Eldorado

If anybody else wanders into this thread with the same idea as the OP, and thinks "say, which kind of dual blades character should I make?", I'm totally in agreement with these two statements.

I've got a level 50 DB/WP scrapper as my main toon; I liked it so much after getting to 50 that I immediately made a clone WP/DB tank, and slotted that one identically with the same IO's upon hitting 50. Eventually, I wound up making another identical build for a DB/WP brute to play redside, and enjoyed that one all the way to 50 (and beyond) as well. I love them all, or at least I used to -- I think dual blades worked a LOT better on my brute before the recent changes to Fury.

After reading this thread, I thought "I STILL don't have a stalker above level 20-something. Maybe I should make a DB/WP stalker to complete the set!"

At level 22, what a disappointment. Oh, it's certainly a viable toon, and I enjoy ganking things from Hide just fine, thanks, but it doesn't PLAY the same as the other three. (I know, it's not supposed to 'cause it's a stalker, but....)

For me, at least half the fun of dual blades IS the combos, and the whole sense of being a whirling dervish of destruction as I mow through enemies. Attack Vitals, Sweep, Attack Vitals, Sw...oops. Missed. Random stabbing or throw in another combo? Keep going and pick up where I left off. For me it's a fast-paced set, not counting the three second animation of One Thousand Cuts, and I'm constantly in motion and pressing keys and dropping bad guys left and right.... When I'm playing dual blades I feel like I'm playing the piano, and using most of my keyboard; when I play my martial artists or claws scrappers I feel like I'm just (slowly) mashing a few keys in comparison.

So I started playing my new stalker, and -- Assassin's Blades takes three seconds to go off, and is interruptable?!

Placate is part of the Empower combo, which for the other three AT's is one of the first ones you get, but here it has a SIXTY SECOND RECHARGE?! So much for cycling through low level combos quickly, huh?

Now, I'm not saying that dual blades is a BAD powerset for stalkers at all! (If it is, how would I know? This level 22 is the highest level stalker I've got!) I AM saying that playing dual blades on a scrapper feels almost identical to dual blades on a tank [if you don't count the smaller orange numbers] which feels almost identical to dual blades on a brute [if you don't count the smaller orange numbers, the fury bar, or the lack of critical hits].

Comparing DB scrappers to DB tanks to DB brutes is like comparing three different types of apples, and I don't think DB stalkers come close to oranges for the sake of analogy. They're more like french fries or something. (And while french fries are great, I don't think I can deal with 28 more levels of fries when I'm this used to apples!)

Thanks to everybody here, my newest, often-played alt now has gold after only two runs at the luge with IR, Sprint and CJ (I fell off the first time, nailed it the second) and missed gold on the main ski slope by two seconds on the only try tonight! (And I'm pretty sure I can shave those two seconds off with practice.) First gold medal for me in the history of the Winter Event!

Then I excitedly headed off to do the same with my main.

It took twenty or thirty infuriating runs to do it, thanks to the overly helpful cluster of buffers at the top of the luge run. I fell off the track -- a lot. I mistimed jumps. I mistimed jumps AND fell off the track. I had Speed boost and IR. I had STACKED speed boost and IR. Speed boost and Accelerate Metabolism. AM and IR. More SB and IR.

I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I'm not sure how I can expect any level of consistency or control if each run has me buffed out of my ski boots, but with different buffs every single time.

Finally Team Buff the Buffs' Buffs called it a night and went home, leaving just me and some wonderful person who'd set their afk message to "IR on autofire" at the top of the luge run -- and I wish I could remember their name right now.

Once again...I fell off the track the first time down with "just" IR, CJ and Sprint but it FELT like a great run up until then. And I had control I that I felt was missing before.

Second run with "just" IR, CJ and Sprint? Second gold medal inside an hour, and my first two ever. So count me among the "forget the SB, just IR please" crowd!
That's the one thing I forgot about -- with IR, my normal leaps were way too high, and I had to learn to make them smaller in a hurry!
I can't say anything about MovementControl and MovementFriction, but as Ironblade said, IR seemed to make me at least FEEL like I was more maneuverable and in control. SB only helped me go flying off the sides of the track at higher velocities than I would have without it, and it seemed like it happened more often as well.

