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Quote:You expect Bill Z to come and contradict himself now, or do you just not read everything?LOOK!
Play a brute since the issue 18 fury changes at low levels while monitoring your damage buff numbers, or just play around with Mid's.
You can set your fury level in Mid's to up to 200% damage buff, and, in game right now, you can fight one minion and see your fury hit at least 60% full(120% buff) right about when he is about to die or dead. Given 3 minions spawns or a lieutenant and minion normal in missions you will only have higher fury.
It's a fact because it's a fact.
I bet Bill Z will shortly clear your clouded vision if he already hasn't while I was posting this.
Quote:I completely understand the difference in "feel" between the two archetypes. I have about twice as many brutes as I do scrappers.
I just don't like to allow my feelings to get in the way of the facts.
I've played a Brute from 45 to 49 since the changes. I've been monitoring my fury that whole time. Yeah, it gets up to 135% sometimes, but that's by no means the average (counter-pun intended). You can bang your head against the wall all you want, the fact will remain, Scrappers are balanced to do more damage on average. Brute's fury will spike and they will get a few hits in with higher damage, but the circumstances they can maintain that advantage under are slim.
I also have Foot Stomp, so building Fury as quickly as possible is not a problem.
And again, I guess I should say "LOOK" to you. If you really think the fact that your fury bare HITS +135% damage sometimes means that's the average (implying that it's all the time), you simply don't understand the math involved.
Consider the patch notes, again. The "sharp fall off" of Fury begins at 30%. So I suppose you could explain your circumstances a little better to account for how you're fighting that fact. Like, is it -1x1 and you bring enough inspirations that you never have to stop moving? -
Quote:Bold for hilarity. It reminded me of So I Married an Axe Murderer: "Pregnant man gives birth... that's a fact."The bar was visually around 75% full when I noticed around 135% damage buff on my attribute monitor with no other buffs active.
A full bar of fury buffs all brute damage by 200%. That's a fact.
So, 135% would actually be 67.5% full fury.
I noticed routinely numbers up int eh 150% damage buff area, but 135% damage buff was practically guaranteed fast even against a single minion.
Anyway, based on your discussion with Bill about criticals and this, I'm guessing you just don't understand averages. In this case it means you take every second where Fury is relevant, add up what Fury was at that second, and divide by the total number of seconds you are considering. That's really great that sometimes you see your fury at 67.5%. For the AVERAGE to be that high, however, it has to be at 100% as often as it is at 35%. Even more so when you consider how often it will be at 0%.
Also note:
Quote:Originally Posted by http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/patch_notes/issue_18_going_rogue_patch_not.htmlThe overall result of these two changes to Fury Generation is that it will be easier to maintain low levels of Fury, while gaining very high levels of Fury will be more difficult.
As for the first 20 levels, a resounding "so what?" With the current leveling curve the first 20 levels are what, about 5% of the game? Once Stamina is available before that, and no one's resting for endurance, it'll be even less. -
Quote:I just explained that happens at ~112% Fury, IFF there's no Build Up, red inspirations, Against All Odds, etc.More specifically, I monitor my damage buff with the combat attributes monitor. It's nice to see the numbers go up.
Also, if a scrapper and brute are solo there does seem to be a point where the buff from fury exceeds the scrapper base damage and crit.
Of course, maybe the higher base damage enhanced makes up for that. I don't know.
Do you really think Fury is averaging 135%? Are you sure you're monitoring it and not forgetting when you pop reds or use Rage or something? The average is much closer to 75% or 80%.
As stated over and over, Brutes will beat them out, briefly, under occasional circumstances. Over time, if you're doing anything but late game max'd out IO steam rolling farming, the Scrapper will win. Do you REALLY think our developers have so little idea what they're doing that they can't balance two of the only AT's that share the same primary AND secondary the way they want to?
Stalkers are their own argument, of course. -
Quote:Brutes are not just for high end damage. They buffed(in my opinion) Fury by making it much easier to get up to 75% and keep it up there even if you're soloing at a relatively leisurely pace.
By the way, scrapper have worse crit chance than stalkers and both are HEAVILY dependent on luck with the RNG.
I like consistency a lot more and Fury is consistent.
