Front_Loaded

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I'd like to see boosts for various ATs so that they're more competitive in PVP - like a higher percentage of unresistable damage from snipes (75%-85%) than other blaster attacks, and blasters might need a damage boost in the post-ED world.

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All I can say is - yuck. Making snipes that optimal still wouldn't do that much for blasters vs. non-squishies, but would make them so attractive that you'd see a hell of a lot more stealthed blasters sniping from their max range, which imo is the AT at its worst. Certainly it's the least pleasant way for a melee to be engaged by a blaster.

People will drop their loads if blasters are given more damage, I don't think that will fly too well either.

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It's a dead issue at this point, because the Devs agree with our side. Toggle Dropping WILL be curtailed. The only question is, by how much?

Lower the percentage possibilities of TD proportionally to what melee toons lost after I5 and GDR...Boom! Problem solved.

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I don't think anyone out of scrappers or tanks had their defenses divided by 8 or more. Going from two guaranteed toggle-drops and possibility of more, to 1:20 and 1:4.8 or so is a much more profound change than anything that came from the global defense nerf. You did see the percentages Castle posted earlier in the thread? There isn't any question about it, it's as good as done.

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I agree that confuse (particularly aoes) are great for xp/time, but it's because of the control. Confused mobs are literally making you lose xp, but having the mobs controlled means you can spend less or no time defending yourself with other controls or defensive powers, spend less endurance on said powers, etc, so it literally improves your dps and dpe, and it does get you to mish bonuses faster.

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This is a bit off topic, but you are simply wrong. Confusion can only buff xp/time, and it has nothing to do with control. To make it very simple: A confused mob does 80% of the damage to his buddy. You do the remaining 20%. Due to the way confusion-affected xp is handed out, you still get 50% of the xp even though you only had to do 1/5th the damage to kill the mob. 50% xp / 20% time = 250% xp gain in the same time, if everything were exactly that optimal - typically it's not but it's always a buff to xp over time. The control is a fabulous effect too, of course.

Aside from this, versus very hard mobs, when you confuse a bunch of +4 mobs you are at a substantial damage penalty to hurt them - but they do full damage to each other, greatly speeding up killing.

Your stalker can do this because the large +Def buff from Divine stacks with itself, and more importantly as you said you were only dealing with one mob. The +Def will never be true for Electric Armor, and as a brute you will rarely ever be dealing with only one mob at a time. When you play a tank/brute at upper levels and you have aggro from 10-15 mobs at a time, you may change your mind.

Having someone reactively put endo back into you is not NEARLY as good as never having it drained in the first place, much along the same lines as hitpoints. As a brute if something zeroes your endo when you have aggro from multiple mobs and your toggles drop, you're often toast.

If you're cool with having 80% of your endo drained, this set is probably not for you in the first place. The main thing the set has going for it is endo management, most of the rest is nice but not exactly earthshattering and certainly not unique.

A high level stone tanker running Rooted has 100% or near enough that I can't tell the difference. I completely ignore endo draining mobs including Sappers with my stone tank. As far as I can tell I don't get any endo drained at all.

Also, since O2 Boost stacks with itself, any Storm can buff anyone to 100% endo drain resist.

Since the level cap is raised to 50, it will not be a big trick to take all powers in primary and secondary that you want and still fit aid sellf if you really want it. 24 power picks total, 18 from primary/secondary, 2 from travel (or 3 if you want Acrobatics), and stamina is looking to be rather optional if you decide to take both Conserve Power and Power Sink. Conserve Power looks to me to be the one to skip actually, I think it will be overkill to have that much endo management at your fingertips but we'll see.

Out of the primaries, all of them that I can think of have one power that is marginally useful, in the case of Electric/ I'd likely skip Lightning Clap since the set otherwise has two AOE knockdowns. That leaves 16 + 3 (leaping/acrobatics + 3 (stamina) = 2 picks to spare. The epics aren't too exciting looking except maybe the extra AOE attack, which would take 2 picks. ^_^

"feel free to gimp yourself", where did that come from? I truly do not care what power you take or don't take, but if you think a power is "gimp" before you even know what it does, that's kind of silly. Speaking of smoking, please feel free to have a hit from my bong. You are way too uptight.

