Nihilii
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:As I sort of implied above, I run TF commander solo with many characters and just use whatever build I have at the time (sometimes before having expensive set IOs). Remember all you have to do for most of the TF is to be able to run missions on +0/x2, and for the end AV you (well, *I*) just pop insps as needed.
I'm curious, for those who''ve done it, did you create a second build with just frankenslotting? -
Level 20 AVs are actually much easier to kill than level 50s, as they have much lower HP and hence regen (whereas your damage doesn't scale down as much). Most AVs of any level are trivial for any combination and any AT if you're willing to use inspirations or/and temp powers, anyway.
The biggest challenge would be to make a build that *wouldn't* be able to do it. I honestly don't think that's possible. -
As you're talking Shield, it's important to consider Shield works much better on scrappers than brutes due to the way the ATs and the set are designed.
With that in mind, I'd go with BS being much stronger in ST damage, a bit stronger in AOE damage, slightly better in end efficiency. The only spot where WM wins is secondary effects, having a stun on its hardest hitter, a KD on its 10 target cone. -
WW is definitely the way to go, although man is it painful since the new interface.
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Quote:Again, I doubt any SO SS/SD/Mu brute is going to reach IO SD/SS/Blaze tanker damage, to use the most AoE oriented epics for each archetype.
If you stick with the same primary/secondary though, i don't think an IOed tanker can reach the SOed brute damage.
For that matter, while the difference wouldn't be as large, I doubt SO brutes can deal IO tanker damage for many builds as well, endurance management on SOs is a PITA without specific powers (/elec or /nrj), the lack of recharge slotting severely hurts damage over time, and SO mitigation isn't so hot (being dead, nobody deals more than 0 DPS). -
Quote:I'd question that. Some IOed tankers can reach 140, 150, 160, 170 ST DPS. AoE output isn't bad either although harder to objectively quantify (i.e., 2x Rage Footstomp + Fireball). I'd argue the damage output a IOed out SD/SS/Fire tanker can reach is most likely higher than what most, if not all SO brutes will ever be able to.
But IOed tanker won't do as much damage as an SOed brute. -
Stone mallets kill stone melee/earth manip for me, they're just too good to pass up and yet the look kills any character concept I might want to play.
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You're right, solo is the way to go ; even for Xp unless you're very low level and have a friend willing to help. Spamming insps go a long way towards making any speed difference meaningless once you're past level 25 or so, as long as you focus on AoEs.
That said, teaming with others can help you to not get bored within ten minutes.
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ToF base stats : 1.32s cast, 8s rech, -11.25 tohit for 20s.
At the recharge cap (+400%), that's one ToF every (1.32 + 1.6) = 2.92s, for a total stack of 20 / 2.92 = 6.84 ToFs. Has to be rounded down to 6.
Slotted up, each ToF does -(11.25 * 1.55) = -17.44 tohit.
With AV resistance to debuffs (85%), assuming level 50 characters fighting a level 50 AV, we're looking at 6 * -17.44 * 0.15 = 15.7% debuff.
Suffice to say... That's a heavily skewed scenario towards the scrapper (recharge cap isn't attainable without lots of external buffs), and yet the debuff is still barely better than what a single luck insp would give you. You'd have to have significant other debuffs or defense buffs for the AV to be reduced to whiff status. It's really not worth it for a DM character to gut his DPS for such a tiny debuff. -
Take it and get rid of Maneuvers and Assault until later.
It's the defining power of Dark Armor, without it you're more or less just a weaker version of Fire Armor. -
That's pretty impressive, considering the amount of lag a full blaster team must have in an ITF. Congrats !
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ML's tohit isn't so big, sure you also have FU but FU has to hit first, and TT:L also covers your whole team. Smoke nade, Psy scream and Elude are all worst choices than TT:L imho.
Poison Dart and Mental Blast are bad powers for DPS, if you want just one Poison Dart is better (slightly more damage, slightly faster, minor -regen). I'd just skip both and pick Swipe myself, it's much stronger than either. That said, it's not ranged so if you want a ranged option, go with Poison Dart.
