Moonlighter

~ I'd change the Build Up slotting to Adjusted Targeting Rech and End/Rech and add in a Rech IO. That saves one slot.

~ I hate crash powers so I'd change Tough to use Glad Armor Def/TP Prot and Glad Armor Def/End. That keeps the recovery bonus. That lets you drop One With the Shield and pick up another power. I'd look at Grant Cover with another +Recharge if only for more Defense Debuff resistance.

Some players like the panic button crash powers though so take that advice with a grain of salt.

~ I'd drop a slot off Hasten. The third recharge isn't worth the slot, especially if you are relying on Ageless to solve End issues. If it bugs you then take your +Enhancement slotters from the cards and increase the two remaining Recharge slots. That saves another slot.

~ I'd drop the Shield Wall from Combat Jumping. Your resists aren't high enough to warrant the increase. That will free a slot.

~ Id drop the Acc/Dam/End/Recharge from Whirling Sword. You are at cap in Damage and Recharge without it and the last bonus is lackluster. This frees up a slot.

With three of those free slots I'd 6 slot Weave and add a full Red Fortune. That reduces the redundant regen bonus and the unnecessary recharge (which we added to Grant Cover) and give you damage, recharge and extra Ranged for incarnate content.

Some other stuff to consider.

~ You still aren't incarnate soft capped with one Parry to melee. I still question the AoE defense - I think I'd rather swap an Obliteration into Shield Charge to get you to 58.5 melee defense. That's just shy from incarnate soft cap with one Parry, which makes you less reliant on Parry in your attack chain. It also means you can drop Parry to increase your DPS in normal content. In addition the only good Scirocco's bonus, the 10% regen, was wasted by the rule of 5. (You can use +Enhancements to reach soft cap but making your Defense IOs into +5.)

~ If this is your main there are a lot of enhancement bonuses that could be tweaked upward with Enhancement Boosters. Mako's damage IOs, LotG defense IOs, Obliteration's EndRed and Recharge IOs, Numina's Heal IOs in True Grit.

~ If you keep One With the Shield with the Gladiator IO and absolutely need more AoE you can squeeze out 1.56% by three slotting Tough with an Aegis. You could even 5 slot it (instead of 6 slotting Weave) with Aegis for the extra 3.13 AoE defense to replace the Scirrocco's. This is just an alternate build strategy to keep in mind as you slot your build.

Finally got through the thread. Some thoughts.

~ Increasing the tanker damage cap is a great way to reward them when paired with Kins and other force boosters, but it really doesn't help them when plodding along doing solo missions. That said I wouldn't have an issue with an increase to tanker damage caps so they can get more benefit from group buffs as long as SS tankers don't pull even further ahead with a third Rage stack.

~ Brutes and Scrappers are not tough enough to tank high end content that has heavy debuffs. Carnies, Arachnos Widows, DA Banished Patheon, all of these can wreck most Brutes and Scrappers because of the severe debuffs. I'd like to see tankers have an inherit and fairly high resistance to debuffs and drains.

~ Brute resistance caps should probably be dropped to 85%.

~ I wouldn't mind Tanker taunts having a demoralizing effect that gave foes a debuff that reduced total Hit Points. This would help them defeat things easier without increasing damage, act as a damage multiplier on teams in a unique way, and reduce the effects of regeneration on opponents.


Edit: Colossus is probably a Brute and these days defeating Wolverine is not really an accomplishment as every girl scout with a super suit does it.

I am running a MA/Shield in DA. I am not noticing my stacking stuns from EC and CS really disabling enemies much. Are people seeing good use from knockdown? I am considering trying Crane Kick with the knockdown set from the Summer Blockbuster but I am unsure how many DA mobs are susceptible to knockdown.

Some questions about your build:

I don't usually rely on incarnate powers to deal with endurance recovery - is your incarnate layout really enough to fix the endurance problems with this build?

I would dump Serendipity for 3 slotting LotG. That will yield much better hit points and regen. Take the 4 saved slots from Deflection and Battle Agility and add two slots to Stamina for a 6 slotted Performance Shifter set. That change will save you two total slots, give you more hit points and regen, give you more AoE defense, give you another 2.5 damage bonus, and give you 3 more 7.5 global recharge IOs.

Put those extra slots into Manuevers and slot with 3 LotG. That will give you extra defense, endurance management, hit points, and regen.

I wouldn't run BS/Shield without Aid Self unless it was for concept (ie. I was a magic oriented character.) Since Targeting Drone is important enough to your concept that you would gimp your build I would be surprised if Aid Self didn't fit into that concept.

