Umbral

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What I'm thinking is that Bill had to have both of the procs in Slash (since it's the only Claws attack with -Def), while your BS build may have had them in two different powers. One in Hack and one in Slash for example. If that's correct, maybe the procs only work when slotted in seperate powers. This would hurt our theorycrafting of Claws quite a bit.

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Achilles' Heel is a Def Debuff IO. The Fury of the Gladiator proc is a PbAoE IO. There is no power available to Claws that can slot them both. The BS build however can slot them both in the same attack because both Headsplitter and Slice accept Def Debuff and PbAoE sets.

I've got no problems helping newbies as long as they're actually a newbie, rather than a noob that immediately assumes that just because he read the little guide booklet that comes with the game and maybe a single post or 2 on the forums.

I love helping newbies. I refuse to help noobies. The important distinction is that the newbie actually wants to get better at the game rather than assuming that he knows every mechanic that he will ever need to know about but doesn't know the basic concepts of animation time DPS restriction.

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As far as damage goes, scrappers will do better in teams for damage than brutes. I have found that even with a kin on the team, it is rare for me to see they +damage stat cap out on my brutes. With a Kin on teams with my scrappers I see it all the time.

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Keep in mind that the listed +dam on Combat Attributes doesn't actually include +dam from slotting. If you've slotted for 95% +dam in your attacks, you only need to attain 305% +dam on a Scrapper and 655% +dam on a Brute.

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How about you actually look at the survivability disparity and realize that you're wrong?

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I realize that Brute's have greater survivability "possibilities" yes. But what you seem to imply is that Brutes come out of the box spitting 850% +dmg buffed fireballs from hell 110% of the time without fail...which is so far from the truth it hurts my sides from laughter. The "case-by-case" scenarios, un-predictability of damage ratios and team/buffs, as well as basic un-predicatability of how any given mob will respond is why Brutes are balanced with what they have. During ultimate-optimal-sweetass conditions, they can perform better than Scrappers, sure, but that's such a circumstantial event that it's not something we can "count on" for average play. So when are "you" going to realize that you are wrong and just angry?

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Actually, they outperform Scrappers concerning damage at 750% +dam. They constantly outperform Scrappers on survivability thanks to a higher base hp, which can't be accounted for anywhere for Scrappers.

Nice try with the absurd hyperbole though. Next time, try to actually get some real, verifiable information to support your outrageous hypothesis, especially since you're arguing with a plethora of other information that's already present.

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That's not balance. That's a definite imbalance. Damage roughly equal. Survivability obviously imbalanced in the favor of Brutes. Learn to pay some [censored] attention to the game mechanics and the numbers before you accuse me of generating conclusions based solely on an unimportant bias.

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And again, here you are getting extremely passionate about your anger over Brutes, once again showing your bias, and once again I'm not seeing this "severe imbalance" that you so cry about.


Maybe cry less? Dunno..you sound pretty heated. A hug maybe?

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How about you actually look at the survivability disparity and realize that you're wrong?

First off, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you just suck. I've soloed plenty on my Defender and never had anywhere near the problems you've had. You should really consider the fact that you're a bad player running with bad slotting rather than some inherent flaw in the game.

Secondly, you're once again comparing the AT that is the worst at soloing with the AT that is the best at soloing. Trying finding something a little less obviously imbalanced for next time.

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Hello all, just curious. As a BS/Regen scrapper, would it be bad to slot for multiple procs in an attack? Such as Scirocco's Lethal proc and Obliterations Smash proc? Is it too much lost damage or is it equalized out?

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Because your attacks deal so much damage in a single burst, you'll do more damage just slotting for +dam. The easiest way to think of it is to consider the procs to be a flat amount of additional damage per attack whereas damage enhancements are percentage increases.

