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Post by ryokan on Mar 27, 2021 17:14:07 GMT -5
So far I have one character which has a Assault Rifle primary power and Traps secondary power, in my opinion the traps power set overall just suck in teams because the other members often manages to get faster kill rates before I get the chance to make usage of any of the traps, when for example a heavy class soaks up all the damage then there is no point in using the caltrops as the heavy class just soaks up all the damage and the web grenade is not much any effective either. The targeting drone utility is kind of limited and while it does slightly increases the chance of a miss it doesn't really justify its high endurance cost.
The landmine and especially the timed bomb charges utility is pretty meh, whenever I try to set the landmines it ends up pretty often that only one enemy gets hit by the land mine and it doesn't kill a normal scaled minion outright and I often have to do to the finishing blow. The timed bomb reload time is pretty poor to justify its usage case, I mean what the hell should I use it for? It seems to work kinda okay in combination with the sleep grenade from munition mastery and according to other people the munition mastery power set overall just sucks and I've would be better off using the fire/electric sets instead.
Overall I feel pretty disappointed with the trap secondary power set I'm fucking stuck with.
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Post by glasscannon on Mar 29, 2021 18:01:36 GMT -5
Traps or Devices? Not being pedantic, they're just fairly different sets.
The mines aren't great. You can stack trip mines together and let their damage stack, but that's cumbersome and even with a Grav troller to Wormhole onto them, it takes more time and coordination to set up and execute than just killing a mob normally. Another use for Trip Mine is to just use it as a melee PBAoE, which isn't amazing, but works well enough on my Trap defender.
The web grenade is your basic immobilize. If you're a Blaster, this kind of power is on nearly all of the secondaries and is pretty easily skippable. If you're a Corrupter, it's also easily skippable. There might be some stuff you can make it do with IOs, but I dunno, prolly not worth either way. If you're annoyed by enemies running away though, its useful for stopping that.
Caltrops however is great. Fill it with Proc IOs and let the lols ensue. It's useful even without them as a slow, but it's not really meant to do damage and it's a utility power for keeping things clustered. Targeting Drone is also a fantastic power, the +ToHit is worth far more than the minimal end cost. It also synergizes with snipe, making it easier to hit the insta-cast point . Make sure you're slotting stuff to improve your endurance recovery and/or efficiency, TD should not be causing Endurance failure.
Also what level are you? If you don't like a powerset it's probably not too late to just re-roll or roll another character entirely.
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Post by ryokan on Mar 29, 2021 20:42:20 GMT -5
Yeah I meant to write devices,
I sort of end up using the Beanbag more often than the grenade despite I made some poor upgrade choices as I have no idea if I should go for better stuns or better recharge time, with this class I'm going for I was trying to maximize damage with minimal recharge time so there were several instance that I nearly ran out of endurance. With all the enemies sprinkled left and right the landmine utility is fairly limited and it is even trickier to pull the tactic where a group of enemy gets blasted by the landmine. It is for me odd that the landmine can be used as explosive melee "weapon" which in my opinion it shouldn't be the case, if anything the player should suffer a knockback too for using it carelessly.
I did forget to mention that caltrops is one of the few power that I frequently use as it has its use where the enemy tries to retreat thus giving me more time dealing damage against them. The smoke grenade however I'm not quite sure what the hell I should be using it for, as the way the game is designed there is almost no payoffs to apply deception tactics. For example in UFO Aftermath the smoke grenade is very useful against aliens because when the smoke grenade gets deployed the soldiers cannot be detected by the enemy thus allowing either to hide the soldiers from retaliation attack or quickly moving from one spot to another, doing that is important as the aliens have dangerous plasma weapons with splash damage that can decimate the soldiers quickly, in contrast to this game I barely notice the effect of the smoke grenade.
it's Blaster/Assault Rifle/Devices at level 50 already with no incarnation ability as I haven't grinded the stuff for it yet. I used to have a Sentinel class with electric armor which was fairly fine by me, since the server moved to i24 the Sentinel class got changed to scrapper, losing all the ability it had before though I already talked with a GM about that yesterday and he told me when I'm ready I can give him a note when he should change it, so in the meanwhile I made another character with Blaster/Beam Rifle/Electricity sets just to try out a different weapon this time, and I noticed that this weapon set has a strong focus on single target hit which is for me too focused of a class, its gameplay is not too bad as it deals at least good amount of damage instead of focusing too much on knockback for crowd control which I dislike.