Out of curiosity, does Increase Density affect control at all? I'd think more density might equal more friction which might perhaps equal more control, but at what cost to speed? And could that be made up with SB or IR? But again, I'm quite content with "just IR" for my runs now.

So again -- thanks for the tips -- you guys rock!

I hoped it was sarcasm, but was secretly worried someone else might take it seriously, so thought I'd point out all the available options.

Only two missions? I'm obviously missing something. There's a BUNCH of taskforces that you can find that are full of level 50 (or higher spawns), as well as a lot of contacts that Paragon wiki lists as level 40-50 or level 45-50: Abyss, Arbiter Rein, Black Scorpion, Captain Mako, Crimson, Daedalus, Dr. Boyd, Dr. Huxley, Efficiency Expert Pither, Gaussian, General Hammond, Ghost Widow, Harvey Maylor, Lovely Linda, Lt. Col. Flynn, Lt. Volkov, Maria Jenkins, Mender Ramiel, Operative Grillo, Scirocco, Serpent Drummer, Shadow Spider, Tavish Bell, Television, The Dark Watcher (Primal Earth), Unai Kemen, Vernon von Grun and Viridian. Obviously, not all characters can access each contact without side-switching, but that's a lot of potential mission ARCS!

And of course, there's Borea in the RWZ, tip missions, and radio/newspaper missions to do!

Like others here, I unlocked the Alpha slot on a few 50's, have run 3 or 4 ITF's and two Khan TF's since i19, and I've done a lot of just "regular ol' stuff" that has led to a lot of shard drops. (Last night after an ITF, I joined a PUG radio team for about two hours and got 10 shards.)

As a result, I've got two uncommon boosts and two or three common boosts slotted across my unlocked characters so far. And I've managed to keep it from being a grindfest by unlocking the Alpha on a character, playing that one for a while, maybe doing a TF, playing some more, slotting a common and seeing the difference, and just playing some more.

When I did Ramiel's arc three or four times in a day? THAT felt like grinding, so I stopped.

Please don't put words in my mouth: never once did I say "lower prices" in all of this. Scroll back up if you don't believe me.

I said "I don't think we're going to see inflation stop", and "more influence sinks in this game to fight inflation." Continuing inflation and lower prices are like apples and tangerines. Same ballpark, but not exactly.

You're creating your own topics like that, you avoid other direct points: I'm SURE I read in multiple threads where the level 50 rewards were changed as a result of fixing a long term bug, you're convinced that the devs "decided to double the rate that 50s generate inf." (If someone else wants to link that, great. My search-fu is weak tonight and I've wasted more than enough time here.)

So congratulations -- you win the thread! Please find someone else to address your arguments to, since I'm done here. I should have recognized the "let's quote him in red!" as a troll baiting tactic but I did indeed fall for it -- bravo, sir, bravo!

Despite the well-intentioned sig floating around about not ignoring people because "you might miss something vital to your cause", I'll have to risk it. I think the long term reward will be my lack of head-shaking, face-palming, and the ever popular pounding my head on the desk.

"Let the Wookie win," indeed. And ignore him.

Is that your weird way of saying "ooops, I said that wrong"? Regardless, you're so very welcome! That'll be 50 billion INF, please.

And you have to admit that it didn't make much sense the first time around. Some might have even found it comical, in which case -- look! You ARE providing lulz here!

And I still find the premise flawed, for the same reasons others are pointing out, and because more INF is entering the non-closed system every minute.

Without any changes to the system, I don't think we're going to see inflation stop until the playerbase and the INF generation start to significantly dwindle, which hopefully won't be for a while. In the meantime, as prices rise, I can just generate more raw INF and sell more stuff and thus keep pace, so I'm not personally worried about it.

Okay -- THESE tiny words, arranged in a different order, have in fact finally penetrated my apparently thick skull. Finally. So thank you!

However:
With you so far, with you on the second line and huh? The third line seems circular, and I'm guessing and hoping a typo. Should it read "...exceeded by the rate of inf destruction" instead?

If so, I DO indeed get it now. If it's correct as it stands, and thus circular, then I'll admit to still being a bit fuzzy.

