Nihilii

I'm happy with my DB/inv performance while farming, using the Sweeping/Sweep combo.

It's good for AV soloing - but not so great as DM or FM would be.

On the other hand, being able to slot 2 -res procs as compared to none for these other two primaries can make a bigger difference teamed, especially if your team is light on debuffs.

Overall, I'd go FM/inv for the reasons BrokenPrey listed. An attack chain that does over 200 DPS and doesn't require much recharge, and Fire Sword Circle for AoE on top of that.

I believe Mids might be considering the Force Feedback proc to be always on, thus giving you an additional 100% recharge you don't have.

As for casts time, you have to consider server ticks (but this actually helps you as animation times will be longer, making recharge requirements lower).

Adjusted cast times :
BF : 1.452
AS : 1.188
VS : 2.64
SS : 1.452

Total chain time : 6.732

Which means BF and SS have to recharge in (6.732 - 1.452) = 5.28 seconds, which requires 12 / 5.28 = 228% recharge in BF (or +128%).

You could go with 5 Crushing Impact (all but the Dam/End) and 1 common rech in BF. That would give you 97% recharge from slotting and an additional 5% set bonus, making it enough with your additional 27.5% global recharge.


(As for my build, I discovered Mids after I hit level 50, so the build in the first post is just something I made quick for forum purposes, ignoring power order).

Edit : I started typing this during an ITF, and BrokenPrey beat me to the punch.

At a quick glance, I don't think you have enough recharge (data chunk would make it easier to look, though ). You seem to have about 35% recharge in BF and 30% global recharge, but you need more than that, about +130% rech between slotting and global recharge.

The Force Feedback proc in Vengeful Slice isn't worth it in my opinion. It has a small chance to go off and you're only going to hit one enemy at a time with it ; you can't rely on a random proc to keep your attack chain going at all times, so at best you'd get DP and Aid Self up a little bit faster... and that's about it.

I don't like boring missions, but I'm not very fond of people who make new topics about stuff they already said earlier either.

Blaster Force Mastery.

Situations where my damage is capped on my scrapper are few and far between. If I had to pull a random number out of my [censored], I'd say it's far less than 1% of the time I spend teaming.

I've never seen the damage cap on my brutes, except when I was popping a bunch of reds ; and I've got a SS brute, which can doublestack Rage for +160% damage.

Poor choice of words (curse you, english language !) : I meant I already soloed him tonight.

I didn't make a video, though. First, I did cheat by using weak lieutenants (wolves) instead of arachnos. My damage was barely above his regen and I didn't feel like trying a bunch of times, especially as I ran like a little girl everytime he hit me with his end drain attack - by the way, Shield Charge is great as an escape power.

The fight took over 50 minutes.

He's strong. So strong that, in fact, I respeced out of Tough/Weave to pick Taunt, Maneuvers and Tactics... and I honestly can't tell the difference in survivability.

DPS is around 160-170 with maxed out AaO and SD. HP at ~3K, SL healing for almost 400 per use, DDR at 95% with 2x Active Defense slotted with HOs, Battle Agility and Grant Cover. Defense is almost as easy to softcap as on a SR scrapper, leaving plenty of room for other stuff. The survivability is so high you can often use lieutenants to fuel AaO and SD for AV fights, and damage being lower than a scrapper these lieuts will stay alive.

Which is why I'm not so happy with him. I play for half an hour, realise how much better he's than my scrapper for most things, groan and log out in disgust.

On another note, my Shield/DM tanker could solo LR too.

...

While my DB/inv scrapper can't even damage him.

...

I'll spare you the whining and sigh silently.

It depends of the powersets.

Invul, ELA, EA, Stone and FA are sets I'd rather play as a brute. A 90% resist cap and higher HP cap makes a big difference there. Fire Melee as well, as Brute GFS is stronger and, as BillZ pointed out, DoTs are affected by Fury but not by crits.

DB, DM, Shield, SS (if it gets proliferated) and Claws are sets I'd rather play as a scrapper. Higher buff mods and all that.

Unlike some people, I'm not able to keep 90% fury all the time, and I frequently dip below 50% (at least once in an average newspaper mission, for example), so my scrappers tend to do better damage than my brutes. So unless the secondary I choose can go over 2600hp/75%res, I'll always pick a scrapper over a brute.

All in all, Going Rogue is probably not going to change anything for me.

I disagree, it's not too hard to build a DM/Shield with all that. If you add other restrictions like a budget limit or specific powers, then yes it'll become harder.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but by level 50 characters without the Fitness pool (and Health) nor any healing/regen power of their own nor any IO increasing regen nor any HP accolade are the exception, not the norm. In my opinion, using base HP regen with base HP at 50 is a flawed basis.

