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Posts
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I'd suggest fire melee/shield defense. With fire melee, you will do great single target and aoe damage, and the damage type is less resisted than most. Shield defense gives you great defense and a crashless tier nine for added survivability, and a great offensive boost with aao and shield charge. The one hole this build had, health recovery, can be covered by destiny heal/regen boost incarnate ability. Add some reactive and judgement power of your choice, and you've got a wrecking ball of scrappery goodness.
Scrappers are more about killing stuff than surviving imo, hence my choice. If I were more concerned about survivability, I'd go brute or tank, depending on how focused on survivability I wanted to be. -
How good is inv vs. the new stuff? I would think pairing dm with almost every other secondary would be superior to inv for various reasons, but i've only played one inv a while ago, on a brute before the inv buffs, but I remember the exotic stuff tearing me apart. I think I over slotted run on sentence making...
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fire/sd is my favorite because as munki said, its got a great combination of single target and aoe dmg.
Other great combos are elec/sd which has mediocre single target but the best aoe output, and dm/sd which has the weakest aoe of the 3, but the best single target and siphon life which increases sd survivability a lot.
Broadsword is fine, but if you want top end output, I'd suggest one of the 3 I mentioned. If you do go bs, it's got great burst dmg, but mediocre single target and aoe dmg overall. Parry helps with defense, and is very useful while you're leveling, but at lvl 50, a properly io'd sd shouldn't need it any more.
Go with any of these and you'll help your kat/reg buddy out plenty. -
Quote:I think they're going to be seeing a decent sized drop off in subscriptions, and it will be because they didn't listen to the argument that the way they implemented the new stuff was going to piss off their less extreme customers. First of all, making the new powers only attainable (in any semblance of a reasonable way) via the 2 incarnate trials was a horrible idea. By doing this, you burn people out on the new content way too fast, and those that don't like the new content get discouraged because its the only way to get the new 'levels' of power. Secondly, by making it so time consuming to get the new stuff, you discourage against one of the strengths of this game, altitis.^^^ This
Not to be an anniversary party pooper but I have friends unsubing pretty fast over this and Justice once again is loosing some fine players, from what I hear other servers are loosing people as well.
And there has been no response from a developer in almost 2 weeks and not even anything from OCR indicating that they care or are even reading the feedback in the past 9 days.
I am sure there are many that would rather current issues with incarnate content are addressed before we get anything new. It really should have been a priority but their silence speaks volumes to it not being so.
And I'm not leaving, so I'm not posting this because of how this directly affects me, I'm posting this because I've never seen an issue lead to so many players deciding to let their accounts expire. I hope the devs will not try to delude themselves with an excuse like 'well the game is old it's going to bleed players regardless', when in fact its bad moves on their part that are bleeding players from this game. -
Something is definitely wrong with the way rewards are being handed out.
I have continually been getting rares/very rares on my brute, while I've only gotten common/uncommons on my corruptor.
The worst part is, I have no idea why. If you're going to have this system, we the players should at least be told how it works. I'm putting in the exact same effort on both toons, and I'm an experienced player so I know how to play each at, yet I'm getting drastically different rewards. The worst part is, I know for a fact the corruptor is contributing more to the team/league, yet gets far worse rewards. So while I don't know how the system works because apparently its a secret, I do know it is broken if the systems goal is to award based on best contribution to the team/league. -
Quote:Katana is avg damage wise, its strength is the fact it makes it pretty easy to softcap vs melee/s/l with divine avalanche. Your big hitters come late with soaring dragon and golden dragonfly.and im guessing you all find katana to be a good primary? ive heard nothing against it but also nothing for it, how is it? ive never had it before\
i know it looks super cool XD
Update: i have a lvl 8(yeah super low but i just made him) katana/invul but i find katana to seem very weak (of course its unenhanced but still you can usually get some idea of how hard it will hit) will it toughen up and hit harder with more levels and getting the sets? or will it still hit rather lightly after all that -
Consider a kat/wp, it's not very tough to softcap en/neg and fire/cold, and da softcaps melee/sl, then on top of that you have crazy reg, crazy rec and a crashless tier nine, and no psi hole. With the new defense busting stuff in game, you want as many layers to your defense as possible, imo.
