Madam_Enigma

Yeah, until you realize "Hey, I get the debuffs, and still have endurance"

Yeah, especially LT's that love to mez.

Except Hail of Bullets does have the capability to apply debuffs.

You obviously didn't read my post closely. I wrote the breakdown WHILE STILL READING THE TEN PAGES OF THREAD.

So, your saying "You used the wrong value because you looked at the entry for AVERAGE DAMAGE instead of how much any given tick does? THe entry for 'average damage' is just that, how much damage the power will do... on average. This accounts for sometimes it only hitting with some ticks, sometimes hitting with all the damage ticks.

From fighting warwolves, I'd say they have at least 40% resistance to smash/lethal. Other resistances seem rather low however. That's just one example. Some robots would appear to have high resistance to lethal/smashing (35% to 40% it seems), but low to non-existant resistance to energy and elemental damage.

What you didn't seem to notice was me stating the value was purely for illustration. I make no claims to know the actual resistances of every enemy. I've noticed that some have high resistance to some damage types. I've noticed they tend to be weaker to other types. I noticed on my claw/sr scrapper that robots tend to take half as much damage as carnies do. I noticed that warwolves take half as much damage from my TA/A defender as Family or standard Council troops.

You know what? I haven't actually gotten to use rain of arrows yet. My TA/A defender is 35 or so. I don't have RoA yet. My A/Dev blaster is 29, almost 30. I have something like 40 different characters I play. Most are still in their 20's. I've fought Manticore on a mastermind though. I haven't really used too many 'rain' powers outside of Rain of Fire on my mastermind (oni casting it). And that has a lot more damage ticks then RoA does.

Come to think of it, I'm starting to think that Hail of Bullets should be compared to something like Rain of Fire more so then mini-nukes. Once I get it I'll have a better idea of the power. On paper though it is NOT inferior to other sets. It's average damage listed is about the same as the other 'mini-nuke' powers.

This you may be right about. I can't tell yet. Once my blaster hits 32 I will be able to tell. Or more likely once she hits 33 and slots 3 damage into it.

By level 8 I had two cone/aoe attacks. Archery has to wait longer to get a second area attack. I should be getting Pen Shots soon too. And I don't know about you guys, but I am skilled at lining up narrow cones. Playing a dark/dark scrapper taught me how. Open up with Pen Shots, then unleash my other aoe and cone attacks. Already with just the first two area attacks I can nearly drop even con minions, and seriously hurt LT's. I'm thinking with pen shot I can drop the minions easily.

How bad is the redraw?

Actually, quite a few stalkers I find subscribe to the "AS then flee" mindset. Once they get placate it goes "AS, placate, use strongest non-AS attack, THEN flee if the targeted enemy didn't die". Something to do with the idea a stalker can't survive in melee due to low health.

I can. Ranged attacks tend to hit for less then melee ones. With whip attacks, you gotta get right in the face of that 400 damage meleer. You sure they wont take pets so they can put them in bodyguard mode and have really good damage reduction?

EDIT: On a side note, I'm not too keen on the new forum setup. It's harder to tell what threads have new posts.

I doubt it'll go petless. It'll want Bodyguard mode for sure.

Open beta nothing, COME ON ISSUE SEVENTEEN! I now want this on live servers.

Assuming of course that a heroic AT which goes bad gets access to the patron pools of course. Or that the black scorpion pool for defenders would be worth while.

You know, even in jest that isn't funny. Say, I was wondering. Why did you stop going by Hobo_Fruitsalad?

Because it's not being invilsible that gives him crit. It's him using Hide, or you hitting him with Smoke Bomb to put him in Hide, or him placating the enemy. The jounin are mini-stalkers. And stalkers don't get crit damage just from using Invisibility.

Sorry if it bothered you. I have been told time and again by stalkers not to summon my pets, because they couldn't AS anything. Stuff died too fast. They also didn't like that on MY teams there is no "kill one foe with AS then run away to restealth". Instead it's "AS if possible, then beat things down with the team." I boot people who flee after one attack just so they can restealth.