Your Whirling Sword slotting is interesting. Doubling up your ATO is providing 3.75 melee, which is the same bonus as full Obliteration. Replace that with Obliteration and you will gain accuracy and recharge at the cost of hit points, but you will also free up the set to add 5 slotted into a power to get another 10% recharge and 4% damage. Something to consider.

You seem to be favoring hit point bonuses, but then undercutting True Grit. By failing to slot it for full healing you are losing a whopping 6% hit points. I'd keep 4 slots in True Grit and move one slot to health. True Grit can then be Steadfast Res/Global Defense, Heal Heal while Health gets the uniques for Numina, Miracle, Panacea and Regen. That would increase your Hit Points by another 6% at a lose of 1% resistance to F/C/E/N. To be honest your resists aren't high enough for a 1% to make a noticable difference, but 6% health coupled with your regen will be better I think.

You are wasting a lot of slotting on End Recovery to keep Targeting Drone when you could be taking Tactics or Focused Accuracy and Conserve Power and/or Physical Perfection. Can't you use the veteran Drone pet and the Lore drones to get across the concept so you can fix up your build?

The Titan Weapon bosses have a build up type power. When they hit it you have to kite out of sight for 15 seconds then return to kill them.

ClawsAndEffect pretty much has it dead on.

What he didn't mention is you'll want Phase Shift. You'll want it to escape, and you'll want it to prevent other people from escaping since if I understand things correctly, a phase shifted character can attack another phase shifted character. I dislike the phase shift meta game but if you are PvPing you should be aware of that aspect to it.

Personally, I wouldn't go through the aggravation of trying to make a melee character work in PvP unless you have PvP'd a lot as ranged and know what you are getting into. I'd start ranged, probably a Dom with Aid Self, Phase Shift, and your APP resist power and then once you have a good handle on the PvP scene decide if you really want to go melee.

So I was finally able to get on and spend some quality time with the Banished Pantheon at +4 x8.

First, it's not really +4. I have my setting maxed, but I am at +3 due to my incarnate powers. That really waters down the challenge. I find that tip missions at +4 x8 are much harder than DA missions. But then they don't give Incarnate rewards.

The most important thing when fighting this group is to get *out* of the fields they drop, particularly the lightning field. The frost field is severe but easy to see. If you jump into a group and you are in a lightning field you have only a short time to get out of the field before you are dead. This kills me faster than defense debuff.

My typical spawn: Pull with Laser Beam Eyes, hop back around line of sight, kill the mask minions that appear first because they are so fast. One LBE or a small kick will one shot them, and the radiation masks are disproportionately dangerous. If I can get the spawn to group at the corner I can hit Focus Chi and Shield Charge. That will clear all the minions and Lts. Then I just kill the bosses. If it's double radiation bosses I might have to kite and Aid Self one or two more times.

If Ion is up the process is much easier. That will kill off all the minions and severely damage the Lts. I can then jump up and finish the Lts, kite around the corner and Aid Self, and then hop back in to finish the bosses. You have to start kiting early - when you are at 2/3 health - because you have to survive the DoT damage to use Aid Self.

I use Rebirth so when that's up I have more staying power. The heal is bigger, I can use it with the DoT damage, and the early Regen is very good.

I can see why you'd have problems. Your build is a bad one for this kind of group because you can't kite. Your heal requires multiple targets so you can't break line of sight and heal up and, if I recall correctly, you don't have a ranged attack to pull with. That must be annoying. Since you skipped your big attacks you also lack knockdown.

How is your damage? One thing that helps is I can one shot minions, 2 shot Lts. and take out a 54 boss in four or five attacks. This helps when kiting since I can eliminate a strung out spawn almost as fast as they come around the corner. I also have a mini nuke with Shield Charge that has good mitigation which you lack.

If I did this on my Katana/Dark scrapper I think I'd slot up Energy Torrent with the new anti-knockdown set. Not only would that give you excellent mitigation that wouldn't scatter the enemies, but the extra 4 points of knockback protection doesn't suck for your build. You could pull a group, hop back to a corner, and do a massive knockdown to open before you jump in. By the time the enemies got back up your fear should lock them down and you can throw your heal in relative safety.

They are both good. It comes down to several minor factors.

~ Animations and flavor.
~ Whether you like the combo point system of StJ.
~ If you can live without the extra AoE if you choose MA.

The whole snipe mechanic seems gimmicky. It make sets without a snipe fall behind. It buffs corruptors and defenders more than blasters. It sets up a situation where players who can't make their snipe perma-fast will just complain endlessly until in three issues a new power, IO, or incarnate ability will be added with a ToHit bonus to appease blasters.