The initial reason I picked the devices for my second class was that I wanted a soldier only class, no magic involved at all since all the other secondaries doesn't use a weapon model, which was for me a big bummer back then.
When I have the time I will fiddle around in the test server more to see which secondaries meshes with the assault rifle class well that doesn't become too obsolete for the occasionally team rounds, once I have found one then I might delete my level 50 character as I have no use for it anymore.
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Post by glasscannon on Mar 29, 2021 23:50:51 GMT -5
You say you made some poor upgrade choices, have you tried to respec to fix those? The grenade attack is really useful and is a staple for AR. Another plus to combing Assault Rifle with Devices is actually related to Beanbag. If you use both it and your Taser from Devices on a single target, you can apply a fairly high magnitude stun on an enemy. This means it allows you to stun more resistant targets than say, using a secondary that has a Hold instead of a Stun.
While Damage and Recharge are extremely important, it's just as important to spec for Endurance management. Your Field Operative skill does this, as does your innate Stamina. Try applying a Performance Shifter: Chance for Endurance on them if you haven't. If you're still having issues, can put more slots into Field Operative, or slot Endurance Reduction into your more expensive powers.
The Smoke Grenade has a couple uses. Combine it with your Field Operative skill and can you ghost by the majority of enemies without any chance of being seen. This is useful for speeding through missions or avoiding overly risky encounters. It also applies an AoE accuracy debuff. The debuff isn't huge by itself but it synergizes with Defense and can stack with other -ToHit effects. It's a quick cast and can be a bit more valuable in groups. Speaking of groups, the -Perception can potentially help your teammates stealth too.
All that aside, it sounds like you want to play a more down to earth soldier type of character. I would highly recommend checking out the Arachnos Soldier archetype. You don't have to spec into the Crab Spider or Bane Spider sets, you can stay focused entirely on the Wolf Spider stuff and pool powers. This can function just fine and its powers are a lot more soldiery. It also has more built in defense, which would make it slightly more similar to the Sentinal archetype you mentioned. If you don't want to be a villain, sadly you'll have to get to level 20 and do tip missions, but after that you can go hero.
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Post by ryokan on Mar 30, 2021 9:13:59 GMT -5
Yes previously I made 2 respecs and today another one based on your advice, I took off the web grenade and the landmine and in turn added 2 melee support pool which is kicking and boxing which really helps with the few melee encounter as enemies in this game have the tendency to rush for melee attacks despite they have ranged weapons. I must have underestimated those 2 abilities performance though maybe when I go for another respec I will leave just for a more upgraded boxing power instead.
I gave also more attention to the beanbag and the taser power and for the taser I added 2 stupefy and a recharge reduction, for the beanbag 2 recharge reduction, 1 accuracy and 2 disorients. Combined with the fire mastery cider ability I can take 2-3 enemies more easily now. For the M30 Grenade I added 1 force feedback, 1 knockback distance, 1 accuracy, 1 damage and 2 recharge reduction. I am still disappointed that the only primary explosive weapon is the M30 Grenade whose primary power is knockback instead of damage and combining it with LRM Rocket is useless due to long charging time as it suffers from the same bug as the sniper power where I have to stand still for a couple of second as else a automatic interrupt happens.
As for this smoke grenade I have never considered using it in the purpose to finish a mission faster, as I usually prefer killing as much enemy as possible instead hence why for this build I am so invested in damage bonuses, as for the other team members well the ones I was in so far barely made usage of stealth I think in total only 1 or 2 player made usage of stealth and they didn't used some kind of smoke grenades.
I didn't know this part about the Arachnos Soldier I thought those 2 options were mandatory which is why I didn't bothered to check it out in the first place. It doesn't bother me if I have to create another villain character, to be frank the mission design of this game has a heavy focus on quantity over quality which really shows, the developer of this game spend so much time writing all the mission text yet no useful information can be obtained from it gameplay perspective wise, in contrast to Stalker or Gothic game the mission description is more meaningful and in some Stalker mods even more so. One player remarked that playing through villain mission is slightly easier as it doesn't suffer from "early design issues" which he further mentioned that the map layout is overall better designed.
