Erratic
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Posts
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Joined
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As its Dark Melee and you have Soul Drain, wouldn't your burst be coming from that (and so put Brute back on the table)?
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I've a SS/EA Brute on which EA has been absolutely wonderful. Endurance recover, boosting defenses, stealth(*), and a heal--EA comes with nice tools.
*Things will aggro if you get too close while running Entropic Aura (which you should never turn off). -
Having a 50 KM/SD, I am going to suggest that you will probably want to take Physical Perfection sooner than you currently plan to do. Also, are you showing your final build, or did you plan to level as detailed? Because not taking a travel power until level 30 would drive me insane. You will probably want Grant Cover (to deal with Defense Debuff) sooner than you plan too.
While I in no way regret my KM/SD, I do feel compelled to note that one of the drawbacks of the combination of powersets is you have neither heal nor endurance recharge abilities. -
There is a map I was on this past weekend that was full of higher level clockwork in an industrial setting.
I laughed my head off as electrical armor basically left me immune to them. -
Blasters are already close enough that I wouldtend to think providing such a solution within the confines of the Blaster AT would be the best idea.
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Quote:Older threads exist (picked a locked one so it can't be necro'd).Originally Posted by Oathbound
Holy cow, how does a 5 year old thread even still exist?
Edit: And yes, I found one from 2004 which is not currently closed. -
Quote:A mission you get to by boarding a train as opposed to entering a door.Originally Posted by RogerWilco
I don't want to hijack the thread, but what's a train mission?
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Quote:Well I did continue the sentence, ". . .(though I certainly have not found that to be the case)."Originally Posted by DrGamma
Uh... ElA is squishy? Compared to what? Stone? Inv maybe (against certain types of damage)? Or is it against lots of Toxic damage?
Just telling you what I found when I did a search on the topic of ElA, and by no means was it uniform (hence the "some"). Keep in mind the title of the thread. . .doesn't sound like the author (me) has found ElA to be weak.Quote:I was really surprised reading this because, for me, ElA was always one of the most survivable armors! Fine, it lacks a +max hp boost, but the quick-ish heal and the drain make a good job of covering for that. You can get mid-to-high resists to pretty much everything - including psi! - and even the Dark "hole" isn't that much of a hole. 
I really do wonder why given how incredible it has been so far. It is enough to cause me to have a half-formed worry that it all falls apart at some point.Quote:Anyway, back to the spirit of the OP: Congrats, you just found a good combo that you enjoy and that is not a FoTM! 
Edit: Was invited to someone else's train mission where the map is full of clockworks. When I get that mission it is going on permanent farm because I'm basically immune to them.
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Quote:Nothing about the theme of the two powersets suggests Dark Melee and Electrical Armor should fit together, but oh boy do they fit together well. Two sources of endurance recovery, one of which drains their endurance, two sources of healing, one of which has a short recharge time the other of which reduces endurance costs, a 30 second damage buff that combines with a damage aura, and all of it backed by +Recharge autopower.Originally Posted by Botzo
So, What MELEE oddball combination would be fun to make next? I'd prefer something that fits well together but isn't obvious.
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I admit, I went down one time this past weekend because I was not paying any attention to my health.
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Quote:It is kinda fun seeing what you can survive and trying to push the envelope. But when you push too far death can be awfully sudden. Basic routine is to run in, Soul Drain, and while going to single target town allow Lightning Field to be grinding away on everything around you. A lot of times I toss in Dark Consumption just for the damage because it will be back before I can run low on endurance. A quite often Power Sink is getting popped too, in part for surviving the alpha strike and in part for the cost reduction it provides.Originally Posted by Eldagore
DM/elec sounds interesting also. Siphon life + resist sets is always a good fit. I think by the end game, it would be tougher and easier to IO to be tougher then a DM/fire. More traditional though, not that I would see that as a bad thing. I might try this. my only attempt at DM brute was a DM/WP and that got freeging boring by level 30. I think this would keep my attention more.
The real work before me is to purchase IO sets and get my defenses up. I also need to finish my character's transition to villain to acquire the proper epic pool. -
Quote:My only guess would be they are referring to the benefit of SS via Rage to AOEs your secondary provides, like Burn or Shield Charge, what with Soul Drain being periodically down as you're levelling and its boost being variable.Originally Posted by Justice29
And ps...I can't, for the life of me, figure out why people are so high on SS/? brutes. I'm sure the rage + fury + knockout blow = SICK amount of damage, but if the argument is SS>DM because of AOEs, then that's an argument I don't understand because what other AOE does SS have besides Foot Stomp?
As for godhood. . .well, I've got my own little secret going right now which is close enough to DM/EA to make this a worthwhile thread to follow.
