Carnifax
-
Posts
3805 -
Joined
-
Quote:See, I like the fact I get my "uber" powers earlier than later. Getting Seismic Smash at 18 rocks, getting Tremor at 18 wouldn't have. There's a lot to be said for playing Early Blooming sets compared to late blooming ones. My Illusion/Storm controller was a lot more fun to play in her 20s than my Grav/TA. Playing Grav/TA showed me how painful having 2 late blooming sets can be.Originally Posted by _Deth_
I don't like Tremor, I am entitled to not like Tremor.
You are looking at this from a purely number crunching standpoint.
I am not looking for a buff in Tremor. No, what I am looking for is for the last power I get in my primary not be a major letdown.
Seriously, how hard is that to understand?
Brutes are designed as a melee damage class. I want melee damage. More control and lower damage out of my tier 9 is a major buzzkill.
Yes, I know everyone is SOOOO in love the with mitigation aspects of SM. I like the damage myself. Thats why i picked it, to hit things really hard. Knocking things on their tails over and over again is funny and entertaining, and yeah, does serve as nice way to slow incoming damage, but it doesn't get em dead any quicker.
And seriously, why would buffing Tremor to FS levels, and I mean real FS levels, not the Rage buffed FS levels, be that big of a deal? FS has a faster activation, does more damage with the same radius so it is hitting the same number of targets as Tremor does, and has a slightly longer recharge, and has the same secondary effect. FS is a true tier 9. Tremor isn't. You compare it to the PBAoEs in other sets, but they are not the sets Tier 9 power. Patron Pools really are not comparable, as they are meant to fill holes the AT has, not to be set defining.
I believe that Whirling hands deserves a buff in damage considering it's place in the power order as well. That or a boost to the chance to stun in it.
This is the whole heart of this issue. Saying that the set as a whole is balanced means squat when you get decent powers up front and crap at the end. It should be a progression. When a power becomes available it should be superior in its design to the powers that come earlier. Saying the set is stronger because the TANKER tier 9 was moved to 7 on brutes is a cop out. I see it as being weaker because you have nothing left to look forward to and 2 more power picks as you level. If I was leveling an SM brute as my first toon, and was doing it solely by running content, when I picked tremor, I would have been pissed, especially if I had also picked fault. "Yay, I have a PBAoE version of a power I already had. Oh wait, it does a little bit of damage, but nothing really to write home about. Man, look at that power that guy with Super Strength got, it's looks like the same power as mine, but man, look at that damage." Seriously. I would have been really, really pissed. And that is my point.
SS translated perfectly when it was moved from Tank to brute, SM did not. Personally, and I really don't care if anyone agrees with me or not, I am entitled to my opinion, I believe they should have adjusted the powers as well as adjusting the order, or they should have just left the order alone.
The opposite happens with my Stone/Fire Brute, getting things like the Heavy Mallets, Fault and Seismic so early made him very enjoyable, especially the amount of Spike Damage my chain could throw out (well once I also got to 20 and got my End sorted). And my Fiery Aura was basically complete as a set at 28. If you reshuffled the Stone powers according to how powerful they are you'd probably only get Fault at 26 and Seismic at 32. That'd be a far less enjoyable set for me to level.
That said if the powers are truely woeful it can destroy interest in the alt completely. That's what happened to my Dark/Kin corrupter. Stuck at level 25 and absolutely nothing to look forward to for 10 levels. He got shelved. But for me Tremor didn't quite fall into the same pit of apathy as that (especially since I'd also got Burn to look forward to to combine with it) -
Quote:I am a bit puzzled as to how in one post you can say "I didn't mention an expensive IO build at all" and in your initial post and here you bring up IOing to give yourself soft-capped defenses. To me the two statements don't gel, but like I said I'm rubbish at Set IO builds for the most part.Originally Posted by _Deth_
Again, not arguing that it is not useful, not saying it is a trash power, I was just stating that people seem to put it up on a pedestal. Whenever anyone suggests dropping it, and I have noticed this on both this thread and a DA/SM thread, people act like you can't live without it and that it would be blasphemy not to take it.
