Frosticus

AE is dead, but w/e not like much went into making it. I wonder if more people are pvp'ing than using AE now... Of course with drop rates in the tank I know I'm heading back to AE as some tickets are better than nothing. So maybe AE will come back anew considering Synapse has said the drop rate issue is imaginary. Maybe everyone will start using AE again, but rest assured they won't be running your sucky arcs this time either heh.

In conclusion, AE is in limbo, if normal drops stay bugged it might have a resurgence. If the drop bug gets fixed all 5 people left playing AE will have the quiet environment to make their masterpieces that they asked for.

I've helped a number of trials form teams lately. Seems overly restrictive to me. I remember trialing this game a long time ago and getting up to 26 on my ma/regen scrapper and doing pretty much everything a "real" account would. I doubt I would have actually joined this game with the current implementation of the trial. I did actually run a trial account a few months ago leading up to i15, it feels considerably more restrictive than some of the trials I've done for other MMO's such as WoW.

well back to AE by the looks of it, tix still seem to drop quickly enough and while I actually like random drops while playing much more I definitely prefer something to nothing .

Synapse's post does nothing but make this issue look like a fix is not in the foreseeable future.

I'd play the heck out of FM for stalkers if it had blaze. Never happen, but man it would be sweet.

I really like having a strong ranged attack on my melee toons to minimize chasing after things that run away cause I'm wailing on their buddy. I however, don't really like waiting until the 40's for that to become an option.

/traps will break the game when it goes to trollers even moreso that it does on MM's. I'd roll a fire/traps immediately and become a hotfeet, toebombing aoe tool of destruction. Then I'd go to monster island and solo all the GM's (one maybe two at a time).

I can't wait.

I've only done a couple /ta MM's up into the mid 20's. it will certainly work for a ranged build, though the mitigation it offers is less than satisfactory imo. I found my thugs/ta ended up getting cut down pretty often (for a MM) and I think thugs are tougher than mercs.

Looks like they got around to giving stalkers their own version of L-rod like they did for scraps/tanks. It does about ~45 more base damage. Sweet.

Fire/sr - I have found my fire/sr to be very enjoyable, fast movement, cuts through mobs like a hot knife through butter because three of its attacks actually use a gigantic hot knife . Ah now I want to rename him! I really like that you can have different colored fireswords for each attack and that depending on how you attack the model will stay active for quite some time. So with a bit of though I can use a purple sword for all my sword attacks and then switch it to a green sword for a while. Neat little mini-game.

BS/shield - I originally rolled a dm/shield brute and took it to the mid 30's, but the total lack of aoe damage wore me down. Bs/shield has been a good solid toon from lvl 8 on. The only thing that bothers me is that shield charge causes redraw. That and I wish it was actually a kat/shield (if possible) as I really like goldendragonfly and soaring dragon animations.

elec/fire - dunno, this toon is only lvl 16 so far and it has been painful up to this point as the st damage is low and the aoe is anemic so far, but this toon will eventually turn into a walking nuke. I even plan to use rotp offensively once the toon has enough bonuses to make it effective with no active buffs running. Yes I plan to actually let myself die...and often. So I'm aiming for high recharge rather than trying to pimp out survivability super high, that way L-rod and roflecopter of the pheonix will be up more often.

I think you should review your slotting of cremate, 22% acc even with your global acc bonuses seems pretty low to me.

I'm not sure if you do/don't like incinerate, but it is a pretty beastly attack. Though the propensity to drastically overkill targets with it if you don't like frequent target switching is very high, especially on teams if others are also targeting the same foe as you.

I've found on most teams I just spam FSC and epic aoe on my fire/sr, it generally isn't worth targeting anything less than luts as the aoe splash will eliminate all of them.

I dunno, I think most of the fire chains deal about the same dps as all of the attacks have pretty similar dpa, so as long as it is full you can pretty much base it on aesthetics/preference. You look like you are more or less there with a tiny gap in the scorch, cremate, scorch section. Though incin is certainly your most end efficient attack that probably isn't a major concern on a /wp w/ stamina. I personally wouldn't drop incin for GFS as the latter is a pretty visually and auditory satisfying attack as you pretty much cleave foes from head to toe with a huge firesword.

Dunno what your goal for the toon is, but it looks like you've spent a fair amount to reach it

With your stipulations I'm gonna say firemelee hands down. It's probably still right near the top even with major inf dumped into the build.

