Kioshi

Thunderstrike needs a target.

lol have you played any Brute after the Fury change? Dive into 3 mobs, deal 3 blows, 50% fury with any primary/secondary on TOs. At the end of the fight you're at the usual new ma fury (70% iirc). Walk down a hallway alone, you still keep most of your fury when you get to the next mob. I suggest you monitor your damage bonus in combat attributes (if you ever played any brute after the change which seems unlikely).

Yeah, my dm/da scrapper planned 'maybe someday I'll do it' build (because I haven't played her in ages, having fun with TW and a blaster) is full of eradications on Soul Drain and even the damage aura because 4 erads are great for her secondary - energy defense and tons of +hp, energy is DA's weak spot as you know. But for SD I didnt bother with the damage and the proc and added recharge in the 5th slot, while the damage aura has more endred and damage from frankenslotting since erads don't cap damage.

For a DM/SR I'd probably use 6 oblits in SD for the +rech and the melee def, but I'd surely love an accurate tohit set with good bonuses since it could improve SD's tohit even more, you can do it with 1 acc+5 adj targetting but the set's bonuses aren't that hot. Or even 6 gaussians for the global defense if you have tons of +global acc but gaussians don't cap recharge and I find the BU proc meh even in a fast recharging power (but except for the global rech, gaussian has great bonuses overall).

I don't even consider the crash nukes, I only see them as 'fun' powers that will let you kill a mob once in a while instead of mashing more buttons or letting the team work in the spawn. I have fun with Nova but I don't think crash nukes are anything more than entertaining powers due to the absurd recharge times, unlike the crashless ones which are all very good (awesome in the case of AR and Archery).

Should I give more examples?

Fire/wp scrapper - no special synergy, but your fire melee powers will never get in the way of your secondary. Now TW/WP has synergy because the KD will help you regen while mobs are not attacking. Same way Energy Melee/Regen is considered problematic by some because EM has two loooong animating attacks that can get you killed when you need some clickie while kat/regen has synergy because of the +def power and the quick animations (I have an elec/regen stalker and I don't get killed while using thunderstrike but many people consider EM bad for regen due to the two long hard hitters, also the fact they're ST and do no KD like T-Strike).

Now, on to blasters - Dark/Dark, you'll never maximize your AoE cones and use the melee powers+Soul Drain 'at the same time' (figuratively speaking) since the ranged cones require jumping back, so primary gets in the way of the secondary - you don't hit a lot of targets with Tentacles at point blank like a fire blaster does with fireball or Rain of Fire. Rad/Fire or Rad/Dark - no need to ever leave melee and use all your AoEs at will, Electron Haze is a cone but it's skippable on rad blast. My Dark/MM can just use Aim+BU and spam cones, jumping to melee to get a regen/recov boost from DP is not as troublesome as having fast recharging melee/pBAoE attacks. And with the 3-cone chain you can skip PSW, while a dark/dark has fewer AoE options outside of epics so skipping Torrent for the KB is not as viable since it's a good AoE.

It's painfully obvious. Just bear in mind, this has nothing to do with the toon being good or not, or your choice to do more ST damage is not valid or etc. As I said, the blaster I enjoy the most is a NRG/Ice, most of my toons aren't powergaming material, at least the ones I really like. My main hero is a mind/emp and I still think mind/ is better on a dom because my troller has no reliable way to set up containment and do AoE damage on teams (no immob, and the combo of mass hypnosis + terrify or epic AoE doesn't really work in teams since they break sleep almost immediately). I have an IO'ed incarnated SS/Fire Brute that is absolutely crazy on damage and can survive well but he's been at the market for months because I got bored with him and I make more money at WW than farming with him, which is another thing he excels at. My main villain is a EM/Nin Stalker, and while it's still a good combo, I'd be better off with KM/Nin or Elec/Nin, I just enjoy EM.

All I'm saying is, if it's still not that obvious, is that from all dark/dark combos we have in the game, the blaster one is the only one that some primary powers may get in the way of the secondary ones and vice versa (well unless you get corr/def Torrent which is a sucky power since it does little/no damage, I can't recall, and a dark/dark corr or def doesn't need the extra protection from KB, maybe not your blaster either, but Umbral Torrent is good damage). I never said it's a 'bad' combo. Oppressive Gloom was a little detrimental to dark/dark Brutes when fury was harder to build, but now that you can get and keep Fury so easily with any set, it's not really to the point it gets in the way of your other powers since you'll be using Soul Drain before mobs wander away too far.

I don't like the creepy stuff. And I also find the fandom fascinating, I don't even like Pixar movies unless my friends/gf force me to go watch them, plus the last cartoons I watched (and got sick of) were Family Guy and Simpsons, but you know they're not kid material. Even weirder is that all the comments you see on the youtube episodes are from guys - I showed it to a female friend my age (30s) who's all into anime and stuff like that, she didn't care much. Now an older male friend who's almost in his 40s, happily married with kids and all, LOVED the show lol.

Yeah, and I don't want no-kb on my dark
I love having a good chain of cones since SOs on mine (Psy Scream - TT - Torrent) and with life drain plus drain psyche it's a very survivable blaster on SOs, the most I've ever had. Maybe I'll even skip PSW since I only go to melee to use DP (haven't got there yet), I also got TK Thrust as a 'get off me' power (not sure I'll keep it tho, since Torrent recharges kinda fast even on SOs and the tentacles also help keeping the mobs away). I love what they did on Dark Blast for Blasters (even the hold has good damage) because on a corr I wasn't feeling it especially with the lack of strong ST dmg.