My SM/WP doesn't have fault, and to be honest, I don't miss it. I made that toon for one purpose, to beat the hell out of things. If it doesn't make the red bar go in a downwards direction, it doesn't belong in my attack chain. Now, currently my toon is sitting about halfway IO'd, when it was full SO'd, I liked fault, and with tremor it was very nice. Now that I am well over the 25% def mark, I can live without it. The closer to softcap I get, the less I miss it. I traded it for Dark Oblit, which mitigates by making them less likely to hit me, and makes the red bar go down. A good upgrade in my eyes.
Seriously, my point is, there are different ways to go about things, when someone suggests something off the norm, why does everyone have to come out and act like they are an idiot. If it is something that kills the effectiveness of the toon, I could understand it.
It'll be effective, probably far more effective than my Fault reliant SOer since you won't be wasting DPS on Fault and you won't be stunning things & missing out on their Fury building attacks. But it will be fairly expensive to achieve won't it? -
Quote:One way to test your theory might be to try to try it with Essence Drain and the Dwarf version. I'm checking to see if they have the same Animation Time on Red Tomax but can't find the Dwarf power listings (I know I've found them before though). Of course it wouldn't be as useful as your bind here (which I would call a minor bug to be honest)Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe
Here's a quirky one I just tried on my pb:
/bind [key] "powexec_auto solar flare$$powexec_name white dwarf flare$$powexec_toggleoff white dwarf$$goto_tray 1"
Now it goes against all conventional wisdom, and it only works in this order for some reason, but this bind enables your peacebringer to do a true double footstomp with one keypress. It's weird. It will drop you to human form, where you perform the white dwarf flare as though it were solar flare, and then the solar flare animates immediately after. Heck, I did it on my level 21 Peacebringer Aether Flux - since he obviously doesn't have solar flare I substituted incandescent strike - and it looked just like he performed a solar flare with knockdown (vise kb), followed immediately by IS.
All with one keystroke.
Now it does use the powexec_auto command, effectively putting solar flare on autofire, so you have to remember to hit the key twice to deactivate the autofire.
I immediately got all excited and went and tried to write the same keybind for double mires on my warshade, but for some reason it won't work. My current theory is that White Dwarf Flare and Solar Flare use the same animation with the same animation time, so the power translates to human form successfully, while Black Dwarf Mire has its own animation that isn't duplicated somewhere on the human form frame.
I guess...
::shrugs:: I just know it works. -
Quote:Yes, but my plan (which pretty much worked) was "Convert everything into Blues and scoff them". AM helps a wee bit too. Because you're killing so fast generally you can pop Insps to keep yourself going.Originally Posted by Sailboat
So far it looks like opinions are all over the map on this issue. That's probably a good sign, that many builds seem appropriate for this. I'm surprised to see Blasters get recommendations, but that's why I solicited opinions.
edit: Doesn't the end cost of Hot Feet slow Fire/Rad at this level?
I'd be inclined to go for level 12 for DOs rather than TOs though and slot AM, Hotfeet & Cages. Everything else will probably be fine with just one basic slot. -
Quote:No, but often all you end up doing is knocking them out of formation around you, which is terrible for any Debuff/Buff or Damage auras you might have going as well as for any follow up PBAOEs you might have. For me that's a reason to avoid em.Originally Posted by _Deth_
Stun in EM would be the other one. So that makes 4 sets with zero damage AoE mitigation powers. The only one that is considered "must take" is fault.
HC and LC doing kb is a bad reason not to take them, if mitigation is such a big concern, knocking the mobs away from you is better mitigation than just knocking them down. It's not like the mobs are gonna change their minds and take off if you knock them back instead of down.