Instead of 1 in 10 attacks being buffed 100%, I see every attack, after maybe the first 15 seconds, being buffed 135% or more.
That trumps even the perfect crit scenario.
I'll take higher defenses and higher consistent damage thank you very much, even if it takes a little initial ramp up.
Where is this 135% coming from?
Either way, you're forgetting that Brutes have a much lower damage modifier.
Scrappers = 1.125 * 1.05 (crit vs minions) = 1.18
or = 1.125 * 1.10 (crit vs lt/boss/+) = 1.24
Brutes = 0.75 * (1+fury)
That means you need 60% fury to match vs minion damage and 65% to match vs lts and bosses. So with your 75% (or 80%) being what you'd reasonably expect the "average" fury, the Brute might match up to your optimism, right? Wrong!
Because then the formula becomes Mod * (1+enhancement+crit/fury+damage enhancements)...
So, if you enhance to 95%, in most situations where in-set damage buffs aren't taken into consideration, you must maintain 105% fury to match damage against minions, ~112% to match vs bosses.
To the Brutes credit, the AAO numbers on a Scrapper aren't MUCH higher, so the amount of fury they'd have to maintain in a shield:shield comparison is only wee bit more. However, in a Build Up:Build Up scenario, the Brute needs a lot more fury to match up. How much? 175%! UH OH! If SS were ever ported to Scrappers (and kept the BU difference) Brutes wouldn't stand a chance damage wise. I would expect if SS were proliferated, Rage would be changed for this reason.
Brutes really were brought in between tanks and scrappers for both damage and survivability. The Brute will catch up, briefly, if they grab most of the aggro in a large spawn. The only scenario where the Brute will match and possibly beat the Scrapper's damage over time is top level, steam rolling, no breaks, no dying, farming type... and that's only if the Brute is holding all the aggro they can. That means no Tankers and no one showing them up damage wise.
Quote:I don't see how this is true. It's certainly harder to get to 90% fury than before, but I don't have any problems reaching 80% solo or teamed, which is the amount I base all my calculations in Mids on. And guess what - at 80% fury, a brute does more damage than a scrapper, except on those sets that make significant use of +damage buffs, of course (SD and DB for example, although Claws are interestingly an exception to this as the brute base numbers on the attacks are higher than scrapper ones).
I just wanted to point out that the statement about Claws was sort of misleading. First, because it's patently false. The base numbers are still lower than the scrappers, the difference just isn't as much. They should be 56% of the scrappers (if the recharges matched), they are 66% though. The recharge was increased when they proliferated the set, however, to make more like other Brute sets and therefore play with Fury like it was supposed to. So the DPS difference is actually (slightly) greater, putting the Brute at 51% of the damage, and putting them further behind the Scrapper.
Claw is interesting though because they didn't change the activation times. So Brutes have (by comparison) a higher damage, but lower recharge, therefore "relatively" better DPA. With a full attack chain, the lower DPS is made up for, actually bringing it slightly ahead of the curve for continual-max-DPA-chains in when comparing the difference between the same primary sets.
That's a mouthful. Long story short, Claws plays the "which is better and when" game a little differently, but not by so much that it matters a lot.
Edit:
I took way too long to type... Now I look like one of those people who didn't read everything before he responded. Brevity is a gift that Bill Z seems to have that I do not :-(. His math was probably more accurate too. -
Quote:I don't have much to say about the build other than seconding the notion that you should take speed boost. It might get old buffing teammates, but you'll instantly be making your team more effective.Thanks man,
I took deceive because it was my only way to tank larger spawns when soloing. I think my plan is going to be to hang onto it until I can reduce the recharge time on PA to the point where they are doing the bulk of my tanking with close to no downtime.
Although I really try not to use deceive more than necessary because it gimps my xp.
Thanks for the advice!
