ClawsandEffect

I can almost guarantee it isn't.

If it were, the Super Groups who all wear the same uniform would be breaking a rule, and I've never heard of any of them being chastised or punished for it.

However, that doesn't cover the instance of someone copying your character's appearance without your leave. I suspect just as strongly as you that there's nothing you can do about it though.

The odds are actually pretty good of someone creating something that looks strikingly similar to someone else's character unintentionally, especially if a lot of brand new costume pieces are used. Would be kind of a dick move to punish someone for that.

I have a different question.

If the only thing you care about in the game is the Hybrid slot.....then why are you still playing it?

Personally, my interest in the Hybrid slot, and Incarnate powers in general, is slightly above my interest in PvP. I enjoy the content and I enjoy the powers, but it has never been a huge concern of mine to have everything unlocked and slotted as soon as humanly possible.

I'll get to it when I get to it.

How long have you been gone?

If you left before issue 8, you wouldn't know about Invention Origin enhancements.

They come in 2 varieties. The common, generic ones that act like an SO that never expires, and Set Enhancements.

The latter is how people are reaching 50%+ on SR scrappers.

The way Set Enhancements work is you have a set of enhancements that share a name, such as Mako's Bite, or Obliteration. When you slot more than one of the same set in a power you get bonuses to your stats. Many enhancement sets offer defense set bonuses for slotting a certain number of them (usually 5 or 6 for positional defense).

Many players slot full builds of Set Enhancements and their characters become MUCH more powerful than using SOs. They can even become more powerful than pre-ED Perma Elude SR scrappers (perma Elude is no longer possible).

Here's some reading for you to get you up to speed on what you missed: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inventions_System

Also, slot your passives. Slotting your passives increases your defense debuff resistance. SR can reach 95% resistance to defense debuffs, which means an attack that would debuff your defense by 7.5% will only lower your defense by 0.35%. SR gets its debuff resistance by slotting the passives. And they DO benefit from slotting.

I recommend taking the Fighting pool. Tough will give you some very useful Smashing/Lethal damage resistance (the two most common types of damage in the game) and it will give you a place to slot a certain Invention Origin enhancement that increases your defense to everything by 3%. Weave will give you another source of defense, meaning you won't have to slot as many Set Enhancements to reach the soft-cap.

Soft-Cap: The point at which adding more of something gives no more benefit. In this case we're talking about the soft-cap for defense. The defense soft-cap is 45%. Once you hit 45% to melee, ranged, and AoE, adding more defense will not benefit you. This is because most enemies in the game have a base 50% chance to hit you, and the game will not allow that chance to drop below 5% (they will ALWAYS have a 5% chance to hit you, even if your defense is 200%), so once you hit 45% you have reduced their chance to hit you as low as it will ever go.

There are enhancements and set bonuses that will increase your endurance recovery as well. So you should be able to solve your end consumption problem with a little bit of effort.

Generally speaking, for SR you want to focus on getting your defense to 45% to all positions first, and then you want to focus on max HP and regeneration after that. You also may want to add more recharge after you fix your end consumption problems as well.

I won't go into all the ways to do that right now, since it sounds like all this is brand new to you. I'm just giving you a heads up on what you missed.

Once you've got a little more understanding of how the Invention System works, I'll be happy to help you with your build. I'm on pretty sporadically throughout the day and do most of my posting from work, so I may not be able to get to it right away, but I promise I'll get around to helping you once you're ready to dive into it.

Here: http://www.cohtitan.com/

On that page, to the right side, you will see something that says "Download Mids' Hero Designer". That program is an invaluable resource when it comes to planning out your build. It compiles all the Invention Origin enhancements with their set bonuses, and shows you how it affects your character. It makes planning out a respec MUCH easier than writing it down on paper.

Welcome back to the game, a LOT has changed since you've been gone. Most of it for the better.

Check the level range you are searching.

Theft of Essence caps at level 30. If your minimum level is set higher than that it won't show up.

If you're farming single target damage is useless to you.

You want AoE for farming.

I second the opinion that you shouldn't spend all your time farming if you're new to the game.

I'm also of the opinion that you should post a build yourself instead of just asking other people to do the work for you. I'm perfectly happy to offer advice and critique a build, but I don't generally go to the effort of putting one together for people who aren't willing to put the effort in themselves.

