Cyber_naut

If you're gonna team at all, I'd endorse this build or one like it. Fireball alone will give you some nice aoe and make you feel a lot more usefull on teams. Or go villain and grab some mu electric powers. While you're correct to say MA is pretty much a single target set, there's no reason not to use the great pool powers to get some juicy aoe. Looks the change will make playing sets like MA on large teams a lot more palatable.

Ah, the power of shield walls... lol. But builds that benefit from more recharge are still better off with LotG's imo, and I think shield walls can be pricey (haven't checked lately).

Brawler was a great animator, and it becomes painfully obvious how good when you look at animations in some competing cames, including some that haven't even been released yet. And before he cut off correspondence in the forums, he was one of the more friendly and informative devs in the game, and it was greatly appreciated, at least by me. I obviously don't know the specifics of what happened, but it's this games loss without a doubt. I would love to know what happened exactly, so I know who to shoot hate at... lol.

I remember TRYING to read that a long time ago, lol. There's no question that arcana is a math wizard, but you don't need to be a math wizard to have a really good idea how effective each scrapper secondary is in game.

And even if you accept her mathematical analysis as being a completely accurate assessment of how strong each secondary is relative to eachother, I don't see any of that conflicting with my arguments anyway. But if you see something in there that does negate something I've said, what and where is it exactly? Or better yet, what about my argument do YOU disagree with?

To summarize my argument:

1)Since regen relies so heavily on regen, it should get debuff resistance, just as other sets that rely on one mechanic so heavily (like sr with def), gets debuff resistance. This argument is an opinion, so really there is no right or wrong answer here, nor can it be proven 'wrong' or 'right', with or without calculators...

2)Regen is NOT lagging 'way' behind any competing sets. Early on, it's actually pretty strong thanks to endurance boosting powers, and click heals putting it ahead of other sets that need to build defense/resistance and toggle management. But as the game progresses, it falls behind other sets, especially those that incorporate defense.

And even if you want to argue that it is on par with other sets even late game, you can't deny the fact that due to it's clicky nature, it takes more skill and activity (activity that detracts from offensive performance, while many competing sets actually ADD to offensive performance) to achieve similar survivability to sets that you just turn on or sets that actually boost offensive performance. I would argue that if it takes more work, and detracts from your offense, then that set should offer superior survivability, and I'm not sure anyone is arguing that regen is superior in terms of survivability vs. competing sets.

You don't need a lot of calculations to make the argument that a set requiring active use is more difficult to use than a set that only requires toggles to be turned on. And imo, a set that requires active use (and time to use it, which takes away from offensive output) should be able to outperform a set that requires no active use and doesn't cut into offensive performance.

I don't think any of us have survival statistics on the varous secondaries available to scrappers, and even if we did, they'd be tainted by player skill somewhat. Having said that, I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of knowledgeable scrapper players would not rank regen as the top secondary in terms of survivability (in fact I think most would consider it a bit squishy in pve play, outside of pairing it with parry or divine avalanche). I'm arguing that it should be tops in survivability, and without question. Why? Because again, it takes more effort than the other secondaries, and pretty much only offers surivivability, while the active nature of the set actually decreases offensive output where many other secondaries actively improve it.

And while its true that regen gets its mitigation from regeneration, heals and +health, more of it's powers involve regeneration (dull pain and/or recon didn't get nerfed when regen was overperforming), and is the primary potential target for debuffs, which is why I believe it should receive at least some regeneration debuff protection. SR has other minor secondary pieces of mitigation as well, but since it's primarily defense based, it gets defense debuff resistance, hence the comparison.

And finally, you're implication that if regen was underperforming at all, the devs would have acted on it by now, is simply not supported by the history of this game. There have been, and are, underperforming, and overperforming sets that have remained so for very long stretches of time, and some of them were altered after player imput and suggestions.

A better solution is to make teaming more desirable via reward rather than making it a requirement. Why piss off players that prefer to solo? The real reason a lot of players solo is due to the bad set up where you get better rewards for soloing than you do on teams. Change that around and you'll see a LOT more teaming.

This. No sane person can honestly claim endurance isn't an issue in this game, especially during levels 1-22, and it's a flat out PITA for most players, which is supported by the fact almost every build has stamina in it. The fact it's so rare that stamina is skipped proves the fact that endurance usage is excessive in this game, which is why the devs have decided to make this move, and it's a great decision.

It's based on my experiences leveling SR toons. From my experience, leveling a toon that relies primarily on defense, like SR, is a PITA, because defense isn't very good without inspirations until you start getting near softcap, and anything that gets through your meager defense makes said toon die very quickly, as opposed to any other set that has layered defenses. I don't mind that sub par performance because you have the end game payoff of soft cap defense and DDR. Now if the game is changed to make soft capped defense far less effective, that leveling up inferiority is no longer justified, and a set like SR becomes a joke.

Defense already has plenty of kryptonite to deal with. For example, DE already had tools that could give def based toons all kinds of problems, which makes the buffs even more difficult to understand.

People build for defense because they can now, thanks to IO bonuses. And it's been GREAT for the game, especially for scrappers. A good deal of the buzz in these forums is due to the fact that players can now softcap their toons late game and accomplish heroic feats like soloing av's and pylons. Weaken that too much and we go back to threads like 'i soloed a group of four hellions!'. Pretty exciting huh? I for one don't want my multi-billion io'd out level 50 toon struggling with every other even level spawn of average enemies like DE and malta, which are common lvl 50 enemies.

And if the devs are wondering why there is an imbalance between people building for defense and those building for resist and heals, then look no further than the miniscule io bonuses available for that build style. The answer isn't to decrease def bonuses or def effectiveness if this is what they're looking at, the answer is to increase players ability to build for survivability outside of defense based builds so they can continue to use their end game toons to solo avs and such.

As has been mentioned earlier, if the devs want to create a new level of difficulty, thats as easy as offering even higher difficulty levels on the slider, or putting it in the new incarnate material.

Thats fire armor. Fire melee has build up.

I'm usually opposed to nerfs, but one nerf that would be extremely beneficial to this game would be a nerf to castle...

THIS. Save the increased difficulty for the incarnate levels.

Agreed. The devs clearly feel capped defenses are too powerful, while ignoring the fact defense is overly underperforming before soft cap, the fact soft cap doesn't happen until late game anyway, and as they've done in the past, they have over reacted with an overbearing change that will make defense gimp.

This. I noticed it immediately on my fire/sd scrapper who was getting repeatedly slaughtered in a tip mish when I repeatedly had faced malta on the same setting previously with little difficulty whatsoever.

You need a cough drop or what?

Shield charge got changed because nothing in the game did the type of damage it did.

With rage, SS is on par with several competing sets in terms of damage and eclipsed by several more. Without rage, SS is in the basement. So while rage might be overpowered if it were in another set, it is absolutely not overpowered in the SS set. In fact, I'd argue that the negatives to rage are excessive when you consider the fact that rage, which requires a power selection and slots, only allows SS only to compete with other sets rather than eclipse them. If you're paying penalties for a power, a crash and serious endurance issues thanks to an end crash that can't be mitigated with slotting and hits all at once, it should offer superior performance, not simply allow the set to compete with other sets and even be bested by some.

And kinetic melee. And dual blades. And dark melee. If every set had the same powers and worked the same way it would get pretty boring, pretty fast.