Erratic

You handwave all the DM's utility with a vague reference to knockaround in other sets. If knockback/knockdown in other sets is keeping you from getting hit the direct and sole comparison with in DM is -To-Hit. That leaves endurance recovery, healing, and damage buffing unpaired by what you've offered.

There is simply no way you get to lump all of that utility in as being worth some knockdown/knockback found in other sets.

Frankly the damage on those powers is a little bit of loving you don't find in other powers that provide similar boosts. Power Sink does not deal damage. Nor for that matter does Build Up, which is far inferior to Soul Drain in terms of what they both commonly do for boosting damage.

Arbiter Hawk posting in a Dominator thread today:

That should probably inform you of how the developers are looking at Shadow Maul and how it is supposed to be approached.

Why are you trying to make DM something it isn't? I noted upthread that each powerset has something it doesn't do well. For DM that is area damage. If you want area damage you need to look to your secondary, power pools, and Epic powersets.

And in truth I've seen some Scrappers who quite happily would drink in the attention. In particular a certain Shield Scrapper I paired with a few months ago for a few weeks. She was godly in her ability to disassemble +4/8 spawns in her 30s.

So consider the question withdrawn.

I think its a mixed bag. There are people out there who know what they are doing who can dive in and do with little fear. Then there are is a larger crowd who are less saavy who tend to hold back when the option is available.

I guess I have trouble with the notion that tanker are somehow suffering or disadvantaged with where they are at now by comparison because there are plenty of tankers I see pulling off stunts that inspire me to play my tanker characters in an effort to be like them based on the notion that I am sure they are taking a pounding which would leave my Brute faceplanted. In fact it takes everything I have not to simply copy the Brute's powersets and make a Tanker. I'd rather tweak my DA/Fire or finish off my Ice/Stone tanker so as to avoid repeating powersets.

Truthfully I am somewhat surprised that Scrapper's aren't giving the hairy eyeball to Stalkers. . .something which at first glance seems to me to be better grounded than Tankers continually and without end doing the same to Brutes.

If the cap were 100,000% not even a team of full of Kinetics could get a Brute there. Would it be meaningful to complain that some other AT had an equally inaccessible but lower cap of 90,000%?

No, evasion would meaning not dealing with the situation presented, as you did. I dealt with it by noting that ambushes do not figure in the life of a Stalker (at least one who leaves Hide active) in the same way they do for other ATs.


You can disagree all you want. Reasonable people have pointed out the error in your thinking. Of course nobody can keep you from believing whatever erroneous thing you want, be that the Moon is made of green cheese or that frequency does not matter in making comparisons. I have the option to spend money on the lottery every week. That hardly means I am going to get richer sooner than someone who doesn't.

Would he scream "over powered". . .what's your basis for that claim?

There is more at work than caps that determine how an AT handles.

Which you can ony compare by considering how often such is required.

You didn't answer the question, you evaded it. I asked what SCRAPPER wanted the attention a taunt aura draws. Precious few in my experience because they are not designed to withstand it. Rerolling as a Brute means getting the taunt aura but also the tools to survive it presumably. However there are tradeoffs for this.

If there is an ambush in a mission then more likely than not my Stalker is Hidden and there you go. In any event my Stalker is immediately able to be laying out full damage without working Fury up. And yes, my reiestance cap is lower. That somewhat argues that go Defensive is a good idea since everyone caps in the same place. That aside (as my Stalker is Electrical), yes, I have lowers resistance caps because I have other benefits to my AT in terms of dealing out damage, not the least of which is a semi-ludicrous crit chance.

Of course its a point and a meaningful one. An event that happens rarely does not compare to a situation that happens all the time.

I fail to see how saying, "Brute's caps are twoo wide compared to other melee AT's," can be read as anything other than calling for a nerf.

You were the one to off the comparison and ask why it was fair. All I did was look at the packages in detail.

I have an ElM Stalker. ElM/Nin in fact. I would take my Spines/ElA Stalker over it. . .she's sturdier, recovers endurances as needed, is immune to energy attacks and endurance drains, and gets a boost which allows here to not too far from perma-Hasten on just SOs (depends on what you consider far I admit). She churns out AE damage consistently like nobody's business.

Not saying I agree, but go on. . . .

At best you might be arguing that SS or perhaps just SS/FA performs incredibly well. Were you really trying to make a comparison between the two ATs you would choose sets they have in common. . .say DM/ElA.

I do see the occassional pill poppers in my time playing the game, but most people I know aren't gobbling in the way I read the above to suggest.

What scapper wants to draw that type of attention?

Really?

My Stalker can pretty handily dispose of a spawn of yellow to orange cons by popping Build Up from a Hidden state, using Throw Spines, moving quickly to the center of the group and using Spine Burst, then taking a step back and using Ripper (with the benefit that now Assassin Strike is likely to crit and drop any target I choose).

My Brute spends considerable more attacks to get to the same end. To be fair, he can also deal with a larger or higher con group. However at that point you're seeking groups for your playstyle and not dealing with content as the game throws it at you.

