ClawsandEffect

Finally, someone who actually got what I was trying to get across.

Sure, buff Dual Pistols. But buff it in a different way than just giving it Aim.

If you just give it Aim, all it does is make it more like the other blast sets that already exist, but less effective because of the more heavily resisted damage type.

It already has the same layout as most blast sets:

1) Single target blast
2) Longer recharge, higher damage single target blast
3) Cone
4) Utility power (in this case Swap Ammo, most sets get Aim)
5) Targeted AoE
6) Mez power
7) Hard hitting, short range single target blast
8) Utility power (in this case it trades the usual snipe for a very narrow cone with 80 foot range)
9) Nuke.

Sometimes the power order differs, but most blast sets have more or less that allotment of powers. All giving Aim to Dual Pistols would do is make it more like everything else and it STILL wouldn't perform as well.

That's why I'm opposed to just giving the set Aim and calling it fixed: I'm not convinced that it will actually fix the problem. Aim would be most useful for the AoE attacks, but all the AoE attacks are DoT, so you could still easily be killed by return fire before the AoE finishes dealing it's damage. (that's what usually gets my DP blaster killed, damage taken while the DoT from my AoEs is ticking off)

My idea? Give Swap Ammo more ammo types to choose from. Negative Energy damage coupled with a to-hit debuff. Energy damage coupled with guaranteed KB on a few powers.
And I'm sure there are a few other things you could do. And you could make Swap Ammo give you a small defiance boost when you switch types.

You WANT both of those powers.

True Grit will increase your max HP, and more HP means more hits you can take before you drop (even with softcapped defenses you WILL take hits occasionally, sometimes several in a row). It also gives you a little bit of resistance to Energy/N. Energy/Fire/Cold damage. And, since it is an auto power that provides resistance, it is a perfect place for a Steadfast Protection Res/Def. (which gives you 3% to all your defenses for a single slot)

Active Defense is your mez protection. You NEED this power. Without it any mez that makes it past your defenses will completely incapacitate you. (this is especially concerning later in the game when you start running into Psionic mezzes that will bypass your defenses) It also gives you some defense debuff resistance, which is important because it keeps your defense from being stripped away by defense debuffs (that any enemy with a machine gun will apply to you with a hit). Defense debuffs are nasty because they tend to come in groups of enemies that all have them. The first hit makes it easier for the next hit, which makes it easier for the next and before you know it your defense is in the negative. Defense debuff resistance (called DDR for short) will prevent that from happening. It is also the power that will keep you from being knocked on your butt.

Take Active Defense as soon as it's available, slot it with 2 or 3 recharge reductions, and put it on autofire (which you can do by holding Ctrl and clicking on it, it will get a green circle around it and automatically fire every time it recharges)

You can take True Grit whenever you have a free pick, slot it with 3 heals and a Steadfast Res/Def.

Fame points are part of the side switching system. You need 10 Alignment points to switch your alignment (you get a Morality mission when you have 10)

But tips drop all the time, so they had to put a system in place to keep your from switching back and forth all the time whenever you wanted. So they came up with Fame points. If you have all 5 slots full, any tip missions will not count toward your alignment points.

It's basically so you have to work at switching sides instead of just saying "Oh, I'm a villain now, no wait, a hero, no, now I'm a rogue, wait, I'm a vigilante, now I'm back to being a hero."

You also get Hero or Villain merits for completing morality missions of your own alignment (so if you're a hero and you run a hero Morality mission, you would get a hero merit). Since these can be traded for some of the most powerful IOs in the game, the devs wanted to limit how fast you can acquire them.

No, no gap....Parry. It activates and recharges fast enough that it fits nicely in the gaps of a Broadsword attack chain.

It just seems logical that time spent doing little damage will improve your DPS more than time spent doing no damage at all.

My chain goes Parry-Hack-Parry-Disembowel-Head Splitter, mostly because my recharge blows on my build.

I'd rather be hiting with a weak attack and improving my defense than standing there doing nothing while I wait for Disembowel to recharge.

Which is why I said 2 minutes TOPS. It usually takes much less than that.

Though I sometimes read too fast and miss an important word that changes the context of what I'm reading

I apologize for derailing the thread as far as I did, I really only intended my post as an aside rather than a topic change.

Important distinction: This isn't because there is anything wrong with Elec/WP, it's because SS/WP is overpowered.

Mine is only 34 at the moment and already survives better than my softcapped DM/SR brute at moderate difficulty (+0-1 x4-5)

Basically, at the level you're at you should have been focusing on your Primary and secondary powers. I had everything from Willpower except Heightened Senses by level 24, and a good start on Fitness (mostly for Health, Electric Melee isn't very hard on the End bar, so Quick Recovery should be enough)

I had Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Thunderstrike, Chain Induction, and Jacob's Ladder by then as well. I skipped Lightning Clap at 26 and took Boxing instead (Willpower really likes the Fighting Pool),at 28 I took Heightened Senses, 30 I took Tough, 32 was Lightning Rod (). And that's where I'm at so far.

I plan on taking Weave, Strength of Will, Electric Fences, Ball Lightning, and a couple other random powers (maybe Mu Lightning to shore up my somewhat weak single target damage)

As far as IOs go, I really like Eradication for PBAoEs (Jacob's Ladder, Thunderstrike, and Lightning Rod), I put 4 in for the max end, E/N.E defense, and Max HP bonus (WP likes lots of HP too). I put 2 Scirocco's Dervish in the last 2 slots for the 10% regen bonus (another thing you should be trying to get plenty of)

Single target attacks get Kinetic Combats if I can afford them, or Smashing Haymaker if I can't. I fill the last couple slots with Pounding Slugfest for the 8% regen bonus.

