ClawsandEffect

Yep, I have both procs as well. And an Achille's in Slash.

It's nice on those rare occasions when all 3 fire in a row. Doesn't happen often, but it is cool.

I used to have FA 6 slotted with GSFC, but I pulled a slot out and just 5 slotted it, moving the proc to FU instead. My reasoning for that is: I rarely actually run FA, basically only when I need the extra accuracy for things like romans and rikti drones, other than that it just sits there in my tray. I wanted to actually get some use out of the proc, so putting it in a power that is part of my normal attack chain just makes sense.

As I mentioned before, my usual chain is FU, Slash, Swipe, Focus, Swipe, Slash, repeat. I get 2 chances of a BU proc firing during that, and 2 chances for the Achille's proc to fire (usualy on a minion, go figure) It's not perfect, and my DPS could be better, but I'm pretty happy with it.

My Grav/Ice pretty much just improved. The only thing that got nerfed in the set was Ice Sword Circle, and it was actually an overall improvement. The damage scale of the power went down a little, but with the damage buff to the AT it's not that noticable, and the radius went from 8-10 feet to 15 feet. Seems like they decided to normalize the radius of all the PBAoEs.

That is the only Dom I have, so I can't compare his performance to anything else, but I'm actually capable of soloing now, which I couldn't do before (not without a lot of frustration at least)

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the changes, as far as they affect me at least.

Iggy, I still want to know how the hell you built your Claws/Regen to pull off the RWZ Challenge with just Swipe.

I have yet to solo an AV But I have tanked Regent Korol on the STF when the Invuln tank died a horrible death. I have almost pulled off a RWZ challenge, damn drone got me at the last second on my closest attempt, if my last Focus hadn't missed I'd have done it.

The funniest part of those things is, I never would have even tried if not for the stories and videos here in the scrapper section of the forums. My Claws/Regen is good, but he's not as good as I'd like him to be. He's in semi-retirement now since he ran out of content to do (I have zero contacts left to get missions from) but I still pull him out for craziness now and then.

I need to get my other scrappers up to at least his level of performance, next on the list is my BS/DA.

Thanks for driving me to be the best scrapper that I can be.

Screw DPS, I'm not putting an attack in my chain that annoys me every time I see it.

My Claws/Regen is built on a very fine line, Swipe is necessary for my chain to even work. I don't have Hasten, and I have just enough recharge to run Follow Up, Slash, Swipe, Focus, Swipe with no breaks. I tried it with Strike and it screwed the whole thing up. Actually it works out to where I can run my chain of Slash, Swipe, Focus, Swipe twice before Follow Up is back up, but I kinda like it like that. My DPS could be loads better, but I'm not a min/maxer so I don't really care that much.

MrSuzi:

Your power choices look solid. You don't need Shadow Maul or Burn. A lot of people like them, but no one is going to laugh at you for skipping them. A couple points about them though. Shadow Maul is not difficult to line up to consistently hit 2 or 3 targets, making it one of the best damage per endurance powers in the set if you get good at it. Burn is technically not a Location AoE, there's no targeting reticle to move around, Burn drops the patch directly at your feet every time, no aiming required.

Your slotting leaves a little to be desired.

Most glaring problem: GSFC in Soul Drain. The set bonuses are awesome in that set, but if you look at it, you will see that it has zero Accuracy enhancement in it. Against anything with defense bonuses (Cimeroran Traitors come to mind) you will not hit as many as you would like, nothing sucks more than firing Soul Drain and having it hit nothing at all. I would move the Obliteration set from Blazing Aura to Soul Drain. You can't enhance the damage boost Soul Drain gives you, and making sure it hits will be more productive in the long run than getting a bigger accuracy bonus.

The other reason to move the Obliteration set is it has very little end reduction in it. You want more end reduction in a power that will be on all the time. I like Scirocco's Dervish, Multi Strike, or frankenslotting for toggle damage auras. Obliteration was designed with blaster nukes in mind, lots of damage, accuracy, and recharge, and not much end reduction because the nukes crash your end bar anyway.

What I would do with the end recovery powers is this: Set up Consume for use in crowds (you already slotted it exactly how I would have) and set up Dark Consumption for 1 or 2 targets by slotting an end mod set in it. I like Performance Shifter, but Efficacy Adapter works too. I say set it up like that because Dark Consumption has an 8 foot radius, and Consume has a 20 foot radius (if I'm remembering that right), which makes Consume more reliable in a crowd because it has a larger possible target area.

Consider full sets of Mako's Bite or Touch of Death for your single target attacks (Shadow Punch, Smite, Siphon Life, Midnight Grasp). They provide ranged and melee defense respectively with the 6 slot bonuses. I don't have access to Mid's right now as I'm at work, but those two sets are very commonly used to squeeze a little defense out of a build. With 4 ST attacks I would slot 2 of each set.

Even with DC and Consume you will want to slot Stamina better than that. I like putting 4 Performance Shifters in it (EndMod, Endmod/?, EndMod/?, Chance for + End), it gives you just about the same enhancement as 3 generic IOs, and the proc is really nice. 4 Performance Shifters gives pretty good set bonuses too. You can get the extra slot from Temperature Protection, it really doesn't need more than one.

