Nihilii

Lewis sums it up well (although it should be mentioned fire/kins can get mez protection with IW and perma it with IOs, psi tornado being a good AoE as well).

The thing with fire/kin is it's really a tremendous powerhouse, so even if you play it poorly like 99% of the fire/kin players out there, you're still going to have relatively good results. That's the appeal for most people, I think.

It's also fast as soon as level 1 and can make an efficient ST damage specialist/AV soloer while not compromising AoE power if you actually pick and slot RoF for damage, but there's like 1 in 1 million who actually gets that.

+4/x8 (gonna assume bosses enabled, as this is the scrapper forum and DM is more of a ST powerhouse anyway) might be rough for DM/regen unless you stick to a few select factions or are willing to use insps, as there's going to be lots of burst damage and eventual def debuffs flying around, and with SM as your sole AoE stuff isn't going to die fast. I think you might get better mileage out of Energy Torrent rather than Box/Tough/Weave, fast recharging, souldrain-buffed AoE damage KD will do a lot for both your survivability and your DPS. That said, the playstyle it forces can be tedious (gotta jump back and forth to maximize the cone), so it's something to try on Test server first.

ElM by itself always underwhelmed me. The stalker version for the effects Kioshi mentioned is interesting, so is pairing with Shield for LR + SC (and AaO boosting the whole thing), but other than that it just seems to be a set that tries to be so many things and ultimately fails at doing anything well ; kind of like an AoE martial arts.

That isn't to say ElM or MA aren't perfectly playable, but there's always a better option.

Oh wow, somehow I didn't realise the nerf was that big. Gonna have to move a few slots (especially for typed def, 0.625% isn't worth it imho).

It affects my Mids builds more than my actual toons though, since I tend to not actually fully IO out ingame and rely on lucks instead, heh.

I haven't checked if you're at the softcap or not, but if you're not I'd consider switching the Oblit set in Tstrike for 5 pieces of whatever and a force feedback chance for +rech proc. As this is a multi-target power, it procs often, and elec/elec is a combo that really gets a lot from recharge bonuses.

The end% in PSink won't do you much good, that's a slot you could better use somewhere else (a kismet +6tohit in CJ for example ? can never have too much tohit unless you're playing a Superstrength character).

I'm not sure what this is about but I like that second pic.

I haven't read the thread, but as in any EM discussion I know nobody has mentioned the impact ET's -health has on survivability ; roughly -16hp/s on an IOed out chain for maximum DPS, which is about ~160% regen for a brute, or almost the regen you have from base regen + fully slotted Health.

FM/SD

You can still softcap with BoTZ nerf, and even if you're not willing to change your build, you probably won't find any WP, regen, DA, FA or ELA combo that is as efficient and versatile as a FM/SD in general play.

If you still want to try something different, I'd say WP and regen are out as they offer no direct boost to your offense - QR is nice and all but isn't as relevant as direct damage boosting effects such as auras or +rech, as we're discussing a highend character that can eventually grab CP/PP and will be IOed out.

Leaving DA, FA and ELA.

With unlimited budget, I'd look at DA. FA and ELA have endurance tools, which is great for most toons but, again, not as important for a "inf no limit" build. DA, on the other hand, not only get greater survivability tools but also stacks well with IOs.

Take DR, for example. It's a full heal with enough mobs, so increasing your max HP, on top of increasing your regen, also "increases" your healing power. Cloak of Darkness is a great 6% defense to stack with set bonuses, and that 6% means a lot when it's the difference between 45% and 39%.

A FM/DA, softcapped for S/L might not be too bad compared to a FM/SD. It still might run in trouble in situations involving heavy defense debuffs and it won't kill as fast.

If FM bores you after doing it once already and if you're willing to forgo ST damage, Spines/DA can be another fun alt to play as well.

Really, I believe you'd be better off just sticking with FM/SD, unless you're genuinely bored with the toon and want to move on.

Ok, watched again, the whole thing this time.

Starts with malta, targets minions and lieutenants, no zeus anywhere, no commando boss, can't tell if there's a gunslinger boss as if there's one he was never targeted (only see words long enough to be minion or lieutenant).

Continues with carnies, no MIs or dark mistresses to be seen.

Continues with KoAs, zoomed out too far to see if there's any boss.

Comes back to malta, then carnies, still the same deal as before.

Shows tanking 4 giant monsters, which is something some scrapper builds can do (Werner posted vids of it for anyone who'd want proof).

Shows fighting ~10 or 16 sappers (didn't bother to check), which is a very realistic situation you'll definitely run into ingame (actually no, never*, but I guess it has value in highlighting how potent the end resist in DA is).

Continues to fighting arachnos, no fortunata or tarentula mistresses are present, tabs to a Bane Spider boss and while the quality on youtube is too low, the word is definitely too long to be "boss", and his HP bar goes down too fast for it to be a boss.

Back to the carnie fight, end is getting lower and lower. We never see the end of that fight.

Cut back to the malta fight, end gets real low and it takes more than a minute to finish the last 3 remaining lieutenants.

In other words, we never see a boss except for the one occasion where it's a downgraded one. If everything was really in +4/x8 then there was some mob manipulation as there'll always be at least one boss, downgraded or not, and there's none in the carnie fight. We never see the most troublesome mobs in the factions fought (malta zeus with swarm missiles, fortunata mistresses with tactics, tarentula mistresses with extremely high def debuff, dark mistresses with extremely high def debuff, master illusionists). Action cuts back and forth so the viewer can't see how bad the endurance management gets (except for the final part against maltas which is played straight, and shows how painfully it gets).

