Me9aMan's Hybrid Battery Guide

The Hybrid Battery is, as of GU 42, a gadgets damager with gear and skills split between damaging and team support to provide team power and commendable damage out. As of GU 42 only gadgets is capable of doing it, but reworks on the other troll powers may extend the option to non-gadgets in the future Also, I call it Hybrid Battery because you are not able to fulfill controller duties; you neither crowd control nor cause debuffs. What you can do is deal great damage while drawing and sharing from a bottomless reserve of power for an excellent might and vit build.


The Basics:

The basis of the build is using Battle Display's power return and boosted vitality scores to give you infinite power and Defibrillator to share that infinite power to three others each cast. The EMP/PDart advanced mechanic is perfect for this since Battle Display needs constant power attacks to keep BD active and energy full.

The loadout template looks like this:

[Attack Power 1] [Attack Power 2] [Attack Power 3] [Defibrillator] [Battle Display] [EMP or Paralizing Dart]

If you run with another Gadgets damager make sure you don't use the same DoT powers as those will overwrite each other and shorten both of your DPS. Normally trollers don't face this issue but running damage stance brings this possible snag. Remember that if anyone should change it is the hybrid; you are not at 100% dps capabilities and and they are.

To get the EMP/PDart AM damage, casts have to be very closely executed and set up three distinct power interactions. Because Defib is a support power you are able to clip any attack power's animation immediately and fit it into the AM rotation without losing time. Defib does not trigger Battle Display's power return, so you have to have enough vitality to boost the return amounts enough to also afford Defib's cost every two seconds. Because power costs increase with higher cr there's no fixed target for an ideal vitality score, but a good rule of thumb I've used is one third damager gear, two thirds controller gear. If just going power positive for solo content but don't need to afford defib spam, I do two thirds damager gear, one third controller gear and swap Defib for Distract.

This build is perfect for controlling duos and alerts while still doing DPS-worthy damage. Because many alerts don't necessitate healers and because some healers are adopting doing small heals out of damage stance, I've run T6 alerts with one tank and 3 damagers for some very excellent clear times. Hybriding alongside a true-blue damager, it's normal to get 50-60% of their damage total. This isn't bad at all for a controller's damage out and will still be more than the average dcuo player. You're essentially counting for two different players performing at competent levels at the same time.

This is essentially a duo and alert build; on raids it's situational. For raids you can be a great battery while helping shorten run times but only reach three teammates at a time with defib; a main troll with PoT active is still a necessity. You can add nicely to the burn but offer no cc or debuffs; if the damagers present are strong enough and main troll/tank need help on the debuffs or cc, going control stance would still be ideal for the team.

Because BD has such a short duration and there's often no PoT to keep you off empty, stopping attacking for any reason bears the risk of slamming the breaks on your and your teammates' power. When you do a pickup, turn a switch, have a break between mobs or otherwise can't attack, you need enough power to reapply BD and one attack power to continue powering out. This is a lot more difficult than PoT trolling as you never really run the risk of losing all your power and the ability to power allies in control stance. In easier content it's easy to miss mobs with powers because they die too fast meaning you eat the full power cost. If consumables and trinks are on cooldown and you don't have enough to cast 2 powers, the team will starve for the next little while.

It also should be noted that besides not always allowing for interruptions, this build is highly counterable with lunges during BD, EMP or a weapon throw mixed in, carries no protection powers like Distract and offers no cc outside of solos and duos. Be prepared to block, roll or jump out of the way as the fast-input nature of the build can lend to being stationary and vulnerable. Your only add management is killing it; for the rest you can use PDF consumables for a quick shield but will need a sharp tank to handle all cc's alone or a healer to offer a shield for pickups. A maxed Sidekick trinket is of great use as it refills health, power, shields you and aggros enemies (without stealing the tank's aggro). A maxed Supply Drop trinket is also highly useful for self healing, picking up your power off empty and boosting your damage.

The Rotation:

Actually implementing this build can be quite a handful. It takes thoughtful use of all of your 6 powers in careful coordination and near-exact timing; you might notice that you're often missing a command or mashing your controller louder than normal while getting used to it. When you do fudge the rotation, always prioritize keeping Battle Display active and defibs on cooldown over striving for optimal damage out. You're replacing an actual troll by running this so don't make your teammates pay for it.

