Bill Z Bubba

And there was much rejoicing.


/yes, I ate the minstrels.

You're good, Iggy. Maybe too good. O.o

About the chance for build procs: Having 1 in FU and another in focus means that I get, on average, a 10% of base damage buff over time. So it's like running assault. (10.5)

Really gonna have to look at that build, man. It's tasty.

Don't do it, man. Don't go aidself. That way lies madness.

45 defense to m/r/a is what you want. A little over that is fine for when the debuffs come in, but you should be sitting at 95% defense debuff resistance with a fully slotted SR, so make sure that the 6 core powers are slotted to the ED cap.

Ya wanna know my secret for surviving without aidself with SR? HP and regen.

The more hitpoints you can get into SR, the more mileage you'll get out of the passive scaling dam-res.

Remember folks, aidself makes you stop attacking. And none of us want to do that, right?

Thanks much! Been waiting on this for ages.

Energy Melee lacks any worthwhile mitigation. While the disorients might be sometimes good against a single target, for large scale mitigation, it sucks. Plain and simple. My hatred of Fiery Aura mostly comes from the fact that I paired it with EM.

Perhaps had you slotted ED 3rec-reds/3heal it would have been more to your liking.

EA has holes that can only be partially filled with tough/weave and SetIO buffs.

It has a cloak and no real taunt aura, so it should be played like a stalker, not a brute.

I've dumped several EA brutes in the past, but it looks like it will be my secondary for claws when I-16 goes live. The knock from focus and shockwave will go a long way toward keeping it alive until I can get IOs running.

I did notice that the board failures seem more pronounced at work than at home, but then... it's night when I'm at home. More people are playing then instead of goofing off at work surfing.

I'm glad I noticed this thread. While I see no reason to upgrade my XP/2.7GHz/2GB current rig for CHV, if Mechwarrior turns out to be as freaktacular as the trailer made it out to be, I'll be going for broke on a new rig.

Thanks for the info, people!

If I could figure out how to be softcapped, have 115% global recharge without hasten, 30% global damage buff AND get rid of tough/weave while keeping at least 85% damage enhancements in each of the 4 attacks all while staying above 1800 HP... I'd be a happy camper.

While trying to find a claws attack chain for my scrapper that went past the 200DPS mark on ST damage, I decided to go ahead and see how that same chain with the same slotting would do for my future brute.

This is, of course, assuming no changes are being made during the proliferation.

The chain is Followup / Slash / Focus / Strike / repeat

Followup needs 184% total recharge. Done without having hasten in the build

Assault is in the build.

FU has a Mako's dam proc and the chance for buildup.
Slash has a Hecatomb dam proc and the chance for dam-res debuff
Focus has an Apocalypse dam proc and the chance for buildup.
Strike has a Mako's dam proc.

Here's an unfortunate fact:
The chance for buildup, as per Castle's memory, IS based off of AT mods rather than a flat 100% buff, meaning the brute only gets 80%.

In the brute's favor, since damage procs ignore mods and buffs, the brute gets more benefit from them.

Scrapper final DPS: 215.5
Brute final DPS: 206.4

I still don't know what secondary I'm going to use for my claws. The numbers listed here are based off of my soon to be claws/sr build.

This is also based on crits firing off at 10% so assume a hard target.


On to the secondaries.... really, I'm stumped.

I don't want another claws/sr.
Stone is right out. Not even an option.
Same for Fiery Aura. Hate that set.
Willpower is overused. Yes, even by me. Think I've got 5 WP characters right now.
Elec has always been blah to me.
Not allowed shields.... which SUCKS. Claws/SD would be brutal. Wanna know how brutal? If I cap out AAO with monkeys and attack a pylon, my DPS with the above chain jumps from 206.4 to 229.7 DPS.

That leaves Inv and EA.
I've got a claws/inv werewolf scrapper. But I might consider rebuilding him as a brute which would solve this problem. Hmmm, he is only 20.

And that leaves claws/ea. The much aligned EA. The pretty EA. The sounds cool but has huge steaming mitigation holes EA. However, shockwave/focus make all secondaries better. With EA, I wouldn't be worried about knocking enemies out of my buff PBAoE like I would with invincibility.

Hmmmmm. Thoughts?


EDIT: hehehehe... for giggles I threw in tank modifiers... same chain for a tank does a measly 139.4DPS. Ouch.

C&E, I worked out a nasty little attack chain of nothing but FU, Swipe, Focus, Swipe, repeat.

DPS isn't great, but DAMN is it a hoot to watch. Too bad there aren't more melee damage procs. With the chain on paper, swipe had the Hecatomb and ToD procs.


But here's the kicker for those that really hate strike:

The chain I'm looking at right now on my spreadsheet is FU, Slash, Focus, Strike doing 216.104DPS. If I do nothing but replace Strike with Swipe, it only loses 3DPS.

That's it. 3.

Hmmmmm, I didn't look at that yesterday. I can't rationalize putting the ugly, clumsy, nasty strike back in my build for 3 DPS!

WOOT!


EDIT: Crap. Now I see why I didn't have it on the chart. For FU/Sl/Fo/Sw I need 203 total recharge in FU. Using strike instead I only need 184 recharge in FU. The current build gives FU 189.

Here's something interesting. I just figured out to to push my DPS over the 200 mark with claws on a scrapper. To do so, I need to drop hasten and replace it with assault.

I have to wonder if it's a balance issue.

Shockwave is a HUGE cone in relation to other melee cones out there. It has a very short cast time.

Above all, though, when fighting lvl 54s with it on my scrapper, it does turn into kD. And what that allows is a touch on the vicious side.

Namely: herd 'em up, cycle followup, spin, shockwave, repeat all with zero worry about tossing enemies around. They just sit there flopping in place while I shred them to pieces. Imagine adding eviscerate on top of that. That's a lot of mitigation tied in to a lot of AoE damage output.

Perhaps the devs have left the kB in place so that you can't do that for 18 levels against everyone.

Got it. That makes sense. Fewer folks to fight means PvPer A has less chances to get drops themselves.

Is there a fix for that besides making all PvP zones cross server?

But even you do that and/or crank up the drop rates only a few more would be showing up on the market. While this might make the price drop a bit, the percentage of PvPers will still be so low that the prices will remain ludicrous.

What does being on a particular server have to do with anything? Aren't all the markets tied together by faction?

I still want a video of Bill Z scrapping huge spawns to either Pantera's "Mouth For War" or "5 Minutes Alone."