ClawsandEffect

Not entirely accurate. Cyclops actually needs his visor just to function normally, because he can't shut the optic beams off. Without the visor he'd have to live as a blind man, because the only things that can stop the beams are ruby quartz or his own eyelids.

I'd consider him Mutant/Tech, because his visor is a gadget that is necessary to control the beams, without it he wouldn't be able to be a hero due to the sheer amount of accidental destruction he would cause every time he opened his eyes. The only "natural" thing about him is he learned to aim his optic blasts, which is literally as simple as looking at something. He also has some hand to hand combat training, but it isn't anything your average Army Ranger wouldn't know.

It's not going to free as many names as you think it will.

Most of the people who have the "iconic" names you're talking about are either still playing, or the characters are high enough level to be immune from the name freeing script.

The first time they ran the script, they discovered that the vast majority of the names freed that way were characters under level 6. The second time they ran it they restricted it to level 6 and under because of that.

Unless you want to suggest they free names on all inactive accounts regardless of character level, you're probably not going to get the names you want. And you still won't get them if the account is still active.

If they free names regardless of level, it is likely to piss of quite a few people who may just be taking a beak for a few months as well.

If the OPs reg date is close to the date they started, then I don't believe any missions they would have would have gotten timers added since then. Pretty sure the last timer added to a farmable mission was before the OP started playing (again, assuming the reg date is close to when they started)

Actually, out of scrapper sets, it is the very top of sets that need attention. Previously, Fiery Aura held that title, now that FA has been buffed, it's Regen's turn.

Your Willpower character I'm sure has decent defense and resistances already going for it. If it gets debuffed you haven't lost ALL of your survival tools at once.

Some debuff resistance wouldn't make Regen overpowered, hell, it wouldn't even completely catch it up with some of the other sets.

Saying it doesn't need buffed is basically saying "Sure, it's okay to keep buffing the other sets, leaving Regen farther and farther behind each time you do."

I'm honestly curious here. What sets do you feel need some attention MORE than Regen does? I can't think of any sets that are having any major issues in need of attention. In fact several of them have been buffed recently, while Regen hasn't gotten a buff since......Oh, wait, I don't think it ever HAS been buffed.

It is not fair to make Regen the red-headed stepchild of scrapper sets just because it USED to be overpowered. There are a LOT of people playing, myself included, that don't REMEMBER when it was overpowered. I can't think of a single positive change to Regen in the last 5 years (the entire time I've been playing).

My Rad/Sonic Defender can take down GMs and AVs without outside help already.

And this is without Incarnate abilities, because i haven't bothered with them on that character yet.

A self-buffing Empathy/Sonic or Empathy/Rad could easily take down AVs, just by survivability and pure DPS. GMs would be in the realm of possibility with Incarnate abilities.

Do you know what the first non-Controller AT was to take down a GM solo? It was a DEFENDER. And it was LONG before Incarnate abilities were even on the horizon. Like 2-3 years ago, shortly after the introduction of inventions.

Can't deal enough damage to take things down? THAT is the bull crap here. Defenders can already solo those things, give them the ability to self buff and it will become trivial for them to do.

I see all this "Defenders can't do this, defenders can't do that" coming from you as a justification to allow self-buffing, and everything you have been saying they can't do, they have already been doing for a long time now.

Maybe you're just saying YOUR Defenders can't do those things. If that's the case, maybe you just need to build better defenders.

I'll grant that agro control will be an issue. Damage dealing won't be if you could self buff.

Fortitude is a 30% damage buff for Defenders, correct? If you take that, and add the 30% solo damage buff Defenders get now, then add Assault's 18.5% damage buff, you end up with a 78.5% damage buff, with no outside help at all. That is also before any damage set bonuses are taken into account.

You will be easily outdamaging a Corruptor, and you'll be creeping up on Blaster level damage output. I'd hardly call that "issues with damage dealing"


I've never seen a Night Widow who is softcapped to everything, has Perma-Hasten with only 40% global recharge, is rocking Instant Healing level regen rates, and can heal back half their health bar every 5 seconds.

