just look at powers, I am thinking you can do this:

 

Both of you skip Distortion Field and Time Stop. With 2 Time's Juncture I think you can survive not having more -slow and -rch. Also, I don't think there's a scenario where you would try to Hold an AV, and I don't think you need to be scared of Elite Bosses or lower...but I could be wrong.

 

For Sonic, skip Scream, Amplify, and Siren's Song.

For Dual Pistols, skip Dual Wield and Suppressive fire.

Also, for the guy playing Dual Pistols, skip Time Crawl. Only 1 of you really needs it, and Dual Pistols requires 1 more power from their range attack.

 

 

For Soul take Soul Drain, Power Boost, Dark Embrace, and Summon Mistress.

 

For pool, take Hasten, Spirit Ward, Mystic Flight, Rune of Protection, Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Kick, Tough.

 

Again, I don't know what slotting will get you, but I imagine Tough and Dark Embrace when slotted gets you close to capped resistance for S/L.

 

Anyways, see what you can do with that. If numbers don't look good, you can play around with different powers. Just remember you both will already have 200% recharge before slotting and set IOs, so no need to make recharge a high build goal. Also don't need defense. So if anything maybe aim for resistance bonuses and mez resistance. But no matter what you do you'll do well

 

[Chance Jackson]

Outside of the additional healing & recharge 2 Time defenders won't be giving each other much in the form of benefits in the endgame as it is absurdly easy for 1 time def to softcap themselves & hit the soft cap, this might not be popular to suggest but I think 1 of you should choose a resistance or absorb set instead of Time.

[MunkiLord]

Outside of the additional healing & recharge 2 Time defenders won't be giving each other much in the form of benefits in the endgame as it is absurdly easy for 1 time def to softcap themselves & hit the soft cap, this might not be popular to suggest but I think 1 of you should choose a resistance or absorb set instead of Time.

 

You're not wrong, but us taking the same primary is the most important part of this and Time looks fun. We did it with two Cold Defenders back on live and it was pretty ridiculous..

[MunkiLord]

I don't have Mids with me to look at builds, but if I were to just look at powers, I am thinking you can do this:

 

Both of you skip Distortion Field and Time Stop. With 2 Time's Juncture I think you can survive not having more -slow and -rch. Also, I don't think there's a scenario where you would try to Hold an AV, and I don't think you need to be scared of Elite Bosses or lower...but I could be wrong.

 

For Sonic, skip Scream, Amplify, and Siren's Song.

For Dual Pistols, skip Dual Wield and Suppressive fire.

Also, for the guy playing Dual Pistols, skip Time Crawl. Only 1 of you really needs it, and Dual Pistols requires 1 more power from their range attack.

 

 

For Soul take Soul Drain, Power Boost, Dark Embrace, and Summon Mistress.

 

For pool, take Hasten, Spirit Ward, Mystic Flight, Rune of Protection, Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Kick, Tough.

 

Again, I don't know what slotting will get you, but I imagine Tough and Dark Embrace when slotted gets you close to capped resistance for S/L.

 

Anyways, see what you can do with that. If numbers don't look good, you can play around with different powers. Just remember you both will already have 200% recharge before slotting and set IOs, so no need to make recharge a high build goal. Also don't need defense. So if anything maybe aim for resistance bonuses and mez resistance. But no matter what you do you'll do well

 

Soul Mastery is a fantastic idea! Question, how exactly does Power Boost work? Meaning if I use it, will powers I've already casted get a short boost? Or do I need to use it before I cast something like Farsight and I'll get the boost for it's duration?

[Justaris]

You need to use it before casting the power you want to boost.    Farsight is a good example.  Also works with Vengeance.

 

[Bopper]

 

Soul Mastery is a fantastic idea! Question, how exactly does Power Boost work? Meaning if I use it, will powers I've already casted get a short boost? Or do I need to use it before I cast something like Farsight and I'll get the boost for it's duration?

