Nihilii

You're right, what I said there made absolutely no sense. It's completely wrong.

I'll definitely drop a billion of pretend money in a video game to improve my character, especially when it allows me to do stuff I couldn't otherwise. What am I going to do with it ? Even as a high score metric, the two billion cap more or less stops that (and storing 2 bill bids on WW just isn't my thing).

I can notice a 5% global recharge difference when it's the difference between running my attack chain without gaps or having a 0.2s gap. I can notice a 10% accuracy difference when it's the difference between having a 95% hit rate against +4s as opposed to a 90% hit rate, or to put it another way, missing twice as much which results in doing, in a best case scenario (missing -res will reduce damage further) doing only half the damage I could do. I can notice a 5% recovery difference when it's the difference between being barely able to run my attack chain indefinitely or being able to run it for about five minutes before bottoming out.

Bottomline, I can perfectly understand some people wouldn't notice the difference, but I do and so do other people. Not noticing the difference doesn't mean there is no difference, either. I've had fights in which losing just 1% HP, 1% of my DPS or 1% recovery would have killed me. I've got lots of builds that simply wouldn't perform like I'd want them too without purples.

You might be already aware of that and implying the 6th purple set does something else than recharge, but as you mention perma-EE, better be safe than sorry : you can only have 5 identical set bonuses on a build, any set bonus past that point has no effect.

Note I haven't actually played the build. It lacks Aid Self and AoEs. It doesn't make use of the PVP +def and +res IOs as I feel the cost isn't worth it on such a build, but the PVP -res IO is a great DPS boost so I used it. That build could run GC GD GC SD without gaps indefinitely with Tough and FA turned off. DPS should be around 230.

Now I think there's room for improvement, and I wouldn't actually recommend such a build if you were going for AV soloing without insps or something like that, a build with Aid Self and more max HP at the cost of DPS would have more success in that situation. This build just does ST DPS while at the softcap.

It's entirely possible to give advice without being a complete dick and making personal insults. Umbral not only constantly fails at that, but acts like he's an expert on combos he hasn't even played and then calls out other people who have the actual experience to tell them their experience is wrong.

Numbers are good, but using lots of correct numbers don't magically make everything you say right, especially if you use them out of context, especially if you're missing tons of other numbers. Using numbers does seem to make many believe everything you say is right, though.

Then there's the whole "oh I'm so skilled and so much above the curve I can take out Silver Mantis with one hand tied behind my back on my DM/Regen, while also tanking the ITF set for 8. But I won't post videos, nor screenshots. Ever." repeated ad nauseam. Now I believe every claim Umbral makes is theorically possible for a DM/Regen. I'm even willing to believe he might be doing all the stuff he says ; but I also believe in numbers, and human behavioral studies show people who talk on and on about something they do are the ones less likely to actually do that thing. Finally, I believe Umbral is a reasonably smart guy, smart enough to run the numbers and have a good idea of the kind of claims he could make with credibility should he want to claim he's doing stuff he doesn't.

I could go on and on about numbers. Again, numbers are good. There's lots of numbers we do quantify on the scrapper boards ; there's many more numbers we don't quantify at all. Movement speed, network latency to the servers, player reaction time, time spent on teams, active mitigation, number of enemies you face, average spread of each mob spawn are all numbers that are, in some situations, much more important than being at the softcap or not or whatever DPS you have. There's no single answer to "maximum survivability". There's just options that might be likely to be better than others in some situations.

For example, if you think defense is always and in all situations much better for survivability than recharge, you probably haven't experienced what powers like Shockwave or Energy Torrent can do against groups of enemies under EB class with high tohit buffs / defense debuffs.

Now there is specific questions you can give one specific best answer to. If someone asks "I want a such-and-such build with the highest ST DPS possible, everything else is irrelevant", obviously you don't need to consider anything else.

Most of the time, this isn't the case, and there's plenty of options to choose from. Berating other people for choosing another option is stupid ; even if it's an undeniably weaker one in the specific context. I mean, geez, I feel like I'm stating the obvious there. Surely it is safe to assume most of us went to school for a certain period of time in our life. Surely you've noticed insulting people isn't exactly the most efficient way to share knowledge.

You want an easy example to wrap it up, how about this : in one tab, search for Umbral's posts. In another tab, search for Werner's posts. Indeed, as amazing as it might look, it is possible to give good and factual advice without also vomiting on any views differing from your own.

I agree if you're talking about RI but EF takes 1 second to activate. I mean you can't really recommend Storm with its 2s animation on FR and diss Rad for having a 1s animation on EF. Even using RI + EF + LR takes only 6 seconds - not that I would advice actually doing that, but just saying ; no fire/kin kills a spawn in 6 seconds, unless you're farming -1/x5 or something, which would be terrible for XP.

That being said, I wouldn't go with either of these secondaries, and stick with Kin, preferably pairing it with Plant.

If I'm looking at it correctly, you'd need :

FS : +225%
GFS : +140%
Inc : +77%

Assuming a hecatomb proc in FS, it'd do about the same DPS as the other chains, but requires much more recharge.

-recharge and -damage can't be added like that really, and certainly doesn't equate resistance to all. Recharge debuffs are sometimes good, but at other times irrelevant because some mobs (AVs and the newest bosses often fall into that category) have so many attacks they're limited by animation times even when their recharge isn't debuffed. Damage debuffs are sometimes resisted. We're also talking about a melee aura with a ten feet radius, you might get most mobs but you will not get all mobs unless herding/cornerpulling (which is wasting time compared to "real" resistance to all that is just there regardless of what you do).

Then, you have to consider the purple patch ; against +4s, effectiveness drops to 45%, which means you're doing a -14.4% recharge debuff and -6.3% damage debuff.

By itself, EA needs about 2 shots to drain even an even-con mob, and with no means of -recovery the mitigation offered is marginal at best ; great to drop mob toggles, but mobs keep attacking even with a smidgeon of endurance left.


I think Ice is a great set, but I completely disagree with these two quotes. What makes Ice so good in my opinion, which coincides with some of your other arguments, is the ability to softcap easily to most damage types, coupled with fantastic endurance management, great aggro and damage capabilities thanks to both auras working well together (of course, endurance tools help damage as well), and good heal/regen options.

If I had to wager a guess...

Recon, DP, IH and MoG.



Edit : Aagh ! What's that new smiley ? Ugly ! Ugly !!!