Eviscerate (which you haven't listed, so I assume you plan to get it) is a rather weak power in my opinion, sure it's a cone but the range is minor and the damage nothing to write home about. Spin and Dart Burst already recharge so fast you'll have your hands full with that and don't need to bother with Eviscerate.
As for the optimal attack chain, I believe it's Follow Up - Lunge - Strike - Swipe. Slash isn't a bad power, but it's impratical to fit in (efficient Widow chains rely on FU stacking as much as possible). For regular play, as you guessed Slash is a nice opener out of hidden status.
Everything in my post is mostly just optimisations and don't fall into the "big mistakes" category, you could do just fine regardless. -
A character that can't benefit from either +speed, +recharge, +recovery or all three is more often an indication of not pushing the envelope hard enough than of having a good build, in my experience.
I can empathise with it being a tedious buff to keep up for some players and I think not using it 100% of the time because one feels it is tedious is a valid reason. However, to try to legitimise restraint in using it by claiming it's not as good as it really is is rather silly considering the overwhelming amount of evidence that shows otherwise. -
Ultimo and Johnny Butane together, now that's a sight to behold. The ultimate trolling combo.
I wonder which one gets to be the sidekick though, as both of them have always not-so-subtly implied they wanted their characters to be Superman while everyone else should be Aquaman. -
Anyone who would ask me to ask and say thanks for anything (SB or anything else) is someone I'm not really interested in teaming with.
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I'd recommend Claws/Invul. The aggro aura is extremely strong and, as long as you're the first to jump in and don't use Shockwave, you're going to hold most of the aggro just fine (and there's always Focus for that occasional out of range bad guy).
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If it's balanced before being ported, there'd be no reason to argue. If it's ported as is, I know personally I'll be too busy playing it to post about it.
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Argue all you want, give me a direct port of SS. Once again : I'm completely fine with that.
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Quote:oÔ
(I know it has been speculatively theorized as more or less in line with other scrapper primaries)
At level 50
Disregarding secondaries
Ignoring crits (with the same crit rate on everything it wouldn't add anything)
Assuming +100% damage from enhancements/set bonuses
Averaging BU as +30% damage for sets with BU
Scrapper Footstomp with perma double-stacked Rage : 355 damage in a 15 feet radius, with a 80% chance to knockdown.
Scrapper FSC with averaged Build Up : 255 damage in a 10 feet radius.
Scrapper Spin with 2x FU : 272 damage in a 8 feet radius.
Scrapper Spine Burst with averaged BU : 163 damage in a 15 feet radius, slight slow.
Scrapper KO blow with 2x Rage : 890 damage at a 13 feet range, with a guaranteed 12s mag3 hold and knockup.
Scrapper Midnight Grasp with saturated SD : 604 damage with a 18s immobilize.
Scrapper Greater Fire Sword with averaged BU : 405 damage.
Scrapper Headsplitter with averaged BU : 374 damage, 60% chance to knockdown, small defense debuff.
Average tohit
Doublestacked Rage : +64%
DM with saturated SD : +30% (+48% if slotted for tohit, but SD needs to hit)
DB/Claws with 2x FU : +20% (+32% if slotted for tohit, but FU and BF need to hit and are attacks, hence are better with damage)
Other primaries : +32% while BU is up, a third of the time.
Yes, that's looking at specific numbers in a vacuum, but if KO blow dealing more than twice as much damage as other typical scrapper T9s or Footstomp dealing more than twice as much damage (considering the radius), and for both powers also offering superior mitigation than the scrapper counterpart, strikes you as "in line with other scrapper primaries" then by the same token, FF or emp defender damage is "in line with scrapper primaries".
SS is already quite good (I would argue too good) on brutes, and this is an AT with lower damage buff mods that also get proportionally less from damage buffs as their base damage is balanced around Fury giving them a much higher average damage % than other ATs.
