JupiterMoon

not new thread is still not new.

a thread like this crops up constantly. lemme bottom line it for you:

IF you only care bout your concept and dont care about team or solo viability - go for it

however, IF Yo uthink you will EVER want to team and IF you want to be able to do the dev created content post 40 - ANY of it - petless doesnt work. period.

these conclusions were tested thoroughly - two years ago. and i havent seen any buffs to mm's attacks in that time to make them any more viable.

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I'm debating between ss/sd and elec/ sd.

Fortunately I have tons of influence so I can basically buy any io's I want... I'm just not sure what I want though. Two teleport attacks would be amazing... But then again, footstomp is just amazing fully slotted.

I'm guessing I'll be able to cap my defences... Esp when I take soul mastery.. Then I'll focus on global recharge and Aoe attacks.

I make farm toons... What's better damage? Lightning rod with the shield charge or footstomp with with the shield charge? Over time of course.

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outside of lightning rod, elec melee is lackluster imo. thunder strike is a pbaoe around the intial target - not you. so if you are surrounded, the mobs behind yuou will not be hit. it's single target attack chain is...well...poo. and lightning rod has a very long recharge no matter how you slot

aoe wise for brutes, building for a 7s recharge foostomp is our best option.

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Storm is excellent in the endgame. Any MM has the dps to deal with arachnoids, save for maybe mercenaries, and more importantly Storm has the kd, survival, slows, and res/def debuffs. It is not especially good at EB or AVs, but it is not useless and EBs are still easily soloable, as well as some AVs.

In most PvE circumstances, Storm's offense (mostly freezing rain) is better suited for battle than FF's defense, although of course getting hurricane detoggled sucks, there is no real way around that without losing storm's huge -tohit debuffs, click heal, and -res.

On top of that, Storm is excellent in PvP. Hurricane will take a stalker out of Stealth, O2 boost is an excellent source of +perception and endurance drain resistance, and tornado/LS are terrors. Combined with a slotted up gale for KB, storm is a very powerful package to deal with in PvP.

I would not suggest pairing storm with ninjas though. Smoke Flash is extremely hard on your endurance bar and you lose a ton of damage (Nin's forte) by not keeping it up. Storm is also a very endurance-heavy set. I recommend more end-light powersets with ninjas, with dark miasma one of the best in pve.

Necro on the other hand pairs well with anything. The damage of necro is much lower (no smoke flash, oni deals much better area damage, etc) but the survival in necro is amazing, especially after the lich.

Necro/Dark is sort of redundant, and melee pets don't synergize as well with a short-ranged pbaoe heal like Twilight's Grasp. Necro/Storm, Necro/Pain, Necro/Traps, Necro/Poison - all of these builds are excellent, high end PvE and PvP builds.

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heh. i want to see storm stop a running biff and then kill him as a +2 eb.

something only my /traps was able to do (mmm..web grenade. biff has pretty high immob resistance)

i consider biff and widdershins at +2 EB as good measuring tools for solo mm's doing dev content. they have insane regen and decent resists. it's almost like trying to take on an AV but without AV levels of incoming dmg. they will also completley shut off your regen for a long time if their spit hits you (it's pretty much the same as poisons envenom) and pretty much shut off all power recharge at the same time.


it also depends on whether or not you think having to constantly replace minions as the norm, or if you prefer to have to only replace them every now and then. i prefer the latter.

your points on necro/dark are way off. have yo uactually played necro/dark with team teleport? and even if you havent, it's extremely easy to floor an eb's tohit chance as necro/dark thanks to the various -tohit abilities in dark and from the dark servant - which can be made perma. really tough eb up there? know it will one shot your minions the second they get in range? drop dark servant on it, darkest night then tp in. no longer an issue. also, the lich is a great little CC'er when combined with the added CC in dark and a patron immob.

only my thugs/traps was easier to level up, however i find trying to team as a melee mm an exercise in frustration.

the game has been all sorts of unreliable the last few days.

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If you don't want to spend a lot of time and money, you can't beat Fiery Melee. SS is highly overrated and won't do nearly as much damage until you get your recharge skyhigh, at which point it comes close. SS does get better mitigation though.

