OABAAB

Yeah Soul Mastery is probably the best choice since the -tohit/dam component of Darknest Night really helps a def challenged set like ELA. As an alternative, Mace Mastery isn't bad also.

Web Envelope: Slot a Acc/Imm/Rec IO and keeps mobs from moving for your AOE. It is also targeted AOE so it tends to hit more mobs than cones.

Focused Accuracy: Pretty self explanatory.

Thugs +1

Bots are good too but as others have mentioned, Thugs are easy to softcap for defense. On my Thugs/Traps MM, me and my pets are all softcapped (or very very close to it) with FFG. As long as you keep FFG up (which is easy with low recharge and fast cast time), that high defense is essentially permanent, short of being defense debuffed of course. Bots on the other hand need to re-bubble every 2-3 minutes (or something like that). Also if I recall correctly, if the bubbles drops in the middle of combat, they have to wait until the fight is over to re-buff. That takes some time too and could drag down your pace a little bit.

As for the healing, I use aid others for the occasional healing my thugs need. That is more than enough since they don't get hit much in the first place. Frankly, you only need to keep your eye on the Arsonist since his AOEs make him a priority target 99% of the time. As for bots, it's true that one of them can heal others but keep in mind that it has a somewhat lengthy animation (3 seconds or so). It can not attack while healing thus that will lower the overall DPS by a smidge. This is not to mention that you can't choose which bot is healed so you'll likely find yourself picking up aid others anyways. Personally, I'd rather have my MM do the healing since she's not the primary DPS to begin with.

Lastly, you can slot more procs into Thugs/Traps. Procs is what makes Traps REALLY shine. You can always use gang war as a mule for all the +def/res IOs so you can slot your pets for maximum damage and accuracy.

I currently have DM/SD and WM/SD brutes. If I were to make another SD brute, I'd go with FM as primary. From my personal experience with my other FM brute, it has really good ST damage and pretty solid AOE. It's damage type is also less resisted. It's biggest hole which is lack of mitigation (KD, -Acc, etc) becomes a non-issue with softcap sets like SD.

One more thing, why not consider WM as your primary? WM is a beast when it comes to AOE and overall a very fun and brutish primary. Post-buff, I was really surprised how powerful it became and out of my 9 brutes, WM/SD is probably my favorite.

The real solution to *AE problems*? Have NCSoft start selling infs and new characters starting at level 50. Yeah there will be a lot of players complaining about how such an option is unfair to them since they can't afford it but really now, life isn't fair.

Okay seriously, I'm not bringing up this silly suggestion to be sarcastic or controversial. I brought it up because it's the plain truth. There will always people that want to be wealthy or to skip the pointless lower level grind. No matter how the game system is changed, that mentality is not going away and people *will* find ways. After all, no MMO has ever managed to successfully remove farming, PLing, etc. Now I'm not saying the developers shouldn't try to keep it under control. I'm just suggesting that there comes a point in time where more resources shouldn't be devoted into solving a *problem* that really has no solution. Such continuous escalation between exploits and counter-measures is endless. It only diverts critical resources away from advancing the future evolution of the game which in my opinion, is not good for its long term survival.

There is something that's even more annoying. Whenever your pets are standing in an enemy created persistant AOE, they just go bonkers. Jumping on roofs, sprinting 100 yards in all directions aggroing groups of mobs, running into different rooms only to get stuck on corners, etc. Am I missing some magic commands that can prevent this? From what I've tried, goto or follow only works if you use it the split second the persisant AOE starts while attack does nothing to override their automatic reaction. If you fail to issue one of those move commands during that split second, there's also a significant time delay between when you click the command and when the pets actually start excuting it (about 2 seconds). Even if you successful move them out of the AOE, chances are they'll just charge *right back*into melee range with the mobs (which are probably still standing in their persistant AOE) only compounds the problem. When will PS finally pay some attention to the horrid pet pathing/AI problem?

Turbo Hussy for my Night Widow. Lord Pthirus Pubis (goggle it if you don't know what it is) for my Crab Spider.

Quick answer to your question is yes, yes, yes. You're only half right when you said that Invul is a resist set. You'll only get the most performance out of Invul if you also build up your smash/lethal defense and it's really not that difficult to achieve though it could be expensive. With weave, CJ and maybe maneuvers, you can get up to about 25-30% def against S/L without emptying your wallet too much (Reactive Armor, Steadfast IO, Smashing Haymaker, Taunt set bonues.. etc). If you got a bigger budget to play with (Kinetic Combat, Obliteration, etc), you can get to 35%-40% or even softcap. In either case, Invincibility will help cover the any remaining holes when you're fighting large spawns. As for the additional endurance burden, Dark Consumption from your primary should make that less of an issue?