I like deceive a lot, though with Illusion/Kinetics I can see your power picks being stretched kind of thin. In case you haven't already you should read this page on the wiki http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Confuse_(Status_Effect). The short of it is if you do 50% of the damage, you'll still get 80% of the exp. So if you're conscious of that fact it won't gimp your exp. Yeah, it's still less per kill, but because you're stopping one from attacking you and the other is dying faster, the speed increase will balance it out. It's also nice, like you said, for large groups because you can "prep" the group by confusing 2 or 3 of them before you hop in. Just make sure to do half or more of the damage and you'll be golden. -
Quote:Like I said above, the best bets are archery/energy and archery/mental. Most people vote the second as the fastest, because of the extra cone attack and drain psyche. I would take archery/energy for soloing though because I believe it's safer (boost range keeps you out of their range).what type of Arch blaster farms...as in what secondary? Ive been debting a blaster. But Ive been more focused on pvp...but the blaster farming might be a challange and fun
And that's a good point about Fire/Ice. Ice Patch is a great way to make any "rain" power do its job really well.
The only "problems" I see with that build is it's very expensive for how effective it will be. A comparable build using sets more inclined to farm, a build for defense, (or of course another AT), would be way faster.
Also, on the off chance you would be doing anything else (that could involve exemplaring, like TFs) you may want to move the purples to the last possible place, so when you ex you still get the recharge and recovery.
You may also want to pop a stealth IO in someplace so you can sneak in when DP drops. Keeping DP up as much as possible appears to be your only chance of surviving anything real difficult. -
Quote:I'm anyone else! Seriously, this is an awesome idea. I mostly would like to see it because now I feel like I have to slot End mods in the forms. As if a bi- or tri-form Kheld isn't starved for slots enough, I actually have to worry about endurance management? Rubbish.Anyway, I would love to see Fitness transfer over to forms. I agree with the idea that "if it's fine for VEATS, it's fine for HEATS" (at least in this case). I can't see a situation that would make this game-breaking, can anyone else?
I imagine the devs aren't really considering it, though.
This would be great. The procs that normally go in health and stamina would go a long way to making the forms more slot friendly early, and more relevant in late game IMO. As stated, the damage and survivability becomes more "comparable" rather than "noticeably better," so it seems to me getting extra regen and serious extra recovery while in those forms would be a nice (but by no means game breaking) edge for the forms. -
Some of it will come down to your play style, too. If you intend to play the terrain, abuse the pathing and AI of mobs, and do your best to stay mobile and distant, I'd say you go Blaster 110%. When I play that way on Corruptors I get frustrated and bored because you can be back pedaling through maps for a while before you finish them.
On the other hand, a set with some reliable -res and self buff/healing would help make up the difference and make you more desirable on certain teams (particularly TFs)... I'm thinking of /Radiation in particular here. The recharge in AM could help with the slow recharge on Hail of Bullets, too.
Just note that if you use chemical or ice ammo, that's another debuff. My DP/Sonic Corruptor draws an *insane* amount of aggro when I use Disruption Field and either of those types of ammunition. I have grown to appreciate Brutes who take taunt because of that one character. -
Quote:This is a good example of how different people interpret differently and how hard it can be to resolve. I didn't read it that way at all. When I tank, I prefer to herd, but reading Tex's post I immediately thought of a group that used to play on Champion who did exactly what he was talking about and how awful they were too. I didn't think he was bashing the way I prefer to tank though...Well the little extra information was helpful, because your post just read like people who herd have a terrible playstyle.
At any rate, in regards to the OP, my "global advice" would be to start your own teams. Illusion/FF has so much mitigation in team situations that you could probably just "supplement" your phantoms with some characters built for damage and call it a day. A good blaster or two standing with an Illusion/FF will wipe out almost anything you throw at the trio... So if you're having trouble with some numb skull who has the star, take your own star! Haha.. -
Quote:If you haven't yet, you aren't going to now. Now that it won't impact your damage and with Stamina becoming free, it feels a lot more like a constant power boost... and some bosses will mez in one hit.One of these days I'll actually start to care about domination. I tend to use it purely as an end refill. About once every two or three missions. I honestly can't remember the last time I used it twice in the same mission. I'm sure I must have though.
Even without it, dominators are pretty much the perfect AT as far as I'm concerned. I just with they had fewer melee attacks and inverted the ranged and melee damage modifiers.
Compare that to before, where it could mean the difference between easy End management or not and it was the difference between defender and almost-Blaster damage (or better if you stacked it).
In regards to the OP, I have come across both camps. I have never heard anyone say it required purples, but I have run into quite a few people who put off IOing so long that they don't get perma-dom until their 40's ... maybe even 47.
