Xyzor

I'm also debating between these two and fighting the urge to go Staff/Regen (I already have a DM/Regen Scrapper).

From what I've read, I'm leaning toward EA for the general utility/survivability. In my mind, though, some kind of Lightning Rod concept seems super cool.

Have a Staff/WP on Beta, and love Staff Fighting. Fast, fun, easy on the Blue Bar, lots of AoE madness! WP is boring, though I understand the draw for people who don;t want to actively focus on their secondary set.

I agree with this about 95%. Dull Pain is worth hitting before you enter combat, IMO, because it caps your HP and therefore increases your Regen. If you take Rebirth, you have an even-more-uber in-combat survival tool (heal + Regen). With regen, it is hard to find a better path than getting the Soul Patron Pool for Shadow Meld. That way you can mini-MoG (Shadow Meld) before you go in, and still have MoG in your pocket.

For what it's worth, 2-slotting Hasten and boosting the first IO to +5 should be enough to perma-hasten if you good set bonuses to go along with it. You can even boost the second to +2 without the boosters being wasted.

For defense, you could split the Scrapper ATO 3 and 3 and get 10% S/L. I prefer the 10% recharge bonus myself with a couple Kinetic Combats in other powers/mules, but its hard to argue with that much bang for your buck from the split set.

A few specific things about the new build you posted:

- Putting your regen/recovery procs in Health/Stamina is a slightly better approach. Wihtout getting math-heavy, their base boosts aren't as high, so your ROI on the Procs are better compared with enhancing the actual ability. You can even pull a few slots out of QR to make room in Health and Stam for them. You won't lose much from the 5-slot Perf shifter combo, and you can still get some minor bonuses from using 2 in Stam (EndMod and Proc).

- Slot Dark Blast as an attack, and if money is no object, 5-slot the Purple Ranged set (Apocalypse). Great +Rech bonus and solid dmg.

- Get Resilience earlier, and at least 2 slot it. This provides good layered defense, and IMO, will get you more utility than Assault at 35 or even Combat Jumping at 22.

This sums it up quite well.

Say, huh, what?!? Are we talking about the same Shadow Meld? Granted, my DM/Regen is built heavily for Recharge, but Shadow Meld recharges FAST. I think in my standard build, it is up every 35-40 seconds. So, with 15 seconds of activation, it has around 30 seconds, tops, of down time. I;d have to open mids and check my math, and I can't right now, but I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. In short, Shadow Meld is AWESOME. It is the main reason to get Soul Mastery.

The second reason (and a close second, which I didn't realize until I tried it) is Dark Blast. Good dmg, very fast recharge, fits/stack with the -hit debuff secondary in DM. I use 4 attack powers, Smite, MG, SL and Dark Blast. Smite gathers dust quite a bit, but Dark Blast is just great. With enough recharge you can sit at range and spam it in situations where Melee range is bad. It takes out Runners fantastically, and can even help you pull in situations where that is helpful.

In short (too late), go darkside and get Soul. Get Shadow Meld and Dark Blast, slot them, and be happy.

Hehe, glad you enjoyed that


Sorry, calling a TRAILER video "Issue 22: Death Incarnate" represents the content as being part of the release. There is no valid argument otherwise. It is not reasonable to expect viewers to know that 'in the past trailers have included shots from any content between the current release and the next release.'

The movie analogy works at a basic level because both Movies and Games use TRAILERS, which are promotional videos containing content from the upcoming movie/game. The short videos, promoting the contents of the upcoming release, show people what to expect from that release. This is an established practice for over 60 years of entertainment, so it is also unreasonable to think the viewer-base should have different expectations.

Now, I have seen movies that were missing scenes that were in trailers, and I know things change during the 'editing' process for both games and movies. This is why I don't think Paragon did anything wrong. But I still stand by, 100%, my argument that they, at least at some early level, allowed content to be released that represented Staff Fighting as part of i22. They may have made an effort to inform their customer base later that it wasn't going to be part of the release, but again, you cannot expect every customer to see every post they make, and the customers that did see those later statements have every right and expectation to feel disappointed.


I understand and appreciate that, and do not feel 'attacked' in any way here. This is an interesting (and hopefully entertaining) debate that I feel is worth engaging in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akUj6...1&feature=plcp

Sorry, but putting action shots of a powerset in a Trailer Titled "Issue 22: Death Incarnate" IS representing that said content will be part of the referenced content issue. There is just no way around that. If you saw a movie trailer, and there was a shot of Bruce Willis, or some other highly recognizable actor, in the trailer, and then you saw the movie, even if his name wasn't used to sell that movie, and he never showed up, you might feel a little misled. His name might not have been in the credits, but you saw him in an official clip from the movie, so you are reasonable to expect him to be there. Imperfect analogy, maybe, but accurate enough to support my point.

Now, do I think it was intentional? Absolutely not. Do I think they did anything wrong? As stated earlier, absolutely not. Was I disappointed that it wasn't included in the actual release (or wasn't going to be, since i did find out a few days before launch)? Absolutely. Was I somehow incorrect or arrogant or selfish for feeling that way? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I agree that the exact wording of my original post may have made it seem like there was some level of expectation that it would be included, and I admit that was on purpose, because I figured (apparently correctly) that some people did not know that it wasn't going to be included.

I see nothing wrong with creating a post where people who are similarly disappointed can commiserate in that disappointment. There really wasn't a lot of dev-bashing, just shared opinions that we were all excited for that piece of content and really wished it had been included.

I don't play on Virtue, I play on Freedom. So I should get things whenever I want, for FREE.

And sure, it is up to the devs to determine when new things will be released, but when the company represents something as being part of an update (by, I don't know, showing those things in the trailer for the release), in a game where a large portion of the playbase PAYS to play, they have a responsibility to deliver. I am not saying they did anything wrong in this case, but your post is a bit of a care-bear oversimplification of why some people were disappointed.

As an FYI - I started this thread not as a complaint (though I was obviously disappointed at the time), but as an expectation-manager for people here because even though I am fairly 'in the loop' on game developments, I didn't know until about 3 days before release that Staff and Beast Mastery weren't going to be included. I figured there were others in that same situation, and better they find out a bit early, instead of on launch day.

This. Absolutely. I have a DM/Regen that I would love to tank with, but certainly wouldn't want to always generate aggro. Something like a Celerity +stealth, but for Taunt, in an IO, or even just a Taunt Aura Toggle added to the Presence Pool would be a decent option.

And an added point here for those of you saying how terrible it would be for certain Powersets to have a Taunt aura, keep in mind that as long as it wasn't part of a 'must-have' power, you could always skip it for playstyle tailoring.

But I don't like the sound the stick makes when it hits the kitten! It should be more of a swoooosh...thwack, than a whooosh-smack...

Yeah, that is fair. I posted at the height of my disappointment, so there was a bit more venom in there than was really necessary. I work in the programming field as well, so I understand that things like this can happen. Doesn't make it any less frustrating when I am the one on the other side of the monitor, though!

Let's hope for a quick fix!