Neogumbercules

I've played a Elm/Nin stalker to 50. While I may have a bias view due to having one of the better primaries for teaming, the only thing I would change for stalkers would be to make placate, hide and AS inherent so they don't have to gut good powers out of the sets they get. That ain't gonna change, though.

Barring that, I'd probably make all AoEs auto-crit from hide instead of just 50% of the time.

Fire/Storm corr.

Freezing Rain contains -def, -res, -spd, and knockdown. It can also be slotted with the -res proc.

Rain of Fire contains -spd and tons of damage. The stacked -spd and kd keeps foes safe and flopping around on the ground. Then you're free to blast away with fireball and fire breath to finish everything off.

It's up every spawn so you get to provide a crapload of damage mitigation for your team and enough damage to make Fire/Darks wet their pantaloons.

If you're ok with getting help from a high level defender/controller you can get anything that makes you hard to kill then you can just storm Perez Park. Maybe a Kin then pair it up with anything that gets an early AoE or two. Mind/Kin controller can AoE sleep, then FS you. This is important because normally a high level fulcrum shift will cause the mob to scatter. Sleeping them prevents your lowbie from having to try and survive an alpha strike, and keeps the mobs from scattering to the 4 winds.

If you're gonna rule out being buffed, then a fire/nrg blaster is pretty sick. Again, Perez Park is where you should go. Pick your battles carefully though, and use plenty of inspirations. Back before they revamped The Hollows I used to find the high level groups of Trolls that were always standing around the explosive barrels. Hit build up and throw Fireball then Fire breath at the barrel. It explodes, kills everything, profit. I would stack up on inspirations from the troll contact in between kills. Good fun.

Plant/Fire dom - Kin/Dark Defender?

I've been playing a plant/earth for a few days now and I've never, in the 4 or so years I've been playing, played a character that was so powerful so early on. By level.. 12 or so you'll be able to totally shift the tide in every battle in a ridiculous way. Seeds is THAT good. It's amazing. It's a game changer. It turns every spawn into a useless sack of HP. Level 19 now with seeds six slotted 3acc/3rech level 20 common IOs and it's up every spawn. Power Boosted and Domination up and Seeds will last for 88 seconds. Longer than it takes to recharge.

As far as Earth, I've only got the first 2 attacks, tremor, and power boost so far. It's pretty good, but to be honest, seeds totally steals the show. Who needs a secondary?

Imagine being a corr and getting Fulcrum Shift at level 8. Or Shield Charge, or Foot Stomp, or Rain of Arrows. Imagine having access to those powers at level 8. Seeds is THAT good.

This was a total disaster red-side. The lag made it totally unplayable (we're talking 20-30 seconds between clicks). Not just me, my entire team and a lot of people in /b were complaining about the same. We never made it to the finale because some level 54 arch-mages killed -everyone- before we could make it across the bridge in Cap. Most people that started it left before the arch-mage battle because of the lag. By the time we got to them, there were maybe half as many people, and not everyone was level 50, so they were useless against them.

Next time I suggest using mobs that have the GM conning system, like zombies have, so everyone can participate equally. Oh, and upgrade your servers.

I'm currently playing a Spines/Elec scrapper. Once it's fully evolved I'll have:

2 damage auras. They also have secondary effects in the form of -recharge, -speed, and -end on top of good damage.

Spine Burst. Good PBAoE, exotic DoT and good secondary effects.

Throw Spines. Ranged cone with tons of damage.

Ripper. narrow melee cone that does superior damage.

Fire Ball. 'Nuff said.

Unlimited endurance, a so-so heal, and enough resistance to keep it standing. Good god-mode power when you want it. Oh and Lightning Reflexes to keep those AoEs recharging 20% faster.

I haven't decided if it's gonna be "better" than my fire/shield scrap. /Shield kind of breaks the game a little. If you want something that's just... uber. Click. Spawn dead. Move on. Try /shield. If you want something a little more...involved. Try Spines/Fire.

I'm playing up a spines/elec at the moment and it's really fun. I like the idea of having capped energy resistance, tons of S/L with Tough going, and infininte endurance with Power Sink/Energize. The heal is ok and if you're not afraid of inspirations you've got a very sturdy build that has tons of damage and two damage auras to melt everything around you. Grab Fireball from your Epic and you're golden. Pick fights against enemies that are heavy on the S/L/E damage, like Rikti, and you can steamroll very effectively.

I just hit 21 and it's starting to take off now. It was kind of a slog getting there, though. Crap ST damage and endurance woes can slow you down. Like most scrapper sets, once you hit SO range it'll start to come into it's own.

OP, you're neglecting the fact that, if you're farming, you're gonna have a rain of inspirations. Delete/combine everything that isn't green until you have a tray full of greens. My capped Fire/Shield does this and...well who needs a self heal? Unless you're totally against using inspirations this is a much more ideal solution as opposed to wasting multiple power picks to get aid self.