Sure, people will point out Rage has a crash, that the rest of the set isn't stellar (although it isn't anywhere near as bad as people want to make you believe) and so on. Me, I'll stick with the same conclusion in any SS scrapper discussion : port the set with the same values, even with no crits, and I'll instantly roll a SS/SD scrapper and, while obliterating everything standing in my way, proceed to laugh at everyone who thought it was balanced. My most played character right now is a FM/SD, I certainly don't mind being overpowered and I certainly wouldn't mind the upgrade SS/SD would be. -
On the whole, it's very underrated, much like any set with endurance tools, or that heavily relies on its T9 tends to be underrated (and EA does both at the same time !).
There's only three flaws with EA, the lack of taunt aura, the lack of psi defense, and one of your defense powers completely ruining your costume (Energy Cloak).
Other than that, you're looking at a set easy to softcap, that can bump its HP to the HP cap (which is ~3200 on brutes) while also having fantastic defense even against high tohitbuffed foes half of the time, along with endless endurance all the time. There's also a small heal in the set.
That being said, it's not such a good set for stalkers, and the endurance management might become less useful once GR hits, if brutes get access to CP. Good news is, between player perception and that, the set might get buffed into godliness somewhere down the road. -
This trolling thing would be more entertaining if we didn't see the exact same words uttered a thousand times before. If people have to be unimaginative copycats, why not just stick to "I farted ! hurrr hurrr" ?
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Quote:*nods*
I think you should judge character performance based on the level where you like to play them.
Personally, the trip to 50 takes me at the very most 60 hours, while I have level 50 characters with 300+ played hours. Most of that playtime is at level 50 too, doing level 50 missions, arcs or TFs.
I don't see many people doing challenging stuff on low level content (unless it's while leveling), so it doesn't really make sense to me to optimize for low levels at the expense of high levels. I am careful when choosing my powers so the order is optimal for exemplaring, but beyond that, meh. A strong level 50 build will be good while exemplared as well. -
Quote:If I'm looking at numbers correctly, it certainly seems so (let's be honest here, the endurance costs in either case are so low I don't really look for it).
Plus, over time don't PB and AD work out to less end/sec than the mez protection toggles like Unyielding/Integration/etc?
10.4 end every 120 sec = 0.09 eps
Mez protection toggles are usually about 0.2 eps
So that's twice lower. Of course, it's back to about the same thing if you double-stack AD for DDR. Let's call that a wash.
Other than that, SD has two "main" toggles and one optional one with standard costs, one T9 that is equivalent to 0 (you recover 60 end in total during these two minutes, then lose 60 end at the crash), but once you add CP and alternate with it it's actually a bonus.
Then there's AaO, which is an endurance buff through damage buffing (more damage = less hits needed to kill). It costs 0.2 per second, so 0.15 with one end red, and gives from 20% to 80% damage. With one target that's 133% damage per endurance, with ten targets that's 533% damage per endurance. Now personally, on IOed out builds while attacking I use about 2 to 3 end per second, with ~200% damage slotted. Thats 66% to 100% damage per endurance. So AaO, even with just one target in range, is definitely helping your endurance.
SD doesn't have end mitigation tools, that is true ; but to claim it's endurance heavy is ridiculous. It has better end efficiency than SR, DA, Invul, Nin and Stone. It has worse end efficiency than Ice, Fire, Elec, Energy, WP, Regen. In my book that makes it middle of the pack. Otherwise you can just call half of the defensive powersets "endurance heavy" and then the expression is meaningless. -
AaO is about twice as effective (relatively speaking) on a scrapper, and Shield Charge is about 50% stronger.
SD doesn't hit any scrapper cap on resistances and doesn't heavily relies on regen, so the slightly bigger base HP brutes get doesn't make a big difference.
That said, it still remains one of the strongest if not the strongest secondary available to brutes, so you can't go wrong with it, especially if paired with SS. -
Quote:*bangs head against desk*
SD is rather end heavy