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this is very true, especially with how early brutes get access to incinerate.

circle of thorns will annoy you though - dont pick magic secondary and ignore magic origin contacts unless you feel the absolute need to do everything on your way to 50

fighting behemoths made me want to punch a baby at times with fiery melee

bill can we have the OP updated and gloom removed from all brute chains?

if anyone wants to make an argument of why scrappers should have super strength or why brutes should never see broadsword - lets take gloom out of the equation. besides, average players dont necessarily always take gloom.

or if we MUST include gloom, include what being able to cycle conserve power does to a scrappers actual EPS

man how i wish brutes had parry/divine avalanche in any form

as someone who plays both sides religiously i can honestly say - there is no problem here.

yes..brutes start out of the gate a little bit easier than a scrapper. but when it comes to where it actually matters - 40+ content - the disparity is small if it even exists, and even then it only exists with a few powerset combinations.

one cannot deny that outside of elect, most brute primaries are very light on aoe. very light. yes yes - footstomp can be build to be 7s recharge. that's an exception. brutes have no spines. hell the heaviest aoe set for brutes is dual blades. i wish there was a way to re-create my spines/da scrapper on red side, but there really isnt.

now of course one can say 'but look at those brute stone melee numbers'. c'mon. unless you've actually tried to play a stone melee brute and tried to io it out to make that listed attack chain AND be able to maintain it for any real length of time you cant just look at those numbers. stone melee/shield is a serious end pig problem? how big? well at 42 on my current stone melee/willpower brute with both qr and stamina, 4.20 recovery rate and 60% end reduction in every attack - i have serious end problems. serious. when i was taking on a +2 biff i had to turn off a couple toggles to keep going end wise. stopping my attack chain wasnt an option - his regen is giant monter level.

what the op has shown us is that - perhaps - the buffs to dark melee were just a little too good.

i wouldnt go with any of those secondaries.

if you want to mostly aoe, that means some herding. and to herd, you gotta survive


while the secondaries you listed can survive most mobs - they all have a group or two that just eat through them.

personally if i were to make another herding brute it would be an /sr brute. why? defense debuffs in the form of various lethal attacks are EXTREMELY common in this game.


sadly none of the brute primaries are very good for aoe. it's too bad we dont have spines.

fault has a pretty hefty taunt to it for something that does no dmg

being level 50 was never an indicator of any type of skill

this game is absurdly easy to play and level in.

before we had ma farms, we had TV farms (villain side). before that we had newspaper farms. before that there was herding and stacking hundreds of minions at a time.


there were level 50 tanks at launch who took only two powers from their tank primary and every attack in their secondaries and the power pools.



this...is not new.

there's a couple CoT bosses post 40 that i've run into (mage bosses) that had 50% smashing resistance

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jb did you just start in on 'canon'?

this is a unique IP. get over yourself already.

what you are proposing is game breaking. in order for it to work, all of these Colossus clones you are propsing to make would need a crap ton of magnetos to balance them out or it's going to be issue 4 all over again.

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Had JB been around for issue 4, he might know what you're talking about.

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exactly. he has no idea what he's talking about. about how tankers at one time HAD the dmg AND the super survivability. how those of us with tankers were soloing respec trials set for 8 people. and hell i was invuln/fire for pete's sake with little st dmg.

right now any speculation or suggestions of buffs/nerfs to scrappers or brutes due to goro are silly.

1) what if it's just another co-op zone?

2) what if it IS an actual change of alignment, but requires an EPIC mission arc to be completed first - on a full 8 man team - and switching back has like a six month cooldown?

3) what if brutes who switch post 40 lose access to gloom, or what if brutes who switch pre 40 cant even do the patron arcs AND cant get access to hero ancilliary powers?


there is too much we just dont know yet. reference the first post in this thread when more details about the expansion are actually announced. until then nobody has any real idea how it's going to work.

hell if the expansion is nothing more complicated than letting people access all parts of the game at will - i'm more fearful of what impact masterminds would have on the game. they already are THE tankmages of this game. what other at can shut down an av's regen, debuff their resistances and defense, keep the av in place, make it stand there and puke endlessly while having tanker levels of resistance to dmg, high resistances to the most common CC AND put out insane amounts of aoe or single target dmg?

it will become city of masterminds long before it becomes city of brutes. serously. outside of some very specific farming scenarios, none of my io'd out brutes can touch my io'd out /traps mms.