Because my Brute can not walk into a group and guarantee his first hit will be a critical hit with a fairly good chance that if that first hit is an area attack it will hit critically. Moreover that first hit, even were it critical, would be of considerably smaller value than what my Stalker routinely puts outs. And on top of that, so long as I am willing to go three hits between usage, my Stalker's Assassin's Strike will most likely crit (and with recharge times being what they are, I am likely to be using two or three strikes between uses of the Assassin's Strike).

I have what I consider to be a pretty darned good built on my signature Brute (the one I give most attention to) and he does deal a nice load of damage. He rarely one-shots things whereas my Stalker routinely does. . .several times in any given fight. . .yellow and orange con, sometimes higher.

That's not a bad idea. If I play the character further I may go that way or with Weapon Mastery.

Not just endurance boost, but endurance coupled with damage. Properly slotted one target can fill your endurance bar and you can have the power available every 45 seconds. If your burn rate is less than a bar of endurance every 45 seconds that means never running out of endurance. If your burn rate is greater. . .geesh, that means your pumping out some serious damage or running an ocean toggles which means you're better off by far than someone who isn't (otherwise you would not be running them).

Blinding Feint and Claws give you +37.5% to damage for 10 seconds. As Soul Drain lasts THREE TIMES AS LONG it basically need only gives you one-third the boost to be on equal footing--something you'd get from hitting one target with Soul Drain. However I have to imagine that most people using Soul Drain aim to use it in situations where they are hitting far more targets. Heck, I routinely manage to use it on full groups with my Blaster who has far weaker defenses whereby to survive the results of using it than a Scrapper does.

In all honesty, you don't want developers looking too closely at Soul Drain (and hence Dark Melee). If they did, things would get changed all right.

I tend to look at powersets in terms of what they don't provide because there is something that every powerset doesn't offer, and for Dark Melee that is area damage. That does not mean you can't have an effective area attack damage dealing character if you take Dark Melee, it means that is what you have to work to achieve. You have multiple people in the thread (myself included) indicating how we managed to do so.

My apology. I read too much into your statement.

To be clear, I have a Dark Armor tanker with Dark Regeneration fully slotted and including Theft of Essence. I do not find it to be as wonderful a combination as other's do. In the best case I walk away with my cost for using Dark Regeneration covered and in the worst case I pay a chunk (though usually reduced) for having used it. All the way around Power Sink has been far less demanding in getting value from it. Please not, I said some number of people fall into endurance trouble with Dark Armor--that was a carefully chosen phrase. I accept there are people out there who have not. What I can not understand for the life of me is the projections of idiocy by that segment on the rest of us who have different experiences. All I stated were facts that can be determined from doing a forum search--some number of people do indeed run into endurance troubles with Dark Armor for whatever reasons. You do not see the same being said of Electrical Armor.

I benched my Dark Armor/Fire Tanker in his 40s because I was still struggling with balancing his endurance consumption. Who knows. . .perhaps on double xp weekend I'll make a push to get him to 50 and pray that the right Alpha choice can tip him over the edge to acceptable performance.

You really need to spend time away from the Tanker forum.

Rather than counting powers you should look at what they do, howmuch protection they provide you, and how often they are available to you.

High Pain Tolerance provides resistance and health but the resistance is negligible. The real gain is the health, so long as you can boost your defense and resistance high enough to leverage it. So it is a healing/health power.

Reconstruction provides resistance and healing but the resistance is only to Toxic. Certainly that is nifty enough when facing Greater Devoured, but not so handy when facing Demons, 5th Column Flamethrowers, Freakshow zotting you, etc. The primary gain of this power is the healing.

Mind Over Body grants resistance to Smash, Lethal, and Psionic.

Indominitable Will provides status protection and defense to Psionics.

Heightened Sense provides Defense to Smash, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, and Negative Energy. Hmmm. . .do you get any resistance to Fire, Cold, Energy or Negative Energy? No. So this set is primarily providing protection via Defense to elements you have no other protection from other than a wall of health or healing. Moreover the Defense gain for Fire, Cold, Energy, and Negative is nearly 4 times that for Smash/Lethal. Unmistably a defensive power (and one you should be taking and slotting well).

One wonders how you knock the Defense aspect of thet set by saying it only has 2 Defensive powers and claim it is a Resistance set when in reality the number of powers that are providing you with real resistance numbers isn't any higher. It seems painfully clear to me that you are meant to layer the defense, resistance, healing, and health boosts to survive making this a mixed set.

As nifty as Invincibility is, an Invulnerability character is sitll a tough cookie with it turned off. A Willpower character forgoing the Defense powers of the set is far squishier by comparison.

As goes Dark Armor and Electrical Armor. . .I suggested Electrical Armor because it gets you past a number of issues providing resistance to endurance drain, the ability to drain endurance yourself, and providing a haste component. Dark Armor has its own set of perks but not having to worrry about endurance drains and being able to fix your endurance issues ranks it higher in my book than Dark Armor where some number of people fall into endurance problems.

Willpower is a mixed set.

If you want Resistance you're looking at Electrical Armor.