I've no experience with Stun at all, never played an EM. But if I was a squishy type Brute (say Fire, Elec or Shields) I'd probably get it. I do love my AOE mezzes though, I'll freely admit that :grin:Quote:Stun disorients, which some would say is better than kd and kb. How many people actually take stun on EM. Not many. Altho, I would make a case for taking it with DA, at least until IO'd.
I don't think I called you a noobQuote:And seriously, this is the heart of my argument. I just don't get why people always get all bent that someone builds without taking the "must have" powers, that really aren't necessary depending on the build. As soon as I mention not taking fault, or that I hate tremor, all these people come screaming out of the woodwork that it is a bad decision, and you just "HAVE" to take those powers or you are a noob and you suck. 
. But your point does highlight a counterpoint / pet peeve of my own, the over reliance and tendency of posters to fix everything with massively expensive IO builds whenever someone asks for some advice on the boards.
Not an attack on you by any means, I think we're both just answering the questions from different standpoints. I don't tend to have the time (and too many alts) to concentrate on pure set bonus based IO builds. I tend instead to pick based on powers with SO sort of levels with a few cherry-picked IOs, which I've a chance of getting.
Yep, I knew there was dimishing returns in terms of slotting it in both but they're both fairly light to slot (Tremor because the Animation Time means I don't really slot it for Recharge and Fault only really needs 3 or 4 slots to be effective without being overkill in terms of mezzing everything and ending up with no Fury). But I'll be slotting as I go so one will be slotted as a "must have" and the second as a "nice to get".Quote:oh, and the FF proc, seriously, putting in both tremor and fault is bad, at least if you use them too close together, as that proc will suppress itself if it goes off too often. -
Quote:Aye, my Grav/TA I made after teaming with a PLed one who hadn't taken any of his arrows. When I got thinking about the synergy and combos you could actually do with one I decided I had to roll him. He's deffo a hidden gem.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Odd that you should mention TA and controllers. My only controller of any significant level is Fire/TA.
His backstory is that he is an alchemist and a stage magician. All of his Fire Control powers are sleight of hand using chemicals. On the TA side, he's a really lousy archer, but a bow and arrow is the most efficient way to deliver his chemical concoctions. An arrow goes a lot farther than you can throw anything.
MA/Fire scrappers are rare. So are Shield/Ice tanks. Never seen a Sonic/Ice defender. Don't see a whole lot of Electric Armor stalkers. My Gravity/Ice dominator is the only one I've ever seen.
A lot of times I will choose powerset combos simply because they're rare. Sometimes I find a hidden gem, other times it's obvious why they're rare.
Originally he was a generic high-tech Hunter type, but I quickly changed him to an alien cyborg visitor / ambassador sent to Earth by a nanite collective as a sort of go-between & translator between the two cultures (because they're so utterly different to each other). He's got a bow because the collective decided it was a sort of cultural weapon of Earth. Certainly one of the most tactical characters I have.
I haven't seen too many Stone/Fire Brutes (or their Tanker counterparts). My very first character was a Fire/Stone tank who got deleted and then reimagined years later as a Brute.
I like the concept of a Shield/Ice Tank too. Nice bit of control to go with shields and a decent amount of AOE. -
I'm thinking a Plant/Rad would be possibly as good or even better too. Roots does more damage than Cages and both are self-stackable (for Containment purposes). But Seeds and RI is a slight wash as it'll debuff ToHit & Defense at the same time.
The nice thing about Rad in general is the Defense Debuffs mean you can leverage the Vet Rewards more as well. A Dark/Rad defender (or Rad/Dark corrupter) might be worth a look as well, Tar Patch, 2 AOEs which hugely debuff Defense and Darkest Night and a self-heal. -
Hmmm. Can Dark Servant take it too now? That'd be lovely!
-
Quote:Don't they already do this? I mean the infamous Mother Mayhem map (the farm friendly one with all the Maniacs) is another, random suburb in Paragon somewhere rather than being PI isn't it?Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Speculation has been that the majority of new content in Going Rogue is going to occur in Praetoria, with maybe a new contact or two in the normal game.
