Dechs Kaison

Then you clearly have no understanding of probability, statistics, and their application to the game mechanics.

So you disregard scrapper criticals, too?

And boy do I miss it! Sure, they're five levels higher than anyone on the team, and can do tons of damage, but I always have defenders with me, and the PPE's don't have godmodes, so they tend to take less time to kill than the regulars.

EDIT: Holy run on sentence, Batman! I think he's gone into a comma.

Until you account for scourge.

This is why I'm afraid of trying that Claws/DA brute. I have an SS/WP. He's level 34. He has tough and weave. He dies. All. The. Time.

I know the problem isn't the sets. The problem is me. I just can't brute!



But I will learn. Oh will I learn. And my claws/DA will rip faces off of anything he pleases.

I just leave it on auto. Then again, I don't have hasten in my builds.

Any squishy that gets aggro before me is moving real damn fast. In which case, I'm still an aggroholic, so I'll try to get the aggro before he dies.

Or he's just on his own following rule #2 and #3 to the fullest.* It's all well and good, rule #4 has him, the team, and myself covered.**




*The second rule of DKTF is: at all times you must be having fun. The third rule is: if you think you can handle it, you're free to go for it.

**Fourth rule: If you thought you could handle it, but couldn't, you are expected to get back up or hosp out.

Unless they just don't like to travel.

Most farmers would have better profits considering that "regular" content can drop purple recipes. They give that up for the convenience of AE. For some people, the inconvenience of travel isn't fun.

Maybe you won't, but I sure will.

Ok, so I know enough to realize that capping defense on a resistance set with an enormous heal makes for a tough character, even without any mitigation tools in the melee set. That doesn't make me an expert on DA by any measure.

What will make me an expert is a Dark Armor tour around the ATs, which I'm in the process of now. I will be combining Dark Armor with different melee sets on each character. My DA stalker just hit 36 last night. He is leveraging Ninja Blade's Divine Avalanche to maximize his survival, but the brute and scrapper I have planned will have no such tools. The brute is claws/DA and the scrapper is Kin/DA. One can stack stuns and -dmg on top of resists. The other rips faces off.

Even then, I won't be a complete expert on Dark Armor. For that title, I'd have to try every melee pairing with DA available, repeated on every AT. The sheer amount of combinations resulting is immense, if not impossible to complete in a lifetime. Suffice to say, the tour is designed to give me the broadest vantage point I can realistically attain. I have done DA with no extra mitigation already on the toughest AT. I'm doing DA with heaps of mitigation on the most fragile AT. I will be doing two varying degrees between on the remaining ATs.

Once I'm done with this little tour, I'll feel much better about my DA knowledge. At that point, I plan on writing the MFing Dark Armor Guide, having tasted the set on four ATs, with and without mitigation tools in a melee set.

It's a good guide to be sure, though I couldn't disagree more with his opinion on Soul Transfer. I wish I'd have seen it before I made my DA tank, but then again, the conclusions he draws on set bonuses must be rather obvious if I made the same ones.

It's not misleading. If you're fighting an AV, you only get one target, and even if it's up every 15 seconds, that 5% won't be enough. I think a good way to fix this is like you said, front load the heal. Maybe make it a 15% heal + 1.5% for every target in range beyond the first. Enhances to almost 30% + 3% per, right?

To be fair, I didn't really have any ideas beyond "add taunt to repel" and "make the heal better."

Rylas had the conserve power rework idea. I don't like the idea of replacing it with conductive aura, as that's more electric realm than energy. Even if you give it the same effects, call it absorption aura or something. Of course, that would be a lot of work, since they'd have to come up with a new animation.

The heal, while fast recharging, is still on a sixty second timer. It's auto hit, which is nice, but does about 5% heal per target. It may be useful in a mob, but absolutely worthless against an AV. Remember that this is a defense oriented set, the lucky shots are going to hurt. Even on a high recharge build, you're waiting probably 20 seconds to heal 5%.

I've got a DA tanker that can fill his health bar every 17 seconds, and every once in a while, even that's too long to wait.

Good catch. They get the stealth power instead, which I don't see needing to change. Actually, I still think the tanker should get a taunting repel. That'd be a great (fun) way to tank, knocking things all over hell while rolling around like a disco ball on dyne.

