Bill Z Bubba

What good name?

I'm not sure I want to know what happens with claws when replacing strike with gloom.

Those were good answers, folks. I don't exemplar much, so having a build full of level 30something IOs for me would mean having a weak character at 50.

For giggles, I just opened up a build of mine in Mids and set all the enhancements to 35 that could go there.

Values before change:
Melee Def: 45.9
Range Def: 45.2
AoE Def: 45.2
HP: 1953
Regen: 32.4

Values after change:
Melee Def: 45.4
Range Def: 44.8
AoE Def: 44.8
HP: 1953
Regen: 31.9


Wow. That's farking negligible. I done learned somethin new today.

Did he make another post after stating that he can't do it the way he thought due to problems with shields?

Should have been covered in the "results are in" threads in the scrapper forums. But I might have missed it.

Give energy transfer the animation from stun. The old animation for ET was 1 second. Stun's is 1.8.

Give stun ET's current animation and make it an aoe so that it stacks with whirling hands.

That's the best I can come up with to "fix" this set.

Thanks, Sarrate. I've got plenty of webspace to utilize. I might start doing that.

Going strictly off the equations that powers are built around, here are what the totals should be:

I, in no way, deny that the old ET was overpowered. It DID need nerfing.

But that's not what they did. A proper nerf would have been to get the damage in line with the power and with the rest of the set.

They didn't do that. They turned a fast animating attack into a painfully long attack that doesn't even look like a single target attack anymore.

It looks like you're punching someone in the face with a bomb.

I don't want anyone thinking that I want a return to the old, grossly overpowered energy melee. I don't. But I also don't want the set left as it is.

For a soloist, EM can still be a DPS monster on single target damage, but only after cranking up the recharge buffs to 11. The fact that its mitigation is so piss poor means that you must pair it with a secondary that can handle heavy loads. It's abjectly pathetic AoE output means that the set has been diminished past the point of equality right down to the bottom of the pack. At least Axe has solid mitigation.

Castle will never grant my wish that ET be turned into a PBAoE. You know why? Because then he'd have to change what IO sets can be used in it.

So what COULD be done? I actually have an answer for that.

Give energy melee the claws damage tweak. That's an equation that changes the final damage of an attack based on its activation time. Then, and only then, would the slow, ponderous, boring animations be worth the wait.

Calculating now. Numbers upon my return.

EDIT: HA! Toss that plan in the trash.
Barrage: Minor buff
EP: Minor nerf
BS: Minor nerf
WH: Good buff
TF: Minor nerf
Stun: Good buff
ET: Bad nerf

Checking now to see if the set is even internally correct.

Back to the OP, has anyone actually gotten a PvP drop in Warburg from defeating a fellow player of the same faction?

...

Iggy broke the game again. Right on.

MA/FA... that does sound freaking painful.

Unless you REALLY leaned on dragon's tail and burn. And plugged the KB hole. And cranked up melee defense. Soooo, massive recharge and melee def build. Cycling through FocusChi, Buildup, Dragon's Tail, Burn, Healing Flames.

I'd probably delete it before level 30.

Yes. Since the ruined ET anyway, they should leave the animation in place, nerf the damage appropriately, and make it a pbaoe.

My very first travel power on my very first character was teleport.

I got rid of it as soon as I could. If there was a way to kill the damned inherent hover and it had a shorter activation period, I would give it another shot.

<shrug>

I dislike both DA and FA. They aren't good sets for the way I play which is at the far edge of insane and solo. DA is higher on my list of "usable" than FA is.

For my playstyle, the scrapper secondaries go like this:

WP
SR
Inv
Shield
Regen
DA
Elec
FA

SR is actually higher than it should be because I know what it feels like tricked out to the gills. It's downright painful for the first 21 levels.

That list is NOT based on hard data. It's based on nothing but my opinion of the sets.

That most assuredly beats the ones I've done so far, but I'm showing you need at least 313% recharge in TE to do that chain, making it as near impossible to do as the mythical followup, slash, focus, repeat chain.

I'm liking this blood for the blood god, thing. Stealing it now.

Quick answer in a best case scenario hitting max targets for each AoE:

When cruising for AoE damage output, you're better off with BF/AttVit/1KC than you are with BF/AttVit/Sweep

Going with some arbitrary averages on numbers of enemies hit, say... 4 for SS, 6 for 1KC and 7 for TE, it's still true but by a smaller gap.

I'll look later to see if there's a better single target attack chain than BF/AttVit, but I seriously doubt it.

Checking BF/Sweep/SS and BF/Sweep now...

EDIT: As far as I can tell, when hitting the max targets for each AoE, BF/AttVit/1KCuts is the best for dishing out AoE. Typhoon's edge sucks on DPA.

Some points: I am dealing with max# targets hit.
I want to check damage numbers in game. CoD is rather out of date these days and may not be accurate.

EDIT2: Oops, it appears, at least going off of CoD, that the extra damage from combos IS affected by buffs, but not criticals. I'll have to figure that in, but I doubt anything will change. Also means that brute db is probably greater than scrapper db.

I just got my db/wp scrapper to 32 the other night and have been utilizing the following:

BF, Attack Vitals Combo, Sweep Combo

It really is nice for AoE, and 1KCuts is a perfect attack for a huge golden robot named Gilded Guillotine.

However, I've also been wondering if it's worth it.

Specifically, I'm wondering if I'd be better of cranking up my recharge so that my single target chain is nothing but BF, Attack Vitals and my AoE chain is nothing but BF, Attack Vitals, 1kCuts.

To figure that out, I'm going to have to do the following:

Determine average damage output of BF, AV, Swe, repeat including damage from the combos firing off.
Determine average damage output of BF, AV, 1KC, repeat including damage from combo firing
Finally, check to see if using Only BF, AV, repeat beats both of the above for AoE damage output and live with a scrapper that only uses 4 attacks.

Working that up now.

My 50s... rather sordid tale, really.

I created Bill Z Bubba as a joke character to learn the ropes of the game. I had no idea that he'd become my namesake, my main, my favorite. He had to buy his last respec because he's used every trialspec, every vetspec and every freespec offered. Iggy Kamikaze has already shown me, just days later, where I need to move some slots for even more regen and HP. As much as I've considered deleting him and rebuilding him as a brute, I know that I never will. He's Bill Z Bubba, the Claws/SR Scrapper. And that's what he'll remain. At least on Pinnacle.

Next was Celmor the Peacebringer. My second level 50 and the first level 50 I've ever deleted. As far as I'm concerned, PBs are brokenly bad.

CoV went live and I knew that I was to be the head of our villain group, so Louis Cypher was 40 before the patch to raise the level cap. He was 50 2-3 weeks later. He had all the accolades. He was an EM/FA brute. I deleted him a couple months ago and recreated him as a DM/WP brute. He's now superior in every way compared to his prior self.

Melcor is the warshade. He doesn't suck.

Grey Dwarf was another joke character built as an evil counter to my brother's main character, Green Dwarf. He sits mostly unused at 50 as a Stone/WP brute.

Of them all, Bill is the only one that I still care about keeping up to date and ready to fight.