My first and only experience with the RSF was on a PuG with 2 friends. Out of the 8, 3 characters were below level 50. Only 2 players on the team had done the RSF before. We had one kin, but no rad, stone brute or mind dom. We didn't use temp powers or pulling. We did wipe twice on the Freedom Phalanx, but finally beat it in 2 hours. Fun, but not too hard.

On the other hand, I've always found the STF to be harder than that. A towered-up Lord Recluse can dispatch most characters in one or two hits, and he can hit well above the softcap. On a few occasions I've been on teams where it took us more than 2 hours to get it done, because we had trouble tanking him. Ghost Widow can also be tricky on teams with tons of melee users without defense.

Most of my teams for TFs tend to be PuGs I build, and I don't do cookie-cutter teams (which, for me, means I invite whoever says "yes"). Both the STF and the RSF are challenging but fun. Dumbing down either of them would be a bad change in my opinion.

Still, one of these sell every one or two days at level 50 for 100m.

You'd have to really want to slot this now on a level 31-46 toon to spend 250% of the going price.

Against me he's always using his ranged attacks, while the Blue Tower is up.

You've used an invul scrapper as well, so I've got no clue what the difference might be. It could be because I'm too slow to engage, making him see me from far away and locking into ranged mode.

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What I find really interesting about that video is how often Recluse actually uses his energy attacks while fighting you. I've fought him soo many times on the STF and he rarely ever uses them in melee with me.

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Hmm, what makes you think cause this behavior ? STF Recluse keeps using his energy attacks against me. Usually, all I do is stand still in melee and spam Aid Self, using phases as needed.

Congrats ! He is a tough one.



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If you have ever fought him with serious intent you know what his biggest hurdle is.

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Yeah, his 50% res to lethal...

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He has an attack that shuts off your recovery totally. A few seconds after it lands your toggles drop, your mitigation tanks and your dead.

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... Oh. Pssch, silly scrappers without end drain protection !

(Hey, come on, one of the few things Invul does better, I couldn't let this pass. )

As for his -recovery move, it's definitely a normal attack with a tohitcheck. He uses it pretty often. On some occasions, I've had 2 of these stacked on me (and, yeah, at that point my end is gone too ).

My chain is BF > AS > VS > SS, that is correct.

I feel the build has enough AoE damage for what I like to do, although I have recently made a second build focused on Sweep for AoE damage, cycling Sweeping Strike -> Sweep.

It is great for AE farming, but not practical in normal gameplay in my opinion. However, it's worth noting I'm not great at lining up cones, so YMMV.

I do this as well. Also, between identical DPA attacks I pick the one with the quickest animation, as the DPA will be higher with procs.

DB :

Low recharge chain

BF -> Attack Vitals (AS, VS, SS)
+127% recharge in BF


Medium recharge chain

Empower (NS, AS, BF) -> SS
+213% recharge in BF

Per my testing, the Empower combo doesn't stack properly, unless you wait for about a second, decreasing DPS. Other people have reported it works for them, although I haven't seen videos. You'll have to choose if you want to consider one or two empower buffs for your chain.


High recharge chain

BF AS SS AS
+313% recharge in AS, but becomes more efficient than the other chains before that point. I'm too lazy to calculate it, though, and procs play a big part in that so this might be a chain you're not interested into.

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With only around 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 influence/infamy (depending on market conditions), you could easily reach soft cap defense.

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With about 10 millions infamy, you can reach the defense softcap on a SR. CJ, Weave, all toggles, all passives and a Steadfast +3% def will do it.

Edit : forgot a Gaussian set in BU, too.

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it is part of the specification for all MA projects that they are accessible to groups of all sizes

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That is indeed true.

On the other hand, it's not part of the specification for all AE projects that they should be completable by anyone on any group size using any AT at any level.

Everyone can start it, not everyone can complete it. Sounds fine to me, and I wish the devs would apply that model to all TFs/trials.

US airports.

Yeah, ok, you're going to tell me this is a US game, and I'll have to agree.

Of course, those of us who aren't being retarded, ever, are punished because other people are being retarded.

Not a big punishment, mind you, and I fully understand NCSoft need to do this to cover their [censored] and not have to deal with "omg help I got my acc hacked!!!" a hundred times a day. It's the spirit of the thing I don't like ; I don't mind warnings, but being restricted because of the stupidity of others always irks me.

Some other games have made a "we don't restore hacked accounts" policy and it works well for them. I'd rather see the same thing for this game, but in the end, it's not a big deal (... except when the login server is down).

Are you monitoring your defense during the fight ? Shadowhunter has a good defense debuff he likes to use a lot (the earth immob).