It all seem very edited to try to make it look good, but looking at it objectively it's just not very impressive, and to go with a passive-aggressive, dare I say cocky "Dark Armor sucks." title for it... Well, I don't know how to conclude that sentence, but in a few words, this video didn't deliver. +4/x8 no bosses just isn't it, especially as I'm sure DA can do better than that.

About the only nice thing I can find to say is it's done with FM, so it's not like there's secondary mitigation here. Other than that, it's all bait and switch to me.

*Edit : right, there's that one mission with only sappers... So I guess it can happen. Once.

Edit 2 : removed a sentence as I'm sure it'd be nitpicked on while ignoring my other points.

I'd rather have Dual Shields.

(Just watched 2 minutes of the OP video and didn't read further, the following might have been already pointed out.)

Not really impressive, to me. Tanker fighting +4/x6 for less than a minute before cutting to another fight... Meh. Endurance was going down very fast against the carnies, and without knowing the build it might have well be a completely IOed out character (in which case a complete +4/x8 fight, bosses enabled, start to finish, should be the benchmark IMHO).

DA is a great powerset, the video is a poor example of it unless this is a SO character (in which case that would be indeed impressive, but I suppose that's not the case as he hardly got hit).

Another option is to stick with 7 members at most (and x7 at most), Cysts only spawn with 8 (or x8) IIRC.

Most obvious option would be to play competently or pop insps and kill the cyst, though.

In this very map the OP posted, it can be rough because you're escorting Waylon out and cysts can pop as part of an ambush group (in which case they start spawning immediately), there's not much room to move, and Tuathas aren't lightweight either - blindly rushing in will most likely get your debuffed by quicksand while nictus AOEs make short work of you. Still, even that situation can be handled by playing carefully or popping insps.

That's the absolute worst case scenario and nerfing cysts because of that would be stupid. At most, set a check so cysts don't spawn on ambushes (I don't condone that either, just saying ; it'd be very stupid to nerf normal, immobile cysts which are much easier to handle).

A CoD clone might work.

I'm not sure the set would be overpowered. Comparing Nin vs SR, Nin lacks full DDR, doesn't have any kind of resistance or +maxHP, starts with lower defense values... The toys are cool but their efficiency in high performance scenarios is arguable, the heal is neat but by itself doesn't make the set too strong.

TBH, if the set was ported I probably wouldn't play it and would stick to Shielders.

It's been less than half a hour since your first topic, man. People aren't on forums 24/7 nor are they tech support paid to reply. I was about to answer to it btw, but I stumbled onto that one and people going all passive-aggressive to get a faster reply are a pet peeve of mine, so you'll have to wait for other folks to give you the answer, which is "it depends" with lenghty explanations of the numerous situations where each one excels.

Going for just S/L would cover you against the vast majority of attacks, and DA has decent resistances to exotic damage anyway.

Melee/ranged or S/L/E/N... I just don't see it happening. Of course, everytime I say that someone pops up with an actual build for the task at hand, so I'm doing you a favor.

On my ElM/SD, I've found Havok -> JL -> Havok -> TS to be enough. It's poor DPS, but all in all you only need ST dps for the one or two bosses per group - and even bosses get hurt pretty bad by 400% damage LR + SC.

Looking at your build, you've got CB, HP, TS, Hasten... You can probably chain CB -> HP -> FB -> TS without trouble.

The scrapper.

ElM/SD defining powers, Shield Charge and Lightning Rod, cap at 400% damage for any AT (being a pseudo-pet).

Scrappers have higher base damage, and higher damage mods ; which means SC and LR will do more base damage on a scrapper, and AaO will boost damage more than it does on a brute.

In my experience, difference between highend farming toons comes down to playstyle as much as builds (i.e., player Joe might be better with a fire/kin, player Bob might be better with a SS/fire) so it's hard to say without knowing you.

For me, ElM/SD is plain awesome and faster than other options, but that's because :
- I use insps as they drop, and convert everything to reds. As the main powers are on a "long" recharge (20-25ish seconds), there's plenty of time to do that without hurting damage output. Red insps stack extremely well on scrappers thanks to their high base damage and 500% damage cap.
- I'm bad at getting things into a tiny spot without losing time, the 25" radius helps a lot in that respect.
- I sometimes drift off, AFK, what have you ; ElM/SD has enough survivability to be able to make some mistakes without ending up dead, that's another big plus for me.

Your experience may or may not be the same. FM/SD might have stronger potential if you use it well, but there's an undeniable ease of use about ElM/SD.

Granite is -30% damage, compared to Fury which by itself can give you up to +180%, you'll be fine with any set. SS gets even less of a penalty than other sets, as there's Rage (eventually double-stacked) on top of that, but it's really not a big deal with any primary.

In example :
You start at 100% base, get +95% from enhancements, let's assume you keep 70% fury on average (+140% damage) = 335% damage. You lose 35% from Granite and drop down to 300%, more or less a ~10% loss. Significant, but not gamebreaking.

For the record, fire DoTs suffer from Granite just as much as any other kind of damage.

As for sets with a damage aura, Dark Armor can come close to Granite, but it's more vulnerable to burst damage and lag (maximum performance comes from hitting Dark Regen when your life is really low, so the slightless delay can kill you).

0. I jump almost exclusively, and run only when I can't jump (either because of webnade/caltrops or low ceiling).

As for jumpspeed, 1 level 50 IO in both Hurdle and CJ is enough for my needs.

There's still people replying to je_saist ?

Dude has been consistently wrong on every post of his since he joined these boards. Every single one.

I don't know if it means anything in another language, but I find it ironic that his name looks like a misspelling of "I know" in french.

In other words, Rangle is right.