No build for you, but shield powers+2 slotted cj+weave+steadfast 3% def should get you to about 43% def. I'm sure you can squeeze out the last bit in w/e way you like.

For anyone not comfortable with DS scales and what they actually mean here are the unenhanced lvl 50 numbers live vs test for a brute.
Swipe: 37.1 --> 34.62
Strike: 56.3 --> 51.72
Slash: 68.4 --> 61.73
Spin: 78.83 --> 78.83
Followup: 33.37 --> 33.37
Focus: 69.2 --> 62.98
Taunt:
Evis: 100.1 --> 90.96
Shocker: 52.1 --> 47.13

So what does that mean? Spin still rocks so hard! But what about some attacks with enhances, single followup, and say 85% fury?
Strike:
146.5 --> 136.7
Focus:
273 --> 248.8

So really not that much of a reduction in actual play, but a reduction nonetheless. At least spin still does like double the damage of most other pbaoes!

The first few attacks of archery ie snap and aimed do indeed deal lower damage than most other tier 1 and 2 blasts. Not 3x as much, more in the range of 1.5x as much. However, archery attacks recharge faster and cost less end.

If you were also fighting mobs with a bit of lethal resists and the set you are comparing to was more exotic damage that may have made the difference a bit larger still.

Did you take blazing arrow at lvl 6? If not grab it ASAP, it is a very good attack. The only corruptor attack that hits harder is blaze from fire. Though both powers do have significant dot damage that you have to wait on.

Other than that arch deals decent aoe damage and with rain of arrows great aoe burst damage. It is a very endurance light set that should allow you to skimp on end reduction throughout the build, which is pretty nice for people not wanting to spend a king's ransom on recovery IO's.

IMO if blazing arrow isn't satisfying you then it will be a long road waiting on rain of arrows, which is really where the set jumps into the next echelon. You may want to look at other primaries if that is the case.

Although it still looks to me like rain of arrows for corrs is doing less damage than it should, but maybe that is intended for some reason or another.

To answer you last question: no arch is not a "support" set like dark blast (not that I necessarily agree with that assessment of dark). Arch is pretty much pure damage role as it has very little mitigation built in. It's actually closest to fireblast imo, just minus the extra dot damage (excluding blazing arrow) so fire is able to surpass it in pretty much every way until you get rain of arrows and then I've yet to hear an archery user say much of anything negative. It also is the best far range set available for corrs.

What do I think? I think I played a claws/wp brute up to 10 and was pretty dang impressed with fury+spin at low levels and was confident it would continue to destroy with over twice the damage of other pbaoes such as whirling hands. And it should continue to as it wasn't lowered from the looks of it.

I also think this is a major concern http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=188712. It feels wrong that that person was so right haha. While this nerf/downward adjustment is not enough to make the set unplayable its enough where if you are a numbers person you will certainly notice and it might put a damper on your enjoyment...maybe.

Fiteclubberz know.

Just for clarity, mezzes seem to no longer suppress knock protection, or at least acrobatics at any rate. We didn't test with melee armor sets.

I've been massaging the build that I first posted a bit more to squeeze what I feel is even better numbers.
-better hp, 1398.9 vs 1335.8
-better regen, 30.43 hp/sec vs 26.9 hp/sec w/ triage active.
-bit better net recovery (recov less toggle drain) 2.38 eps vs 2.13 eps
-more even distribution of defense, lowest is 45.3 (psi), highest is 47.1 (ranged) *I realize higher can be beneficial but my goal was to softcap only, so for this project overages are wasted resources.
-bit better team defense 26.3 vs 25.85
-removed siren's song and replaced with screech. This will stack better with the stun of seekers to nail down a boss easier.
-much more useful slotting of poison trap
-should be more friendly for those wanting to exemplar down

It did however cost me 3.75% global rech

I think overall this is one of the better builds I've ever done and it would be very powerful. I think I'd tentatively place traps/sonic as a top 10 most powerful toon in the game.

edit: if my calculations are right this toon could theoretically live indefinitely through 1350 dps of incoming slash/lethal damage. So something that would kill a naked squishy in one second this build would actually be sitting even through (ie not getting hurt, but not healing excess). Vs damage with no resistance it could face about 930 dps of incoming damage.

That is before taking into account seekers which are an amazing -53.2% damage (so pretty much cuts incoming damage in half in ideal situations) and the fact that your traps actually pull a lot of agro of their own.

Click this DataLink to open the build!