Have YOU seen a Night Widow that can do that? Because that's what a self-buffing Empath would be doing.

It's not just the ability to do something, it's the AMOUNT of that ability that determines whether something is overpowered.

Empathy.

Seriously, Empathy would become the most overpowered set in the game if you could buff yourself with it.

You could give yourself enough recharge for perma-hasten/perma-AB with very few set bonuses.

You could softcap to practically everything with self-Fortitude (which will give you around 23% defense to ALL types/positions by itself). Pair that with Defender Maneuvers numbers (7% to all) Hover (2-3% to all), and Weave (4-5% to all) (with a Res/Def in Tough) and you suddenly find that you only need a few set bonuses to be softcapped to everything you can possibly have defense to. I did the math before. If an Empathy defender could self buff, they would be capable of hitting 35-36% defense to everything, with no outside help.

Regeneration Aura will be permanent or nearly so, giving you levels of regeneration that will surpass a Willpower character in a large crowd. You could almost surpass a Regen running Instant Healing with permanent Regeneration aura.

Oh, and you can hit yourself with a rather large self heal every 4 seconds or less and have stackable mez protection.

Pair that with a secondary like Sonic and you have a tankmage in the making.

So, yeah, self buffing characters would cause a severe nerf to a number of powersets. Empathy would go from one of the weakest offensive defender primaries, to the strongest.

Key point: Dark Armor has no defense debuff resistance. None. Nada, zip, zero, zilch.

This is a key point because the most common defense debuffing attack in the game, by far, is machine gun fire.

Now, if you focused all your slotting on building melee defense, those machine guns are going to have free reign to strip your defense down to nothing in seconds flat, because melee defense will not protect you from them. Machine guns are ranged attacks, even if they are standing right next to you.

So, if you focused your build on melee defense, you are quite frequently going to find yourself having no defense at all, or even negative defense.

If you get a significant amount of S/L defense built up, you will have a cushion between yourself and those defense debuffs. You'll still get debuffed, but it won't happen instantaneously, you'll at least have a chance to pop a couple purples to keep your defense up, and you'll have more time to hit Dark Regen. If you build for defense and have it stripped away, damage will start coming in faster than you can react to it, so it would be in your best interest to avoid getting debuffed as much as possible.

I'd try and shoot for at least 32.5% defense to S/L/E/N damage. That will put you a single small purple away from softcap, and it's much easier to achieve without having to gimp other aspects of your build. It is very feasible to get 32.5% defense to those 4 types and still have decent accuracy and recharge in your build, if you try for the softcap you will probably have to sacrifice one or both of those things.

There is almost always a better choice to spend your power picks and slots on. It's not so much that Melt Armor is a horrible power in and of itself, it's just that scrappers almost always have something more useful they can take.

The -9% resistance really isn't all that significant. You'll boost your overall damage output more just by popping a single small red inspiration, which A) lasts 20 seconds longer, and B) You don't have to wait 90 seconds to use another one.

Even if your enemy has resistance to your damage type, you will STILL boost it more with an inspiration than Melt Armor. A small red boosts your damage by 25%, half of that is 12.5% (enemies rarely have more than 50% resistance to any damage type). Melt Armor on the other hand is still giving you just a 9% boost.

In my opinion, by choosing it and 6 slotting it, you probably wasted a power pick, and definitely wasted 5 slots that could have been more useful somewhere else.

I second this.

As an added note, you can achieve an attack chain of Flares-Fire Blast-Flares-Blaze with relatively little recharge needed.

A full single target annihilating attack chain, at range, that you still have exemped as low as level 13.

You do realize that you will HAVE to take a pool power eventually, no matter what, right?

We get 25 power choices. There are only 18 powers between primary and secondary.

Unless you decide to stop playing that character after you have chosen all the powers in your primary and secondary, you will be forced to choose a pool power at some point.

Not going to happen.

The devs are still standing firm on their stance that allowing us to pull 10 out is being generous, because enhancements are intended to be permanent.

