The Go Go Gadget Guide to Everything Gadgets

I'm referring to just it's damage and the overwriting part of the conversation.
I'm not talking about where and when it's useful which is the key to using any power. In the middle of an engagement I would not use it. Just before one, I would. If someone in my group stepped away and the team was killing time, I would set them up.

It's bothering me that I have so many power points left when I get SB, GG, Sonic Cry/Holo Decoy, Battle Drone, Distract, and Defib. What am I missing that leaving me with 8 power points, I don't ever switch my load out in situations so I don't want to just pick up powers that aren't on my load out (I know that's not the BEST way but its just something I'm used to so I never change it)

You could get some of the innates in the iconics tree. Like the +50 Vit and 100 power added to your power bar, +25 Dom which turns to 50 Dom in controller stance, the 10% and 3% increase on your damage crits, +100 health, I think there is an added defense innate too. They're all st the bottom of the tree. If you pick up things and throw them super strength increases damage.

NVM I just bought a couple situational CCs like stasis field and vortex for bumping adds outta the way and lasso for a non PoT pull and stealth and thermite mine to have some fun with every once in a while, and while I like the idea of holographic decoy being abMass stun designed for the gadget tree I don't have room on my load out for the selfdestruct and the cool down is a little long for my preference

I always make sure to get the Dom and Vit innate boosts

Thanks for answering that Dark. I've been busy.

It's your choice and you should use what you like. I was just trying to give you some info. Stealth can be viable especially if you use the HT mod. I like to use Sleep Dart the cast Fear Gas out of it on my troll when I'm trying to help with damage. The mine will cause an AoE knockdown I believe so in that it has it's uses. It's up to you tho.

Had to make a seperate thread: on the power issue - at this rate we'll be looking at a 100% power-cost increase by T6 if it continues to go up by 50% per end Tier-gear.....something like Wintery Tempest/Debris Field Inferno with a base of 450 would be absurd in say T8 (200% power-cost increase if rate continues) where it would cost 1350 for a single Cast and P-O-T ticks would be around 400-ish.....how are they supposed to play with lesser geared individuals in low Tiered instances...

But more seriously - thought the devs said that a similarly geared Controller would "feel" the same power wise as high-end T4 (78/79 modded)

I have a lot of experience as a Controller, so I've been able to make the appropriate adjustments in my playing style for raids. It is just that the "cushion" I had as a high-end T4 controller has been eliminated. I was using every trick in the book today to keep my power levels up while solo trolling some Paradox bosses. The second controller picked a very unfortunate time to go AFK. Solo trolling a raid wasn't even worth mentioning at upper T4 levels.

Playing solo is a different story though. I've had to move to a "low-power-consumption" loadout for duos and challenges.

Just a question, is photonblast clippable? Can it be clipped by consumables? And whats the best consumable to use for gadgets for PI with feargas/napalm/cf

You may want to consider getting a healer debuff it'll be more useful than the damage debuff. It can be useful in some PvE content instance's(prime, inner etc). A one shot is always going to be a one shot. The lasso was a good choice especially if you run the FOS missions regularly. Sonic Cry is a good group stun especially in close quarters. Cryo Foam can root up to 5 adds. You'll have better chance to get all targets if you jump. Napalm will knockdown and set up to 6 targets on fire(if they're closeto each other). If you want to save the power point on your non PoT pull. Each of the movement mode's have a pull. Flight's is a multi target pull the other movements are single. It'll cost a skill point. So that's your choice on whether to use a sp or pp.

If you clip it you'll or jump to cancel you'll stop damage. You may be able to clip right there at the end but may lose a big tick. It's a choice you have to make. Is it worth the risk of cancelling damage? That's up you.

Electro shock pulse, or something that will set a group on fire(can't remember the name of it) would be your best bet to interact with FG or CF. Then you'll get the explosive burst tick for the PI. Their both mid range powers to so you could lunge, cast your consumable back away then cast FG or Foam or both.

Napalm won't interact with a consumable. You'll get your burst hit either way from it after that it'll just overwrite the burning DoT if there is one.