For Hack, here's how it would break down:

33% +dam = 112.9 * .33 = 37.357 additional damage
Touch of Death proc = 15% chance for 71.8 damage = 10.77 additional damage
Mako's Bite proc = 20% chance for 71.8 damage = 14.36 additional damage
Hecatomb proc = 33% chance for 107.1 damage = 35.343 additional damage

Each of the proc contributions remains constant for all attacks while the benefit of +dam varies from attack to attack. In general, you're best slotting +dam to 90-95% before slotting in procs (except for the AH -res proc). Whenever you get to the redzone for +dam, you're better putting in procs. ED will reduce the effectiveness of any additional +dam you put in to almost nothing.

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Honestly man, you're really showing your "bias" here, and it's coming off as alot of crying.

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Actually, it's exasperation at a vast majority of the player base being incapable of seeing what is mathematically apparent! I've shown repeatedly that Brutes are numerically superior to Scrappers thanks to everything they've got. The fact that I find that imbalancing makes sense to me.

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The reasons as to "why" Brutes may be able to reach higher damage levels than Scrappers do not, in any way, un-balance them to Scrappers, simply due to the truth that SO MANY factors are required for that to happen...AND they CANNOT be done solo and DO require a TEAM to achieve, as well as constant monitoring (Fury drops below a certain level and there goes that damage). Per the Dev's, needing "multiple" team-mates to be able to achieve certain performance levels is in not any way "un-balanced."

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Actually, the big factor is that, in order to achieve their absolute peak performance they may need this. However, given the same buffs as a Scrapper, the Brute will be more survivable and, except for a very specific range of +dam buffs, will do more damage than the Scrapper. They may need multiple teammates to achieve their absolute peak performance, but so do Scrappers.

The other point is that we're arguing about caps, which are a team exclusive point of contention (unless we bring in greater performance of tier 9 powers and inspiration use). As it stands, Brutes have more to gain from everything simply because they have better caps for damage (and a better potential scalar to go along with it) and better baseline and cap survivability. That's not parity. That's broken.

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Grant a Scrapper the same type of "buffs/debuffs" and thier performance level damage wise will be just about as good and they'll be "un-killable" as well...so I don't see what the problem is...other than you are upset (or jealous?) that another melee AT can reach your Scrapper's potential with effort.

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Actually, that's where you're wrong. We've done the math. Even assuming that they have the same damage and mitigation values (a stretch, considering how easy it is to push resist based Scrappers above their resist caps with the +res shields), a Brute still wins out on survivability because they have more hit points.

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I just don't see a problem with a Brute (who uses many IO's and teams) being able to perform at levels comparable to a Scrapper with the same types of buffs. That's fine game balance imho. Teaming should never be nerfed.

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I wouldn't either if they actually performed at the same level. The problem is that they don't. Brutes perform better. They achieve similar levels of average damage and higher levels of peak damage all the while maintaining significantly higher survivability.

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I suppose next we should nerf the abilities that a "full" Corruptor team can achieve right? A full, well built, IO'd Corruptor team can achieve things that most AT's can only dream about. Defender teams can too.

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That's simply an illustration of the power of stacking force multipliers. That's a simple issue with how the game operates (and we're getting into the realm of buff v. straight effect balancing, which is a whole different argument). You're comparing a straight attack/defense AT comparison (Scrapper to Brute) to a hyper optimized buff/debuff team comparison. They're only marginally related.

Let me make it simple for you: the big thing that you (and many others that want to use anecdotal evidence in balance considerations) seem to be ignoring is that, while the Brute and Scrapper do similar levels of damage across all +dam values (Scrappers win at "moderate" levels, Brutes at "low" and "high" levels) but Brutes are always harder to kill because they can take full advantage of tier 9s and have higher base and cap hp. Any argument that they've got the same survivability as a Scrapper because they have the same self protection modifiers is blatantly untrue because Brutes have a larger pool of hit points to work with in all situations which increases the effect of their heals and regeneration and requires 12.5% more damage to penetrate their mitigation before it actually kills them.

