Ehina

I wouldnt call the set broken. It still does its job.

However, the set used to be fun for me. After the changes it definitely doesnt fit my pace of play anymore.

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It boggles the mind that ppl still say Ice Melee is low damage

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It's low on damage if you compare it to Fire Melee, Super Strength and Stone Melee.

However it trades some dmg for more mitigation : -rech, -spd, knockdown with Ice Patch, and hold with Freezing Touch. For many people a well built tank primary is enough mitigation in itself for 98% of the game content, and they don't feel they need more. You can also argue that Stone Melee offers almost as much mitigation with the constant AoE knockdown without loosing much on the damage side.

When people roll a /Ice tanker they often choose to concentrate all their effort on the control/additionnal mitigation side of the set, and on the way neglect its damage potential, that is not insignificant, but not the best either.

However, I had alot of fun last time I played a /Ice tanker (Ice Patch ftw !), and I'm looking forward to leveling one soon maybe. Not sure today I would like it as I used to.

Maybe a Shield/Ice could be fun, we'll see

Sad to see you don't like Freedom anymore Jacobi. I never had the chance to play with you, but from your few inspiring movies, I can see you're a good and solid player.

I'm still fine on Freedom. For me it's like that the PI/Grandville chat moved to Atlas/Cap, not much more. I'm used to form and lead 8-man teams on a regular basis, and I dont really have a problem finding ppl to run AE story arcs that are not farms (and I get alot of positive feedback from the players for that !).

But I guess the difference is that I dont mind farms either, it's always fine when you play with nice, polite and cool people. (I don't say that's always the case, but for me the ppl I play with are more important than the farming/non-farming issue).

Good luck on Justice if it's your choice

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Those are the figures for my SS/ brute in the PvP zone (base damage taken from Mids set on PvP mode, cast times from Mids too not including Arcanatimes) :


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Mids numbers on power pool attacks are completely wrong. Look in the actual game for correct numbers.

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Thanks. I already asked confirmation about this point and ppl said it was accurate. I gonna double check that. [Editing my previous post in the meanwhile not to create any confusion]

Edit : thanks for correcting me. My numbers were indeed wrong. The normalization of PvP dmg still looks quite stupid to me, but not as much as I thought... Pool attacks are not better in terms of dmg as Primary attacks, they're just similar relatively to their casting time. There is still an imbalance in the fact they cost less end and recharge faster, so at the end every melee AT should get them for a better attack chain.

[Post edited as it seems the figures I posted were wrong, I gonna check those and rewrite it (or not^^)]

In my experience (what I played and didnt like because I felt I was clearly underperforming) :

- Psychic Blast for blasters.
- Sonic resonance/ for defenders or /Sonic resonance for controllers and corruptors.
- Peacebringers as a whole, if you compare them to Warshades.
- Energy Melee/ for brutes since the nerfs.
- Every defender secondary but /Sonic Attack (just having a whole secondary devoted toward dmg for a so low dmg coefficient doesnt make sense to me).

Both gonna rock in PvE, my preference being for SS/SD which gonna be an AoE monster too.

Forget about PvP, as Air Sup/Kick/Boxing/Flurry deal twice more damage than your primary attacks there (it's not an exageration, set your Mids on PvP mode and see by yourself). So only Rage/Hurl/Siphon Life... etc are useful there, your primary attacks not much.

Once both are soft capped, the tanker still has more life and also better resistances from Deflection, Tough.. etc, to mitigate the damage that pass through his defense.

Also dont forget that to soft cap his defense the scrapper has to make a few more sacrifices in its IO build.

There's still a large difference between both of them. But you're right on this point : once both are soft capped the SD scrapper is a bit closer to a SD tanker than a WP or INV scrapper is to a WP or INV tanker for example. (The reason is that WP never gets to any cap regen/defense/resistance, and only the INV tanker can reach the S/L resistance cap of 90%, the scrapper cant)

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IHowever, I think the real issue at the heart of this is that in the devs' eyes, in order for there to be PvP rewards, PvP needs to fit their idea of balance. I admit I don't like saying it but it seems to me as though they consider their idea of balance to be more important than the enjoyment of a subsection of the game by an even smaller group of players.

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I'm not sure it's the case. The devs considered old PvP was broken and not the working the way they intended. For many reasons I suppose, but the main one being : it wasnt that popular.

