PleaseRecycle

It makes me wonder where this "bad aoe" idea even came from, and whether it has already permanently permeated the zeitgeist. I could swear I even saw someone say SJ's single target damage sucked somewhere, perhaps it is self evident that it must suck in some way and the challenge when a new set is released is determining exactly how the suckage is manifest.

It used to be the case that weapons stayed drawn as long as your character was in attack mode. I don't remember which issue removed this by adding redraw functionality that more closely resembled what we have now, but the reason they did it was that the majority of emotes, of which there were far fewer back then, looked absurd with a weapon drawn. The bow emote, for instance, cause katana users to neatly impale themselves through the head. Secondary powers had similar problems. To reinstate constantly drawn weapons they'd have to add thousands of new animations, combining every weapon set with every possible primary, secondary, pool and temporary combination, and even then people would be angry because you still wouldn't be able to emote with a weapon drawn unless they did approximately the same amount of work making all of those compatible as well. I'd rather they focus on other things.

Dz, my point is that having the dot baked into the animation time is if anything an advantage, not a drawback. What's more likely to waste damage on overkill: An attack that has a 2.5 second animation and does 200 damage in ten parts over that 2.5 seconds, or an attack that has a 2.5 second animation and does 200 damage all at the end? In fact, they'll both overkill by the same amount, there is no difference at all, but one difference that does exist is that the dot will be much more likely to give you the kill, rather than a teammate. Not necessarily an exciting advantage but the fact remains that the dot power is better than the chunky power if only in a superfluous way.

I suspect you'll enjoy it!

I don't know why SJ gets reduced effectiveness from fiery embrace and I agree that that could be a bug, but speaking of the set in general without sticking it to a particular secondary, you simply can't call its aoe bad. I'm hoping to eradicate that notion before it really takes hold on the forums. Combo system totally aside, it does fantastic damage with short animations, standard target caps, and short recharge times. Many melee sets don't even get two aoes, much less two of the best aoes available. The only drawback to street justice's aoe is the radius on spinning strike and in a min/max situation, you can cram ten targets into a twelve foot sphere. Quite easily, in fact. It's kind of the point of ambush farming.

Due to wide and unjustified complaints, they gave hail of bullets a large defense bonus for the duration of the root time, while also increasing its damage. Anyone can use it more safely than any other pbaoe nuke.

Empty clips is merely passable but bullet rain is excellent. Inferno rounds are better solo or teamed unless you're having a lot of difficulty keeping things out of melee range for some reason.

You can also calculate damage scale off the top of your head by remembering that scrappers do 63 damage per DS, stalkers do 56, and so on. That way you can also compare sets across archetypes, useful when that's the premise of your thread.

No, it doesn't have the weakest aoe of all melee sets. It has better aoe than almost any other melee set while maintaining incredibly strong single target. Here, let's play a game. You name the set that you think has better aoe, and we'll go from there.

Kinetic melee is far above average, as is street justice. Martial arts is no slouch either since its most recent buffs, however.

Everything else aside, Ultimus, why exactly does street justice have to be the best single target dps set for brutes, scrappers and presumably also stalkers and tankers? I'm not convinced that it is the best ST set for scrappers in the first place, but if it were, why does that mean it should be identical for everyone else? Scrappers don't even have the same sets to choose from as the other melee ATs.

The fascinating thing about Shubbie is that the wronger he is, the more self confident he becomes. But sure, Shubbie, go ahead and cry for a refund because street justice sucks. Of course it does. There, there.

SJ/EA is a great combo and not just because they're both new. Street justice does so much freaking damage that it's the one set I've been able to justify pairing with a non-damage aura set lately, and the aoes' modest range goes very well with a taunt aura. It isn't a particularly demanding set for recharge but it doesn't hurt, either, so that's a nice bonus. I guess if you wanted to get crushing uppercut into a seamless chain with three combo builder hits it would be incredibly demanding, if even possible, so there's synergy in that sense too.

And, of course, both of the sets are really good. This is an advantage because as history has taught us, good things are better to have than bad things.

Nummy Muffin Coocolbutter?