Anyway I appreciate your advice as previously I barely bothered upgrading those power sets.
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Post by DrBrain on Mar 30, 2021 12:48:18 GMT -5
Ill take a look at it after work today to see how the values work. Devices on blasters were intended to be a utility batman set that was kind of tactical on producing values in team match up. Its utility is nice though.
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Post by glasscannon on Mar 30, 2021 20:09:40 GMT -5
No problem, happy to try and help. Out of curiosity though, since you mentioned your slotting for the grenade, could you post a screenshot of your build? 1 Damage enhancement seems very low. If you're using Single Origin or regular non-set IOs, you'll probably want not 1, but 3 damage enhancements on an attack power. The grenade is very much intended as a damaging power rather than a knock back power. The reason it has lower base damage than Slug, for example, is that it's an AoE attack. So it'll do less damage to a single target, but it will out DPS Slug or even Snipe if it hits a few enemies since the damage effects multiple enemies.
Unless it's for your concept I would also personally advise against Box and Kick, especially Boxing. Boxing has very low damage and will probably be heavily outperformed by any of your Primary attacks in damage, or most other damage options in the pools. I'd recommend Cross Punch from the fighting pool instead, and if you really want the Fighting pool attacks for theme, you could get all three, for Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch. The reason being is that they all give each other bonuses, making Boxing less bad, and Kick and Cross Punch even better.
Additionally, most of your assault rifle powers will still out damage even Cross Punch or Kick at close range, just because an enemy is close doesn't necessarily mean you should switch to melee powers.
I think the issue may be in your enhancement set up, so I might be able to give more specific advice if I could see it.
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Post by ryokan on Mar 31, 2021 3:18:07 GMT -5
Here you go:    For the melee sets I only picked it because I don't know which else of the other powerset would be suitable for close - mid range combat, then in this case I keep only the crosspunch, which of those support powers would be then better suitable for the first 3 Assault Rifle powers? |
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Post by glasscannon on Mar 31, 2021 11:27:15 GMT -5
Alright so this post is long as hell so I apologize in advanced. I don't think I could even do a tl:dr of it.
So unless this is for concept reason, the first three AR powers aside from Burst are very worth taking. Slug is a very powerful single target shot, and buckshot is a reliable AoE attack. For mid-range combat I'd say your Slug, Buckshot, M30 Grenade, Napalm are your best options just like when closer to their max range. Melee range, your AoE Cone attacks like buckshot might be more awkward to hit multiple enemies with is all.
As a Blaster you shouldn't really need any of the Pool attacks unless it's for concept and/or RP reasons. If you do wish to have attacks from them though, Cross Punch is good. Enflame is good. -and as far as I've heard a good portion of the others are passable save for Boxing. Enflame probably not a good option though since you said you wanted no magic.
Now, personally instead of Pool attack powers I'd look more into defensive and/or utilities. To be honest the most defensive options you'll really only get noticable use out of when you're doing IO set min/maxing, which isn't really something I'm good at so I can't really give too much advice on. The defensive powers though would be Tough and Weave, these are basic and have decent enough base stats that you'll probably feel them at least a bit even without min/max slotting. Manuevers, Combat Jumping are others ones, but their bonuses are smaller, so I think their more used as defensive set mules.
Moving more towards utility options there's Corrosive Vial which is an AoE defense debuff and it also does a decent amount of Toxic damage, so this one is both an attack and utility power. Adrenal Booster from the same set only has a 4 minute base cool down time, which you can put 2 Recharge reductions into to shave down considerably. This'll give you a big damage bonus, a smaller +ToHit bonus, and even a recharge bonus for 30 seconds, kinda like an additional super build up. You might also be able to slot Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: Chance for Build Up in it for an additional huge damage bonus and that same enhancement can be put into your Tactical Reload skill as well. There's also Tactics from the Leadership pool which gives you and all your nearby allies a bonus to +ToHit, which will stack on yourself with your Targeting Drone. It's very hard to have "too much" +ToHit, so this would not be a waste or redundant choice. Vengeance is from the same pool as Tactics, and is really only useful when teaming as it has no usage outside of teams. If a teammate dies you can use the power on them, and give yourself an all living teammates massive overall buffs.
