Jade_Dragon

I wouldn't mind the idea of an "Enhancement-spec", where I can just unlock all the Enhancements currently in my build and move them into my tray as I wish. Respecs to unlock Enhancements do kind of bug me, since I have so many macros. After doing the respec, I still have a lot of work to get everything back into place again.

The problem would be how to implement it. I agree that you shouldn't be able to just remove Enhancements willy-nilly, but being able to only remove 10, and trade in the rest, unless you want to simply move them around, seems too far in the other direction. Especially with dual builds. Maybe just a flag, which says, "This Enhancement is locked", when you slot it, then the respec unlocks it for any successive move, until again slotted and locked.

I think one thing that does need to be stickied is the information that it DOESN'T go away. In short, you never want a Crab/Bane dual build. You want either a Crab or a Bane/Huntsman, but once you go Crab, be sure that you never want to go back.

As I said, my Crab's concept is pretty much built around her being a Crab. I have another character for the Bane.

Yep, the Peacebringer basically is constant and solid, being mainly a damage dealer. The Warshade feeds off his enemies, becoming much stronger against large groups of foes, but not having quite the same ability against smaller groups as the Peacebringer.

This is not to say the PB solos better than the WS, but you would solo the PB at +2/x1, while you would solo the WS at +0/x3.

The PB also tends to be more the specialist, better filling the blaster or tanker role as the team needs. His human form gets most of the damage. The WS's human form is more a controller and jack of all trades, while his forms are more general, having both high damage and defense. (When stacked with Mire/double Mire and Eclipse) This fits with the Inherent, the PB tends to complement the team, while the WS matches the team's strengths.

And one of each is a very good idea.

The problem is that the Mastermind henchmen share the same AI with your enemies. The behavior you want to see, a Bot staying in one place, waiting for a foe to come into range before he begins shooting at him, would be exploitable on a foe. You could stand out of range of his attacks, fire at his with your attacks that had greater range, and finish him off without him ever firing at you or moving in closer.

Likewise, as mentioned, the AI is programmed for one or two members of a spawn to charge into melee to break up the ENEMY spawn. It makes combat both easier, since the foes aren't protecting each other, but also harder for squishies that have to evade the foe charging at them. If the devs made it so Bots didn't charge into melee, then ENEMIES would never charge into melee, and Blasters would never be at any threat.

Now, it's more complicated than this, there is AI that "prefers Ranged" and AI that "prefers Melee". Bruisers, Ninjas, Necro, and melee-centric MOBs are all set to prefer Melee. MOBs with good ranged attacks and the henchmen I didn't mention previously prefer Ranged. Still, there's got to be that one Ranged fighter that likes to close to melee in each spawn, and if your henchmen didn't do that, your foes wouldn't either.

One aspect that can cut down on this is putting henchmen in Bodyguard, as mentioned, they have a tendency to let their foe get out of range occasionally rather than run after them. Another is that henchmen that have run out of ranged attacks and have a melee attack recharged will often run into melee, so they can use that attack. If they don't HAVE a melee attack, or they have enough ranged attacks that they don't end up firing them all off and sitting doing nothing, they will not have this problem. This is why the Medic had his melee attack removed. Fully upgrading a henchman can help solve the problem since it usually gives him more ranged attacks.

The other thing is that running into melee and giving chase to a runner, while it seems different, is somewhat the same. The chasing henchman is only trying to keep his foe in range. The best way to stop this is to be quick on the Passive key, to stop the chasing behavior and force him to come back. You can do this about running into melee, too, but usually you only have one henchman doing that, while if you've got a henchman chasing runners, they probably all are, either that or your other henchmen have given up and are waiting. In that case you can Passive Follow to call them back. Once everyone has dropped aggro, you can usually set back to Defensive.

The biggest enemies to Masterminds are Kadabra Kill, and that *$#@*&% Calystix the Shaper. Actually, Kadabra is childsplay compared to Calystix's Slag Heaps.

The best way I've found to get through them is to load up your henchmen with Lucks and hope for the best. Lowering your difficulty to -1 can help, too. This is actually one of the few times I will concentrate fire, you do want to take out the master first, his pets will fall when he does.

Someone else may have a strategy for targetting the pets first, but nothing has worked for me but to brute force it. Lately, I've taken to dragging one of my other characters in on a second account to do the actual fighting.

The basic thing to remember is that stealth and aggro are not diametrically opposed. What stealth does is reduce your chance to get aggro in the first place. Once you have aggro, however, stealth is no longer applicable to the battle. This is true for a Stalker as well as a Tanker, sure a Stalker's stealth is so good they can stand right in melee with a foe and not be seen (and this is true only for Stalkers, and stealth + SS) but once he makes that attack, his foe can see him and outside of Placate there's nothing he can do to lose aggro.

I actually came up with the concept of a stealthy Tanker prior to Dark, and played a Stone/Axe Tanker with the Stealth power. The basic idea was that I could approach the enemy spawn, getting very close to melee, and avoiding ranged counterfire until I was almost right on top of them. I did have to be careful to warn my teammates not to attack until I made my move, as otherwise they'd be a lot more visible than me. Once the fight began, though, anything I aggroed stayed aggroed on me. The same has proved true with my Dark/Dual Blades.

