Celidya

I used to be fine with 2 -KB IOs, until i realized fake nems and some AVs could still go through it. Now i'm running 3 and it's perfect. I found that a major annoyance to be unable to fight those mobs, since usually they spam their KB, it can become very, very frustrating. Especially when you're about to fire dark regen and it ends up hitting nothing because the mobs pushed you back.

I'm all for this change. I'll never play anything stone related as long as it looks so ugly. Now finally with i16 i can consider earth control, if only stone armor could become something visually appealing, it would be perfect. I don't even understand why it was made so bad-looking in the first place. If it was not for the fact of being overpowered in granite i think very few players would ever play Stone armor if it was, let's say, as weak as Energy Aura or something like that.

Dark Miasma is about average i think. I think i don't have the same standard as all the posters above shouting how great both sets are, really. DM offers some useful things but when it comes to keep the team alive i think it's barely average.

Note that i'm not talking about the random PUG in a radio mission or whatever, but when the stuff really gets hard. Usually that means:

-one or multiples AVs, and against them the debuffs aren't worth much. The most useful debuff is -regen, i would much prefer to have some buffs against an AV than all the DM debuffs together

-massive aggro : the anchored debuffs are inferior to buffs for a good reason : they will NEVER hit all the mobs in the area when the things are not under control. And that's exactly when you need them the most.

An effect applied on the mobs instead of the players will never be as good as the other way around. Against any serious threat, by the time you can cast the debuff and/or manage to bring all the mobs in range of it, it will be too late. Any ambush, unwanted aggro, mobs spread all over the room, and the debuffs are more or less useless while the buffs are useful all the time. So i would take a FF, sonic, cold or even empath over a Dark miasma if what i need is someone to keep me alive.

Storm ? All it brings is offense. But if i want offense i'll look for a kin, blaster, scrapper, or about anything else. Hurricane is beyond useless in any decent group. Sorry, but by the time the Stormie is done debuffing the mobs and push them up into a nice big pile with FR, i'll just kill them and move to the next spawn. A lot faster and more effective as well. And even the damage it brings is average, again, by the time the Stormie is done summoning all the pets and all the stuff, things will be dead.

Both sets are good for leveling, they can do the job, because frankly most missions are so easy anyone could do it anyway and support is not needed. But i wouldn't rate them "as good" as the main sets. When i want support, i'll want a rad, FF, sonic, empath, maybe even cold or TA. Dm if the team is good enough. Storm ? They're the last thing i want when i need support. And i leveled some of them, i just can never justify myself to play my storm characters instead of about anything else because they're good only to bring chaos when things are so bad there's nothing else to do. And the whole point of bringing a def or even a controller is to avoid that at first.

Thanks for the information, that's exactly what i was looking for

I used to think survivability was the most important thing, got some soft capped character and thought i would never play anything else as it was so awesome.

That was until i turned to the dark side and found that going for high dps/high recharge builds is a lot more fun, and about as effective most of the time. This kind of build is a lot more fun for me because i can usually fit more QoL powers that i like, and i can slot my powers with more freedom.

Sometimes i miss surviving anything and diving into spawns with no worry for my own health... but it gets boring after a while i think. I prefer to go fast and furious and i like the fact i need to kill them before they kill me. Sure, i usually can't be the last survivor in a team wipe or make fun of tankers dieing before me, but i feel much better obliterating a spawn 2 times faster.

Now i'm so addicted to it i just can't play anything else than dark armor, because that's about the only defensive set that benefits fully from + recharge enhancement while having decent survivability and fun gameplay. Fire is just too squishy and regen is not my thing, so i'm more or less stuck with /dark. I'm trying to enjoy /shields again, or maybe even /SR, but whenever i'm trying to build something with it, i realize i can't fit what i want into the build and i spend most of my slots to soft cap, leaving me with lower global recharge. The fact defensive powersets don't have a mezz protection toggle, but instead are forced into this !§*$# clicky mezz protection is annoying as well.

So i'm just used to low survivability now, and spaming purple inspirations and the self rez whenever i need to.

Hello there,

I'm planning on making an elec melee/something (probably dark or shield), Lightning rod looks awesome and it seems elec is a very AOE oriented primary. Fine, i'm all about massive destruction.