Weapon clip > [Attack Power 1] > [Defibrillator],
Weapon clip > [Attack Power 2],
Weapon clip > [Attack Power 3] > [Defibrillator],
Weapon clip > [EMP or Paralizing Dart], (repeat).

> indicates a clip, truncating animation time with the following power. Weapon clips are fitting in a single weapon attack and shortening its cast time as low as possible while a) still getting the damage to register, and b) not delaying the AM enough to lost the damage bonus. The charge range attacks indicated in its weapon mastery's description put up the most damage of all, and among those 2 Handed's needs the least amount of time to still count its damage. By clipping the weapon attack and the power attacks, you can fit in these ten plus different commands in the time it would take the 4 needed for just the AM rotation to cast. Lunges also work great as a weapon clip to shorten distance and for countering; even if you cancel the lunge before it completes spanning the gap it will still get the counter effect. Defibrilator has a cooldown of 2 seconds and this rotation will be able to cast it every time the moment it becomes available again.

Possible other additions jump cancel if running Fear Gas; you don't actually jump, just tapping x will end its long channel animation but can't be done a) while immobilized or b) in flight/skimming prior to GU43; or [Battle Display] to establish power return while using it as a clip, I'd place it after the first Defib if I didn't simply cast prior to attacking; or to use for its small HoT when damaged, in which case I'd put it after EMP/Pdart as its cd is about 5 seconds, exactly as long as it takes to get off another boosted EMP, and shortens a small, half second delay EMP adds on.

I personally have been using EMP; Gauss is a good, usable while controlled elec pi spreader and boosts/is boosted by foam. By personal preference I also run Fear Gas as it's great further aoe, doesn't hurt too bad on damage to single thanks to pi and doesn't cost extra power points like vortex or napalm. If using PDart I'd stick to max range powers to get the most out of its range advantage over EMP. Just remember your dots interrupt other damagers using gadgets and if anyone should budge it's you; if they're a full fledged dps and you're half of one, you should be prepared to give way.

Me9aMan's normal rotation:

Lunge / Throw Mastery > [Gauss Grenade] > [Defibrillator],
Lunge / Throw Mastery > [Fear Gas] ^ (Jump Cancel),
Lunge / Throw Mastery > [Cryo Foam] > [Defibrillator],
Lunge / Throw Mastery > [EMP], (repeat).


Videos:

Apologies of course for video quality; I'm on PS3 and haven't bought a recording peripheral. All the same these can help show the normal flow of the build, some of the things you run into and what it is capable of.

This first one is a clip of me and a leaguemate that ended up by ourselves in Intergang Crime Wave. After screwing around in the first part like a duo successfully we invited two more and ran it one tank, three damagers.



This second one was in the new Avarice Impurity where I was able to put more emphasis on landing lunge counters and charge throw clips. The DPS knew ahead of time that interruptions can be an issue for me and was cool to use the oan portal, but I want to emphasize not penalizing your teammates for your build choices by demanding they run switches.




Closing Thoughts:

I always start a pug by telling them I'm troll. Have an actual controller armory ready if needed, especially while playing with people you don't know.

By going Hybrid Battery you trigger the Role Optional buff of getting PoT when power gets low for the whole team. It's not much, but it's a nice addition and may help get you off of empty in a slip up. Same applies to no healer/hybrid healer and a decent HoT when damaged or while blocking. DCUO loves damagers

I've enjoyed max damage, escalating replenishing procs and breakout regeneration in the build.

This runs great with Might / Vitality mods and enough of them will help wear less troll gear and still have the needed vit. If you're USPS, I craft m/v6 experts as well as pdf 6's.

I've managed to hit power positive in PvP but since power restore effects are mitigated in arenas it's harder to manage defibbing. I'll be putting in max m/v as I earn them to hopefully pull off the build; it's steep but with a heal teammate it's looking like it will dominate and perhaps help reshape the metagame.

Shouts out to TheDark, D3vi1, Rokyn and Penryn for laying some of the foundation/adding support in the making of this build as well as any pug member that didn't fuss me trying something new in an instance.

(reserved)

I'm speechless

I like this strategy a lot. Well done. If I may ask what are the numbers for your hybrid build, as in Might, Precision and Vit. Also, how do you choose your Gear? Thanks for your help

Right now, 110 cr, 145 sp I troll with 2/3rds troll gear and just synth 5 mods while I earn some scratch. I saw it was super grainy in the video, but I'm a little over 4k might and 3k vit. As gear is ballooning the vit req is growing a lot, but 3k or so is staying on top of it. Like I mentioned I just landed a M/V 6 exp plan and will be seeing how high I can push my dps while keeping up power out.