Even if it weren't for the stealth, CoD provides Immobilize protection, enhanced Perception, and Defense that does not suppress. Sure, it's only 5%, and there are better places to put slots, but as long as your teammates understand the strategy of letting the Tanker grab aggro before opening fire, you're not going to be penalized for keeping it up.

The only argument I ever had against it, that it makes your character totally invisible, can be changed at the Tailor.

Well, Kheldians you don't really have the "big picture" until you unlock Dwarf Form at 20, so to me switching to Crab/Bane/Night Widow/Fortunata at 24 made perfect sense. Maybe it could have been 20 instead, but I think even as low as 16 wouldn't really do it.

Plus there's the fact that with two builds you can do a lesser version of the Kheldian thing and switch between them. Well, you're stuck with the backpack, but you can switch.

I'm still trying to figure out why SoA get Patron Powers and not additional powers in the Primary/Secondary. Although I guess they've got to have some reward for the Patron Arcs.

I believe the answer is:

1) No

2) No

2 MAY be yes, but I don't believe so. It would be kind of annoying to hit Build Up every time you cast VS. And if Build Up effected VS, then any self buff proc of the like would as well, and vice versa.

I certainly don't hate my Dark/, I love it. I love the idea of sneaking around and being stealthy on a Tanker, and I love the idea of being beaten on for a while, and then draining my foes to get back to full health so they have to start all over.

I've never played a /Dark Scrapper, so maybe I can't compare how they feel to one another, but honestly, if it's that Dark/ has a Scrapper-like feel, I'm fine with that. I still have Gauntlet pulling everything to me, and the damage isn't so bad that I can't survive long enough to use it. Then again, I'm Dark/DB, and it's possible the stacking of Weaken helps Dark's (low) Def and Res.

And I agree with Herclea about being able to make my character visible, although that was more a cosmetic issue. It didn't stop me from playing him, just makes me happier now.

I have a Scrapper that I play as a dedicated tank role, she constantly taunts and keeps foes on her, and has both Confront and Provoke, so she can main tank or off tank depending on whether a "true" Tanker is available. She's built for that, and usually needs a teammate backing her up to take that much damage for a full team, but that's the choice I made about her build. I certainly don't look down on Scrappers that didn't build for tanking, or aren't able to.

I keep saying that the Brute is like the Scrapper on blue side, it is not DEDICATED to tanking, but it is able to if it is built for that role. In fact, it should be better at it than the Scrapper. That doesn't mean that it's specialized like the Tanker is, though, the Brute is a damage dealer, and that's its role on the team, just like a Scrapper. The Stalker is the specialist on the red side.

If you want to build for offense, that's your choice. If there is another tank available on the team, then that role is covered, and you can offtank. If there is not, then your team needs to be prepared for that, being willing to back you up to help you survive the aggro you gain, and watching their own aggro. If you cannot survive the aggro you are pulling and someone else is pulling aggro off of you, then that is a MUCH better thing than you falling, and the aggro you DO have getting dumped onto the rest of the team. That's a team wipe in the making.

That said, if your teammate was a Dominator, there's not much he can do to handle his aggro. If he's an offensive Corruptor, or has limited self support powers, he can have trouble with that, too. In that case, the best thing you might have done is discuss with a Mastermind or another more defensive Corruptor on the team how he could back you up and pull some of the aggro off you.

In fact, I've often said a Mastermind is the best teammate a Brute has. The MM is the other redside AT that is supposed to tank for the team, only while the Brute can hold the aggro very well but can't take the damage like a Tanker, the MM can take loads of damage but can't hold aggro. It can help you to grab the aggro of the center of a group, and let an MM's henchmen grab some foes at the edges of the fight. That way neither of the two of you get overwhelmed, and you can both tank for the team. And the MM can heal and buff you with his Secondary.

IMHO, the devs didn't really implement travel power suppression to prevent jousting per se, but to prevent a server exploit that would increase the safety of jousting to complete invulnerability. In short, you could zoom up to a foe, make an attack, and then move out of hand to hand range before the server even recognized that you were IN melee. Not only would you never be attacked, you never could be attacked, because in effect you were using melee attacks at range.

Suppression means that you have to remain in range long enough for the server to register that you ARE in range, and either process an AI attack, or allow a player with an attack queued up to get it off. If you attack in melee, your opponent gets an attack in melee.

Conceptually speaking, I agree with the last poster. Usually when you see a character with super speed attack someone, he zips into melee, and then stops for a second while he punches him. If he ducks the return punch, it is his REFLEXES, not his SPEED that allows him to do that. So Super Speed alone doesn't allow you to dodge blows, that's Super Reflexes, the Defense Set. So there's that second before you flash away again where you can be counterattacked. (some other game systems give you an "attack of opportunity", where you can attack out of order when attacked)

And I'll add that "jousting" and "kiting" are somewhat different, as the former usually refers to melee attacks, while the latter is ranged attacks. The principle is the same, though, that you remain out of range for your foe to attack, while in range to attack yourself. It would be possible to get the same effect with kiting without travel suppression, but it's a bit harder since you have to estimate more where your maximum range is. You could queue up a ranged attack, though, zip forward until it fires, and then immediately zip back before the server could update your position.

Conceptually speaking, Claws/WP is the closest thing to Spines/Regen.

I think Claws/Fire is what you're looking for, though, so carry on.