Now, moving on to your Enhancement set up, I think this is where the main problems are. I actually see a lot of the same mistakes I made when building my first character on live, which was actually an AR/Devices blaster. Now from what I can tell your Burst, and Slug actually look completely fine and the only issue I see with your Buckshot is the extra Knockback IO. I'd personally replace with either -Recharge or some kind of proc IO perhaps as the extra knockback range isn't very useful at all. The problem with the Knockback enhancements is that they only increase how far an enemy is knocked back, not the magnitude of the knockback which would allow it effect more resistant enemies. I'm assuming the Force Feedback Enhancement is the Chance for +Recharge when it's in any of yours powers, and that is a very useful enhancement though
Now with your Grenade it really should have 3 Damage enhancements in it. This will make it very noticeably more powerful. I would advice dropping the plain Knockback IO and one of the Recharge IOs. The only thing of value you'll lose is the one extra Recharge in it, but the trade off is well worth it.
Now with Beanbag and Taser, I wouldn't recommend putting any extra slots into these. I would say leave them at 1 slot, and just put an Accuracy enhancement in them. The Stun IOs, much like with the Knockback ones, only increase the duration of the stun and not the magnitude, and not by enough to be worth it in my opinion. Now if really want to slot them, maybe just give them 1 extra slot for a total of 2. Put in 1 Accuracy and 1 Stun Duration or 1 Recharge.
Your Tactical Reload looks good, 2 Recharge and a slot open for Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control: Chance for Build Up. Full Auto, Napalm, and Snipe should be 6 slotted. 3 damage, 1 accuracy on all of them. Probably 2 Recharge on Napalm, and maybe 1 Recharge and 1 Endurance Reduction on the other two.
Moving away from AR to your Devices more: Caltrops looks good with 4 slots. I'm not sure how much the Damage enhancement does but it might not be a waste? I don't know the numbers well enough to be honest. The Slow is good, and got extra slots for proc IOs. I covered Taster already. Targeting Drone looks good in slots too. Smoke Grenade looks fine. Field Operative looks alright, if you wanted to put more slots into it you could, but probably isn't necessary to be honest. Gun Drone I'd recommend six-slotting I think. 2 Recharge, 1 Accuracy, 3 Damage. IO procs might be really effective in them but to be honest I'm not sure, so that's just the standard, non-set build I'd recommend.
Okay, moving onto your Pools and Ancillary stuff: I made this mistake too, but Brawl should never be slotted ever. It's barely useful at level 1 and sadly even high level enhancements can't even redeem it. I wouldn't recommend even slotting it with anything, it should just never be used.
Your Health might have a couple too many slots. There are some really good unique proc IOs for health, but the regular Health IOs probably aren't worth it. If you're going for 4 slots on it, I'd say either get the unique set stuff like the Miracle you've got there already, but really these unique ones are the best things to place on it regardless of slot amount. For regular health regen, your Field Operative has a much higher base number, more than double, so I'd recommend putting more standard Health IOs in there if you really, really want the regen. Though I think Endurance Mod sets might be better in it still.
Fly having three slots I don't think is advisable either. I'm assuming you're using it in fights which is why you've got the Endurance Reduction in it? if you really want to use it mid-combat, I'd say maybe just stick to 2 slots, 1 speed and 1 endurance reduction at most, maybe even just one slot though. You might actually get better Endurance sustainability by investing more in your Field Operative skill's End Mod while leaving your Flight's End usage default.
For your pool attacks, I'd say try to go for like 3 Damage at least in them, at least for something like Cross Punch or Kick. Accuracy might be really good too, but for saving space maybe pick a Set IO with Damage/Accuracy to fill 1 of 3 slots instead. Aid Other and Aid Self sadly aren't very useful. They're very cool in theory, just not so much in practice. They also sort of require Field Medic to get the most mileage out of, so unless you want to invest the power slots into it for concept/lore reasons, I'd advise skipping it.
Finally for your Ancillary power pool: You've got your two Stun powers in Beanbag and Taser, so I don't think Char is very helpful. It's a little too much single target CC than is necessary for a Blaster and unlike Stun and Beanbag it's a Hold instead of a Stun, so the magnitude of it won't stack with them. Melt Armor is fantastic, no problems there, 4-6 slots seems just fine for it. Fire Shield is also very good, could use more slots but that's mostly for set min/maxing. Instead of Char I'd recommend either Rise of the Phoenix or Bonfire. Rise of the Phoenix is very good as it's a self resurrect, but since everyone gets the two premium resurrects it can be a little redundant. Bonfire is actually kind of an AoE CC option as well as a damage option. The only issue is that it's knockback by default will knock enemies out of it. This can be fixed by either toggling on Restraint which every character gets as an inherent, or by slotting a Knockback to Knockdown enhancement in it.
