KillerShrike

They are both fun; play whichever you prefer.

But if you play a tanker...please actually tank. I'm always baffled by players that run tanks and seem to think they are a scrapper or brute. If you don't want to hold aggro for a team and be a team player or you want to be a primary damage dealer, then make a scrapper or a brute. It's better for all involved. You'll have more fun, and your teammates wont be dismayed when you run around facesmashing while everyone else gets shot to hell.

Some of the powersets in the game, particularly the older ones, have multiple animations for some of the powers in the set.

You can pick them in the costume designer on the same screen you pick the colors for the powers. There are drop down lists on the powers themselves.

Note that even for many powers that don't have a different _animation_, you still need to pick a different _tinting_ option to color the powers using the same drop down.

Super Strength and Martial Arts in particular have significant variation in their animations.

Personally I prefer the ground punch to the dainty little foot tap for Foot Stomp; it just looks more superheroic to me.

Enjoy!

Staff is good on all the AT's that can get it (including Tanker), and mixes well with various mitigation sets.

I personally like Stalker the best; it's a beast. I have a lot of fun with my Staff/Ninjitsu.

A little slow to post, but I dinged three more 50's over the last few weeks...

RE-ZA (Scrapper DB/WP)
Prefab (Mastermind Bot/Traps)
Crimson Citadel (Scrapper EM/SD)


My son got his fourth 50, and his first one that I didn't help him level:

*Rockgardian (Tanker SD/SM)

Now he's working hard to get his next one, Street Racer (Stalker SJ/Nin) to 50 by his 6th birthday in about 5 weeks. He's already up to 34 and going strong. His challenge on this one is to do all the enhancements himself too.


*(amusingly, my son originally misspelled the character's name as Rockgarden; I told him we'd get a rename token if he got the toon to 50, so we re-christened the character with his originally intended name)

Sadly, not that I know of.

/wdwsave will save the UI layout but not slots
/wdwload will restore the UI layout but not slots

but this is 1 layout for your install, not 1 per character.

/cleartray will wipe all your power slots for the current character which is useful after a respec.

I really wish there were something like

/powsave save slots
/powload restore slots

that created and restored a character specific power slot set up.



Depending on how many enhancements you are planning to switch around, Enhancement Unslotters might be a viable alternative. If I just need to tweak something, I usually go that route to avoid a full respec.

My MA/SR is just shy of iCap as is, so I'm going with Assault. I'm going to try Core first and then lazily build Radial as time permits to try both.

I've got the third t3 over slotted currently (inner right), and haven't really noticed a big difference.

All in all I've been pretty underwhelmed by Hybrid on the three characters I have it on currently, and also by the Magi trial, so I've been unmotivated to unlock and slot it on my stable of 50's. If it weren't a pre-req to keep going up the incarnate tree I'd probably skip it on most of em.

I prefer Scrapper for TW.

I toyed around w/ TW/WP and it was ok, but TW/Electric Armor worked out better for me. YMMV

Axe matures late for tanks as you get your AoE's last. In the mid to late 30's you should gel together.

As for END, 22 == SO's. Slot for END and you should be fine.

Just wanted to say, feeling much better about the direction this is now taking. Thanks for listening to our concerns!

I'm not frothing mad or anything, but I am very disappointed by the complete train wreck this has turned into.

The company may have the right to alter the content to maintain "balance" or quiet vociferous complaints, but they also have a responsibility to do so professionally with a minimum of shenanigans or churn, and are wise to do it in a way that does not antagonize their customers...particularly the "good" high-roller customers who spend more than the minimum on the game. The described approach does not seem to take this into account.


So, I'll wait and see what the outcome is after its been coded and put out for us to test before passing judgement, but it _sounds_ bad as explained and seems to intrinsically create problems. "Solutions" that spawn new and significant problems are rarely a great idea, in my experience.

But while I'm waiting and seeing, I will _not_ be buying further SBE's, or more Paragon Points other than my subscription until this is all sorted out and I can tell exactly what my money is buying. I certainly wont be picking up the 3 or 4 sets of hecatomb I was initially planning on getting.

