Madam_Enigma

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"And I don't want to hear from brutes who's job is to do damage, and who get BETTER defense then a scrapper with the same set due to having better modifiers."

Do brutes really get better defenses than scrappers? I don't think so. I have both an SR brute and an SR scrapper...they have pretty much the same defense, with only a % or two difference due to design choices. I'm pretty sure brutes get the same base values as SR scrappers.

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First of all, you see that "Quote" button? It's your friend.

Second of all, yes they actually do. I'd just compared the unslotted values of both scrapper SR and brute SR. Brutes get slightly higher values. Even with that, it doesn't matter since both can fairly easily hit 45% defense or higher.

Third point, herding is a waste of your time and the team's time. You can't hold aggro on as many enemies as you'd want to while herding. Not to mention as a brute, all that time you spend herding is time your NOT building up fury. Instead as a brute you should charge in swinging, then charge then ext group of enemies once this group's dead. SR will give you enough speed to get to them before you lose much fury.

Fourth point, if your trying to herd with a /sr brute... What's your magic taunt aura power? /SR doesn't have one so yes my claw/sr scrapper likely herds just as well as your DB/SR brute does.

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"By the way, I also have an ice armor tanker. So don't even talk to me about not being attacked very as often as a brute. My ice tank's entire job is to get attacked instead of the rest of the team. And outside of energy damage (don't have energy defense yet) at level 17 he is barely getting hit already."

You can't compare the experiences of an SR scrapper or a level 17 Ice Tank to what a level 50 SR Brute has to endure. They're not the same thing. And your original argument was that your SR scrapper could live just fine through a TF, which does not compare to the role of the main herder.
And how do you know defense works perfectly the same for all ATs? I'm not sure that it does. This is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. What your level 17 Ice Tank deals with, as well as your SR scrapper is fairly irrelevent. Do you have an SR brute? That's what I want to hear about. Does anyone here have an DB/SR brute that can compare like scenarios?

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Not the same... Are you even listening to your self? What does a brute do? They charge into melee and cause lots of mayhem, likely drawing a lot of hate down upon them self.

What does a scrapper do? They charge into melee and cause lots of mayhem, nearly always drawing a lot of hate upon them self.

What does a tanker do? They charge into melee and make every enemy in the battle attack them instead of the rest of the team.

So, which of the three classes should be getting attacked more often? Yes, that's right the tanker. Point of fact, tankers play very much like a scrapper does. And my claw/sr scrapper is level 50. So if a level 17 or 18 defense based TANKER is capable of avoiding enough attacks with only 22% defense to be extremely hard to kill, what does that say about the level 50 scrapper or brute with more defense? And keep in mind this is on eight man teams running the 4th difficulty too.

Yes, I said 4th difficulty, and not 5th one. So that means MORE enemies trying to hit the defense based tank then on invincible. Think that over for a moment. By the way, my tanker is ice armor/warmace so extremely endurance intensive too. Dual blades isn't quite as endurance intensive I've noticed. And yes I've played it at all the various levels. Including at 50.

Oh and about herding... You do realize there's a cap of about 18 enemies for how many you can keep taunted onto you right? So if your herding, odds are your putting the team in danger since you can't hold all that agro.

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"Sorry, I have 2 /SR at 50, and I haven't noticed this."

Two SR what? Brutes, scrappers? Do you herd with them?

More info please.

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I have to wonder, since brutes are damage dealers and not intended to be meat shields, why are you herding with one? The taunt auras usually are intended to help build fury during a battle, not herd maps.

By the way, just logged into my ice tank. He's currently got about 22% defense to smashing lethal, and already smashing and lethal attacks don't scare me due to missing most of the time. Why are you so worried again?

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Nemesis after vengeance, or Nemesis Snipers, Malta Gunslingers, Rikti Drones, Bane Spider Scouts and Executioners, just to name a few that hit me as though I had no defense at all.

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You know what the trick to things that can potentially get around your defense is? Learn their tactics. By the way, banes don't ignore defense. I've yet to have any real trouble with them on defense based characters.