They thought it wasnt popular because casuals and pve players once in the zone were getting owned non-stopped by the PvP crowd, so they werent getting fun.

There was alot of skill involved in the old PvP, as well in the way you control your toon during a fight, as in the way you built it. It required weeks, sometime months of work and dedication for a random player to get to the top and compete with the best. What they failed to see is : every PvP game functions like this, there is no exception. If there is fun, there must be skill, there must be differences between players, their individual skills, there must be achievement through effort and dedication.

But they tried to implement a system where everyone could have fun immediately, by removing most of the differences between an experienced player/toon/build and a beginner one.

We can see now that's a basic misconception about what is PvP. If you make a system where everyone is equal and tweak your game and its basic mechanisms in this way by non-intuitive means, you create something that is just dumb. Nobody gonna have fun with it, but maybe the people who dont understand at all how it works and just mash buttons without understanding the mechanisms and the relation between what they do and the precise result they get in a fight.

They tried something, it didnt work. They're intelligent people, that I'm sure : if they werent we would certainly not have such a great PvE game and we wouldnt be reading and writing on this board right now. It might take time, but I'm pretty confident they'll have to come back on what they done with i13 PvP and say : ok, we made a mistake. We didnt listen to our players there, and we were wrong.

The question is how they're going to fix this mistake. It won't be something easy for them. But they just have to do it.

Yea you're right, actually it would just be a zone with no special "[censored]" PvP rules, but a zone where heroes and villains can fight each other under the normal PvE rules.

And it would be damn fun !

/signed.

And as Helin said, based on popularity, take the next logical step : cancel all the i13 PvP rules.

Oh damn. Sounds like a dream... At least it proves that it shouldnt be hard for them to create a PvP zone with i12 rules.

I bet it would quickly get 10x more crowded than RV/SC/Warburg and the arena all put together...

2. I've both soloed and played in team my Elec/SD up to 47 now, and never had a problem leading teams and tanking. You just need to refill your inspi tray with small purples between each mission. Just pop one or two and your defense is soft capped in every position. OtwS is a very good tier 9 and alot of help against very tough stuff.

3. Put a FF +rech proc in Crowd Control, it has a chance to proc for every critter hit, and gonna give a +rech boost to all your powers including Shield Charge, BU, Hasten. Take Hasten and BU 3xslotted with rech too. Frankenslot SC to get 95% dam and 95% rech. So, BU and SC will be up very fast and always together.

Good luck

I think the standard chain for MA is CK->SK->CAK->SK repeat. Not the best scrapper dps around, but not that gimped either.

Sure MA could need a few buffs. It's a bit sad that its tier 9 has a low dpa and is skipped by most min-maxers, and that Cobra Strike, its only "punch-attack", doesnt deal any real damage.

Nah the game is definitely not dead, I regularly receive pms from ppl running non-AE content to join them (I'm on Freedom).

There are big groups of players running the regular content, and not participating in farms (check my Sig if you wonder who those ppl are).

Btw radio missions used to be a form of farm ppl repeated ad nauseam, as is the AE now. There werent a problem for the community as they didnt offer more/less xp than story arcs, they had just an easier access (not stupid travel to different zones, go kill X mobs... etc).

Today, some AE missions just offer so much more xp than regular content and this create an inbalance in some way. Most of the time it's according to the risk vs reward ratio however, as the AE allows you to create much more difficult content (aka 54 boss maps). Sometime it's not, as there are still a few exploits that need to be fixed (hamis right now).

My vote for Elec/SD.

Even with SOs it's fine. Just fill your inspiration tray before each missions with small purples. Pop one or two before tough fights or when you need to tank for your team.

Just invest in a FF proc in Thunderstrike (very cheap), and 3x slot your Hasten and your build up with recharge.

The next step if you want to be more efficient is to look a bit into IO sets to frankenslot at least LR and SC so they come back faster : easy to get something like 20% acc (dont need more as you gonna fire BU each time with those), 95% dmg, 25% end, 95% rech. So those 2 deal full dmg and come back much faster. It's really cheap to achieve with some parts of Multi-Strike, Eradication or Scirocco.

Good luck

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you need also a team to run a 54 custom boss farm and they hit harder than Cimerorans I can tell you

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Depends entirely on the selected powersets the bosses have.

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Can you give me some examples please ? Other than the Hamis. I'd really like to know how you create custom bosses who dont deal damage. If it's really possible, then I must admit I ignore about it.