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Quote:Nailed it. I can't believe an experienced player would not be aware of the fact that stacked buffs/debuffs in this game are ridiculously more powerful than anything melee toons can do.There is a reason that the standard LRSF Freedom Phalanx Rush was 1 Brute and 7 Corrs - and it has nothing to do with melees being invincible and making support ATs obsolete. The only reason the Brute is there is because they can hold all of the ATs in one spot for them to die.
In fact, I'll go one point further, the reason the top end content is so ridiculously loaded with debuffs, to hit buffs and pretty much every other nasty trick the devs can think of is because of support ATs.
This is a silly argument, I'm really stunned if you actually think force multipliers are suffering in this game and living in the shadow of melees running around punching stuff. -
I think this is the key here, some builds/powersets get hit much harder than others. SD's mitigation value is severely weakened by the new mechanics, so you're going to see the problem much more so than someone on a claws/regen, because while you're still pissing a ton of bad guys off, you're getting hit a lot more than the guy without a taunt aura that pulls aggro away from tanks.
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Quote:What difference does your ability to solo make in a situation where you are NOT SOLOING?
When you are solo, you are just as tough as you ever were, because the base to-hit in the rest of the game has not changed (other than Praetorian DE mobs). The trials are the only place your survivability drops off, and you are with at LEAST a full team the whole time.
If you guys aren't seeking solo glory, then why are you so concerned about your melee ATs' ability to perform well on their own in circumstances where it is a given that you will not BE on your own?
You are still serving the same purpose you ever do on a team: You are giving the enemies something to shoot at in order to keep the heat off the squishier ATs. That's exactly why all brutes and tanks, and some scrappers have taunt auras.
The teamwork here is, other people are keeping you alive with their buffs so you can better keep them alive.
The problem with your logic here is, if the new mechanics make melee ats just about as squishy as squishies, then they become far less attractive to teams for obvious reasons. Teams with stacking buffs/debuffs are already far more effective than teams with lots of melee, with the new mechanics to eliminate defense, this gap has widened.
For some melee at's, a big chunk of one of their two powersets is dedicated to keeping them alive, and that is being weakened severely by recent trends, while other ats are suffering no losses at all, when buff/debuff was already more powerful, and not coincidentally, more sought after on teams - if you can't see the disparity there then I can only guess you are biased for some reason. -
Great job. What strategy did you use to take down the towers while recluse was buffed and after you?
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Exactly. Not to mention the fact brutes and scrappers are SUPPOSED to be strong solo at's to make up for the fact they don't bring as much to teams as support toons. If they are 'evening the playing field' by weakening brutes and scrappers ability to perform well on their own, what are they doing to improve their contribution to teams to make up for what they are losing?
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Quote:Im not convinced the trade off is of the same value that it used to be for a Brute.
I think it will get worse, before it gets better.
I dont think the softcap has changed in the pre-Incarnate game.
At the high end, fully slotted and io'd, there wasn't enough of a trade off, again imo. But I do agree the devs apparent crusade to make defense worthless is headed in the 'going too far' direction.
It's ok for top end builds that cost billions to make to be almost unkillable. Even in the regular content, my uber toons can die in various situations. But with the current trend, my uber 50s can die like a level 10 blaster far too often and far too easily. Maybe the devs have a different playstyle, but I don't enjoy going to the hospital every five minutes on a top end character. If some players like to die a lot, fine, up the difficulty capabilities to +8/x16 and let them go nuts.
