Moonlighter

Am I the only one who will have as much trouble uninstalling Mid's as I will the game itself?

Thanks for all the discussion. The scrapper forum has been, by far, the best sub-forum I have participated in for discussing any game.

I wouldn't use respecs or resources changing my build right now because i24 is on deck and it allows you to add a significant amount of resistance to a build. It will have new ATOs, new sets for powers, and lots of set changes that directly address your goal of adding resistance.

I like your new build much better.

You are underslotting Energize. You really want it perma. I would go with a 5 piece Doctored Wounds. I would steal slots from Weave. You are only using four Global Recharge IOs from Luck of the Gambler so you will want one in Weave. That will lose your E/N defense. So change Weave to have 3 slots with LotG in it. If you are really concerned about the Negative defense then I'd drop either drop Eviscerate for Focus and slot Thunderstrike, or slot Eviscerate with Eradication/Multi-Strike combo for E/N defense.

As an aside, if you are going to use purple IOs then the build can be improved in a number of ways but it gets expensive. Slash should have 5 purples and the -Res proc from Achilles Heel.

If you happen to get card packs then it is worth it to use the enhancement boosters on the Recharge IOs in Hasten. With that and Agility in your alpha incarnate slot you will have perma-Hasten.

I know it doesn't seem it now, but with perma-Energize, Energy Drain under perma Hasten, Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection you will have more Endurance then you know what to do with.

That means you can drop the HOs in Kinetic Shield and Power Shield and add in a Def/Recharge from Luck of the Gambler for more hit points if you drop one of the Crushing Impacts for a purple set.

Once you hit soft cap you need to decide to either go for incarnate soft cap or to build for recharge so you get perma Energize.

The Touch of Death sets are not good for you. The bonuses they provide aren't particularly good with this build. I'd swap them for Crushing Impact for the recharge, especially since in i24 Crushing Impact is getting some resistance.

Your defense powers are better off slotting with Luck of the Gambler Defense, Def/End and Def/Global Recharge. The hit points will be better for you, especially with Energize providing a regeneration buff.

Dampening Field and Energy Protection are auto powers that don't use endurance. The HOs are useless. You'd be better off with a 4th Reactive Armor to boost your S/L defense for incarnate stuff.

I don't think you need to use your resistance passives for S/L and E/N defense. You are well past the soft cap, and not close enough to incarnate. Instead I would slot 3 Aegis for the F/C defense. This will let you get rid of all those slots in Taunt.

Overwhelming Force is a waste in Focus. It lacks recharge and Focus already does knockdown. You need to pick up Shockwave and slot it up with this set. Then Focus can be used for E/N defense (Thunderstrike) or recharge.

Energy Cloak should be 3 slotted with LotG. Def/End, Def and Def/Global Recharge.

Energy Drain needs more accuracy and recharge. You don't need the +Endurance in there because it will only be useful if you are hitting multiple foes and 3 or more enemies should be filling your bar.

You can slot multiple +Endurance, so that can go into Endurance, Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection if you need extra endurance.

I don't understand how you can overslot defenses for endurance reduction and put no slots into Stamina. At the very least Stamina needs EndMod, EndMod, PerfShift +Endurance. I generally four slot it with PerfShift for the hit points and recovery.

I don't like the Brute set in Spin - it needs to go into Follow Up. If it is in spin then you will need to keeping spamming Spin when you are damaging a single hard target like a AV.

Follow Up needs to be slotted like an attack. I would stick the Brute set in there. If you really want the Gaussian's proc in there then either 5 slot the Brute set or use 5 Crushing Impacts.

Entropic Aura only needs a single slot with a end reduction IO.

If you are going to take Overload then leave the default slot and use it as a mule for the PvP IO. As an aside, with such low resistance scores the 3% Resistance PvP IO is probably not worth the cost.

Put the Regeneration and Endurance unique (and their slots) into Health, not Physical Perfection. That way they are available to you when you exemplar down. But sure they are at minimum level.

Not to be a downer, but the only reason the OP pulled that off is that there happened to be an Empathy defender in the group. Without that particular character the actual scenario in that situation would be that the defender would take a ranged mez from the DE, the toggles would drop, and the defender would die instantly. The empathy mez protection is what really made the difference.

I've said this elsewhere, but come the next issue /Elec will be really powerful. Screw defense soft cap, you can hit resist cap to S/L and, of course, Energy. Plus I was seeing ~75 to F/C. Adds the staff 7.5% resist bonus and F/C is in the 80s! What Fire/Cold hole?

This is on a build with 30ish defense to S/L, perma-Hasten (and Energize), with unlimited endurance, drain resistance, and a damage aura. Crazy stuff.

There is a huge difference between DB and Claws. Claws has much more mitigation in the form of knockdown and a ranged attack to catch runners. Focus and Shockwave (with the Summer Event set) are both good mitigation. Spin is a beast as well. They play differently because Claws needs to constantly bounce around to use Shockwave well. DB sort of stands and delivers.

/Elec is a beast of a set and it will only be getting better in i24. My current i24 theorycraft build has capped resistance for S/L and for Energy (obviously) and ~75% resist for F/C. This is a build with unlimited endurance, perma-Hasten, a self heal combined with a regen boost, and a damage aura. It also has around 30 S/L defense, but I think I can play with the build and get that to 32 so I can cap with one small purple.