In my experience they hit harder than usual bosses from the non AE content. You cant choose them so they dont have attacks, and they always have a range attack to prevent the hovering "exploit".

The few boss farms I've played had level 54 bosses who really hit like trucks, and the task was actually harder than most of the ITF runs I've made even on invincible. It required a solid team with controls an debuffs and/or a very good tank.

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Heck, I know someone who runs the ITF all the time, at least twice each day, and has been doing this since it was released. And the guy keeps getting fun, and buying expensive IO recipes with his merits. Are you going to judge him and say he must stop with his "farming" ?

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Not a very good comparison IMO;

1. The ITF requires a team of players who have completed a non-AE story arc to enter the Cimerora zone.

2. Cimeroran's are generally a lot tougher than a custom created enemy group of Lts and Bosses intentionally created with minimal attack powers and minimal defenses and can be easily defeated with brawl. The risk vs. reward ratio is entirely different between this and the ITF.

3. Even though the ITF takes place all in one zone, it still requires the players to travel more than 10 feet inside the AE building to complete the TF.

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I know it's not a perfect comparison, but it wasnt the intention in the argument. And I hope you get my point behind.

Btw : you need also a team to run a 54 custom boss farm and they hit harder than Cimerorans I can tell you. I'd like to see how you defeat a real boss farm with brawl

Now if you're talking about the Hamis farms, we both agree this has to be nerfed, just like the Comm Officers were, because it's 'exploitive farming'.

This would be an heavy, heavy mistake.

What are you doing with all the people who DONT farm and enjoy running and discovering new storylines each day in the MA while leveling their toon ? Because there is a TON of great content in the MA which isnt dev choice.

If your car doesnt work well, you're going to fix it, not to burn it pretending solving the problem this way. Same with the MA : fix the exploits, yes. Close the MA which is a great tool for a large number of people, no.

The only problem I see is "exploitive farming", aka comm officers farms, hamidons farms. That the devs fix once they appear. The rest is fine, really.

Farming isnt boring, farming is fun. As everything else in the game, because remember : it's just a game we play to have fun !

I will tell you what is probably boring for you : doing ONLY farming ALL THE TIME. That is boring. At least for me it is. I have alot of fun taking one of my AoE toon and wiping a boss AE map, once or twice time to time maybe. Not more. But it's fun when I do it, and I will be sad if this possibility we didnt have before the AE was nerfed in any way.

And it's the same for everything else. Imagine that you like the ITF much for example, and start to run only this one twice each evening. It'll get boring fast, isnt it ?

Heck, I know someone who runs the ITF all the time, at least twice each day, and has been doing this since it was released. And the guy keeps getting fun, and buying expensive IO recipes with his merits. Are you going to judge him and say he must stop with his "farming" ?

So I can also believe there are some ppl who only farm and keep genuinely getting fun there. Why should we judge them and tell them their way playing the game is not right ? We shouldnt.

I play on Freedom, I have no problem joining non-farming AE teams, old content teams, TFs and SFs everytime I want. Yes I'm part of a great organization of players, and of course that helps, I wont deny that.

@The OP and other ppl who complain they cant find non-farming teams, check my Sig. We're a "non-farming", "non-PLing" group of SG/VG and we play on Freedom, Virtue and Justice. That dont mean you cant farm whenever you want, but you wont find any of those on our channel.

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The problem with putting a FF+rech proc in tremor is you kinda need the slots to put in obliteration Unless you know an easier way to get 3.75% melee defense :P.


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You kinda need to frankenslot Tremor here if you spam it often with the proc. I could make a SS/SD build on my Mids that is still softcap melee and range with Footstomp frankenslotted and a FF proc. So I think that's possible also with Stone Melee. The problem with Obli being that it's ridiculously low on end redx. So it's good on Shield Charge, but certainly not on Tremor.

Anyway I know that's not easy. SM/ single target chain consumes ALOT of endurance also.

The usual chain being SF->SM->HM->SS->Gloom (in no particular order) with a decent recharge, you need to focus for heavy end redx at least on SS and probably also on HM.

Furthermore, you kinda need all the uniques, and end accolades can help also.

Well, even with all those you may run out of end if you spam your single target chain non-stop. I have the same issue with my Fortunata, but still it's really manageable if you're not into AV or Pylon soloing. Pop a blue time to time

Just thinking for myself later btw, not criticizing your build or choices in any way

About your PvP section, you may not know that your build can hardly be good at the same time for PvE and PvP.