 

Powers cast prior to casting Power Boost do not get the boost, but your toggles get boosted (as they are basically all re-cast at short intervals). So Maneuvers, Weave, Tactics, etc., all get a 15 second boost. I believe Time's Juncture would have it's -ToHit debuff enhanced as well.

 

Power boost is ideal for using before any long duration power as the boost gets applied to that power's entire duration [For what it's worth, I also grab Clarion Radial for the same reason, plus it gives me a 2 minute timer to know when to reapply Farsight, Temporal Selection, and Grant Invisibility].

 

I go Power Boost -> Farsight (adds an additional 12.3% defense and 12.3% to hit for 2 minutes) -> Temporal Selection (add an additional 147% regeneration for 2 minutes) -> Grant Invisibility (add an additional 2.4% defense for 2 minutes).

 

Power Boost is on a quick recharge, too. For me it's roughly 30 seconds, up for 15 seconds, so I use it on other things when necessary, as long as I know not to use it when my Farsight needs to be reapplied within 30 seconds (the Clarion timer is useful for that, if you have countdown timer enabled.  Basically if Clarion says 30 seconds or less, no more using Power Boost. Your Power Boost recharge might be different so you could use a different cutoff point). Anyways, some extra fun...

 

Power Boost -> Dreadful Wail/Screech (add an additional 14.6 seconds to Stun). So you can apply a mag 6 stun for nearly 30 seconds without slotting for Stun. Since I slot Screech for procs (long recharge makes procs more effective), it works well for me.

 

Power Boost -> Chrono Shift (add an additional 29.5% recovery for 30 seconds)

 

Power Boost -> Slowed Response (add an additional -24.5% defense debuff for 30 seconds)

 

In short, power boost is a lot of fun. It adds 98+% of a base secondary effect to so many powers. Clarion Radial (T3 or T4) does something similar, but it's 80% (for the first 10-15 seconds, then it drops to 20%, then finally 10%).

[Bopper]

Any updates on your duo? How'd the Time/DP with Time/Sonic wind up working out for you guys?

[MunkiLord]

We're not quite there yet. He made a TW/Fire Scrapper and I'm also working on two Blasters in addition to our Time Defenders.. My is currently level 38 and she is awesome on teams! While we haven't teamed up yet, I'm already imagining the possibilities.

[MunkiLord]

OK, finally got them to fifty and put together some builds. Did Infernal mission at +2x8. The mobs were cake, no problem there. But Infernal was slooooooooooow. Still working out attack and buff/debuff chains, so between that and more Incarnate powers, this will get much better. 

 

But Infernal couldn't do hurt us until I started running low on endurance, then he eventually killed me once. Good start, but work in progress.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, MunkiLord said:

OK, finally got them to fifty and put together some builds. Did Infernal mission at +2x8. The mobs were cake, no problem there. But Infernal was slooooooooooow. Still working out attack and buff/debuff chains, so between that and more Incarnate powers, this will get much better. 

 

But Infernal couldn't do hurt us until I started running low on endurance, then he eventually killed me once. Good start, but work in progress.

The default single target attack chain for the sonic blast defender is typically Shriek-Scream-Shriek-Shout. However, I would suggest an attack chain of Screech - Shriek - Shout - Shriek. I would put a PVP and Purple proc into Screech, PVP procs into Shriek and Shout, and try to minimize the recharge in the powers to maximize the proc probability. Keep in mind, the -res from sonic helps boost the proc damage.

 

As for the time ST attack chain, it mostly depends on the build. Try to use regular ammo if you have Piercing Rounds, so you get the -res debuff. Make sure you both are applying the Slow Response (I use 3 slots, all procs... Shield Breaker, Lady Gray, and Achilles). If you grabbed Suppressive Fire, that is great for proc damage as well. You can easily put in 5-6 damage procs and max them out at 90% probability (1-2 purples, PVP, and 3 regular hold procs). 

 

 

[MunkiLord]

These are excellent suggestions, thank you