Death_Adder

Eh. I can see the draw of the taunt set, but I still think it's a mistake. Agility will buff the end mod of power sink enough that with heavy slotting it can completely drain a mob in one hit. At the same time agility will add enough defense to maneuvers, weave, and combat jumping to cover the loss of the 2.5 def bonus, while giving a recharge bonus.

You have Power Sink slotted for taunt. This is a mistake. Slot for end red and use it to sap enemies. This will let survive prolonged combat with lower or rebuffed defense.


Edit: Also, you skipped shockwave. Shockwave is a fantastic mitigation tool to disrupt alphas. Look at any video of high end claws gameplay and you will see shockwave is a huge tool for survival.

I know you said no fire, but a fire^3 Dom or mind/fire/fire would fit the concept and be extremely lethal. You could give the fire effects a dark tint and explain that the brush with death left your character able to access Hellfire or Soulfire. Firey assault almost plays entirely at range, and embrace of fire let's you melt spawns faster. Rise of the phoenix will really play to your deathless concept.

The reason why Stalkers didn't get ice melee with Ice armor is just because they didn't have enough time to animate a new assassin strike for the set before the issue went live. Stalkers will get IM, it's just a matter of when. I would think it will be a free proliferation in i22 with staff melee being the pay set. It has been stated that staff melee will be for all 4 melee ats so I think they learned that there will be outrage if a purchase power set is not for all ats that could use it.

Dark Melee adds much more survivability from the heal in siphon life than the minor -To Hit.

Really though, SR is much better on brutes and tanks than scrappers. Lower hp makes you more vulnerable to being 1-2 shot and give less room for the sliding resists to keep you alive. No taunt aura means your kill rate is lowered as you have to chase down runners. It can work, my first 50 is a DM/SR. It's just much better on a brute.

Jump kick is actually quite good if you are lacking damage in your primary or secondary sets. It's lightning fast recharge and the fact that it benefits from containment make it an excellent soloing tool for controllers. It does the same damage and animation time as air superiority but with a much faster recharge. It makes up for that by only having a 20% chance to KU instead of 100%. However, if you are a controller, you don't need the extra mitigation and do need the damage more frequently.

My huntsman SoA is Zack Burton, a homage to Jack Burton of Big Trouble in Litte China. He is a former SoA who carved out some personal power, went rogue, bought a cargo boat, and runs goods back and forth between the isles and paragon city.

While in Talos, some tsoo stole his boat while he was rescuing a friends fiancé and all hell broke loose. So he falls back on his training, reflexes, and a submachine gun to kick *** and get his boat back, all while daring the universe to give him it's best shot, because he can take it.

A huntsman or crab SoA would work. I see you have a fire blast defender, but fire is really good on a corruptor. Scourge + Rain of Fire is beautiful. You also might give Dominators a try. Some of the assault sets are range heavy, and the controls are nice too.

I agree with the storyline arguments, but the problem is that the development already invalidated it when they allowed any arc to unlock all patron pools. This was a quality of life improvement but it makes no sense that working for Black Scorpion will let you master something that can only be taught by Ghost Widow.

That really only leaves the balance issue. It is balanced that you have to run the arc to unlock the pools. I don't know of its balanced to change sides first. I would be in favor of the undercover hero arc that would allow heroes to unlock the pools without changing sides.

Here are some set that have good aoe damage and are not super strength:
Titan Weapons has great aoe. It has a PBAoE and 3 huge cones.
Firey melee: has 2.5 aoe attacks in Combustion, Fire Sword Circle, and the breath.
Ice Melee: There has some changes to the set a while back, Frozen Aura now does foot stomp level cold damage as well as the sleep, and Frost is a great damage over time aoe. Ice patch is always fun.
War Mace: It also got buffed and now is a great burst aoe set as well as having good single target
Kinetic Melee: This is a newer set, it plays like a blend of claws and energy melee. It has a good pbaoe in Burst and a 30ft ranged cone that does knockback in Repulsing Torrent. If you can work with the knockback there is a lot of aoe potential there.

Also since Tanks now have access to Villain epics, Mu Mastery can give any set AoE potential thanks to Ball Lightning and Electric Fences.

