EricHough

If you see me on either of my accounts when you want to run one of these, feel free to give me a yell Kult. I have a nice wide choice of redside characters who are all incarnated, so can fill in just about any gap in the team.

If you don't want to run after targets - play a brute and take taunt. Taunt aura's + auto taunt in attacks keep most things from running away and when they do, you can just taunt them back. This is why I have almost given up on scrappers and play mostly brutes - not because I don't love scrappers but because all the runners drive me crazy.

Sheild, EA, Invuln and to a lesser extent WP scrappers should have less problems with runners, as they all have taunt aura's. However, when all you have is a single taunt aura you have to rely on luck to make sure it is pulsing just after the mobs morale breaks and it starts to run but before it gets out of range. Brutes have enough other sources that runners are rarely an issue.

EDIT: if you want a brute that will have even less problems with runner, play a claws brute. Focus has enough range between it and taunt you can pull most runners back to you and if they don't come back, focus usually knocks them down so you don't have to move far to finish them off.

Well, I ran a quick and dirty test with my BS/ElA brute and my StJ/WP brute. Both of them generally stayed between 135%-145% damage bonus when surrounded by mobs, dropping down to 120%-130% when running between groups (how far I dropped depended on how far I had to run), with the occasional peak at 148%/149% for a couple of seconds. Both brutes where running at +0/x2, the broadsword brute was L29, the StJ brute L23. I have pretty solid attack chains on both of them - at least enough to always have an attack ready to go, so no gaps.

The street justice brute did feel like his fury dropped faster between/during fights than my broadsword but I didn't get a chance to run them through the exact same contant and at high levels of fury, having more mobs pounding on you probably makes a big difference, which is why this is a rough test at best.

With the way fury generation falls off around 60%-70% fury, I suspect that having a chain of fast activating attacks is going to generate more than having a high recharge and a chain of slower activating, if harder hitting attacks. My StJ brute is still using the lower damage, faster attacks for combo generation (initial strike, heavy blow, rib cracker). If you had droped initial strike in favor of shin breaker, i could see your attack chain not keeping your fury as high.

For Wind ninja I would think KM/EA or KM/Ninjistu would be a better fit than KM/Shield. Just color both sets some shade of blue/white and it looks like you have swirling air shielding you and are focusing air blasts as an attack. If you want a shield charge like effect, you could pick up spring attack - huge leaps are definitely an air type power. Either a scrapper or a stalker would work for this - stalker KM is a very nice set because the PBAoE has 100% crit chance from hide and the build up auto recharge from concentrated strike is easy to get. The KM version of AS looks really awesome - I have a wind based ninja using KM/Ninjistu, but EA is a bit more thematic.

You could also do EA for shadow ninja if you don't want to do dark armor, since it has a stealth power, just color the shields dark. Alternatively you could play it as a dark melee stalker - dark melee/ninjitsu is a very nice pairing. You could pretty much go any stalker secondary here that wasn't obviously some other element - DM/WP, DM/Regen or DM/SR would all work.

The only thing I could think of for a melee based light ninja is going energy melee on a brute or stalker and coloring it white. If you are willing to leave melee AT's behind on this do it as mind/energy assault dom - color all the attacks white and explain the control set as ninja mind tricks.

Ice ninja: Stalkers get ice armor now, so if you are dead set on an ice ninja you could go with that. Pretty much any primary that wasn't another element would work here. You could also do an icy assault dom or ice manipulation blaster and get some nice ice melee attacks.

DM/SD is going to be best on a scrapper. They get far more of a boost from powers that give damage bonuses like AOO and soul drain due to their higher base damage and the fact that they get higher bonuses from the two powers. For example, soul drains base damage bonus for a single target is 60% for scrappers but only 48% for brutes. Any damage bonus brutes get is further watered down by combining with fury.

DM/Inv is not so obvious - dark melee will be better on the scrapper but invulnerability is likely to be better on a brute due to their higher base HP and HP cap. I guess it depends on what you want out of your dm/inv character - do you want to be more of a damage dealer or a little more tankish? If the former, go scrapper, if the latter, go brute.

One thing to keep in mind is that a characters primary end use will ALWAYS be in their attacks. Toggles are a constant but very low end drain - they really slow down your end recovery more than they actually damage your blue bar but attacks will always eat into your blue bar. Increased end recovery speeds up how fast it comes back - but high end recovery means 2-3 end/sec and a single heavy blow burns twice this, higher damage/end cost attacks burn end even faster. This means that even on a high recovery toon like a WP or Regen you will probably want to slot SOME kind of end reduction in your attacks. It doesn't take much, just 20%-30% in each attack will buy you a lot. I am a huge proponent of frankenslotting cheap IO sets for a good mix of enhancement values as early as possible - this allows you go get decent acc and a nice mix of recharge and end reduction while still getting close to the damage cap.