For the 100th time, remove AE exp or other rewards for that matter would make the system irrelevant and ignored by the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of players. It would be the final death knell for the MA feature. What was the point of spending months or maybe even *years* developing such a "ground breaking" feature (as the devs put it) only to have it become an afterthought? It would also validate the pre-MA-launch opponent's stance of players will be finding ways to abuse the system which in turn will cause its demise.

My primary goal for playing MMOs is the advancement of my alter-egos. As such, I personally wouldn't touch AE unless it has decent rewards. I certainly don't give a hoot about the stories, much less player generated ones. For really good plots or stories, I prefer to pick up a good book, read an online article, watch a stimulating TV program or catch some foreign films. MMOs probably won't even crack the top 10 of my list. Maybe my standards are a bit high due to my artistic background but the point is that I, like many others, do not come to MMOs to search for good fictions. Let's not try to get all fascist about the "interpreted" primary intent or usage of the MA shall we.

Three small alternations.

Replace cryo freeze ray with:
Full Body Scanning - Ranged (single target), magnitude 7 foe hold, minor energy based DoT.

Replace sleep grenade with:
Enhanced Pat Down - Melee (single target), magnitude 10 foe confuse, magnitude 7 PBAoE foe fear (10' radius).

Replace summon police dog with:
Summon TSA Screener - Summons two henchman that uses Full Body Scanning and Enhanced Pat Down on foes exclusively.

These changes will make the set all the more real world like.

You know Dr. Aeon, it's interesting that you're preaching patience when you know full well (or should know as an employee) that time isn't a luxury PS/CoX can afford. I know where to find NCSoft quarterly reports and what to look for when it comes to CoX revenue. I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. This is part of what I do for a living. In anycase, since the introduction of AE in April of last year, CoX sales revenue all the sudden plummeted 40% (compared to a 43% revenue decline in a rolling 12 month period ending in Q4 2009). Basically, during the course of Q1 2009, CoX revenue went down 3% which can be attributed to the natural decline of most aging MMOs. Then came AE in Q2 in the final two quarters of 2009, revenue fell off a cliff and dropped 40%.

Next let's look at the chronology of AE itself. The first 2-3 months after the introduction of AE, there was no doubt that it was wildly popular and widely utilized. Everyone and their extended family were crammed into the AE buildings in AP or Mercy/Cap. That kind of player interest couldn't have been bad from the revenue standpoint and the fact that revenue only dropped 3% from Q1 to Q2 of last year seems to reflect just that. Then came the fine-tuning or nerfs to be more blunt. In chronological progression, ticket cap, custom critter exp, MM pets, and now allied NPCs, just to name a few of the big ones. If you log on during peak hours right now, the players in Mercy and Cap AE buildings are a mere small fraction of where it was a year ago. Going back to the revenue decline in 2009, you can't honestly tell me that these two trends had no correlation. The fact is that drastic and persistent nerfing of popular (and maybe even integral) features in a MMO can contribute significantly to the eventual demise of the game itself. After all it has already happened several times in the short history of MMORPGs. Two prominent examples would be SWG and more recently, Tabula Rasa.

Now let us consider the obvious fact that PS is not exactly flush with subscribers and rolling in dough (at least compared to years before). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the bigwigs at NCSoft corporate have already expressed their concern over the steep decline in CoX revenue last year. After all in the corporate world, if a product line suddenly loses 40% of sales revenue in a matter of months, it usually gets discontinued. NCSoft may be willing to deal with it for now given that the overall company profitability skyrocketed last year due to the popularity of AION in Asia but how long is it going to last? What if GR doesn't generate as much revenue as desired? That projection isn't all that far fetched given the short term memory nature of the MMO population, ample competition and the fact that CoX is an aging game. This is not to mention that patience isn't exactly a virtue in the world dominated by corporate balance sheets.

With all of this in mind, I am simply shocked that you guys haven't switched to a more conservative approach when it comes to AE fine-tuning. The nerf now and deal with it later approach as exhibited by this latest episode is extremely shortsighted and irrational. It's almost as if PS is willing to alienate some player now while banking on GR to inject fresh blood later but that scenerio is far from a guarantee. Regardless of what the "good riddance, let them leave" or "we don't need players like that anyways" crowd is saying, CoX is currently not on a solid enough footing to be able to afford the hemorrhaging of even more subscribers (revenue).

