Carnifax_NA

I'd guess at around 9am their time. They are either 7 or 8 hours behind GMT (the clocks going back on Saturday confuses me) so around 16:00 to 17:00 GMT I'd guess.

1) Burn has a Target Cap nowadays of 5 targets. Well it always did do that but the nature of the DoT ticks ensured that it spread around. Nowadays because Burn does a lot of it's damage in an initial blast the 5 target limit is much more noticeable.

2) Fiery Embrace has been substantially changed now. It is no longer a flat +Fire damage power, instead it adds (well switches on) an additional Fire damage component to all attacks for 20 seconds. The damage the Fire attacks do is 45% of the attack which generates it (which makes it very good indeed for a Brute with high Fury and Rage as it's 45% of the final damage figure of any attack, not counting PROCs). So if you have Footstomp @ 50 slotted with 3 damage SOs you'd do 115 damage. With FE active you'd do an additional 51 damage for a total of 166. But if you've got a damage bonus of 100% from Fury and Rage also running Footstomps damage goes up to 221, plus if FE is active it will do an additional 100 damage for a total of 321.

I can't see any reason you'd stick the PROC in Burn compared to Footstomp. I suppose if you managed to keep something in the Burn Patch for 10 seconds it might have another chance of PROCcing but it still wouldn't be worth it.

LOTG were changed ages ago, from their initial design of only allowing one which gave a much larger Recharge bonus into allowing 5 (that's your cap on them per character) which each give a 7.5% bonus. So you're safe enough getting 5 of them, it's by design.

Recovery Serum is a great, cheap Temp power which can go a long way to helping out. My BA/Fire scrapper soloed through Praetoria with one of them always with him for when the End Bar started misbehaving.

My Fort/Widow also carries around these two temp powers at all times. She rarely needs to use them but they can be lifesavers when she does.

Other long term options include using A-Merits to buy one of the +recovery uniques to stick into Health (Miracle probably, 2 A-merits to get it), or the chance for End proc for Stamina. They won't be as visually obvious as Consume is, but they'll mean you struggle for End far less.

Why didn't you just ask him, via a PST if you wanted to avoid any unnecessary drama?

I reckon he was just doing his job, as he saw it, and hadn't considered the ramifications on your Fury bar.

This makes an excellent point. My FA characters are a Stone/Fire Brute (who I'm getting itchy feet to retry, especially once I19 comes along). He augments his defences with excellent AOE control via Fault, Air Sup and Tremor.

The other is a Broadsword/FA scrapper who can flatline in seconds, or if has a chance to stack his autofiring Parry can stand in the midst of a big pack of meleers laughing and let them burn to death.

Adding recharge to a FA helps a lot because it gets Healing Flames back up more quickly and that's probably your key power in terms of survivability (as well as meaning your big hitting attacks recharge more quickly so things die quicker).

Aye, it really depends what you're playing with Rad. A Rad/NRG defender (*shudder*), I probably wouldn't bother. An Illusion/Rad, nope, probably not. I've no other real reasons to be in melee.

My Fire/Rad/Earth was build around the PBAOEs though. Flashfire > Run in > Fissure (or is it Fault, always confuse them) > Cages, plonk down some toggles and then stand there doing Seismic, Air Sup & char as things stand there, burn and choke and get eaten by Fire Munkies.

I miss that character

Being knocked around and stuck inbetween all that seething, mooing demonic flesh is going to give the Scrapper nightmares though (unless they like that sort of thing, who am I to judge ). I speak from experience playing a Widow when City of Demoos first came out about 6 months ago. I was mighty relieved to make it to Fort and be able to play a ranged character instead.

Thugs/Thermal might be a nice alternative. Decent AOE but mostly ranged henchies with smaller, quieter models. Only downside might be the sporadic knockback of the pistols (and the lack of extra -resistance attacks in the MM attacks). Bruiser would benefit from Grant Cover and add to Phalanx Fighting without overly cluttering up the Scrappers screen.

*pokes head in nervously*

But isn't the point that if you put it in Smite it can go off twice per chain compared to once in the other powers?

*flees*

Seems like a good idea in my book. Have to thin the herd somehow and letting people get on with it themselves by hurling themselves off a cliff in a dustbin or whatever is as good a way as any.

I've watched it happen every year for the last 3 or 4. Standing, pointing and laughing the mess it makes is generally the best way to deal with it, there's no point getting involved.

This, 3:45 in basically sums it up for me.

1) I'm in agreement with this (and I don't even have Ninja Run because I think it looks silly). Most of the powers that come with the Super Boosters are forgettable (I forget I have them all the time). Cossie parts is what made me buy them (another reason I skipped the Ninja pack).

2) Since watching the Psychoville Halloween Special 2 nights ago I really wish you'd change your avatar. I keep getting flashbacks to an especially disturbing scene involving a goat...