One of the bigger reasons this is happening is giving enemies things that literally make defense useless, which overly cripples builds and powersets that rely on defense. And they tinkered with this in the regular lvl 50 content when they added tip missions, and they upped the to hit ability of enemies like DE. -
Quote:First of all, I was referring to fully decking out a character with the top tier incarnate powers. Sure, you don't have to do that, just like you don't have to level a toon to 50, but if you're shooting for the top, that's what I was talking about.Fortunately, no one needs to do them hundreds of times, except maybe the most unlucky person on earth. I've done about 22 Lambdas and 18 BAFs across three characters so far. One has tier 3s in all four slots and still lots of threads, merits, and components left over. One has 1 uncommon and 1 rare slotted, and is 93% done with Destiny and 10% into Lore - with more than enough threads and astrals to unlock both if I wanted to. The other is a bit of a slow poke: I'm still deciding what to do so I have nothing slotted, but Judgment is at 81% and Destiny is at 85%, Interface is currently empty. However, its not that I lack the ability to slot Interface: that character currently has 64 threads, 46 astrals, 6 empyreans, 2 common, 11 uncommon, 3 rare, and 1 VR component. I've also been specifically experimenting with ways to manipulate that character's earnings *downward* (because I think it would be unethical to experiment with pushing my rewards upward if there is a component to that experiment which drives everyone else's rewards downward) so she's actually earning rewards *slower* than everything else I play, the VR lucky drop notwithstanding.
That's 40 runs across three characters, all of which are making serious progress on the system. I'll almost certainly be completely rare slotted before I get anywhere near a hundred runs. I'm actually considering starting a fourth once the second unlocks Destiny (I'm inclined to unlock Lore with iXP conversions).
I doubt I'm significantly far from average when it comes to drops. If anything, the average player is likely progressing faster.
I don't know where this "hundreds" notion keeps coming from, but neither actual calculations nor actual experience comes anywhere near that value. I have to believe that at least part of the problem with some estimates is that not everyone knows Empyrean merits can be converted into rare and very rare drops even in the worst case scenario that a player never gets either, ever, which itself is unlikely over the long haul of doing on the order of a hundred runs.
I just did a successful lambda, and I got 3 astral merits, which converts to 12 threads, and five threads. Almost enough to make one common component...
Granted, you can get up to 2 empyrean merits per day and rare/very rare drops every once in a while, and that will drastically reduce the time to get what you need, but I doubt you're getting 4 top tier powers in 40 runs.
If you don't get the rare drop you need once every 5 runs out of your 40, you'll have to craft one using 4 uncommons, 100 threads and 100 million influence. And if you don't get the very rares you need once every ten runs, get ready to grind 4 more rares and 400 million influence.
This may not seem excessive to you, but I bet it does to a lot of average players, as evidenced by the many posts that seem to suggest just that.
Maybe '100's' is an exaggeration, maybe not, if you look at my post you'll see I was responding to someone who made that estimate, though I doubt 100 or so is far off the mark. I'd take one of my 50's through the process again to figure out exactly how many trials it would take, but I'm already bored of grinding the same two trials over and over again, one after another. So again, I wish the devs would have allowed these components to be obtainable in other level 50 content so there would be more variety in terms of paths to the incarnate abilities. I'm not saying you need to feel the same way, but clearly I am not alone in having this opinion. So if the goal is to keep as many people happy as possible, the devs should consider expanding these rewards to other lvl 50 content. It would eliminate the problem many of us have with this limited path. -
Quote:Yeah, I personally think that tying incarnate advancement almost solely to the 2 new trials was a horrible idea. I think the two new trials are good, but having to do them 100's of times for any character you want to advance in the new incarnate powers, is going to wear people out fast. It would have been better to spread it out among all the level 50 tf's, or at least with the tin mage and apex, to allow for more variety. And when they determined how much would be necessary to advance toons, I think they forgot that this game focuses heavily on altitis...The only reason I want more trials is because the five characters I choose to focus on for incarnate content due to time constraints, will have to do BAF between 80 and 100 times for judgement, and another 160-200 times for lore. I realize this is supposed to be our long term-end game, but with one mission capable of giving XP for it, that is going to get real grindy, real fast.