Nemesis after stacked vengeance? Hmm, interesting fact. It's the LT's that use vengeance, and then only upon their own death. So kill the LT last. Presto, no stacked vengeance. I learned this tactic, why didn't you?

Malta gunslingers? Interesting, I've yet to really have a problem with them either on defense sets. The reason I don't like malta is because Knives of Artemis appear in every malta arc. And THEY I have problems with. Them and their stacked caltrop patches of doom. If a scrapper can drop a malta gunslinger fast enough that even if he's got high to-hit it doesn't matter, I'm sure a brute who's likely keeping their fury bar filled will have less issues. And I know for a fact that /sr can easily allow the whole "run from mob to mob nonstop" play style brutes almost demand. I use it on my scrapper main. Barely get hit no matter what I'm fighting too.

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"I'm having trouble believing you. Why? Because my main hero side is claw/sr"

I don't want to hear from Scrappers whose only job is to do damage. You can't compare scrapper survivability to that of someone whose job it is to actually draw enemy fire. You don't get attacked as often as my brute does. You don't herd like I do. Stand in the middle of a herd that you grouped hitting the aggro cap and see how long you live. That's the job of a brute. SR brutes take more of a pounding than some scrapper who's only there for damage add.

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And I don't want to hear from brutes who's job is to do damage, and who get BETTER defense then a scrapper with the same set due to having better modifiers. Your claiming that defense is negated. That's bunk. SR doesn't suffer from that problem outside of a few select enemies which villains will rarely face. Defense works the same weather your a brute, stalker, scrapper, or tanker. Defense doesn't care what your AT is. It works the same. So if a scrapper with 30% defense and Elude for things like elite bosses and archvillains is just fine, a brute with better defense will be just fine too.

By the way, I also have an ice armor tanker. So don't even talk to me about not being attacked very as often as a brute. My ice tank's entire job is to get attacked instead of the rest of the team. And outside of energy damage (don't have energy defense yet) at level 17 he is barely getting hit already. So as he gets up in levels he'll get hit less and less. So don't pull the "I get attacked more then you" card. It doesn't float.

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"If the OP is complaining about DE or the Eyeballs, or even Nemesis soldiers, I think it is more of an issue with them learning the game, what does what, and what the little orange shield in the insp tray is for."

I know what the orange inspirations are for, and I shouldn't need to eat a ton of inspirations to be effective. Any toon who eats enough orange inspirations can call themselves a tank...brutes shouldn't need to. And I don't understand why they soft cap the defenses at all. I was on a LRSF and even with double bubbles and elude I was getting hit as though I had no defense whatsoever. I had a friend who was playing his Widow and they had comparable defenses and were having the same problem. Same went for the ITF where I was getting hit regularly with 85% defenses. If having 45% defense (capped) means anyone cimoran can hit without issue then what's the point of SR on the ITF at all? The toggles are effectively pointless.

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I'm having trouble believing you. Why? Because my main hero side is claw/sr and I take her into cimoran regularly. She doesn't have soft capped defenses. And yet enemies miss her pretty freaking often. Only one enemy in the game I've seen can hit through Elude reliably. Heck, even fighting an AV if you hit 45% defense that AV now has a ... 7.5 percent chance to hit you. Defense isn't broken. I'm wondering how you think you get hit so freaking often anyway. Some fun numbers you may (but probably wont) find interesting.

For a brute an unslotted SR gets 19.51% defense. That's UNSLOTTED mind you. with 3 even level SO's that goes up to 31.216% defense. That's very close to the soft cap of defense, and will prevent most attacks from coming anywhere close to hitting you.

Outside of a few rare enemy types every critter has 50% to-hit. That includes AV's. So subtract your defense from 50% to determine their base to-hit, THEN multiply for accuracy. AV's have a 1.75 accuracy modifier. So what does that mean an AV's chance to hit non-capped SR is? This is just an SR with even level SO's, not using elude or outside buffs mind you.

