Moonlighter

An /Elec scrapper or Brute should have unlimited endurance. Between perma-Energize (which provides a global Endurance Reduction) and Power Sink the *last* consideration for the build is endurance consumption.

I do prefer /Elec on Brutes because Energy caps at 90% and you get a taunt aura.

I would be shocked if a taunt aura 3 powers deep into Presence would suddenly make melee characters scarce. And if it increases the presence of support characters I say "Yay."

A Scrapper won't be able to leverage Burn unless you get lots of immobilize powers or some kind of taunt aura. If you want Burn as a mitigation tool it's great as it will send your enemies running away. If you want it as a damage source it will be problematic. This means Burn won't be as useful until you can either get Tentacles from Soul Mastery, the Hybrid taunt aura which is up only half the time, or maybe Caltrops. That's a long hike.

Another thing about the scrapper is they cap at 75% resistance. Since Fire hits over 90% resistance all that extra is wasted on a scrapper. Brutes can hit 90% fire resistance which makes them extremely durable against those types of foes.

A Brute has a taunt aura and Burn is just brutal if you can survive. You also get the higher resistance caps. I'd go a Brute for this build. And I say that even though I generally prefer scrappers.

That said, your best bet will be to try to soft cap S/L. Yes, that means you will want to leverage Kinetic Combats. If you can't do this at least get to 32% so you are capped with one small purple. If S/L is capped you end up with holes to cold (rare) and Energy/Negative. You can work on getting up E/N as well since that will involve your PBAoEs or just don't worry about it and kill things fast. Soul Drain followed by Burn will be really strong if you can keep enemies in your Burn.

The nice thing about chasing defense is you end up pumping your recharge, regen and hit points because you can three slot each defense power with Luck of the Gambler IOs -> Defense + Def/End + Def/Global Recharge.

Um, I'm talking about the non-hidden 1.18 animation time version of Assassin's Strike. In a good AoE zerg group who is out of combat long enough for Hide to kick in? By the time I run up and throw my first attack almost everything is dead. Good for XP, bad for game play.

I think your post sort of ignores the point I was trying to make though, and that is that buffing nukes is buffing an AoE zerg style of game play that isn't particularly compelling, though it will be good for farming. I'd rather see a large modifier to single target damage then buffs to make AoE zergs more appealing strictly from a fun standpoint.

I also like the animation for barb swipe. I liked it way back when it was on claws. It is just terrible if the attack doesn't do enough damage to warrant the animation time. That was the issue with the old claw attack and is currently the issue with Barb Swipe. Moving the animation to an alternate Ripper and/or Eviscerate animation (assuming it is tweaked to match times exactly with the current animations) would be awesome. If they have the animation hanging around they might as well give us the option of using it.

The defense debuffs I worry about most never miss me; debuffs from Tarantula Widows, Carnie bosses and some DA mobs. I believe they are autohit or at least typeless.

Thematic explanations aside, we don't need an AoE placate atop two pools. But we could really really use a taunt aura at the top of Presence. No, wait... really really really use. Because that third "really" makes the difference here. Arbiter Hark and Synapse won't be able to deny me if I have a third really in my post.

Let's look at some of your quotes:

And then a post with no value except to elicit an emotional rise:

I'd look at your own post history before claiming someone's "motives are overly emotionally driven" as you put it.

I get what you are saying, but I rarely kite as a scrapper or a Brute unless I am testing my build at edge cases; ie. recently read a Werner post. In fact I set my difficult to be just at the edge of where I would have to kite to do normal content.

This assumes that the extra Brute staying power doesn't allow them to stand and deliver longer. I find when you are operating at edge cases this is often the case.

High health is protection against the alpha strike or rapid changes in incoming damage which is typically a weakness of Regen. Scrappers are much more susceptible to this. High health also boosts Reconstruction and the heal portion of Dull Pain, thus increasing the character's ability to recover from damage spikes.

It's an interesting discussion. Brutes don't get access to Shadow Meld so that's another factor in Scrapper's favor.

The changes to DP are welcomed, and they make the set competitive with the current environment, but come the new changes the set will fall behind again.

~ Once all other sets gain a crashless nuke DPs loses one of its big advantages. It's not nerfed, but it does lose ground in the balance scale.

~ DP still has redraw. This hurts its DPS when trying to incorporate attacks and defenses from its secondary. I always saw the crashless nuke as the counterbalance to the redraw sets.

~ With no Aim and no snipe the set loses a lot of burst potential that other sets gain. DP *really* loses out when paired with /Dev or /Energy that can perma Snipe.

Here's my suggestions for further changes:

~ Shorten the animation* on Piercing Rounds. Make the -Res debuff work with any ammo. Ammo dancing to keep up the -Res debuff against hard targets for the benefit of the group is annoying at best.

~ At 20 seconds Piercing Rounds should have a higher damage. Bitter Ice Blast has a 12s recharge and it does 142 while Piercing Rounds only does 128. That's pretty bad, even adding in Incendiary ammo. My guess is that Piercing Rounds is using AoE damage numbers but the "cone" which is more like a straight bolt usually only hits 2 and even that's unreliable. Someone skilled at it can get some 3 hit openings but that's tough and they probably spent enough time lining up the shot to waste several hundred damage worth of potential damage.

Like Shadow Maul, make the extra one or two enemies that may be hit by this power a freebie and up the damage to be competitive with single target attacks. This is not a power that will reliable hit 5+ enemies, and to leverage it requires time to position.

~ Why is DP's Suppressive Fire only 9.54 seconds while Archery's Stunning Shot and Assault Rifle's beanbag at the same recharge are 11.92 seconds? Both AR's and Archery's activation time is much shorter than Suppressive Fire. Why are all three of these substantially shorter than the hold in Bitter Freeze Ray which also does substantial damage? None of these stuns deliver damage at all. At least bring Suppressive Fire's stun up to par with Archery and AR.

~ Have a higher percentage of damage use the more exotic damage type when you swap ammo. It is an intuitive and cool gameplay element to be rewarded by knowing what ammo to use against which enemies. I suggest making swap ammo change the ratio of lethal to special damage to 50/50.


*Admittedly I am biased because I hate the animation.

When these changes go through Archery will probably need to be reviewed as well since it has redraw and it's main competitive advantage was a crashless nuke.

I run DA at +4 x8 on my MA/Shield as well. It's not that bad because it's really just +1 at end game. Run tips at +4 x8. I am curious how you do. That's the hardest normal content for my melee. My Dom has a much easier time on tips though.

You are going to make me resurrect my "MAN" build, aren't you?

Brutes are good, but they aren't even top of the food chain. Unless what you mean is farms that have enemies within a narrow range of performance.

I would agree for normal play. It might be annoying trying cutting edge tricks but I don't think a Regen scrapper can't be pretty good.

It's just that the nature of Regen highlights the strength of Brutes. For EA, for example, a smaller regeneration and energize heal isn't an issue because it's one part of the mitigation. Even Willpower has layered defense. On Regen it's the most noticeable of any secondary set, though, because Dull Pain exaggerates both of the Brute's health advantages and every Regen power except MoG is 25% less effective.

You run a Shield build +4/x8 on tip missions? I am curious how you handle multiple boss carnie spawns where pets have increased ToHit, the defense debuffs from Arachnos spawns, and Devouring Earth quartz. Are you just kiting everything all over the maps?