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Quote:The two commonly talked about breakpoints for Defense are soft cap, at 45%, and being a purple inspiration away at 32.5%. Failing that, as much as you can get without ruining your character's performance.Originally Posted by RogerWilco
So what defence should a /regen Brute aim for at level 50 and for the high end game?
Yes.Quote:Defence makes the monsters hit you less, resistance makes the hits smaller, is that correct?
A power can be made permanent if its recharges is equal or less than four times its duration. As Moment of Glory has a duration of 15 seconds and a recharge of 240 seconds, it can not be made permanent.Quote:Is it possible to have enough recharge at some point to make Moment of Glory permanent? -
Quote:Unless their goal with those sets was to make them strong in other areas and leave as a challenge covering what wasn't given to those sets.Originally Posted by MisterD
My own weird opinion of build resist toons for def is that it is..sort of cheating. Well, maybe cheating is an over strong word, since it is really just building to be the best it can be. But I just dont think that the devs would have made sets without defence, if it was totally impossible to play these sets...
One of my melee characters has awesome resistances, decent self-healing, decent endurance recovery and struggles to acquire defense while another has great defense, reasonable resistance, reasonable defense, weak healing, and struggles with endurance issues.
So I do not think of it as cheating to acquire defense on a resistance based character but rather taking up the actual challenge of filling the hole that every defensive powerset has. -
Ebonbolt, DM/ElA Brute - 1 to 33
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Quote:What I am about to say may not hold true at higher levels, but I find that Soul Drain plus Lightning Field does a decent amount of area damage for the duration of Soul Drain. True, it is limited to the recharge rate of Soul Drain. However if you can come close to perma-Hasten Soul Drain would be available basically every time its duration ended--so Lightning Field could be putting out enhanced damage. Add too the power of Epic sets under influence from Soul Drain. Hmmm. . .if I manage to take this build to 50 and if I am able to find the influence to kite it out properly I may have to see what sort of farmer it makes.Originally Posted by Kathari
*/ELA gets less flack than DM. The primary reason that DM gets flack is that most people use their brutes to farm. A DM/ELA brute has no AOE attack chain to speak of. The very nature of brute fury is that you attract/attack large crowds. Having a primary set of nothing but ST damage slows you down alot.
Electrical Armor gives you Lightning Reflexes, which helps somewhat. I admit, having only 3 attacks (Smite, Shadow Maul, and Siphon Life) and having to wait for them to cycle is at odds with the notion of attacks flowing seemlessly from one to another without pause. Picking up Midnight Grasp (he's 33 but I haven't trained since level 29) should help as will eventually slotting to improve recharge times.Quote:I have been flirting with a DM/Fire build for a while, and have even rolled one several times. The highest I've gotten with a DM/Fire is level 24. DM simple takes too long to level, even though it is pretty darn effective against bosses in regular play.
I am pretty sure I did not beating down that crowd of 14 crey I leapt into yesterday (to discover to my surprise contained a +4 Boss) one at a time.Quote:Personally, I think that DM/ELA would be a fun build. But I would miss AOE too much. There's something about watching ten minions fall after your first attack, leaving just a boss left. With DM/ELA it just isn't possible. Same goes for DM/non-damage aura toons of all varieties.
Edit: If you're interested in it, give it a spin one afternoon. With DFBs you can have it into its 20s and get a good feel for its actual play without investing too much time. -
For various reasons I didn't feel like working on any of my existing characters. The need to make a Staff Fighting character not being fulfilled because the powerset has not been released, I decided to try out a build which on paper seemed to address the two headaches I have when making and playing a melee character--endurance and healing. So I started a Dark Melee/Electrical Armor brute with no great hope for it to have anything else going for it above my other melee characters.
32 levels later, I have to say I think I was woefully underestimating the potential of the build. Heck, I'm in love. I can't wait to get back home and play the character. He may not be silly unstoppable, but darn if he doesn't stand up to a heck of a beating while dishing it right back.
Why when I search do I find virtually no conversation on this particular combination of powersets?
Yeah, I know DM is definitely short on AE powers and there is much dislike of Shadow Maul. I have also seen some criticisms of Electrical Armor in terms of squishiness (though I certainly have not found that to be the case). Still, I learned to reliably put things in SM's cone (target center of group, take a step back, use SM) back on my Dark/Inv scrapper, DM doesn't do much in the way of AE but Soul Drain backing up Lightning Field does put out some nice damage, and if Electrical Armor is kinda squishy, every 3rd attack being Siphon Life keeps me from noticing. And being able to laugh at Super Stunners and Sapper. . .Priceless!