That's silly to me. My current main had permadom at level 30 or 31. The build up to that point was almost cheap, too (sides lotg). Entropic Chaos and Kinetic Combat are your friends. More expensive stuff will come later.
I understand the counter point though. This isn't really news. In fact, it seems like most of the time when someone asks for build advice here it's remarked how you can get permadom with only 70-80% recharge. So it would seem anyone looking here probably already knows that it doesn't take purples or billions of inf, etc etc.
In regards to "the" wiki, don't use wikia... like, ever. Paragonwiki is much more updated and doesn't have ads like wikia. Their section on Dominators hasn't really been updated since the rework though. Perhaps it's time for someone who reads this board regularly to step up :-P. -
Quote:If it's between these two, I would say Combat Jumping. The last bits of defense as you get closer to soft capping can make a big difference. With two Assaults running and the low damage modifier, the difference in damage Aim will make is not that much.With Perma Fort and Manouvers and Hover we're around 36%, Hover is not slotted yet so your looking at 39% perhaps without any IO's. So the question is, do I take CJ which you can slot up another 4% to hit (I belive) 42% to all or go with the +Acc/Dam of a power that you can have like 10 of every 25-30 seconds?
I should metion that we are also running Assault on both Characters.
The damage buff on Defender Aim is 50%. Consider the base 100%, Enhancements at 95%, and double assault at ~40%, it's only a "real world" boost of 1/5 damage. Where as the difference between 39% defense and 42% is the difference between getting hit ~11% of the time and ~8% of the time, meaning your "real world" damage taken against even level minions would be about 1/4 less.
Did you happen to take Fitness? When the Fitness pool becomes inherent, you could use the extra power picks to grab Tough and Weave instead of CJ. Then you'd get more defense than CJ and (if you haven't ready) put the Steadfast Protection proc in Tough. That'd take you to softcap.
Edit: had a dope moment when writing about defense the first time. -
Quote:It would certainly make things better. The runspeed is -50%, so it would keep them packed tight twice as long. I'd still prefer a bigger debuff or a straight immobilize.I mean Inferno is fast because I hit one power. Efficient because it kill almost everything. I understand that it takes a long time to recharge. Wouldn't snowstorm slow the badds enough to hit RoF and get in, and hit Inferno. I will use fireball when inferno's not up. I'll try to add a little defence.
Also remember that Inferno's only going to hit 16 targets. Unless you go absolutely bananas with recharge, you're only talking about 5 kills a minute. It's very inefficient. -
Quote:It will free three, most likely lightly slotted, power picks. The Fighting pool for Weave requires a similar investment for instance (w/ the right IOs that translates into around +8.5 defense vs. all). The Medicine pool is another excellent fit that is made more available for an AT with few or no defenses or self-heals.Quote:It means that you can pick up 3 powers in the concealment pool to use as slotting mules for all those LotG +7.5s that people will have from spending Alignment Merits.
In other words, I don't think we'll be getting any free slots out of the deal.
Concealment will be a popular option because with 1 slot, 3 of its powers become awesome mules. Medicine may be commong on characters that have Power Boost and a lot of Global Recharge. For example, a perma-Dom /Energy Dominator could get a lot of use out of Medicine even if there was only 1 slot in each power.
I guess we'll see though. -
Quote:I want to try to use the PbAoE tier 9. It compares to shield/elec to me. Fast and effiecient.
Okay. That will work when Inferno isn't up. I still think inferno will help when up though.
Inferno's recharge is 6 minutes base. Shield charge is only 90 seconds. Inferno's not fast and efficient. If you want to farm with a Blaster Tier 9, Archery is the best bet. Archery/Energy and Archery/MM are the fastest farming Blasters. The first is the safest IMO it tears BM apart, because you can Boost Range + BU + Aim + RoA + Explosive Arrow and almost everything's gone. Repeat 30-60 seconds later, depending on the recharge in your build.
If you're going to farm with Fire/ your best friend is Fire Ball. Fire Breathe is dangerous if you're alone, and Rain of Fire's scatter is counter productive if there's no one immobilizing.