That's about all I see that I would change, your power choices look good, as do most of your slotting choices. Just thought I'd throw you some advice as to what I'd do different.

Put it in Fly and use a couple Blessing of the Zephyr IOs.

Increases flight speed, while reducing endurance, and has the added benefit of adding some ranged defense as well.

If you can't afford them and just want more fly speed, I concur with Dysfunctional, the slot should go in Fly.

Healing Flames? Doubtful. A self heal enhanceable to recharge in 15 seconds? Probably not going to see it.

RotP is much more likely.

I believe it's because they gave minion xp, were ridiculously easy to kill, and came in HUGE spawns. An spines/fire or /dark could just walk through a mission with their auras on and collect massive xp just for standing there.

Not gonna swear to it, but I believe that was the reason (or something similar)

Also, if your character is particularly broke (didn't get any lucky drops, etc.) you can disable xp to earn enough money to buy enhancements before the ones you currently have slotted turn red and cease functioning. If you get more than 3 levels above your slotted enhancements the number indicating their level will turn red, and you will no longer be getting any benefit from them.

(this is if you are using storebought enhancements, it doesn't apply to Invention Enhancements, because they will never stop working)

At that level the best place to look would be in Kings Row or the Hollows. Skyway might be a little dangerous until you gain another level or two.

The learning curve is long, but it's not very steep. It's confusing at first, but you'll find that the more you learn, the more sense everything else makes, making it easier to learn.

Crafting and slotting IOs is the easy part. Figuring out where to slot them is the hard part. I'd say don't worry about them for a while, focus on learning the game, and after you have that down then delve into IOs.

Edit to clarify what I meant about IOs:

In most MMOs a particular item or weapon can only be placed in one or two places, making it pretty obvious where it goes. In CoH, if you're playing , say, a blaster, a Ranged Damage IO could go into any one of up to 6 powers or so. Figuring out where it would benefit you the most is not the simplest thing ever, and you will find that if you ask 5 people, you will likely get 5 different answers. And none of the answers is wrong, just different. What works for someone else may not work for you, and vice versa.

Similarly, a scrapper has on average 5 powers that will accept a Melee Damage IO set. In some of the higher end things, what power you put a set in gets kind of important depending on what goal you're trying to achieve. I'm not going to give a bunch of examples, because, being new to the game it would make very little sense to you, but it's worth looking into later on.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...08#post1211108

Only thing I could find.

Important part: "As far as I'm concerned we'll never allow this"

He didn't say emphatically that it will never happen, just that he personally doesn't ever want it to happen. That is a pretty good indicator that the odds of this happening are somewhere between slim and none.

Okay. Say they decide to give us, for sake of argument, the option of a chest emanation point for every blast set it makes sense for (excluding Assault Rifle and Archery) That's 73 new animations they need to come up with, just for one more emanation point. I already subtracted Aim from all the sets that have it. Any time you add an emanation point, that's 73 animations. Just for the blast sets.

Of course there will be much gnashing of teeth and complaining if blast sets are the only ones who get this option, so control and buff sets need to get it too. That's 63 and 90 animations respectively, for just one additional emanation point. I didn't count Trick Arrow or Traps because it doesn't make sense for arrows to come out of your chest, and only makes sense for a cyborg or robot for traps to do so.

226 animations to make every time you want to add another emanation point. That is a LOT of work. Head/eye emanation would be 200 or so if you subtract the powers that already start from there (Sonic, Psychic and X Ray Eyes)

I never said it was impossible. Some of it probably IS easy. Some of it probably is NOT. Regardless of how easy or hard it is, it is still a LOT of work, for something that a large chunk of the playerbase will probably not care about. 226 animations for a chest emanation point for every power it makes sense for. How many people would actually USE that option? Probably not enough to justify the time spent on coding it.

It took what, 3-4 months for them to do Dual Blades? Dual Blades is NINE animations and it took them that long. Now imagine how long it would take to do 226. I am presuming here that the animations and power effects were coded seperately and then combined when both were finished, which is the most logical way to do it. That doesn't mean I'm correct though. How long have they been working on I16? Since, what, April or so? 4 months, doing animations for 2 sets, along with everything else they are doing. And that's with all the extra help they recently hired.

It is pretty clear that there is a significant amount of time involved in coding animations. What you're asking for is a staggering amount of work for something that would be received lukewarm by the majority of the playerbase, and it just doesn't make sense to do it right now.

I'd take Thunder Kick early and respec out of it later. Only having 2 attacks for that long really sucks. Could probably push Hasten off on the early build for another attack, and then respec into Umbral's build later when you have more attacks available.

Solid advice on the power pools from everyone here though. I skipped Stamina and Hasten on my Claws/Regen, but that's on his finished IO build. Martial Arts will get more mileage out of Stamina than Claws, so I suggest you pick it up until you start IOing. Hasten is always useful, I just didn't have room for it, so I had to drop it.