In my opinion EM was fine before the nerf. I didn't have a ton of experience with it pre-nerf, as I had just gotten ET on my brute before the bat came down. However, this was a set that did nothing special until you get ET. That's your uber power. The one-hit-wonder that makes the set. I don't understand why they arbitrarily decided to single out EM in the first place when you can point at practically any set and find a power that pushes a set over the "edge." Foot Stomp, Fulcrum, Fault/tremor, Freezing Rain, Shield Charge, Lightning Rod, Fearsome Stare, Seeds of Confusion and more.

Other than ET, what did EM have? Stacking stuns against single targets. Good. Not great. Whirling Hands is not even worth mentioning.

It just seemed so random to nerf EM when they did, and as badly as they did. Well, I guess one could chalk it up to PvP, which is a pathetic excuse. As far as I'm concerned, all they need to do is is give ET the old animation back so it restores the feel of the set. Leave the stun mag nerf in there if it makes everyone feel better. They may not have fundamentally changed any powers, but they fundamentally changed the entire feel of the set which in my opinion is far worse than breaking the "cottage" rule.

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that ST damage chart is pretty useless when you wanna compare EM to other sets and say "SEE SEE! EM is FINE! Crap AoE, best ST. Balance!!!" To me it's like comparing a Ford Taurus with a 1000hp engine to a 500hp Ferrari and saying they somehow compare because the Taurus can win on a half-mile drag. Put them in a real-world scenario (race track with actual turns and varying conditions) and the Ferrari would smoke the Taurus every time and look a lot better doing it!

I'm not sure if the numbers were somehow made to factor in regular team-based scenarios so someone correct me if it was. Maybe EM can beat out everything else in ST when you stick it in an empty room and have it whale on a sack of HP. That says nothing of how it actually works in-game, either solo or on a team, or whether or not the set is any fun. Most opinions I've read from EM players more experienced than I seem to agree that the ET nerf ruined their love of the set.

More AoE is NOT what the set needs. It needs it's old feel back.

Defender numbers carry over to pools as well. Just another thing to consider. Seeing as how you're going dark/dark, though, both of those will provide enough -tohit to floor normal enemies after a few powers anyway. If your primary focus is damage the corr is the best choice. That said, if you're more interested in Dark Miasma rather than Dark Blast, you can go defender since they have DM in their primary so those powers come a lot sooner. With Dark Blast your best powers are the ST blasts and the two cones, and those all come by level 20 on a defender.

Weird. Usually the devs stealth nerf accuracy every issue.

Thanks for the heads up.

So most people would agree that time bomb is a pretty useless power. It routinely shows up in those "worst power ever" threads. It takes forever to detonate, and no team is gonna sit there and wait for you to plant it and wait for it to go off. On top of that, the interrupt time is ridiculous. It's almost impossible to place effectively in advance because by the time aggro is set it's gonna be hard to plant it without getting hit and there's no guarantee that there's gonna be anything close enough or alive enough to hit by the time it finally blows.

My suggestion is to change it to "Remote Explosive." When you take the power you get two powers. Remote Explosive, which plants the bomb, and detonator, which causes the bomb to explode. This would go along with speeding up placement time and drastically cutting the interrupt time.

This would make the power A LOT more fun to use. It would also solve the problem of Time Bomb being a totally redundant and crappier version of Trip Mine that's impossible to use effectively.

The two mine powers would then compliment each other. Trip Mine can be the weaker but faster recharging damager that can be used defensively and Remote Explosive can be the huge boom for when everything needs to be dead right now!

Get yourself stealthed and lay down a line of Trip Mines a ways away from the group of enemies. After that's done, sneak over to the foes and plant a remote explosive. Run back behind your defensive line of traps and mines and press ZE button! BOOOM! Enemies get blown all over the place! The survivors shake themselves off and come running after you only to turn the corner into 3 more trip mines, an acid mortar and a poison trap! Everything is dead and they never even knew what hit em!

Lets face it, traps is not the kind of powerset that will ever play well with the fast and furious play style most people are going with these days. Hell, I can BU, Shield Charge an entire spawn to death by the time a trapper gets his first trap down when I play my scrapper. Personally, I think this suggestion plays perfect with the way traps is designed. It's a more methodical, slower paced, but very powerful set when used to its strengths. It's very much a defensive set, and that's why I think changing Time Bomb in such a way would be awesome.

Ultimately, the problem of the team not waiting for you to set up 10 traps is always gonna exist. That's not gonna change unless they dramatically alter the entire set. This is why it's best to just play to the strengths of traps and give it something unique and less redundant than Time Bomb so at least that way people who enjoy the set can have fun with it.

Oh never mind. Found the official site and apparently it's being updated regularly. I had though the original maker had quit and a few other people were making unofficial updates for it. Seems it's back in order now, I guess.

Elogost, you read my mind. I was JUST about to type the same exact suggestion you just made. Unfortunately I then realized it would be in violation of Castles cottage rule. Basically, the devs don't want to fundamentally change what a power does, or it's mechanics. For Burn to be in compliance with this rule, it would have to remain the same power, just having its values/effects tweaked to make it more useful.

Really, all they could do to it if they were gonna follow the rules would be to remove the fear and change the target limits/damage. Maybe they could give it knockdown or something but keep the fear. Something like that.