I'm not sure on what your costume is, but based on the mane and weapon choice, I see two options stand out for your theme: Stone and Elec.

Stone can be used as "Asphalt Armor"; it's really tough, and it can be colored to look like chunks of pavement. It also plays to the immovable barricade suggested by your name. I can't stand actually playing the set due to the recharge, movement, and damage penalties, but if you can it will fit.

Electric works since the railroad sign still has electric cable hanging from it, so it can represent an electric overload that gave you electric powers when your ripped the sign out of the ground.

And then you can always take a minimum fx Invulnerability, Willpower, or Super Reflexes and handwave the mechanics of the set and just rely on your costume to match your concepts.

Larcen3 give the pros of fire, here are the pros of elec.

Elec has much stronger resists. If you build for it with the right alpha, Elec can constantly at the resist cap for SL and Elec, which are the two most common damage types. Also elec has noticeable psi resistance, which is a hole for fire.

Elec's heal is on a longer recharge, but it gives you very good regen for 30 secs and an end discount on every power you click. Combined with elec's recharge boost, that will let you spam the hell out of Titan's AoEs during momentum.

Speaking of lightning reflexes, not only does it give you a +20% bonus to recharge, it also gives you a 40% resistance to slows. This is huge for a resist set as debuffs will hit you more often than not.

Power Sink will refill your end much more frequently than consume, and as previously mentioned is a great survival increase through end draining.

In summary, Fire does offer more damage, but elec offers MUCH more toughness without giving up as much damage as might be assumed.

I'd be very interested in it, but I would need to know the powers before committing to buying.

I would expect the melee set to have high aoe, with a minimum of a 15 ft radius Irradiate and Proton Scatter with a 30-40ft range. Every attack should be either pure energy or energy/smashing with -def as a secondary effect.

I'm not sure on the armor set, but I would expect high resists or def to energy and toxic, and some heavy debuff/mez auras, as well as personal toggle version of Accelerate Metabolism as the Mez shield.

I have no idea on the secondary effect for sets, but i remember from the leaked screenshots it looked like it had a similar layout to claws and KM in that it had a 40' ranged attack, a PBAoE, and a huge freaking cone (for a melee set). It's still too early to tell for a full build since it hasn't even hit beta yet.

For top end damage, reactive is the way to go. The -HP is limited to 150 per stack which is insignificant when fighting an AV. Personally, I'm looking at spectral to stop runners when fighting normal spawns. I hate the lack of taunt aura on most scrappers.

What I would really like to see for tanks is a normalization of the tier one attacks. Bruising is a core mechanic of the at now, but certain secondaries are at a disadvantage using it due to animation and or recharge times. Kinetic and Dark have greatDPA and recharge, and also can proc the help out of it. Jab is horrible, ice is slow animating and stone is slow recharging. If they were all set to .83 cast and 3 second recharge I would be ecstatic.

I admit, the end powers are over done, but they are useful and easy to implement. I just thought of three alternate options that could work with the bag of tricks nature of the set:

1. A Wide Area Web Grenade clone. It would help with runners, add slows, keep thing nice and tight for team/primary/epic aoes. Not as thematic for ninjas, but really useful.

2. A melee range Surveillance clone with smaller debuff numbers. Ninjas should be sneaky and backstabby, and this lets the backstab in without treading on Assassin Strike.

3. Glue Pot - A hand thrown glue arrow clone. Closest power effect to caltrops without being caltrops. You would loose the avoid effect, but if the recharge rate slow is massive, it willl provide as much mitigation.

... A 16 foe target cap aoe cage available every spawn.







What?

Yes. In Elec, Charged Brawl is much, much better than Havoc punch. In fact, Jacobs Ladder is a better single target attack then Havoc Punch.

Before the animation changes to stone around i12, Stone Mallet was better than Stone Fist. Now the long animation makes it inferior for dps.

Well... Since Stalkers got physical perfection in weapons mastery, why not add a new +end/+recovery power to ninjutsu for scrappers? If not, they could just go with quick recovery. Some kind of end power is thematic to the set, but it's a cottage rule that Stalkers don't get Quick recovery.