Nihilii

If by ignorable you mean you can avoid the enemy factions that dish it out, sure ; but when the question is "what is most survivable" without specifications I tend to assume "overall", or as in "any and every situation".

If by ignorable you mean DP + SL + regen + ranged bonuses you're going to get through E/N will do it, then you're simply not raising the rep high enough. Try +4/x8 arachnos, rularuu, longbow, psi clockwork... Even +4/x8 riktis can occasionally give a DM/inv trouble if there's a good combo of mentalists + mesmerits + guardians in a single spawn or two spawns close together with a respectable amount of ments/mesmes.

I honestly don't think a DM/inv without insps/temps/external help of any kind can take on a large level 50 solo +4/x8 kill all arachnos mission without deaths, unless maybe with extensive usage of Energy Torrent, though I'd certainly love to be wrong and watch a video of that being done as I could learn from that player/build.

There's a number of people who gravitate around the perceived best, that's true ; but as things get more and more balanced the disparity between played powersets gets smaller.

Just consider Scrappers, before Shield it was a mix of SR/Regen/WP, with a few Inv, DA and FA here and there. Since Shield was introduced it feels like 1 every 2 scrappers is a Shielder - not claiming this is any accurate but casual glances at what people play ingame tend to be enough to tell trends when done 30, 50, 100 times over different hours/days even if you don't track the data.

I don't disagree with Katie in that it's certainly a valid way to build. Softcapping to E/N would make your tanker exceptionally sturdy.

There is one thing I disagree with in her post however (although I might be assuming she implied something she didn't) : 33% defense, along with 77% resistance, 500% regen (~55hp/s), a fast recharging PBAoE KD in Footstomp and the option to heal yourself for 1500 hp and increase that net regen to ~70hp/s for 2 minutes should you ever get low on HP is enough to take 17 robot bosses pretty much indefinitely against the ITF comp (unless on +4 or something maybe, I have to admit I never did an +3 ITF or above).

I don't disagree with energy softcap being nice to have against debuffs, but Stone also comes with hefty debuffs resistances - ~85% res to end drain in Rooted, ~60% DDR in Granite + Rooted (IIRC). The nice thing about softcap here might be that you could leave Rooted off (and move faster), but personally I find I get more mileage out of turning Rooted on and off as needed (and it's actually not needed that much while in Granite, even if not at the softcap).

So the question is, are the sacrifices you'd make for that mitigation be worth it ? Does your playstyle involve hard enough missions to make the mitigation worth it ?

For me personally it'd be overkill most if not all of the time - the two situations I can see where it'd be great to be softcapped to E/N would be STF GW and LR. Typically this is a team situation and you might have friends buffing you, or you could chomp one purple insp per minute there, afterall that's about the only time where you might have any use for insps.

Just as well it could be said you could go for the greater survivability and use blue insps, but the thing is you'd have end issues pretty much everywhere without external buffs, while the survivability is only useful (again, IMO) in a few specific situations.

I've looked at the latest build you posted in the scrapper forum and was almost about to erase all that post because at first glance it looked like you didn't sacrifice anything while getting to the E/N/F/C softcap, but then I realised... No Mud pots.

Mud Pots is big in lots of aspects, it's great damage per endurance, it's great damage period given enough enemies, especially as it's a toggle that does its thing on top of you attacking, and it's also great for aggro control. It is my firm belief you shouldn't skip it.

That said, if you could fit in Mud Pots and keep everything else the same I think you'd have as perfect as a build as one can make. Seeing as you joined in Oct 2006 you've been here pretty long, maybe the Vet Reward letting you pick a travel power without prerequisites isn't too far ? I don't know much about Vet Rewards but it could be something to keep in mind for the future.

Meanwhile, you could drop either Haymaker or Taunt for Mud Pots. Losing either isn't ideal but the other choices are even worse.

I don't think there's a "best" build between the two, this softcap one (assuming you fit Mud Pots in) is very nice and might not be too end heavy, the earlier one (in the scrapper thread) doesn't have as much mitigation but have more end to keep going and two additional attacks (Punch, and considering you'd have to drop Taunt or Haymaker for the softcap build).

I believe the best way to choose would be to question your playstyle and your preferences. If you routinely do extreme AE missions, STFs or +level ITFs, and like to be completely invincible, the softcap build is probably the way to go. If you'd rather like to pack a punch and don't mind using a purple insp every once in a while, the other build might be better.

Reason I moved the regen tissue and miracle to Health is because fixing the Miracle proc enhanced with Endmod is probably in the works soon or later, and an EndMod in PP by itself isn't so useful, I believe a second slot in CP can provide a bigger help, especially when Hasten is down while you're in Granite. I'm not 100% sure it's actually a smart decision, this is just how I would do it.