I am returning to the game after a several month break, and discovered that my skill points have been reset. I scanned thru this great guide and did not see anywhere in it what stats have the highest priority regarding skill point allocation. I reviewed some other guides and they stated that I should refer to the power set specific guide for details.

About my play style:

Gadgets/Flying/Martial Arts (don't ask, because I don't remember wtf I was thinking)
As I began playing, I gravitated towards hand blasters.
My feeble gear is damage gear, but I have controller gear I can swap to in a pinch.
I tend to weapon attack more than abilities, so I think that precision will be higher priority than might.
I have about 50 skill points

I was reading a fire guide and it stated the allocation order was:

Might(m) -> Precision(p) -> Critical Attack Chance(cac) -> Critical Attack Damage(cad)

I saw that the order in another guide was:

cac -> cad -> m -> p

I played before the tier 2 innates and don't have shield unlocked, so I put all of my points into might and then vit/dom. In retrospect, I was greatly diminishing my damage output. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

With only 50 SP you'll probably want to pick which role to focus your points into. Then if your going to role differently you can respec.

For controlling Vit, Cunning, crit chance, crit mag, prec, might, dom

For DPS Crit Chance, Crit Mag, Might, Prec, Power(might and precision tier 2 can be switched in order for playstyle)

As a controller you should get all the dom you need to run the instance's from your gear to land your CC. If you don't meet the min requirement than spec there first. Also if your looking to increase your shield strength resto is another option. It will give +15 where Dom will give +14 in troll stance(+7 in DPS).

As a DPS by speccing into the crit innates you'll raise your overall damage since it'll effect both your powers and your weapon attacks. Make sure if you can to get the one's in the power points as well.

I find that the tier 1 innates are more vital to get first than the tier 2 innates. Their is just a much bigger boost in the tier 1 innates. This is also my opinion on what works best and others may feel differently. I have a tank that feels might first for DPS but I netted the best results going with crit first.

Having fun with my new gadgets (thanks again Dark) and wanted to recheck to see where I can further improve my playstyle. I'm running:

Statis Field
Intim
Napalm
Fear Gas
Photon
Bunker
Crit innates and power/vit innate

SF>Int and PB for single use, NG - FG (jump) and BB - FG (jump) for aoe. I use handblasts, stay ranged and spec might. I find that I can do more at range than carrying Field and a 1H, though I'm not so geared so as to make that a viable option just yet. I bring empowered channeling for photon abuse/a little mitigation and tumbling master for safety, escalating might, berserk and blast on weapon. I'm thinking core strength is the most valuable as a dps but I would like to confirm the math of penetrating strikes mod to know which is truly better. I flirted with WoP for my sc as it will interact with FG just the same as Bunker and I could do more damage with a full power bar than a single bunker, but I've been fortunate enough to have competent trolls and not worry about running out of power. I haven't started on consumables just yet but I'm thinking personal dampening might be the smartest way to go since Napalm is already a beast PI spreader.

This thread posted results but didn't show how they got those numbers. Basically Penetrating Strikes is preferred for PvP because it gives an 11% increase in damage. In PvE it's only 8%. Core Strength gives 10% in PvE.

Your choice of powers are fine as is. Some players carry Bunker and some don't. It just depends on how often you use the other 5 powers. Some feel they only need 5 powers to cycle through and just throw in Bunker to fill the slot. Others fit in a 6th power that they use just as frequently as the 5 powers so they don't need a Bunker. They just accumulate damage differently. Both work but depend on a player's approach.

Unless you have an extra power point you don't know what to do with, you shouldn't go out of your way for the vit/power innate in damage stance. Even if you use WoP. Nice approach to use it to spread electric PI. WoP is usable in damage stance to give power even if your vit is low.

You pretty much got it. Napalm is already setting up burning on multiple targets so you don't need something like Electro Static Pulse Device for PIs unless you're looking to use it to clip your powers like Intimidation. But most of our powers already have a short animation.

PDF's are really good for a personal shield so you don't have to use a power slot for something like Distract. If you have any V or V Expert consumable plans that are far range you could use them to do more damage and clip your weapon combos. They're costly though.