I usually aim at 5 slotting attacks with something similar to the following:focused smite acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech and a bonesnap acc/dam. The 5th slot varies depending on the attack and the character - on a willpower I will probably slot either an dam/end/rech triple or an acc/dam/rech triple. With just L25 IO's his slotting gets me 56% acc, 92% dam, 20% end and 36% rech with the acc/dam/rech triple or 40% acc, 92% dam, 36% end and recharge with the dam/end/rech triple. You can do similar things with PBAoE sets, although spinning strike is screwed a bit because it only takes targetted AoE sets, which suck - but you can still get ok enhancement values out of a mix of detonation and air burst.

I slot up my attacks like this at L22 and run with it until I start replacing them with better IO sets like crushing impact, touch of death or kinetic combats depending on the set bonuses I am chasing.

Even if you are not willing to frankenslot like this, I would always suggest running with at least 1 end reduction SO in each attack. In general I find 1 acc, 2-3 dam and 1 end reduction the minimum slotting to keep from draining your blue bar in a medium to long fight, no matter how much end recovery you have.

The thing about WP, unlike the sets that are either all def based or almost all def based, is that you don't have to get to the softcap on everything to have a pretty awesome defensive set. Where most of the def based sets (SR, SD, EA) don't have anything else to fall back on, or very little to fall back on, WP has huge regen, good S/L resists and nice +HP.

I would say the best stretch goal on WP would be getting S/L def softcapped. If you can do this and have decent E/NE def, you will be a powerhouse - however S/L has the longest way to go on WP, so that takes the most sacrifices. If you can't do that, or don't want to shoot that far I would recommend trying to push your S/L def up to 32.5%. That put you 1 small purple insp away from the softcap. If you can get both S/L and E/NE up to 32.5% you will be pretty well set. Things like cimerrorans will still chew you up because you have no def debuff resistance, but that would be true whether you are at 32.5 or the cap - it just takes a few seconds longer at the softcap.

I don't have a problem with the timer on the hospital doors in the Lambda, BAF or Keyes trial, however in both the Underground trial and the lowbie Death from Below trial the timer makes no sense and is an extra, unnecessary delay because in both of these you have to take a teleporter outside the hospital to get back into the trial and in many cases even after taking the teleporter you have to travel a good distance to catch up to the main group.

When the entire trial is essentially one large area right outside the hospital, the timer on the doors does prevent possible exploits. However with the last two trials essentially being long dungeon crawls the timer just adds more time out of combat and action and at least in the case of the underground trial, making an already long trial even longer.

First off, don't add any more slots to Stamina - after you hit level 22 and can slot SO's any slots beyond the third will be mostly wasted due to ED. There is an exception to this I will mention later.

Have you slotted your attacks for end reduction? They are the heaviest end users in a fight - the shields are constant but low drain, they reduce your end recovery more than they actually reduce your end bar. Even 1 DO worth of slotting in each attack makes a HUGE difference. If you don't want to give up damage, try finding some L20+ damage/end reduction IO's in the market - bonesnap, bruising blow and pounding slugfest IO sets all go down to L15 and a level 20 dual IO will give you 16% enhancement to each area it affects.

There are a couple of other IO's you can slot to help as well. Miracle +recovery IO's start at L20 - they are horribly expensive on the market but if you run the new signature story arc twice and take the hero merit reward each time you can buy one in fort trident. Craft it, stick it in health and it will give you a nice boost to end recovery. The second IO option is a performance shifter +end proc. It is not as expensive on the market as a miracle - but it also isn't usually worth buying with merits, so it might take a while to get. This is the exception to the 3 slot rule in Stamina - you can put this in a 4th slot.

However, in the long run slotting at least some end reduction in your attacks is going to make the biggest difference.

Midnight Astral has her tier 3 alpha slotted up, so if we want to go off on an Apex or Tin Mage, I am up for it. A WST sounds like a great idea though, Notices are nice easy ways to build up threads for the next incarnate slots :-).

I do need a citadel on her to finish off the TFC badge - so if we end up picking something lower level, that would be my vote. Otherwise anything goes.

To make the EA shields have less of a visual effect do one of the following:

1) Select bright shields, then the darkest version of the color you want
2) Select dark shields and then the brightest version of the color you want

Either one of those choices will reduce the impact of any of the 'aura' type shields considerably. You will probably only have to do it with entropic aura - its the worst offender of the set.

Of course, even if you do that you can't take energy cloak without fading out completely. They definitely need to add minimal FX settings to all the shields and a setting similar to the one cloak of darkness gets to energy cloak.

Well, I ran just the faster chain with triple stacked follow up and included only a 5% crit chance. It looks to me like you are still calculating the damage multipliers incorrectly, either leaving out the base multiplier or not including the enhancments, here is what I got (with everything layed out so that its easier to see where I may have made a mistake :-).