And YOU provide many of the lulz here, too -- but I'm not entirely sure you do it on purpose. But regardless of the intent, thanks for the result! And you've obviously been around the forums long enough to have been here for Positron's excuse why they couldn't merge the markets. Do you remember it? Did you recognize my remark as a not-so-thinly-veiled stab at it? Apparently not.

Well, you proved you can highlight in red -- have a cookie.

While you were busy with that, though, here's the part you must not quite have comprehended or you wouldn't be asking about: "I just hope they implement some sort of change before rare salvage hits the 2 billion inf ceiling and everything else gets traded off-market" -- which may be an extreme example, of course, but I'm NOT the only person thinking it around here. Or did you miss the "Influence Destruction Project" and the Crazy 88's project to destroy influence while buying their way to the top of the SG list? The #1 SG seems to be a pleasant side effect, while the PURPOSE started with Fulmen's destruction of influence via charitable donations to other SG's.

I'll agree with you on the first part -- everybody CAN sell their drops at WW's and buy SO's at level 22, even though not every new player has figured it out yet. Once they start buying IO recipes, though, the new players get sticker shock AND START THREADS LIKE THIS!

As I said, I'm just concerned that with the economy left unchecked, some of the more desirable rare recipes will be trading up around 2 billion mark as well down the road. Want to buy a Numina's proc or a LotG 7.5? Oops -- time to hit the forums and put a bid up there, since they're all at the market cap.

Which a lot of people are saying isn't enough, as evidenced by some other threads.

I'm not even sure those are coherent sentences, and I still can't quite decipher them. I THINK you're saying that WW's is taking bigger chunks of INF as prices rise; I'm saying that the rate of INF creation is currently higher than the rate of INF destruction.

From what I've read here, they didn't "decide to double the rate that 50s generate" -- it was my understanding that they FIXED A BUG that had been halving the drop rates for 50s and unintentionally bumping the INF creation level.

However, the very LACK OF an equilibrium point between INF creation and INF destruction is exactly my point. If you can PROVE where that lays I'm sure many of us will be glad to see it, though.

In the meantime, enjoy your highlighter!

But you'll want defense if you want to run ANY attack chain vs. huge spawns of level 54's, unless you think you can take out that boss by faceplanting on his foot.

There must be a break-even point between defense and DPS somewhere, as evidenced by the select handful of people who have soloed pylons while surrounded by a spawn of high level enemies. [I seem to recall reading where someone did it with TWO spawns feeding their AAO.] That's simply got to take a truckload of defense AND a top-tier attack chain!

On the other hand, I'm not completely convinced that EVERY scrapper powerset combination could do that sort of thing, at least not before the addition of Alpha slots -- and I suspect that with Alpha slotting our Stupid Scrapper Tricks™ are going to become slightly easier. Since I haven't been trying to build a pylon soling machine, I've been content with building tanklike scrappers for defense and being the last one standing after a run of the mill, elevated difficulty PvE fight, even if it takes a while.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way -- I've been building for survivability since way back when, and I always have to suppress a snicker when the purpled-out SR scrapper who isn't softcapped faceplants. But there's lots of ways to play and enjoy the game -- I've put my scrapper-y mouth and money behind survival and what I call DPFM, instead of DPS. (That stands for "Damage Per Five Minutes" and it significantly drops when you're laying on the warehouse floor, waiting on a rez or a clear spot to pop a wakie. )

Still, back when we could look around in-game and see "Ultimate This Bonus" and "Ultimate That Bonus" -- and I guess we will again after they fix it -- I sometimes got the impression that I was missing out on something. "Do they know something I don't?"

You did buy a game, with lots of ways to enjoy it.

Easy mode: go out there and beat stuff up. Buy and slot SO's. They're color coded, and I've read here where kids 10 and under figure that part out and have a blast, and it's also more than enough to keep a lot of adults happy, too!

Intermediate modes: Buy and slot set IO's. Learn about all the different advantages you can get from having six slots' worth of stuff in four or five slots. Frankenslot. Learn about set bonuses. Download Mid's Hero Planner and play around with that. Maybe decide you want purple sets, but before you start getting sticker shock and complaining, remember what "ultra rare" means and remember that there's a lot of other people who are trying to outbid you. Read some of the market guides on how to make a billion INF in seven days, and only "working" 30 minutes a day or less. Make a billion. Make five billion. Spend it on cool stuff. Repeat.

