Biospark

Here is an idea for improving the Fighting Power Pool that I would like to share and get feedback on. Additionally, I am working on ideas for other Power Pools which could be improved using similar adjustments, making them more like the Ancillary Pools.

FIGHTING

Tier 1 (A) Boxing : Same as current, but add in alternate animations, specifically the "Barrage" animation.

Tier 1 (B) Hardiness : Passive 7.5% resist to Energy/Neg/Fire/Cold

Tier 2 (A) Kick : Buff the damage slightly AND add in alternate animations

Tier 2 (B) Tough : No Change from current form. Although I believe this toggle to provide too little for its endurance cost, I cannot provide a sound argument to increase the protection, other than there is quite a bit of wiggle room between this toggle and equivalent ones from each AT. This toggle is currently 50% strength of AT toggles available. I would argue that 70% would not be overpowered.

Tier 3 (A) Weave : No change from current form. This power is well balanced for the power pick investment and the amount of protection it provides.


Some reasons WHY

1) By creating a different pathway for choices, players can avoid taking an attack that they dont need or want in order to get the defense toggle they actually want. Those players still seeking extra attacks can still get the attack(s) in a variety of methods.

2) Adding in a passive power at tier 1 and including a small amount of resistance beside S/L would help the pool considerably. I personally feel that the amount of survival afforded by "Tough" is not balanced to its cost. Adding the E/N/F/C will make the toggle worth the endurance cost IMO. I am sure many will not agree, but every time I take tough as a player its for only 2 reasons (slotting Steadfast IOs AND pre-requisite for Weave). Thats not the way it should be. Tough should stand on its own as a power worth taking, even if you still take Weave.

3) Adding alternate animations is something that REALLY helped me with a couple of my existing characters, and extending this to the Power Pool attacks seems a "no-brainer" to me. Personally, I dont like the animations for Boxing or Kick and would LOVE to have other options available. Unfortunately, the current animations are so short that both powers would have to be "revamped" a bit to allow for other animations as options. But its a worthy effort IMHO

*** Thanks for tuning in and looking forward to constructive feedback***


EDIT: I have updated the original post based on feedback in this thread.

So far its been an excellent improvement to soloing. It actually has had a couple side-effects for me.

1) 30% more base damage is noticeable enough that I have reconsidered the effectiveness of Assault. Meaning that my solo damage has gone up even more due to adding in assault.

2) The effectiveness of my blasts is quite noticeable against villains of all types. Minions are now small potatoes, Lts are much easier to dispatch and Bosses are still a challenge, but not nearly as time-consuming to take down as before. Speed thru a mission is an important aspect for me (and many others I suspect).

The interesting thing about this improvement is that each of my defenders still retains their original strengths and weaknesses, have the same effectiveness in groups, but gain a solo-ing improvement.

The devs did a great job on this one !!

but.... (you knew there was one)
I think there are still some small tweaks to be made to individual powersets to even-out the primaries a little more.

My Willpower characters all take the passives, all of them. They are excellent !

In fact, a third reason for liking WP is that there is not a single power in the set that I dont like. That cannot be said about 95% of the powersets out there. There is always at least one "eewww" power.

I have the first 7 powers ( I skipped the self rez and the tier 9), but not because I dont like them.

Before Willpower came along, I was happy with most defense sets and felt INV was the best overall for survivability (early and late game). But none of the sets really made me happy when I played them on scrappers, until Willpower.

Willpower is my favorite defense powerset for two main reasons;

1) Its overall tiered survival of Regen+Defense+Resist makes the road to 50 a smooth ride, even for scrappers. Its very good at what you want from a defense set: keeping you alive.

2) Willpower is a "set-and-forget" powerset. You turn on your toggles and then focus on clicking attacks only. I absolutely love that aspect, because thats how I like to play a melee oriented character.

That being said, there are two things that you need to watch out for; certain villains types will eat you alive, like anything that debuffs your regeneration. And secondly, you can be taken down by a heavy alpha strike. For the former, I recommend learning which Villains to take out first (which is something you will probably do with any character) and it is very helpful to have a power like a hold or knockdown to disrupt them while you beat em down. (My Tank has Air Superiority AND Char from Pyre Mastery)
As far as the alpha strike, having something like footstomp would help, but my approach is to focus on my Defense using IOs. Willpower is a little expensive to get to softcap on S/L/E/N but it can be done. You can get into the 30% defense range fairly easily by using the Smashing Haymaker IO set and getting a couple additional defense toggles like Combat Jumping and Weave.

I agree with Oracle regarding WarMace as well.
You can make it a pipe-wrench, baseball bat, and I think there is another less magical/super-hero-ish choice. I just cannot think of it at the moment.

And Willpower is definitely a good "Natural" set.