So what gives? -
Quote:Double xp weekend. No better time to do so.Originally Posted by Riius Indigo
Ouch
So, you think I should start all-over with a scrapper? -
Quote:No problem. As it was I was posting in a rush while trying to make it out the door in the morning so probably missed the last part of the post I was responding to.Originally Posted by Hopeling
I apologize if that came across as an attack; I was just puzzled by the objection. I didn't mean you were dishonestly trying to misconstrue his words, just that you would have had to delete the last part of his message to get the quote you did. I wasn't operating at full capacity myself at 5am, frankly ;P
I am trying to hold off on any new melee characters until Staff Fighting show up. I had been planning a scrapper but suppose I might have to consider a Stalker. I could use one more to go with my ElM/Nin.Quote:...and yeah, it's also really cool on Stalkers; I'm working on one of those Plays quite differently from a brute or scrapper, though, so I'm not sure if it's drawing from quite the same pool of potential players, and it only became this awesome a week ago, so I haven't seen many yet. In a month or two I would not be at all surprised to see a lot of them running around.
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Quote:I didn't deliberately omit anything. I saw the line and gave a response. My fault for not catching the end of his statement. However I am going to strongly suggest you refrain from claiming knowledge of another person's mental state without considerably more to go on. (Edit: Honestly, do you really think that it would make sense to intentionally falsely edit someone when their full words are available in the thread itself?)Originally Posted by Hopeling
Yes, that was mentioned; in fact, you had to deliberately omit it from your quote, so o.O
If your goal is to offer a refinement to what I said, I am game. I obviously was looking at minimal factors. The import of what I said--that damage is being reduced--remains. Saying, "It works out to be XX.XXX% instead," is hardly undermining the statement.Quote:The exact degree of its effectiveness will vary depending on foes, but will pretty much never work out equivalent to 16% damage resist, especially since it's reduced by the purple patch and by AV debuff resistance.
I considered making the statement that I would expect Stalkers first and Scrappers second to get more mileage out of the combination of powersets. But that really didn't seem to be the most useful comment. Morever I suspect there is some minor benefit that a Brute enjoys with the combination over either of the other ATs.Quote:KM/EA seems more common on scrappers, at least that I've seen, probably because they get more benefit from Power Siphon, and can recharge it instantly. It's still far from bad on a brute, though. -
Quote:That depends heavily on what you are fighting and how many of them.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
A minor recharge debuff is not comparable to damage resistance. Everything should be dead long before they're looking at a 7th attack.
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When looking at the combination of a primary and secondary powerset I prefer to look at what they both bring uniquely to the table which can be leveraged by something in the other set. As example, on my KM/SD Against All Odds brings extra damage based on the number of foes nearby and Power Siphon also ups damage, so in combination I want to lay down area attacks, especially after having ramped up Power Siphon a bit.
KM/EA does not strike me as being obvious in its points of synergistic leveraging. This does not mean it is a bad combo nor does it mean there aren't things to be done with it.
Entropic Aura depresses nearby opponents recharge and ramps yours. If you can keep 10 opponents nearby you're gaining a bit more than the benefit of an SO of Recharge to everything you have on top of slowing incoming attacks by those foes. Toss in that Power Siphon means you are applying a damage debuff to what you are hitting. Sure, you may not have incredibly high resistances built in but you will at times operate as if you had them.
The base recharge on Burst is 15 seconds. With 10 foes nearby and Entropic Aura that drops to 11.25 seconds. Add 2 Attack Rate SOs and with sufficient foes it is now at 7.5 seconds. 14 Endurance per hit? Well, its not like you don't have Energy Drain. You'd probably want to pick up Spring Attack as another means of delivering AE damage.
Extra Recharge from Entropic Aura also increase the number of Concentrated Strikes you can launch, which in turn increases the likelihood of recharing Power Siphon. -
Quote:EA is supressing the attack rate of opponents. If I am reading City of Data correctly it is applying a 16% recharge penalty to nearby foes--meaning they are making 6 attacks when normally they would be making 7 attacks. That is equivalent to 14% damage resistance so long as the attacks are coming for closer than 8'--mostly melee attacks but if you happen to be standing next to something targetting you with ranged powers they get impacted as well.Originally Posted by Derek_Icelord
I can only speak for myself, but the reasons I don't use Energy Aura are that yes it's easy to softcap, but it offers little in the way of resistances. There are other sets that are more difficult to softcap, but also bring more to the table.
Now toss on top of that the ability to debuff your opponent's damage with your attacks and you've gotten even more pseudo damage resistance. On anything you've hit you're looking at, in combination with EA above, taking damage at a rate equivalent to a character with 22% damage resistance. And that before you've applied the first bit of damage resistance to your character. -
You can make new characters and log them off and back on.
Only previously existing characters seem to be mapless. -
Sonic/Dark Blaster