Nihilii

Staff/aggro aura would be my pick (so 1. inv, 2. wp, 3. ea). Staff isn't particulary impressive in pure damage but it's just a blast to play.

TW is extremely powerful, but people seem split between those who hate Momentum and those who don't mind it. If you don't mind it it's certainly the best choice you can make from a power perspective and also quite fun with plenty of AoEs, some with wide radius. Since you're VIP, I'd say check it out on Test before committing to a purchase on Live.

I use everything as it comes, but I don't go out of my way to get consumables, unless I'm stuck on a particular task and need the extra boost.

Was you're over reaction over an minor terminology issue so neccessary, as long as its the same affect?

I like the idea and am all for the proposed reward levels in the OP.


Monster island and hive/abyss is populated by monsters, not giant monsters. Monsters do not reward merits.

My own personal picks for level 1 to 50, based on the idea that performance in this game is determined by how fast do you kill mobs and that safety, given a sane starting point, can relatively easily be obtained as needed through converting every inspiration into purples with the occasional breakfree. You may or may not agree with this particular perspective, different metrics will produce different results. With that in mind, here goes:


Blaster - Fire/Psi

Bit of a no brainer, for the early on one-two punch Fire Breath + Fire Ball as soon as level 8, and Drain Psyche later on.

Runner up: Arch/Psi. Takes a little bit longer to get going, but has quite devastating AoE output once you get to 32. Drawback: redraw.


Controller - Fire/Kin.

This particular combo always got flak for being supposedly only good for farming, but that's mostly because it was so good at that lots of folks hopped on the bandwagon and made terrible builds. Pick Ring of Fire and Char at level 1 and 2, slot these for damage and you can deal very nice damage at low levels (due to containment and AT mods not scaling completely until level 20). At level 20, it starts being slower solo, although you should have Fire Cages, Hot Feet and Flashfire and can do a decent job at taking down groups of minions/lieuts; but regardless, you get SB which is invaluable for teaming. At level 35 you get Transference fixing any endurance woes and level 38 gives you Fulcrum Shift. As for epics you get many options, thanks to Siphon Speed getting Hasten and eventually Indomitable Will on a reasonable recharge is an option (although it won't be perma).

Runner up: Plant/Kin. The AoE immobilize does twice the damage it does in any other primary, meaning it does half of the damage of Fireball. Not so impressive, you say? Once you factor in the 8s recharge, the gigantic 30 feet radius and the fact it sets up containment for itself, it is quite nice. Throw Seeds of Confusion in there, which you get as soon as level 8, and you get a slightly slower but much, much safer character.


Defender - Time/Fire

With defender mods you can reach fairly high numbers of defense combining Farsight, (epic) Powerboost and perhaps some toggles here and there (if nothing else, Combat Jumping is a must - on any character). Think 40 to 45%, so, yep, the fabled defense softcap is attainable even on SOs here. Time also provides ghetto aggro management through powerful movement slows, allowing you to get the most of your Fire AoEs (and Rain of Fire eventually, which as a pseudopet uses fixed, blaster damage rather than defender damage IIRC) without things scattering to the four winds. Endurance will be a concern in some situations but the inherent helps on that front. Still, you'll likely want to pick Conserve Power (and hence go with Power Mastery as to have PBU, which also works like Power Boost and is on the same recharge as Farsight).

Runner up: no real suggestion. Cold/sonic is great for teams with very potent -res debuffing on tough targets and great teammate mitigation as soon as the first levels but lacks significant AoE output for soloing.


Scrapper - Titan/WP

TW is, well, TW. No other scrapper primary can really compete in pure power. You get a cone giving you +11% melee defense as soon as level 1, and spamming this alone using no other powers could carry you through the low level game. Your second AOE comes at level 2 and by level 26 you should already be a damage powerhouse.

The two issues are going to be 1) keeping stuff in range 2) having enough end management to sustain TW. WP gets its aggro aura at level 16, which while not fantastic will do the job against up to +2 mobs and will still work if intermittently beyond that. QR by itself won't sustain TW, but it will help, and at level 35 you can pick Conserve Power from the epic pools. WP has the advantage of being all passive so you can spend all your time attacking.

Runner up: TW/EA. Much like WP, EA alleviates many TW issues. However, its aggro aura is even worse at 2.25s duration and 2s activation, meaning it might (I'll confess I haven't tested this particular combo myself yet) start losing aggro, or at least having mobs doing the out-and-in dance, as soon as they are +2. The +recharge in EA's aggro aura may not be as useful as it would on IOed out characters as even without recharge you are going to have to watch that end bar, and it is more click intensive if slightly so. There are positives though, the aggro aura is available as soon as level 10, and the end management is trickier to use but also more potent.


Tanker - FA/SS

FA is reasonably sturdy as long as you're willing to use purple insps to complete your resistances and fast-recharging heal, but what it more importantly brings is extremely endurance efficient damage. Blazing Aura is the most efficient damage aura as it deals the most damage, Burn has a ridiculously low endurance cost - it's low even as a singletarget attack, but it can actually hit up to 5 mobs. You also get Consume to refill your end.

