Nihilii

You're either seriously underestimating -res or have a very, very different playstyle than mine to consider a 40s -10% res AoE on 10 targets to be terrible.

... I'd put my money on different playstyles, as endurance is never a concern on any of my builds by high levels, especially on a regen.

If Melt Armor was a first level epic pick, I wouldn't use anything else. Ever.

If anything, regen gets less from this than any other secondary.

+40% regen is merely noticeable (if at all) when you're already running at 700%ish regen + heals, however on some other powerset like, say, SR it's a much bigger increase as they don't have any other sources of +regen except Health.

Regen builds being usually loose (can afford 3 power picks) and fine on end (can skip CP), what seems more interesting to me is the Blaze epic pool. Fire Ball and Melt Armor are really worth it.

DB/FA should be rather good on damage, with great AoE capabilities as well. FA is considered to be one of the weakest secondaries defense wise (which means it still has much more than enough to get the job done, so you don't need to worry about that really) but on the other hand you get to do more damage.

The core powers are, in my opinion :

Dual Blades :
Ablating Strike
Blinding Feint
Vengeful Slice
Sweeping Strike

Either Power Slice or Nimble Slash to fill out gaps, too, as you have to pick one of the two.

Typhoon's Edge and One Thousand Cuts are also cool if you want to do AoE damage. I'd avoid Confront.

Fiery Aura :
Fire Shield
Plasma Shield
Healing Flames
Blazing Aura - while it might seem like it does little damage, that damage adds up over time and on top of your attacks, it's also very end efficient if you fight more than one foe at a time.

Consume and Fiery Embrace are great powers, one refills your end every few minutes and the other gives a good damage boost for a few seconds. Not musthaves, but good to get.

Temperature Protection is so-so, in my opinion. It offers minor resistance to slows and some res to fire/cold, but your fire res should be capped with the 2 other shields. That said, it's an auto, so it doesn't hurt to pick it if you haven't any better choice.

Burn is a PBAoE that does very high damage, but makes your foes run away. Some like it, some hate it, it's a power you have to try to know if you want it.

Rise of the Phoenix is a self ressurection power that also damages and knockback your enemies when you use it. The biggest downside is, well, you have to be dead to use it, and some argue they'd rather spend the power pick on something else and use an awaken inspiration instead. That said, it does have a cool animation...


As for pool powers, it's usually recommended to grab the Fitness pool (for Stamina), although it's possible to do without. Another popular pick for Fire Armor is the leaping pool, Combat Jumping adds immobilize protection FA lacks (except in Burn), and Acrobatics adds KB protection that is also lacking - another option is to slot a KB protection IO somewhere.

Other good to get options include speed for Hasten (brings your attacks and your heal up more often), fighting for Tough and Weave (increases your resistance and your defense by a bit) ; nothing is necessary though, you can really go with what you want, what you find fun and what fits most your toon.

I'm not sure which powerset you're talking about exactly. In any case, every scrapper combo is good.

Unless you'd rather be a hero (and/or a scrapper), might I suggest looking at a Claws/Elec brute ?

Currently, Brutes have higher damage numbers for Claws. Higher endurance costs and longer recharges as well, but endurance isn't a problem for ELA and recharge is somewhat mitigated by Lightning Reflexes. ELA benefits a lot from the higher resist cap as well, with your energy resistance bumping to 90% this is 250% as much mitigation as a scrapper will have in that situation. It makes Power Surge worth it as well. There's also the higher base HP, which means a better heal and higher returns from +regen.

I think Claws/ELA is one of these combos that work so much better as a brute. This isn't to say a scrapper wouldn't be great (is there any that isn't ?), but it's something to consider in my opinion.

It should definitely be fine with a sword set. My Katana/Fire leveled great with Divine Avalanche, and Fire Armor plays pretty much the same as the new ELA should (resist based, with a heal).

If you can finish something at all, you can finish it without deaths if you're careful enough and/or given enough attempts, unless the only way you won was with vengeance/fallout. That is (should be?) common sense.

The hardest part in a specific MSTF/MLRSF setup (i.e., all scrappers) is gathering enough players with the right AT, a good internet connexion and the ability to login during the same time period. It's already hard enough to organize a normal allscrapper or allblaster STF/RSF, claiming the lack of public proof that a blaster or scrapper MSTF/MLRSF has been done proves it isn't possible is ludicrous.

I liked ELA before the change (granted, I did use Aid Self), but I don't think it'll be at WP levels of survivability in most situations - nor should it be. You get more damage, from both the damage aura, the endless endurance and the +recharge auto.

Survivability is going to be much more than enough for me though, even with minimal IO slotting. If I read the numbers correctly, with Tough/Weave, CJ and a steadfast, you're looking at 10% def to all, 58% res to S/L, 75% to energy, 45% fire/cold, 35% negative, 40% psi, half of CP more than half of the time, 380% regen more than half of the time (with health 3 slotted) and a heal as strong as recon although it's not up as often and using it for the +regen/-end means you might waste some of the heal component sometimes.

With the heal added to ELA, I'm thinking I might make a DB/ELA scrapper.

Of course, that'd lead me to whine endlessly about the resist cap... So it might be better to go with a tanker instead.

DB/WP is very end efficient, between the Attack Vitals combo (which has one of the best DPE) and QR. Anything /regen should be good as well for end efficiency, with QR and only one toggle.

This topic just made me resub. Bear with me for a second so I can get off my chest what I want to say since weeks : these new forums are awful. Meh.

Good thing I16 seems to be as awesome as the forums suck, though.

