Battlekin

One thing that nobody has really entered so far is that the Fire/Fire/Pyre is going to have more trouble surviving than the Shield/Fire/Pyre on any content that isn't specifically minion/lt farming. Having had both IOed out to a fair degree, nothing can approach the survivability of my softcapped Shield/Fire. The other benefit I have found to SD over FA is that immob>Burn takes too much time to line up and do the damage compared to one large-radius smash from SC.

Now, Shield/SS/Pyre compares more closely to Shield/Fire/Pyre, however I dislike the Rage crash. It just breaks the flow too much. YMMV.

If you have the resources to soft-cap a Shield Defense Brute, then you basically have a Tank with Fury. Beyond the soft cap there is basicallly no difference.

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To the OP,

Before you invest your time and energies into what seems to be a significant project, I'd say find out more about your target audience. So far in this thread, I've seen players described as either marketeers, casual players or market-haters.

That seems rather simplified. I believe that each CoX player uses the market system to some varying degree. There must be very few market-haters who have not been inside a Wentworths to sell a valuable recipe or salvage.

So, maybe you can approach this project from the perspective of identifying different levels of players' involvement in the market and focus your advice on how each player can successfully increase his/her involvement in the market.

For Example:

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* You are a Level 1 Market Player if your goal is to keep things simple and use the market only to sell off the recipes and salvage you receive in order to generate more money.

At this level of market play, you can do a number of things to keep things simple and generate more money...


** You are a Level 2 Market Player if you use the market to buy items to improve your character and sell off the recipes and salvage you receive in order to generate more money which can be used to buy more items.

At this level of market play, you can do a number of things to cheaply buy items to improve your character and sell other items for a better return...
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If novices to the market can identify which category they are, then your advice to them can be much more specific making it much more useful, I believe, than a generic bunch of FAQs.

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I sense a flow chart coming from this sort of idea. Maybe not a bad one, either.

Rawr. This +a hard refresh (ctrl+F5) did it, thanks Spazz.

As of this morning, every time I pull up a new forum post, I get a warning that the page containes both secure and nonsecure items and a prompt to continue. This is new, something between last night and this morning changed. Did something on the forum site lose its security certificate? It's getting really annoying to have a prompt pop up on every new post, every navigation back, etc. And no, I don't want to disable this feature in my browser as I find it an important security precaution. Just thought I'd point this out.

Anyone else having this problem, or is it just me?

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May I also suggest building your IO sets toward melee defense. Stacked with your DM -tohit, an extra 20-25% or so melee defense from IOs would make those swords whiff 95% of the time. Throw in Darkest Night later on and be untouchable and unkillable even if they do hit you.

Take Taunt with this advice, the -range is crucial to making things close to melee where your defenses are strongest and they can be within reach of Soul Drain and Lightning Field. Melee is your friend.

Slot Lightning Field for endurance [u]drain[u] as well as accuracy, damage and endurance usage. By itself with enough time and slotting it can drain an enemy to 0. Combine with Power Sink and you have a whole additional level of mitigtion, since you can drain most mobs and keep them at 0 indefinitely.

Punch/Tough/Weave can come in extremely handy. This build is probably the one time I'll actually recommend Fighting in its entirety, since you won't have much else you'd want more and endurance should never be a problem. Since you're DM you can skip Medicine. With a travel power, Fitness and Fighting (and probably Hasten if you want to buzzsaw) you should be fine on pools. Set Punch to auto for Fury generaton and you're golden.

DM/ELE is the original buzzsaw build. Take Shadow Punch, Smite, Siphon Life and Punch and just rotate then furiously. You'll see what we mean. Toss in a Dark Blast and Midnight Grasp every now and again and you'll be shocked and amazed at what you can accomplish.

[/ QUOTE ]This is one of many posts in this thread that I have found useful and gives me an understanding of how the set plays, but I have a question.

This post suggests the use of 11 pool powers (Boxing+Tough+Weave, Swift/Hurdle+Health+Stamina, Prereq+Travel Power, Hasten, Prereq+Darkest Night). This requires dropping five primary/secondary powers. In the plan I'm currently operating from, I'm currently dropping four, and one of those is Taunt (Shadow Maul, Touch of Fear, Taunt, Conserve Power); if I take Taunt, it means I need two more powers to drop.

I suppose I could save one slot by just going Hasten/Super Speed, but Mercy Island architecture already has me head-desking. Does it get less bad later on?

For people who like to take a lot of pool powers with this build, what in DM/ElA do you drop?

By the way, I have my DM/ElA Brute to level 8 and it's getting more fun as it goes. Thanks to all for the advice.

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This is just my opinion and of course preferences will vary.

Boxing/Tough/Weave

Hurdle/Swift (some may choose Health, I would not)/Stamina

CJ/SJ (this lets you skip Grounded by using -KB IOs, and gives defense)

Shadow Punch/Smite/Siphon Life/Taunt/Soul Drain/Midnight Grasp

Charged Armor/Lighting Field/Conductive Shield/Static Shield/Lightning Reflexes/Power Sink

Gloom/Darkest Night

This leaves two powers open for interpretation. Myself, I'd choose Dark Obliteraton and Power Surge. But that's just me. There's a slew of good ones there; Hasten, a different travel power and Grounded, Touch of Fear.