SS helps on that front too, with the damage boost brought by Rage being worth much more DPE than its cost, crash included and all. Even better is the tohit, which is IMHO very underappreciated even on IOed out builds, and is even more critical on SOs where you don't have the luxury to build for godlike accuracy and decent tohit. Foot Stomp and KO blow complete your toolbox nicely, for some extra damage but also some extra mitigation.

You could easily run out of end if you spam everything you have on that character. I'd say go crazy while your end bar is at 20% or above (or if you have consume recharged), and only start using Burn (and eventually Taunt, if you have it) after that. You'd be surprised how fast things still die.

Runner up: for a completely different character, Ice/Fire. Ice Armor is good enough on SOs, and between Energy Absorption and Fire Melee's overall efficiency in DPE due to its DoTs being essentially "free" damage, endurance is taken care of.


Brute - Titan/EA

TW for the same reason as on the scrapper. EA instead of WP as the aggro aura is much more potent on the brute version (on scrappers EA actually has a weaker aggro aura than WP, which already isn't fantastic), and brutes can make slightly better use of the T9 thanks to their higher HP cap.

Runner up: Titan/Elec. Gets a damage aura, immune to endurance drain, same endurance management tools as EA, and being resistance based can stack purples easily to reach very impressive survivability. The flipside is, of course, it lacks any form of defense or DDR, so better watch those defense debuffs preemptively. It also can't manage its T9 as well as EA, as it is a health *and* endurance crash at once.


Corruptor - Fire/Cold

Admittedly takes a while to get going on the secondary side, but once you get there, you'll be glad. Snow Storm keeps things in your Rain of Fire early on, Sleet does the same later. Heat Loss will be a tremendous help for your endurance.

Runner up: Fire/Dark. No big reward at the end of the road like Fire/Cold, but with Twilight Grasp, Tar Patch, Darkest Night, Fire Ball, Fire Breath and Rain of Fire by level 10, you're free to AOE your way to 50 with minimal concern for your survivability.


Dominator - Earth/Fire

Earth provides controls in loads and in all forms. AoE stun, AoE slow, AoE sleep, KD patch, hold patch and a taunting pet, you have to try really hard to die on an earth dom.

Having survivability covered, all is left to do is look at damage, and fiery assault provides. As soon as level 2 Incinerate is on par with a mid-to-high tier scrapper attack, Fire Breath and Combustion makes for some decent AoE output, and eventually with Blaze and Fire Blast you will deal very good ST damage as well. Add Consume and Domination to refill your endurance, (epic) Sleet to boost your damage further, and it's quite a powerful character on SOs.

Runner up: Fire/Psi. Much maligned since the rebalancing/nerf (depending which side you sit on), it still retains decent AoE damage and average ST damage, but more importantly a fantastic +regen and +recovery tool in Drain Psyche, arguably better than on a blaster as with the superior survivability a dominator gets through controls you can make use of it more reliably.


Masterminds - I really don't know enough about the new powersets to have an educated opinion. MM performance isn't too defined by IOs though, and I would guess a Bots/Time would still rank pretty high on the list, with pets reaching high defense fairly easily and spamming those burn patches coupled with Time's slows.


Stalkers - Street Justice/Ice Armor

Every stalker primary is perfectly fine thanks to the AS revamp, which gives you a ridiculously powerful attack as soon as level 6. StJ pushes this even further eventually, with controlled crits on Crushing Uppercut, which is the second highest ST damage move a stalker can get (the first being ET, which can't crit and saps your health).

On the Ice side you get a slow aura helping to keep things in range, or at least running away not as fast, complete slow immunity, decent defense and DDR, great endurance management in Energy Absorption, and Icy Bastion is just the cream on top giving you high resistances, regen and recovery when you truly need it and without a crash.

Runner up: KM/Ice. Kinetic Melee lets you do 100% criticals with a PBAoE (unless that's been changed, not sure), and your T9 instantly recharges BU.

Using CoD numbers as they're pretty reliable and fit my memories of either power...

Caltrops - 2.78 damage per second during 45s. End cost: 7.8 per patch.
Scrapper Death Shroud - 12.51 damage every 2 seconds, instantly. End cost: 1.04 every 2 seconds.

So that's 6.255 base DPS for Death Shroud, for an EPS of 0.52 and a DPE of 12.03. That would make Caltrops more than twice lower in DPS (also worth noting it is restricted by the pet damage cap). To match Death Shroud in DPE given those conditions, Caltrops has to hit enemies for at least 12.03 * 7.8 / 2.78 = 33.75 (34) seconds in a row. There's also the animation time on Caltrops, whereas the aura can be activated outside of combat or kept always on, and the aura taking a damage purple proc.

All of this discounting the scatter effect, which is significant and should not be ignored IMHO unless you have a fast-recharging AoE immobilize. Admittedly, it has a bigger radius. Still, I would tend to say if judged on damage alone, Caltrops is not competitive with damage auras. YMMV.

