Augury

Quick question. Just wondering if a granite brute without TP is at all feasible. I'm taking and 3 slotting swift but I've basically used up all my powerpool slots already and thus can't get TP.

I am however taking Health and Aid Self, so I'll be fine just cycling Rooted, and when I really need to stay in it I have Taunt and Mud Pots, and will probably be tanking an AV or something and won't need to move in a hurry.

Feasible? I hope so. o_o

Does anyone know if any of the dominator Ghost Widow pool powers have the graphics of her soul storm attack? I've seen other ATs use it, I think it's the hold. We don't get the hold, so I'm afraid I can't get her patented soulstorm look for at least one of the attacks.

Anyone know?

Gravity anim changes, woot!

... wait, what? O_o

Don't you guys think you might've been a little too harsh on the poor guy?

Well. My SS/SA brute is "natural" origin. Her "natural" state is also being a demonic killing machine. So yanno, YMMV as per finding it hard to apply natural to secondaries.

Shame she still got the throwing knives though.

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Finally, I think an AoE immobilize might be great fir a brute. It attracts lots of aggro - which you want - and most mobs do a lot less damage at range.

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What if you already have say, taunt, foot stomp and mud pots though? Or uh, that fire damage aura which name I suddenly can't recall and taunt and another AoE damage attack?

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Toons effectivness is secondary to having a good time.

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Quoted for truth.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a level 10 Brute to take to an Infernal fight.

FireKitty, I'd just like to say that your inability to realize that a lot people plan their characters ahead of time, and often do it very well "without having used the powers", is at least mildly irritating.

What I find worse is that instead of you attacking my negative points about the PPPs you've decided to attack me personally. That's very bad form, in case you weren't aware. In a thread where I wanted to poll how everyone else feels about this and maybe see if I was wrong, no less.

I'm sure though this post will also be interpreted as an attack and you'll accuse me of baseless whining some more and infer that I'm somehow too dumb to plan ahead, again. If you liked the PPPs that much, you could've just said so, cause that's what the thread is for.

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I, personally, wouldn't take any of my toons that were so far removed from the levels of the team into a mission with them. Granted an SK solves that, but there's no way that you're there to help with the mission, right?

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Did it today with my Brute. Level 5. My girlfriend and a couple of friends were running missions and having a nearly 40 dominator and too many alts to count I was quite sick of seeing the newbie levels again and soloing through them.

So I got SKed up to level 39. Then when the friends left SKed to my girlfriend to level 38.

As for not helping with the mission, this may be that Brutes are just good at this, but once I picked up steam and with various team buffs I was pretty much still an asset. In fact while duoing we came across a pretty nasty named werewolf form archon. I died twice and raked up debt helping my gf to kill it, and it was two shotting her henchmen and took 4 or 5 shots to kill me.

I kept it on the ground when I hit, my fury shot up, and I did solid damage. She wouldn't have been able to take it if it hadn't been for me.

Probably a flimsy tale, but just goes to show even a lowbie SKed or LKed up to high levels can be there to help, not just stand back and sponge up xp. If I'd been there for that, why would I've racked up debt trying to tank bosses way past my abilities?

I think the worse part was having to have people escort me to mission doors rather than slacking off when actually inside the mission.

Take Dimension Shift. Slot minimally for recharge and endurance (I have 1 of each). Love it until the day you die.

Sure many groups whine about the power and even many controllers avoid it like the plague and the general consensus even among doms still is that you shouldn't take it.

Here's why you should: we don't get defender primaries as our secondaries. Your AoE hold is innately inaccurate, doesn't last long enough, and takes too long to recharge. Dimension Shift is accurate enough (sometimes too accurate, but that happens) without any acc enhancements at all. It recharges fairly quickly so you can use it at the start of pretty much any fight, and to top it off it lasts longer.

If tossed on a group the right way and it's a big one, it can illiminate half of the group until the other half is dealt with. Unslotted for accuracy (which is what you want) you can throw it on bosses, and particularly elite bosses and AVs to phase shift almost ALL of their entourage, leaving your entire team to pound on the boss/EB/AV until they're dead. And trust me, this can go fast if it's the only mob you have to take account with in boss/EB cases.

It's also a good emergency trigger if you hadn't used it, in case things start going bad, to instantly relieve the pressure.

