Madadh

All true, but there is a fairly huge gap in between a fire brute (or tank) on a fire farm (ie fire damage only) and a blaster.

Also, it looks like in your numbers that your Dark/2gun got the damage reduction for chem rounds figured in, but the Sonic/2gun didn't benefit of the chem rounds.

And I'm not sure I'd assume most blasters are running tough and ED mastery, but I don't run blasters much myself so I can certainly be easily talked into believing it.

The Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection (the one that goes in a travel power) will also disable if you exempt more than the levels below the level of that IO, too.

I farm with my Claws/SR scrapper, and love it. Serious damage output from the get go to the end of the mish with no need to warm up the fury bar. Scary durable to almost everything. Wade in vs toxic and not care. Psy enemies, don't care. End drain, don't care. Debuffs, don't care. All the things that usually piss me off or make me slow down I can just ignore.

That said, full disclosure, I don't have a Claws/SR Brute at 50 to compare it head to head. May have to add that to my 'to-do' list.

Also, feel free to ask here for definitions if there were a few you didn't see in there that you'd still like defined.

I've always hated this mission even on my well over capped /SR scrapper.. And she has plenty of -slow and +move and is as close to capped to DDR as you can get.. I just hate getting reduced to a crawl. It's no threat at all, but still...

I've played nearly every possible def combo out there. And yes, I can see the appeal of cardiacs end reduction. But unless I'm running a toggle heavy set, and stacking many toggles on top of it from pools (like only melee sets can do), I just can't see getting cardiac. I've always found the +end from musculature to be enough. And the added damage too be to awesome to pass up. Granted, I play my defs on the aggressive end of the spectrum.

I guess it depends on what you want to do with your def. If you want to be reactive, then the end reduction will probably pay for itself many times over.. If you want to solo much, or be proactive, then skipping the extra damage isn't the best plan. In my experience. And I've tried it both ways, and always found cardiac to be a waste of my shards..

But, I'll admit to being limited to an offensive play style. So my perspective is likely limited,

I used Power Mastery. I think almost any epic could work, however. (Except maybe Mace mastery, as I think the def can be capped without mace, and the extra resistance is helpful. I'm sure you'll find others that disagree). And yes, any build pushing it's limits will rely on inspirations. But with a strong enough build, and enough Inf invested, and a willingness to fail, you may not need inspirations.. I have always used them, but I know folks have been able to succeed without them...

I even use temps, too. And I don't regret it. I don't get the big difference between throwing out a shivan and throwing out a Lore pet. To me the difference is very abstract.

So, reliant on inspirations, no.. Do you like to succeed more often? Yes? If so, then use inspirations. You don't get bonus XP or drops for doing without inspires.

OK, I'll admit, I haven't read through all the pages this topic has generated. But are we still honestly debating if DA needs a buff?

Short answer, no!. It wasn't one of the strongest on SOs alone, but it didn't suck. With IOs, it can achieve levels of backside-whooppin that are just crazy.

It could use a thematic tweak, perhaps (the not capped to neg is a valid point), but all sets could. Does it need any changes to be viable? No, not in the slightest..

Pure healing, I'd say the best AT is a Def. Then a MM, assuming the MM pays attention to the rest of the team, and not just the pets. Then Trollers, then Corrs.

My responses are, however, a blended response factoring the raw numbers and the psychology behind the ATs as well. If you went just numbers and ability, I'd say Def, Corrs, Trollers, MMs. Either way, if you want to make healing your main focus, Def is probably the way to go. And Emp the set you want.

All that being said, you really should also consider and factor in other things, like buffs/debuffs and offensive potential, as CoX really isn't a 'heals' driven game. I'd take a blended heals/Buffs/debuffs/offense teammate over a 'pure heals' teammate any day. And I'd be far from alone in that in this game.

Rad sonic is a hard target killer.

FF is always beneficial to a team, unless you are running AE farms that are tailor crafted to have nothing of any real threat to your team. Massive extra Def helps offset def debuff, and helps (albeit, slightly) enemies that have insane accuracy bonuses. Also, many people lack Toxic resists, and -end resistance, and you can provide those. Also, you provide a broad area of mez protection. Granted, versus a lot of content, the team might not need some of the exotic protections you provide, and that's fine. Build to attack in the meanwhile.