They may change their mind on that someday, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

Punctuation is your friend.

Look in your temp powers again.

Call to Justice is a temp power that is basically a placeholder for the Justice power, which is the Hero Alignment power (it's an AoE Acc/Dam buff)

If it disappeared, it should mean the timer counted down and you now have the Justice power. The timer is 7 days if I recall correctly.

If you already had the Justice power itself and it disappeared, I don't know what to tell you.

Edit: Nevermind, mistaken power name. The one that is supposed to disappear is Countdown to Justice.

True, but that wasn't the point I was making.

My point there was, if you look at the sets that only have debuff resistance to one or two things, it is almost always the thing that would hurt them the most to have debuffed.

Case in point: ALL sets who rely primarily on defense to survive have defense debuff resistance to some degree or another. Even Willpower has some. Basically, the more a set relies on one thig to survive, the stronger it's debuff resistance to that thing is.

Example: SR relies pretty much 100% on it;s defense to stay alive, therefore it gets 95% DDR almost by accident.

Shield Defense relies on defense as well, but it gets a little resistance and +HP as well, so it's not quite 100% relying on defense, therefore it gets less DDR (but still able to reach 95% with creative slotting)

Willpower doesn't rely nearly as much on defense as the first two, so while it gets some DDR, it's not nearly of the same caliber of the defense sets.

Now, Regen, as anyone who has played it can attest, is hurt the most by -regen and -recharge debuffs. If it followed the pattern of every other set, it would get some debuff resistance to those things.

Hell, Fiery Aura gets some -recharge resistance, and it isn't NEARLY as important to FA as it is to Regen.

Yes, you can. But you do that at the cost of your other defenses.

You resist S/L damage strongly, but you barely resist E/N damage at all. Thus, in my opinion at least, it is more important to get that E/N defense up. Also, if you have E/N defense, those pure energy end draining electric attacks will be less likely to hit and drain your end.

Smashing/Lethal is NOT the only type of defense you want to build for, especially with a Willpower character.

The nice thing about Resilience is when you DO get stunned, it doesn't last very long at all.

When you pop a wakie, everyone else is stunned for 30 seconds, a Regen with Resilience is stunned for like, 2 seconds or so. Stuns wear off REALLY fast with Resilience in your build.

Bets bet is, like others said, a Steadfast Res/Def, and it's a good spot for a Gladiator's Armor 3% Defense as well if you can manage to acquire one.

E/N defense is, in my opinion, more important for an Invuln than S/L defense is. You resist the hell out of S/L damage, so anything that DOES get through is barely going to scratch you. On the other hand, you don't resist Energy or Negative Energy nearly as well, so any pure Energy or Negative attacks that get through are going to HURT.

4 Reactive Armor in 4 powers, and use 3 Eradication/3 Cleaving Blow in Whirlyhands. That'll help with the E/N defense and shouldn't hurt anything to any great degree.

I agree with Fin on the psi resistance. Since Invuln starts with 0, it isn't worth trying to build it up to a point where you'd even notice it's there. You'd have to sacrifice too much from the rest of your build to do it.

Not the whole mob. It checks to see if it procs on each enemy individually. Usually it will fire on one or two if you're lucky. And unlike Slash with it's two ticks, there's no real way to tell which enemies you've debuffed.With Slash it's obvious because the second tick will be slightly higher.

The best use for it I've personally seen is putting it in Sweeping Strike on a AV killing Dual Blades build. Blinding Feint-Attack Vitals is a pretty good chain and doesn't require a lot of recharge. You can get 2 -res procs in it that will stack with each other (but not themselves).

Honestly, your original build was pretty good. Just needed a little bit of tweaking to improve the performance and get rid of some of the redundancies (like a lot of +HP bonuses when you have Perma Dull pain)

Putting Obliteration in your AoEs is a decent option. If you have Spin and Eviscerate both you'll max out on 5% recharge bonuses, and will definitely be over the threshold of perma Dull Pain.