My reason for bringing this up: Going Rogue is going to be a PAID expansion. They're not going to do anything that affects the normal game, because that content is only available to those who bought the expansion. The PI arcs are probably going to stay exactly as they are now.
I wouldn't be too surprised if they decided to have Going Rogue coincide with the release of I17, that way the people who don't buy the expansion get something new at the same time. Could include new contacts in PI and Grandville, and a new TF or something.
Also: The Praetorians aren't stupid. Why would they attack at the one point where Paragon City would be best equipped to defend itself? The portal missions prove that you don't have to have a portal generator on both sides to access a dimension, because we pop out at random points in the dimensions we visit. The Praetorians wouldn't be limited to just attacking in PI, they would show up where the city is least prepared to push them back, like Dark Astoria, or Boomtown. It's possible in both places for them to establish a foothold and not announce their presence until they are ready to. -
Rather than saying "Yes" or "No" outright I think it depends on two (or three) things.
1) Your Eclipse downtime. Even fully slotted out with SOs and with Hasten running you'll still have 30 seconds or so downtime on it. So the Shield can be handy for that downtime. They can also be handy for that small interval where you're getting close enough to trigger Eclipse in absorbing any alpha. If you've IOed enough to make the gap tiny or nonexistant then you don't need the shields really.
2) Do you flit between forms a lot? If so the Shields are a bit of a pain to put back up all the time. Plus for the 30 seconds you don't have Eclipse you can Dwarf up if things get hairy.
And I suppose it also depends on what you're taking instead too. I ended up dropping the Elemental shield (the Fire & Cold one) for a Human Form blast, but keeping the other two. The Smashing & Lethal because it's hard to avoid taking anyway and there's lots of Smashing in the game and the NRG / Neg NRG because NRG is pretty common ingame and Quants etc do all Neg Damage with their anti-Kheld powers nowadays so it's handy to protect against them when I'm soloing and attempting a TP & Smash attack on a Quant or Void. -
Quote:If you're talking about things like Handclap & Lightning Clap isn't it because they does knockback rather than knockdown rather than because it's a zero damage AOE mitigation? It's the type of mitigation they provide rather than the fact they do zero damage. Other than those 3 I don't think there are other non-damaging AOE Mezzes in the sets, are there?Originally Posted by _Deth_
Fault is great for giving yourself a second to regen back an alpha, but so is tremor. I really don't understand why so many consider fault a must have power, when the zero damage/aoe mitigation powers available in just about every other set are usually skipped.
Personally I use both Fault and Tremor on my Stone/Fire. But I find both can interfere with my Fury Building if overused. So I tend to fire them off after a while rather than trying to keep things perma-fallen over & mezzed from the off. But I do have Healing Flames as a Spike Heal rather than lots of Regen so it suits him to allow his HPs to go low before starting to Control (and burn) the spawn.
Of course the end goal with both the AOE knockdowns for me is to get a pair of Forced Feedbacks into them, which is the other good advantage of them. 2 quickly recharging, wide AOE powers to PROC with. Yum. -
Oddly enough I just fought him yesterday too doing Johnny Sonatas arc. Big scary bugger alright. In pieces now though. Well I had to, he kept getting back up again!
Bit surprised at the EB at the end of the arc too, I thought I was rescuing him until he started hitting me. -
> Prove to me you are a Villain fan!
I'm definitely the Villains #1 Fan!!
I have all of Mako's albums. Even that spoken word one from the 70s (what were you thinking Mako).
Ghost Widow has a restraining order against me. I'm not allowed to approach within 500m of her tower or call her any more.
I've got the largest collection of signed photos & memoriablia from Lord Recluse, including a rare letter to Statesman where he calls him a "Poo-poo head".
And I've still got Weaver One chained up in my cabin in the woods, Misery style, working on new Tarantula designs for me (I'll never forgive him for what he did to Becky, now he's gonna put it right).