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So what say you, the Tanker community?

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My Tankers have no problem with either end efficiency or stackability in teams. Someone would have to explain to me what exactly is the problem here (and I wouldn't agree that this is correct as a whole, as for at least my playstyle, both claims are wrong).

If anything, I'd argue 2 tankers is almost a necessity in some teams (nothing is necessary obviously, but if your teammates die every few minutes then they'll get bored and leave). Take a PuG running an AE lieut/boss mission set for 8 for example, if you aggro 2 groups at once some squishies are guaranteed to die. You could say "pull one group, don't aggro two groups at once" but that'd slow down the team. You could say "if squishies were really good they wouldn't die", but we're talking about a PuG and most people just aren't that good.

Frankly, as it is I'm rerolling most of my scrappers as tankers because the damage/survivability equations are heavily skewed towards tankers. I don't really understand why so many "tankers have problems" topics pop up on the tanker forum while everything on the scrapper forum seems fine. It might be because the normal game is too easy and there isn't enough reward intentive reasons to up the challenge, but I'm not sure that's a problem with tankers. If you actually go out of your way to look (or make, thanks to AE) for challenging content and don't only play with skilled friends, tankers are really an awesome AT.

Now, if you really want to buff my favorite characters, I won't complain...

Color me disappointed. The new animations just don't do it, for me.

Ah, well. Still interested about the difficulty changes.

It's not just one team, it's everyone on the whole server as far as I can tell.

Tons of MMOs don't rely on tanks, and that's not new. People used to focus too much on EQ while there were plenty of other MMOs, people now focus too much on WoW while there are plenty of other MMOs. This article was already outdated 10 years ago.

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I don't have enough playtime to play the market for enough money for that stuff

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You don't really need time to play the market, you just need to be fine with the idea that you're screwing less knowledgeable folks over. If anything, the less time you have the easier it is.

On the build itself, I'd put two Adjusted Targeting in BU instead of 2 of the 3 recharge slots (rech, rech/tohit). Same recharge, better tohit, slight damage bonus.

I also believe the perfshifter chance for +end IO in Stamina gives you less end than a regular end mod slot would.

I propose this : instead of putting all that effort to think about how to change a system many people enjoy, try to put that same effort to think about how could you improve your own gameplay experience.

Possible suggestions : not reading broadcast, forming your own teams and not minding other people's business all the time.

I just got word from folks on the european servers that they get the same kind of lag, and have been getting it for years. The exact same stuff : netgraph with spiky red bars of doom, animations skipping, market being hard to use, people teleporting, and everything else out of the game working perfectly. Support gave them the same answer too : "there's a problem somewhere between your connection and our servers".

Now of course this is secondhand for you guys, but myself I believe these folks and I find it weird there's a network problem not related to NCSoft on different servers located in USA and in Europe, a network problem that doesn't seem to affect any other game or any other site in any location. I'm also rather worried to hear it has been lagging for years over there...

I'm not grabbing my tinfoil hat just yet, I know there's much I don't know about computers, but just saying, that seems to be a strange coincidence to me.

What is this "difficulty setting" thing you speak of ?

Minimum level : 54
Maximum level : 54

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I guarantee that Invincibility did in fact interrupt LR's bane summon in issue 14 and before; I ran the STF probably close to 30 times with my Invuln tanker. I never had him summon a bane as long as I was in melee with him irregardless of weather he had a toggle debuff on him.

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Same here. I tanked LR multiple times with my invul scrapper in I13 and I14, Recluse never summoned once while I was in melee, no other toggles were on him.

Using your best DPA attacks is the first step, but not the only one.

SK - CK - SK - CAK is the best MA DPS chain as far as I know. EC shouldn't be used at all.

I've held aggro for half an hour in AV fights with full teams on an Invul scrapper. I consider that long enough.

Now, if you want to hold absolutely all the aggro of every group 100% of the time, the problem is you'll have to sacrifice a power pool to get Provoke ; but Invincibility by itself is good enough to hold most aggro, most of the time (and it's very easy to keep the aggro of a single tough target all the time as long as you attack it to stack more hate on top of the aura).

Other scrapper secondaries have a much harder time in my experience, the taunt in their auras don't last as long (if they have a taunt aura at all).

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Most scrapper attacks have a mag 3 taunt component (Tank is mag 4) so you taunt stuff by hitting it.

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I'm not aware of any scrapper attack with these properties. You just generate hate by attacking, the more damage and the more often it's reapplied the better, but it's not a taunt effect. On my DB/WP, I could get a blaster friend to steal aggro on something I'm attacking quite easily simply by outdamaging me.

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Maintaining 6.5 targets is an astoundingly high figure.

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Agreed, in most cases ; but if you can manipulate the situation to have 10 targets at all times, that means you can have very high performance.

Something that's important as well, in my opinion, is travel time. When you kill a group in 18 seconds, even if you take only 2 seconds to travel to the next group, 10% of your time was spent without any target in RttC range, while Regen still regens at the same rate. This affects WP's ability to kite - when you absolutely have to (defense debuffs in ITF, at least for me), your regen starts being really low.

I've also seen people on broadcast call :

- defenders "healers", or even "heal"
- controllers the same as above
- burst AoE damage "DPS"
- DPS "damage"
- tankers "taunt"

I've seen broadcasts for "fast ticket running farms", too. As tickets have an equal share between players, it's much more efficient to solo if you know what you're doing.

What should be very clear is many of the players on broadcast have absolutely no clue what they're doing ; and for some of them, that lack of knowledge is unfortunately not limited to the game.