Cognito

Yep, pretty sure.

Missing a target did not raise my fury.

If this is the case (it seems so), then brutes will have a harder time building fury against defence based enemies (e.g. ice tanks).

U sure Cap? I know incoming attacks on a brute generate fury irrespective of landing or missing.

I was fairly sure that A brute only generates fury if his/her attacks hit?. Seems that way... of to check!

((Nice work Pious. Can't help feeling despair for thirty kids locked in a life they will inevitably p*ss against the wall))

Defence limits a fury cos the brute misses more. Missing = less fury.

E.g. Consider 50% damage mitigation from resistance, and 50% mitagtion from resistance.


Resistance tank - brute will hit 100 times, doing half (lets say 5) damage. The tank takes 500 damage, but the brute gets all that fury from hitting you 100 times.

Defence tank - brute hits 50 times, doing full (lets say 10) damage. Tank in other words gets the same damage, but the Brute only gets half the fury build up from attacking.

And in the fact that Chilling Embrace will slow the brutes attack rate... This is my logic why Ice tanks probably have the best (although still limited) chance against brutes... they stop the brute building fury from his/her attacks. You still have the problem of sub-par attacks the tank does building the fury on the brute.


Id guess the best way would be simply to avoid the brute until its rage (from ss) / unstoppable / overload drops. Then close in. Do not attack, spam Energy Absorbtion 3xrecharge, 3xend modification, then start hitting the brute when you get its end low. Its only guesswork though. I think any tank has its work cut out vs a brute, but Id imagine Ice tanks have the best chance.

Leadership is never a waste...

Like all AoE effects, you get more value for your money the bigger the group.

Assault and Tactics are probably the best two leadership powers. However, you may wish to consider Manuevers as it will stack nicely with your Force Field Generator.

At the end of the day, I think dominators should do more damage than controllers. Until they do, its bleh time.

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is when faced with AVs or tough bosses, there you spend 90% of the fight with no minions to drain.

[/ QUOTE ]

Personally, with my ice tank, I keep the minions around in the case of tough bosses, simply to bolster my defence

AV's are a different matter though. As you say, these are long drawn out fights. So if you don't have stamina you may aswell resign yourself to being a pure aggro soak machine, and not attacking. To be honest, in a 6man+ team thats not unreasonable - if there are enough blasters / scrappers in team to do the damage.

Sorry

to clarify - i am getting OG

Shall i get CoF in addition?

TO be honest...

I'd go Dark/Energy or Energy/Dark!


Dark/Energy works well as the -debuff of dark is tasty with a defence based set, and the dark heal covers a whole in the energy (which has no heal).

Energy/Dark gives you a much better "Whallop" factor with the last big hitters, and Dark allows some end recovery and AoE effects.

If you going for PvE, AoE effects are king. Not much difference in Energy or Dark attacks, but /Dark armour has, IIRC, 4 AoE powers compared to Energy having 1 (powersink iirc?).

So consider a hybrid!

OK Ive got my Spines/Dark up to level 24 now and its an absolute and complete monster in big teams.

I cant see anything at all competing with it in big teams. Spines has the most AoE of any scrapper primary (by far), and Dark has 4 x AoE effects (all others have none except for invun kinda with invunerability).

For big teams - Spines/Dark no comparison.

Only problem is you will need clever END slotting and clever use of toggles (i.e. with a tank on team - turn of your armours... ).

However... Advice please...

THe AoE Fear effect looks tasty, and goes with concept. However, I have concerns how useful Fear will be when I will pretty much always be running two damage aura toggles...

Thoughts?

Really depends on how much end you need tbh... but 3xrech 3xdef sounds good.

For PvP you arent going to get a whole stack of defence from energy absorbtion. To my mind, you want to go all out for the end reduction and go 3xend, 3xrecharge.

As far as I know, en absorbtion def debuffs stack - am I correct?

Oh and by the Way Cap - nice to see you taking a set with some solid AoE effects in!

[Please Note Force Commander is not at this meeting... for RP reasons]

Flash Arrow is not the strongest TA power... thats for sure.

Additional thought... TA/Elec might be a possible stamina-less build. I have TA on my mastermind - even running two leadership toggles and having 1 end rec in all TA powers I do absolutely fine. TA is a low end cost set.

And elec, with its end drainage and posiblle end gaining effect may be lowish cost.

Combine with vigilance? Might be an option.

Looks good.

Id take Ice Arrow - use this with Telsa Cage to lock down boss and make controllers look silly

Personally, Id loose the Nova for this - I never like Nova's on Defenders but hey ho.

Short Circuit. Id play to its strengths - End drainage. Only needs 1 accuracy, but id go 3xEnd mod, 2xRecharge. Spam it. In big groups it will cost you next to no endurance (you may even gain some).

Bow drawing is a right royal pain if you ask me...

Anyhoo...

Depends on what you are gonna be playing... solo, group, PvE, PvP... etc...

Fancy doing more damage or more debuff/protecting?

e.g

Sonic will give you absolutely silly -res powers. Given TA already has two good -res powers, this will stack pretty well and make you a real damage booster to the entire team. This should allow you to ignite your oil slick (very important) as Sonic does energy damage.

Dark would give you the -acc debuff that is the one thing TA isnt to good at. However, you wont be able to ignite your oil slick (so make sure you have Tech Origin for taser dart or that other one i cant remember that does energy damage).