If you use your team bubbles (the 2 you can't give yourself) to pick up some set bonuses, you'll most likely end up with plenty team protection anyhow, and then just focus on personal defense, and offense. A large part of your personal defense will come from Dispersion Bubble, and so heavy slotting on that helps the team anyhow.

I think it's possible to get pretty insane defensive numbers (including some pretty decent resistances) so your bottleneck solo will be kill speed and maybe in some cases some types of mez and end drain (which you can't give yourself resistance to). For the most part, you're going to be relying on positional defenses, tho, so if those are high enough, it'll only be a few types of enemies that are a pain.

In my opinion, calling repulsion field 'meh' is a vary charitable evaluation. There are a few people that have found situational uses for it. But myself, even if I grant those situation uses are fairly common (which is debatable) I'd still not consider the power a better choice than a lot of other things that you could pick. Vary rare is the alt where I don't wish I had another power pick or two. (Granted, even rarer is the alt where I didn't wish I have more *slots* but that's another story.) And yes, it drains a lot of end. It's an AoE, and unlike other AoEs, it's endurance cost goes up per enemy affected by it. So, in the instances where it is most pressing to be tempted to use it, it's most likely to very quickly eat up your blue stuff. I'm not sure I'd want it even is it had a flat end cost, but it would be a LOT more tempting a power choice. Of course, that is just my opinion, and I'm sure we'll here a few people chime in with the opposite opinion soon, so you'll have to choose for yourself and see what you think. Maybe it'll work for you and your play style.

I do like force bubble, situationally. It's often quite helpful solo, but takes a lot more finesse and practice to use well on teams. And, a lot of the time, the best way to use it on a team is to leave it off. Persoanlly, I'd take it, use it solo to your hearts content, and get used to how it affects the enemies, and how you can herd them up, or bunch them in different ways, and then not use it on teams at first. When teaming with friends or people you know, let them know you wanna experiment with it, and if they're cool with that (and friends should be) use it as you see best, and get feedback. PUG teams that dislike it will often only focus on the negative effects and not give ya good feedback on what they found helpful. If you get any feedback at all. Friends teams will tell ya what you did with it that was good, and what was a pain in the backside.

Elec seems to me a tad light on damage, and potentially high on mitigation, if built to sap. Your primary is quite durable, too, so you will likely struggle on damage output more than survivability.. I'd say you could solo a lot more than you'd want to try to solo, because who wants to spend 3 hours per mission. I honestly can't ever seeing this being a farming alt, but I could see +1/x6 maybe being doable in not too much time... Assuming you build for damage output form the elec, and not for sapping.

For generally solo survivability, I'd say hitting the 30s in positional defenses is a good start. If you can't get all 3 positions, I'd be willing to see a lesser value for melee, as you can Force Bubble, or KB to keep melee at bay. Truthfully, I don't think getting on to the 40s or even capped to ranged and AoE should be TOO tough, but it's been a while since I worked on my FFer.

And, you always have PFF to fall back on, so....

A valid point, except, endurance reduction beyond the point where you are regenerating endurance faster than you spend it is wasted (sappers type encounters excepted). Extra damage is almost never wasted unless you are one shotting everything you come across. And since almost every encounter requires you to reduce an enemies health bar, the extra damage will be useful in almost every encounter.

It is probably even moreso the case for the OP, who stated that, "honestly most of my attacks are slotted to debuff." I'd assume that means he didn't get all his attacks slotted to teh ED cap. In that case, musculature will be ever more help.

I think instead of a new set for this, perhaps they just need to add more skins to AR.

I could get behind a bunch of new weapon skins for most all the weapon sets. I'd not exactly lobby for a new weapon set to be added. If the mechanic was interesting, I might be OK with a new weapon set, but I'd be probably happier with an interesting new mechanic tailored to, say, magic origin alts. A set that looks like spell casting, or something similarly magicly thematic might be nice.