Dersk

Yes, and it's been glorious for tanking.

Y'know, I almost missed you.

Odd. Here I was thinking it was because you repeatedly insisted the developers hated tankers, tankers were damage-less punching bags and agro monkeys, rage sucked, invulnerability couldn't tank for teams without the assistance of buffs, invulnerability was weaker to cimerorans than willpower despite being "the" S/L set, and a few other remarks more extreme than the kind that suggested passive resists getting bumped from 7.5% to 10% resistance.

The way you say it, it almost sounds like you suggested the changes that happened.

I'm curious why you're even considering acrobatics. It does absolutely nothing for you but drain endurance.

Some fire attacks will also check against smashing or lethal defense, which you'll have plenty after getting weave and energy absorption.

Without explicit descriptions of what is too much DPS or what is overpowered, you fellows probably aren't even arguing about the same thing.

Some of the argument concerns the size of KoB's damage. Rage's damage buff obfuscates the issue. A better starting point would be to note if energy transfer, total focus, and seismic smash are too strong for scrappers. At that I think what is okay for brutes is clearly okay for scrappers, whether or not they will become top performers for DPS for scrappers (and yet still being situationally weaker than brutes).

I don't think there's anything a superstrength scrapper could break that a stone/shield scrapper couldn't too, but if scrappers can't even get EM or SM then this is all [censored].

The mustard gas injury was from WWI, which was from 1914 to 1918. Hitler didn't have anything to do with the politics in Germany at that time.

Edit: how it would have been possible to have a rise of Nazis in a victorious Germany is beyond me.

I have a fire/stone tank, and am not impressed with burn + knockdown.

Making an AE mission with nothing but enemies that do not run from burn is therapeutic, though.

CoT spectrals are weak to psi. My mind dom and mind controller just love those guys.

Are we looking at the same "study"?

What scrapper numbers would be, from take 2

Name | DPS | EPS |

Scrap Energy 151 3.3
Scrap Claws 149.6 2.9
Scrap Fiery 149.3 3.1
Scrap Strength 142.1 2.9
Scrap Dark 141.6 3.1
Scrap Martial Arts 141.5 3.6
Scrap Warmace 141 3.7
Scrap Dual Blades 136.3 3.5
Scrap Stone 131.8 3.5
Scrap Katana 128.6 3.2
Scrap Battleaxe 123.3 3.2
Scrap Broadsword 121.7 3.1
Scrap Electric 103.6 2.9
Scrap Spines 80.1 1.6

When limited to basic IOs, the only set that uses less endurance that what superstrength does is spines, which is only low because of the absolutely horrible activation times. The only currently existing sets that are better for dps are fiery melee and claws. Several, like martial arts and dual blades, use more endurance for less dps.

As had been mentioned in Bill's threads, the brutes' ranking of superstrength is not as high as it would be for scrappers for various reasons. And, if you look at the differences between take 1 and take 2, brutes superstrength is much more competitive with more aggressive IO slotting, which would put superstrength even farther ahead for scrappers.

Your definition of poor is curious. The brute sets that beat SS were fiery melee, stone melee, and fully soul-drain saturated dark melee, and they only beat SS at very small margins. The relatively poor performance of superstrength with basic IO slotting for brutes should clearly show you how easy it is to improve the performance of superstrength by taking outside powers and adding a lot of recharge. You're drawing the opposite conclusions you should from the very threads you reference.

Edit: to be more clear, there is one (existing) brute set with less single-target DPS than superstrength in the basic IO slotting calculation. When gloom and heavy recharge are included, there are six sets with less single-target DPS than superstrength... for brutes, who gain less from rage than scrappers would.

Mediocre to poor...

April 2004

The radiation toggles aren't large enough to reliably cover most spawns. When you engage, the spawn may spread out more as some of the enemies approach you while others stand still. For these reasons, I suggest you either run towards the anchor for radiation infection, or hide around a corner (breaking line of sight) and let them come to you.

The first doesn't do much for spawns that are spread out, but the second is quite often disrupted by teammates. Realize that whatever you do, you have a very brief period of time when the animation of radiation infection isn't completely finished and you can't activate another power, but you can move around. Use that time to position yourself however you see fit.

I'll specify that radiation infection should be the first toggle used when survivability is a priority. Enervating field doesn't have quite the same defensive properties.

Are you speaking from experience or extrapolation? I freely admit I have no defense-softcapped dark armor character, but just using purples doesn't cut it from my experience, as characters without defense debuff protection need around 70%+ defense to avoid "cascading defense failure", and that won't always keep the character alive.

I don't deny that for the most part Ghost Widow is not a problem, but her hold (the only reason anyone mentions her name) will land eventually, and when it does there is nothing present in dark armor that keeps it from killing you. I have been hit through 45%+ negative energy defense by her hold on my invuln, and survived it quite easily due to protection that cannot be replicated by dark armor. This is just a case in point, and not intended to show dark armor as completely inept.

Those were just two instances that quickly came to mind, so not intended to be marathon trials. But, your brief refutation doesn't really satisfy.

That way of calculating damage describes a naked blaster as only allowing 50% of damage to come through, which is a terribly idiotic way of describing character survivability. You're only mitigating 75%, as opposed to 88% suggested by your 12% admittance figure.

But, perhaps I might not be so good at math, so please, feel free to explain why I should view a naked blaster as only allowing 50% of damage through.

Edit: For the people who keep reading this and, according to comments can't figure it out, 0% defense is 0% mitigation from defense, 45% defense is 90% mitigation from defense. Really, people...

+4 cimerorans or Ghost widow AV?

I'm quite sure it's closer to 25% getting through without being debuffed.

The request is placed under the assumption that the power will be significantly reduced in strength. He's not asking for those things to be added to the power as we know it.

You're imagining something different than powers like crowd control and pendulum. I wasn't attempting to describe the character moving forward.

Chilling embrace has a much larger debuff component than against all odds (edit: of course it's of debatable value against an AV). The ice tank will sustain larger average hitpoints than the shield tank, with the heal portion of hoarfrost being an added bonus. Not all psi damage checks against positional defenses, so that's a minor plus for the shield tank.

Listing ice defense as a hole for the ice tank undermines your credibility on the subject, honestly.

• standard shield bash
• two-handed shield uppercut
• Taunt
• Build up
• Forward arcing cone that would probably use a similar animation to the current shield charge, only without the teleporting effect
• PBAE where the shield is thrown and does two quick rotations around, then returns to, the user like a boomerang.
• Unique power that works similarly to hibernate, seen with the council mobs with shields that have their own version of hibernate

I didn't even have to try to come up with 7. I'm sure two more attacks could be wrangled.

edit: coming up with 9 powers is the easy part. Making the set good is an entirely different subject.