PleaseRecycle

As I've said before, love can only exist between two humans, or a human and a dolphin. A human and a power set do not comprise a natural arrangement. Some claim to love kinetic melee, but can they experience the joy of parenthood with kinetic melee? Can they feel the pangs of guilt when they think about electric melee's sweet caress while having dinner with kinetic melee? My constituents have made it clear that they value the traditional relationship between person and power set and love is not a part of that relationship.

It takes something like 170% recharge in all three powers, a little less for cobra strike iirc.

Base DPS is 91. This is ignoring enhancements, storm kick's enhanced crit chance, the procs you'll be sticking into all of these powers, and reactive, because those would be a big pain in my rear to calculate as I am not used to doing so.

It is a little dull, animation-wise, but it gets results! At least the animations being repeated are highly dramatic and not just glowy-fisted punches.

Since nobody else has mentioned it, as I am the only person who prefers scrappers to brutes, I shall point out that follow up for scrappers is approximately thrice as effective as it is for brutes. In addition to this already oceanically salient point, scrapper spin's recharge advantage is more than merely significant in applications where you can be sure that its target cap will be saturated even without considering its heightened ability to apply procs. To carve the stately wiener onto this David of an argument, the scrapper archetype icon is both yellow and swooshy, thus indescribably more liable to excite one's passions than the grey fist.

A_F, why are you so committed to your belief that blasters are terrible? I can see why Johnny Butane is so revved up about tankers, because lobbying in favor of an AT has had positive effects in the past. He may be more hyperbolic than Halley's Comet but at least his heart is in the right place.

On the other hand, you seem to have dedicated your posting life to tearing down blasters, in the face of 80% of the forum telling you they're fine as well as the devs obliquely pointing out that they're fine and, as if that weren't enough, simple polls of popularity demonstrating that they're beyond fine. At this point it seems less like playing devil's advocate in order to pull for buffs and more like some kind of ancient tribal vendetta.

Aw, my mistake then. I was thinking it should clearly accept the achilles proc since hey, every other comparable attack does. I wasn't going to worry about it until I finished sorting out the rest of my IOs but now I guess I don't get to worry about it at all.

Even without the proc, I think that chain can be best described as furiously gnarly.

The best MA chain is storm -> cobra -> storm -> CAK. Well, you can use either cobra or crane in there, but only use one of them! Your main goal is to maximize usage of storm kick, and the second best attack in the set is CAK. Therefore either cobra or crane, which are now identical apart from their secondary effect, is ideal to fill in the final gap. Storm -> cobra -> storm -> crane would also work, and it would be fine, but it requires about the same recharge as the CAK chain and the CAK chain is superior for DPS, while also accepting an achilles heel proc.

You have storm kick and dragon's tail slotted optimally. Skip eagle's claw unless you just love the animation or the critical bonus effect. It is not part of anything resembling MA's optimal chain and between hasten and recharge bonuses you oughtn't need it.

I just today got my MA/DA scrapper respecced fully into the storm -> cobra -> storm -> CAK chain and I can tell you that it is as sexy as you'd hope.

Disclaimer: the last time I played spines was about seven years ago. I reached level 8 and decided I would rather play claws instead.

To pick out one area to critique and possibly give you some ideas, one of the advantages of spines/fire is that you get two very nice damage auras. What's with your slotting of those? Procs aren't something you should steer clear of, but think of it this way: every fifth tick, the proc has a chance to fire. Every tick, however, benefits from damage enhancement. If you intend to use musculature alpha, that would explain it, but if not I would say slot them better for damage enhancement before worrying about procs. I know you're looking for defense too but scirocco's is simply a better set for aura powers than erad and oblit. It gives good damage and end redux, and also a proc.

To offer a dissenting voice, invulnerability is one of the weakest sets for visual fuzziness. It's unrealistic to expect it to be able to challenge dark armor, but it also falls well behind fire armor and super reflexes, and arguably even willpower. This results in a level of costume clarity that many find unacceptably high. If you can live with that you may still find some merit in it.

If that were the only problem with invulnerability that would be one thing, but in my opinion the reason it won the coveted "Worst Set of the Year" award for the fifth time last month is that it also completely lacks fire damage. I see you've thought of making up for this deficit by going fire primary, but is that really enough anymore? Blaze mastery? Please.