That's not balance. That's a definite imbalance. Damage roughly equal. Survivability obviously imbalanced in the favor of Brutes. Learn to pay some [censored] attention to the game mechanics and the numbers before you accuse me of generating conclusions based solely on an unimportant bias.

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ChaosString:
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Oh, I reach 90% all the time during missions, and exceed it during some types of encounters

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You don't "exceed" 90% Fury, I think at best Fury caps out at 95% (I actually believe it's 90%) due to either a "bug" or design. So you're not going to "exceed" 90% Fury hardly ever, IF ever for that matter.

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Actually, you do. You just don't get Fury from attacking if you're over 90%. You have to get it from being attacked which, if you're on a team, isn't a difficult thing to do unless you're */Energy.

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Second run I gave up at 6:22 when the pylon was barely at 50% health.

This chain sucks and isn't getting anywhere near what our calculations are showing.

I'm beginning to seriously doubt the belief that the two different types of DR debuff procs stack.

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Get either a Bane Spider or a Blaster to observe the status of the Pylon for you with Surveillance. If they're not shown to stack for a least 5 minutes, I'm pretty sure that's decent evidence that they don't.

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Another way to snoop on enemy stats that anyone can use: Power Analyzer MkIII

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Wasn't sure if that one would let you do it forever or if it would drop off, so I played it safe and went with a method I knew wouldn't screw you.

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Second run I gave up at 6:22 when the pylon was barely at 50% health.

This chain sucks and isn't getting anywhere near what our calculations are showing.

I'm beginning to seriously doubt the belief that the two different types of DR debuff procs stack.

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Get either a Bane Spider or a Blaster to observe the status of the Pylon for you with Surveillance. If they're not shown to stack for a least 5 minutes, I'm pretty sure that's decent evidence that they don't.

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Would it be very unbalanced to have an optional lower power nuke at level 32? A good example would be Inferno: lower the damage to around 240 at level 50, reduce the recharge to around 75 seconds, make the endurance cost about 30, give it a new name, and make it and inferno mutually exclusive at level 32. This is not a suggestion. I plan on posting a much larger post in the suggestions forum next week so I thought it might be a good idea to get some insight from veteran blasters.

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You already have Full auto and rain of arrows. They meet your criteria of being lower damage faster recharge and not being able to be taken with the other nukes.

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They're also considerably stronger over time than the other nukes and, as such, are one of the primary balancing powers of AR/* and Arch/* which would otherwise be seen as underperforming. Giving something like that to Fire/* (which is already probably the top performer) would make it even more powerful and has even less reason for being done.

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Yeah, it always felt like 6 seconds, though.

Seriously annoying to use it and root yourself for that long.

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Eh, I've gotten quite good with it. Thanks to the range extension and the Soul Drain buff, I can now plow through large mobs with a lot more speed than I used to. It's still no Spines/* or Claws/* but you can use it to close the gap a bit (re: every use kills 5 minions).

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What I mean is that if endurance use was relative to power effect (damage was the easiest to discuss), then there would be balance. That would mean that people would use endurance relative to the amount of damage an attack caused. The endurance used by toggles would be relative to the amount of defense it provides.

I don't see how this could unbalance anything. It's not going to add power to anyone, it's just going to ensure that no one pays more for less.

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Interestingly enough, this is the way it already is when you look at it within the same AT. A Tanker pays as much for his damage as any other Tanker does. A Scrapper (except for a claws Scrapper because that's their shtick!) will pay as much for his damage as any other Scrapper does. It not exact, but it's close enough (cuz Arcanatime screws with everything!).

Your (and Starsman's) problem is that you want every point to cost the same over all ATs. I (and most of the people that agree with me) don't really see that as a valid point. There isn't a definite game balance reason that has yet been posed as to why a change like this should occur just so that Tankers (and Defenders feasibly) will be capable of attacking without a break for longer than any other AT just because they do less damage and are, by game design, less endurance efficient at it.