However, i have no experience with this set, at all. I don't play villain side anymore for quite a long time now, and i never tried electric melee because i don't like electricity (power customization will improve that as well). After looking at the powers in Mids and in game, i'm confused with some of them.

-Jacobs ladder : it looks like a decent cone, but the arc seems very narrow compared to the other melee cones. So how does it translate in game ? How many targets can you reliably hit with it ? Based on my overall experience with cones (translation : they never hit enough targets to be worth it for me) it looks like a skippable power or a very bad aoe, is it true ?

-Thunder strike : this one is confusing. Based on the description it looks like a high damage attack + chance of a stun on the target, then some "splash damage" and a knockdown on the other mobs in the area. Huh, that's complicated for a single power. I don't care for the ST damage and soft control effects, so it it a decent pbae power ? What's the average damage at lvl 50 with 95% enhancement on the main target and other targets nearby ? I have no idea if i should consider that as a real pbae power (and the description is not accurate) or a single target attack with a minor pbae as a bonus

-Chain induction : i think i picture how this one works. I'm just wondering how many targets it can hit, on average, as the description doesn't seem to give any info on the frequency of the chain. Let's say i have 10 mobs around me, is it more likely to hit 2 of them or 10 of them ? And do all the "jumps" have the same damage as the initial attack ? Again, it sounds like a single target attack with a chance to become an AOE. Weird.


So overall i don't know what to think about it. All the powers look great on paper but when i look at them, i can't really take into account LR since the timer is so huge. It's a great alpha opener, but i'm looking for an AOE attack chain as i'm used to have with claws and spines. And i can't seem to find any way to have one, even if i add fireball to the mix. Elec melee looks like a bunch of hybrid attacks that are not as strong as ST attacks, but not real AOE as well. I'm not talking about 2 or 3 mobs but diving into mobs spawned for a full team. Hopefully i'm mistaken, but could anyone enlighten me on the Elec melee mechanics and what should i expect from it ?

If anyone could show me an AOE attack chain as well (including fireball if needed) it would be perfect.

Thanks in advance

As much as i hate Ela, i'd be happy with Ninjitsu. It looks like a very well designed set unlike other defensive sets. SR is just boring for me, it has nothing fun and active at all. Shields is powerful and it was fun playing for a while but i just feel it lacks the freedom. Primary restrictions, and all the power pools/IO sets needed to make it decent just kills the fun.

I tend to aim for 3,7-3,9 on my /dark scrappers... with about 1,2 to 2,1 eps spent on toggles, sometimes even more since i like to keep sprint/superspeed all the time (even in caves). I either eat blues, have enough time between fights, or just begin to shut off the toggles i don't need when i'm up for a long fight.

Ma/dark used to look good for that... However now i can't think of anything better than elec/dark. The elec stun + oppressive gloom looks awesome if you're not in a hurry to kill anything... While it looks fun, dead mobs are "controlled" better. So my spines/dark is a good enough controller

Anyway i wouldn't rely on the dark epic for anything. I have tenebrous tentacles on some of my defenders... and nightfall... both already suck for me on a ranged character. So using them on a scrapper sounds like a big waste of time to line up a narrow cone that will hit maybe a third of the mobs in a team setting.

Caltrops seem like a better strategic tool if that's what you're looking for. TT defeats the whole purpose of an AE immob anyway... it's good to keep some mobs in a big pile for some ae goodness. But then you have to jump out of melee to fire it (so the mobs will try to follow you), then most of the time it will miss half of them because of the silly cone, those will come at you, and you'll end up with mobs more scattered than before.

If you really want a controller-ish scrapper, i'd say elec/dark + presence pool. Pbae stun to stack with the stun aura. Pbae fear to stack with the fear aura. AE stun with the self rez.

If my character doesn't have status protection... i just won't run any malta mission.