What can be said for it, however, is with Mace or Ice as your Epic, you could get at or near softcapped S/L defense... that'd make BM easy no matter what you were using. -
Quote:You won't be able to fill a resist hole like that with sets. However, I believe the most noticeable hole in Willpower is Lethal and Energy defense, because those are the two types most associated with -defense. So if a few of those go out, all you're left with is the resists which are pretty weak (as you say) against F/C/E/N and Toxic.My goal is to try and cover the holes in Willpower as best I can at 50, namely F/C/E/N resist, S/L defense, and Endurance drainers (hence the +3.something net gain).
Between Quick Recovery, Stamina, Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection, you probably don't have to worry a ton about End drain. Just make sure to take out Sappers first.
Quote:I tried to look around Mid's for finding what recipes might do the trick but finding stuff that is affordable is difficult. I only have about 30 million INF right now but I have a lot of relatively expensive rare salvage that I can sell plus some merits. I've just been away too long to really know about all the ways of building INF or the recipes. Any suggestions to improve the holes that give me trouble?
Quote:I know Luck of the Gambler is hideously expensive but that one I think I can do via merits if I can figure out a good way to gain enough.
I can't remember off hand which healing procs are available, but those would be good to throw into health.
Quote:I normally play +1/x4 though I could probably do +1/x5 without a huge deal of effort. Is this about right for a Brute?
Quote:Thoughts? -
Quote:What's very wrong is the idea that it's not close. The average damage increase is so small that dividing it by 2.5 is not a huge difference. Saying it's not close is like saying 1 cent and 3 cents are not close because the ratio is 1:3. Saying it was very wrong was me trying to be polite by understating just how wrong it is.Is what is very wrong. It is actually more complicated than what you've shown. Not much more complicated, something a mathematical statistics student would learn in the first semester. Yours is the analysis of someone that took prob/stats 101, the one the football players take. No offense.
No offense taken. My statistics courses were based on calculus for business, otherwise known as finite calculus. I have no idea what football player take. The biggest difference between a basic analysis and a more complex statistical analysis in this realm would be accounting for chance of failure. However, like I said the proc's duration is less than the time between the periodic check, so chance of failure does not increase or decrease the average damage increase.
If you think it's more complicated, then I would assume you took courses that were not at all related to math. You see, the presence of extra variables and values doesn't always mean that it's more complicated. I know that's the way people with a liberal arts education tend to think. The truth is, you just have to understand the relationship of those values. Again, in this case the relationships are not complicated.
I would love to see you try to actually make it more complicated. Even if you complicate the math somehow, the reality will always be as I said: it's better in Build Up because it will ONLY proc in scenarios where you can use the build up... because you are, after all, using "Build Up." If you put it in tactics, you might as well throw the slot away. -
Quote:Why would you hate to say it? It's really easy to disregard such statements when there's no explanation. The build you posted has lower defenses and resistance but significantly higher recharge. Since the build I posted can continuously chain AoE immo & the highest DPA AoE attacks, it seems to be your definition of "not very effective" vs "very effective" is whether the bets are perma, regardless of personal survivability.I'd hate to say it Gilia but that build does not look very effective to me. This is an approximate copy of my guy currently.
I immo the whole group, taunt them, they can't hurt me, they aren't hurting my teammates. It's incredibly clean. From the looks of it, your strat is to mix pets into chaos and hope they stay packed nicely enough that your cones are still effective.
Yeah, I can see it in some situations, but if you really think it's that black and white you're dreaming. Unless you're being ironic and intentionally posting a more expensive build that's not much more effective... -
Quote:Balanced with what? Ice Control depends on Ice Patch and Arctic Air for much of the Troller/Dominator's career, and even with enough recharge to continually use AoE control... there's only two of 'em. IP and AA aren't affected by Domination.Static Field isn't affected by domination either. Personally, I don't view this as balanced... two of the three AoE control powers in an already very soft control set are not affected by domination?!?
As stated, some sets lean more on Domination than others. The quantity of powers that gain from it isn't how they're balanced, they're balanced as whole sets. -
Quote:According to Mid's, Sniper Rifle with 99% damage enhanced will do 516 damage with Build Up at level 50. It will do 377 with Targeting Drone (as opposed to 343 without).Really? That's it? Is that tiny portion at least "un-resisted" damage? Or no?
