Icesickle

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Decided to go with Rad/Sonic...he's level 14, whee. Thanks for the replies.

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You picked a not-so-great primary and a not-so-great secondary. If it's raw performance you're looking for, just about any other combination of defender sets will do.


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I agree completely. Rad/Sonic is about as mediocre as you can get, with no raw performance capability whatsoever. Anytime I see a Rad/Sonic Defender, I send them a tell advising them to re-roll, because they will only experience unmitigated heartbreak and impotence from 1 to 50.



Of course, I know you weren't replying to his post, Rigel, but I got a kick out of reading those two messages in succession. I had a good chuckle.

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yeah i was about to cough up my drink for a split second before it occured to me that he was addressing the OP not the new choice

dont do it, I had one and it was awesome personified, then the ET animation change came and totally altered the flow of the set, its 2 big moves take 6 seconds to animate now. Before it flowed nice (and hit very hard) I would rather the ET "nerf" to ahve brought with it a reduction in damage as opposed to the morphine infused treacle flow that EM now has.

Go stone melee/fire, superior in every way now.

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One of the nictii has an autohit power.

No amount of defence works versus that

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is it an autohit power? I presumed one of them just acted like a DE quartz eminator and threw down +200% tohit rendering defence useless.

are you adverse to IO sets? What kind of budget do you have if not?

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Well slotting at lvl 8 really does nothing for the power, TO suck. Your not going to get good Def number till SO and that is at lvl 22. Till lvl 22 your pretty much a blaster with all melee attacks

Edit to add more: Nothing as change in the past 2 years to make Scrapper wearker. It just might be /SR. /SR doesn't do a lot a lower lvls and it is a late bloomer. When you get to the later lvls you will love /SR

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DOs actually make a noticeable difference but its still not good....

rad/sonics can solo AVs and Giant Monsters....

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i wouldnt go with any of those secondaries.

if you want to mostly aoe, that means some herding. and to herd, you gotta survive


while the secondaries you listed can survive most mobs - they all have a group or two that just eat through them.

personally if i were to make another herding brute it would be an /sr brute. why? defense debuffs in the form of various lethal attacks are EXTREMELY common in this game.


sadly none of the brute primaries are very good for aoe. it's too bad we dont have spines.

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sheild can have def debff resistence of 94%,

My elec/sheild, and for that matter, my DM/Sheild scrapper can outsurvive anything, lvl 54 boss agro cap, AVs, Giant monsters

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Umbral, while your comments are well thought out, it still come across (at least to me) that you to want to nerf brutes due to the percetption that they might be better than your scrappers. You seem to fear that people will say lol scrapper when you ask to join a team on your scrapper.

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Eh, if you knew me particularly well, you'd realize that I actually get this riled up about most kinds of balance considerations within the confines of RPGs. Part of it is because I generally tend to go with the less min/max type characters because I enjoy the flavor of the character much more and would rather not be penalized for not choosing that specific character. I'd rather have each character operate off of the same baseline of performance than have some operate worse than others, especially after the difference has been pointed out.

I've got more than a few suggestions of how to help solve the issue with as little negative impact as possible, though I choose to withhold them because they're rather numerous and depend heavily on the specific implementation of the game (whether each power in the database needs to be modified independently, how ingrained the AT caps are, whether it would be preferably to bring Brutes down, Scrappers and any other ATs up, or a combination of the 2, etc.).

I'm not just complaining for complaint's sake (though I won't say that I'm not deriving a great deal of pleasure from a very lively and enjoyable debate), nor am I doing it because I think Scrappers should be the absolute best at whatever it is we do well. I genuinely believe that there is a problem that should be addressed and, if it were within my power, I would do what I could to address it.

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dude..... its a game, try enjoying it.....

elec/sheild, your time between your twin tier 9 uber attacks is spent herding up as many mobs as you can

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they have near av levels of regen

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Avs dont really have high regen so much as high HP resulting in a higher regen. I am pretty sure I remember someone doing the math a while back and they have a low % of actual regen but when coupled with their 22,000+ hp it adds up.

Also IIRC this was the major problem when they raised the regen rate way back when and caused such an uproar. A little extra regen boost goes a long way with so much hp and they didnt realize it was going to make an AVs +hp a sec skyrocket like it did

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It wasnt a little extra regen though, it was 1000% increase, was illustrated in the beta why this was a terrible idea and it got rammed through to live anyway. After a while it got scaled back to a 300% buff on what it was.

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All three charts show fire being the big winner with lethal the loser.

Suck it, scrappers!

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waitaminute... that's mean. Good thing we get crits!

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and fire melee and FE......

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ET, EP, Gloom, EP, BS, EP, Gloom ftw

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I'm showing that chain to do 2 DPS less than ET, Gloom, BS, TF and cost .2 EPS more.

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My spreadsheets show Stone melee running 1000 SmashPS more than EM and 5000 more AwesomePS

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And... how does that factor in the dissproportionate benefit a scrapper gets from buildup/soul drain?