Brute Attack Chain DPS calculations (followup -> focus - > Slash)

Damage Base: 1.0
Slotted Enhancements: 95% (0.95)
75% Fury: 150% damage (1.5)
Triple Followup: 90% damage (0.9)

Total Attack multipliers are 1 + 0.95 + 1.5 + 0.9 = 4.35

Follow up: 33.37 (base) x 4.35 = 145.1595
Focus: 62.98 (base) x 4.35 = 273.963
Slash: 61.73 (base) x 4.35 = 268.5255

DPS = Total Damage/attack time = (145.1595 + 273.963 + 268.5255) / (1.056 + 1.32 + 1.584) = 687.648/3.96 = 173 DPS


Scrapper Attack Chain Calculations (Same as above, making sure to turn off crits in Mids:-):

Damage base: 1.0
Slotted Enhancements: 95% (0.95)
Triple Followup: 112.5% (1.125)

Total Attack Multipliers: 1 + 0.95 + 1.125 = 3.075

Follow up: 50.05 (base ) x 3.075 = 153.90375
Focus: 86.96 (base) x 3.075 = 267.402
Slash: 82.58 (base) x 3.075 = 253.9335

For scrappers, we factor in the crits now at 5% (so multplying total damage by 1.05), so the DPS calculation is:

DPS = total damage/attack time = (153.90375 + 267.402 + 253.9335) * 1.05 (crits)/(1.056 + 1.32 + 1.584) = 709.0012125 / 3.96 = 179 DPS


Final values - Brute DPS = 173, Scrapper DPS 179


NOTE: for some reason the current version of Mids lists the brute follow up activation time as 2.64s (2.772 w/arcanatime) so its a good thing to double check these values in game when you want to be sure, as the real activation time is 0.83s (1.056s w/arcanatime), the same as the scrappers.

I will say that while your numbers in the previous post may be slightly off, they do reflect the same things I saw in earlier calculations done on the scrapper boards when brute claws first came out - the more recharge you add in, the closer scrappers and brutes get. At the absolute highest end (capped damage, max recharge needed) I think scrappers end up ahead, mostly due to crits, but things are SOO close in most cases that unless all you care about is pylon times, it really boils down to a matter of AT preference. Especially since pylon runs are about the only way to even SEE the numbers we are calculating - since it will take at nearly 8 seconds to GET triple stacked follow up and by then you will have done 1000+ points of damage to your initial target, which means most things are going to be dead or nearly dead before you can get cranked up.

Honestly, the best combo I have found on a dom for control + damage is */fiery assault and plant, mind or earth control.

Fiery assault not only gets great single target and AoE damage, it gets its powers in a decent order so you don't have to either gimp your attack chain by waiting forever to finish it off or take lesser powers earlier on. Flares + fire blast gives you a decent cycling ranged attack chain and incinerate is a very high damage melee attack that is a nice addition. Fire breath is the highest damage AoE attack dominators get and while its a cone, its a decent sized one that is not hard to use. Embrace of fire is a great damage boost that can be used with the attacks in the fire mastery APP as well.

Plant control is probably the best every spawn control set in the game. Seeds of confusion is gives you a long duration, nearly every spawn control starting at L8 which can be up every spawn once you get some recharge in it. At higher levels you can leverage Carrion creepers for a lot of extra AoE damage and even roots is worth slotting up for damage if you want to - it may only do slightly over 1/2 the damage of one of the area attacks from the APP pool but it has a HUGE radius (30') and is easy to use.

Mind control is the next most control heavy set, although it is single target focused at first. Mesmerize, dominate and confuse gives you 3 great single target controls and mass hypnosis is easily up as often as seeds of confusion. While the AoE sleep isn't as good a control when you are in a group, its great solo. At higher levels, once you get your recharge up to perma-dom levels you can alternate mass confusion, total domination and mass hypnosis for a lot of hard AoE control.

Earth probably has the most overall control of any set, the only real drawback is a lot of it is soft control. You can alternate Stalagmites + stone cages (to stop the stunned mobs from wandering around), earthquake +quicksand and volcanic gasses+quicksand for a variety of control effects and something is likely to be up for every group. Because the last 2 combo's don't lock things down as much as other hard controls you will take some fire, but with careful tactics you can cut down on it. Since qucksand, earthquake and volanic gasses are both location AoE's you can place them around corners, give the hold or knockdown a chance to kick in then move into range and open fire.

I have played a plant/fire, earth/fire and mind/fire dom all the way to L50 and they where great all the way and are a blast in incarnate trials, with a lot of control and damage options you have something to do in any trial. There was almost no time when I felt I was gimping along waiting for the better powers to open up, which I find to be a real problem with a lot of the dom primaries and secondaries.

Scrappers, brutes and tanks are likely to be your best choice if all you really want to do is toggle up and jump into a fight. Almost all support sets are going to require some kind of activity other than attacking, so any defenders, corruptors, MM's and controllers are likely to be busy enough to not qualify as a slacker. VEATs would also qualify, as all their team buffs are toggles except mind link - and you can put that on autofire.

I would consider Willpower, SR and Shield Defense as the most slacking sets for a melee type - you turn on your toggles and put active defense/practiced brawler on autofire and go to town. Invulnerability is probably second choice - you have to fire off dull pain every now and then but once you get it perma you can put it on autofire if you want. All the other defensive sets are going to have at least 1 heal you have to fire off regularily.

There you go - anything/WP, SR or SD is going to be a serious slacker toon, at least once you jump into combat. You might have to put some effort into the build, especially with SD or WP if you want to softcap them, but outside of that they are jump in and go toons.