PleaseRecycle

Heh, good point. A caveat to my warning there is that I stopped using defensive sweep at level 33. If you keep using it you can easily rein in your endurance problems. The defensive bonuses I wanted precluded 50%+ end reduction slotting in the aoes but that would presumably help as well. However, 99% of the time it isn't even an issue because most of the time I'm not fighting an AV. When I am, it tends to be dead in less than five minutes. Or there's inspirations. Or there's team buffs.

TW is stronger than SJ but anyone who says SJ has nothing going for it hasn't really been paying attention. For one thing, TW's high-recharge, high-aoe style requires that you do one of the following things: Pair it with a secondary with enormous endurance recovery potential. I'm talking EA or Elec, FA and WP won't cut it. Or, definitely take cardiac or ageless. That's a fine option that is useless to you until you reach 50 and prevents you from taking spiritual or rebirth. Or, kludge it and hope nobody notices the fact that your "single target chain" includes a couple aoes and you need to take regular breathers in AV fights. I make that last one sound bad but that's what I went with on my TW/WP. SoW and conserve power do not even come close to making it an endurance sustainable combo but it can do a good impression for up to five minutes.

Another thing about TW is that it takes more focus on your part to be used effectively. The fact that half the set is cones means that you should constantly be shuffling around to be hitting your target caps. The fact that two of the set's best powers can only be used during momentum means that you'd better be ready to improvise an attack chain if you miss your target at any point, especially in single target situations. It also has redraw. I care, maybe you don't.

SJ is a much less weird set. It does not consume endurance by the bucketload because it is not 57% aoes. The aoes it does have get scoffed at for being small-area, and especially compared to TW every single other melee set is small-area, but by non-TW standards they do really good damage with some nice mitigation included as well. It is probably true that with equally high end builds TW does better single target damage than SJ but what is also true is that SJ is constant and reliable in its single target DPS. A single miss can't invalidate one third of your single target arsenal. You don't need colossal recharge to have a single target chain in the first place.

Finally, the biggest selling point for SJ in my opinion is that it looks really cool and is fun to play. TW also looks really cool and is fun to play. Crucially, though, one of the sets is about punching and kicking people and one of them is about hitting people with a big hammer. Which of those sounds like more fun to you? You really have to take that into account because if mechanical strength is all you care about, save your paragon points, make a claws/FA and call it a day.

Blasters and stalkers on live are far closer to their HP caps than dominators are, is the thing. Stalkers' cap is being raised and this is being touted as a fix. It does make you wonder what part of "Blaster" says "can't buff your HP very much," conceptually.

However, to answer that question in the way I suspect Oliin might as well, what if they did up the HP caps for everyone who currently caps at 1606? Would that be a bad thing? One thing it would do for everyone is make frostwork suck less.

I don't know if this helps or not but new Dark Astoria has been universally hailed, and in some cases groused about, as much easier than any previous incarnate content. Things there might have a higher chance to hit but they spawn starting at level 50 and in the missions you never have to fight purples unless you want to (and even if you want to, by the time you yourself are +3 you can't). Don't think of it as rendering your 50s obsolete, but as giving them the kind of chance to flex their muscles that the council and circle of thorns stopped providing eons ago.

Every post-Castle set has broken previous performance standards in one way or another. It didn't seem too likely that darkness control would be the first exception.

To me, based on this thread, it sounds like the balancing factor for DC is that many of its best tricks aren't such a big deal at high levels. -tohit is amazing early on and always remains at least useful but when you and the rest of your team are softcapped incarnates it just doesn't quite have the same proportional impact. The same can be said of the confuse (I know, I know, you can use this one power to solo the RSF, but in your average team environment...) and ehhhhh arguably the double damage aoe immobilize. Actually that last one remains pretty spiffy.

What will always be relevant regardless of level and outfitting is that you get two high damage, from the sound of it, pet powers, a wide variety of control types, and a control patch to go with your aoe control. And you don't have a sleep to automatically skip. So is it overpowered? Probably, yeah, but not in a way that will cause everyone to forever abandon all other control sets. It can't take seeds of confusion away from plant, and it won't wrest hot feet away from fire.

My only question is DC/DM or DC/Cold?

It seems like the stalker set was conceived of as being invariably slotted into AS itself. Obviously that isn't actually required in any way, but it is the best way to avoid the behavior you suggest, Claws. That way instead of breaking the new mechanic it builds upon it and gives you bonus criticals whether you fire a slow AS or a fast one.