Elec is always fun as gives you another way to subdue your enemies with short circuit. When you come to your EMP arrow, there is a little synergy there. Will ignite your oil slick nicely.

Rad has some attractions. TA isnt a good AoE -def power, although has a powerful -def debuffer in acid arrow. Not great, but fills a slight area of weakness (although the -acc weakness is much more of a gap and filled by dark). Will ignite your oil slick nicely.

Energy - pfft. Dont want to knock them out of your oil slick / disruption arrow / glue effect etc etc. Thats just wrong. With a lot of skill can be used to knock them back in but it will probably to more harm than good. It does ignite your oil slick pretty well but Id say this is one to avoid.

Archery and psionics - well you said you didnt want it!.


I think that about covers it. So my suggestions would be:

Going for all out damage (in team or solo): TA/Sonic

Going for all out protection (in a team): TA/Dark (but get the right origin)

Going for a team build and want something different: TA/Elec

AVOID TA/ENERGY!


Just some thoughts.

Auric Allbright was thoroughly enjoying the Annual Crey ball and dinner. He had already won a considerable amount playing Backgammon and had, at least, broke even on Roulette. And now he was at the head table, enjoying a rare vintage Champagne with the Countess and various heads of security, research, and public relations.

His one niggling problem was the man known as Force Commander, sometime tactitian and even (if they has such a thing) leader of the Militia. The commander was somewhat popular, apparently with entirely reasonable political ethics (even if his carousing could be critised personally), and with an uncanny ability to uncover some of the less scrupulous aspects of Crey's research.

He had his supsicions who this man might be. Two years ago.. in Switzerland... the village of Audenweiz... the F.A.B. project. A disaster, ruined by the investigations of the European Mutagenics Agency. At least no incriminating evidence was left behind. The very man who was a thorn in his side back then appeared to be working in a very similar manner right now, but in a more personal and driven way.

But now he had a plan. As the conversation on the table turned to the Commander and how to divert his investigations, Auric permitted himself a wry smile.

"Ladies and gentlemen... I believe I have the answer!".

He reached into his Tuxedo Jacket, and tossed the holo-crystal onto the centre of the table. The image briefly flickered in pale green light...

"MUTANT TERRORIST OF AUDENWEIZ EXPOSED!"

As the presentation played, wry and chilling smiles appeared throughout the table. None more cold or machevellian than Auric himself...



[TBC]

Just tested:

Kinetics defender: Siphonspeed 3xSO recharge, Hasten 3xSO recharge.

Got Hasten down to 30 seconds (therabouts) downtime.

This isnt stopwatch perfect, but was fairly accurate.

Which is pretty good - Hasten is up 2 mins, down 30 seconds. So whats that, about 80% of the time hasten is up?.

Had neurtino bolt recharged before I was through the animation . Not that a like neutrino bolt, but given its very short activation time, felt pretty amazing.

No matter how many defenders you have in a team, you will always want a nice ice tank who keeps em all tightly packed in debuffery goodness and... debuffs them himself!

If you PvP take hibernate and 3x recharge slot it. Hibernate is a monsterously good power in PvP for a tank.

If you PvE/Team, end problems are not so bad if you have a well slotted energy absorbtion (id suggest defx3, rechx2, endx1 or something similar).

These days, you can't really tank AV's without taunt. So get it by level 40+ if you want to be worth your salt. Personally, i always get taunt at level 10 and never look back. If I want to solo I play a scrapper.

Permafrost is perhaps the worst power there is. You will laugh of practically any cold attack without you, and its a piddly resistance to fire even fully slotted. Only take if you have a spare slot and seriously want to max out your protection. Given the rarity of fire in PvP, it isnt really attractive in this regard either.

Just my 2inf.

Thats my concern really. Even when dominations up, dominators seem lacklustre against AV's, and thats just wrong. Certainly brutes and corruptors seem much more useful, Masterminds seem probably more useful. Id probably prefer a dominationup dominator than a stalker but then domination wont always be up.

That sounds a pretty good guess to me.

Trouble with ice/ice is its plethora of AoE powers. Its a good PvE set, but PvP its not so great, especially as two of the really defining slows (Arctic Air, Chilling embrace) require melee range which is ouch for many dominators.

I also find it an end heavy set which is slow to build up domination. Thats hard work in PvP. If you want to win in PvP you need to get domination up. When its down you are probably the weakest AT out there.

I agree with you 100% about triangles PRAF... I recall you made an excellent suggestion about dropiing triangles and allowing transient resistance to all mezzing after being mezzed (like PvP).

My problem with faster domination is - even when domination up, dominators are not significantly better than brutes / corruptors when putting out damage, so they still underperform (given how feeble holds are against AVs). I really dont see this balancing things out, although it helps.

Brutes are particularly stong vs tanks. And lets face it, tanks needed something that they should fear .

If you are facing a brute, I would play an ice tank. They are best a limiting the fury build up (defence based, slows for reducing the attacks that hit, and end drain which can be a brutes bane). Its still hard tho.

I doubt they will change the triangle system.

As for domination bieng up more with AV... does that actually help? DOminators still cant hold them much, and they wont match a corruptor or brute for damage even with dom up . If thats the "fix" its pretty mild for a big problem.