Not sure if you're aware of it (the way I read your post it seems you might be saying Build Momentum is the only way to build momentum), but you actually build momentum with any attack, for 5 seconds. Top chains plan around that, only attacking once per ~7s out of momentum save for the eventual miss, and good builds can attain devastating ST damage as well as stellar AoE output. At the high end of the performance spectrum, few other melee powersets can compete with TW in either of these categories, and none in both. It's not like it's bad while leveling either, as you get a cone Divine Avalanche as your level 1 power.

For that matter, even without Momentum TW would probably be a great set - average looking in subpar analysis ignoring radius, but great in actual gameplay for that very reason.

So... What is the deal with Degen? I've tried to look up the numbers and it says 0.8 as much damage as reactive and 1,000 hp per stack on hard targets, which doesn't seem all that high compared to reactive with my weak napkin math.

Level 50 AV = ~28,272hp, regens ~93.75hp per second
93.75 * (28,272 - 1,000 / 28,272) = 90.43
93.75 - 90.43 = +3.32 DPS

On the other hand, -2.5% res is already +5 DPS on a 200 DPS character, +7.5 DPS on a 300 DPS character and +15 DPS on a 600 DPS (i.e. while Lore is up) character.

What am I missing? Genuinely asking, I just resubbed and I haven't had the chance to test one yet.

Edit: I see. Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to test all of this and write it up in a very precise way.

Haven't tried in the last months but there's no reason it shouldn't anymore, AFAIK.

It's not something everyone is guaranteed to be able to do, and I would wager even people good at it mess it up every once in a while, but if you manage it properly, EA is very, very strong.

TW is overpowered but boring, and this post is basically a lazy rehashing of what PleaseRecycle already said.

I strongly dislike "balance by inconvenience" in video games, but to be fair to the devs I suspect it's more the powerset *wasn't* balanced at all...

It doesn't really bother me, but I can't understand why some people here are apparently offended by the mere idea of giving other people the choice to not read admin chat if they don't want to. Is this one of these "I really like that thing, and you not liking the same thing as me is making me angry" thing?

Everytime I see someone taking res/def/heal numbers and claiming uberness based on that alone I think back of those melee types who tell themselves "wow, I'm such an awesome player" when they got outside buffing and wonder what the hell happened when said buffer leaves and they start getting killed.

No DDR, no slow res, low energy res and a heal reliant of having a foe near you everytime you need it are all significant flaws in highend content without relying on others to plug the holes in your build, conveniently overlooked flaws by people turned on by poorly calculated theorical survivability on a spreadsheet but not so much by the playerbase as a whole who actually cares about playing the game, hence why we don't see so many DA around.

Then people go on to tell themselves if most other players aren't playing DA, it's because they are uneducated masses unable to figure out how to understand the profound subtleties of the build or of its playstyle... Because this game is rocket science and so hard to figure out what with everything thoroughly explained since years.

That said, while nobody sane should buy the uber DA hype, it's not a bad set either and any complaint about its performance is misguided. It has potential power, balanced by inconvenience. You can't remove the drawbacks and keep the strengthes, so any balancing would result in the performance being smoothed somewhere in the middle point, and that wouldn't be nice to people who actually enjoy DA and deal with the shortcomings as it is.

Being myself tends to involve moving forward, having half of the team follow me and the rest screaming "wait! we're not ready" and everyone but me die as a result. Then they ask if I have wakies, but I don't 'cause I'm converting everything into lucks.

I usually did MSRs with one or two friends, also eventually teaming up any player that picks up on what we're doing and wants to join. People are way overestimating the amount of folks required to do this thing. If you can complete a STF or a RSF, you can do a MSR raid with the exact same team and nothing else (it is actually much easier than either of these TFs). The one important point is you have to split up (break the team) to plant bombs. Since the league system this is now easy as you can just form a league, move people to 6 individual teams as needed, then regroup once they've got their bomb set (on teams with lowbies it's also best to break the grates first, as people won't be sidekicked anymore during the time they're in a solo team). Hang in the bowl, have some lucks handy for spike damage and a wakie for those times when rikti magis get cascading defense failure going and kill somebody, and enjoy your lagless raid.

My personal issue with defenders is they make the game too easy and not really fun at the same time (and I'm not one to believe an easy game is unfun).

Corruptors still make the game too easy but not always as bad, due to lower mods on buffs/debuffs, and are actually more fun thanks to higher damage, Scourge and getting those attacks sooner.

That said, I'm having issues playing either AT since I got the Blackwand. Why even pick attacks when a vet power you get at level 1 will do more burst *and* DPS, up until, perhaps, level 30... Sigh. Nothing except Fire Blast and Sonic Blast is worth playing, and Sonic Blast isn't satisfying. There's only so many fire blast characters I can make before wanting to do something different.

I love spamming my AoE immob. Stops KB dead, and annoys control freaks.