Those are only the tip of the "intermediate level iceberg o' fun", but all I can think of regarding the market and IO's just now.

Expert mode: If you think this thread is like algebra, I'll politely suggest you stay out of the Scrapper Forum, or at least be prepared for actual advanced algebra and (at least) intermediate-level calculus! Even this Market Forum often reads like a college-level economics textbook, but there's a lot to be learned from all these forums. And there's a lot of fun that people have at the advanced level, like Crazy Scrapper Tricks™ and soloing task forces, just to name two. And of course, a lot of the fun also comes from the forums, whether it's learning new things, sharing old or new things, debunking other things, or just helping others.

Hmmm. My calling stupid people who have more money than brains (and who willfully violate the EULA and TOS) "idiots" wasn't graceful? Darn -- I'll work harder on that next time, maybe.

And we DO need more influence sinks in this game to fight inflation. I'm still not sure why they took out the nominal charge to speak to a Hero Corps rep and change mission difficulties, but that was one change they probably never should have implemented. While I can't prove it, I really don't think any of the designers/developers have a very firm grasp of how things work in the closed ecosystem of the CoX economy, and wish a couple of them would read this forum regularly and perhaps learn from the knowledge here. (I mean, we all KNOW how the poor villains have suffered now that the markets are merged, right? )

...and I pay for costume changes! I'm consistently amused when I log on some of my older characters and see where they're approaching 100 free costume changes, and paying for them takes a little influence out of the closed system.

I just hope they implement some sort of change before rare salvage hits the 2 billion inf ceiling and everything else gets traded off-market -- which is still a LONG way off, obviously, but it looks like a possible outcome with the current "INF gets generated, INF never disappears" model.

Now that you're getting into IO's, spend some time here on this forum, and read the multiple threads and guides about how non-farmers can go from zero INF to over a billion in a WEEK, crafting and selling for 15 or 20 minutes a day.

After you've made your first billion, you'll quickly realize that the only people who are buying INF from "gold farmers" are basically idiots who DESERVE to get caught and banned.

I agree with Nethergoat and all the rest -- if your "mixed information" sources are talking about benefits from 6-slotting Stamina, they're probably talking about smallish set bonuses like defense, regen, and accuracy for people who are well and far into the IO game AND who have extra slots to sling around. Or your sources might be time travellers from before 2005 and Enhancement Diversification. [ http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Enhanc...iversification ] or something.

For most of the rest of us, the best thing to do is three- or four-slot Stamina and look into the Miracle +Rec IO, the Numina's +Regen/Rec IO, and perhaps the Performance Shifter +End IO.

And as has been said, the best place for quick, accurate build advice for each of your toons is with the experts in the appropriate archetype forum -- the people in the Scrapper forum KNOW their scrapper stuff backwards and sideways, for instance.

I find it highly amusing that a lot of people simply assume that scrappers are merely suicidal nutcases who go charging into swarms of bad guys without any sort of thought behind their actions.

I LIKE hanging out in this forum with these shrewd, calculating, mathematically inclined, quasi-suicidal APPARENT nutcases -- and I learn useful things that keep my characters from faceplanting when they're doing what's OBVIOUSLY crazy stuff!

There's a lot more to scrapping than the "here, hold my beer. Now watch THIS!" part....

...but let's keep it quiet and not tell everybody.

Factual error: sorry, turns out Divine Avalanche adds to melee and LETHAL, not smashing. But I suspect you already noticed that!

I like it -- it looks like you gained a LOT across the board, and only lost a little! S/L is higher than your old positional defenses were, as is psionic, and energy/negative are practically soft-capped! Meanwhile, you lost what? 0.5 to 1.3% resists and a little fire/cold defense? Oh, and you picked up even more regen, but lost a little end reduction along the way. [Again, you already know this, but I figured I'd recap fast since not everybody reading this will open both builds, right? ] Personally, I think those are very worthy tradeoffs.