I put 4 Luck of the Gambler in defense powers, including the recharge if i happen to have one, and either Reactive Armor or Aegis in resistance powers. I slot High Pain Tolerance with 3 resistance from a set and 3 Numina's Convalescence.

Do something similar to that, and you should have smooth sailing for your Electric/Willpower brute.

(Note, this shouldn't be taken as absolute truth, if you find something different works better for you, go for it. This is just what *I* did)

But until someone from the studio comes out and says so, it's still just speculation. It culd very well be something else entirely that they are working on.

No worries, I go off the deep end myself on occasion responding to people, so I know how it is. Someone says something that just gets under your skin and you fire off a respnse without really thinking about what all you're saying. It happens.

In my case, I get angry quickly, but I cool off just as quickly. So, I go back later and look at something I posted and think "Why was I so mad about that again?"

(using the proverbial "you" there)

Oh, I get what you're saying. It just seems anymore like every single TF I go on ends up being a speed run.

I said in a global channel "I'm looking to start a Tarikoss SF, and I'm NOT speed running it" and had a full team join me. I had never run that particular TF before, so I wanted to actually read what the guy had to say. Someone complained, loudly, that I was taking too long to set the missions. Keep in mind that it takes me 2 minutes tops to read mission dialog, and that I said in the very beginning that I was not speed running it, but apparently 2 minutes was too long between missions. I was very clear on what kind of TF I was putting together in this case, and that person tried to force me into speed running it anyway. I ran the Silver mantis TF as well, and I have NO idea what was happening because everyone was rushing through everything, there was at least one mission that was completed before I even got to it.

I don't mind speed running TFs that I've done dozens of times, but if it's my first time through it, I want to read the dialog and have some idea why we're killing this particular collection of enemies.

The only problem I have with this post is the fact that you are refusing to alter your tactics as well, making you no better than the ones you're calling n00bs here.

It's a two way street, you can adjust your tactics too. It is in no way fair to expect someone else to change how they play because you refuse to.

Edit: I seem to recall us having this discussion before, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Perhaps his goal was to get himself added to BaBs' ignore list?

If so, good chance he succeeded.

I haven't played FA on a brute in ages, but my spines/fire scrapper is enjoying the buffs.

The point of Fiery Aura was to provide just enough survivability, because in theory you would be killing your enemies fast enough to not need a whole lot. Now that they've buffed a few powers that may actually be a possibility instead of just a theory.

Pretty sure you mean WEB Grenade, not Smoke. At level 6 it's the only power with "grenade" in the name you have access to.

Smoke Grenade is a very underwhelming power in my experience. I usually skip it and use the power pick at level 16 to put Health in so I can get Stamina by level 20. I do that wth blasters because the level 18 power is usually worth picking up ASAP. (I usually take Swift or Hurdle at level 6 or 8)

I personally hate Caltrops, but other people love it, so the only thing I can say on that is to try it out yourself and see if you like it.

Good luck with the blaster!

There is nothing stopping you from just starting your character over on a different server.

The only thing you won't have is the level, because you can just email anything else you want to the new character. A lot of players do exactly that. It also helps when your home server crashes altogether.

I don't think there will ever be a way to copy characters from one server to another while leaving the original in place. It is far too open to exploitation, and the devs don't seem to like the idea of getting one character to 50 and copying it 10 times for a total of 11 50s.

There is also the fact that the servers would copy your character exactly as it is, including anything you may have in your inventory. Got lucky enough to get a Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense recipe? Well, how about that, now you have 11 of them! When you copy a character to the test server it works like that, and there is no reason to believe a copy between live servers would work any different.

Kind of hard to say at this point, since Kinetic Melee is only about a week old.

With the newness of the set, no one has really stress tested it yet to see what it can really do when you dump a lot of time and effort into building it.

Whereas Dark Melee has 6 years of stress testing behind it, most people can easily find out what it can do if they want to dig up the informantion.

Honestly, I'd say wait a couple months, until the number crunchers and build wizards really put Kinetic Melee through it's paces, and ask again.

To a point, I already mentioned that I dropped Aim and Build Up with 2 of my blasters because my playstyle was essentially revolving around the recharge cycle of 2 powers.

Of note: Since I dropped Aim and Build Up I have teamed quite a bit with those 2 characters and so far NO ONE has complained that I wasn't doing enough damage. In fact I strongly suspect that no one even realized I didn't have them.

So, if not having and using Aim on sets that have it didn't lower my performance to any significant degree on a team (or solo for that matter, I use the animation time that would have been spent on Aim and Build Up to fire another attack or two), why should I expect adding Aim to significantly increase it?

Now, I do want to get one thing straight. I am NOT opposed to improving Dual Pistols, I never was. What I AM opposed to is the idea that slapping the same power that every other set has into it is the ideal solution. If it must be improved, think of something else instead.

It's kind of like saying giving Energy Aura a damage aura will fix the problems with it because similar sets have a damage aura and they're just fine.

Actually, you can put the Performance Shifter proc in both of them. Transfusion drains their endurance to heal things in range of it, Transference drains their end to give targets in range end back.

It's not a good idea to slot it in either one, since the target of the power is the enemy you are sapping for the effect, and not the people receiving the benefit of the effect. Speed Boost will take it, so if you want to randomly give your allies endurance that would be the place in Kinetics to put it.

Accelerate Metabolism, Recovery Aura, Adrenaline Boost, Painbringer (I think), and a few other powers will accept that proc, but you will get the most mileage out of putting it in a passive end recovery power like Stamina or Quick Recovery.

I believe Conductive Aura in the new Electric Control set will accept it as well, but I haven't confirmed that for myself (probably a similar situation as with Transfusion and Transference if it does)