It just seems like a bad design to introduce this mechanic to buff blasters when other ATs can easily make it perma and blasters cannot.

Honestly I'd rather have the mechanic make snipe perma when damage bonus hits a certain level so blasters can build up to it with defiance.

This all assumes 22% To Hit?

Which means these comparisons are only good for /Devices and /Energy?

Or am I missing something?

Have you thought about active mitigation, like Energy Torrent? I know Shield Charge seems to help with the knockdown though I am only running +3 x8 and using inspirations.

Also, you might want to consider using the Lore pets. This isn't like DPS checks where the pets obscure the stats we want to measure. The content is designed with those pets and at those settings leveraging the pets is a non-trivial play style and design exercise.

I would like to add to the chorus that this thread is pure win and this type of community communication is awesome.

Fairly cool changes. Certainly interesting.

~ I love the tier 3's being boosted to 80. I love it with Archery, and I think it will improve the blaster experience. I wonder if Archery will get love since that was a perk on the set. Will it be changed in Assault sets? I am curious if Doms will see the ranged increase.

~ The changes to Snipes are... interesting. It certainly in an interesting addition to Devices. Being able to work Snipes into a reliable rotation is a nice boost for that set. Although it seems to me to be a bigger boost for Defenders and Corruptors who can hit the 22% with Tactics and Kismet than for Blasters. The design will tend to create a situation of haves and have nots - the blasters who can use Snipes reliably in their rotations and the blasters who still won't take them. I doubt I would waste the power choice and slots for a Snipe I could only use during Build Up and with Inspirations.

~ Adding a big regen and recovery boost to specific secondary powers is nice, but that wouldn't save me from the times I face plant. Those tend to come fast, and usually involve my defense dropping due to toggle suppression from beng mez'd. When I need a heal I need it immediately. I'd rather have a self heal than a boost to regen. It will speed up, I think, the process of running content at my current settings but it won't allow my to boost my settings much if at all.

As people have pointed out, Dual Pistols has no Snipe and thus misses out on a big chunk of the boost to blasters. Thank goodness I am not running Dual Pistols/Devices where I can't leverage the implied boost to /Devices.

I am glad, if I understand what was said correctly, that the set is getting animation love. Yay! Will they will bring Dual Pistols in line with other sets only to have it immediately fall behind again because it doesn't have a snipe? Let's hope not.

I get the feeling I am one of the few people who are blown away by Fearsome Stare. That power alone with no recharge bonuses other than the power itself can keep entire spawns perma feared. I don't have anything like that in Fire/ for example. Only Mind/ and Plant/ have anything similar, and Mind gets it much later. And the Ice Patch knockdown power; that's also very good.

Dark Control is really good. Not plant, but good. I am running incarnate content at +3 x4 currently. Now that I am perma-dom I could probably go higher, but since the overlap is still small until I get my purples sometimes I blow it hitting Hasten and dom drops so I keep my settings at x4.

Having a fast recharging single target confusion that doesn't cause agro is amazing to open with on those double boss spawns. One of the strengths of the set is being able to start havoc with confusion without causing agro, but in missions with ambushes this isn't as useful.

The only issue I have run across with Dark Control is Nemesis since they are resistant to Fear and Confusion - my go to powers.

Dark Assault is okay. At least it has both a PBAoE and a cone for AoE unlike some sets. It lacks the additional PBAoE of psi, but it has a self heal which is unique as far as Dominators go.

I would love a system that allowed the freedom to make duplicate names.

Class/Archetype designs based on overwhelming alpha strikes are generally terrible and usually, if they are effective, break the game. I would support some extra damage, but I would argue against an overall design goal of making blasters the alpha strike specialists.

I favor Arcanaville's overall concept of active mitigation. I don't like the primary attack increasing in damage based on the number of nearby targets (I don't think that effect is worth the server performance hit personally) but a short duration splash fear effect on attacks would help mitigation in a way that was fairly unique. Whatever the boost, it needs to work on ambushes!

I know people don't like snipes, but if a snipe could reliably defeat a high con Lt. and splash fear that would be a big survival boost and it might win me over. Reducing a spawn in that way is actually a great survival tool, especially since many groups are designed to have one problem child. Even at +2 x4 starting a fight by eliminating the sapper/sorcerer/illusionist/etc. and splashing fear would be a great solo tool. It would even help with a single boss since you are basically opening up by reducing their health by half and splashing a fear on them so you have time to set up a follow up.

I agree with people that blasters need better single target ranged damage and that there is a buffer right now in the game that you could bump their damage a bit and still be within the parameters set for some of the high end melee attacks. Single target ranged damage in particular is much lower than it should be.