Hmm...so basically, Build-Up is definitely still the better choice for AR's Sniper Rifle if you want good damage?
It's not unresisted damage.
Are you considering Sniper Rifle for thematic reasons?
If you really want to go Sniper Rifle crazy, my recommendation is /Energy. You can Boost Range + Build Up + Snipe. It's enough damage to take out an evil level minion from very far away, if it doesn't resist Lethal much, and will seriously take chunk out of a Lt or Boss. However, two small reds or a medium red will let you do the same thing with Targeting Drone. That's not as much damage, but enough to one shot your average minion.
With Archery/Energy you could do the same thing with a bow and do a bit over 600 damage. That's not going to one shot a Lt either, and it probably doesn't fit your theme if you started with AR/Devices in mind. -
Mangle's your ally on (I think) two different Villain Tip missions. He's the only optional NPC I go out of my way for, because he tears everything down. I've actually sat and watched as he took out three groups of +1 Freakshow without breaking a sweat. Most of them go down in 1 or 2 hits, and he's definitely on scrapper lock.
He never seemed as scary as an enemy, but I'm not surprised by this thread at all. -
Quote:It isn't that complicated. In Tactics, it will on average go off every 200 seconds. Since it lasts less than 10 seconds, that average will stay the same whether it procs or not. It lasts 5.25 seconds, so on average it's going to be active 2.6% of the time.One of these days I'll write out the analysis, but without a doubt, the Gauss proc is substantially better off in Tactics than Build-up and it's not close.
That's an average damage buff of 2.6% and ToHit of 1%.
For Build Up, it's going to be significantly less. Even on a high recharge build which can Build Up say every 25 seconds, you're talking about less than half the average increase, that is about a 1% overall increase in damage (on average). With standard recharge, it's about 0.5%
So the "analysis" says to put it in Tactics. The real world disagrees though. Because in Tactics, that "average" could be realized when you're not attacking. It could be realized when you fire off two weak ST attacks and nothing else.
With Build Up the damage is always realized when you're Building Up ... either to quickly drop a single target or to dish out as much AoE damage as possible in a short order of time.
So yeah, you're talking about 1/2 to 1/4th the possible "average damage increase over time," but the reality is that damage increase will virtually always be better timed and is substantially more effective in game. So the reality is the average damage increase is much much better in Build Up.
You're also talking about pennies. The 2% (at most) increase you get from using it in Tactics is not worth the horrendous draw backs.
So,
is very wrong. -
Quote:This is, along with the paragraph I didn't quote, is a horrendous over simplification.Blasters on the other hand (along with defends to some extend but defenders are so good at what they do it doesn't matter as much) play pretty much like a gimped version of any class with a ranged power set. I really think the blaster's need an inherent which changes how you play them like the CoV classes in order to give them identity. Right now defiance is pretty much designed to ensure you don't need to do anything differently just blast away under all conditions which is what people always did with blasters.
Blaster's have an identity, and it's the same as it's always been: damage till someone drops. Defiance 1.0 was introduced because data mining showed that it was too often the Blaster. Now it's in favor of the Blaster.
Blasters rely on terrain, LoS, and geometry to stay alive, making them more active and more fun than many other classes. The reward is more out of the box damage, both AoE and ST.
The drawback? There's a few. They make the bad reputation that Blasters have now.
ONE, they are not "force multipliers." There's so little debuffing that on a full team you're better off taking a Corruptor with less damage but say -30% resist because they will boost the rest of the team's damage as well. Sonic/ and DP's -regen are the small exceptions.
TWO, their inherent is mostly helpful in prolonged battles. For many people, (particular red-siders) the ideal in this game is steam rolling through everything. This is largely because of Brutes and how Fury works. Without the prolonged attack chains, Blaster's damage doesn't triumph over other ATs as much.
THREE, with IOs you can make other high damage ATs even more survivable, like Stalkers and Scrappers. Making the Damage vs Survivability scale look more appealing on the melee end.
FOUR, the AT fix has for so long been to just increase the damage. Defiance 1.0 and 2.0 did this, but the Stalker revamp uped their damage modifier, Controllers got containment, Defenders go the "soloing buff," and most recently Dominators got their damage modifier uped as well. That's just off the top of my head.