I think this new "typed" version looks even better, and I also like some of the little "extras" you slotted in there. I tended to slot 4 KC's in my melee attacks and then frankenslotted an extra accuracy/damage. You added two Pounding Slugfeststo DA for a little more regen and a disorient proc -- and every little bit of regen helps! (Would the Pounding Slugfest acc/dam be better than the dam/end? I think I'D like the extra accuracy to help it hit, but that's the fun with this game-within-a-game of IO's -- tweaking and customizing to fit each player.)

Good luck, and I'd love to hear what others have to think, too!

JamMasterJMS: He's using the old Mid's so he can respec before Issue 19. QED.


Fantomas: I wouldn't call it a train wreck. Numbers-wise, it resembles my kat/WP build that I haven't been playing much of, but she held her own in the "old", pre-pylon RWZ scrapper challenge, which generally makes me happy with a toon for MY PvE needs and then some.

Oh, and your character's regen is a LOT higher than my kat/WP's -- yours is up around where my DB/WP main's regen is, but I spent more on that build too.

The only thing I don't know about -- and it's important to know that I'm saying "I honestly don't know" and NOT muttering "I disagree with" -- is what appears to be your attention to positional defense rather than typed defense. Now, this is the SAME thing I did with my DB/WP, the same thing I did with my kat/WP, the same thing I did with my BS/WP -- see a trend here?

And the people here who know such things said "but WP works better with TYPED defense. Try some Kinetic Combat sets in there instead." And I didn't listen at the time, and I was still happy with the performance. Taking out a whole spawn of level 54 Rikti, no inspies, no temp powers, and so on? Woot!

And then over the summer, I took a friend's advice, respecced my DB/WP into a typed defense build and tried THAT out. And I'm a LOT happier now!!

DA adds to melee when the going gets tough. And it ALSO adds to S/L defense. Would you be happier with a typed defense build and trying to go that route? Again, I don't know -- your mileage may vary. When i19 rolls around and I have to respec a TON of toons...I'm personally planning on trying it.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out?

I'm probably a little weird for the scrapper forums -- I still try do it all with my DB/WP, except the extreme pylon soloing. (I've mostly got what WAS going to be my dual build for that, but now that's on hold pending i19 soon™.) And by "do it all", I sometimes like to exemp down and when I do, I LIKE having all eight of my DB attacks. I also like being able to tank with a scrapper and have Confront on that toon as well as a few others, for those times I just can't quite get there fast enough to stab it in the face.

Having all eight of those attacks gives me more blades on the Swiss Army Knife that is a dual blade scrapper. I'll often do the same Attack Vitals, 1000 Cuts, repeat mini-chain, although I'll lead the whole thing off with Blinding Feint. Uh oh. Taking too much damage? Okay, THIS time I'll Blinding Feint, Attack Vitals, full-out Sweep combo for the extra mitigation and then go back to the shorter version.

Empower?! Well...uh. "What ClawsandEffect said", "what he said again about the recharge", and "yeah, exactly" on the last part. That's what I do a lot of the time too, as mentioned above.

I really can't recall seeing too many DB scrappers singing the praises of Empower; I DO see plenty of them saying "I respecced out of the first two combos because who uses them?" But hey -- if something's working for you, go with it!

But the character's name is "SCRAPO" -- do you see a trend?

I'll mostly agree with what Pine says -- I still haven't sat down to IO my kat/regen scrapper from Issue 1, but his build looks like a good starting point. Above all, yes, get SOMETHING in those slots. Doesn't have to be "set IO's" -- shop at WW's for some GENERIC level 40 or level 45 IO's, like "accuracy" or "damage." A lot of the time people working on the Field Crafter badge are selling those for less than the cost of SO's.

Failing that, spend the 5 or 6 million and just BUY SOME SO's! You'll see a 100% improvement in things like damage (okay, 94.93% after ED) but that will still be HUGE, as will a 33% accuracy increase, and so on.

Sweep may take too long for your tastes, but I hate seeing other people simply dismiss it because the DPS isn't good enough, and then everyone reading the thread goes "yeah, man, Sweep is awful."

Get ready, everybody -- scrapper forum heresy!!!

