Quote from: wyldhaunt on Dec 13, 2022, 05:03 PMHowever, for the melee which goes out and gathers Rikti from the outlying saucer areas, the protections cast in the bowl don't help so much.
Standard operating procedure on Virtue was to have the Melee Monsters (who all have mez protection) "cruise the rim of the bowl" so as to intercept (and mitigate) the flow of Mesmerists and Magus into the bowl area, keeping their attention (and aggro) away from the center. You probably saw me doing this during the last couple of MSRs on saturday this last weekend. Idea being that clustering clumps of Rikti away from the center protected the squishies in the center from excessive aggro (and mez) while keeping the Melee Monsters "circulating" around the rim of the bowl and "cruisin' for a bruisin'" (so to speak). The strategy "leaked" of course, but that meant that the center didn't need to take the full brunt of Rikti piling into the center all at once. Made things safer for everyone (assuming the Melee Monsters had builds that were up to the task, of course).
Quote from: wyldhaunt on Dec 13, 2022, 05:03 PMI have heard from another player that our former player who led the effort to formulate our strategies, while playing a kitted out Shield/Axe Tanker with a Ice/Pain 2nd-account nearby for support, could handle up to 20 Magi - this is obviously hearsay as I detail here, but I do know they actually challenged our melee to pull enough Magi to wipe the league, with a reward for the person who could. That eventually did happen.
With Clear Mind stacking from support and the right build, I can imagine that would be possible and work. The challenge though is being able to scoop up that many Rikti Magus, since they don't exactly spawn in clumps of 20. You have to keep moving and keep pulling (and maintain aggro!) in order to gather up that many.
Quote from: wyldhaunt on Dec 13, 2022, 05:03 PMI am more comparing the performance of this build to my Inv/Savage (Gnawt) build, which does have to be concerned more with Magi; they've mezzed Gnawt and almost taken him out several times. I'm attributing Isskjelv's better performance to the improved S/L/E/N Defense and Fire/Energy Res of Isskjelv's build over Gnawt's, though it is possible that I've simply learned to play better.
Back on Virtue, an SG mate of mine had an Invulnerability build that was great against everything ... except the
Lanaruu Storm Elementals out in the Storm Palace of the Shadow Shard. For some reason, his build just wasn't strong enough against Energy damage, which of course the Storm Elementals were doing very regularly, and his protection scheme just wasn't up to the challenge. By contrast, Redlynne (MA/SR Scrapper from Issue 2 on Virtue) had absolutely no trouble with taking them down, because damage
types "didn't matter" to SR (so long as you weren't dealing with SR Kryptonite that "negated" the entire protection scheme). It was just more Melee/Ranged/AoE to me, so as long as I held aggro, everyone else was fine (although, as a Scrapper, that limit of aggro capacity was severely limited!).
I suspect that Isskjelv's superior performance relative to Gnawt during MSRs is likely due to the fact that Invulnerability isn't as strong against Energy damage as we'd like to assume (based on the name of the powerset, among other things) ... and the Rikti throw a LOT of energy damage around. Ice Armor is doing a LOT for you in that regard, by making the energy damage attacks MISS you, rather than taking ALL of the hits and needing Invulnerability to resist them down below your regeneration capacity. The danger there is the "death by a thousand cuts" flood through what Invulnerability is supposed to be doing for you in terms of resistance and regeneration.
This is why with my build for Redlynne here on Rebirth (as a Tanker), I reach for Incarnate Softcap Defense (59%+) with my
Agility Radial Paragon alpha slotting letting Storm Kick's +10% Defense vs All give me a safety margin against Defense Debuffs (multiplied in effectiveness by capped Defense Debuff Resistance, courtesy of Super Reflexes, of course) and then let a combination of scaling resistances (SR passives, mainly, but also the Reactive Defenses proc slotted into Maneuvers) along with Preventative Medicine proc (in Aid Self) backstop most of my resistance concerns, since that combination "resists all" rather than picking and choosing types of resistances. After that, it's all about piling on as much regeneration and +HP (to boost regeneration throughput) as I can muster, because regeneration "mitigates all damage types" rather than needing to pick and choose (once again). Being able to regen 5% HP every 2.35s like Redlynne (SR/MA Tanker on Rebirth) can means that unless I'm stuck standing in overlapping World of Anguish pink puddles for "too long" when fighting Malaise, it's actually quite difficult to force Redlynne the faceplant. As her HP goes down, her resistances (and absorb) goes up, while her regeneration is just passively working the entire time to keep her upright. The beauty of Super Reflexes is that it "negates" SO MUCH of the incoming damage that regeneration becomes an exceptionally powerful countermeasure for any damage that does leak through your defenses while also making Aid Self (which has a 1s interrupt) a viable option even when in the middle of massed combat (just don't be moving or under DoT when casting Aid Self). I've even been able to deploy Assemble the Team(!) while I've got the aggro of about 8-10 Clockworks clustered up on me at the end of the Synapse TF (they all just MISSED me, so no interrupt for the casting of AtT).
So for Redlynne's Destiny slot, of course I went with
Rebirth Radial Epiphany because ... that which cannot kill me ...
CANNOT KILL ME ... and that massive regeneration buff can heal a league clustered up in one place, keeping the living ... alive. Hence Redlynne's title (inspired by her performance during MSRs herding Rikti Magus) of
The Extraordinary Death-Defying Redlynne ... and given some of the aggro she's soaked up in the past couple of weeks (Marauder and friends SOLO during Lambda because I jumped in too soon, as well as last night Pumpkin Fest after iTrials), I'd say that title is pretty well earned now. Even Anti-Matter's Obliteration Beam can't one shot Redlynne anymore ... although World of Anguish "pink puddles" can outstrip her baseline regeneration (and are auto hit!) so those are one of the many Kryptonite Factors that I can't get too complacent about (there are others).
Quote from: wyldhaunt on Dec 13, 2022, 05:03 PMNow, defensive toggles still suppress during mez, but at least they don't detoggle.
And thankfully, all of the Leadership Toggles count as being defensive (target allies, not foes) so they don't need to be retoggled on if mezzed.