The final chance to hit is 32.872 from an AV. So your avoiding more then half the AV's attacks. Hit elude, and the AV will only hit 7.5% of the time. Or soft cap defense via IO set bonuses and team mates and the AV only hits 7.5% of the time. This is the lowest chance an AV can have to hit someone. Those minions your worried about? They have a lower chance to hit soft capped defense.

Think about the implications for a moment. I'll tell you something else about the power of soft capped defense. You know the Eden trial hero side? You know how the crystal titan has an aoe attack which one shots anyone unless they have the buff from eating an ambrosia insp? I did that trial with a claw/sr scrapper. I kept giving all the ambrosia insps I got to team mates. I never got hit by that insta death aoe. In fact the AV never hit me at all, and he kept trying.

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What gives? Has Super Reflexes been completely and utterly nerfed or what?

I've achieved close to 200% defense on SFs or on ITFs, etc, and it means nothing. I remember when Defense used to actually keep you alive, and now I might as well run toggless for all the good the endurance cost does me.

I implore the devs...please fix Defense. As it stands right now my SR Brute is almost utterly worthless. There are so many enemy groups that have accuracy enough that they can hit me right through my toggles. SR should have the same level of survivability as any other secondary brute set, and it simply does not. Either up the level of resist that gets afforded by the innate defense sets, or stop giving such ridiculous accuracy bonuses to enemies which turn our brutes into one-shotable nobodies.

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There's only one enemy in the game PvE wise that I'm aware of that completely negates defense. That's those freaking eyeball things in the shadow shard. In that case, sure turn off your toggles. I wouldn't though. You need them to prevent the eyeballs from hitting 95% of the time. 65% hit rate is quite enough thank you very much.

Oh, and don't try my AE arc then. It's called Rise of the Poisoned Fist, published by @Poison Bloom. The AV/EB at the end is pretty much my villain main (ninja/poison mastermind) and WILL shut down your defense completely. /poison shuts down defense not by debuffing defense, but by nuking your ability to buff defense to begin with. This bypasses def debuff resistance rather well I find.

VEATs have some really freaking nice things. A damaging form of poison gas arrow (grenade in this case), an aoe imobilize+recharge debuff, good aoe damage (crab spider), and discounted end cost leadership that can be stacked with the leadership power pool if desired? Sign me up!

That said, spiders have it rough until the auto respec at 24. With SO's in both their baked in maneuvers and defensive training they have 25% defense to ranged, and 15% defense to everything else. They also have no def debuff resistance, so their prone to cascading defense failure. Especially against longbow.

Spiders also have only one really useful aoe damage dealer that they get at low enough levels to really help out for the grind to 24. Beyond that, they get a couple melee attacks, a couple single target attacks... Wolf spiders are rather underwhelming. Since so many things love charging into melee or using aoe's, they get ripped to shreds often for the first 23 levels. That's where their defenses are thinnest.

Wolf spiders are still fun, but I'd suggest staying on the first difficulty. They have trouble with many bosses pre-24.

Widows though... Man oh man oh man are they good. Same defense issues, but they actually kill things faster so it's less of an issue.

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I did a full rundown on my Human/Dwarf here, complete with a mids link for the build.

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Not sure if I agree with the guide in part. The fitness pool, especially for tri form is kind of pointless. The powers don't carry over to forms as I recall, so if you spend most of the time in dwarf, you spend most of the time without Stamina.

Actually, with stygian circle the fitness pool is kind of redundant. You don't care about regen and recovery, just killing things fast so you can heal off corpses.

I have my human form macros set up to turn on the smash/lethal resistance shield. That way I take less damage during my TP attack. Only flaw in the strategy is when something lands a hold or stun on me while in dwarf. I never notice the icon, so go back to human form pre-mezzed. It's a very fun tactic.

I either cause the entire team to go "WTF?!" after I wipe out an 8 man spawn, or I die horribly. Either way the battle (for me) is over in seconds.

My warshade's search comment?

"You know what this team needs? More aggro! That's right, warshade and loving it!"

Leadership helps, true. But honestly I didn't notice much difference with Poison Bloom between with and without. Now, my thug/ta should end up with tactics in at least one build. Not sure when I'll squeeze it in though. Between stamina (TA is very active) and a travel power, I didn't get super jump finally till level 30.