Yes, sometimes this power will hit all mobs but one. You're still ahead, even if it slows things down a little bit. If people complain, then they don't understand what you're doing for the team. My regular team when I played my dominator every single day came to love dimension shift as I did.

Coupled with power boost and/or your AoE hold this will turn a very hard fight into a very easy fight, because first you take on the non shifted mobs, then drop the hold once the shifted return to reality, take those out.

A further trick with grav/energy far superior to using crushing field which is little more than an aggro sink to get you killed is to use Wormhole to teleport a group, then use Whirling Hands to stack the two disorients. It's "not quite a hold" but it comes damn close. If something big isn't disoriented you can stack Total Focus and Bone Smasher on top of that (or seperately) and again you have a disorient.

But yeah. I cannot state enough the importance of taking Dimension Shift on a grav dominator. You might be able to get away with not taking this as a controller, but as a grav dominator you're weak on control and this will become your best friend, especially in tough boss fights.

As a last sidenote: I took propel and 6 slotted. I most certainly don't regret it, besides doing really solid damage it also gives me a respectable chain with which to stay at range if I need to, and the knockback doesn't hurt either. YMMV.

Grav/Enr is a patchwork set of powers as far as control goes, but as stated above clever use of powers goes a long way. The reward is doing pretty nasty damage. You haven't lived until you unleashed your full attack chain on an EB or AV while under domination using a grav/enr.

I'd get Combat Jumping over Weave. The only reason I would get Weave over CJ is basically either 1. you want to squeeze every 0.1% def you can out of your power choices, or 2. You have fighting powerpool and cant take the Leaping pool as well.

The latter is why I have weave planned for my brute. 3 slotted with SOs it does give you over 5% defense which is pretty respectable, but then the minute difference with CJ isn't worth added end drain and lack of jump height boost and the pesky activation.

Well, personally I think the brute PPPs are the worst of them all.

I mean. Compared to the EPPs scrappers and tankers get which actually can help make them "godly" from simply "uber", since their EPPs let them specialize in various ways the PPPs only seem good if you are okay with diverging from the role for which you picked your AT to begin with, and thoroughly enjoy PVP.

After all, I see no reason in PVE to take ranged attacks. Sure a minor accuracy debuff done by gloom might be "okay" if you can spare the slots and endurance to bother with it, if you're already high def. Mu lightning might be "okay" depending on the endurance stolen (i.e. if you can use it to help high endurance use from lots of toggles running while tanking). The web grenade from the scorpion pool might be okay. For. Uh... ... Well it might be okay for the recharge, I guess, if you're trying to tank a really scary AV for the team, or something.

But none of them really help us brutes be better brutes. The only reason I can see why anyone would be excited by the PPPs personally is either concept or PVP. After all brutes DO lack ranged attacks in PVP. And they don't get pets either to run interference (only bad in PVE since they steal fury). Or control to stop someone running away in many cases.

I wouldn't know about PVP personally, I prefer not to do much of it. I can say though that the only reason I am vaguely considering taking any PPP power is because I'm a granite brute with SS and basically have nothing better to do with my last two powerslots anyhow.

I figure anyone with a more fleshed out secondary where you need to take more primary/secondary powers looking to PVE and be a brute won't be very thrilled. Am I wrong here?

I dunno. I'm just very dissapointed. The PPPs don't generally do things I really need like:
- Raise my resists even higher
- Raise my defense higher
- Help with endurance drain when running all my toggles (unless I'm VERY wrong about the end boost provided by Mu Lightning)
- Kill things better/faster
- Raise my accuracy (and something like focussed accuracy could mean one less acc enhance slot to fill with dam, recharge or endredux)

Since my other serious villain character is a dominator, let's run through her PPP choices, which includes things like:
- Defense vs certain damage which is good since squishies like to get less squishy and not faceplant unexpectedly
- Resist vs certain damage, as above
- A little bit of extra control to stack onto what she has
- A little bit of extra damage to stack onto what she has
- More pets
- Endurance stealing powers which help with endurance (and I'm talking about AoE powers like Dark Consumption and Ball Lightning here, not the single target quite possibly flimsy end steal we get on Mu Lightning)

Sorry about going on a ramble here, but what were they thinking?!