AND I'm the chief organiser of Paragon Citys Villcon 2009 in the Bricktown Expo Centre-which-looks-a-bit-like-a-warehouse in October. This year we have Wretch, who's doing some poetry readings for us, Scicerro is signing his new book, "Woe is being an angsty anti-villain" and the Carnie Dancers will be performing their new show for us ("Mind Alteringly good" : NY Times) -
Are you lowbie farming tickets or what?
The nastiest character I had around that level was, oddly, my Fire/Rad controller. By level 10 he had Hotfeet, Cages, RI, AM, Choke (or whatever the hold is called) and Air Superiority. That was enough for him to harvest Hazard Zone spawns quite happily. End was a bit of an issue but offset with Insp drops mostly. That against i16 3 or 4 man Architect spawns might do alright. Especially if you pick the right spawns (security guards or PPD cops perhaps). -
Quote:This, basically.Originally Posted by Hertz
Exactly. That is your incentive to, I don't know, conserve endurance. Use blues. Attack less quickly than you can, so you're not chugging your whole endurance bar like an audience at a Dead concert devours those brownies.
If you never had to turn your toggles back on, they would be Auto powers. You'd just turn them on at the start of the game and leave them on until you logged out. No strategy whatsoever. But they're not: they're toggles. You have to decide how to prioritize your energy consumption.
This game isn't that hard. I see no reason to make it even easier.
The only thing in the game which troubles my Dark/WP at the moment is those "Oh ****" moments when a Mu or something drains my End out and the toggles drop, or I'm scraping along with just one or two running while I wait for Dark Consumption to recharge.
I really don't need the game to be any easier really.
The only Toggle Change I would like would be for Kheld Defensive Human form toggles to surpress when shapeshifted rather than dropping (but still cost End if they are toggled on but surpressed by form). -
Personally I think the main reason you haven't seen Ice Armour for Brutes is simply that NRG Aura was / is too similiar in how it works and may have been originally "Ice Armour for villains" when it was being designed.
-
Quote:Oooh, that's interesting. Are they going to give Stalkers the same one? They should really, poor Stalkers, stuck with the Brute / Tank version (I assume Tanks get the Brute version).Originally Posted by Nihilii
Assuming real numbers on Test are accurate, LR for scrappers is a different pseudo-pet than on brutes and actually does much more damage. Considering the cap is 400% for pseudo-pets and that it's possible to get very close to that 400% cap on a scrapper (BU + maxed AaO will put you at 380% or so), scrapper LR is stronger.
-
Quote:Plus you don't need to be Science to do the mission, just run up to him at 30+ in Bricks and he should give you the mission. Very handy if, like me, you always forget to get the stupid thing.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Holsten Armitage grants it too on blueside (he's the Science origin 35-40 store)
-
How would you hold aggro? That's a nice survivable build but I don't see how you'd actually Tank with it.
-
Quote:Remember that Build Up and AAO will have a massively more pronounced effect on all the Scrappers other attacks too though thanks to the higher base damage in non SC / LR attacks.Originally Posted by Blue_Note
Right. The difference in build up and AAO is not that big though. Elec/SD brute then
I find Brutes more interesting than Scrappers to play anyway so I'd probably go Brute too, slotting is a bit more of a challenge and Fury is far more fun as an inherent (although it's also a cruel taskmistress). I'm currently doing the same debate with Claws/Elec and coming down on the Brute side, even though I'd probably get teams if I went Scrapper. -
Quote:Shield Charge and Lightning Rod "cheat" by using an invisible pseudo-pet to do the damage. And for some reason the Devs implemented it the lazy way and made all 3 versions use the same pseudo-pet. So even the Tanker version of SC does the same damage (plus Tanks get it 9 levels earlier too which is nice).Originally Posted by Blue_Note
I've been pondering on some new toons lately and thought of finally making an /SD brute or scrap.
