Nihilii

Boo lolPVPer making new account to troll

you need to start typing in lowercase because it's cooler

Yes.

TBH I'm pretty sure I could strip all the IOs out of the character and do all the non-DPS locked things I can do with it now, just at a slower pace (most likely still faster than my other IOed out incarnates meleers). Or, in other words, I don't really buy the "SS/fire / shield scrappers / fire/kin controllers are bad with SOs / while leveling" because this has never been my experience while doing just that, whereas it has been my experience that there are far, far worse combos even IOed out. Energy/dev blaster for example.

... and I suppose I have nobody but myself to blame for it.

Before incarnates, SS/Fire was a good combo, somewhat balanced as it could in theory do very impressive damage output but realistically you weren't ever going to run an attack chain with Gloom at full speed without running out of end.

Then came the Alpha Slot, level shift, and of course Cardiac. 300 pylon DPS became the norm (which means ~330 real DPS), and that's all-the-time DPS as opposed to specific situations (if I have 10 foes around me that never die while I fight a lone target i.e. DM/SD, etc.). Not only that, but I always felt the real strengthes of SS/Fire were underrated. Namely, two heavy hitters with KO Blow and Burn animating reasonably fast, which tend to be much more useful than faster animating, smaller damage attacks dealing the same DPA in actual gameplay, as you're not standing still trading punches *all* the time, there is an amount of time (more and more significant as we get more and more powerful) spent moving from mob corpse to future mob corpse. Add to that one of these heavy hitters is actually AoE, then throw in another AoE with a gigantic radius by melee standards. I know, I know, people can supposedly hit 10 all the time with the war mace cone, good for them. Personally, I'm lucky to hit 3-4 with a 180° degree cone, and even with Foot Stomp 15' radius I find I'm often not hitting the target cap. Not only that, but most people I play with do about the same or worse as me, so these mythical skilled players who aim perfectly somehow never end up on my teams. I guess I'm cursed.

Aanyway. Then you have a strong ranged attack in Gloom, which is more and more useful as incarnate content proves to be more dynamic than the good old warehouse full of guys punching their fists and doing their best to stand still and get AoEd to death. Against i.e. Apex Battle Maiden, I find my brutes to outdamage my scrappers quite a bit between Gloom and the bigger hits per attacks (making it easier to joust).

Even RotP, which is often considered as a joke, is a staple power for me. Deaths sometimes happen, and the ability to get back into the fight instantly is, again, more and more valuable IMHO as content becomes harder. The lone brute falling down and having to hosp or wait for a rez rather than using RoTP on a small scale PUG lambda against Marauder can all too often be the difference between a team wipe and a ten second setback.

My point being, SS/Fire rocks, alright. And now we get those new slots, and the only real, significant drawback to the combo (lack of defense/DDR) is all but gone with Barrier, while damage output is supercharged with Reactive, and to a lesser extent Lore (for ST) and Judgement (for AoE).

Soloing +4/x8 against malta, longbow, arachnos, vanguard is a sleepwalk, everything dies so ridiculously fast there's barely time to use ST attacks. Sometimes I log onto my other melee characters, play them a bit, realise it takes me longer to take on +0/x8 with them than +4/x8 on my SS/Fire, and give up.

It's admittedly not as sturdy as other secondaries, but then again, where is this extra mitigation really needed, if you use inspirations? Not in +4/x8 solo missions against the toughest factions, barely if at all in minimum-size PUG iTrials, and never in preformed teams, which is the norm, at least on Freedom.

Wah wah wahhhh. Yes I'm whining, I'm ranting, and I don't have a point. I find the whole "SS/Fire/Soul" so completely silly from a concept PoV - attacking by dropping a burn patch on the ground, then throwing skulls, then doing a Popeye punch. Yet the difference is performance is so drastic compared to my other characters, I can't help but play it. Spreadsheet numbers might not show it to be that way, but if you ask me a SS/Fire is worth two other melee characters, assuming same quality of builds/players.