But what you're suggestion would fundamentally alter the power. I don't like the "cottage rule" either, but it's not gonna go away.

Just to get back to the original topic here with my two cents. My IO'd Fire/Shield can:

-Stand in an aggro capped spawn of level 52 custom bosses and /dance

-Kill said group with extreme ease.

-Solo Pylons with ease

-Solo AVs with ease

-two-shot entire x8 spawns on normal maps

-puts out about ST 260 dps on a build I threw together off-hand with absolutely no intention of making a high ST damage build.

-almost never runs out of endurance, and even if it was getting low I can pop conserve power or a blue

Most of the time I kill off an entire spawn of enemies before they can even react. For the few stragglers left behind after SC and FSC there's almost no danger they can present me with. Some might say that you can make a build that is theoretically more survivable than /shield, but in actual practice my money is on /shield totally outperforming any other set in actual gameplay terms. Like Frosticus said, this game is about killing enemies and /SD does that gloriously and while it may not be the absolute most survivable out there, it's still enough to bulldoze the vast majority of content in the game and make regular enemies completely trivial so what difference does it make?

Of course when it comes down to what you want to play, just play what you think is cool. My first character ever was a claws/da scrapper I made back in I4 when everyone was running with their unkillable /regen and /sr god scrappers and burn tanks.

Any fully matured scrapper will be powerful, especially when you IO them out. That said, I do think that /Shield is the "best" scrapper secondary when you determine what is the scrappers primary job, and what set is the best at facilitating that. A scrappers job is to kill things while surviving long enough to be the last thing standing.

Shield provides you with the be-all end-all powers of AaO and SC and it provides 95% damage mitigation when IO'd. What else is there to say when your alpha strike can wipe an entire spawn of the face of the planet and 95% of every attack they manage throw at you gets deflected? Even the few attacks that do get through are reduced by damage resistance and /SD gets a HP boost, making them all the more tough. That's before figuring in inspirations and team buffs. Speaking of which, /Shield scrappers boost the survivability of their teams as well with extra defense. Compound upon that all of the awesome slotting you can do with shield especially in terms of spots to put uniques and the pendulum swings even more in /SDs favor. This is all without even talking about what kind of extra tools your primary can bring to the table.

If someone were to say "there's no reason to play any scrapper than /shield" they would be correct, but only if what they meant was "there's no reason to play any scrapper other than /shield IF you want absolute numerical superiority."

Of course, as others have said, the set is definitely less superior when you're not using IOs. Basically, when it comes to a scrapper, and you're willing to IO it to the gills, any set combination is probably overkill for most content in this game.

tl;dr, play what sounds cool to you.

It's been a while since I've made a build and I remember there were a few "unofficial" mids updates out there. Can someone point me in the right direction for what people are using now?

I have been getting the flickering issue as well. Using 10.3 catalyst on a 5770. When the screen flickers, for a split second I see a freeze frame of my character from when the first flicker occurs before returning me to the game.

I reactivated my account after several months to try out i17 but now it's impossible to DL the test server for me. Seeing as how the connection once the DL is actually done still seems borked, I'm just gonna avoid it and hope it goes live soon or they fix it. For those that want it, there's a fix in the "0kb/s" thread in here. It involves hijacking the EU updater.

I agree Ninjitsu would be an awesome set for Scrappers. It's probably only a matter of time until they get around to porting it over. I played it on an ELM stalker all the way to 50 and had a blast.

Don't worry about all of that super expensive stuff. Keep an eye out for Touch of Death, Mako's Bite, Red Fortune, Scirroccos dervish, and Obliteration. Make sure you get tough and weave and put the steadfast 3% def IO in tough. You can get one of those super easy by doing bronze rolls with MA tickets at the lowest level. 60 tickets for a roll. When you wanna start getting the really expensive uniques either farm Ouro or do TFs to earn merits. It's up to you whether you want to do random rolls or work towards a specific set, but I've been lucky with random rolls in the past.

You don't need anywhere near 1 billion to get a high recharge, soft-cap DM/Shield. Once you get there though, you'll be practically invinicible. Like Werner said, once you get Fireball you can use that and shield charge to fill in your AoE gap. Not great, but it'll do you. The real magic is your ability to solo pretty much anything once you're built right.

Necro post, maybe but I was searching for spines/elec info and came across this thread. I'm pretty much in agreement with adding a taunt to lightning field.

I'm voting for Fire/Storm. While it lacks the self-heal and pet of /dark, you get a similar but superior tar patch esque power in Freezing Rain. You can slot that with a -res proc, giving a number of enemies in your debuff an even greater smackdown. It also comes with a big -def debuff which will be a great help in being able to hit higher level enemies. The knockdown is just icing on the cake, making it even hard for your foes to escape. You also get access to hurricane, which is just plain awesome in the right situations. Lightning Cloud has awesome graphics and adds a lot of damage, and Tornado is a good chaos power.

However, /dark is still probably the safer solo set but not quite as offensive as /storm. Your massive debuffs, Fearsome Stare, your own heal, plus everything dark servant does will be able to keep you alive against most anything.