Jade_Dragon

One important thing to remember when using any Vet Reward is that your Streakbreaker Code is based on the WORST to hit rating you've recieved in the last couple of minutes. If you have a lot of unslotted (for Accuracy) attacks or use a lot of Vet Rewards, the number of misses you have to get before a Streakbreaker kicks in increases. So your overall hit ratio decreases as you use inaccurate attacks.

For this reason, the BEST time to use Sands of Mu, or any Vet Reward, is right after you've missed two or three times in a row. The Streakbreaker should kick in and force the attack to hit. If you use Vet Rewards a lot, or attacks that aren't slotted for Accuracy, then you'll want to wait until the third time you miss before you try Sands. If you have all your Powers (attacks AND any other power that takes a to hit roll to hit a foe) and you're sure your to hit is always 95%, then you can probably go ahead and try it after only one miss.

Likewise, this should be obvious, but if you always use Sands of Mu after Aim or Build Up, not only will you have the best chance of hitting (since it will boost your to hit) but this will keep the Streakbreaker up and you won't miss as often.

Honestly, the Temp Powers are designed to scale with level in the damage they do, so they don't NEED to be slotted, but the fact that they lose accuracy as you go up in level (because the beginner bonus for accuracy goes away) is the main factor that makes them less useful at high levels. Likewise, they can't be slotted for Endurance, so they are most costly compared to standard attacks, too. They are useful to Defenders, Controllers, Masterminds, or even Brutes, as they are "immune" to damage modifiers and always do the same damage no matter your AT or Inherents. But at best they are "as good" as a regular attack, and they are best used sparingly, when you have a to hit buff up.

Finally, I'll add that as noted, if Sands of Mu was a normal attack (needing to be slotted) it would do the same damage as Shadow Maul. (It IS Shadow Maul, even down to the ability to hit two targets if positioned carefully) Flurry overall does about half the damage. I've often said Flurry needs to have its damage set the same as Shadow Maul, or within about 75% of it, and hit targets in a shallow cone like Shadow Maul does. It would make the power considerably more attractive.

Ironically, Flurry has a very low End cost and Recharge time for the damage it does, when what it really needs is MORE End cost and recharge so it can deal more damage in the given cast time. Jump Kick used to have the same problem, was given the ability to be interrupted halfway through, but actually still retains the End cost and Recharge given to try and get more players to use it.

I also have a number of animations I'd like to see for Sands of Mu in place of the current one, including the old Storm Kick animation, which did a Flurry-like kick where the character struck several times while standing on one foot.

My personal recommendation is to go with Blazing Bolt, particularly if you're not having any trouble with End. You've got Domination to refill the End bar if it comes to that, and that makes Consume nice, but only as a filler while you're waiting for Domination to come up again.

Sniper attacks on Dominators recently got a huge boost, so they do almost as much damage as a Blaster's Sniper, even with the Dominator's lower ranged damage mod. You don't have Aim + Build Up to go along with it, but IMHO it makes for a good opener.

OTOH, there are Dominator players who insist that Sniper powers are useless on a Dom, and would never think of taking it. Either way, it's a situational power you'll only get use out of every once in a while. The only reason I'd go with Consume is if conceptually you wanted more of a melee-oriented, AoE damage Dom, and wanted it for a little additional damage on top of Combustion.

The attacks should not have been changed to knockback. Make sure that you weren't fighting against greys, that should make even knockdown turn to knockback.

I didn't notice any knockback on my SS/Inv Brute last night. I wouldn't trust the tooltips, they have always been erratic.

I've noticed Protector Bots don't take any Defense IO Sets. I'm guessing the reason is that there is something in the set, like Recharge, that would not have the expected result. So the devs disallowed that combination.

Of course, there are plenty of pets that take Sets that include Recharge, or even Recharge Intensive Pet sets, so that's just an example. It's probably not Recharge that is causing the problem with Gremlins. (Although it could be with Protector Bots)

Well, when it comes to damage, the truth is Super Strength is not all that different from the way Claws used to be. Super Strength is NOT balanced around Rage, the devs designed the set with low damage, fast recharging attacks, and because of the way chaining effects DPS, this made for a low damage set. Claws was exactly the same. SS lucked out with Rage, the power was not meant to balance it, but turned out to be so powerful that it did.

The difference is, Claws did not have a sustainable damage buff like Rage, in fact their buff is about half of that. And so Claws got a rebalance, with the damage and recharge times rebalanced for their animation times. Brutes even got a modified version of Claws, with a lower damage potential. So the precendent is there, although it is rare, for a Set to be modified for a particular AT.

What I suspect is that Super Strength and Martial Arts are meant to be the counterpart to each other. The custom animations that were added for both sets have brought them closer together, visually, with some shared animations, and a lot more punches for Martial Arts. So if Super Strength WERE rebalanced for Stalkers, I would expect it to end up a lot like Martial Arts. More that than Energy Melee, at any rate.

I must say that a long time ago, though, I wanted to see a version of Super Strength for Scrappers that was more about snaring foes and throwing them around. Like, drop the Hand Clap, Foot Stomp and Rage for some sort of lasso or rope that can pull someone towards you and punch them, or swing them around. Sort of the way Spiderman or Wonder Woman uses their strength. Then again, I discarded the idea when I realized there really isn't a mechanism to let you knock or pull someone TOWARDS you.

1) You have Rage WAY too early. Rage comes as late as it does in the set because it is such a good overall power.

2) I see what you did there, choosing Foot Stomp over Hand Clap. Given that Stalkers get Repulse, which is also an AoE knockback, I would call it likely you would get Hand Clap instead.

In short, yeah, if you set it up that way, it's going to sound fantastic. But the devs are more likely to set it up in a way that is not so fantastic. On the good side, it's at least possible that a little bit of the damage from Foot Stomp might be moved into Hand Clap to compensate.

Every single character I have, my first stat in the box is Base Defense, the second is To Hit. That way I can tell if I have had my Defense debuffed by a foe (like a machine gunner) or if my To Hit is debuffed by Spectral Daemons.

I like to have damage boost for my third stat, particularly on Brutes, but really with any character that has Aim or Build Up or the like. It's particularly useful for attributes that scale, such as Invincibility, which is based on the number of foes in melee, or the Warshade or Dark damage boost powers.

The only think to make sure is that the /e message is not the same as an emote. But that's simple enough.

In short, if you type in something /emote doesn't understand, it makes it a thought bubble. And it is logged to the chat log as "<playername> [your text here]". So you might want to make it something like "/e thinks about [whatever]".

To be more precise, Tankers got Bruising in I19, as well as a max HP buff so their cap is higher than Brutes, now.

Brutes got a nerf to Fury, so that their Fury maxes out at about 75%, instead of the 85% that was common previously. However, it rises much faster, and can be maintained in combat a lot better. They also have a lower cap to how much damage they can do when buffed by things like Fulcrum Shift.

Scrappers were uneffected, but in general they will do more consistent damage than a Brute, while not taking as much damage. Brutes can still do more damage than a Scrapper under special circumstances, but it takes a lot more work to get there.

When it comes to tanking, a tank is never really needed, but the Tanker will still do the best job at it. A Brute will be better at it than a Scrapper. If it's not really needed, though, the question becomes if you want to specialize with damage, with defense, or somewhere in the middle. Personally, I like my Tankers, even solo. I like being that tough, and can get irritated with the micromanagement Fury requires. (Although that's really gotten a lot better with the new Fury)

Actually, I've noticed the same thing, but in Cap Au Diable they seem OVER crowded.

Maybe Dr. Aeon kidnapped them all...