No, it comes from the fact devs have stated over and over it's just defensive+follow. Unless it was patched specificly to allow any defensive except attack, goto and stay giving bodyguard isn't intended. The patch notes for Bodyguard specified it had to be defensive+follow, and at the time my accidental testing verified that. If I had pets in defensive goto, and they were in range I was still taking full damage.

And you do bring up a good point about the default simple commands. That's why I dragged the advanced commands into my power tray. More control over what my pets do.

yea, I know. Crabs solo pretty well. It's just the struggle to reach 24 with all those dang longbow missions shutting down your (admittedly crappy) defenses.

I suppose. Heh rads and darks as I recall got really really ticked off when AV's started massivly resisting to-hit debuffs.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually do those tests while doing missions in the distant past? Things kept throwing greek fire at me, or my pets would draw ALL the agro the instant I try getting stuff to hit me.

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I have never played it but numbers wise it looks like a great set, two AoE res debuffs looks sexy for teams.

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Acid Arrow is only a 7ft Targeted AoE, but if stuff is crawling around a corner due to Glue Arrow it's more than capable of hitting multiples. Other than that, good for bosses. Personally I just want Ice Arrow to sync up with the actual arrow and maybe the Poison Gas Arrow have a more substantial debuff, maybe even Flash Arrow having a bit of a debuff to it too, though then I'd have to drop Slug....

All that aside, it's a little less effective than it looks. It looks like, "Oh dood, -Damage, -ToHit, and all that -Res?! I'M IN!" So long as you don't realize the -Dam is less than half what a /Traps user can do, and only ~20% larger -Dmg than a /Rad can do (If you don't count the mitigation in -ToHit is like 1/5 what Rad can do).

[/ QUOTE ]Flash Arrow actually gives about the same -ToHit on an AV that Rad can do, because Flash Arrow's is unresistable.

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And that can be enhanced by Power Boost too...correct? PB'd, it'd be pretty sweet.

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Not really. Against an AV, 5% to-hit debuff is still rather underwhelming. I think that's what it slots out as. Can't remember. I know it's extremely low. Stacks well with thug enforcers though Every little bit of chance to hit reduction helps them.

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You just won't need hasten. Quickness will be hasten enough for you.

And I'd be taking the antimez toggle the instant it shows up - 10, right? It's been a while since I played my SR. Not a breath later. Not sure about the 3 slots in it, either - my MA/SR had just two rech slots, and I don't recall any issue with a gap in protection.

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Practiced Brawler is a click, not a toggle. I'd put the second slot in it asap though.

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Question about this....does bodyguard mode ever suppress? I was in a bank mission yesterday and got held/stunned; it seemed like when I was I was taking the brunt of the damage, even though I thought I was in Def/Follow mode. My minions still seemed relatively healthy. Or was it just that my share of the burst damage was that large?

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If a pet is in defensive follow, it's in body guard. No that doesn't suppress. However if it's in attack, goto, or stay mode it's no longer a bodyguard.

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Think this is wrong, pretty sure BG mode is activee as long as pets are in defrnsive and within range. The GOTO that comes free with MM is GOTO AGGRESSIVE.. simply make your own GOTO DEFENSIVE, do not send them to far and they will still split your damage.

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They would have had to change it to be other then just defensive follow. Here, I'll log into Poison Bloom and test once again


The test will be done in four parts. I'll use a custom tab with damage taken being shown, and erase it after each test. The top item will be the test number. I'll try getting the same enemy type hitting me first each time. This will be on challenge level 1 at level 50

Step One: take damage with pets in passive mode for a control number.

Result: 68.02 damage

Step Two: take damage with pet in defensive goto

Result: 25.09 damage

Step Three: take damage in defensive stay

Results: Haven't done this one yet, the mission threw an EB at me, not a good way to test these things...

Step Four: take damage in defensive follow

Result: 16.73 damage

Ok, I'm big enough to admit being wrong. It use to be just defensive follow, and I'm not sure when they changed it. I try keeping up on the patch notes, and never saw anything about it.

