Dechs Kaison

That should work pretty well.

Since Dawn Strike is on such a long recharge cycle, what would you think about using just the two flares, but using a second build which enhances those two powers for knockback? That would give me four points to work with.

Someone needs to learn to take their own advice.



Here, let me do the research part for you. Ice/Ice was given to brutes for beta, then taken away for a combination of reasons, none of them are valid any longer.

1. Back then, fury required you to be hit to generate fury, not just be attacked. This caused Ice Armor to generate less fury.
2. Ice Armor also slowed enemies, so fewer attacks were being made. This wasn't bad on its own, but it compounded with point number one.
3. Back then, Ice Melee sucked. It did not have footstomp damage in Frozen Aura, and if I recall correctly, Frozen Touch didn't do much damage either.

The largest problem was that the powersets were analyzed as a thematic combination. Not only did ice/ice brutes not generate much fury, they couldn't do anything with the fury they did generate. Ice Armor had two strikes against itself in fury generation. Ice Melee only had one strike in the lack of damage. When you only look at them together, that's enough to wipe them off the drawing board.

Energy Aura was added in its place, which suffered from the first problem, but not the second, so it worked well enough. It became much better when all attacks generated fury regardless of hit.

Win.

Good point, but there is an often overlooked benefit to this. Tohit debuffs will benefit your allies as well.

Would you be happy with stick models for dual blades? Because that's an idea I could get behind.

Pretty sure this came in the same issue as Kheldians, which was i3.

EDIT: Nope, the level cap was increaded with Issue 1.

Those are new too. I can't tell you when they were added, though.

That part is easy. Once you have a KB magnitude to time controlled equation, you can calculate how much time a foe spends on his back in relation to the recharge time of the power. For example: if a power has 50% chance of KB that will take 3 seconds to recover from and a 6 second recharge time, then the enemy affected will not be doing damage for 25% of the time on average. If he's one foe in a mob of seventeen (the aggro cap), you can now quantify how much survivability that KB gives you. The missing piece right now is that time to recover bit.

The math part isn't so bad. If you have a means to record those times I described reliably, get me the results and I'll give you the rest.

This was written so damn well that it's worth quoting just to repeat it.

Create a scale of capability. At one end is offense and the other is defense. Scrapper sits on the offensive end, while tanker sits at the other. The middle of the road is a brute.

I saw your recent topic on this subject and it got me curious. However, I think what you're asking for is a daunting task if ever there was. It's not impossible, but I certainly don't feel like doing the work on it.

You'd need to establish a formula to tell you how controlled a foe affected by KB is in terms of time. This would require an enemy with enough ranged attacks that he would fire immediately upon recovery, some way to time from the moment of KB until that retaliation, and a variety of KB magnitudes (at least three) to create as points on a graph. Sample size is key, as it needs to be large enough to be fairly certain of the times.

All these recorded data points would correlate KB magnitude to "time controlled." At that point, you could begin comparing knockback value to other forms of control.

Again, I don't feel like doing the work myself, but that's what would need done. Also, I have no idea how to reliably obtain those time measurements, short of sitting there with a stopwatch. If you go with the stopwatch, then the sample size needs to be significantly larger to diminish the presence of human error in the results.

From that standpoint, you should be more inclined to like brutes over both scrappers and tanks.

Brutes clearly do more damage than tanks. Likewise, they have a clear survival advantage over scrappers. Generally, brutes can survive well enough to tank anything in the game, but they do more damage than tanks. The added survivability of a tank generally doesn't matter. Most scrappers can be built to survive almost as well as brutes and do marginally more damage, but they lack the taunt aura needed to be able to function as a tank for the team.

This is coming from a min/max style player who enjoys tanks more than brutes, by the way.

Easy now, it's not a perfect tool by any means. The values it generates are largely useless, as we don't know how much DPS is incoming. It is a very useful tool for comparison's sake, however. The best thing I have found to use it for was answering a question:

"More HP and regen, or a few more % of defense?"

I can plug in the values for two builds and clearly see which one survives more damage.

Indeed I do. Here's a link.

Uh, that's kind of the point.

Other than damage mitigation, brutes have everything the tanker has but better...

Because a tanker's job is to survive anything, and they get the best numbers out of these powers anyway.

Defenders usually take leadership powers, but why would they if buffing the team is what they do best? It's because defenders get the most out of these type of powers. That's also why tankers should take tough/weave. They get the more benefit from these powers than anyone else does.

Keep in mind, every % of resist/defense you add does more for you than the % before it.

I don't agree that every tank needs tough/weave, but you'd have to be daft to suggest that just because "they're the best at it" they shouldn't get even more.

Yeah, -20% defense would cap your tohit against even con enemies. The issue is that a vast majority of the population is already slotted to cap tohit against even con enemies. It only takes one SO.

If you're talking about radiation blast, you can't really skimp on accuracy because you need to be able to hit the first time. Again, this is the reason -def is largely useless.

If you're talking about Radiation Emission, then your radiation infection is auto hit, and pretty much floors enemy defense. Here you could skip accuracy slotting all together if you could ensure that all your enemies stay within the debuff. Even fighting +1s and +2s, this won't be that noticeable because of how easy it is to hit things in this game. When you get to +4s, however, it's a different story. When you get to AVs, it's another different story, because they resist 85% of your defense debuffs.

Well, certainly not anymore.

Yeah, because you might as well walk away. Grab a drink, make a sandwich, use the bathroom, take the dog for a walk, and then come back to the game. Maybe you'll be at your destination by then.

I don't think travel in missions is ever a big deal to begin with, but of my characters that use teleport, they all have sprint as well. Even without sprint, I don't find myself having problems keeping up with the team.

What I do find useful is being able to get through doors clogged by teammates, henchmen and enemies. Also, the ability to completely ignore immobilize and -speed and caltrop patches is nice. Teleporting past groups of enemies is better than stealthing past as well.

And you were complaining about the endurance cost of teleport? Running those toggles in combat is extremely inefficient.