SP wise I went straight down the trees as much as I can to get a spread of dps and support. I grab crit chance/mag, power heal crit, might, vit and whatever defensives as leftover to get the +25 m/p's. Only some weapons touch on all of those bases so they're the first ones cleared.

Regarding precision, I've been mostly ignoring it but I'm starting to reevaluate that. The white damage is very nice; 2h mastery throws hitting sub 2k each, four times add up to more than an uncritted EMP each rotation. It doesn't reach up to 8 like EMP or as wide as any of my powers though which is why I've been leaving prec low on the priority list. Might be moved to try it though. When soloing some of the dps gear adds a nice chunk; that's when I lean 2/3rds damager, 1/3rd troll on gear. A power positive EMP gad is a great solo; I cleared prime with no tag out and did all three rage bosses in the new challenge no problem.

For selecting which gear to use, I go by its slot color and slot bonus. Head and shoulders for a dps are blue and neglibigle; might as well go troll on those. Because I also keep a fully geared troll armory much of the gear is shared between them; if I know I want a troll turf mod, such as the excellent escalating replenishing proc neck mod, neck lands a spot in my hybrid as well as role troll. I also jumped for a cr97 neck over other pieces because of its dual benefit in my armories. Pieces that aren't common to both can be 96 for a little while longer.

That's great! We are practically the same in CR and SP, which is excellent. I have been experimenting with this and this is very informative. I have been Gadgets since launch and will never change. I am also quite partial to my Dual Pistols, which kind of keeps me behind the ball from the other Weapons. I do agree that precision with the weapon attacks could be very relevant. I plan on setting this up this weekend and I will let you know how it works out. Thanks again!

Hey bro, I saw you mentioned me...D3vi1 and Penryn did most of the work bro, they deserve the praise a lot more. I just threw out ideas and tested stuff out.

All good, I just forgot to add D3vi1's name. It was really damn late lol.

What do use on for your chest piece and weapon? I use Penetrating Strikes & Replenishing Adapter (even though I didn't really use weapon attacks often. figured I'd throw it in and hope for weapon tap that got me the power restore.)

What kind of trinket is that? Vit or Damage? I use the damage one but I keep it on cool down the whole time. I my belt, I use Supply Drop, damage trinket and sometimes vit trinket depends on the dps/power consumption, PDVI (which reminds me of PDF VI expert is out there now) and Orbital Strike. I don't use the Sidekick mostly because I don't have the MoT at the moment. The fact it taunt's is helpful and didn't know it actually shields you. I haven't touched it in a while.

Just some info, the electric PI boost to EMP and dazing PI boost to PDart only applies to those 2 powers if they're used outside the Advanced Interaction boost. They just boost their damage by the normal 50% boost our other powers get. So you're free to use any PI power, as long as it's 3 different ones of course, and not have to use electric or daze. EMP and PDart will still get AI boosted damage.

I wasn't able to team up with you before. I'm hoping to get something in soon. I'd like to see what you can do. Maybe even with a little more damage gear or something. I'm really good a solo controlling raids since I use all the power out tools. I also designate atleast 4 players as Supply Drop Droppers during the raid and tell them when to drop it. So you'd be able to let loose. I'll send you a tell if I can ever get a freggin chance to set a run up with you.

I use blast mod and piercing; they're among the more optional ones imo. My belt is damage trink, pdf, sidekick and supply. I dropped orbital to get that extra safety net on my power amount.

Nice to know about the pi distinction on EMP and PDart; don't know why its even there in that case lol. Just as well; only encourages more playing around with pi's depending who you're playing with.

Definitely on grouping up. I'll welcome any chance to learn more.

Shout out to D3vi1? with all due respect JZ, whomever you are.. but this entire work is D3vi1's and you've acted like it's your own...

This is D3vi1's guide hes talked to me about all of this way before this was posted

Yeah, it might be a good idea to mention the person who wrote the original guide which your friend gave you to see.