It i have it... i don't mind. I usually either stealth to the end or just kill them all, they're not that hard. Or maybe that's because i never play powersets with weaknesses they can use enough against me. I remember only the purple bosses to be an annoyance with their huge to-hit against defensive based sets... and sometimes when i herd too many sappers with my /dark scrappers. I usually don't bother killing them first since i have enough end drain protection, but sometimes i just realize the room i rushed had 3 or 4 sappers... sigh

I don't think it's a good idea. If anyone is going to make a sticky about builds, i think it should be all the tips and tricks used to make those builds, not the builds themselves. I don't think it helps much to give a build and say "take this one, it's awesome !" because a build should reflect the playstyle of the owner, and we all have our own playstyle. At best a build should be a source of inspiration, not something to copy paste.

On the other hand, helping another player to make his own build and sharing the tips and tricks to do that looks a lore more helpful and productive i think. It's all a matter of point of view, i always pay attention to the build posted and it taught me a lot of things. However, i would never play some of the builds out there, they're most of the time the opposite of what i enjoy. So they're not fun builds nor "good" builds based on my criteria, but they're a good way to see how the other, more experienced players, slot their powers and what they do. Then i can learn and adapt, and i'm quite happy with the builds i can make now.

This game is all about customization, stealing another player's build feels like going through the menu and picking a pre-made costume at character creation. Sure, it looks decent, it fits well, and you can tweak the colors, but it lacks anything special and it has no personnality.

Yeah i'm not happy with spines/anything/blaze to be honest. After adding blaze to my spines/dark on test i found it became a redraw machine. So i'm not sure i'll even bother trying it on live, massive redraw + the loss of survivability doesn't seem really worth fireball... and that's disappointing since blaze mastery solves the pathetic ST damage of spines as well.

Now that we had power customization, i hope one day they'll fix the redraw issues

First, there's the guide in my signature for more explanations

Now for the build itself, i would say the resulting stats are not bad at all, however i disagree on some power picks and the overall orientation of the build.

About the epics, i always hated focused accuracy, i think it's plain useless and even more with follow-up anyway. Physical perfection is nice, however that's not something needed i think. I'm doing fine with my claws/dark on live without it, and with cloak of fear instead of OG. So it's icing on the cake, i'm not sure i would go for that. Conserve power is more than enough.

Do you plan to run CoD all the time ? The defense you get with everything on is not bad at all while maintaining decent +recharge, i'm just not sure if it's worth all that much. I tend to aim for defense only when i can reach 40+ %, otherwise it will most likely last for the first 3sec of the fight then the debuffs will stack and your defense will vanish into nothingness. But of course it depends on what ennemies you like to fight. Anyway i would trade the end reduction IOs for two Lotg uniques in CoD and combat jumping.

I would move the slotting from Spin to Death shroud while removing the last IO and put an end redux instead, then put the purple set in Spin... The purple proc in there is awesome since it's a very fast recharging attack.

No shockwave ? It's a matter of playstyle but i would happily trade all the +defense in there for shockwave Anyway i'd say remove focused accuracy, put conserve power instead of PP, and add shockwave with the 6 slots from FA. I think you're going a bit overboard with endurance unless you plan to fight a lot of end draining mobs or solo AV with no insps.

Finally there's the KB protection. With only one IO for that it won't be enough, i advice adding a second one, and even a third one if you want to forget about KB. I used to have 2 of them and fake nems or some energy users still could knock me, with 3 i have yet to see anything going through the protection Combat jumping is a perfect IO mule for that: the karma -KB, the lotg unique, then a kismet unique.

I would love to avoid aid self on some builds... but i found i always need it sooner or later. I don't like relying on green inspirations, they don't drop that often and usually when i need a heal, inspirations are not enough. However i'll have to try some +regen build instead for something /shield or /SR. I'm now addicted to combat jumping + superspeed + hurdle for moving around, that's 3 power pools, last one has to be either tough/weave OR aid self...

Scrappers. It doesn't suffer the annoying stuff the game can throw at you (mezz, etc...), most of the times it's just killing stuff and doing it well, with style on top of that.

Defenders have a lot of fun powers as well and i like the archetype. But the fact they can't solo anything at a decent speed and their damage is useless most of the time detracts from the archetype for me. I keep making builds for them thinking how cool and awesome it would be... until i remember they're defenders, and the only thing worthwile i'll be doing will be to buff/debuff/heal my team, while being too lazy to bother attacking anything for 80 damage.