On paper this does look like it'd be the case but the knockback is all single target and it actually works really, really well, much to my surprise.

The synergy is in allowing the entire group to sleep, running into the middle of them and then picking off the enemies one by one (Power Push quickly followed by a melee attack followed by the other blasts). The fact you're knocking Mr Target out of the sleep patch is pretty much irrelevant because you'd be waking him up anyway, and he's going to be dead soon. Knocking them away from Conductive Aura is more problematic but they spend so much time on their backs it really doesn't matter (plus you have the single target hold to slap onto them).

It's a surprisingly effective combo thanks to the now excellent single target damage you can do (probably the highest ranged single target damage chain available outside of Fire, and average to good melee damage if you can bear the slowness of Total Focus, Bonesmasher is gold). On teams it works well too provided you adopt a "I'm gonna finish that" approach, dropping the AOE mez and then focusing on individual targets, taking each down completely before moving to the next.

Well used Knockback is not a bad thing in the slightest overall. The worst sort of knockback is something like Explosive

Elec/Thorns on the other hand has a few issues, Elec Control is a busy set and relys on a sleep. Thorns redraws a lot (but its baked into the animation times) which is kinda annoying. But the biggest issue is a lack of synergy between the DoT of all of your attacks and the sleep patch. Thorntrops is also difficult to leverage well with Static Field.

I'm not sure Chilling Embrace from Cold Assault will wake sleepers either, normally debuffs don't.

And Psi Shockwave really doesn't deserve the moniker "one of the best PBAOEs in the game" now. It is one of the strongest Domi ones but the gap is pretty low nowadays, the PBAOEs are all fairly balanced. The damage is basically the same as Ice Sword Circle, Combustion and Thorn Burst both top it. The debuff is nice on it though, and the chance for stun is sporadically useful (basically the same as Whirling Hands one).

A few more things :
Tremor actually has the lowest damage of any PBAOE Domi power available, it does the same as your Tier 1, Stone Spears. The high chance for knockdown makes it very handy though.

Jolting Chains End Drain only affects the initial target. Chained targets won't loose End (but apparently WILL be affected by the Chance for -End PROC which is odd). You can verify this by looking at the Real Numbers description of the power, the -End is only mentioned once.

Other than those two wee things an excellent rundown of Elec/Earth with good emphasis on all the pros and cons of the sets and powers.

10% chance. I have it in Jolting Chains but am unsure if it's worth it. Mind you it's dirt cheap and Chains doesn't really many slots (but Domis in general do).

For my Elec/NRG it was attractive on paper for the odd chance of stacking stuns, but overall it's not that impressive. Think I'll end up replacing it with a Devastation in Chains instead.

Overall if you like spamming Cages the chance for Stun is probably going to get more use there, but again it's debatable if it's worth slotting at all.

At least it isn't the laughable Debilitative Action Chance for Stun, which has got to be one of the most useless enhancements in the entire game (2% chance of triggering).

I can't agree with your disagreement.

Any character I've played through Praetoria who has teamed even a small bit has ended up missing the end contacts and arcs due to outleveling them.

I'm also not sure Praetorian missions are available via Flashback, are they?

I'm in agreement with MonkeySpirit. If you want to make sure you get through the complete arcs in Praetoria you need to be solo (or otherwise counter the excess XP you get on teams which makes you outlevel the arcs before you've managed to finish them). The mission arcs in Praetoria are built around soloing the content (as is the morality mission at the end of each zone).

I got around it by making "Content" characters, who mostly soloed and were built towards it, and "Teaming" characters who joined PuGs at random and almost never did any of their own missions (my Fire/Dark Corrupter only ever did the Tutorial and the Portal mission at the end, everything in between was as a member of a PuG).

Basically as Liz says, with an emphasis on the "Try before you buy" part.

I switched to Virtue after playing EU side for years, and US side does suit me. But I'm a pure PuG player who likes to run lots of alts, quickly get a team of randomers with said alt, run a few missions and then move on. I'm not a member of any SGs, don't have many global friends or anyone I team with regularly and I rarely see the same characters twice, purely of my own choice.

"Better" is a relative term, if I could play both sides with one subscription then I'd be all over that and playing EU or US side as the fancy takes me.

Nowadays it also gives a 15 second Recovery boost and some End drain protection too (it doesn't technically "sap" either as it doesn't affect enemies Endurance, it does a bit of damage to them instead and gives you End back)

I assume the additional Recovery Boost is intended to be a -Recovery cushion which is why it doesn't apply any additional -recovery resistance.

iPlayer is UK only (you gits)

Although in my case I think it's actually RTEs fault I can't get it here (unless I use FoxyProxy of course...). They can't be having with people being able to watch Eastenders across d'interwebs, they have to have some barebones reason for charging us a License Fee over here even though most people pay and watch the UK channels via cable.