You'll never find my henchmen blocking doors. Why? Because I'm frequently the one who initiated combat, so my henchmen are busy slaughtering things.

Ok, maybe my TA/Thug. But they tend to spread out anyway.

When I'm playing my high level ninja/poison mastermind I will admit. I spend more time healing my pets then the team. I do heal the team however. It's just that it might take all my attention to keep those ninja tier 1's from going SPLAT. And even then on large teams I'm resummoning a lot. If I didn't spend so much time healing them, everything would be dead in seconds.

So, a brute taunts the enemy hit with each punch. So, does every brute spend the entire fight switching targets after each attack? No, they focus on one enemy at a time usually. Many brutes have a damage aura, true. But they do not have a tank's punchvoke. Actually, unless someone can point it out in patch notes, I'm not sure if brutes do taunt with each attack.

Brutes are intended as a hard hitting melee type. Sure they have defenses, but at base I believe it's closer to scrapper defenses. I could easily be wrong though. Going into the game to check however, it proves to me that brutes have SCRAPPER levels of defenses. They 'can' tank to some degree. But then so can scrappers with the same sets. Honestly, no villain AT is built to tank. They are all built to be fairly self sufficient. Thus making the need for tanking redundant.

A overview of the persepctives I have encountered:

Brute: Oh noes! The pets are stealing my precious agro! How can i keep fury maxed out 100% of the time if not everything is hitting me?! And they dare to claim they can tank! But I'm the villain tank, everyone says so on the brute forum, and I have the same powersets as heroside tanks. I must be the tank. RAAAAAAR!

Stalker: I don't like masterminds. They kill things fast, and always shoot first. I can never use my precious assassin strike. And they don't let me run away right after I kill one enemy.

Corrupter: You mean I have to heal THEM too?!

Dominator: But I can't keep my domination bar filled. I don't have enough time to do more then throw out a control or two!

All of the Above: GET YOUR PETS OUT OF THE DOORWAY!

Note I didn't include the villain Epics. Haven't teamed with enough of them on a MM to find out. Although, as an MM I love teaming with them.

Nevermind that the devs changed it so that players aren't blocked by henchmen. We can push them out of the way, or walk through them. Can't remember which it is. Nevermind that masterminds get some very effective buff/debuff sets. Nevermind that they do really good damage, as well as provide damage mitigation just for having pets out.

Of course the hate stems originally from badly played Masterminds. Someone encounters two or three poorly controlled masterminds, and assumes all masterminds are like that. I noticed teaming dried up in the 20's on my first one. And now teaming dries up around level 10.

Last time I checked was a few years back. At that point in time it was still 0.65. My ice/mace tanker still feels like he hits things with a heavy feather. One which he can barely lift but doesn't do much damage.

Even the primaries that don't help soloing don't hinder it THAT much. What does hurt soloing for defenders IMO? The "healer" mentality that says your secondary should be avoided or barely slotted. An empath who doesn't neglect their secondary can still solo. Maybe not fast, but they don't suck at it either.

By the way, saying it can't solo well implies frequent deaths. If your dying that often, maybe your secondary is underslotted. Maybe you need more attacks. Or maybe you need to rethink tactics.

I don't solo slowly. However unlike in most teams if I need to use Rest, I can when solo. When solo I chew through most mobs fast.

Group 1: OSA>Disruption>Ignite> Fistfull of Arrows (to finish off any LT left standing)
Group 2: PGA>Glue>Disruption> AOE minions to death>blazing to finish off LT
Group 3: OSA>Disruption>Ignite>imob melee boss that's still alive and any LT>snipe boss>aoe remaining foes

The only time I have any trouble is vs high damage mobs that heavily resist lethal damage and imobilize, such as warwolves.

Last I checked, defenders already have the same damage mod as tankers. Namely 0.65, so what are you wanting exactly here?