Werner

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I'd agree with most of those assessments Werner with one qualification: it's gonna be hell on your blue bar. You're either going to get a build that has nice, sustainable blue bar, or you're going to get one that blows every other set's survivability out of the water. There isn't really much middle ground on the mega-builds.

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It's going to be difficult, that's for certain. Everything is achievable separately. But doing it all at the same time? Eesh! I really should plan out a build rather than just hoping, but I've been having too much fun with my altitis this year to spend any time planning. Most of the alts I've been playing are upper 30s to upper 40s now, and I've gotten one of them to 50, so maybe some month soon I'll be back to focusing on doing some serious damage with one or two builds.

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If you put it with the right primary and load it up with IO's its ok otherwise it just doesnt bring enough to the table.

In my humble opinion it only works with spines and even then it takes a large IO investment before it becomes truly powerful. Claws and the swords can work with dark but they would be stronger with almost any other secondary which is a telling point.

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Now, I'm only talking about seriously expensive builds here. And I don't have a build I'm satisfied with, but I can tell you what I believe that Katana/Dark and Broad Sword/Dark are capable of. I believe they are capable of soft capping defense, plus having all those nice resists, plus having one of the best heals in the game on a quick recharge, plus being solid builds that give up almost nothing to get there. I think they would have better survivability than most top tier scrappers under most circumstances.

Again, I'm not fully-satisfied with anything I've seen or made yet, but I think there's a build out there waiting to be discovered that will put most everything else to shame.

Or I could be wrong. But even if I'm wrong, the builds I've seen are at least competitive.

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I'm waiting for someone to step up and show us how good that combo is soon.

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I'm nearly done with my DM/DA build and BS/DA is incidentally my next focus. I'm curious as to what you meant by this comment though.

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I assume it means that he understands just how good BS/DA or Katana/DA could be, but none of us have really gone totally nuts with a build yet. Mine's at 29 now, so it'll be a while for me. Someone will definitely beat me to the punch. I know you're working on one. Powerforge is also working on one, and we know what he can do. I still need to review his build. (Sorry, Powerforge.)

I, uh... wow.

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The only way to celebrate : kill a few AVs. Four of them. At the same time !

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OK, now this is just getting silly!

I have a LOT of ground to make up. *chuckle*

I don't know what "John Boys" means.

It probably would have been better if it were REALLY a kill all like the title of the mission indicated. If you really can just go in, wipe out the main boss, and exit with 700 tickets, then I can see how it could be farmed.

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I'm guessing it's due to the fear of powerlevelers more than actual farmers. Often folks seem to use those terms interchangeably.

Just roll a toon in Atlas, walk across the street, get SK'd by whoever and get leveled. No anchors needed.

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Even then, you'd be better off with a mission that strung the bosses out rather than cramming them all into a single death room. Well, unless you had a seriously hard core team set up that could tear them apart without absolutely destroying the squishies. Even then, I'd say you'd want no more than the aggro cap in bosses being taunted by a tank, then a bunch of AoE blasters to tear them apart in seconds. Rinse and repeat for as much as you can in the mission. Give it a lowish rating and a generic name and description so that nobody ever finds it.

Thing is, I'd enjoy a mission like that. That sounds like a fun challenge for, say, the trio of tank and two fire blasters that I was part of that burned from 1 to 50. Just because it looks like a farm or a powerleveling map doesn't mean that's the intent.

I'm probably on the wrong forum to find out, and it may be way too early in I14 to know, but I'm really curious to know where the devs are going to draw the line on this kind of thing. I'd hate to see our fun destroyed by farming worries.

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Perhaps it's just me, but after playing this game long enough the idea of playing for more experience/influence/stuff loses its appeal. There is the obvious social aspect, but from a solo point of view it's much more about testing your limits and "how crazy can I get before I go splat?".

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Yeah, I'm sitting on something like five billion influence before I even start counting assets. If I want stuff, I can buy stuff. I'm playing for the sheer joy of playing at this point, and a giant room of extremely straightforward death like this is FUN.