Dead mobs in less time is generally better for xp over time. Regarding confuse, see sig.

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never fought malta, but i've fought carnies a lot with my stalker and mm and haven't had much trouble with them...

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It's very likely there will be one or more Malta storylines 41-50, so you probably will.

Regarding Carnies, again your stalker isn't throwing much AOE damage like some brutes do, and as definitely happens on teams; and your mastermind likely is not in melee range with carnies when they die. They ALL have a PBAOE end drain that takes ~20 endo that triggers when they die. How many times will a brute be surrounded by carnies dying in large numbers all at once? Oh yeah, and they do a ton of psi and energy damage by the way.

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hell, even the longbow spec ops super drain grenade only drains like 80% of my end, leaving me enough to kill him (if it's just 1)

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You aren't bothered by having 80% of your endo drained????

Oh I think most of them understand it just fine.

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What makes you think Grounded will bring the drain protection up to 100%? It will still be skipped because it's redundant protection and the power slot can be used elsewhere.

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Because that's typically how powersets that give partial status resist for multiple powers work. If you take one Super Reflexes power for example, you get 22% DefDebuff resistance. You don't get 100% DefDebuff resistance unless you take all (or nearly all, I forget exactly) of the +Def powers in the whole set.

I don't care if YOU skip it, play your character any way you like. I'd like to know for sure the difference in endo drain protection with vs. without, I would bet ten bucks they did it something like 60% on the toggle / 40% on the passive.

What makes you think the toggle is 100% protection from endo drain? Is it?

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If the game was somehow engineered in such a way that blasters' optimal attack strategy is always to stay at range, and gains no advantage from entering melee range, then what would that mean for blaster vs melee fights, when the melee doesn't have range?

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I pointed this out many pages ago, but it bounced off someone's Invincibility and was lost. Enjoy the kiting guys, it's what you seem to want. 1 in 20 or 25 odds to knock your mez toggle isn't too attractive.

When you do get knockBACK from thunder strike, it is entirely different from the Blaster version - the Brute version is linear knockback straight out from the caster, which is very good for a brute, versus the blaster version which is radial scatter, not so great.

Has anyone seen Havoc Punch knockdown/back at all? I miss that, the blaster version has about 50% knockback. I haven't seen Brute Havoc Punch knockdown even one time.

I guess "people with brains" don't do malta or carnie missions, or try to pvp versus ice tanks/kinetics .

I agree, someone needs to buy a 10 pound ham and go hit it with a baseball bat and record that sound. Maybe get some steak bones and bust them with a hammer.

Not to mention the natural counter for Ice/EM tanks - capped energy resist, high smashing resist, endo drain resist, slow resist, disorient resist.

Power Sink for Brutes appears to be exactly the same power as Power Sink for /Electric blasters, i.e. only endo drain. It's actually a pretty good power in I7, at least the blaster version is, and no good reason to assume the brute version is weaker. If someone among the PL'd-to-40+ crowd can confirm or deny that would be nice to know.

When the 7.5% resist takes you to the cap, that means going from taking 18% damage to 10%, or almost a one half reduction in damage taken. It is simply good to be at the cap. Energy is the third most common damage type (behind of course smashing/lethal) in the game later on, having capped resist for it is pretty damn nice. 65% or so smash/lethal resist on top of that AND significant psi resist is really nothing to take a crap on.

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Most passive protections of this nature cannot provide immunity as they actually don't fully protect you (I believe I want to say "don't offer any Magnitude of protection") but rather just reduce the amount of time you'll be under the effect.

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Since endurance drain does not have any "duration", I have no idea what you're getting at. I also plainly said it is certain that having only one of the endo drain powers will not provide complete immunity to end drain (else why have more than one?)

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I did several Carnie missions with my Dark/Dark Corruptor without having any Endurance problems. Indeed, the only Endurance problems I've had involved certain Longbow agents and their ability to instantly drain your End bar in one shot (dunno if they can still do that or not).