Not that I'm 'opposed' to non-synergistic toons, I enjoy my energy/ice more than my dark/mm, she's a hover blaster and I do tons of maneuvering with her - a keybind to drop hover and use ice patch helps but I'm finding ice patch kinda underwhelming with the short 10' radius and 3.5 cast time, I have faceplanted some trying to protect suicidal scrappers lol.

That has nothing to do with the fact that the two sets are almost anti-synergistic, the best thing about blaster's DB is the cone chain and one of them does a ton of KB, which the other cone doesn't prevent (TT). A fire/dark can skip Breath and never jump back to maximize the AoEs (and then KB mobs with Torrent, uh, now it's hard to use shadow maul), neither a rad/dark since rad blast loves being in melee. Dark Blast has no targetted AoEs (ok nuke is a PbAoE but who cares, you'll never use it often) so you'll keep jumping back and forth to use the cones and all the melee goodness from the dark secondary. And Torrent, unlike the def/corr version, is a great power for damage and survivability.

Sure anything's playable and can be made good in this game but I see dark/dark on blaster almost on the level of an energy/fire in terms of synergy.

Pinkie Pie kinda had me from the start lol. Her song and all the shenanigans in the first two episodes made me watch the rest. I was also just finding it 'cute' then I really liked episode 13 (the one Applejack and Rainbow Dash compete), then came the Pinkie Keen one (1x15), then right after Sonic Rainboom, Stare Master, well I was hooked then lol.

I was still watching each episode only once but... the 2x03 one became my favorite and finally made me like Twilight Sparkle (kind of self-identification with totally freakin out with things that seem unimportant to others) and now there's no turning back, I watch some episode I like whenever I need a 20-minute pony fix

Heh good call, forgot about that one - I don't have it on my dm/da that hasn't been played in years and after that I only made DM Stalkers

It's not because of the damage, SD has a 120 sec recharge time and does less damage than Whirling Mace.

The reasons are:

1) There are no accurate tohit buff sets.
2) The bonuses from the newer PbAoE sets are highly desirable in most secondaries, like e/n def and +hp from Eradication, +rech and melee def from Obliteration. And these sets provide everything Soul Drain needs which is accuracy and recharge and being on a long recharge it doesn't need much end reduction. And dark melee can only use two of these sets, in Shadow Maul and Soul Drain.

Interesting, those HOs always haxing the powers lol (since Arm Lash doesn't accept any IO set with range). According to Mid's with these HOs even Brawl can have a 11' range instead of 7, or any melee power. That'd make it very worthwhile in powers with a huge arc like Crowd Control if you have the slots.


Becaules unless you're using ragnaroks, the only TAoE set that is worth anything is Posi Blast, and you'll likely slot 5 of them giving you 26% recharge max, so instead of using the 6th slot for some proc like the FF +rech like you'd do with obliterations or eradications you'll likely end up putting a straight recharge IO there since Posi's recharge sucks and you always want good rech values on your best AoE. Or if you're short on slots 5 pieces of Oblits are good enough depending on your secondary, 5 posis usually not unless you already have tons of global rech, and even then on toons like my perma hasten ss/fire broot I use 5 oblits on Footstomp to get close to 90% recharge instead of Posi's lousy 26.

Bof is a ranged cone, and like Fault, a ranged targetted AoE, benefits from range enhancements like dam/range from Positron (or the Stun/Range from Stupefy for Fault). Those two can also be slotted with vanilla Range SOs/IOs while Spinning Strike cannot.

Yup, mine's Scotaloo but because on Virtue ALL THE PONY NAMES ARE TAKEN

I do have two Sweetie Belles on Freem and Exalted tho lol.

Now c'mon let's share test results!

I don't know about the Stalker/Blaster version but the Tanker fellas say that CE is so good for holding aggro because it ticks every 0.5 secs while the others have a 1 sec tic rate. I know the Stalker version doesn't have a taunt component of course, but I'm guessing it ticks at least as fast as OG.

Nice to know, I don't see many invul brutes but I saw invul Tankers surviving stupid stuff, I was wondering if a Brute could do as well or close. The build is at 44.9% for s/l and 43% e/n with 1 mob, I think that's good enough because TW is hungrier than SS in power picks and slotting (and I don't want to get the pvp proc lol), resists are 70.5% s/l and 23% e/n (that part kinda worries me a bit but lots of energy damage are typed smashing right?).

I think Tankers are in a very good place now, while people moan about them here in the forums, lots of people play them, it's been crazy the amount of Tankers I've seen lately - 8 last Keyes, 4 in a Posi 1/2, 3 in a Sis Psyche... I softcapped an inexpensive sd/ma almost by accident with tons of rech, regen and +hp, in fact she was running around at 44.9% m/r/aoe at level 22 with SOs and using Storm Kick, If I had leveled her more (I really dislike Tanker damage even with 100% bonus from AAO plus she's on a server I don't play much) she'd hit the incarnate softcap with storm kick, and with great resistances for SD since you can slot more stuff for that unlike my FM/SD scrapper.

Well just like Call_Me_Awesome's guide to invul Tankers softcaps to s/l/e/n with 1 mob using smashing haymakers and other cheap stuff.

Thanks for the build Doc, it looks great, I really wanted to fit Hasten. Seems Cardiac is the way to go since resistance buffs are uncommon even in iTrials, Agility looks nice too and would softcap me to 1 mob and help with recovery and rech, but at least in iTrials most of my toons have their defense and recharge buffed to hell almost every time.