ClawsandEffect

It's because you're not VIP.

You can post in any forum that says "All Access", but cannot post in other forums.

The devs opened up the forums in a limited fashion so new players or returning non-VIPs have a place they can ask questions about things.

If you can use IOs, you can get purples. Regardless of HOW you can use IOs.

Not getting a purple in 8 farm runs is not an accurate indication that you can't get purples. I've gone over a year without getting a purple on a given character before.

It also assumes that Fiery Aura and Soul Mastery are the only things EVER paired with Super Strength

What about hero brutes who never cross to villainside to pick up Patron pools?

Also: I didn't mention it before, but the thread Auroxis linked to showing Claws as the second lowest ST DPS set was written almost 3 years ago.....Claws has been buffed since then. And Brute Claws didn't even exist then to compare to.

This thread gives a much clearer, and more realistic picture, and it does so using attack chains attainable by your average player, without a crazy build: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=132894\

As you can see there, when the sets are compared only using attacks found in the set, Claws comes in 3rd place for ST DPS, behind only Fire Melee and.....Energy. You have to look quite a ways down the list to find SS.

Take Gloom out of all those brute attack chains and the picture looks a lot different.

Compare ST DPS of a powerset BY ITSELF, with no pool powers or APPs added to it if you really want to compare them.

1) Your double will have any powers available to your powerset, whether you have them yourself or not. I don't know why it changed to a Warden.

2) Since the arc caps at level 30, it's possible that they will have access to powers up to 5 levels above that just like a player who is exemped. I can't say for sure though.

The first one is WAI. My double had Shockwave (Sonic Blast Shockwave, not Claws) and my blaster has NEVER had that power.

I don't know if the second is WAI, but I suspect it probably is.

Not entirely accurate.

You just need to OWN the tokens, whether you've spend them on anything or not is irrelevant. You could have 27 tokens just sitting there doing nothing and still have IOs unlocked.

Umm, I could be mistaken here, but unless you can slot a resist damage SO into Umbral Beast to increase his resistance, Cardiac will have no effect on his innate resistance.

Alpha slots only affect things that can be slotted with SOs of the type of enhancement you're looking for.

I wasn't going to respond just yet, but I read this and had to.

I cannot disagree with this assessment any more strongly.

Do NOT skip Siphon Life, even if you have Dark Regeneration available. It is the second best attack in the set, and will be a HUGE part of your single target attack chain.

If you're running DM/DA you would want to take it and slot it as an attack, ignoring any slotting for healing. As mentioned, you would have Dark Regeneration for when you really need a heal, but if you skip Siphon Life because you have it you'll be gimping your damage output.

Siphon Life is not droppable in ANY Dark Melee build, because it is just that good as an attack.

Psssst........I was being a smart-aleck.

I have Ring of Fire on my Fire/Kin for use as a damage power.

Skipped Crush on my Grav/Time, and Illusion doesn't have one so that's a moot point.

This is a good point.

And Hide will obscure your costume more thoroughly than anything except the original look of Cloak of Darkness

That was my plan actually, to use Jacob's Ladder as part of my ST chain.

Because the type of the damage is irrelevant to Shield Defense.

Shield Defense utilizes positional defense. So, instead of building up your S/L defense to avoid machine gun fire, you would want to build up your Ranged defense instead. And that ranged defense will defend you from machine guns, fire blasts, electric attacks, throwing stars, thrown rocks, etc. The damage type of those attacks does not matter in the slightest because they are all ranged.

The Romans you've been fighting have been using primarily sword attacks, with the occasional javelin. The sword attacks are flagged both Lethal AND Melee, and the game will look at both of those values and use whichever is higher. The javelins are flagged Lethal and Ranged, so they are using your Ranged defense value. The game is completely ignoring any Lethal defense you have in favor of your Melee and Ranged defense, because they are undoubtedly higher.

I agree.

I rolled up an Electric/Energy stalker in anticipation of the changes and hit level 18 in record time (for me at least, I don't play that many hours a week and hop toons a lot)

I've been enjoying it so much that he will be the character I focus on for 2xp weekend.

The only issue I've encountered is using AS out of hide seems to burn through end really fast. It will be resolved as I level and get IOs on him, but it's kind of annoying at the moment. Nothing a tray full of blues can't solve, but I'd rather carry reds.

I wasn't the one who did the calculations, but it did take Quills into account. It was from Bill Z Bubba's "The Results Are In" threads.

I've found that shards are faster for the first 2 tiers of Alpha, but threads are generally faster higher than that. Depending on whether or not you run iTrials.

The store-bought enhancements are already better than their in-game counterparts.

Being attuned, they keep their set bonuses when you exemp down to 3 levels below the minimum level. So if you bought a set of Thunderstrike you keep the set bonuses all the way down to level 27, while someone who slotted a set of level 50 Thunderstrikes loses the bonuses below 47.

I'm not a complete dev fanboy, despite my frequent defense of their decisions. There ARE things they've done that irritated me, I just don't generally spend time complaining about things that are already done and can't be undone.

The store-bought enhancements being better than the in-game versions is one of those things. Another is the fact that the vet rewards I waited 5+ years to acquire can now be gotten by a new player on their first day if they want to drop $400 on the game all at once.

Both of those things annoyed me, but other than mentioning them here I'm not going to sit around whining about it. It's already done, so there's no point.