Frosticus

I like CI, it is kind of cool and I really like that it uses the old ET animation as I've been missing that attack ever since they made it look stupid on EM.

I didn't realize it rolls a tohit chance on each jump. In fact I've been using it to hit really hard to hit targets like the raider FFgen's by hitting a foe next to it and the jump seems to always go over to the FFgen.

I wouldn't object if it jumped faster, but I find it to reliably hit a lot more targets than jacobs and even thunderstrike (unless I corner stack them). I just make sure I always use it early so that it has the best chance of doing ring around the rosy on the spawn before someone dies and breaks the chain.

Arch, run in drop acid+posion trap and then launch rain of arrows while they are all held. Not to shabby and you don't have to reposition yourself.

Targets don't use much end when they never attack...

IMO the reason /thermal works so well is because it doesn't impede your target, they go full out trying to kill you and next thing they know they are flatlined and going nowhere. Elec/kin works similarly in that regard as /kin doesn't really hinder the target.

IMO elec is attrition based and so is /cold, but they aren't the same type or even symbiotic types of attrition. I'm sure some people can make the build work though.

Elec you want your target attacking lots so they drain themselves really fast, so ideally you pair it with something that will keep you alive while they go all out on you. Even better if that pairing also helps drain them faster (ie therm, kin)

Cold you want your target to cease all attacks due to being hammered with -rech because cold has limited survivability when taking a lot of incoming damage.

To me they just don't seem like a very good match up.

I'm going to say elec/shield/fire or ss/shield/mu. Though I'll give a mention to elec/fire/fire and ss/fire/mu as well.

Spines is really good too though, it just doesn't have anything like the "everyone dies NOW" powers like elec and/or shields offers. But if you had a way to constantly feed things into your damage aura it may well pull ahead, auras are really good.

I'm currently leveling an elec/fire/fire scrap. I think FE and blazing aura will do a decent job of replacing AAO and sheildcharge for me because I like hitting the tele-nukes from range yet AAO dictates I already have to be surrounded. FE fueled blaze mastery should be pretty nice too. The build I'm planning has FE up about 37% of the time, that should work nicely for blazing aura and fireblast/fireball.

Don't laugh but I'm also going to try leveraging rise of the pheonix. Slotted up it hits almost as hard as scrapper l-rod, which is quite a bit harder than shield charge. Basically I plan to use it in the ~10 second window that hasten is down so that I don't mess with my cycles. I don't have it yet, but I plan to make a bind that will drop all my armor toggles and just jump in and immeditately die, boom rofflecopter of the pheonix +fireball and then retoggle while I jump to the next group. We'll see...

I'm unsure why you have slotted two pieces of achilies in each attack. I can assure you that the 1.5% dam buff it offers is less than fully enhancing the damage of said power.

I'm also confused why you have the hold proc in CB. It already stuns. Plus it makes your acc slotting of the power ridiculously low.

I dunno, doesn't look that bad, but you have some weird choices and I'm not sure you need both hiber/hoarfrost +aidself, you should be killing things faster than that kind of staying power provides imo.

-1 x 5+ is great for my "weaker" aoe toons. You know the kind of toons that can do tremendous aoe damage, but don't have very much survivability. Not everyone is a scrapper or brute or a softcapped squishy, but they still may want to experience the same joy of playing a hack n slash as other people get.

I think the -1 setting is awesome for low level toons and even some high level toons that don't dump a lot of inf into their build. I'm generally running at +con/4+ on most of my toons by the late 20's/early 30's, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the typical cox user.

From the sounds of it it is not the -1 setting that is causing this change to TF's, but rather making it more of a priority to the dev team.

TF's have been using the old difficulty system for years and just now we here it causes all kinds of problems...I doubt those problems are greater than everyone being stuck running the ONLY end game content the game offers at the same difficulty, but hey what are you gonna do.

Use the old system for TF's or find a way for -1 to be disabled for that area of the game only. Those are the only two solutions that should be on the table at paragon. We don't need another difficulty system introduced for TF's on top of what we already know, it's too late in the game for that. Option A or option B and as far as I'm concerned that should be the end of the discussion as I'm not really interested in hearing excuses from the dev team.

I think you should ditch thunderous blast, slot some end mods and range into telsa cage, get some damage slotted into your two attacks, and then switch over to an IO build

A couple end mod IO's in telsa will give you better draining capability in pvp than slotting your two attacks with endmods.

I don't think penultimate means what you think it means

I don't really have anything to add, tanks will remain a bottom 4 AT (popularity wise, excluding epic AT's) after GR. If anything they'll dip a bit further, but probably not enough to warrant the Master of Spreadsheets attention.

