ClawsandEffect

You're misunderstanding what he meant.

Your 70% is your S/L resistance. There is no soft cap (SC) for resistance. The hard cap for resistance on a tank is 90%.

A softcap is a point at which adding more of something will have no effect. The most common usage for that term is when referring to defense.

An even con minion has a base 50% chance to hit you. Now, the game will not allow that chance to hit to fall below 5% (or go above 95%), so no matter what you do an enemy will always have a 5% chance to hit you. Since their chance to hit you can't drop below 5%, that means the effective soft cap for defense is 45%. Once you reduce an enemy's chance to hit you to 5%, adding more defense does you no good at all.

He's referring to the Rule of 5. Basically, you can only have 5 of any particular bonus active on your character at a time. So, if you have 3 5% recharge bonuses from Crushing Impact, and 2 5% recharge bonuses from Obliteration, you have 5 5% recharge bonuses. Any more 5% recharge bonuses you add on top of that will have no effect.

Bill is waiting until I21 so he can recreate his main with the exact same name without deleting the original. The original is being moved to the VIP server.

Quite frequently, actually.

Out of this round of proliferation, over half of it are power sets that players have been suggesting be ported for quite a while now.

Poison and Psi Blast for Corruptors? Yep, I recall numerous threads about that.

Thermal and Fire for Defenders? Ditto.

Broadsword, Katana and Regen for Brutes? Same there.

War Mace and Battle Axe have been suggested for Scrappers more frequently than anything but Super Strength and Ninjitsu.

Dark Blast is the single most requested powerset for Blasters. Ever.

And Brute players have been positively BEGGING for Energy Aura to be fixed, and it looks like they're doing exactly that.

Your assertion that the devs never listen to the players is blatantly false. They may not have listened to YOU, but that doesn't mean they didn't listen to ANYONE.

It's not just seniority, it's the fact that it already exists at all.

As of right now, there are quite a few blasters with Soul Tentacles, while there are exactly zero with Tenebrous Tentacles because Dark Blast does npt exist yet for blasters.

It makes much more sense (and can't possibly break any characters) if they make the changes to the set that hasn't been introduced yet, than it does to try and alter a pre-existing Patron Pool in order to not have to change Dark Blast.

I'd lose Physical Perfection to be honest.

Superior Conditioning actually raises your max endurance, which will help your already swimming in end recovery build more than adding 12.5% more end recovery.

I'd really lose Focused Accuracy and keep both end powers, but the question I'm answering here specifically asks which of the two end powers I'd skip.

Between Stamina and Quick Recovery you should have plenty of end recovery. With your well-documented refusal to use IOs, more max endurance is going to be a thing very difficult for you to come by, unless you plan on pursuing the accolades that give you more.

So, for YOU, I'd skip Physical Perfection and keep Superior Conditioning. I'd do it differently, but it's not my character.

I've looked at Bill's build in-game (we both play on Pinnacle), he does not have Aid Self.

I think it's against his religion.

An SR tank will have significantly lower HP than most other tanks, and less ability to absorb damage than all of them.

Ice, Invuln, and Stone all get a Max HP boosting click power.

Willpower and Shield both get a HP boosting

Fire, Electric, and Dark don't get max HP boosting powers, but they do all get solid resistances and a self-heal. Additionally, you can add survivability to those sets by adding defense. SR cannot add resistance the same way.

SR has no real resistance to speak of, and it doesn't get a self-heal. It also has no way outside of IOs and Accolades to boost it's HP total.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will be a BAD set for tanks. It's just that SR will do what many tanks can already do (softcap defense), and it doesn't have much else going for it.

A set that gets good resistance values AND is softcapped will survive much better than a set that is JUST softcapped. I think with the sheer number of enemies a tank is expected to have on them at all times, you're going to see the RNG screw SRs on a regular basis, and SR doesn't have much of anything else to fall back on once it's defense is breached. Anything other than S/L damaghe is going to be hitting at full strength, and some of the tougher enemies in high level content hit REALLY hard when they land a blow.

I don't think SR on a tank will outright suck, but I don't think for a second that it's going to be as ZOMGAWESOME as some are thinking it will.

I am forced to agree with this general assessment as well.

Go try tanking something like Devouring Earth or Veng buffed Nemesis with an SR and see how long you stay on your feet.

The things that can ignore defense are getting more plentiful in this era of the game. That's going to suck for a tank who is expected to hold the agro of those things with nothing BUT defense to rely on.

