Jade_Dragon

Tentacles stacked with Night Fall is a good 90% of the AoE capability of Dark. Tentacles is an EXCELLENT power, it's only slight drawback is that as a cone you don't have as much range as a targetted AoE, but it is perfect for locking down a bunch of foes that you've herded into one spot so you can melt them.

There's also nothing more fun than hitting a Giant Monster with Tentacles and see even bigger Giant Tentacles come up to surround it.

I will typically only summon my Punks at the beginning of the mission, and not replace them unless the Arsonist dies. My build was pseudo-petless for a long time, though, I didn't get the Punks/Arsonist until just before 32. (He wouldn't have have Burn before that)

A good rule of thumb is that each Tier does about the same damage, overall. Meleers tend to do slightly more damage, both because their attacks are better, and henchmen have a higher melee damage modifier. Tier 2 tends to do most of the damage for Ninjas, Necro, Thugs and Demons (from what I've heard) for Bots and Mercs it's the Tier 3.

Your own attacks are always a controversial subject, but you can pump out a lot of damage just by adding Vet Rewards to your chain. (In fact, my Nin/FF doesn't even USE her bow, she uses Sands of Mu and Temp Powers like Revolver and Hand Grenades)

Heh, would you call that a Clawfort, like a Guncrab?

I've often figured that would be a fun route to go, even though it's not represented in the NPC roster. (NPC Fortunatas have no melee attacks at all, and say so in their help text)

In all fairness, skipping a Tier of pets on a Mastermind is probably an appropriate comparison, too.

I once made an analysis that if you have three powers, the MM attack powers, that provide about 25% of your damage (more like 20% past 32, but let's not nitpick) and six powers that provide the remaining 75% of your damage, then on the average a Pet power is about the equivalent of two attack powers. Or conversely, the attack powers are about half the value of the Pet powers. Of course, this doesn't include the defensive benefits of Pets, but it's a good rule of thumb.

For most ATs the Powers are, for the most part, weighed equally, that's the way the game is designed. When those rules are broken, that's when you get the "must have" powers. In the case of a Mastermind, it's just design that the Pets and their buffs count for more than the other three powers.

TT:M is at least similar. A great deal of capability is built into that power that isn't redundantly available on Spiders. Likewise, it's pretty easy to make the comparison that one Spider TT:M is the equivalent of TT:M + Mind Link on Widows. One power that is the equivalent of two. If you do choose to skip it, you'll need two more powers just to take its place...

This is not to say that you can't, or even that two powers out of nine, or eighteen, or even 24, is all that game breaking. But why beg the question, when you've got 24 choices to choose from? Then it becomes not a question of whether you pick up TT:M, but when?

Yeah, if I saw an SoA without TT:M, I certainly would point out that it would considerably help their defense. Especially prior to 24, where even a Widow needs all the defense she can get her hands on to survive in melee.

I do think the idea that it costs too much Endurance, as well as that the Defense isn't that great, is a holdover from Leadership. They've heard talk about Manuevers being all of that, and assume it's just exactly the same power. I would say, for a Soldier, "No, it's like half the Endurance cost of Manuevers, and three times the Defense. It costs no more End than any defense used by a Scrapper or Tanker. In fact, you can think of it as your defense, and that it helps the rest of the team is a bonus." Seriously, I'd say exactly the same thing if it gave the 10% defense only to the caster, and the rest of the team only got 5%.

Obviously, no one is going to learn that if no one tells them.

What I suspect is Brawl is a "kludge". Although no specifics have been given, from the way BaBs and others talk about it it sounds like Brawl itself is hardcoded to skip the relevant tables and jump directly to the proper animation sequences. Of course, those sequences must be modifiable in some way, or the custom animations when Dual Pistols or other Power Sets were added could not have been linked to.

So "theoretically doable with any power" may mean breaking into the game engine and altering the code so that other Powers besides Brawl can be redirected to these alternate sequencers.

Granted, I could be talking out of my hat here, and it could be as easy as just copying and pasting as others have said. I would expect if that was the case it would have been done by now. Then, I suppose, the issue comes down to, "Do we do this for Punch and Kick, and have people complain that we haven't done Air Superiority or Jump Kick?"