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Post by DrBrain on Mar 31, 2021 17:31:48 GMT -5
We plan on making landmines alittle better as well as smoke grenades and timed bomb. Also kudos to Glasscannons post above. Really good insight
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Post by glasscannon on Mar 31, 2021 18:04:47 GMT -5
We plan on making landmines alittle better as well as smoke grenades and timed bomb. Also kudos to Glasscannons post above. Really good insight :D
-and hype for mine and nade buffs!
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Post by DrBrain on Mar 31, 2021 18:55:50 GMT -5
Timed bombs and nades will be getting some QOL love for sure.
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Post by ryokan on Apr 6, 2021 11:55:10 GMT -5
Sorry for the late reply, I was too much of a lazy bastard to do a respec for the 5th time anyway here is my current build now:   So I slotted the sniper, full auto and napalm to 6 slots based on your advice, added another slot to the Gun Drone and got rid of all melee attacks and got rid of the 2 healing powers, I replaced the "chemical" power set with magic one as it they exclude each other and since I opted for flame master anyway it doesn't make much of a difference now in terms of my originally planned character lore. I couldn't fully slot all the powers yet because I'm missing recipes for those and the auction house doesn't provide enough recipes/IO's of what I need. After I respecced I did a couple missions and while I still feel fairly fragile it seems the enemy impact to my hitpoints is slightly less now, having all 5 powers turned on (tough, weave, targeting drone, fire shield and field operative) doesn't impact my endurance too much now. Since I still had a couple of slots left and I was not quite sure what to do with them since I still kind of strayed off your advice I opted to add a few slots to the beanbag and taser power but fewer of them then in my previous build to leave room for the others. For the bonfire I was first at skeptical about its usage because its description didn't described clearly how large its area of effect is which is fairly large, probably larger than the caltrops one? It seems though to be powerful enough to knock out lieutenant class enemy I don't know about (elite-bosses) yet I didn't get the chance to test it yet. There was that mission I played in team with another blaster where I helped him to finish it which is the interrogate family boss, a tip mission it's the variant where the room is filled to the brim with SWAT units which are allied at first. On that mission there was a point I almost got killed as I couldn't time the attacks properly to keep the other hostile units in check as they were in positions where my AoE attacks would not be effective. Maybe It will be slightly better when I get to slot in more defense upgrades which should improve my fragility somewhat I think. |
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Post by glasscannon on Apr 11, 2021 12:21:13 GMT -5
That's fair enough if you spend excess points into stuff you just like. Though any reason for Arcane Bolt having a slot? It's not a terrible ranged option for melee characters but it's a little redundant on a Blaster. It's got a longer cast time compared Slug for instance and will do less damage. If it's just 'cause it looks cool, that's fair enough to be honest.
Unless you're like hyper god slotted and min/maxed beyond belief, you'll sadly always feel kinda vulnerable as a Blaster especially if you get unlucky with enemy positions. The PPD SWAT are also a very dangerous enemy group, they're like a lesser Malta.
I'm not sure the exact radius of bonfire, but it's fairly high. Its probably very similar to caltrops, give or take a couple feet or so maybe.
Now for getting the recipes. Your best bet is to look for a Merit Vendor to get everything with exception of Purple-tier and PvP IOs. Purple and PvP IO recipes are seeded in the market at 20 million and 10 million each respectively while the other stuff isn't. Merit Vendors are pretty much everywhere, I think they even show up on the map like a regular merchant. I just learnt recently that the slider in the top left corner of their menu is for changing the level of the recipes they sell. So you can use this to access the sets with lower level caps if you want their procs or bonuses for whatever reason.
Anyway, the build looks a lot better now, and glad to hear it seems to be performing better too. I could nitpick a few things, but it's probably more of a personal preferences thing, so no real worries. I think that build looks just fine to do reasonably well in any normal piece of content especially so after you get more of your IO sets and stuff.
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