I'm a Brute so obviously what I want to do is:
- Control (really BADLY at that, immobs are the most scorned powers of controllers and doms, and AFAIK we don't even get a hold which may have actually BEEN USEFUL)
- Fight at range
- Fight at range s'more with AoEs
- Have a pet to steal my fury

Gah. Just gah. I'm not going to take a PPP, and pray to god that this changes, though with the whole "you can never spec out of your PPP" I doubt it will.

How else am I gonna get famous?

You didn't mention me by name.

I bet a controller with the Ice Mastery EPP could outdamage a level 50 dom.

I'm tempted to try and see how much damage I can squeeze out of a controller, but then I'd never get to 50 anyhow so it'd be an exercise in futility.

What sets you use might have something to do with that, both on the dom and the controller. Like I said doms need work, but I think there are a few overstatements of how much help in this thread.

Sea Witch, at least the one I encountered later on in the game, was an actual AV toned down to an EB. I would've soloed her, except her damn push attack meant I got a few too many adds and died. Should've cleared first.

And yes, she was mez resistant.

As far as DPS, proof that it depends on your set/slotting: my MA/SR scrapped has about 4.7 DPS. my grav/enr dom has about 4 damage per second, calculated for biggest DPS output with attack chains. I can't say that's rather bad.

Hell with domination up her damage would far outstrip my hastened scrapper's.

Like I said doms could use a little love. I'm all for that. But I don't want people to decide not to play a dominator because they somehow get the mistaken idea from this thread that they're gimped; which I can say at least grav/enr isn't, so long as you're not looking too hard for control. (and if you look hard enough, you'll even find plenty of that)

I actually think between dominators and controllers the latter simply got a way too powerful innate AT ability. Containment is so much better than Domination because it's always on, and you'd be silly to waste your end attacking something that -isn't- contained.

I'd personally like to see if controllers with containment built for damage could outdamage scrappers or blasters. I don't think that's as crazy as it sounds.

Well why I don't switch CJ for SJ is because both let me travel (though one admittedly does it better), but the other also gives me 3% of defense, which tops up my passives to a nice round 10%. SJ won't have any combat viability, and I can get around with both. ^^;

Anyway that's an interesting build concept. It really isn't for me, though, as I like at least 3 damage and 2 endrdx in my attack powers (which is why I need focussed acc) and would probably go insane with only 4 attacks, let alone getting by with 2 til level 32. ^^; However, you've definately given me something to think about.

Well that settles the last def slot for elude. 6 slotted it now. Not sure why I stuck two endrdx in Conserve Power, looking at it now.

Still unsure wether to get Dragon's Tail.

Well partly why I didn't 6 slot elude is... I almost 3 slotted it only for recharge. In I7 you only need 45% def to floor any mob, so even if I only run combat jump and my passives, I'll still be 10% over what's needed to floor their attacks?

Or is there some scenario where getting the fullest enhanced def from Elude is good even in I7?

As for Jump Kick, it's still higher damage and completes my attack chain better than Thunder Kick. It's staying, period.

As for taking Dragon's Tail. I have definately wanted to take it but the problem is, what don't I take to get it?

- I have to take every power in my secondary. Otherwise I'm a big dumhed.

- I need 5 normal non AoE attacks to have a full chain. So I can't drop any of my 5 attacks (dropping Jump Kick would just prompt me to get Thunder Kick, so don't try )

- I need Stamina so I can't drop Hurdle/Swift.

- Need Aid Other for Aid Self. Could drop that but then I have nothing but def and the innate secondary defenses of SR which I hear aren't all that great. Worth it? I don't know, Aid Self is quite awesome on an SR scrapper with hasten. Comments? O_o I'd really rather not.

- Focussed Acc I need to enhance my attacks. I could drop it but I'll be running into end problems if I do.

- Combat Jumping is too good to pass up, and need it for travel. Though if I don't need it for vertical travel, I suppose I can ditch it. Less defense = doubleplusbad though.

- Conserve Power. This is the only power I could see myself conceivably dropping for Dragon's Tail. I'm really not sure if I'll need this power with stamina and EndRdx in my attacks and big toggles. The problem with dropping it is that when Elude crashes I could conceivably pop a CaB, pop Conserve Power if its available, then throw my toggles back up and pray I don't faceplant.

To illustrate why I think conserve power might be able to go is that if not running sprint but all my other toggles I still regen more than the base regen without stamina. And while hastened I can keep up my attack chain for about 150 seconds. So. Dunno.