I personally would not recommend Shadow Maul for a Brute, the animation is prohibitive to Fury generation. It has its places to be sure, just not here.

I also really dislike Grounded as a rule. It's got a lot of benefits, but being KBed any time you're jumping is just... wrong. I personally just prefer to close the loophole with CJ + IOs, as the resistances are not worth the downside of the power.

There are three endurance recovery tools available in this build: Stamina, Dark Consumption, and Power Sink. Nobody should need all three. Pick two and use the leftover power choices otherwise. (As an aside, this is also why I would not pick Health- the build relies on healing, not regen, so the only reason Health would be useful is from a +recovery IO standpoint, but this combo will already be swimming in endurance). Also, depending on your endurace situation, Dark Consumption can be better than Power Sink, as it does fairly decent AoE damage. It just recharges 3x slower and isn't conducive to draining as a mitigation tactic. Again, each have their place depending on your preference.

May I also suggest building your IO sets toward melee defense. Stacked with your DM -tohit, an extra 20-25% or so melee defense from IOs would make those swords whiff 95% of the time. Throw in Darkest Night later on and be untouchable and unkillable even if they do hit you.

Take Taunt with this advice, the -range is crucial to making things close to melee where your defenses are strongest and they can be within reach of Soul Drain and Lightning Field. Melee is your friend.

Slot Lightning Field for endurance [u]drain[u] as well as accuracy, damage and endurance usage. By itself with enough time and slotting it can drain an enemy to 0. Combine with Power Sink and you have a whole additional level of mitigtion, since you can drain most mobs and keep them at 0 indefinitely.

Punch/Tough/Weave can come in extremely handy. This build is probably the one time I'll actually recommend Fighting in its entirety, since you won't have much else you'd want more and endurance should never be a problem. Since you're DM you can skip Medicine. With a travel power, Fitness and Fighting (and probably Hasten if you want to buzzsaw) you should be fine on pools. Set Punch to auto for Fury generaton and you're golden.

DM/ELE is the original buzzsaw build. Take Shadow Punch, Smite, Siphon Life and Punch and just rotate then furiously. You'll see what we mean. Toss in a Dark Blast and Midnight Grasp every now and again and you'll be shocked and amazed at what you can accomplish.

SD/FM makes me feel like I hax'd the game. Too much damage for a Tanker, too much survivability to be anything else. I actually stopped playing him because I wanted something to be challenging.

If you want a Tank with more damage, go roll one with Shield Defense. See? Everyone's happy.

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Let me put it this way; let's say you transfer your level 50 completely tricked-out inf-capped hero to redside, or vice-versa.

Um... what are you going to do with it?

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the same thing you did with it blue side, except with a whole new range of content.

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Which you can't get through contacts because you've already outleveled them all. Again, see previous comments about Oro. The only thing doing this would unlock that isn't Oro is the factioned TFs and GMs. Oh, I'm sure badge collectors would froth at the mouth for that, but come on, is that really worth an entire expansion? Where's the sense of progress? Where's the time sink that generates revenue for NCSoft? Or maybe that's why it's a paid expansion, because that sort of thing may appeal to people in the short run, but it's a non-revenue generator otherwise.

Regardless, I really don't think it'll be that easy. History and business economics are against it. Honestly, I think people are right when they point out that starting out at level 1 is too harsh to appeal to the player base as well, so I'm counting on something in the middle.

Let me put it this way; let's say you transfer your level 50 completely tricked-out inf-capped hero to redside, or vice-versa.

Um... what are you going to do with it?

Oro everything? If that was the case, why not just open up the Oro missions to both factions, it would be easier than making an entire expansion out of it. Are zone events and factioned TFs really worth an expansion? Seems like you could exhaust the non-Oro content pretty quickly with a maxed-out character. And that's just bad for business; that's why PLing is so frowned upon.

No, they are going to make a way to force people to play the same content over again, that's their M.O.

I would be willing to place money on them working it so that if you have a character switch sides, you start from square one; at level one, with no enhancements or inf. But in order to make it your character you keep the same powersets, AT, costume slots and character name. It makes sense from a business standpoint; leveling up your character takes time, and in an MMO time=money. It makes sense in a play standpoint; just because you have a lot of reputation and security clearance with Recluse doesn't mean Hero Corps automatically recognizes your authority, you have to earn it.

In a perfect world in order to accomplish this the devs would add another step to the login process; enter name and password -> choose server -> choose character -> choose faction. It wouldn't be that different a mechanic than dual builds currently is, just more involved.

People are being allowed to join an ITF while still on an AE TF mission. This causes everyone on the team to crash when entering the first mission.

Mystic Fortunes are not affecting sidekicked characters.

I've heard from some folks that the set bonuses from PvP IOs act like purple bonuses and don't go away when exemplared/malefactored. Is this true? Is it intended?

Lightning Storm (et al) were designed and balanced around their base recharge. IOs (and Hasten, for a small part) broke that balance. So they're being reset. They were never designed to do that much damage.

Which, granted, makes them suck more, but that's the point of nerfs, and nobody's going to be happy with less.

What I'm most upset about is the fact that the purple pet sets were lauded as having this as a feature, so people like me spent, literally, hundreds of millions of influence on them, and now that feature is useless, and that money (and time we spent making it) is worthless.