Edit to explain why Claws benefits less from Stamina: Claws has an endurance discount as part of the set's balance, MA will burn more end over time than Claws will every time. As a result, Claws/Regen can skip Stamina more easily than MA without running into problems. My main doesn't have Stamina and only runs into endurance problems when fighting Carnies and Sappers.

Oh, almost forgot!

Going with the Leaping pool is a very good decision for a /Fire or /Dark scrapper. They are the only secondaries that get no Knockback protection built in. Unless you're lucky enough to have a KB protection IO drop for you, or make enough to buy one, the last power in the pool, Acrobatics, will be invaluable.

Swipe was originally a multi-hit attack. Probably something like:

.35 lethal damage

.35 lethal damage after .5 sec delay (100% chance)


and they just changed it to:

.76 lethal damage

.03 lethal damage after .5 sec delay (0% chance)

Doing it that way means they can change the animation and make it work without having to completely recode how the power works. That would effectively change it from 2 small hits to one larger one, and they didn't have to mess with the coding.

I'm not sure if my guess is accurate, but it makes sense.

I prefer Swipe myself nowadays. The DPS IS slightly lower than Strike still, but Swipe fits in my attack chain a lot better.

The RMTers use trial accounts to gather names, and then send out a flurry of spam emails on a real account because they know they only have a short window before that acount gets banned.

Trial accounts can still use the /search feature, and that's all they need to gather a couple hundred names at a time. They probably wouldn't use an invite message system to spam people because the way they're doing it now is more efficient. They'd get maybe 30 or 40 invite message spams out before the account is banned. Since people don't check their email much anymore they could get several hundred of them out in the same time before someone marks them as a spammer.

The feature suggested in the OP would be nice, but it would do very little to make blind invites less annoying.

If you have 8 BS/SD scrappers and they all have the Achille's proc in one attack, you should be able to get some significant debuff numbers out of it. The proc will not stack with itself, but it WILL stack from multiple users.

If you have one available and want to stay all melee, bring a Dark Armor scrapper, tank, or brute to pull the mire nictus away. I think that mire IS auto-hit (it hit my wife's SR scrapper every time, through Elude) and it is negative energy, which DA resists better than anything else in the game.

Last I heard the populations in order go: Freedom, Virtue, Infinity, and it gets sketchy from there.

I like low population servers. There's less lag, and I don't mind soloing, so if there isn't much going on right then it doesn't bother me.

Also, the higher population servers may get you locked out during special events when a lot of people are playing at once.

That was a little harsh Fleeting.

I took the fact that very few seem to have known him, yet posted with messages of condolance, as an indicator of the community we share. Though he may not have been well known, he was one of our own. He played CoH, and presumably loved it, that gives him something in common with each and every one of us here. All of us are bound together, however thin and tenuous a binding it is, by the fact that we all choose to spend our free time playing this game.

Posting a message of condolance for someone you did not know is not the same as going to their funeral to get out of school. I would not presume that I would be welcome at the man's funeral, as I have never met him. That does not mean I can't sympathize with the loss his family and friends are going through.

With that said, my condolances and sympathy go out to Alan's family and his friends. He has made the final log out, and will be missed.

Good luck AC!

I don't think we've ever really butted heads on anything, but I always thought your posts were well thought out and reasoned, even if I disagreed with your opinion.

I never once got the "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about" vibe from your posts (though I'm sure it's cropped up in mine from time to time).

I also thought you were older than you are, at least mid-20s. Based on your reasoning ability at a relatively young age you should do well in any technical field.

The only advice I have is: Don't take on more than you can handle at once. Some others have said it, but it's pretty important. You can probably fit 20 classes into a week pretty easily, time-wise, but if you try to cram that much knolwedge into your brain at once you can easily get burned out and find that it's all running together. Set up your schedule in a way that allows your brain to recharge a little between classes. Sometimes you HAVE to take classes that are very close together because that's the only time they are offered, but when possible give yourself at least 45 minutes to an hour between classes so you're not asking your brain to go from calculus to literature within a few minutes. You'll find that if you switch from one subject to another too fast you won't retain the information from the first class as well. Give yourself time to digest what you just learned.

Heh, all this is coming from a high-school dropout. Ironic, innit?

Anyway, good luck with your college studies, and try not to aim any rockets at western Iowa, I'd appreciate it

There is no such thing as a bad Scrapper combination.

Some are better than others at certain things, and there are good all around builds that don't excel at anything, but there isn't a combination in existence that can't pull off some eye-popping feats later in the game.

A couple examples of what I mean:

Very few things can mow down minions like a Spines/Fire or Spines/Dark, but the trade off is they get anemic single target damage, which makes them not as good at one hard target.

A DM/Fire is sort of the opposite. Your AoE will not be great, but you will have one of the best single target damage outputs a Scrapper can have, in your primary. Your secondary trades a little survivability for more damage. An SR will outlive you in the long run, but in th eshort term you will do more damage.

I look at Claws/Regen as one of the better "all around" builds. They don't excel at any one thing, but can do everything at least passably well.

Scrappers are probably the best overall balanced AT in the game. The performance differences between set combinations are relatively small compared to other ATs. What one scrapper cannot do, another can, and vice versa.