I don't think /Elec will need help from its primary once you hit end game, though leveling at can feel squishy if you are used to sets that can soft cap early.

...in a crazy, I doubt it will make it to live kind of way. Using Follow Up + Tactics + Kismet to make the snipe perma-fast, and then going for perma-Hasten to bring the recharge down. Fun stuff.

There have been some good counter points here. Some I can see, some I just don't understand.

~ The argument that Shadow Maul is fine because people skip it and get their AoE from outside sources baffles me. From what I can tell many people that are arguing against a change to the cone size don't actually take Shadow Maul in their builds. I honestly can't fathom or respond to this argument; I just don't get it.

~ The point that Dark Melee can leverage Soul Drain and Dark Consumption as AoEs is an interesting point. I understand the point, but I have a hard time considering powers with a 120 second recharge and 180 second recharge to be serious AoE damage dealers. In order to even use these every spawn you will need to be perma-Hasten, and even then Dark Consumption is up every 40 seconds.

At its best a Dark Melee scrapper enter a spawn and hit Soul Drain and then hit Dark Consumption. At that point you will have (assuming target cap) +150% damage for Soul Drain (50% base plus 10% per target up to 10 is Red Tomax City of Data is to be believed.)

Soul Drain hits for 55.05 + (55.05 * .96) = ~107
Dark Consumption hits for 68.82 + (68.82 * 2.46) = ~ 238

The total damage in this cycle is ~ 345.

A minion at level 50 has ~430 health not including resistance.

After this you'll be sitting on a spawn that has many minions at 90 health, Lts at 507 health and bosses at 2235 health.

At this point you will either be using Shadow Maul or you will be hitting everything else with single target attacks for the next 40 seconds or so. I am not seeing this as a legitimate AoE strategy. The only other option is to go outside the set for AoE. That's fine, but all sets can boost their AoE with that strategy so I can't really see using that argument against balancing this set.

(Edit: So assuming we hit Soul Drain again in 30 seconds, that will kill of the minion if they have no resistance. So if we then concentrate on hard targets we can clear a spawn this way and let Soul Drain finish the smaller stuff. Two points here, that strategy doesn't work if the spawn is +1 or higher or has any resistance to negative. It also leave you with a 30 second gap before you can use Soul Drain to damage the next spawn.)

~ The point that Dark Melee has great single target damage is fine, but I haven't been able to get exceptional single target from Dark Melee/Shield. Yes, I use the pylons to measure the DPS. Single target damage is great early, but once the fodder dies off the damage just drops off and the time to kill the last part of the pylon drops dramatically.

To respond to the person that says pylon times aren't important, I don't disagree. Single target damage is only good for hard targets and stupid scrapper tricks. We are, however, discussing the single target advantage that Dark Melee has over other sets and using the pylon to do that is simply a decent substitute for how the set will perform against hard targets.

~ The point that Dark Melee has a a lot of utility is a good one. Having a good endurance management tool in the primary is a big advantage. Having a heal in your attack chain is a great advantage. I am less excited about the ToHit debuffs which substantially drop off as opponents scale up, and most people I have seen skip Touch of Fear because the game tends to scale to a place where single target debuffs and soft controls that require DPS loss aren't really useful.

Is this utility enough to warrant Shadow Maul's small cone? I don't mean to sound like a jerk but I am still of the opinion that Shadow Maul could use a small buff in the form of a bigger cone.

They are both good. Dark Armor will be a rough ride up due to endurance, but since TW has gobs of AoE so you can concentrate on Endurance management with your Epic Power Pool. It will be somewhat easier to defense cap /Dark, but you won't get the high resists to Energy which are really useful endgame.

If I was considering either set I'd go Brute though.

Having resistance bonuses between 2% and 5% or higher would be bad for the game. Defense capped characters can still be pressed by bad luck and the game is tuned to deal with defense capped characters. Resistance capped characters provide way too much consistency to provide moments where game decisions are crucial.

I suspect that you will see something like the following:

Bonuses are paired (like defense) to S/L, F/C, E/N and Psi and Toxic.
Small bonuses are in the neighborhood of 1.25
Medium bonuses are in the neighborhood of 1.88
Large bonuses are in the neighborhood of 2.5

So excited for new IO sets and a revamp of some of the crappier set bonuses. That was totally unexpected. Here's hoping that the melee sets don't all start with the crappy resistance to Immobilization! And getting new defense and resistance and targeted AoE sets is great.

Thank you for a revamped Bricktown with improved 30-50 level content. This was so needed. Love the concept of the Zig jail break. I am hoping the prisoners will be reduced during normal times and instead be available during the break out. I also hope the breakout includes named Elite Bosses. That would be awesome.

Power Pool and APP customization is wonderful.

Of course I am also excited for the various blaster changes, the new Dominator and Blaster sets, and the pool revamps.

This looks like it will be my favorite release for a long time.

Stretching (As people have said)
Chain Melee
Acrobatic Melee (less like current Martial Arts and more like Jump Kick)
Swinging Travel Power
Wall Crawling / Climbing
Laser Blasts (Not like radiation, but rather thin lasers like laser beam eyes)
Toy Mastermind (I don't know why comics like this but they do)

I am not saying something like Swinging or Wall Crawling would be feasible, but they do appear in the comics a lot.