Well, I think the thing is, by the time you're worried about a character name, you're concept oriented enough that the presence of the legs will bother you.

Although I did like the character that was posted here once who was a Crab Spider, but was "asked as a special mission by Lord Recluse himself to join the Bane Spiders". The implication is that the character is a Crab Spider at heart and likes the legs enough to keep them, even when not actually using them.

What makes me balk is the logical inconsistency of having the Crab backpack, and not being ABLE to use it. Whether you choose to use it or not, you cannot fire blasts from the backpack if you have the Bane Mace. Then again, it bothers me that you cannot bonk people over the head with the Patron Mace. (Except with Brawl...)

But an SoA is NOT a Spider. There are Widows in that category as well.

Just to say it, I am not arguing the premise, merely trying in my own way to avoid overgeneralization of the argument. (That's actually usually why I end up dropping into a thread)

Well, I thought that the separate stances only counted with Brawl, but I guess you're right. Again, though, I think the issue is that Brawl is the one Power that's allowed to perform a non-weapon animation without drawing the weapon. That's why Brawl can do one thing if you have a weapon out, but another if you don't. The other Powers don't have the capability of doing that, even if you COULD assign them an animation for each weapon.

Best case scenario would be that you would Kick with your weapon out, the weapon would stay out -- and then it would go away. (Because Kick has a Combat stance)

Note, BTW, Dual Blades, I believe, kicks with the Brawl, but Dual Pistols is the "pistol whip" animation. So Brawl has an animation that DOESN'T map to those 7 stances.

Night Widows do get Placate. They also get Assassinate Criticals, although they do not get Assassin Strike. Also, the SoA Critical is only about +50% damage, not double damage.

Okay, this has come up twice, and I feel the need to address it.

First of all, a petless Mastermind is skipping FIVE POWERS from his Primary. Likely, he is skipping a sixth as well, as it only effects pets. Thugs would be an exception, but then one might argue Gang War is itself a pet and thus off limits in a "petless" build as well. The point is, this is a huge chunk of the Mastermind's available Powers, and not in any way comparable to the choice to take or not to take ONE power from the Secondary.

A Tanker not taking any of his defenses is, again, dropping a good 33%-50% of his Powers. It's not like the Tanker has anything in his Primary other than defenses, at skipping them both reduce his contribution to the team, and lessen his ability to deal damage, since he won't be able to survive to finish anything off at his Tanker level of damage.

A Tanker skipping his Taunt aura, however, is again not the same thing. Sure, in most cases he can't Taunt as well with it as he can without it, but you might as well say that all Tankers should take Taunt. One or the other should be adequate to do the job, both is just ensuring good aggro handling. The bigger issue to me would be whether the Taunt aura itself was integral to the Tanker's defense, like with Invincibility or RttC. (And RttC is going to be far more useful for its survivability than for its Taunt aura, leading to the likely need to take Taunt on TOP of that)

Tactical Training: Manuevers is ONE POWER. Yes, it's a good 75% of his defense on a Spider. It is not on a Widow. And even a Spider doesn't have a Secondary devoted entirely to defense. There's a reason TT:M is so important, it's because a Wolf Spider has 3 defensive powers in his whole Secondary, a Crab has 6, and a Bane has 5. (If you count Cloaking Device as a defense, it's primarily an offensive boost)

TT:M is valuable, yes, but it's a long way from a petless Mastermind.

This has been discussed many times before, but I'd still like to see this readdressed, and Kheldian Nova/Dwarf forms as well.

If we can't customize the model that we turn into, is there some way to add something we CAN customize? Again, shoulders, head, gloves, on the Granite. Or as I suggested, "eddies" of colored energy flowing in the Nova/Dwarf form. That way the base model always looks the same but we can make our forms look a little different.

There's still the old suggestion BaBs made about "put together the Granite form from parts fitted over the (invisible) human model". I don't know if that was discarded because it wouldn't work, or enough people said that they didn't want it.