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Your dark/dark corruptor does not stand in melee range when multiple carnies croak, which is when they throw their endo drain. The experience when playing a melee is ENTIRELY different, and standing next to 3-5 carnies that die in unison will pretty much empty you out. This is not an infrequent circumstance in carnie missions even when solo, and especially when teamed. It can't be mitigated except by someone kindly putting endo in you (only Transferrence) or eating blues.

You can expect to see Malta too in the 41+ game on the villains side now that it is going in - someone with a max level villain may wish to confirm, but I feel certain they'll be there, they're frankly pretty cool and usually a decent tactical exercise. They have an endo drainer mob called a Sapper that is similar to the Longbow guy, except that's all he does. He also gives you -recovery. These guys kill tanks when not controlled immediately at the start of a fight.

Interesting observations on the new endo drain rules from the field

It may be more noticeable for Defender attacks because their activation cost is likely higher; since the amount returned for Defender and Blaster attacks has been stated to be 50% of activation cost by Geko when it happens, it is reasonable to assume the same is true for Brute attacks - but I'm observing that the Brute melees have a very low cost, and it is likely that the amount returned is in fact in the 2-3 point range, which would be rather tough to see on your blue bar.

I can tell you that in the Blaster world, endo return was never something I particularly noticed on the blue bar ever, and those attacks DO have high cost, but then I never slotted endmod.

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I believe the "having no heal is a weakness" camp have specifically stated a number of times in this thread that it's "having no heal in a +Res set is a weakness." Super Reflexes and Energy Aura are both +Def sets.

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As horrible a blasphemy as this may sound:
Maybe the set just won't be uber awesome at herding max aggro mobs and tanking like Stone or Invuln are. And maybe that's okay.

Re: Grounded
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What features? It's what, just some worthless piddly resistance bonus? And then what, some minor added defense against (not any actual magnitude of protection from, mind) an effect that's far less prevalent and troublesome than Knockback? That'd like picking a bag of crap over a suitcase full of money.

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Oops, forum downtime made me miss this.
- Cap your Energy resist; it's good to be at the cap
- Bump to Negative resist, which the set is otherwise weaker against and is really a pretty popular damage type in PVM
- Endo drain resist; it is likely that having both endo drain resist powers will provide complete immunity, and it is certain that having only one will not - and if you're thinking endo drain is uncommon or not dangerous, I guess you simply skip Malta and Carnie missions in PVM and are willing to be weak in this area in PVP
- PASSIVE

All of these are useful and valuable in their current form.

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If we can show that the set actually "does" perform subpar, then changes could come to improve it.

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That is based on the assumption that the dev team considers it especially necessary for all protection sets to be equally protective , which is obviously not the case. Fire vs. Stone especially post-38 is the biggest contrast in the most situations, or EA vs. Stone in cases where your opponent does heavy Def debuff or is simply highly accurate.

Fire accepts a second damage buff and Burn, as good or bad as it may be (and post epics with AOE immob, with Burn buffable, it may be QUITE good again); EA accepts endo drain and odd status resists that are generally a bit hard to get (repel) and of course KB resist. Seems pretty clear that the other odd things in Electric gets are - to the dev team anyhow - an adequate trade.

Yes, but what if I want the features of grounded as they currently are but I don't want to be locked to the ground?

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how can you see having knockback protection not any better than what /elec currently has? are you on drugs like the devs?

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Are you familiar with what is like to play locked to the ground? Play a stone tank/brute up to granite and then campaign for a change like this. Stone is the worst PVP set for that prime reason, you give up mobility for status protection. It's acceptable in edit: PVM because b) the great majority of players take Teleport, and b) the environment is very very predictable and Teleport is a reasonable way to move around. The main complaint in this thread has been not so much that the set lacks knockback protection, but that the workaround requires the player to select a specific travel pool. Locking you to the ground in order to get knockback resist is doing exactly the same thing.

I certainly don't object to getting free knockback protection, but trading it for being locked to the ground is D U M B.

How is "ONE" any more options than "ONE"? To apply your logic, "so just don't have any knockback protection, problem solved, instead of having to take teleport". Not any better at all than what's in place with the set currently.