When meddling in Mids I noticed that the stats for Shield charge are the same for both scrapper and brute. Normally the dam of powers on brutes is lower then on scrappers, which makes sense, because brutes get fury. But because Shield Charge is exactly the same, this means that brutes get a lot more mileage out of this power. Or are these numbers in Mids incorrect?
And according to the recent St0n3y's I16 update the exact same also applies for Lightning Rod, or might this be a flaw? I'd prefer making an Elec/SD scrap, but looking at these numbers an Elec/SD brute seem far more powerfull then the equivalent scrap...
Thoughts?
So the Brute version does do better as it can gain Fury as well, but since there is a pseudo-pet involved the Damage Cap for SC & LR is 400% rather than the Brutes one of 800%. The only advantage Scrappers have is that they get better +Damage bonuses from other powers like Build Up & Against All Odds. -
Quote:I'd drop Petrifying Gaze or Bitter FR. Probably PG to be honest, not only is its animation fairly long (ties with Dominates, quicker than Bitter FR) but the PG moves pretty slowly towards the target, which I find really annoying. Plus it doesn't do any damage at all.Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
I'm sure my slotting is crappy, but my level 50 Dark/Ice defender has him slotted with 2 hammi-O Acc/Mez, 2 generic hit debuff IOs, and 2 generic heals. I never seemed to need recharge so I just went for generics. I wonder if his Hammi-O acc/mez helps his other powers? Anyway, he seems to work fine, though largely I just cast him and let him do whatever. I normally busy myself with debuffing, blasting, and holding, so I just let fluffy flit about and do his thing.
Side question: if you were going to respec OUT of one of the 4 of these holds, which would it be? Freeze Ray, Bitter Freeze Ray, Petrifying Gaze, Dominate. I am thinking of scavenging some slots for filling out some of my other powers better. I went overboard on the holds because I could.
Lewis -
That's is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen
Seriously. That's one foul looking dinner. -
Quote:I'm pretty sure those Robots defense Defense, not Resistance. I've certainly seen a Shield Tank get creamed by them where my Lobster wasn't really troubled by them.Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar
I wouldn't know where to find Black Scorpion, but I fought those radiation robots last night on the test server (8 man spawns) and they never debuffed my resistances. Though thinking about it that may be because a maxed out Eclipse starts me off at ~200%.
Arbiter Sands was one name I picked from the list on your other post. Mostly because he resummons bots which you can use to fuel Eclipse and Sunless Mire. No corpses but could be handy. He may mez thoughQuote:I haven't used the AE but I would expect that to be the best place to fight AV's, especially because you can use minions that wouldn't die to Sunless Mire (dark/regen scrappers?).
Nightstar has the massive s/l resistances, so I would think Black Swan is the negative resisting one, she is definately always with those bloody shadows!
Edit: Bobcat was the one recommended to me, dont know her stats though.
You could also cheat and make a Thugs or other MM AV in the Architect of course
-
Quote:It does indeed. But only for the first few seconds. Burn inherits both the damage bonus AND the duration of damage buffs, and Fury seems to last 2 or 3 seconds. You can easily see the orange rain of numbers decrease after a few seconds when Burn runs (the RWZ dummies are useful to check it with).Originally Posted by Bookkeeper_Jay
^This
Darkest Night? Do you really need it that badly? As people have stated, Mu would fit you much better in this instance. BUrn is very powerful indeed, especially since Fury increases burn's damage.
Ditto with any sort of Build-Up, if you trigger it, count to 6 or 7 and then Burn you will see the Build-up damage bonus only remains for the 3 or 4 seconds remaining.
The damage of Burn is still excellent, just not as amazing as one would hope with full fury because it doesn't stick around for the entire 10 seconds.
Personally I'm stuck in deciding which Epic Immob to get too, starting to lean towards Web Envelope since it's AOE too and doesn't prevent knockdown (my Stone/Fire likes knockdown). Having to skip Darkest Night is annoying though but I dunno if I'd be able to cope with trying to line up Tentacles all the time.