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Quote:IMO, this is as it should be. WP should outsurvive SD because WP only offers survivability, while SD offers offensive boosts with shield charge and AAO.My WP Brute can, and has, solo'd half the crates mission (not on purpose, I had a particularly bad team - I prefer everyone sticks together for the most part and plow through as a group).
I don't think the SS/SD Brute would be capable of the same without Darkest Night at this point (which the WP Brute does have, but that build is not softcapped to begin with at 40% SM/L and 35% E/N/F/C)
Having said that, I think the devs are headed towards going overboard in their quest to devalue defense in the game. Defense based toons should not so routinely see their main form of mitigation so easily obliterated. -
How did you survive on a fire, isn't most of their dmg energy? Did you use insps?
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Very impressive man, congrats! How did you deal with the final rommy and his fluffies fight? Did you have to get him away from the healer? Did you use anything to kill their regen?
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Reactive by far from what I've read about the -reg. They made the numbers for -reg way too weak, especially if they are resistable.
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I got the top tier barrier on my ss/wp brute, and its a great power. First of all, the top tier one is perma, and at minimum gives you a 5% def boost. But its really great, especially in the new content that likes to laugh at defense, by giving you a short, but huge, defensive boost to help you absorb a nasty alpha.
My fire/sd scrapper is going to be lusting after that heal, plus regen one, which should up his survivability big time.
When I first read these powers, it seemed like they would only affect teamates. Then when I first tried barrier and saw that it also affected self, I got a lot more interested, lol. -
Blasters need a buff, plain and simple. The minor damage advantage blasters hold over corruptors and defenders is nothing compared to the buffs/debuffs corruptors and defenders have.
My solution would be to remove the massive crash for all blaster nukes (and buff the ones that don't have the massive crashes now). This would signifigantly boost blaster aoe damage and increase the effectiveness of the at. -
I play both, and the disparity between the two sets was minimal before the fury change, and now the two at's are about as close in performance as they are going to get after the fury change.
As other posters have pointed out, the two at's do have slight differences, which will sometimes justify playing one or the other. Obviously there is playstyle, in that scrappers can go at whatever pace they want while brutes have to push the envelope more to achieve max performance. Some sets work better on each at vs the other at. Some sets are only available on one at (which is why I no longer feel full set proliferation is needed or warranted).
I'd say the two ats are working as designed. On average scrappers slightly outdamage brutes while brutes have a slight survivability edge. On teams, scrappers benefit more from damage buffs and brutes benefit more from survival buffs. From my experience, the two ats are very balanced. My favorite two characters are a FM/SD scrapper and a SS/WP brute, and both have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall are very even performance-wise.
One thing I've noticed in the incarnate trials, is the one at that was thought to be left behind, tanks, seem to be showing their survivability edge moreso than in the past content, though this might just be a misperception due to limited exposure to the new content so far, but that has been my impression. -
Some people like the 3 team action, some people like one small team (I like both). The best solution would be to make the new content accessible to both options.
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I'll check when the servers are back up, but I think I remember the -reg being -12.5% per shot, and the -to hit being -2.5 per shot.
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Still haven't been on a successful run. Difficult is one thing, but when experienced teams routinely fail, I'd call that excessive.
One thing I really despise is being reliant on temp powers. Needing the acid to close the doors isn't too bad, but needing the grenades to defeat marauder is lame, imo. Especially if you run out, and/or some teamates don't seem to know where to find them to pass them to the designated grenade guy. It would be one thing if they made it easier to defeat him, but requiring them really makes the fight gimmicky and frustrating.
The teaming que is a complete joke. I have yet to have it work for me, and on one try I waited for over an hour. You can put the claimed 3-4 min wait time listing back where you pulled them.
Which brings up another problem, it takes a long time to get a team together. Should be interesting to see how much harder that becomes when the new shine wears off. I would suggest that when designing task forces, allow for much smaller teams with the option, not requirement, to create large ones. Put a carrot out for large teams by improving drops for larger teams.