The reason is that Air Sup/Kick/Boxing/Flurry deal twice more damage than your Spine attacks in PvP. Yes, this is how stupid i13 pvp is. It's the same issue for every melee AT, to be forced into power pools attacks.

You can still use Impale and Throw Spines from your primary though because they're range attacks, and BU ofc. But to be efficient in i13 PvP you need a complete different build using Pool Attacks.

Check it by yourself by setting your Mids on PvP mode (Options/Configuration/Effect&Maths/Show values for Players). And look at the base damage of each attack. No it's not a bug, Mids is pretty accurate there.

I think this precise point needs to be more known by the community. It's pretty gamebreaking in my opinion.

The cap defense means that in most scenarions anything above is useless in PvE, unless you get debuffed or mobs have a ToHit bonus. And this is 45% defense.

Stone armor is the toughest of the game, puts you easily to defense soft cap and to resistance cap (90%).

You loose in runspeed and recharge though, so you wont kill things that fast alone.

A FF proc in Footstomp helps alot to get some recharge back + ofc good IO sets.

Good luck

A few tips.

Of course get LR at 32, Shield Charge at 35 and slot them well asap. A good frankenslotting with a few cheap pieces of Multi Strike, Scirocco and Eradication should get you something like 25% acc (you dont need more cause you fire each time BU with those), 95% dam, 25% end, 95% rech.

Get also Hasten 3x slotted asap : you want those 2 big AoEs back as fast as possible. And get Buid up 3xslotted with recharge too as you want it up exactly at the same time than those 2.

Put a FF +rech proc in Thunderstrike : that is essential. This proc costs nothing, and has a chance to proc for every critter you hit with TS, giving 100% rech boost for 5 sec. When you hit 10 critters with TS, it has approximately 65% chances to proc, that's alot.

The continuous "proccing" of TS while in big spawns will help both LR and SC to come back much faster... but also Hasten on the way and all your cooldowns... that's the beauty of the thing !

Choose the Mu Patron at 41 (I prefer it for concept than Soul, but Soul is good too), and get Mu Lightning at 41 and Ball of Lightning at 44. The first one will complete your single target chain in case you solo or have to kill a tough boss, the other one is one more cool AoE power. You can also take electrifying fences as an option if you want to truely specialize in non stop AoE firing (that I didnt find useful on mine yet).

Dont skip any of /Shield powers except Grant Cover. Take One with the shield and slot it with passion ! This tier 9 is awesome, improves your survivability alot in tough situations... and its crash is minor.

In Elec/ I skipped Charged Brawl (then I missed a solid ST chain until late, but np to me as I mainly played in teams), Jacob Ladder (a bit weak IMO), Taunt, Lightning Clap.

You wont sit much over 25-30% positionnal defense for long. No worry, always refill your inspi tray full of small purples in between mission. When things are a bit tough eat one, if they're really tough eat 2 of them (so that you hit the 45% soft cap), and if you need to tank a big boss pack for one minute without the help of your teamates, hit also OwtS it really makes a big difference.

I could lead and tank boss maps at 35 on this toon without any issue. Fury is always full in those situations. And I felt also as I was dealing tons and tons of dps.

Seriously, this toon is a blast

Good luck with yours

PS : ThugRus has also a good guide about this combo, you may want to read it for further infos.

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Well there are many changes I didn't/don't like, but attack powers from Pool power sets doing more than those from the primary power sets?

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You nailed it perfectly. Actually I didnt care much about i13 PvP until I went in the zone with my SS/FA brute, decided to respec her toward pvp... and saw the absurdity : i cant use my attacks there, I have to take stupid pool attacks that are useless in PvE and end up with the same chain as everyone else (at least those who understand the mechanics and still play zone PvP, aka a small minority)

How is this supposed to be intuitive ? How is this supposed to be fun ?

Seriously, I'm still waiting for an answer on this precise point. Cause it's the total opposite of the rest of the game design and philosophy : freedom, choices and customization.

The devs must listen to their playerbase on this point and stop to pretend everything is working as they intend to. That I don't believe. And I'm pretty sure they're not happy with i13 pvp, they just didnt admit it officially yet. How can a game developper pretend he's happy with a change when the large majority of the community using this feature despise it and leave ?

As I said in another thread, I really love this game, and it deserves a much better PvP !