Let's hold up a sec because I take this kind of thing seriously. That's cool if there's overlap as D3vi1 started me into trying hybrids, but where I went after initially hearing the concept of wearing troll gear in damage stance is my own. At first I thought pushing defib hadn't been tried at all yet and was testing and sharing my findings when D3v's thread was linked to me. He mentions he'd ran it but it's pretty glossed over; it's mostly about healing over there, which is cool and its own thing. Earlier on I had thought I was inventing something by bringing defib and replacing a troller, but it's alright if I'm not the first guy to the scene. One common thing between D3v, Dark and anyone else I had talked to about it on forums or in game, it's still super gestational. Not heavily tested or widely known, and feedback and footage would be very helpful. I pugged a lot to play it against different groups and a lot of folks were curious as to how it's done. At first I was just going to upload some vids but a lot of folks also wanted the how and why... as you see above, a bigass post to be shoving into an existing thread. I went a few weeks this way, building on it and recorded some runs and used what I learned to write a fairly ground up guide for others who want to get into trying it... None of that is with outside influence. I came here to break down as much as I can in my findings to help it reach the community. It isn't listed as Me9aMan's invention but it is Me9aMan's guide. I put in about a month refining this into what it is; this work is my own.

Hey I would like to clear some stuff here real quick. The rotation and play style that JZ came up with was completely out of his head....from what it seems like. Me and Dark have spoken to him before on PS and he seemed like he knew the powerset very well. I don't think he necessary ripped D3vi1 off but more like he came up with something similar. Obviously I can't speak for him but I'm counting on that as being the truth. He also confused our avatars from what he said but as I said before I take no credit at all...I only test stuff out and exchange ideas.

What I'm a little lost on and is why not post on the thread that D3vi1 already made? So that way you can both compare notes and exchange ideas. But that's all I wanted say. Hopefully this gets cleared up somehow.

Thanks for the backup. Because it's big; what I had written here is its-own-thread-sized, and I had linked in the go go thread to make sure all the relevant people saw it. I had waxed concepts over in the hybrids thread there a handful of times and helped defend it against its random naysayers. It's touched on, but it's not a guide, not like what imo was most needed to get the word out and maybe help get less weird looks from people when running it.

Actually just link dropping in another thread got deleted, but you give me the idea to just upload a vid there and carry the link in my sig.

Your guide isn't really any differet from d3v1's at all, you can't just take someone elses material, loadouts etc.. tweak them a little and then call it your own.. That's like me using the "Hunger Games" books as a basis, changing a few ideas in the book and then calling it the "Hungry Games".. If I was d3vi1 I'd be pretty offended by this whole thing.. and hoenstly given his response in this thread already I'd say that's the case... personally it seems like you owe him an apology but thats just me.

JZ already gave credit to D3vi1. That's more than enough. D3vi1 brought up the idea but he doesn't exactly put his loadout and rotations out there. JZ did something different than D3vi1 did and posted that along with a video.

Another thing to mention is that on D3vi1's first page he doesn't even have his controller section filled in. JZ certainly was influenced by the hybrid idea, originally brought to his attention in the Gadgets thread where D3vi1 and I talk about it, but JZ's work is his own seeing as how D3vi1 rarely shares his exact and sequence detailed execution on it.

D3vi1's hybrid guide also is a general discussion about tanks, healers and controllers. JZ's is just focused on Battery support in Damage role. So his guide is not a place for healers, or tanks to comment. JZ's thread is directed at one role which is something that I, a reader, would prefer to check out. As a reader and player, I can't honestly say I'm interested in looking through or reading about hybrid tanks or healers. So I support this a separate thread catered one topic.

Except that a novel it is not. Give the Hybrids thread another read; since his trolling section is blank you'll have to scroll the 6 pages to piecemeal all he has together, and that pretty much boils down to the template loadout bar, and much else is outdated or I simply disagree with. I actually talk more about it in his thread than he does. That thread aims to introduce all hybrids in any power, whereas I put forth, without his influence, and actual guide. And running it is a lot more difficult than reg trolling, so a guide is well advised.

You can stop saying or assuming that I just read his posts and appropriated it as my own, because I didn't. We've reached similar conclusions given the same starting point and same things to work with, but we've gone different places with it and I'm actually interested in teaching it.

Take a look at the likes on D3v's reply above; I added a like because at first I thought he liked the thread. It's pretty ambiguous, considering imo he has perfectly nothing to be mad about. If he wants to air a grievance let's let him do it himself.