Wisdom of Solomon is really just there for the +100 power. Seemed to me that any other contenders for that last power point weren't doing my damage any good. WoP, Anesthetic, Battle Drone, Defib, Energy Shield; situationally all of these can be handy if I didn't already use bunker or wanted to dual spec, but none of it really drives my damage when the 100 power innate can lend a bit. With the possibility of that last point, looks like I'm not changing anything. Thanks for the fast reply!

The ideas in that thread are a bit off. They're assuming that Core Strength adds 10% multiplicatively which it does not. The damage bonus is additive to your pre-existing modifier, so it would turn a pre-existing 35% dmg mod to 45% and 50% to 60%. For this reason, Core Strength is better than Penetrating Strikes for only non-damage roles in PvE.

In damage role, your minimum modifier would be 35%, max usually being 50% or let's say 45% for Gadgets. Then your actual damage increase would be 145%/135% = +7.4% if you were using 35% powers. Or 155%/145% = +6.9% if you were using 45% mod powers. Since the minimum mod is 35%, a damage increase of +7.4% is the max you'll get cause the added 10% is worth less and less as your base modifier goes up.

Now Penetrating Strikes.. it subtracts 528 defense or 7.5% damage reduction but this is also additive so it's not a 7.5% damage increase. Your actual damage increase will vary because mobs have differing defenses but we can just look at the base mob defense since Penetrating Strikes gets better as mob defense goes up. All mobs have a minimum defense of 1056, or 15% damage reduction. Then all your damage comes out being multiplied by 85% to account for mob defense. Penetrating Strikes ignores half of this defense and turns 15% reduction to only 7.5% damage reduction. The new multiplier to account for mob defense would then be 92.5%. So your actual damage increase with Penetrating Strikes on mobs with the lowest defense they can have would be 92.5%/85% = +8.8% increase. Already you can see it's higher than what you could possibly get with Core Strength in the damage role.

Of course only nub tier mobs and some high tier mini-bosses have a defense this low so your gain from Penetrating Strikes should be a lot higher. I haven't done much testing for raids specifically, but I've seen some regular T5 mobs have defense as high as 2700, or about 38% damage reduction. Doing the same thing above, you would find Penetrating Strikes to give you a 69.5%/62% = +12% damage increase, substantially more than even Core Strength giving a true 10% for Controllers. Healers and Tanks definitely benefit more from Core Strength but I feel like it's a toss up for Controllers, where it'd depend on whatever instance you were doing.

wall o text ;p so in short, Penetrating Strikes > Core Strength for damage roles in PvE.

one more thing edit: Would Penetrating Strikes still be better if the mob had the defense debuff on them?

With Penetrating Strikes and a -7% armor debuff, mobs with 15% armor would be left with 0.5% damage reduction. The gains would be 99.5%/85% = +17% damage increase.
With Core Strength, it would be (145%/135%) * (92%/85%) = +16% damage increase for 35% powers,
or (155%/145%) * (92%/85%) = +15.7% for 45% mod powers.
Penetrating Strikes is still better.

I got a Boo Junior trinket today and did some testing on it. I was mostly interested in its shielding powers.

Here are some stats:
When summoned, Boo Junior will appear for one minute. It has a one minute cooldown. At the 6, 28, and 52 second marks, it will cast a shield on the person that summoned it. Each shield can last up to 13 seconds and has a 525 damage mitigation cap.

Boo Junior does ok damage. He was doing about 150 damage per hit for me. I also saw the pet Panic a few enemies.

The trinket also gives 246 Might boost.

The shield effect seems semi-useful. That is 1575 damage mitigation over a minute and you can have the trinket active 50% of the time.

EDIT: There is one potential problem with this trinket. It doesn't look like shield will stack with Distract. If I get the ghost shield and then cast Distract, I only get 525 damage mitigation. It appears to work with Personal Dampening Field V Expert though.

I've used Penetrating Strike by accident before when I swapped to HL and back to Gadgets. I ran with the same group from my league and for some reason my numbers were lower than with Core Strength, are you sure about this?