I'm not trying to talk you out of anything here, just giving you some facts to consider.

Good point about claws getting less from musculature due to follow up. Musculature does indeed boost both lore and judgement powers, so even a claws/da is getting something out of it, but it does look more marginal for them.

I'm not surprised at all that rebirth is great for regen, actually. How does it look for dark armor? My intuition is that dark regen causes it to be less relevant than it is for most other sets, but I don't have anything to back that up at the moment.

I confess that I've been discussing the incarnate boosts with my own new ma/da scrapper in mind, which I guess I could have noted earlier. Soon as I hit 50 I'll be sitting on 44% s/l, 32% e/n and 100% global recharge. It's from that perspective that I've been advocating musculature and ageless, because for that combo with those bonuses barrier seems not all that necessary as I hardly use dark regen in the first place. It's also one big luck away from softcapping every relevant damage type in trials. I've yet to do any trials, of course, so I suppose we'll see how it works out. The biggest issue is absolutely endurance and I'm not convinced that even cardiac is going to be quite sufficient, though ageless certainly will.

Trying to work out if I'm crazy for planning things this way by proxy, I guess.

You make good points too, Deus. Especially about being able to take cardiac and musculature and ageless and barrier all on the same character! Would you believe I've never picked two boosts in the same category on anyone before? Always forget that's an option.

I know it's a terrible comparison. My hope was to illustrate how non-competitive lightning rod and shield charge actually are in the area of farming. Biggest orange number does not mean best performance.

Organica, I wasn't giving numbers because checking the DPS of a chain is just about the easiest calculation one can do. It is left as an exercise for the reader.

I looked at that thread and what I mainly saw was people saying, "Well, MA used to be pretty bad and I haven't run the numbers but I assume it still is." Good news! It isn't. I'm not going to tell you that it does the absolute best single target but it does beat much-beloved sets like katana and I believe even claws. You don't have to like dragon's tail but going by the numbers it does the best DPA. That's hard to argue with. It is also up much more frequently than FSC, a power whose popularity can only be due to people's love of large orange numbers. It is up six times as frequently as lightning rod and does about a third of its damage, as another example.

Which would you guess is the better farmer: MA/FA or Elec/Shield? The answer may or may not surprise you!

Anyway, why do you want to disbelieve that MA is good now? It really is! Enjoy and spread the word!

What chain do you run, Organica? If you're rocking Storm -> Cobra -> Storm -> CAK you're doing better DPS than a DM running Smite -> MG -> Smite -> Siphon, before considering BU or SD. Yes it is smashing, but why do you say that's the most resisted? In my experience lethal is far more heavily resisted - basically all the same stuff that resists smashing heavily also resists lethal, with the exception of carnies, and then there's all robots in the game on top of that.

You're also stunning the heck out of whatever you're punching! You've also got room for an achilles' heel proc! What's not to like?

Dragon's tail is one of the best scrapper pbaoes. The only one I like better is spin. Reliable mitigation, the best DPA of any scrapper pbaoe coupled with the shortest animation, standard recharge. That's really hard to beat.

FSC would be great if it had a standard recharge, but in reality it has a highly protracted recharge for the same DPA that most other sets get out of their pbaoes. It's also curiously expensive. KM is definitely in the bottom tier for pbaoe, so FSC does beat it there, but if you like FSC burst isn't really that far behind. It also does knockdown! What it is far behind is dragon's tail, lotus drops, and spin. This is part of why it goes so well with FA, but pairing it with any damage aura set or with shield would also go a long way toward making up the pbaoe deficit.

And the derail continues, sorry Vman!

Werner, I admit I am not very familiar with your (or someone's) survivability rating system, so I would have two questions - how well do those numbers stack up to what other sets achieve in the same circumstances, and how does it look against normal tohit? I couldn't even make a guess on the former but I suspect that the difference is a good deal less stark in the more general case.

Deus, you do know that the "for an entire league" part applies to ageless, rebirth and clarion as well, right? But yes, I'm well aware that barrier is impressive. Apologies if I seem to be goalpost shifting, not my intent, but I think if we're talking about "enough" survivability and permanent vs time limited benefits we should absolutely consider inspirations in the mix.