So um. Comments on what to drop for Dragon's Tail would definately help. ^^; I'm really not sure about what to do with that at all.

Relative to a controller, scrapper HP should be a fair bit higher shouldn't it? And so because Aid Other heals a percentage of your own max HP on someone else, it should work okay? O_o Right? Or am I misremembering my facts now?

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Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://home.comcast.net/~SherkSilver/index.html)
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Name: Izabella
Level: 50
Archetype: Scrapper
Primary: Martial Arts
Secondary: Super Reflexes
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01) --> Storm Kick==> Acc(1) Dmg(3) Dmg(5) Dmg(5) EndRdx(7) EndRdx(7)
01) --> Focused Fighting==> DefBuf(1) DefBuf(9) DefBuf(9) EndRdx(11)
02) --> Focused Senses==> DefBuf(2) DefBuf(11) DefBuf(13) EndRdx(13)
04) --> Agile==> DefBuf(4)
06) --> Jump Kick==> Acc(6) Acc(15) Dmg(15) Dmg(17) Dmg(17) EndRdx(19)
08) --> Crane Kick==> Acc(8) Dmg(19) Dmg(21) Dmg(21) EndRdx(23) EndRdx(23)
10) --> Focus Chi==> Rechg(10) Rechg(25)
12) --> Hurdle==> Jump(12) Jump(27)
14) --> Combat Jumping==> DefBuf(14) Jump(27) Jump(29)
16) --> Practiced Brawler==> Rechg(16) Rechg(29)
18) --> Swift==> Run(18) Run(25) Run(31)
20) --> Stamina==> EndMod(20) EndMod(31) EndMod(31)
22) --> Quickness==> Run(22) Run(33) Run(33)
24) --> Crippling Axe Kick==> Acc(24) Dmg(34) Dmg(34) Dmg(34) EndRdx(36)
26) --> Hasten==> Rechg(26) Rechg(36) Rechg(37)
28) --> Dodge==> DefBuf(28) DefBuf(33) DefBuf(37)
30) --> Aid Other==> IntRdx(30) IntRdx(36)
32) --> Eagle's Claw==> Acc(32) Dmg(37) Dmg(39) Dmg(39) EndRdx(39) EndRdx(40)
35) --> Evasion==> DefBuf(35) DefBuf(40) DefBuf(40) EndRdx(42)
38) --> Elude==> Rechg(38) Rechg(42) Rechg(42) DefBuf(45) DefBuf(50)
41) --> Focused Accuracy==> TH_Buf(41) TH_Buf(43) TH_Buf(43) EndRdx(43) EndRdx(45)
44) --> Aid Self==> IntRdx(44) IntRdx(45) Heal(46) Heal(46) Heal(46) EndRdx(48)
47) --> Conserve Power==> Rechg(47) Rechg(48) Rechg(48) EndRdx(50) EndRdx(50)
49) --> Lucky==> DefBuf(49)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Run(1) Run(3)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Critical Hit==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
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Things people might notice:

1. No travel power. I basically won one extra power by not taking one, and I should still jump and run a ton faster than fliers do. (CoHBuilder quotes 70 FPS or 48 MPH, and it doesn't seem to count the jump enhances) With elude up while traveling should be just fine.

2. Jump kick and no Thunder Kick. Thunder Kick is actually lower damage and I love Jump Kick's animation style to bits. When hastened I wouldn't use either TK or JK, regardless of which I picked, and when not hastened I'd have a break in my attack chain of nearly 2 seconds with TK anyway, so I lose only 1 second by taking JK, and to make it up it does additional damage. Plus; no standing still.

3. No slots in Agile, mostly because they were needed more elsewhere.

4. Combat Jumping to help with travel and because it's an uber cheap toggle which gives me 3% def to compliment Dodge for a total of 10%.

5. Aid Other/Aid Self. I was trying to decide between this and Tough/Weave (which would require me to cut another power for Boxing or Kick, which I also didnt want). I went went Aid Self because between quickness and haste that's 40% of your health regened every 10 seconds. That puts my HP regen up to 4.4% per second, and an unhastened regen scrapper according to my calculations gets about 9%, so that's almost half a regen set for one power. With Def and 2 intrdx I should be able to get it off fine in most circumstances, especially when bubbled or eluding. (which can be up 33% of the time)

6. Stamina/Conserve Power/Focussed Acc/EndRdx in attacks. I hate running out of endurance. Hate, hate, hate, hate. I also hate missing so tend to slot 2acc. Focussed Acc lets me drop one acc from my kicky powers and replace it with EndRdx. This is yay and means I can fight on for whole minutes without running out of stamina even while hastened and running all my toggles.