As always with that reply number 7 is the only valid point, but it is valid enough to prevent it from happening anytime in the near future.

1-4 are just some dude's opinion. One shared by many I'm sure, just as I'm sure many would enjoy a more populated experience.

If I can solve 5, 6 (with the assumption that bases could move) with about 2 seconds of thought I'm sure someone smarter than me could do it too.

7 - as mentioned the only technically valid point.

8 - back to dudely's opinion
9 - neither freedom or virtue hit more than 2 dots last 2x xp event, hardware has been upgraded well enough to fulfill the task now.
10 - CoX has survived plenty of death knells around the community and has even weathered some bad PR as lately as i14. If a merge was determined to be the course of action it would work out better than if it was determined to be important and it wasn't done.

It hasn't been necessary to date and I think it is fair to see where the game stands after the dust settles. If it staves off CO it is pretty bullet proof, though CO seems to be doing everything it can to make that as easy as possible for CoX heh.

The "phased can attack phased" was imo added because the pvp community asked for it for a long time. It can be a neat thing there. In pve it has very limited application as the enemies that use phase themselves are very short in numbers and the use of player generated enemy phases is also exceedingly low.
*I don't even know if it would actually work on those dudes with the shield that goes up, and carnies phase in and out so fast that the 90 second "no phase" imposed on players makes it pretty suboptimal.

It could be a cool game mechanic, it just isn't.

Here's a really easy example.

ie
If I have 1000 hp and 40% def I die when 10,000 incoming damage has been delt.
If I have 1000 hp and 45% def I die when 20,000 incoming damage has been delt.

*Well in both cases you could die after 1001 damage, but I mean over enough samples that is what it would come out to be.

Other factors* because damage generally occurs over a time frame adding in regeneration and resistance extends the timeframe longer for the 45% than it does for the 40%. Meaning that softcap can even exceed being twice as good as 40%.

Many toons find it unnecessary to reach softcap for their play experience, while others still have it as their main goal for a build.

Regarding positional vs typed: I good guideline to follow is build whatever is easier for your toon to hit high levels with. ie if you have frozen armor as an epic choice that already gets you ~half way to 45% s/l maybe take a look at that rather than building for positions from scratch.

Lastly, teams often easily offer ways to go far beyond softcap for many builds and also don't be afraid of inspirations. For instance, being at about 32.5% def is 1 small purple away from softcap, don't be afraid to use it. My fire/sr scrap is currently in that boat, so I'll pop an insp and can tank +2's for a full team. ya it will be softcapped on his own eventually, but for now use the tools available.

But we all know that the RNG can be a cruel mistress. Def can be streaky, resistance on the other hand is always steady and consistent in its performance. I don't think the devs overvalue resistance, it is very good. I think they undervalue defense personally and that's why it is so much easier to boost defense

Nothing against dm/shield it is a very powerful toon, but for all the times I've wished I had more st damage compared to wishing I had more AOE damage...well it isn't even close.

If you are specifically building a dm/shield as a big game hunting scrapper then cool, it is very good at that. Though tbh there are better AV killers to be found in the other AT's.

You mention a goal of +0/8, well you don't need the extra survivability that DM offers for that, but you will probably enjoy some extra aoe that's for sure. An elec/shield will very quickly defeat entire spawns set at that and truly the best mitigation is complete mitigation found through defeat.

If you have a goal of harder and maybe even fewer targets then dm/shield all the way for a scrapper, though a solid case can be made for BS/shield and also FM/shield.

I personally ended up rolling bs/shield after doing a dm/shield brute up to the mid 30's. The non-existent aoe ended up wearing me down. And sometimes it is nice to open up with a full strength shield charge, which unless souldrain is still active from the last group you have to get in the mix before hitting it. It's a small thing I guess, but the teleport is fun.

Very few AT's in the game have active primaries and active secondaries that consume endurance on par with a dominator. In fact I don't think any do. Blaster blast sets tend to be incredibly endurance friendly whereas doms have endurance intensive primary control sets and what amounts to endurance intensive assault sets.

You have to look at specific combos within AT's that can burn end like a dom can.

I latched onto your one comment in your first post because it is inaccurate without some heavy qualifiers. Simply put being able to refill domination more often via increased recharge in a build can and does off-set the increase endurance burn that goes along with that increased recharge. The recharge on domination was not changed with the dom revamp so you could only be talking about a global rech build vs a more OEM build. Alone it doesn't, but as a build it does. I agreed with everything else you said in that post, but I though that went without saying as I highlighted what I found incorrect.

I'm not going to explain something within the confines of your observations because that's all they are; your observations. Suffice to say I disagree with them.