Cyber_naut

The problem with EM is that it was balanced around the glorious power that was ET. Then they nerfed ET, and the overall weakness of the set became ridiculously apparent.

Now you have a set that has only one strength, single target damage. And that would be fine, except for two problems. One, there are other sets that have similar single target capabilities, and most, if not all, deliver that damage better in team environments. Two, these same sets that are on par with EM for single target capabilities, are far, far better than EM in terms of aoe capabilities. That is why EM is a badly underperforming set, and that is why the vast majority of knowledgeable players dislike the set and call for reforms.

My biggest problem with the situation was why EM was nerfed. The dev responsible flat out posted in the discussion thread that a big reason for nerfing it was because in thread after thread, he saw players mocking other players for taking any other set except for EM. I recall this very clearly because it shocked me to think that a dev did not realize these thread reactions were only due to the fact EM was the only viable melee set for PVP, not because the set was a top performing PVE powerset. In PVE, even with the old ET, EM was subpar due to it's feeble aoe capabilities. Then to add insult to injury, they changed pvp (same dev responsible, same HORRIBLE results) to remove the advantages EM had in PVP in the first place.

As far as fixing EM and making it a more competitive powerset, the devs could go one of two routes. If they want to have EM be the best single target type set, thats fine, but then it needs to be heads and shoulders above the competition, when the competition is already heads and shoulders above EM in terms of aoe ability. Simply returning ET to its former state would accomplish this, and EM would still be supbar in PVE because aoe ability is almost always more valuable in PVE due to the fact you are almost always fighting multiple enemies, and the value of aoe only grows with teaming. Or they could buff other powers to improve its single target output, preferable the faster hitting attacks.

The other option is to boost EM's aoe capabilities. I would suggest some of the following. Make stun a more useful power by making it an aoe stun, maybe even add some damage. Or justify ET and TF's horribly slow animations and make them small cones or aoe's so that at least some of the targets they hit on teams are not dead before they land.

It's a shame such a nice looking, and formerly popular powerset, is left in such a state of disarray where only a few players are left that still enjoy it, especially when it would not take much to restore the powerset to more competitive levels and satisfy a lot of disgruntled customers concerns.

Spines is hard to get into because it is really, really weak until late in the game - you need most of its powers for it to be effective and fun. But later on when you have all your aoe goodness and the endurance to use it, it's a very fun set, especially on teams. It's definitely the weakest single target set, by a lot, but it's also the best aoe set, if you have the patience to get there.

There's no question that WP's taunt aura is very weak, but as others have pointed out, every set has weaknesses, and this is one of WP's. Having said that, I've got a WP tank at 50 and I have no problems getting and holding aggro via attacks and taunt.

I think the posters who feel the difficulty isn't so bad are probably primarily soloers or on very small teams. Soloing, I've had very littel problem with the praetoria missions.

However as teams get larger, the difficulty gets RIDICULOUSLY too high. I don't mean slightly too hard, I mean stupid hard. Going to the hospital after every other spawn (or countless ambush...)hard. I don't know why they went away from the difficulty slider mechanic, but I strongly suggest they go back to it.

I can imagine new players trying this and thinking its some kind of emergency room simulation.

Some players like hard, and thats fine, but hard was attainable by pumping up the difficulty slider. A lot of people like to feel powerful and not visit the hospital every five minutes, so the base difficulty should be easy. This way more people are happy becuase there are more options instead of the only option you have in praetoria, which most seem to agree, is too difficult, especially for toons that are such low level, with minimal powers and slotting.

I've downloaded the .psd files, but they won't open - says it's not compatible with my version of photoshop (cs2). Could you make the files available to be compatible with cs2?

In terms of AAO, for once I actually agree with castle when he said that AAO is fine as is.

Looking at the rikti pylon situation, where SD's are herding groups of monkeys or other minor enemies around them to saturate aao, one player outdid many of them on a db/elec at 262 dps. That out-dps'd even fire and dm sds with saturated AAO. So either db or elec is overpowered (and I certainly would not argue that), or fire isn't doing enough damage (and I wouldn't argue that either), or people are overexaggerating how good AAO is and underestimating how good some other sets can add dps to a build.

I think most people are gravitating towards sets that are easy to build defense with, and among the offensive secondaries, SD is obviously the one starting off with the best defense. The answer is to improve options for building resist/heal sets for optimum builds, not tearing down defense sets. If it was as easy to build top end toons with res/heal sets as it is def sets, I think you'd see a lot more examples of high dps output with elec, da and especially now with the fa changes, just like you see with the db/elec in the pylon thread.

And the reason I suggest building up the res/heal sets and not tearing down the defense sets is this - in terms of the hardest challenges in the game, you'll hear a LOT more instances of people complaining of being ridiculously 'squishy' on a res/heal set than you'll hear complaints about things being 'too easy' on a defense set. In other words, there's plenty of 'kryptonite' for even the best defense based 'uber toons', but way too much kryptonite for similar toons based on res/heals. Res/heal toons probably feel like they're stuck in a bad episode of smallville where even their pen ink is made from meteor juice...

Spines with pretty much anything is a good farming primary because you can pick your enemies to match your secondary, and spines does great aoe damage all by itself, even better with more offensive secondarys like DA, elec, and FA. But it has weak single target damage, so you'd have a very hard time soloing AV's regardless of secondary.

The best all around scrapper combo, imo, is fire/SD, though I'm not sure how bad the SC nerf is going to hit the combo. Fire does great single target and aoe damage, and SD gives you additional aoe dmg, and good starting defense so you can reach softcap defense with IO's, and softcap defense is pretty vital if you are going to take down avs.

Having said that, literally any scrapper combo can be built into a pretty respectable all around toon or specialty toon, especially with IO's and using pool powers, so pick something you enjoy and make it work for you. And with the two build option, you could make one build for aoe, and the second build could be your single target build.

[QUOTE=Sir_Lionheart;3115749]