Deft_Bow

Long-time vet who has come back to the game after a year absence. I need some advice on Kinetic Melee but am completely unable to find any in the forums. How does this set stack up with the others? I've got an old KM/Fire back from when the set first came out sitting at level 20 and am wondering if I should continue in this endeavor, or should just give up on her and start SS/Elec brute farming for incarnate shards?

Trudging through KM/FA right now, at level 12 and just slotted level 15 IOs because why not? Waiting desperately to hit 24 so I can finally slot the 27 Steadfast: Resist Knockback I had laying about on another toon as KB is frustrating as hell. When I get up in levels though: Burn seems like a really good combination with Power Siphon and the new Fiery Embrace seems REALLY good with it (as the additional fire damage is in fact affected by +Dam from PS). /FA is not for the faint of heart, though, as you'll either have to change your build to account for KB or flop down some serious dough to get an IO to solve it. It's also notoriously squishy late-game, but absorbing alpha courtesy of Shadow Meld should help things once I get up in that level range, until then I'll just have to keep popping Purples to survive alphas.

They all have it. Just some have it to different degrees than others. DN has the twirly glowies around your arms when you raise them up to activate it, and although I've never taken Soul Tentacles I'd imagine there is a fair ammount of it on that, too.

Sadly what the set really needs is to drop the dead weight that is Conserve Power for something that actually helps the set. While porting over Energize would be quick and easy I think EA deserves a little bit more attention than that. In particular I think it deserves a little more attention in its only relevant secondary mitigation: End Drain. I'm not asking for Heat Exaustion level End debuff or anything ridiculous like that...well, actually, maybe I am. When solo, Energy Drain can't completely drain anyone (although it does take a noticeable chunk) even when fully slotted, and unless it's paired with Electric Melee or you're on a team that drains endurance (rare other than Kin Corruptors). Why is this power all by itself when it could potentially be paired with something that compliments it so well? I know we have our cottage rule, and that Energize worked in decently well with that, but honestly I see an offensive toggle or click power -end and -end recovery debuff as the most elegant solution to EA's problems. As far as I'm concerned with ELA's paltry performance levels in terms of -end and -end rec it is pretty thoroughly unexplored territory when dealing with a Brute. Shouldn't the -end and -rec on Energy Drain be there for a reason?

Darkest Night is also really useful for soloing at high numbers like +2/x8 if that's your bag. Darkest Night the furthest one away and it'll pull the entire group in a nice clump so you can corner-pull, Soul Drain and go to town with Dark Obliteration and Shield Charge. Best part will be they won't be able to touch you. Basically if you plan on doing anything but soloing AVs (and even then DN has its uses, but less so as it's a real blue bar destroyer), then DN is your best bet.

Looking at pages upon pages of threads I see no mention of Dual Blades in any capacity. Is it really that bad of a set? I've actually been planning on doing a grinding challenge of DB/EA. It's going to be...interesting. Before I did that though I wanted to ask around about how it's been since the hype died down. People still soloing AVs with it? Does it suck end bad? Why does no one use Empower in their late-game builds? How do you type with boxing gloves on?

Actually when I get to finalized builds with Spines when I go Blaze Mastery I always end up getting rid of Impale because with all the +recharge it just seems useless when compared to Fire Blast. Unless I'm building for PvP I always find that I can fit in strictly better powers for what the character needs. For instance, you could take out Impale, Combat Jumping, and Melt Armor for Boxing/Kick, Tough, and then Weave. This, and a less recharge, more Melee Defense oriented build might just let you intelligently solo those "I think I'm worth 8 heroes" missions.

Just skip Scorch. Easy call. You said yourself that your melee attack chain would be GFS->Incinerate->Cremate, right? What do you need it for?

Isn't Syphon Life your strongest attack? Why is it not slotted for damage?

This turned out long and in some respects drawn out, the bottom of the post contains a summary of what I'm trying to say for those who are too lazy to read through my "rantings"

Issue 16, the dawn of the resurrection of a multitude of characters for me. I spent hours customizing powers and recreating costumes in order to fit with their new amazing themes, paying specific attention to powers and how their visuals would make this character look. I happen upon my old Spines/Regen scrapper and lo and behold! There is an option other than: ridiculous looking tree things! I immediately get to redesigning him, spending time and effort doing what I love: making him prettyful. Now, I don't go out and play him immediately, as I take this opportunity to get a few thoughts from my head into action, creating Spines scrapper after Spines scrapper, relishing in the new wealth of concepts I can make. All is not well and good, however, as I spend time leveling these notoriously hard early-level powersets, and finally get to the crown jewel: Quills.

Now, from what I remember from previous spines scrappers, Quills has always been an amazing power, letting me dish out damage without even clicking, and having that debuffing effect? Great. What I was really looking forward to, however, was not having my attack times take forever and a day whenever I decide to use Healing Flames, or for that matter most of my secondary powers on my Regen scrapper, because of the redraw. And yet, I look after using healing flames, and the spines are gone? I quickly log out and log back in as my Spines/Regen, click on Spines and then click on one of my numerous click powers, and yes, they were gone again. Quills was still running, but my porcupine-esque visage was not to be had. The spines were not there. Wrest away from my form in their prime. O why has thou forsaken me, Quills?

All joking aside, I have no idea why such a terrible thing would happen to what I remember being a set-defining power. Does this change its role as such? Slightly. Does this seriously affect the viability of Spines when looking at a set like Regen? Yes. Now, I have seen this topic on the forums before, but never in this section unless it was a small footnote on a thread about Spines, and never to my knowledge have we received word from this on the Devs as to whether or not this is "working as intended". Guessing by the fact that I can use Quills, then turn on a toggle and not be forced to redraw, and the redraw only happening on click powers not in the primary, I would guess yes. My only question is why? Was Quills' non-redraw contingency allowing the performance of spines as a whole to be too much in terms of the balance of the game? Was the movement of Fire Armor and the planned movement of electric armor as secondaries to Scrappers too much in terms of the scrapper that could not only have a secondary damage aura but keep its endurance above almost zero (unlike Dark Armor)? I plead someone of authority to answer these questions, as it just doesn't seem to add up to me.

Looking at Spines' animation times, and then looking at literally any other power set in the game, it's pretty clear that Spines has the short end of the stick on animation times, coming in slowest among all the sets I've played (or at least seemingly so). Does the set make up for it with incredible area of affect attacks? Yes. And an exotic damage type? Gads yes. And a great secondary effect? Yes indeed. But do all these pros mean that every time I redraw and am killed by an enemy because of that milisecond of timing that I didn't have to click a green or heal or something else that I don't curse the very concept of redraw? Of course not. My point being that does an already undeniably abysmally slow set really need something that made it just a little more user-friendly taken away from it?

This is where the people who skipped ahead can join in =P

Will the fact that Quills no longer negates redraw make me stop playing Spines Scrappers? Goodness no. I enjoy spines as a set because of the wealth of new concepts that have been introduced as of Issue 16 and revamping my previous Spines scrappers to be fitted with all the brand spanking new shineyness that comes with power customization. What I would really really like, though, is an explanation as to whether or not this new aspect, or lack of an old aspect, was intentional. If so: What is the reasoning behind it? If not: Is it fairly high on your lengthy list of "things to do"? Another thing I would enjoy is to basically hear some opinions on what other people think of this change, whether or not you are a spines scrapper, or if you have some spines scrappers on the shelf that you haven't dusted off for a while. I am very aware that there is a chance that this will not be changed, but it would be really awesome to get a state of address on this issue on one of my new/old favorite sets.