Pursuing that line of thinking will simply lead you to the conclusion that stalkers need a buff, Zem. By comparison to other stalker sets, street justice is the second best if not the best by almost any measure. Great DPA, a huge tier 9, loads of aoe, and this is without even considering combos which only make the set better still. If shin breaker can take Achilles' heel procs, I'm going to go ahead and say that street justice is hands down the best stalker set, bar none.

I love street justice.

Do you really want to wait for your next batch of points? Really? Are you sure?


buy street justice!

Unless you're completely determined to hate the set for a reason I am having a hard time discerning, I don't even see why you couldn't make the stalker concept work on a brute, scrapper or tanker. If the concept involves being invisible, well, there's dark armor and energy aura for you. Energy aura doesn't even get a No FX option for energy cloak, so you'll look identical to a stalker whether you want to or not. If that's not good enough and you want to be an invisible guy wot kills from the shadows in one blow, congratulations, scrapper SJ allows you to hit combat readiness, rather than build up as stalkers would get, and drop a combo 3 crushing uppercut on something straight away. This basically does the same damage as assassin's strike, and that's if it doesn't crit.

Er, I had the same brainfart as you. Rib cracker does the lowest DPA, shin breaker is the highest behind crushing uppercut. So, instead of getting the -res attack, stalkers get better DPA and the -def. I think most people would call this an acceptable trade since the -res is pretty minor in the first place.

The thing about losing a combo builder is that you still have three of them, which is arguably still one more than you actually need. I probably will take three on my scrapper but it would be possible to construct a very good chain with two combo builders and alternating use of two or three of the finishers, depending on how much recharge you have. Taking all four of them on one of the other melee ats would be silly, though, as you wouldn't even need any global recharge for one of them to be redundant.

I don't see how they could have made the stalker version of the set any better without dropping either the tier 1 or tier 2 attack. They're not going to do that because for one thing it makes the set too good, dropping one of the higher tier attacks down into the level 2 pick, but also because that would make it more difficult to produce an attack chain at low levels.

I am indeed. If combo level did affect crits, it would do 1000 damage straight up.

Food for thought: An enhanced critical crushing uppercut is going to do 900 damage before factoring in damage buffs. Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

It depends on what you're looking for out of your blast set of course but I'll echo the suggestion of a rad/ blaster. Does it have status protection? Not exactly... If you don't mind a little jury rigging with defense bonuses, defiance usage, or possibly even clarion, though, it outperforms defender and corruptor radiation blast by a huge margin. That isn't to say that the latter two won't be doing damage, but it's the difference between needing to cycle through a ranged chain a couple times to kill minions and lts to being able to simply hit NB, irradiate, and in my blaster's case psychic shockwave and leave most of the spawn dead right there. Absolutely an unsafe playstyle compared to the supporty types', and I'd be lying if I said I never got myself killed, but picturing the smiles of the faces of the little children who I imagine are watching the carnage play out via some sort of high tech, Running Man-style reality show produced by Paragon City's local Fox affiliate makes it all worthwhile.

Shin breaker does not apply a defense debuff, rib cracker does. I don't know if you can slot it with defense sets or not but you're only losing a -7.5% res effect, not the -7.5% def. Shin breaker also has the poorest DPA of any street justice single target attack. While it's still good, had rib cracker been omitted for stalkers instead, the devs would have opened themselves up to the exact same criticism over that. Are you suggesting a ten power set? Perhaps you'd rather they'd dropped the taoe?

The set is damn fun. The numbers are visible at the creation screen even if you've not bought it yet, though of course that doesn't help you if you don't have access to the game right now.

I say it has exceptional aoe. Its cone and its taoe are both quite small compared to those in most other melee sets, but they not only do great damage, they do it with short animations. The fact that they have secondary effects that ramp up in effectiveness the higher your charge level is is a nice little bonus.

Much like KM, there aren't any bad DPA melee powers in the set and it has the advantage of having an extreme damage tier 9. This seems to be the direction they're going with new melee sets. You could argue this either way, but I would say that unlike KM it doesn't have a demanding "ramp up" mechanic that many find distasteful; for scrappers at least, the charge up thing simply turns already-great powers into ridiculous powers. Oh and here's one number for you: tier 3 charge adds 25% base damage to the two aoes and the tier 9. It does not enhance crits but when the tier 9 already crits for 200 base damage, uh, I'm going to accept this.