I find musculature and ageless attractive because basically you get a medium red all the time. When is it not desirable to have a 30% damage buff? Never. In addition, you get infinite endurance when you want it, some recharge that you don't necessarily need and certainly didn't ask for but why not, and better DDR than willpower gets 75% of the time if necessary. You also go from being highly resistant to endurance debuffs to basically immune, stronger against tohit debuffs which dark has no other way of countering, and I believe you also get some resistance to regen debuffs? Now that we're on the subject of trials, can you think of any of these debuffs making an appearance on the trials?

On top of this, you still have your insp tray. You don't need blues, you don't need greens, you don't need yellows (most of the time), you definitely don't need light blues, and you don't need break frees. Left to my own devices as I often sadly am, I end up filling the space with big purples and big oranges. Here's where I see the best case for barrier - if you could stomach carrying nothing but big reds, you might get the best of both worlds. I can't do that, as it bothers me to go through inspirations as fast as that would entail. However, if instead you go the easy path of loading up on on-demand mitigation, does barrier really compete with that?

When on a lambda do you need barrier? Well, it'd be awfully handy during the initial assault, but the problem, if you can call it that, is that the significant buff lasts for thirty seconds (which is still clearly great) at which point I assume you're going to want to hit a luck anyway unless you somehow built your dark armor character to have more than 45% of s/l/e/n. The other place where it would be handy is the collection phase, but by design that phase lasts for less than fifteen minutes and in my experience usually closer to five. Half of the phase is spent running to the next objective so I find that I get good results in general just by hitting a big purple when I'm starting in on the next couple crates, and why shouldn't that remain true with dark armor?

BAF is so easy I can't really imagine you ever need to hit barrier. Maybe if you're mopping up the spawns during the last phase? Maybe if you're going for Keep em Separated and are main tanking more than usual with fewer buffs on you than usual? Even there I have to imagine you're within somebody's bubble, or leadership, or 30' clickies now. I don't know anything about Keyes Island because I am still waiting for the general populace to get it through their heads that you do NOT kill Antimatter early before I can be bothered to try it again. From the couple runs I did, though, it didn't seem like it had anything as damage-intensive as the collection phase of lambda. Could be horribly wrong.

I absolutely see the advantages of barrier in theory, but in practice, with the trials we have today, do you need it? Why not just use big purples?

Well you can certainly make that case, but I prefer to look at this situation from the angle of the destiny slot. What destiny does the most work for dark armor? I have a hard time imagining the answer being anything but ageless. In the same way as you can look at the best alpha, cardiac, and build on it from there, you can also start from destiny.

Cardiac does indeed do more than just endurance, but it would be hard to say that ageless' recharge and either recovery or debuff resistance bonuses are somehow insignificant compared to that +res. The other thing is that if you go ageless not only do you not need cardiac, you also don't really need spiritual as you are already getting a huge if less constant recharge buff. In that light, what's wrong with musculature? You may not be impressed with its damage bonus applied to already well-slotted powers, but consider this example. My most recent scrapper is almost 50 and is about ready to slot the purples I've amassed and start the ol' incarnate grind. I was thinking of taking char, melt armor and fireball because what's better than melt armor with just one slot in it? Well, it turns out that fire blast with just one level 50 damage IO in it and musculature, 100% global rech and some ungodly number of global acc bonuses is pretty amazing for a situation like blue mitos. That's a type of value that you don't get from other incarnate combinations.

It would be totally sweet if a full team could increase their spawn size higher than its natural position, though. Imagine x10: every spawn contains 16 minions, 7 lieutenants, 3 bosses, and an elite boss. What about groups that don't have elite bosses? They get an elite boss doppelganger of someone on your team. Cmon devs, you aren't too busy to add this right?

Speaking only of the incarnate stuff, while dark armor is of course a poster child for cardiac, it seems like an equally valid way to go is musculature and ageless. Of all the armor sets, no set needs rebirth or barrier less than dark armor. Clarion? Heh. So, why not ageless? Tons of recharge, tons of endurance, and possibly tons of debuff resistance. What's not to like? This also frees up your alpha, as cardiac is definitely second fiddle to ageless when it comes to endurance. Of the options, the next most attractive alpha is probably going to be musculature. Claws only needs crazy rech if you're after the top chain, and let me assure you that you will do plenty good damage without the top chain. Musculature compounds the heck out of the damage you'll do. Its bonus could be compared to running triple stacked assault, but for zero endurance. Additionally, it allows you to underslot damage slightly, for example slotting four kinetic combats and not having to make up for it with an additional enhancement.