Don't get me wrong, in the general case a hyperagressive brute almost certainly does do more damage, and their playstyle almost certainly invokes more incoming damage than that 12% HP can compensate for.

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and firey embrace

IMO brutes should do more damage, they need to work to keep on the boil, scrappers dont, isnt that along the lines of "risk V reward"?

I dont see scrappers getting a off the bat damage buff, would be nice if scrappers had a domination like inherant clicky that would double the rate of criticals for a time.

They are two different ATs with different playstyles which both lay out the smackdown with equal vigour and it seems people are crying because a spreadsheet shows one MAY outperform the other. Neither of them underperform, both are fun, both can solo AVs, given what happened to PvP I would advise to be careful what you wish for because if you interest Castle enough to take a look you may not like what you get.

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Meh. I understand that people were spoiled by the old animation, but stating that the set is "unplayable" is quite the exaggeration.

Comparing ET with Seismic is also kinda preposterous, due to the costs involved. A SM can't get too liberal with Seismic under normal conditions, because it chews Endurance like few other things.

Different sets = good thing. The whole idea of different powers is... them being different. EM is still alive. However, we need to adapt.

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EM isnt unplayable, its just crap, sure its ST damage is still high but several other sets are higher AND have vastly more mitigation and AOE capacity. Its now a medicore clunker of a set where pulling off 2 moves takes 6 seconds, the flow of the set is like treacle....mixed with glue. I couldnt give a crap about the damage or how the animations look, theres just no flow anymore.

Different is good, adapting is good but you cant adapt around something that isnt there, SM is superior in all aspects, damage (ST and AOE) and mitigation. Whatever you do to raise EMs game you can do with SM and get better results.

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Because the chances of Brutes being able to "keep" their Patron Power Pool attack Gloom is very very slim imho. They'll most likely have to respec into Ancillary Power Pools upon faction switch and pick up Dark Blast, which will drop their damage averages substantially enough to say: Blueside: Scrappers > Brutes in damage.

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How the heck do you think that would work? Epic power pools are AT based. While Brutes could easily get Scrapper APPs, other ATs will not find it as easy. They might make something entirely new, but I highly doubt it.

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scrappers should ahve access to tank epics, they already have identicle sets in body mastery and energy mastery

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And I keep hearing about the damage bonus advantage scrappers have, shouldn't that show up in the DM comparison when SD is charged with 10 targets. I guess gloom is messing up that comparison, maybe bill can fire up the brain for one more comparison and figure out the next best brute chain without gloom, and we can see better what the dmg mod advantage is.

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The advantage is actually showing up. Going from 3 targets to 10 causes a Brute's DPS to jump by 21 points. For a scrapper, this jump is 41 points. This gap will only get larger as more +damage is added to both.

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That's cool, but the problem is that brutes are still out-damaging scrappers all over the place. I guess the solution is to give scrappers more access to plus damage. More fuel for the 'SS for scrappers' campaign!

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isnt it mainly down to the epics? scrappers are LONG overdue for at least one more, they should have access to the tank ones IMO, body mastery/energy mastery is a clone on both ATs after all

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Not imo - look at DB for example, scrappers and brutes are doing pretty much identical damage while brutes have far better durability.

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shhh i want fire blast, fire ball and melt armour

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And I keep hearing about the damage bonus advantage scrappers have, shouldn't that show up in the DM comparison when SD is charged with 10 targets. I guess gloom is messing up that comparison, maybe bill can fire up the brain for one more comparison and figure out the next best brute chain without gloom, and we can see better what the dmg mod advantage is.

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The advantage is actually showing up. Going from 3 targets to 10 causes a Brute's DPS to jump by 21 points. For a scrapper, this jump is 41 points. This gap will only get larger as more +damage is added to both.

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That's cool, but the problem is that brutes are still out-damaging scrappers all over the place. I guess the solution is to give scrappers more access to plus damage. More fuel for the 'SS for scrappers' campaign!

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isnt it mainly down to the epics? scrappers are LONG overdue for at least one more, they should have access to the tank ones IMO, body mastery/energy mastery is a clone on both ATs after all

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I was also surprised to see so much Brutin on the top half of the list. Apparently Gloom is REALLY good.

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Sadly enough, I'm not surprised in the least. The devs love Brutes.

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This has more to do with the fact that global +damage buffs and secondary buffs aren't taken into consideration, such as Shield's AAO. When those are included scrappers will bypass most of the brute numbers because of their higher base damage.

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Maybe, but that's only if the secondary is shields, lol. What other secondary will provide scrappers with the damage advantage they should have in most cases over brutes?

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fire armour, FE is 25% better buffage

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I was also surprised to see so much Brutin on the top half of the list. Apparently Gloom is REALLY good.

I was even more surprised to see claws so close to the bottom. OTOH, claws is capable of some mighty fine AoE damage output, so that may make some sense.