Only because Narlok's a friend, and that was framed almost as an insult. I know I've pretty much said the same thing to other people, and I meant it as an insult.

Nothing against you at all. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

Hate to say it, but Rylas is right here.

I'm all for more options. If someone wants to roll an EA tank, let 'em. Likewise with ice brutes.

Speaking of that, someone care to do the comparison between tanker ice and brute EA? I have a feeling that, with modifiers accounted for, the two will compare rather closely.

I still think Ice would clearly come out ahead as a better set. Damage aura, -damage debuff aura, more consistent +HP buff. The defense numbers in EA would have to be higher to compare.

EA has its hurdles to overcome to be a "good" set in my eyes, and proliferation would mean the perfect chance for the devs to take a second look at it, just like with Electric Armor. EA needs a more consistent way to stay alive. Of the other defensive sets, Shields has +HP as a passive (along with resists) and Ice has a non crashing +HP power (along with -dmg). EA only has a very minimal heal, repel, and endurance drain (which ice also has). Conserve power is still nigh worthless to EA characters, and redundant with tanker APP. The endurance discount aura is a great idea, but I don't know if +end cost is something that can be given to enemies. It's likely it can, but it could be mighty powerful and hard to balance. Maybe repel can be made to have a taunt component, but it shouldn't be the only taunt aura for the set, much like the Dark Armor control auras.

I have to ask what your secondary is that's causing so much trouble.

I have two stalkers which run without stamina. One is EA, so he doesn't count, but the other is Ninja Blade/Dark Armor.

Few things bug me more than this. Most people that do this are probably like me, in that they can't build a scrapper tough enough to survive what they want to fight. They're willing to kill slower to have an easier time making a tough character. I gave up on scrappers/brutes for the time and made a tank with the full intention of tanking.

I have a scranker myself, but it's actually the second build for my DA/Fire tank. With most teams, I play the unstoppable wall of unstoppableness build that taunts. The scranker only comes out on two occasions: Tanker Tuesday and any team with more than 5 defender/corruptors. On those occasions it is generally beneficial to be less survivable but have fireball, hasten, build up, and fireball.

Very true, and likewise with focused accuracy. The set has well balanced attributes to be useful everywhere.

I never meant to say it was true for everyone. Apology accepted, but I think one is due in return for my not being clear to begin with.

Also, congratulations on the little Claws. I've a few years before I'm ready for that. I'm still debating the whole "Uncle Dechs" philosophy anyway. (That is to say, be the uncle. Visit the kids from time to time, bring presents, they love you, but as soon as they cry, it's back to mom and dad. All the joys of parenting without actually parenting.)

Then it seems you read it way out of context.

In the post where Grey has his build, he mentions building S/L defense. Not typed defense, just S/L. We got into a discussion for adding the +end proc in Dark Regeneration. He didn't know where to steal the slot from. I saw Gaussian's and realized he probably put it in for the S/L defense. That's when I said this:

I was talking to Grey Pilgrim here, referencing his build and quoting his need for more slots. I'm pretty sure you'd agree with me that the +end proc alone is worth a lot more to a scrapper than the 2.5% recovery from Gaussian's. Add to that the fact that he'd be getting more S/L defense out of my slotting suggestion, as well as getting the same recharge for Power Siphon in less than half the invested slots, and it seems like a no-brainer.

If you think it's necessary, I'll go back and edit the post to preface my claim with the phrase "In terms of your build."

Every time you mention this, you ignore the fact that Reactive armor enhances things that need to be enhanced. It even ED caps the most important attribute in those four slots. It's almost always the best option for slotting, especially so when building for defense. When it comes to recovery, Impervium all the way.

Gaussian's takes six slots to fill out and, even in all those slots, it does not enhance the one thing you really want enhanced. If you are going for the defense from the set, which is by far the best bonus it has to offer, you give up the opportunity to frankenslot in some additional recharge.

It's a great set, but it has its fair share of drawbacks. It is not a clear cut "always worth the slot investment" set. In Grey's case, he's better off without that. I didn't think my post could be read so far from its meaning.

And in Grey Pilgrim's build, the one which we are referring to, he cannot afford those slots because none of those set bonuses are worth the benefit he gets out of those slots when put elsewhere.

Well, fun is the real goal here. If you're haning fun, you aren't doing anything wrong.

Me.

Or that damned dispersion bubble!