The more damage gets added to ATs that were supposed to fill other roles, the less important the Blaster becomes, because they aren't fulfilling anyone else's role.
With shrinking player bases, you can't expect the damage to be reduced though, because small teams and soloing are important on some of our servers. If they were going to do it, it should have been done with GR's release.
The answer has been stated here, that you make the Blaster's control powers (and debuffs) more effective, at least in their secondaries. I'd like to see Defiance tweaked as well. I'm thinking increase the duration, either just slightly OR by a lot, but make it so the same powers will not stack on themselves more than once or twice. The latter would help the steam rolling teams.
Well, that long slightly off topic diatribe had nothing to do with MA.
So in regards to that, I still agree it's a great idea. Some MA/SS and Ninjitsu powers and a throwing star would really do it. -
Apocalypse and Ragnorak are very expensive. You'd be better off moving a slot from Coralax to Shark Jaws, because another piece for Unbreakable Constraint would be worth more recharge.
The mixed franken slotting with some defense doesn't seem like the best bet. You have 12-15% defense for all types and all positions. It'd be better to focus on, say ranged defense with some AoE in the mix. Now, if you picked Pacing of the Turtle and Touch of Lady Grey and Analyze Weakness for how they enhance the powers they are in rather than the set bonuses, I can understand that. If it was for regen, I don't quite understand. -
Couple things --
You have Super Jump at level 28. You could take Inertial Reduction at 28 to get the same effect, without needing Combat Jumping. Though it seems you were interested in Acrobatics, so maybe that's why.
I would swap out Leaping pool for Aim, Inertial Reduction, and Increased Density.
You won't be able to get a lot of defense AND perma recharge. In fact, with this sort of build I'd probably forgo a defense build. Ice/ is pretty survivable as it is, and the returns on an expensive defense build wouldn't be there. That's my guess anyhow. You could consider going for soft capped range defense (that's 45%), but if you're jumping in to get most of your Fulcrum Shift then that won't be a huge help. You can always FS from outside the group and just let the melee characters soak it up. You and your nearby ranged friends would just get a smaller damage buff.
I see from Scorpion Shield that S/L defense might be more your cup of tea. Consider getting the Arena and PvP day jobs for the Combat Shield temp power. Also, Kinetic Dampener is a craftable temp power. They are both somewhat expensive (on endurance) temp powers for S/L defense. They can really come in handy in dicey situations and stack well with Scorpion Shield.
Honestly, as far as making an effective IO build for cheap down the road, I would start low bidding on 5 full Thunderstrike sets. They won't need to be top level. You can skimp on the Damage and Damage/Acc pieces in particular, as the set will add global accuracy and it will max out damage even at the lowest possible level. Add a full set of Lockdown for Web Cocoon and you'll have something like 25% ranged defense.
Low bid on 2 Positron's Blasts as well. More global accuracy, some recharge.
S/L defense builds aren't cheap. -
Quote:I was going to type out a full response, but frankly everything Phrox said.1) Nah, not worth it IMO. If you're having end problems, pop a blue, if you're having def-debuff or enemy THBuff problems, pop a purple. Elude is, IMO, far too situational to really be worth a power slot.
2) Dunno about attack chains (theres a thread a few down from this asking for them which hasn't got any answers yet), but I wouldn't skip either Lunge (your best ST attack - at least in terms of DPA) or Spin (your best AoE attack). Eviscerate is quite nice, but I'd take both those before it.
3) Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, it's not great in either. It'd go off more often in Tactics, but, as you suggest, it's likely to go off when you don't need it. I'm guessing you're after the full set bonus from GSFC, in which case, IMO at least, it really doesn't matter. If you're not going for the bonus, forget about the proc. If you really wanted to find some way of taking advantage of it, then FU would be the way to go, but given that you've gone for BU, I guess you're skipping that, and even then, it's nothing special.
4) I like it. With softcapped def and a single -interrupt IO, I can pretty much always get AS off, and it's a nice boost to my survivability. Dead widows do no damage. But then, I do solo a lot. It's less useful on a team.
The only thing I'd add is if you DO use Gaussian's, put it in BU.