The entire point of my "some kind of parity needs to exist" is that, between Brutes and Scrappers, there isn't really any at the top end.

I take Brutes doing just as much damage while being 12.5% harder to kill at the very least, thanks to their higher hit points, with a grain of salt. This is something that many of you who currently see parity are missing. Brutes and Scrappers do the same damage. They shouldn't be. Brutes should be doing less because they're harder to kill even excluding power sets. That's what parity is.

As for the top end game, I'm talking about when you're dancing with the caps. When you're on a good team and/or IO'd to the gills, Brutes will outperform Scrappers. Their scalars are simply higher at 750% +dam (6.375) than a Scrapper's (6.075 assuming 8% overall crit chance; 6.1875 assuming 10% crit) as well as their resistance (250% better mitigation) and hp caps (33% better mitigation) and team contribution (cuz they have punchvoke).

Even assuming that only one of these is possible at any one time (either maximized mitigation or maximized damage) you still have to keep in mind that the Brute is still going to be better simply because s/he is harder to kill thanks to naturally high hit points. If their damages are equal but everything else remains as it is now, that's not parity. That's a discernible advantage for the Brute.

Because of this obvious advantage, it screams to me the need for a change. I don't care however much you scream that Brutes have to put more work into keeping their damage up or whatever, the fact of the matter remains that Brutes are capable of super-Scrapper level damage and super-Scrapper level survivability and even have a native advantage in one of those 2 fields when solo!

The only reason we're not going to see the changes to the AT to see some actual parity is because Castle doesn't want to rock the boat. You've already seen what's happened from his buffing of Dominators. People got angry at him for it. For giving Dominators a global buff in a way that didn't make them overpowered. Limiting the top end of Brutes because it's overperforming both of the similar ATs on blueside (Tankers and Scrappers) would be received just as poorly and quite possibly worse because, even though they've got the same damn sets and the same damn punch voke and they both have access to Taunt, 90% of Brute players insist that they should have parity with Scrappers with the exception that they should ignore their higher caps because for some reason they're pointless to bring into a balance consideration.

Which is all [censored] stupid.

Brutes are too strong as they are now. They've got too much damage for having so much survivability and too much damage potential for having so much survival potential. That's pretty much where it is. You can't change it, the numbers are right [censored] there, but people can (and will) obfuscate it.

I've been willing to stand aside and say "eh, it's redside, I don't really care", but GoRo has me agitated. This is why I never wanted side switching, but, now that we're getting it, we've opened up the "AT power disparity can o' worms" and Castle is unwilling to put forth the effort to address it.

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Or scrapper's resistance caps to be raised to 80% or even 85% >_>

Nah I want more damage.

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Plus, other than Invuln and S/L I don't think any of my builds are even close to the cap.

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Eh, neither are Brutes, but they still have the higher caps. The big point of distinction is that it would allow Scrappers to actual distinguish themselves as being hardier than Blasters, Controllers, Defenders, etc. by some mechanic other than higher hp (and only 30% more at that).

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Which, getting back on this threads rails, sort of brings backing to the assault/defense AT's. Considering an AT can be primarily focused on both control and ranged attacks, why not assault and defense?

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First off, Assault is melee/ranged damage fusion. It's Energy Melee smushed in all nasty like with Energy Blast and a little bit of Energy Manipulation to top it off.

Secondly, there isn't really much direct parity between control and defense sets. Controls aren't as potent as defensive sets, which is why you can generally get away with it. They're also a binary metric of damage reduction (on or off) rather than the partial reduction which is part and parcel with how defensive sets work.

Of course, I shouldn't shut down the idea completely. With appropriate scaling back of the self buff scalar, it could quite easily be a balanced AT. Damage would need to be lower than Scrappers or Blasters to account for the combination of ranged damage capability and increased survivability, but, I'm reasonably sure a happy medium could be found. I'm just not sure it's going to able to find a niche with Scrappers and Blasters around.