Sure, it will be a solid set for a lot of things, but if I'm about to start a DE arc, I'm going to boot an SR tank in favor of something that can survive the agro in a heartbeat.

Of course.

Because every player in the game who plays a melee character keeps the difficulty slider maxed at all times. That isn't a very good metric for testing the survivability of a given character, because you aren't likely to be in that situation unless you choose to be.

You could just as easily say SR sucks because large spawns of DE or Nemesis wipe the floor with them. Very specific situations do not a comprehensive test make.

I never crank up my spawn sizes past 3 or 4 on a Regen. The LEVEL of those spawns, however, is frequently +3 or +4. Regen is good at different things than other sets, and that is very likely to throw veteran brute players off when they try playing it. Regen is better at fighting a smaller number of tough enemies than it is at fighting a larger number of weak ones, simply because of the difference in number of incoming attacks.

Fewer incoming attacks gives you more time to react to them and determine whether you need to hit a heal or if you can just push on through it.

And for the record: Running out of click powers in a fight with a regen is a sign of either A) an overall bad regen player, or B) one who is prone to panicking at the first tick of damage and clicking everything all at once.

The changes haven't happened yet. They'll be occurring with issue 21.

The endurance replenishing will still work, just the heal that goes along with it is going away.

It is getting Energize instead, much like Electric Armor did to replace Conserve Power. That is happening because Scrappers (which are also getting Energy Aura) already have access to Conserve Power in Body Mastery and they aren't going to let us double them up.

Sure, put me down for 100 mil.

I can probably scrape that together if I lose.

I learned a long time ago never to make a bet you can't cover in the event you lose said bet.

Extremely unlikely it will keep Tenebrous Tentacles. Soul Mastery has Soul Tentacles, which is Tenebrous Tentacles in everything except name, in every other respect it is mechanically identical.

I'm betting it will be replaced with Dark Obliteration.

I could see it happening.

Though if they don't adjust the values of accuracy and end consumption we will end up with a power that a lot of people will end up skipping anyway.

We won't be getting Oppressive Gloom, because it's already available in Soul Mastery.

In my opinion, getting Dark Regeneration is a pipe dream, unless they tweak it to be similar to Drain Psyche. I don't think one of two ATs that lack any form of true self heal in any primary or secondary will suddenly be given the best self heal in the game. I've been wrong before, but that just really doesn't make any sense.

Because they are already getting 2 new primaries and a new secondary?

Do you really want to hear the complaining if scrappers get Energy Melee, Super Strength, Battle Axe, War Mace, and Energy Aura while other ATs get 1 or 2 new sets at most? There are more things possible to port to scrappers than would possibly be fair in one round of proliferation.

As it is, Scrappers and Brutes are getting more things ported to them than anyone else is. Giving them even MORE stuff while in some cases there aren't even any more options to give other ATs just wouldn't be fair.

Dark Blast/Dark Manipulation is pretty much the ONLY possible proliferation to blasters left at this point. Anything else they get will have to be a new set.

I also suspect that Super Strength for scrappers isn't just going to be a direct port. If I were the devs, I would definitely be concerned that double-stacked rage and the ability to crit with a scrapper's damage modifier would end up being too powerful. It is possible to have full time double stacked Rage, if scrapper values compared to tanks and brutes were carried over (as far as Build Up is concerned) that would be a permanent 200% damage boost that a SS scrapper could acquire. With scrapper's already high damage modifier that could (and probably would) end up being pretty overpowered.

It said in the announcement that, since the art team is so busy with I21, they are specifically doing things that don't involve the art team this time around. Ice Melee for stalkers would require a new animation for it's Assassin Strike at the very least, so perhaps they are waiting on that until the art team has more time.

It also implies that they are only using pre-existing powers in the Dark Manipulation that Blasters are getting.

Inherent Fitness invalidated their original reason for not doing it in the first place.

They were concerned about how overpowered a brute would be with no downtime from level 4, giving us Stamina at level 2 made that no longer a concern so it got done with the next round of proliferation after that.

I'm really hoping the port to Brutes makes them look at giving Regen some sort of debuff resistance (it's the only mitigation set in the game that has no debuff resistance of any kind)

The only time the Cottage Rule is ignored is in cases where a power is broken so badly that the only solution is to replace it altogether.