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The set is good, but sometimes I wonder where all that balance is when the set with redraw has such weak debuffs as well as no reactive mitigation. And I don't think it's a case of TA being the balanced set.

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Hmmm so does anyone know what brings it into balence with the other buff/debuff sets?

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I know! I know! A good mix of debuffs, PLUS it also does extreme damage.

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Again, only if you can ignite the Oil Slick.

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Not a problem. I got a pyromaniac with me all the time

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nova offers... what, exactly?

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The most damage.

[/ QUOTE ]Not distributed in a significant enough way to give a damn.

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In the situations where you're fighting a single target for long time periods, Nova trumps human form. Once the Essences drop and you've got only one mob to Mire off of, even though the Human form is still fun, cool looking, and relatively viable at that point... Nova is more efficient.

This, among some other situations that I might be able to list if I wasn't sneaking on here at work, sure makes ME give a damn... but people are different. Totally fair opinion you've got there.

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And don't forget my favorite tactic tri-form warshade gives you.

Step one: Transform into a black dwarf
Step two: teleport into the middle of a large group
Step three: black dwarf mire
Step four: transform back to human
Step five: mire
Step six: Jump back out of spawn while transforming to nova
Step seven: DESTROY!
Step eight: stygian circle to recover your lost stamina/health now that the majority or all of the enemy group is dead.

This takes just a few short seconds. And when you pull it off 8 man teams have to pick their jaws up off the floor.

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Can't forget you also get mez protection in Black Dwarf.

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This is of particular importance. Toggling on Dwarf form acts as a sort of Break Free due to the form's inherent mez protection. Even if you don't slot the powers it grants you, this effect will drastically improve your performance.

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Tell me about it. This here is how I've survived many a freak tank with twin hammer arms.

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A solo VEAT is stronger than a solo Kheld.

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I think I have to disagree here. I find my warshade does better solo then my wolf spider. At level 20 my warshade had become almost unstoppable solo, and quantum guns stopped bothering me unless I failed to spot it first.

At level 20 my wolf spider feels very squishy. I have lowish defense to melee, and everything likes to run up and smack me in melee. Even the guys with bows. And my ranged defense keeps getting trivialized by the FREQUENT longbow missions.

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Well, teamed-up on an 8-man team (not an All-Kheldian team), I've always felt extremely powerful, even before I13 actually.

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Definitely! Without question! I love my little purple killer and his fluffy little brothers.

But to go so far as saying that the Khelds are the most powerful AT while teamed is quite a reach... especially with such a questionable term like "powerful" in reference to a MMO character.

Now... the statement about not being much better than Defenders?? I think we ALL can agree someone was on crack when they said that junk.

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I'd say the two canidates for "most powerful 8 man team" are 8 thug/any-mix-of-secondary masterminds or 8 VEATs qualify as THE most powerful 8 man teams, with all controller/defender teams also ranking up there. 8 man scrapper teams though... Mmmm, blender.

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What's the concept behind Laser Beam Eyes? You have such complete control of your body that your eyes now shoot lasers?

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My concept? Well Madam Enigma is a logical outgrowth of an old Heroes Unlimited character. I liked the look of claws so didn't do the true character (katana wielding hyper agile person with laser vision).

Why hasten? Claws doesn't really benefit much from it. Even the longest recharges aren't that long. The only thing it'd really help with is Elude's recharge. And Elude is recharged more then often enough. It's not needed 90% of the time (assuming you didn't soft cap defense). If you soft cap defense, it's just giving debuff protection anyway. Plus Elude boosts recharge rates to begin with. If you need elude, your already attacking faster.

Then there's quickness. Right there your boosting recharge rates.

Superspeed? Not really needed. Three slotting swift, sprint, and quickness for run speed puts you at about 48 mph. By comparison an unslotted superspeed with unslotted swift and quickness is 74.45 mph. Sure it's faster, but do you really need that much extra speed? Many I know have control issues at that rate of movement.