I have no experience with traps so, anyone could explain how Poison trap works ? When looking at the game numbers it looks like a 10sec debuff with 1min30 recharge. Either i'm missing something, or it looks very bad compared to anything else. Sure, 1000% regen is good, but it's not up even half the time with good recharge slotting. That seems pretty useless since regen is good only for AV/GM fights and those take a long time.

Any TF where i need to exemp down with some lowbies and they want to clean the map when not needed. I usually just superspeed + stealth IO to the end of the map and proceed to solo the last room or the glowies while they're making their way through the map. Sometimes i'm fast enough they don't even have time to enter the map, lol. Now this should be fine but i'm usually something/dark so i'm far from being soft caped and at the lower levels the lack of IO set bonuses makes me pretty squishy. I tend to keep a stock of inspirations especially for that and there can be some fun fights.

I remember a Synapse TF where for the last mission most of the team couldn't stealth. I was so bored i ran to the king and planned on cleaning the trash here while waiting for them to make their way. Then two other scrappers joined me and... we just destroyed the AV and all the mobs while the team was still busy cleaning the mobs in the first rooms

However the most "epic" scrapperlock i had was a long time ago on my BS/shield against Romulus. The team was quite bad and the tank died, i had aggro so i thought, well, i'll just try to survive. Then i noticed the empath didn't heal me at all, because we had an argument about scrapper "tanking" and she kept telling me scrappers can't tank and i shouldn't jump on the mobs before the real tank. So of course she wanted me to die in there so she could laugh at me because, well, according to her i'm a scrapper, not a tank, and i shouldn't have any defense so i can do more damage.

It was rather pointless as i didn't have the dps to kill him solo but i ended up using everything i could, insps, temps, spaming aid self, but i could tank romulus + all the nictus for about 5min until the team came back after a general wipe... i was the only survivor and i died about 30sec after they joined the fight again because i ran out of inspirations and of course, the empath still didn't heal me at all I was quite proud of it and i never stepped back from romulus... it felt like a duel i had no chance to win, but damn that was fun.

Fun times as well at the beginning of Mission architect. On the first days we had some fun with freaks on the longbow map and only 3 force field generators. That was enough defense to keep me alive in the middle of 50+ freak bosses... with my spines/dark. But then i invited friends to have more mobs... and realized i was the only one to survive thanks to the heal. They never saw such a big wave of mobs so they all rushed the room then died in about 10sec, and i just stood there for 20min soloing in an ocean of freak bosses, with barely enough recharge to keep me alive with the heal. Lots of fun as well


Now for the thing i would LOVE to do in full scrapperlock. ITF. Last fight. With a BS/Shield scrapper. Just staring at Romulus from the opposite side, then run up to him through the 50 cimerorans and just solo him while not even paying attention to the adds because only Romulus is worth fighting. A straight duel like that. And i would be so strong i wouldn't even notice the poor cimerorans trying to hit me. THAT would be epic But sadly i can't see that happening without any kiting or clearing the adds first, sigh.

Well i hope there's an update coming for i16. At least an updated database would be fine if the new guy behind that doesn't have enough time for including everything like vet stuff, pvp IOs, etc...

I often thought about trying a DB/dark but i never did because of 1K cuts. I like AOE damage more than anything, and without Sweep DB doesn't seem really great for that. The looooong (and ridiculous on top of that) animation just kills the fun i think, i had a DB brute a long time ago and i really didn't like the animation on this power. /Dark works better with fast activation times as well, if you're stuck in the animation, there's a good chance you'll fire dark regen too late if something unexpected happens.

If i'm not mistaken, you don't need a lot of global recharge (about 35% ?) for the attack vitals chain. Unlike other primaries i don't think DB benefits a lot from global recharge, so going the defense route seems appropriate. But then you're more or less stuck with cloak of darkness + weave. You can keep CoD off most of the time, and turn it on when you really need the added defense.

That will be hard to choose for my spines/dark... fireball sounds tasty... but i'll probably have to drop boxing/tough/conserve power to get fireball. On the other hand my blue bar would be happy with another recovery power. Too bad fireball is not on the first or second power pick for the fire epic pool.

Yeah hopefully the guide i wrote will answer all your questions, if not then just ask