I suspect that a much larger number of players are still on the "get more stuff" train, though. Heck, I'll probably farm for tickets at some point just out of curiosity. Or maybe not. I never really did with merits. I figured out how I could get them quickly if I wanted, then never did so again. I haven't bought a single thing with merits.

Well, you can get tickets pretty fast on that mission if you can survive it. But that is pretty obviously not the point of the mission, or it wouldn't be so blasted difficult. To me, it's clear that it is simply what we were using it as – a challenge.

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It appears to be gone now. Too bad, just got back and wanted to see if my blaster could some how whittle them down.

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It's still up, just type in Who Cares or Who Cares 2, make sure you're not under "My Creations".

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And if you've rated it, that you're not excluding missions you've rated.

OK, I tried this a second time, with strategy this time. In other words, pulling the tanks one or two or three at a time into the crowd of minions to power Soul Drain. Working that way, I was able to do it no temps, no inspirations, no deaths, and I think faster than the spawn diving method. Spawn diving was more fun, though.

I didn't pay much attention to MArc on test. My assumption was that you wouldn't get ANY rewards for playing MArc missions until they became Dev picks, or something like that. That way, they wouldn't have to play cop, telling you what kind of missions you could and couldn't enjoy. I was wrong. That's good in some sense, as they'll get a lot more people playing it with full rewards. But it's bad in that they have to regulate content.

Yeah, I'm not sure where they're going to draw the line on farming. I LIKE diving into spawns with a lot of bosses. I DON'T do it for the rewards, as I know how to make all the influence I'll ever need by playing the market when I'm not too lazy to do so. I would LOVE to play missions where all of the spawns are all bosses instead of stupid minions and lieutenants to grind through. I usually stop missioning by the mid levels because invincible has become too boring.

But a mission full of bosses strung out like that? That's some serious XP. Maybe more than they intend me to be able to get.

As far as farming goes, the Devs have provided me with farming maps. I don't NEED to make my own when I feel like farming, which I occasionally do. I occasionally just want to sit down and tear apart enemies that don't threaten me for hours on end. I don't need MArc to do that.

OK, this IS awesome fun. Tried it out with Sergei on invincible. I saw the room of tanks, and thought I couldn't be happier. Then I dove in, and the biggest ambush ever ran in to liven things up. I was wrong. I COULD be happier. I tore things up for about 15 minutes, grinning from ear to ear in pure scrapper BLISS, then poof, dead. I was slightly injured already, then two of the tanks hit me for 782 points each at the same time.

Ran back in, probably made it another five minutes. This time, they just wore me down. They burned me out of greens and oranges, and my health headed down. When it got into the scaling resistance territory, they had a hard time finishing me off, but they eventually did.

Heh, faster each time. Only lasted a couple minutes on the third try.

Couple more minutes. Do these tanks ever end?

Fifteen seconds. Seriously?

And then another fifteen minute stretch, and the room was finally clear. Boy, I was sick of tanks by the time it was done. And I think that makes it perfect.

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I just went 3 heal/end HOs and 3 Dam/Acc HOs. That comes out like this:

95% dam
95% acc
95% heal
95% end

I can still run the smite-sl-smite-MG chain with no recharge in SL due to global bonuses and hasten.

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Sweet.

Genius!

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Wait... would a Shield/DM Tanker put our more damage than a Shield/SS Tanker? I figured a Shield/SS Tanker might be capable of doing some ridiculous things like solo'ing AVs and the like but would DM outperform it?

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Without running any numbers, and being rather unfamiliar with tankers, and not frequenting the tanker forums, I'll respond with pure guesswork!

I'm guessing that top tier Dark Melee and Super Strength tankers put out similar DPS. I'm guessing that Dark Melee would have the edge for absolutely ridiculous things due to an endurance recovery power. Not needing Aid Self will open up the build a bit. I also hate the Rage crash (though not nearly as much as in the past). I'll miss Foot Stomp.