From reading these forums and shaking my head a lot, I think that a good percentage of people have put DPS over Damage Per Minute, or Damage Per Five Minutes -- and let's not forget that DpFM drops when you faceplant! Now, if you're going to run around with your difficulty slider at 0/x8 for the rest of your character's career, DPS may be the most important thing in your world, but if you want to crank it up to 11....

Sweep is a nice form of mitigation. Those level 54 Rikti or whatever have to stop pounding on you and concentrate on standing up for a few seconds every time you knock them helmet over teakettle, which increases YOUR survivability. My DB/WP's regen rate isn't as high as that of a regen scrapper, but I can see that little green bar start climbing back up when I knock down the boss with Attack Vitals, then knock down him along with any of his buddies in the cone of 1000 Cuts, and THEN knock him down a third time, along with even more of his buddies, with Sweep.

As long as I keep landing those two combinations, that boss spends about half of each fight standing back up, which means he's not attacking me! And those short breaks when they're all standing up again MIGHT be a good time for a regen scrapper to fire off some sort of heal, but I'm merely guessing on that.

Sweep's not entirely about DPS. It's about being able to stand in the middle of the brawl longer and CONTINUE TO DISH OUT DPS when that other scrapper -- who bragged about "I've got so many purples and so much recharge that I'm only using Attack Vitals" -- just faceplanted.

Okay -- I've just got to ask -- "un enhanced"? By that do you mean "he hasn't got any really cool IO sets" or do you mean "his powers have nothing but empty slots"? I'm reading it the second way, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

If he's got NO enhancements, he's NOT being used to his full potential, which will get about twice as good when you drop some Single Origin enhancements in there. In the meantime, he's powerful like a bulldozer with an empty fuel tank is "powerful." Could be, hopefully will be, but really isn't that powerful currently.

As far as more detailed build information goes, as SonicArcher22 said, you'll have to either download Mid's Hero Planner and post a build, or type out a reasonable facsimile.

Examples of Mid's builds are all over the scrapper (and other archetype) forums and look something like:

Name Goes Here: Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dual Blades
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Power Slice -- _________(A), ______(3), ______(5), __________(15),________(23)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- ________(A), _______(3), _________ (7), ________(9)
Level 2: Ablating Strike -- _______(A), ________(5), ________(7), ___________(15)
Level 4: Reconstruction --
etc
etc
etc
etc
etc.

Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)

That way people can take a better look at what you've got slotted in each power, and make a MUCH better assessment of what can be tweaked.

It's my opinion that there's a "sweet spot" somewhere between -1/x1 and +4/x8, which varies with the AT's, players, character levels, skill levels -- pretty much everything.

One level 40ish group may be able to steamroll Council on +4/x8 and get everyone a level every half hour. Another group may be able to SURVIVE on the same settings, but won't rack up anywhere near the defeats and experience per hour. Those level 54's are tough, they sometimes take a while to whittle down, and they pack a pretty mean punch -- and the commute from the hospital can get boring. That second team might make more experience per hour over on +2/x8, or maybe +3/x5, or....

Is the first team "better?" No, they're just more in synch with each other that night. Maybe they've got a kineticist and a couple of awesome debuffers, where the second team might not. Or maybe the second group DOES have a kin and the same type of debuffers, but the second team's got five different other types of toons than the first.

Changing difficulties is now cost-free -- my advice is to see what each team thinks about turning things up or down, and play around with it until you find what works best for you at a given time.

You want the devs and mods to crack down on people selling things on the forums?!

"This forum is to discuss the Consignment Market system and Inventions. Come here to make suggestions, bid or sell items, and discuss all features of the game economy. THIS IS FOR IN GAME ITEMS ONLY!"

That kind of suggests -- at least to me -- that they're okay with people selling items here, though they probably should put the line about "it's only okay to buy and trade in-game items WITH in-game items and INF" up there, just to cover themselves.

Yet it's so -- perfect!

Grrrrr. You beat me to it! Oh well -- it bears repeating, I guess. *tacks quote into sig*

They wouldn't have to nerf Patience if you hadn't found that exploit that comes from slotting it with the uber-rare purple set: Common Sense.

If you use Common Sense with Patience, you get all kinds of nifty side effects like the Save INF aura, the Minimal First Aid power (defense against high blood pressure, headaches and ulcers), and of course, it significantly raises your defense against Make Ragepost.