PleaseRecycle

Charming!

Anyway, I have to say that looking at that power list brings one thought immediately to mind. That thought is "bleeeuuuuggghhhhhhh." Dark manip isn't even uniquely melee focused or anything, it's no more so than fire or elec for example, though it hardly could be, but were blasters really short on all-melee-all-the-time secondaries? No, they were not.

On the bright side it only has one pointless damage aura instead of two, though they really need to give death shroud a twenty foot radius instead of leaving it at eight (and then do the same for scrappers, please! Sure it'd be balanced!). Shadow maul is also a heck of a lot nicer than thunder strike and combustion, and I'd even take it over FSC, though burn blows it away.

The best thing about the set seems to be soul drain and the new-to-blasters play style that will offer. No building up before jumping into a spawn, instead you start in the middle and go from there. Interesting. Rad/dark or fire/dark would be pretty good combos, lots of aoe without worrying about redraw or ranged cones. Still, seems like those with any interest in long range fighting at all need not apply.

I can see that a 38% to 43% crit chance would be pretty damn good but it might be worth noting that if you do have the best single target chain, adding EC before DT means you've taken EC for the sole purpose of boosting your aoe. Do you slot it as an attack or do you leave it with just an acc/dam/end/rech in it? How often will you find yourself wanting to spend an additional 2.5 seconds frozen in place and unable to reposition before the 1.5 seconds you spend on dragon's tail? Not trying to say that it isn't worth considering but it does come with some trade offs. On the other hand if you skip EC you have severely limited your ability to float daintily in the air.

I suspect the reason it works out that way is that it means you're applying more proc chances per second overall and getting about the same base DPA out of the power to begin with. Further, you already have hecatomb slotted in storm kick so this adds another purple proc to the chain where there otherwise could not have been one.

Sounds like a fun chain but I know my own MA scrapper could never pull it off while keeping all the defense I want.

It has better damage in the fantastical realm where you're actually going to be at 80% fury all the time. Actually new EA looks really good, anxious to try it myself. Maybe not anxious, but at least it's a new secondary finally. I will eat my hat if it ever becomes fotm; it is never going to have a big orange numbers power and this dooms it to obscurity. I never said Nihilii was right, I said he wasn't taking the piss. That's more than I can say for some others. I don't really care how many times you fall back on "well, in the end it doesn't matter what you say because we all know the brute versions are better" as that is literally incapable of becoming truer by repetition.

It's like playing whack-a-mole in this thread.

Hey good point, where exactly is shockwave in this? Did you perhaps notice that it's a substantially better power for scrappers as the brute version received no damage boost to match its increased recharge? Well if you want me to point out the most obvious way without even questioning your numbers it'd be that the scrapper is doing most of this dps to ten targets while the brute is doing most of its dps to five targets. The brute was also compelled to take an additional not-very-good attack in the process. Is that a positive thing? And you did mention shockwave, didn't you?

all hell, are you factoring in double followup? If followup is ignored the scrapper does less damage, but why would the scrapper forget to use one of her best powers?

Great question! Actually the reason I want to convince the people asking for power set advice that electric armor is inferior on a scrapper by exactly one standard, survivability, is that there is an increasingly powerful undercurrent on the forum toward what seems to me to be homogeneous play. This is manifest particularly in the brute zone where, at last check, 90% of current threads are about SS/FA farmer builds. Arguing against that would clearly be a lost cause so instead I take what I can get and point out that no, it isn't a bad idea to play these sets on a scrapper. I remind you that this argument arose from loads of people telling someone that he simply had to reroll a character that it sounded like he'd already taken quite far.

Their reasoning? Brute damage auras do infinitely more damage. Brute claws attacks all do more damage than scrapper claws attacks. Brutes can survive ambushes while scrappers wilt in the stern noon sun. Brutes can maintain aggro while scrappers shed it as water off the bottom of an otter.

In other words, the entire case for this guy to waste a lot of his time is predicated on at best misunderstanding and at worst lies. Nihilii has been the only one arguing in good faith, in pointing out that the actual advantages for the brute are going to be some hitpoints, some regen, and the taunt. You've now caught on to this yourself, Deus, but damned if it didn't take some doing.

Obviously none of this actually matters as it is still just an internet forum topic about a video game but as you can see I've had some time to kill and who doesn't love a good debate.