I thought I would give some insight into what I see from AI, because it seems to be a bit different than what other people have talked about..
Outdoor Alien Battles:
First off, I think that every crat will want to run Retreat to Glory (or a lower equivalent) when they are outside. Some added information on this nano:
1 - It stacks -> so if 3 crats are running it, it would function as a -1k AE nano drain every 20 seconds over the 9m radius.
2 - As a side result of it stacking, you can force cast this nano repeatedly to increase the amout you are draining. Instant cast + 5 sec recharge means you can drain 4 x 336 = 1344 nano in a 20 sec. period.
3 - Sometimes, I will alternate force casting this and AE calm during the first initial rush of enemies and then stop force casting it after 25% or so of the aliens are dead.
4 - It does not break calms. Not only that, with the probability of the aliens breaking the calms themselves being so high, it wouldn't even matter if it did.
5 - It does not generate taunt/aggro onto you.
As many other people have suggested, I use distrupted psyche outdoors a lot. I don't really do this with the intention of calming mobs, but rather to wipe mob aggro to keep them off of the doctors. So, if you use this and don't notice very many mobs actually being 'calm', you still could have a big effect because of the hate list wipe.
Indoor Alien Battles:
The situation is a little bit different inside...
Retreat to glory is much less useful indoors because of the speed at which the mobs die. Sure the aliens still nuke hard, but most battles are over in 20 seconds or less which doesn't leave much time to drain nano. Your best bet is probably to run Mourners March indoors.
In the same way, spamming Distrupted Psyche indoors also can cause problems. Like any RK calm, distrupted psyche has a pretty large chance of being broken if you recast ontop of it. If you spam it, you will often break your own calms as soon as they land. As such, I usually cast disrupted psyche on the primary target right when the pull comes in, then switch over to contemplation on stuff that isn't being hit. I never get counters, only get unaffected. Typically, the higher the mob level, the more likely you are to get unaffected. I haven't run into a non-boss mob in the ship that can't be calmed eventually.
While I don't usually bother to charm outside, inside the ship is pretty good. Here is what I have found so far:
1 - If you think of the mobs as 'snakes, horses, and frogs': I have not been able to charm snakes, charmed frogs have been completely worthless pets, and charmed horses are ok (damage range from 1k-3k).
2 - All mobs on the ship have an innate chance to resist charm and can be buffed to resist charm. The innate chance to resist varies by level, so the higher the level, the more times you will have to cast the charm to get it to stick (could be 4-5 times minimum)
3 - It is possible to charm *all* horse/frog type mobs. This includes mobs that I (lvl220) cannot determine the level of. Not only that, but you only need to use a tmd class nano to do it. This *could* mean that you can use displace thought patterns to command 2 high level alien pets at once. However, I would not recommend it, basically because of the difficulty in controlling a charmed mob that you cannot immediately recharm.
4 - So yes, in the ship you can charm what you want and the end result is a pet that is somewhat worse than a 215 engineer pet. In other words, regardless of the level, the charmed pets hit too slow/don't nuke enough to be overpowering forces, but still can give you a bit of a damage boost.
Another thing that has been mentioned a few times before that I also find useful is to use the malise line in the boss room. Regardless of what you might think, the top end malise is 50% of ubt, so if ubt cuts damage 20%, malise will cut damage 10%. 10% damage reduction is not bad.
Finally, regarding the loophole perk line - I like it and I have it maxed. The nuke (antitrust) hits for 800 at loophole 10. 3 seconds to cast with a 15 second recharge. The nice thing is that if it is resist, you get the resist message immediately, and it only takes 6 seconds until you can try again. I typically only get resists vs boss mobs.
Overrule also seems to be a pretty nice perk special. Its a bit difficult to say 'its saved lives xxx times', but I like to punch it during the start of an attack (while aggro is the least controlled), just in case someone in my team gets aggro early. Its 20 seconds of defense, and then you have to wait 90 seconds before you can use it again. The casting time on Overrule is a bit long, so I'm not 100% sure that it would be all that good during a very fast emergency (i.e. if a person is going to die on the next hit, i don't think you can activate it it fast enough to make that next hit miss). Its good if you know a fight will have an awkward start and you want added defense until the tanks can control aggro.
I'm least happy with puppeteer. The damage boost is ok, maybe 10% for the 30 seconds at best, but my real issue is the difficulty in using the perk. I really don't have the space on my primary hotkey bar for such a small effect perk. So, I have it on another bar, so anytime I want to use it, I have to change to that secondary hotkey bar shift+key, select my bot shift+f1, launch the perk key, change to primary hotkey bar shift+key, retarget key. Basically, 5 extra keystrokes for a very marginal increase in damage. This perk would be 10x better/more useful if it worked without having to target your bot (you can't use it on any other target).
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would be super nice if FC would give the demotivational speechs a slightly larger range tho.
Originally Posted by Xertigo