Maybe this is old news to everyone but me, but martial arts is really great since it got buffed. This is particularly true with substantial investment into the character, as its top chain is just ultra brutal and isn't quite as recharge intensive as with some sets. That said, I would suggest trying martial arts on a scrapper, or if you plan to wait a bit to make a couple of these characters, you could wait for i21 and make a martial arts tanker of some sort. FA/MA would be pretty mean as tankers go.

You really don't need to turn off bosses but if you want a smoother, creamier difficulty curve I guess it's an option.

"Learn to jump" is in fact excellent advice however, credit where credit is due, A_F. If you aren't bunny hopping around with CJ and hurdle, you aren't getting the most out of your blaster. Yeah yeah, hoverblasting. You can do better! Jumping is also more fun. Among other things, it enables you to essentially ignore long animation times, keep dangerous enemies out of melee indefinitely, look sexy as hell, and little known fact, the more you jump the more likely it is for a purple to drop.

Jumping around in combat is in fact great for any type of character, but blasters probably get the most out of it of any AT. They are the one AT that is the most committed to ranged damage and the least encumbered by other obligations. That is to say, you rarely have to take time out of your busy murdering schedule to heal someone, or buff someone, or rez someone, or anything else.

So yes, a good point which I don't believe I've articulated very often in my frequent defense of the archetype. It may not be intuitively obvious but if you're blasting, you ought to be hopping.

I like revive, as bad as it is compared to other self rezzes and as irrelevant as it is when you aren't dying in the first place. It's just so thematically satisfying. However, I like vengeance for the same reason, as you point out it is a place for a lotg global, and the kicker for me is that it's actually a really effective power in a lot of highbie applications. I try to get vengeance on every character if there's any way to fit it in and there's always a chance to use it sooner or later. Dr. Aeon and the fab four are examples from the STF where it is commonly helpful, Reichsman too of course, weakened Hami, basically any part of the ITF if you have a moderately inattentive squishy on the team, the list goes on and on. To say nothing of the trials! Oh, and in addition to buffing you it also buffs those weirdos who follow you around sometimes. What were they called again? The time? The tomb? I'll think of it later. Vengeance is great, you should take it.

Poisonous ray is also pure toxic damage - ice armor does not provide any defense against it whatsoever. The only way to defend against it is ranged defense. In other words, don't even worry about that, attacks of that kind are vanishingly rare and don't hit very hard in the first place.

It's interesting that this thread started its magical journey with the assertion that blasters were bad because incarnate powers render them useless. When it was demonstrated that blasters benefit at least as much as anyone from incarnate powers, the argument shifted to blasters being bad because their defensive abilities are inferior to those of other damage dealers. With this debunked, the topic has come to be about how blasters are bad because buffers and debuffers are better. Any guesses as to what the next reason that blasters are bad will be?

Thank you, Nihilii, for demonstrating once again that the only thing better than being ironically incorrect is being incredibly pedantic while being ironically incorrect.

I think "YMMV" goes without saying on this kind of thing but I will add that I've taken to slotting level 27 to 32 IOs where possible. This has two advantages: the most obvious one is that you get to keep more of your bonuses while exemplaring. As Infini said, you don't actually need this, but I say why not be s/l softcapped on citadels, sutters and most of the ouro arcs worth running? Especially if you plan to go all the way and use purples, well, one of the selling points of those is that their bonuses work at any level. How silly not to capitalize on something you've already invested so heavily in.

The other thing is that this means you can begin buying your final IOs starting from level 24 to 29. I don't know about anyone else but I personally enjoy surfing through the ho-hum 30s on a wave of invented mayhem. The mid level villain groups are categorically not designed to be a threat to IOed players so abusing them is endlessly amusing. Again, maybe that's just me.

I had a great time leveling up my own KM/FA scrapper. After finishing his build and getting him moderately incarnated out, I stopped playing him because he made highbie content too trivial. If that sounds like the kind of problem you don't mind having, I suggest you continue playing the character. Oh, and it's also a fantastic combination for ambush farming.