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I'm pretty open to seeing everything get a shot. If they released 5 more Rogue AT's in this expansion I'd love it. I'd love to see another AT with the Blaster Secondary as a primary perhaps, a modified pet set most definately, another assault set for sure. Whatever they could screw together.

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I'm doubting whether they're going to release 5 new ATs. Opening up side switching is going to throw the rest of the game into enough chaos. At most, I'd expect a single additional AT (or EAT) added to each side to include some of unseen concept combinations.

*/any.

You can't really pick a bad secondary for Claws. Just go with whatever fits your concept.

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My personal preference would be for Scrappers to simply get a damage increase.

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Mine too and I would wager Brutes resistance caps to be lowered to 85% or even 80%. I don't want this to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised.

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Eh, I doubt it'll happen. I've still been pushing for Scrappers (and Stalkers) to get an increase to their resistance cap (to 80-85%) to differentiate them from the +res cap of every other AT out there. It really butters by biscuit that the VEATs have an 85% res cap and Scrappers don't even though Scrappers are supposed to be tougher.

I think that expecting a slider system for musculature as complex as the slider system for the head is a bit much, especially since the head doesn't perform anywhere near the number of animations that the rest of the body does (and isn't even articulated to boot!).

However, one thing that I do wish was present for women (and only the women model) would be a separate slider for chest and breasts. I agree that it makes no sense to me that men can have a huge barrel chest but women can only have huge knockers (which are a B cup as the smallest, wtf?). I'd very much like to be able to actually create some beefy women than aren't oozing hormonal teenage versions of the female form.

Absolutely... utterly... awesome...

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Most players aren't happy with any changes it seems, especially here. Moreso than any other MMO I've played at least.

Hell, I even had to stop reading the Dominator Buff Thread as well, same as Castle. And I'm usually all for a revolution.

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Eh, I think the Dom changes are absolutely great. I was worried that he was going to simply increase their scalar across the board but it's nice to see that he's doing it as a significant buff to non-Domination and only minor buff to Domination.

I do feel vindicated insofar as the internal memo he released saying that Dominators are going to be an AT focused simultaneously on control and damage, not a control heavy AT with a little bit of damage. I've been saying that for more than 2 years! Go me!

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He said a lot more about Spines from what I remember as well, during the Issue 13 beta I believe. Spines basically has two very effective secondary effects, -recharge, slow, along with a damage aura, great AoE and good ST, ranged immob, ranged cone... Yeah. But he did say he wouldn't expect anything to change perhaps even in a year, so...

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I think most of that was because there are just too many things wrong with Spines from the perspective of a Scrapper set. It's got 2 substantial secondary effects (Toxic DoT and -rech/-spd) and at least 3 of the powers (Throw Spines, Impale, Quills) of the powers have no real place within a Scrapper primary. The amount of work required in reworking Spines/* would just be boggling... He did specifically mention that, if he did take a swing at it, most players wouldn't be happy with the changes though. He never said why, but I expect it's because he would tone down the AoE and ranged damage heavily, bring up the ST damage, and remove/change/nerf one of the 2 secondary effects.

My personal opinion is that splitting the physique slider into multiple specialized sliders for each portion currently without a specialized slider (upper arm, forearm, upper leg, lower leg, neck) would solve the problem quite nicely. You can have a character with very beefy arms without having hugely muscled neck and legs. You could also go with scrawny arms but huge legs (MA Scrapper much?).

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Ice is also a good option. Fantastic ST damage to go with /eng ST damage, two holds for a little bit of safety, powerboost will help the hold durations and slows(i thik), and boost range can turn Bitter Ice Blast and Bitter Freeze Ray into long range monsters.

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This is true. Ice/Nrg works out well and is probably the classic Blapper from way back in I4. It's probably the least equipped for AoE damage, but offers great control to make up for the fact that */nrg is kind of lacking in that department.