And it isn't completely broken. Since Repulse didn't accept any IO sets or really any enhancement other than End Reduction and Recharge Reduction, changing it wouldn't break anyone's character by making enhancements invalid in it.

They revamped Energy Aura in preparation to port it to scrappers, and I suspect they've been planning the change from Repulse to Disrupt for a while now, but they decided to wait and do it all at once.

Specifically why it costs EXTRA endurance to repel each enemy, when Force Bubble has no such restriction. Repulse costs the endurance to run the toggle, PLUS extra endurance every time an enemy is repelled.

And Conserve Power was replaced with Energize for the exact same reason it was replaced in Electric Armor: Conserve Power exists in Scrapper Body Mastery, and they won't give us two copies of the power.

Hibernate is getting replaced in Ice Armor for Stalkers for the same reason. It's in Leviathan Mastery.

Think you mean Domination here, but wrong word aside you're right.

Illusion wouldn't work so good for Dominators because only 3 powers in the set would even be affected by the ATs inherent (and one of those powers is quite frequently skipped).

When 2/3rds of a set is completely unaffected by an ATs inherent ability, it probably isn't a good idea to give them that set. That would be like a scrapper getting a set in which only 3 powers can crit, or tanks getting a set in which only 3 powers get Gauntlet. Or brutes only building fury with 3 powers.

I'm REALLY hoping Regeneration finally gets some debuff resistance. It is currently the only mitigation set in the game that has no resistance to any kind of debuffs whatsoever. It kind of sucks when a couple debuffing enemies can completely neuter your secondary's ability to keep you on your feet.

The change to Entropy Aura in Energy Aura looks really interesting as well. A recharge buff for each enemy in melee range of you? That sounds....possibly ludicrous with all the recharge bonuses we can already get.

Actually the changes to Energy Aura overall look nice.

Poison for Controllers sounds interesting as well. I'm predicting another GM killer combo in Illusion/Poison.

The lack of proliferation for Dominators leads me to believe that they may be working on Dark Illusion Control/Dark Assault for them. Illusion as it is wouldn't be a good fit, as only 2 powers in the entire set would get any benefit at all from Domination.

Maybe something like this:
DARK ILLUSION CONTROL:

Blind
Spectral Wounds
Deceive
Tenebrous/Soul Tentacles
Superior Invisibility
Flash
Fearsome Stare
Phantom Army OR Spectral Terror (I really don't see it keeping both)
Dark Servant (which would be more fitting than Phantasm)


DARK ASSAULT

Dark Blast
Smite
Shadow Maul
Gloom
Night Fall
Death Shroud
Soul Drain
Midnight Grasp
A new short range heavy hitting blast

Yep, they combined Torrent and Nightfall into one power, and replaced one with Aim.

Doesn't say anything about Tenebrous Tentacles, but they've never let us double up powers in the past and Soul Tentacles in Soul Mastery is an identical clone of TT. I'm betting something will be changed there. Very possibly it will be replaced with Dark Obliteration.

I'm very surprised that Life Drain wasn't mentioned, I was pretty sure the devs would never give blasters a true self heal in a primary or secondary. Since they haven't released a power list or all the details yet, we'll have to wait and see about that one.

Curious as to what Dark Manipulation will contain as well. If Life Drain is left in the blast set, it's a safe bet that Siphon Life and Dark Regeneration will not appear in the Manipulation set.

My guess is as follows:

T1: Gravity Well or something similar, probably a single target version of Tenebrous Tentacles, or a ranged version of Midnight Grasp's immobilize.
T2: Shadow Punch or Smite
T3: Death Shroud (Electric Manipulation gets it's damage aura early, so there's precedent)
T4: Smite or Shadow Maul
T5: Build Up or possibly Soul Drain (I'd like to see Soul Drain here personally, it'd be unique among Blaster sets)
T6: Dark Consumption
T7: Fearsome Stare (I would not be surprised if this is ported as it is, it's no more powerful than Shiver)
T8: Cloak of Darkness
T9: Midnight Grasp

I use Build Up prior to Lightning Rod or Shield Charge.

That extra 80% damage on top of your 65% damage boost is nice for making sure more of your enemies do not get up when you use those attacks.

I honestly can't imagine skipping damage boosting powers in any set that has them available. Sometimes you just want to hit something really hard.

Also, I'm more useful to a team when I help defeat things than I am by just being a punching bag. Build Up helps me do that.

And it only took you a year to admit it.