Nihilii

I think the blaster B would be more efficient in most situations, for multiple reasons.

It's a lot easier to get 100% recharge than 45% defense and 50% global recharge. In fact, the blaster with 100% recharge can manage to have optimal slotting and power selection, while the blaster with 45% def and 50% global recharge will have lower damage output or utility powers than normal.

I've yet to see a blaster build with 45% def (not even with any global recharge) that has the best attack chain available, force of nature maxed on res and rech, temp invul maxed on res and aid self with at least 2 interrupt and 95% worth of healing.

There's more to that. Best blaster ST DPS requires melee. A fire/elec can reach about 300 DPS in melee, yet the same build will have difficulties breaking 200 DPS if it sticks to a ranged chain (I doubt it'll come anywhere close to that with the sacrifices required to get 45% def and 50% rech). That's an enormous difference in damage output right there.

In other words, you end up with something that is much weaker than a blaster offensively, and much weaker than a scrapper defensively - 0% DDR, still no mez protection, possibly not capped to AoE, possibly no or few resistances and +HP, has to avoid melee range against flying foes or -fly, hovers slowly instead of the perfect movement control CJ+Hurdle offers.

I'd argue that. SR still seems to be one of the most popular choices (the other one being Shield, which is THE obvious top dog) among minmaxers. Capped DDR and a loose build in terms of set bonuses are things no other build has. Capped DDR + softcap is really miles ahead of softcap or even softcap + X% DDR in terms of mitigation, unless you stick to the very few factions who don't have any defense debuff.

Thinking about it, I bet you could count on one hand the number of players who have soloed Silver Mantis without temps or insps on a scrapper that isn't SR or Shield.

Well now sorry but that's completely silly. If you say a power name, it's reasonable to assume you mean the exact same values. Otherwise, you should mention it.

IOs is actually the best case scenario to support *your* point, as with HP bonuses the +HP HPT offers is relatively less important. With SOs, the difference would be even more pronounced and make it even more overpowered.

I think any argument I might have wouldn't convince you because if you believe that our views of the game are so completely different we can't possibly understand each other.

SR has one and only one flaw, bad luck streaks. With HPT you'd get rid of that only flaw, the amount of damage required to get through 2200-2300 hp + scaling res (that would also kick in earlier in terms of total HP, although at the same % relatively speaking) + softcapped defense + capped DR would be... a lot.

... You could argue Shield is kind of like that with its resistance and +HP (SR takes much less effort to softcap, giving room for +rech or +dam, but then Shield has AaO and Shield Charge, which evens out). I believe Shield is overpowered.

Before an angry mob of scrappers shieldcharge me to death, I want to mention I'd shut up about it if they just gave Shield to all primaries already. Invisible shield, I don't care, just let me have the overpowered goodness with all primaries.

Consider brutes have Fury, making AaO relatively weaker, though.

With one target in range

Assume scrappers operating at 230% damage (build up averaged), their AaO gives +19%, a 8% improvement.

Assume brutes at 400% damage (build up averaged, fury at 90), their AaO gives +15.5%, a 3.875% improvement.

With ten targets in range

Scrapper : 230% damage, +81.25%, 35% improvement.

Brute : 400% damage, +65.5%, 16.375% improvement.


So the way I see it, AaO is more or less twice as effective on a scrapper as it is on a brute - less than that if your fury is lower, as I assumed 90 Fury for the brute this is basically the worse case scenario, but in any situation it'll remain more effective for the scrapper.

This isn't to say brutes aren't just fine, just pointing something out.

Depends. On my Shield/DM tanker against Malaise, I slowly lost life while OwtS was down, and slowly regained life while it was up (thanks to the HP bonus). Without OwtS I would have died in that situation.

I'm sure there's more situations where it helped me and I can't point out and tell, this is just the most significant example I can remember as against Malaise the resistance doesn't even matter, it's just the +HP alone. OwtS is the kind of power you can't always notice if it helps or not. For example, if I'm fighting an AV that can kill me in two hits without OwtS and three hits with it, I'm significantly decreasing his chances to kill me by having OwtS up a third of the time, using it reactively when the AV lands a hit. There's the possibility he won't land a second hit (and with softcapped defense, this is the most likely situation), but if he does I would have been dead without OwtS, using it definitely increases my chances to win.

While I've heard and believe sets are balanced around SOs, I haven't seen any evidence showing sets are balanced around having a 100% success rate at tanking missions set for 8 without any support from their team, nor inspirations, nor temp powers, nor active mitigation from their primary, with SOs only.

In any pickup group I've ever joined (and I PuG a lot), bosses are often the last to die. At most, there's sometimes one or two lieutenant alive, probably because they were on the side.

Same with buffs, I agree it's reasonable to assume there's a good chance there'll be some buffs, but to assume there will be buffs at all times, in range at all times, and build with that in mind is in my opinion a mistake, as you'll be in a bad spot when there isn't.

It might be different for people who only play in those teams who sit around until they have 8 members and specifically look for a tanker, a kin, an emp, and so on. It might be different for people who play in SG or friend teams only. I don't do that personally, and I'd question if these scenarios are really representative of the "average" gameplay.

The way I see it, build like you're solo and have to take on all the mobs and you'll never have any trouble. You might be X% slower at a specific task in a specific setting than other, more specialized builds, but you'll be fine at doing anything. On the other hand, build assuming you'll have specific buffs or a specific team set-up, and the day you won't have these things you're in trouble.

I agree with one part of your conclusion, and disagree with the other. It's best to understand the thought process behind the builds than just copypaste, obviously. I happen to think a character built for AV soloing will steamroll all PvE content as well - if there's something it can't do, I haven't run into it yet.

BP might just be your achilles heel. Some masks and lieutenants have these huge defense debuffs I could see hurting fire armor a lot even with purple insps because of the lack of any defense debuff resistance, on x8 I suppose you're guaranteed to have at least one of these debuffers per spawn.