So my vote would be Willpower/War Mace (for a Tanker)

Edit: Just looked into the game, and there are a couple wrench options, baseball bat, police batons, wooden club and even a sledgehammer (I like that one)

One of the coolest combinations I have seen is DM/SR. I remember 6 years ago (almost) playing a new alt in KR and seeing a guy run by me named "Spectre" who was a DM/SR.

What struck me about the combination was how well -tohit and +def could work together and just about made one of my own on the spot.

Years later I actually did and DM has alot to offer SR. Specifically Siphon Life.
Add in one of the best buildup powers in the game and decent ST damage, would make this combination a great "Hard Target Hunter". Although not at the top of the AoE heap, I figure taking Fireball combined with a well-placed Shadow maul will do some decent AoE.

For me Shadow Maul has gone from love to hate and back to love in my heart. Once you get the hang of it and use it properly it pumps out excellent damage. Its efficiency is decent enough that you can even use it on single targets if you dont have anything else ready to fire off.

I recently levelled a DM/SR up to 28, and as far as scrapper combinations that I have tried, its the fastest I have ever gotten one to that level.

Good Luck deciding on your new Scrapper

The following is fairly close to my own Kin/Electric with the exception of travel powers.
I went with Recall Friend/Teleport/Hover and somewhere between 10-35 I also took Increase Density for teaming.

Your build is solid, with alot more emphasis on Accuracy than mine. I usually stick with just 1 ACC IO until I can get Set IOs and global bonuses into a build, but personal preference should rule when talking about Accuracy.
The very first power that I went after IOs was Transfusion. As you can see it benefits very much by slotting IOs and well worth the cost to do so as soon as possible.
My Kinetic/Electric does pretty well on a team, although he can be quite busy throwing out SB, ID and Transfusion/Transference/FS. I can take the same build out for solo work and do fairly well depending on the enemies. I recommend getting more slots into Tesla Cage since this power is your main pre-emptive control when solo. The longer it lasts, the better off you are against villains with nasty mezz effects.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Ace: Level 31 Technology Defender
Primary Power Set: Kinetics
Secondary Power Set: Electrical Blast
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Transfusion -- Nictus-Acc/Heal(A), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(3), Theft-Acc/Heal(3), H'zdH-Heal/Rchg(5), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx(5)
Level 1: Charged Bolts -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(13), RechRdx-I(15)
Level 2: Siphon Power -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(7)
Level 4: Lightning Bolt -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(11), RechRdx-I(15)
Level 6: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(17)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- Jump-I(A), Ksmt-ToHit+(17)
Level 10: Ball Lightning -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(13), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(19), EndRdx-I(21)
Level 12: Speed Boost -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Short Circuit -- Acc-I(A), EndMod-I(23), EndMod-I(23), EndRdx-I(25), RechRdx-I(25)
Level 18: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(27), RechRdx-I(27)
Level 20: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 22: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 24: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(31)
Level 26: Transference -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(29), EndMod-I(31)
Level 28: Tesla Cage -- Acc-I(A), Hold-I(29), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 30: Acrobatics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc-I(A)
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 6: Ninja Run

With regards to which power to drop for Hasten, I can only guess which attack you get the least mileage out of. My tastes would tend toward the Snipe, but damage-wise Psi-Tornado is fairly low damage and I dont know how much you actually use it while teamed. It really depends on your use of the powers, but I would eliminate one of the attacks most likely.

Just a couple of quick observations that I see;

You mentioned that you have alot of accuracy in the build, and you are right.
For Generic SO's I will go 1ACC+3DMG myself, and it seems pretty solid until I get on teams doing higher level enemies, and then my best stuff is aimed at team-mates, so not a big headache even then.

You did well on recharge slotting in your powers as well as making most of them work as they should, but you should consider getting some endurance reduction into the more expensive powers.

You did not take Hasten. I normally would never recommend Hasten to anyone, since it kind of bothers me that Hasten and Stamina seem to be "staples" in every build you see.
However, the EMPATHY powerset really screams, begs, pleads and demands Hasten if you want to get the most out of it. I seriously reccommend working it into your build for all your long-recharging powers (pretty much everything important to Empathy).

The last comment is more of a question. Do you specifically wish to avoid IO sets ?
Is it a question of Influence or just not gotten to that hurdle yet? The reason I ask is that even though some of the best IO sets are expensive, there are some very decent "uncommon" sets that really crank up a build. Once you get into your 30s, its well worth the effort to pick and choose a few cheap IO sets, or "franken-slot" from different sets to make every slot count for more than one "enhancement".

Whenever I think of Single Target Holds on my defenders I am reminded of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Three Hold powers is just too many buttons to push and my fingers have enough problems hitting the right ones at the right time. One Hold power is quite tasty but always leaves me wishing I had a little more in the bowl. But Two Hold powers is just right !!!

sorry, medicine can make a person silly at times