Night fall actually has a good damage scale. The problem with it is that it's the only attack that uses the scrapper ranged modifier, which is hideously low. In effect, it's been bugged for over six years and no one cares so it hasn't been looked at. I wouldn't recommend using it as a proc mule just because its recharge and endurance are set up as though it's a competent attack, which it is not, so they're vastly inflated. Torrent, also of darkness mastery, is actually the better bet both in terms of the procs that it takes and its larger area. Sadly it also costs boatloads of endurance but at least it recharges faster. Its guaranteed knockback could be a boon for this character. It isn't that you necessarily need the survival on an invuln scrapper, but it might help you keep things at range given that their default behavior is to give you hugs forever.

Laevateinn is correct that the individual powers in blaze mastery are radically better than those in dark mastery, but blaze has one aoe versus dark's three. Seems like dark could be made to work more smoothly as an ad hoc primary, however wonky the resulting build looks.

In fairness it does sound like Lxndr knows what he's getting into. Choosing to make a pre-I9 build at this point puts you firmly into the concept character camp in my opinion. Looking at it that way, he actually has advantages that one didn't back then. Inherent fitness, for example. Taoe ally buffs and the proliferation of maneuvers on teammates. The fact that street justice is of the new breed of primary that combines reliable mitigation with solid damage, a no-no back in the olden dayes (except when it wasn't). Sounds like a fun project to me, though not one I'd play myself.

I was playing around with boosters yesterday, not specifically in stamina. Turns out that just boosting the first of two level 50 commons in a power does like 75% of the work. The difference is 91.8% versus I think 95.6%. Since the only way to get them is via real money, I'd recommend just using five rather than ten on a power slotted with two level 50 commons. That was kind of a tangent.

You say, "PVP IOs?" I say, "LaDiva!"

Trustworthy, courteous and prompt as always.

I have to say that ceteris paribus, s/l defense is the most valuable kind. By "kind" here I mean "type pair or position." Not only do the AT sets give a purple bonus worth of s/l in some cases, they're the only way to get that. Not only are they the only way to get a purple bonus worth of s/l, as far as I'm aware the only ultimate defense bonuses remain the ranged defense bonus from coercive persuasion and the various s/l 5% bonuses from the AT sets. This puts the most valuable kind of defense bonus into a class of its own, as if it weren't already. The fact that you can double up on them by going half orange half purple is just kind of silly if you ask me.

Makes sense. After crowing about how this is by far the best AT set I can hardly complain when it is slightly less overpowered than I thought it would be, hah.

I could be misunderstanding. I thought it modified the crit rate on a per-attack basis? As in, attacks with higher base crit rates will be improved more. I assumed that mauk was informing me that no! Such is not the case. It only improves by the basic minion scale.

I don't know who to believe anymore! What is it doing, and which behavior is working as intended?

Honestly though, even if it is only 2% across the board I'll still happily buy tons of these sets.

Well if that's the case it sounds like beta scrappers need to be lobbying for fixes so it works as advertised. My internet isn't really up to getting it myself.

In issue 22 controllers will do containment damage to trial AVs even without them actually being controlled so that isn't an issue.

If you're considering range an advantage for corrs, remember why fire/kin is such a good controller combination in the first place - both sets thrive in melee. It's a good corruptor combination as well but you're still going to be in melee most of the time if you want to take advantage of your own buffs.

Finally, not to try to talk you out of a combination you enjoy, fire/cold as either a controller or corruptor would be much more powerful on trials than fire/kin of either flavor. Something to think about... it's quite the sexy combo.

We're also being a little modest here: the 2% crit chance increase is against minions. Against anything higher it's 4% higher crit chance, and with certain powers you can bump that up to 6%. That starts looking pretty beastly pretty fast.

Technically the proc is better but I don't really like getting chunks as opposed to a steady flow. There are advantages to it though and if you're almost always below full endurance the proc is the better bet.

Interestingly, three and three slotting gives you the same health bonus as two sets of four KCs as well as the same defense bonus as two sets of four KCs. In effect, it saves you two slots and gives you different enhancement values and the proc. Two free slots is nothing to sneeze at but it seems to me that the devs were pretty careful to not allow this strategy to be too dominating compared to slotting the set in its entirety. You can of course stack these bonuses with the KC bonuses as they do not have the same values and it is nice that they aren't restricted to melee powers.

Well okay, I suppose I'd be safer if I called it the best AT set in terms of quality times AT popularity since I didn't actually check every single other AT set before making that determination. What I do know is that I play a lot of scrappers and this set is good for every single one of them*, with the critical chance boost standing out. You can look at it as 2% or you can look at it as 40% but any way you slice it it raises scrapper damage in a multiplicative way that never existed before. I'll take it!

* Oh and when I use the word good there I mean better than any purple set.

From the posts I've seen of pre-beta info on the sets, the scrapper set is far and away the best of the AT sets. I personally expect it to cost twelve billion on the market and take a while to obtain through that route. 5% s/l defense, 10% recharge, and it enhances your critical chances across the board, making one of the best inherents better still. I'm glad I can afford some super packs!