What I call suboptimal in that context is having to employ unusual tactics in order to have the same Fury generation rate as other brutes, tactics that result in lowered DPS/aggro control.

Examples of that can be :
- using Brawl, or other quick animating attacks over higher DPA attacks.
- turning OG/CoF off and on - that's animation time another brute could have spent on attacks/aggro.

It's possible with some primaries the difference is low enough that you won't ever notice a lowered Fury rate, without having to do any of the above. In example, if OG is simply the difference between taking 6 seconds to go from 0 to 90 and taking 6.5 seconds to do the same thing, well, yeah, that's not a big deal. For some people maintaining 90 Fury through a whole mission is apparently something they can do with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back. That's great ; but there's other players like me for which 70-75 is a more realistic average, and that 70-75 might drop to say, 60-65 with OG. Now that's a significant difference, although not so large that you'd notice it unless you were actively looking for it or tracking with an external program.

Using my EM/DA again (admittedly an extreme example seeing as EM being, well, EM), I've sometimes (admittedly, in rare occasions) finished fights with 10, that's right ten Fury. Simply because most if not all minions/lieuts were dead and the remaining boss and two minions were perma-stunned, and I lose Fury while animating my big hitters. That situation never happened before OG.

Note I find OG is a fantastic power and one of the main reasons I choose the combo, the mitigation it provides stacked with EM stuns is great. The fact that it actually does hinder my Fury generation to a point where I notice it was something I honestly didn't expect which is why I'm so adamant at pointing out that it can be a concern for some primaries/players.

Dude, you haven't posted anything in this topic before a red name popped up. My money's on you only being here through the dev digest too, I don't really recall that many of your posts in the scrapper forum. Your credibility as a completely neutral bystander interested in contributing to the conversation who happens to genuinely "defend" the devs is hovering around 0.

Personally, I have faith in the devs. Sort of. Maybe "had" now ? Yeah, because no matter how you sugarcoat it, that post of Castle was completely unscientific - picking one example that isn't even true to start with, simply because it's from someone famous, and jumping to conclusions without fact-checking everything.

You can run that post of his through the fanboy glasses all you want - I'll lend you my pair, it served me well during all these months when I thought balance was done carefully and not by some guys doing "fixes" drastically changing powers by a factor of 100% while the main power guy isn't informed ; it's still worrying. I'm not saying Castle is dumb or anything, of course there's much more than Shield he has to worry about, but it's still a worrying mistake because this specific post was wrong on several levels.

It's not like Frosticus was alone in interpretating Castle's post the way he did, so there's either some miscommunication or maybe, just maybe, Castle might have made a mistake in this post (and really the answer to that question was about 4 pages ago - when it's not "omg you're pro-nerf" blocking the discussion, it has to be "omg you're anti-dev"... Sigh.)

Indeed. It seems you are correct in assuming shutting off conversations and spreading misinformation about your favorite OPed sets being weaker than they actually are might really prevent the devs from finding out about the imbalances for a while.

Carry on with your anti-nerf shouting, I guess. Won't stop me from expressing my opinion on balance whenever I feel like it.

oÔ

+80% dam on alts with ~220% average damage "isn't that large" ? That's essentially a 36% damage boost, or the difference between doing 200 DPS and 272 DPS (which is, incidentally, close to the difference Sarrate shows between x/SD and x/x).

Also, I doubt FM/SD can actually reach 300 DPS, and Claws/SR can get to 220ish, so that's giving a little bit too much of importance to a random sentence.

AoEs with a 20' radius, that animate in 0.7s each, hit up to 16 foes and knockdown most of them, while also being in a defense set and stacking with other AoEs from primary/epics.

Edit : had no clue what "scale 0.7" means in ingame numbers so didn't comment, but now that Arcanaville has posted on it... Yes, SC does slightly over 200 base on a level 50 scrapper. If that corresponds to scale 3.2, then even Brutes do much more than scale 1.4 (2*0.7) with unslotted, 0 Fury Shield Charge.

Just making sure you're not comparing SC to, say, a 8 feet PBAoE hitting a max of 10 without any secondary effect. Of course you're not. Please tell me you're not.

Seriously though. I'm scared now. Not because of nerfs, but rather because I'm getting the feeling the power guru doesn't truly understand the monster he created.

You're either very stupid or I am very smart*, but in the context of his post I thought it was pretty obvious he meant the normal attacks and not the level 32 power.

* More likely neither of these two options are true, rather you didn't read his post fully and don't want to back down now thanks to petty internet forum ego.

Yeah, 95% (cap) is a bit low.

Anyway. Playing alts heavily relying on defense as always, nothing different than usual.

As for the post just above, most obvious thing popping to my mind is Rommie hitting with Soul Drain. It's easy to almost never run into that situation on teams because he dies so fast, but it still happens every once in a while.