I should probably run some sort of numbers before running a character up to 50, but I think only once have I planned anything out before actually making the character. You might think I wouldn't be so whim-driven, but I am.

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I rolled a DM/Shield scrapper a few weeks ago, but after seeing the DPS Shadow Monkey is doing I rerolled as a tanker. If a scrapper can get to 300, it's likely a tanker could be at least over 160... and solo AVs, too.

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Definitely. Dark Melee tankers are already on the verge of soloing pylons, if they haven't already. A Dark Melee/Shields tanker should be able to do absolutely crazy stuff.

Hey... maybe you're onto something. Maybe that's a tanker I could actually enjoy instead of just slogging through. I'm SO going to go build one. Thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious!

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Really ? Hmm... Best I can get is ~225 on a gapless BF->AS->SS->AS, using Heca proc + Achilles in AS, Arma proc + Eradication proc in SS, and Mako proc in BF, and I can't get it with any secondary. Even my SR Mids build would have a 0.06s gap, and that build wouldn't have Aid Self nor enough endurance to sustain the chain. Another SR build would have a 0.12s gap and Aid Self, dropping the DPS to 215.

I still have much to learn.

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Or my memory just sucks. I'm either remembering or misremembering that Shred Monkey's AV soloing build was doing 231 DPS. Then he dropped Aid Self for additional DPS, so I figured 235 DPS was probably lower than what he actually achieved.

For proof of concept builds that I poked at, let's see... I have one at 220 DPS and another at 214 DPS, so I'm definitely more in your neighborhood.

Shred, what sort of DPS do you do?

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My attack chain is Blinding Feint => Attack Vitals (which is Ablating Strike, Vengeful Slice, Sweeping Strike). I have around 170 DPS with that chain ; however, it drops fast against foes with lethal resistances, as Achilles Heel -res is also being resisted.

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nice thanks, i think i may try dual blades i didn't realize it could get its DPS up that high thats pretty solid.

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Technically, it can get DPS up around 235 without damage buffs from the secondary, I believe. Shred Monkey would know better than I.

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It seems to me even with perma DP, +maxHP can still have some use as you can hold off using DP and use it as a big emergency heal when needed. It's definitely not something I'd build for, but it's not totally wasted either.

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I'm into +HP even with perma Dull Pain. I'm a big fan of holding off on it until I'm injured and not just using it for the buff. If I can get away with that behavior on Regen, people can definitely get away with it on Invulnerability.

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Pylon + RWZ Challenge
Screenshot
Video

Doing the challenge Werner was talking about - defeating a pylon while a RWZ challenge spawn is attacking you. Two chief mesmerists, one chief soldier, one or two chief mentalist(s) (I can't remember exactly) and one conscript. It wasn't too tough once all riktis were in melee range.

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Woot! I think you're the first. Grats!

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My math seems wrong, anyway. I thought I had around 180 DPS with the new build, yet it takes me 14 minutes (links to a video) to defeat a pylon.

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14 minutes puts you at 173 DPS. That's not far off.

Positron's nasty nasty nasty. And you didn't touch your purples. Very nice.

I really want to watch these, but I'm so far behind in my foruming and private messaging. *sigh*

In any case, grats!

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Now which would be better for overall survivability:

Having these stats for Siphon Life
45% accuracy
71% damage
40% endurance
88% heal
90% recharge
with 43.1% Melee Defense

Or having these stats instead
43% accuracy
96% damage
62% endurance
0% heal
43% recharge
and being Melee soft-capped?

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Very close. Tough to call, but I'm going with the better heal.

Roughly speaking, the 88% higher heal in the first option will probably provide you with about 50% more overall healing and regeneration. The 2% lower melee defense will see you taking 40% more damage in melee, or maybe 30% more damage overall. So it looks like the additional healing will probably slightly more than make up for the additional incoming damage, but it would depend heavily on the rest of the build. As for inspirations, while greens can easily replace the lost healing from a 0% heal enhancement in Siphon Life, a purple can even more easily replace the 2% defense deficit. So yeah. I'm going with healing by a small margin.