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I have a bots MM I enjoy but it can be a little boring. I want to try something that is much more active. I was thinking about trying the melee style MMs (necro/ninja) since I need to constantly position them to be effective. Sounds like a nice change from Bots.

I played a necro/dark up to level 11 or so in CoV Beta. I liked it and did not mind using the Goto macro like mad.

I will 90% solo, 100% PvE. I like both sets thematically.

1) Suggestions on which to try? Zombie AoE puke sounds like they might be better for soloing small spawns - not sure.
2) Secondary? I was thinking of Pain Domination for something different and to keep my guys alive. I also enjoy TA. Want to avoid Dark since I have a D3 hero side. I hear Storm is great for necor/ninja but I am not sure why.

TY for any advice.

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lots of people keep saying to go storm, but i disagree. storm is a gimmick. it doesnt have the tools i feel are necessary to deal with the large amount of arachnoids, eb's and av's you encoutner post 40.

the ideal secondaries for either of those melee primaries are: force field for added defense and self cc protection (stacks especially well with ninja +def) or traps for the av/eb neutering, web grenade and ffg.

get team teleport. team teleport into each spawn. this ensures that all of your pets are together, have no reason to run or lag behind and are all within your ffg/dispersion bubble.

bots vs. necros is no contest - bots. or thugs. or even mercs.

necro is fine solo. but in a team it's a royal headache dealing with huge spawns, most likely spread out spawns and melee pets that are awfully squishy.

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The changes with the other AT were made to enhance the core purpose of the AT.

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Tankers already fulfull their core purpose too well in some cases. That is not the area causing deficiency, so it is not the area that needs attention.

Nor should we invent a "new area" for Tankers when then cannon, other media and other information sourses indicate Tankers and Tanker-like heroes should be heavy hitters; not debuffers or healers or anything else.

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I agree with the earlier poster that Tankers should be better against groups as a means to preserve their role within the game. If you want a boss killer grab a Scrapper. If you want to take on an entire spawn grab a Tank.


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And how do you justify the hero teams's team big guy smacking around people smaller than him and then girly slapping the guys he should by all rights be able to lay into?

Tankers holding back on minions and LTs with their current mediocre damage levels at least makes thematic sense if they can unload on Bosses, AVs, etc with high damage.

NOT being able to open up on Bosses and AVs and then brutalizing the squishy enemies not only doesn't make any thematic sense, it's not very heroic in my opinion.

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Isn't all damage on non perma-Doms being improved not just melee? Since Castle stated that the Dominator's new purpose is damage and control consecutively.


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And that just goes to show that an AT's purpose can change over time as the game changes.

Doms are an example of a defensive primary and an offense secondary AT that has now seen a shift to more offense. They could do both before, but now they do one better than they used to. Do they now control worse? If not, I fail to see how that is unlike Tankers. They didn't give Doms leadership abilities or invent them something new to do.


.

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lol

do you really want a dom's usefulness?

really?

i'm starting to see a pattern here. you've clearly never played villain side, have no concept of game or class balance and care only about your concept of this one class.

really are you going to start holding your breath till you get your way next?

tankers are fine. dom's will have no place when going rogue hits because a) controllers can control better and b) blasters can blast better - especially with the overwhelming MAJORITY of dom dmg dealing abilities being MELEE on a squishy.

jb did you just start in on 'canon'?

this is a unique IP. get over yourself already.

what you are proposing is game breaking. in order for it to work, all of these Colossus clones you are propsing to make would need a crap ton of magnetos to balance them out or it's going to be issue 4 all over again.

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Will scrappers ever get Energy Meele or atleast electric meele, All the sets they have now seem really boaring to me, and I would Love to play a EM/anything scrap... All my tanks are em except for like 2 and Im not much of a stalker/brute player so I was just curious to see what you guys think.

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you can have energy melee and elect melee when brutes get broadsword and spines.

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I have a question about this - and this is completely serious.