Just a quirk of mine.

Yep.

And it will start with "Why didn't they TELL me this was going to happen!"

I will link to this post and give 2short credit for calling it.

I will get bonus points if it actually starts with the sentence I typed here.

Vahzilok Plague arc.

Also, Freaklymics/Freakshow War arcs.

The latter two are still a couple of my favorite arcs in the game.

Took me about 10 seconds to come up with an answer.

Well, if you're doing Dark Astoria Incarnate stuff, the base chance to hit of the enemies in there is higher than normal. 64% instead of the normal 50%.

That means your softcap is no longer a soft-cap for that content.

I would plan on going with Agility Alpha to help with that. It buffs End Mod, Defense, and Recharge.

The soft-cap for Incarnate stuff is 59% instead of 45%, so you'd be well served to get as close to that as possible. It IS doable for an SR scrapper to get there, but you will have to slot for a lot more defense bonuses than normal.

I assure you, it DOES work in a damage aura. My DA/STaff tank is level 30 and has had 3 pieces of the ATO set in Death Shroud since level 7. That is my live, in-game character.

Mids' is wonky and doesn't let you do things sometimes.

That's funny.

You countered utter bullcrap with.......utter bullcrap.

Defenders are still plenty useful. Most people who play Defenders understand that their primary role on a team is to buff and debuff things.

A player who whines that Corruptors deal more damage than Defenders.....doesn't know how to play a Defender.

I know this because probably 75% of the Corruptors I see ignore their secondary and act like a lower damage Blaster. I would say those players don't know how to play a Corruptor either. Then they play a Defender and the only thing they see is the lower damage.

Hint: You don't invite a Defender when you want more damage. Unless you want the ENTIRE TEAM to deal more damage. Defenders get better values out of all their buffs and debuffs than any other AT.

I would agree with this statement.

If Castle had been allowed to actually do what he wanted to do regarding Brutes, the vast majority of this thread we are currently in would not exist.

I would also venture a guess that if Castle had been allowed to reduce the maximum potential of Brutes as much as he wanted to, Johnny would not be quite so up in arms about how they perform better than Tankers.

Thanks for finding the actual quotes, I had no idea where to look for them.

Someone who remembers where the devs said they were supposed to be.

That place is "in between Scrappers and Tankers".

In most situations you'll encounter in the game, they actually are right about there. It's just when you get into heavy buff situations that the brokenness becomes apparent.

A Brute by itself isn't going to be hitting 90% resistance to everything, and it won't reach its damage cap by itself either. When you start adding buffs they pull ahead of both of the ATs they are supposedly meant to be between. Under heavy buffs a Brute will nearly equal a Tanker's survivability, and actually deals more damage than a Scrapper (like, 40 points more, but more is more)

I don't see what the issue is with lowering Brute resistance caps and damage caps. for 99% of the game it won't even be noticed. Only Electric Armor and Fiery Aura will really notice the resistance lowering, and it's nearly impossible for a Brute to stay at their damage cap for more than a few seconds at a time anyway. Most Brute players will barely notice a difference. I'd guess that a lot of casual players aren't even sure what the Brute damage cap IS. ("casual" in this case being players who don't frequent the forums and who don't have multi-billion influence builds on their characters)

If a balance problem is being caused by 1 AT being too strong compared to the other 3, doesn't it make more sense to adjust the problem AT than to continually tweak the other 3 in an attempt to balance it that way? Makes more sense to me at least.

It's not like I'm saying Brutes need to be gutted, just adjusted slightly downward on their maximum potential, since that maximum potential is what's causing the balance problem. The overwhelming majority of Brutes would remain virtually unchanged.

At least it gets decent resistance to smashing, and smashing damage doesn't often have nasty side effects with it.

Hence why I said most of the time.

It's not everything. It's just the 4 types I mentioned in my post.

I used the Tanker ATO proc in my damage aura, and have Cardiac Alpha planned. S/L are sitting at 90% and Psionic would be well beyond it if it were possible.

Mids' can't show you double stacking the proc, but that's how I'm getting 90% to Negative Energy.

You'll never cap Energy resistance, and near as I can figure Fire/Cold caps out at about 75% or so for a DA tank.