Anyway that's about that. I'm pretty satisfied with this build as is and was just wondering if people saw any glaring errors anywhere. This MA/SR scrapper will frequently work with my gf's Mind/FF controller.

Thanks in advance for anyone with the patience to look this lengthy post over and comment. ^^;

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If you're just going to duo with a Scrapper and are unlikely to be teaming with anyone who can heal, this could be especially important.

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Well, I'm the scrapper and I'm actually getting Aid Other in the high 20s (I think it's level 28) with 2 intredux in it. Sure it doesn't seem like much, but I have higher max HP so I should heal a fair chunk, and if bubbles/elude are up I should be able to get it off without too much trouble?

Or is that just folly and should I just focus on scrapping?

Speaking as someone who damn near got her grav/enr dom to level 40, I'd have to say:

1. I never had problems doing damage. Soloing was smooth after I got singularity. Of course, grav/enr always felt like the most damage heavy powerset combo doms get.
2. I can't remember the last time I ran out of end. I do have Stamina though.
3. I can't remember dying any quicker than corruptors, stalkers or MMs, mostly died when things went bad and everyone else pretty much died too. I did run CJ and Maneuvers slotted for def though.

On the flipside, I'll say I didn't get into domination mode enough, and being grav/enr while mitagating a lot of other stuff left me gimped as far as control went. I figure unless you're a tricked out plants dom that most of the time corruptors can do a lot of what you do while DPSing a lot better.

So the Doms can use the help. Heh.

Well, a little more about my SR scrapper. Since I'm the one being talked about here. My melee/range defense will be hovering around 30% at 50. Even in I7 that won't bring me close to flooring the enemies, except for when I elude, which between hasten and quickness is up about 33% of the time.

Unfortunately as I understand it in I7 the minimum floored to-hit percentage of LTs, bosses, EBs and AVs is going to go up. So while it'll be easier (yet still impossible even with SR and pool powers when not using elude) to floor mobs, popping elude will mean I'd be taking more damage than in I6.

Also, I'm taking Aid Self at 44. It heals 40% every 10 seconds, and from my calculations that's almost half as much HP regen as a regen scrapper can throw out without hasten.

So I'm thinking:
- Forcefields will be great until I get elude and heavy SO slot my build cause they casually floor the mobs I'm fighting, but get less good later on when I'm eluding and they're already on their minimum anyway
- I can self heal eventually, and pretty damn well too (when are they nerfing Aid Self?) so would an empath really work that well in the long run?

That basically leaves sonic to buff resistance. This will always be handy. But she says it has annoying sounds. Maybe kinetics but that doesn't much help defense, I won't have any endurance problems in the long run (getting stamina and conserve power and slotting heavily for endredux), etc.

And yeah. I was way excited about SR until I realized without elude you top out in a realistic build at about 30% defense. Then I got even more depressed when I found out anyone can pop a purple inspiration and get almost as much or more.

Again I'll just point out that while you may argue that morality is relative until the day the sun explodes and vaporizes all of us, ethicality is not. Ergo while someone's morality may dictate that the end warrants the means, ethics say he is still quite evil, and ethics are more objective than morality ever will be.

Ethics being a set of written and unwritten laws of right and wrong that applies to most of the world, and those who fall outside of this model which is closest to objective right and wrong (since it's written down and followed as law by groups of individuals and professionals, or embedded in the collective subconscious) are considered evil.

Hence Doc Vahz is still, you guessed it, evil. His morality might dictate that he is not, ethics dictate that he is, and a person's individual morality changes constantly, while ethics generally do not.

As for being guilty of not accepting other people's viewpoints, I'm just dumbstruck at the ability for people to say "Doctor Vahzilok is not evil". I hope that's just a special tailored case of Co* morality and it doesn't reflect the way they look at things in actual life.

But speaking of accepting viewpoints, let's all start agreeing with eachother all the time and then we can vacate the forums since discussion won't be necesary.