I ran into several missions last night that I would classify as "farming" maps. And there was no doubt about the fact that they were made for farming. Playing through those, I learned about some very interesting techniques to get the spawn counts up to the highest possible.

My first reaction to this was: "Well this is a BS farming map. This won't stay on the server long." Because I know the Devs want to avoid having players exploit the MA system for farming & power-leveling.

But then I thought, "Well....what if you just really want to fight alot of guys at once when you solo?"

This is especially going to be a problem for Scrappers & Brutes - the two AT's that probably get the biggest amount of jollies from soloing.

It makes me wonder where the devs are going to draw the line, and how they plan to continue to regulate the system against exploits without completely ruining the functionality of the system.

If I had to guess...I'm going to say that very soon, they're going to implement a nerf that completely neuters the system - and then dial up the performance from there. What do you think?

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ther'es nothing wrong with making a farming map. people are confused in this.

what was wrong was using mobs that gave twice the xp of a boss but had minion level hp/resists/regen. ie - knowlingly useing broken mobs

i have a farming map with all super arachnoid bosses. you ever fought 5 super arachnoid bosses at a time with a set without substantial slow and toxic resists and some way to root them? i love that kind of challenge, and i love the bonus xp they give. which they should - they have near av levels of regen

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Fark a video. Post the damn build. That's 228.2 DPS.

Now the $100 question. Get those same buffs you're using for that build and dump them into a dm/sd build with portals popping SD/AAO fuel.

What's that DPS going to hit?

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But wouldn't you wanna atleast see who was wishing me luck?

Video


Edit:
Werner!!!
You really need to clean up your mail box.

Edit 2:
A heck with this...
I'm heading out to work so here...

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>| Copy &amp; Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
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|-------------------------------------------------------------------|</pre><hr />

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122% global recharge

talk about an 'outlier' build

/ela performs just as badly in ae missions man. there are some seriously tough mobs in there especially the custom ones.

according to numbers posted in the scrapper thread about ideal rotations, stone melee is nearly a full 1 end per second higher than anything else out there once one has a lot of global recharge.

so if you go sm, you have to think long term: IF you plan to slot a lot of io sets for global recharge, stone melee can hit 5+ eps. you will need to maintain higher than 5 eps with toggles running and i just dont see that happening without both stamina AND quick recovery, or a fast recharging power sink/conserve power

so if that's your plan and if having to carry around a trayful of blues on the important, lengthy fights were maintaining said rotations is important - it's gotta be wp or elec imo

i dont see much of a reason to to test sets that the two at's dont actually have

lets face it - broadsword with gloom would be insane on a brute. not to mention when one puts that on a brute with shields and realizes you wont need to io out for the melee/lethal defense caps thanks to parry (and it's inreased dmg with full fury...)

and stone melee on a scrapper?

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But I can guess how that's going to turn out:
Scrap Dual Blades 169.7
Brute Dual Blades 168.3

Just like that. I honestly think folks need to pay more attention to that data chunk right there. The scrapper and brute used identical chains and the scrapper won by a measly 1.4DPS.

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As long as 90% fury is a resonable average for Brutes in normal PvE play--which is to say that fury fluctuates equally above and below 90%.

90% may be a resasonable watermark for AV/pylon soloing, but in normal mission play, I think it's too high. I've played three Brutes to 50, one to 32, and one to 46, and even though I chase the hell out of fury, I can't keep it pegged at 90% for an entire mission, especially when there are glowies to click, hostages to escort, or sparse parts of the map (long hall to elevator, long hall from elevator to next spawn).

When you first started these comparisons, you were asking for top-end, high-recharge ST attack chains, and so I didn't have a problem with the 90% figure, since you were pretty obviously talking about optimizing for pylon/AV soloing situations.

But now it looks like you're trying to draw comparisons between Brutes and Scrappers for "normal" content in "normal" situations, and for that, 90% is simply too high an average.

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nah.

for the instances where having that dps is important - mostly fighting eb's, av's, pylons, etc - 90% fury isnt hard to get to or maintain

that EPS on stone melee is disturbing. but i guess it's the price one pays to be able to one-shot hold a boss for 10s unenhanced and keep groups of annoying longbow staggering around indefinetely.