The last surprise for me was energy melee. I'm going to have to respec my em/fa now base on this information.

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"respec" it into a SM/Fire, thats much more fun now. I spent so long on my EM/Fire, got all the accolades I could under lvl 30, great build, tons of fun right up untill ET animation made it flow like treacle. Now its just a shell, stripped of its IOs

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I don't want to give up the acc boost from Tactics, and running both FA and Weave costs way more end than Tactics/Man.

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Just so you know Tough and Weave toggles cost LESS ENDURANCE than manuvers and tactics. The leadership toggles cost 17% more endurance than the fighting ones.


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Yes, of course they do, but that has very little to do with what I said. I said that Maneuvers + Tactics costs less endurance to run (a lot less) than Weave + Focused Accuracy.

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My bad, I misread what you wrote, put my own expectations on what I expected you to have said and from there on in thats what I saw whenever I re-read it, the brain does that

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brutes have to be at 85% fury to do the damage of a tanker?

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O.o


Brute at 85 Fury >>>>>>> Tanker

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so then why should tankers be able to "just blink and the power comes out!" where as brutes have to build up to it?

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I think every tank in game would swap gauntlet for fury, in fact fury was going to be the Tanks inherant at one point.

As it stands tanks do about 6% more damage than brutes off the bat so as Bill put it "a burp purs brutes over tank damage" there really isnt much of a build up.

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Tankers should always have the original animation. They are bastions of power... have so much reserve power they can look at Hamidon and say "lulz." To call up extra power is, to Tankers, but a laughable grit of the teeth... revert to the original ET animation.

A Brute... starts with the new ET animation... They would need to focus to attain such high damage... once a brute hits 85%+ on their Fury bar, the original ET animation comes back into play.

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so then explain this to me plox

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Dude thats just one guys imaginary solution to getting the old ET animation back, its not real......

SM/anything works just fine, i often forget to turn on my fire sheilds on my SM/Fire and plow through relentless missions untill something mezes me.

SM/sheild sounds lol-tastic in terms of mitigation and damage though

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brutes have to be at 85% fury to do the damage of a tanker?

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O.o


Brute at 85 Fury >>>>>>> Tanker

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so then why should tankers be able to "just blink and the power comes out!" where as brutes have to build up to it?

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I think every tank in game would swap gauntlet for fury, in fact fury was going to be the Tanks inherant at one point.

As it stands tanks do about 6% more damage than brutes off the bat so as Bill put it "a burp purs brutes over tank damage" there really isnt much of a build up.

SR = awesome

with brutes HPs it gains a lot more from scaling resistences (the lower your hit points the more resistence to all you get)

you get quickness which is like 3 lotgs worth of +recharge so thats 100s of millions saved

defence debuff resistence is easy to get all the way up

You can also soft cap out SR with just SOs, nothing else can reach essentially a perma god mode so easily.

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Tactics is now better than FA but maneuvers is a terrible power for scrappers, it costs more than weave to run and gives a pooptastic 3.5% defence, combat jump gives 3% and costs a fraction of the end cost or slot a steadfast +3% def for no end cost.

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Much of this is true, but most of the powers you compare it to aren't mutually exclusive with Maneuvers. I have maneuvers AND a steadfast +3 AND combat jumping. I haven't shelled out 300 Million for the PvP +3 Def IO, so every little bit toward the def cap helps.

More importantly, I'm taking that pool anyway, so I can get Tactics, which when slotted with Gaussian becomes a defense power itself. I'd rather have Maneuvers and Tactics both running than FA at the same end cost.

Basically, with Stamina and Leaping that only leaves two power pools, so the choice comes down to two of the three from Leadership, Medicine, or Fighting. I don't want to give up the acc boost from Tactics, and running both FA and Weave costs way more end than Tactics/Man.

So while maneuvers may not stack up to those other powers one-on-one, it's a false comparison. Its advantage is that it's a pick that gets me to something else I need, and does something useful to boot.

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tactics and maneuvers would not be as useful as boxing/kick, tough and weave IMO. Yes its one dead pick to get them but you get much more defence, resistence and therefor mitigation (and closer to def cap). You want to slot gaussians so much, throw it in build up. When using powers like tactics as a mule for IOs think about how much accuracy you can dial out of IO builds making tactics pretty irrelecant, my spines/da (which is purpled) has a 95% chance to hit whilst standing in a lvl 52 COTs mages chill of the night.

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I don't want to give up the acc boost from Tactics, and running both FA and Weave costs way more end than Tactics/Man.

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Just so you know Tough and Weave toggles cost LESS ENDURANCE than manuvers and tactics. The leadership toggles cost 17% more endurance than the fighting ones.

You want manuevers go for it, everyone should build to their own preferences and I love off the wall oddball builds, I have manuevers in my spines/da was taken as a lotg mule but I can even run it with my end recovery.

but we do agree that tactics is superior to FA