I kind of wish melee characters would get the "dom treatment" for PBAoEs. When the AT got revamped PBAoEs were bumped to 15' in radius. A 8' radius simply isn't realistic in today's super fastpaced game IMHO, and it's kind of sad that you're better off picking Ball Lightning or Dark Oblit than using your primary PBAoE for most combos (save for ambush farming I guess). Then you've got Judgement with what, 40-50 feet radius? It just seems like for most attack powersets you're better off using anything but your primary these days. I sure would feel a lot better about picking anything but SS as a primary if PBAoEs would be bumped to 15' or even just 12'.

So, yeah. As it said in the title, pointless whining, and I don't have a conclusion. I should probably start a blog or something instead of using the forums as my personal soapbox, but all the cool kids use facebook or twitter these days and IT IS CONFUSING. Alright, time for my pills.

No issues, but I tend not to have issues with that sort of stuff. Barrier does seem like it could be problematic to people with sensibilities to that sort of stuff, especially if you customize it. I turned mine orange/yellow and there's a bright, seizure inducing flash when it goes off.

Sold. Thanks!

You nailed it well. I think the damage should be a wash - the widow needs Ageless or Cardiac to attack at full speed, whereas the Claws/SR can pick Musculature and end up even with the Widow in DPS (the widow can of course pick Ageless and Musculature, but then the Claws/SR can pick Rebirth and have much more survivability, etc.).

The widow also has the advantage of being able to go a fair bit above 45% defense without any compromises. Good against tohitbuffs and incarnate content.

It seems I'm not getting a patch from the old launcher, even though there is a new one (using the PlayNC launcher updates normally). Is this just me?

Edit: nevermind, ignore this.

Still got that one for sale, still asking for the same price.

As I've been missing a fair amount of potential buyers due to not being on when they send me a tell and them not being on when I reply back, I thought I should mention this - I'm european, and unlikely to be on after 5pm GMT -6. If you're living in the US, it might be better to schedule a trade via PMs or tells rather than wait to be able to chat live.

Grats!

Greatest irony of the iTrials : at certain hours of the day (non-US times, basically), it can take longer to form a team to launch the damn thing and do it as a league that it would be to just duo/solo it, assuming you could start right away.

8 on the same team multiple times, leading to both kinds of results (no threads table / threads table), save for one occurance when we were 9 due to queue.

Mirroring the experience of others here, I've experienced increased lag in maxsize BAFs. 16 men and lower BAFs are still mostly smooth even during the prisoner part.

Ran more small scale lambdas today, with more of the same players, some with the same characters, playing more or less the same way... No threads table, I believe.

I haven't been able to identify something different or particular in our trials that could have caused the discrepancies with yesterday's runs.

Ranged softcap, 65% S/L res (epic shield + Tough) and green insps were enough for me to farm +4/x8 S/L ambush farms, with bosses on, on my fire/cold controller. She has about 1200hp IIRC.

On a corruptor, I'd go with the same plan - except I'd probably use a temp jetpack to fly slightly over their head (the controller can AoE immobilize stuff forcing them to be at range, I assume more mobs would get to melee and be a threat on a corruptor). Another option would be to go Leviathan for the AoE immobilize, I suppose - it animates slowly, but the lion's share of the damage is done by the reactive procs from your rains and you're bound to have downtime with the only two fast recharging AoEs you have being fire ball and fire breath. The corruptor only gets to about 50% S/L res, so it might be needed to either use both green and orange insps, or get the Rebirth +regen destiny and some orange insps.

The above paragraph being, of course, complete theorycraft. I don't have a fire/cold corruptor.

... Yet.

WASD for moving/strafing and QE for leaning/turning is standard mapping scheme for shooters, so I always use that. Are there really that many other MMOs using WQSE? That seems rather unconvenient. You'd have to move the middle finger back in an uncomfortable way to move backwards, rather than naturally extend it to go forward with the usual WASD.

Ninja Run now doesn't work (greyed out) for me, outside of trials.

Thanks for the information guys. Guess I'll see what support says.

Brutes could earn 3 millions in raw influence from kills per minute before I20. It is in my opinion the best metric, as it evaluates defeat speed and doesn't tie you to a specific build, map, or earning goal. What mission you use, what settings you use should be entirely up to you ; find what works best for your character as to get the best numbers possible.