It wont break the bank for the studio if I stop spending in their shop, but at the level of one long time customer and fan, the impact of this debacle is a loss of revenue for Paragon of an average of $100 a month. Likely I am not the only person who will curtail their spending, based upon the ambiguity this decision engenders.

So in summary, this is a bummer.

Yeah. I like Beam Rifle solo and on small teams...but on most big teams you've gotta be quick on the buttons to keep up, and avoid the longer animating attacks. It's kind of a bummer.

I've noticed it in the past with Kinetic Melee...and for non-melee attacks Beam Rifle.

It might be a case of the attack sets that have special mechanics, such as applying buff stacks or checking buff stacks or disintegration tagging, and so forth running thru detection logic that slows the damage resolution.

I'll try to pay more attention to Street Justice, Dual Blades, Titan Weapon, and so forth suffer from similar issues.

I liked it on Beta, I like it Live. My and two of my compadres are enjoying it; we're trying it out across Tank, Stalker, and Brute and leveling up together. We are tweenys currently.

We don't think Staff Scrapper seems very compelling; given the DoT nature of the AoEs and middle of the road ST damage we didn't think the crit factor would be very exciting. The serious number crunchers could convince us otherwise, but that's what it looked like to us.

We settled on Inv/Staff for the Tank, as it seemed like the AoE +DEF would pair up nicely w/ Invincibility and at low levels the END reduction Form is helping pay for the toggles. At higher levels we think the +RECH form will help with reaching perma-Dull Pain earlier, and the +DMG form is available when more damage is needed. So far so good; the toon is very sturdy so far.

The Brute is Staff/Electric. We were originally going to do Staff/Fire but the player changed their mind at the last minute as they wanted a bit more sturdiness in the end game. The damage output is very good, but we expect that to taper off a bit as Brutes do tend to benefit more from Fury in the early game, comparatively. The END discount form has really helped to avoid resting / converting everything to blues.

The Stalker is Staff/Ninjitsu, and is mine. It's kind of a bummer that the Staff Mastery isn't available, but on the other hand having the +DMG form permanently on and ALSO getting a Build Up is more than a consolation prize. Having Assassins Strike really helps the single target damage. I chose Nin to give us a little bit of utility as leveling up three melee toons together we have no guaranteed support. It's not much, but the toolbox options of Nin give us _some_ options, which is better than _no_ options.

Overall the damage is a bit sub par so far compared to the other melee sets we've done this with (StJ, Dark/Dark, and various weapon combos), but not terribly so. It seems to be about the same as when we trio'd Axe, Mace, and Titan Weapon. I expect that as we pick up the higher end ST powers it will improve. However, the survivability is excellent, thanks to the generous +DEF power, and (stalker aside) the flexibility of the Forms offers utility at the expense of some damage, and offer pairing options with various defense sets.

We all like the animations (but, two of us used to play Soul Edge / Caliber and both liked to play Kilik, so there you go). And when all three of us synch up with the PBAoE's its quite spectacular.

The Staff fun quotient is high for us.

AS from hide to start off, but you should be able to stay in the fight and scrap as effectively as a scrapper.

You lose AoE and some hitpoints compared to Scrappers in the abstract, but comparing specific sets that is less true or significant.

Build up stacks of Assassin's Focus and then pop someone.

Placate is basically optional now. If you take it at all, take it late.

If you put the Stalker ATO Chance to Hide enhancement in Assassins Strike, you go right back into hide after your initial opening AS. That makes your next attack a crit.

I wouldn't pair regen w/ staff, or any other weapon set.

Regen on a brute is better than regen on a scrapper, but its still going to fall short of the top end mitigation sets.


As to your opening question...Staff Fighting, Brute or Scrapper?...consider expanding that to include Stalker. I've been playing around with it and staff seems to work well with a Stalker, and for added fun you stack both the staff form buff and Assassin's Focus.

I just made a staff/ninjitsu stalker and ran it up to 10 street hunting in atlas & hollows. So far so good, but I'm a bit concerned that I might run into END issues later on.

I was strongly tempted to make an Staff/EA stalker instead, but went w/ Nin at the last minute for no real reason other than it felt right.

Ice Armor looks so tempting, but a) I struggle to come up w/ a good concept to fit it for most sets, and b) it really is just so very ugly...I really don't want to have to look at it.