P.S: If you dislike my bluntness and challenging tone, feel free to put a temporary or even permanent ban on me. If that is to be a consequence of me saying what needs to said, so be it. My main account was already canceled prior to all of this and this account only has about two weeks left. However, allow me to say this one final thing. The reason I canceled originally was due to a perfect storm of busier real life schedule, low CoV population and other diversions. It was not the result of some ragequit over any particular prior issue. However, now that I've seen the way this particular nerf was handled and the continuation of collective tunnel vision on the part of PS, I doubt I would've renewed anyways. Good luck.

Way to go devs. When you announced that CoX is going to implement content creation tool, many player warned that this will open a Pandora's Box but obviously it was an acceptable risk to you all. You said that you can deal with the bugs, unbalances, or exploits as they come and the overall potential for such a groundbreaking feature outweighs the risk. Now, those predictions have indeed came true and sure enough, you kept to your word and continued the tsunami of nerfs every few weeks in order to keep up with the authors that were *too* creative for their own good. As time went on, CoX population went through a continuous decline and AE use dwindled. This isn't a conjecture as anyone who has played for more than two years have made that very observation with their own eyes. As for those of us that can read financial reports and is knowledgable on currency exchange rates, the persistant decline in CoX is even more crystal clear. CoX sales revenue declined every quarter in 2009 from 6.8 million won in Q1 to 3.9 million won in Q4. That's a 43% drop in CoX revenue in the short span of one year. If revenue continues to decline at this alarming rate, barring a miracle, CoX will be in its death throes sooner rather than later. You don't even have to do any in depth due diligence to arrive at that conclusion but I digress.

My question for you devs is this. Given all that have transpired during the past year, what exactly was the point of AE? Why did you spend so much time developing, fine-tuning, monitoring and marketing (to the point of hype) the AE if it is eventually going to be little more than a niche feature that only a fraction of the population will actually partake in? Did you actually think that most people will only be motivated to use the AE for "storytellling" and "roleplaying" purposes when you went ahead with it? Maybe you haven't noticed but that vast majority of the "story" arcs on AE are amateurish in quality, full of typos, logical fallacies and simply aren't all that fun to play. This isn't to insult the player authors but rather pointing out a reality in the world of arts/literature when it comes to the talent divide between the haves and the have nots. If every amateur storyteller were so adept at their craft and hobby then practically anyone can publish good literature or conjure up compelling scripts for movie/television. That is simply not the case.

As some other people have said before, if I wanted a good story, I'd go read a book or watch a movie. I certainly do that constantly but in an online game? Not so much. Obviously not everyone will share that sentiment but enough surely do. Yet you choose to go the route of trying to mold AE into an exclusive story telling club as if to alienate those who care more about rewards. Are you so confident that GR is going to replenish your subscriptions and coffers? Here's a reality check. Engineers and programmers are quite often bad with the finances and if you all actually do expect GR to have that kind of impact, you fit firmly into that stereotype. You're introducing a paid expansion and revamping the graphics of a game that's already 6 years old. That's not to mention that there's literally a log jam of competitors out there so consumers aren't exactly short on options. To be brutally honest, GR is not going to make a huge splash as you think and it certainly wouldn't bring it a massive amount of new subscribers for a sustained period of time. Certainly not enough to make up for the 43% revenue decline over the course of 2009. After all, no game except for WoW, (and *maybe* EQ1) has exhibited such persistent staying power over that lengthy time frame in the U.S. market. As a matter of fact, the entire U.S. MMO market is suffering from a drastic decline in subscriptions numbers and CoX is not going to be the game to buck the trend, economic recovery or not.

P.S: Going back to the original point of introducing AE and the inevitable train wreck of nerfs that will surely follow it. I would just like to say, I told you so. You made your own bed and now you have to sleep in it. And no, more nerfs is not going to be the solution because it hasn't worked so far, hasn't it?

Too bad the devs went ahead and ruined the thread 6 months ago when they buffed up WM/BA. A new <insert gimp primary>/EA thread needs to be created for 2010. EM/EA anyone?

My EA brute is only level 28 but I do have level 50 SR and SD brutes (fully equiped with IO sets of course) as well as some other non-brute AT characters with various degrees of focus in defense. Here is my observation.

With SR, it is quite easy to reach well above the 45% defense cap (mine sits around 50-52%) if you take the fighting pool and use IO sets. From playing around in Mids, I couldn't figure out a way to get my EA brute to similar numbers (50%-ish) without some sacrifice in other areas. You might say that "oh, anything above 45% defense is gravy and not really necessary". Well, that is true unless you get debuffed (a concern for EA due to its middle of the road def debuff resistance) or if you're fighting enemies with +to hit bonuses (not exactly a rarity either). Also, I just find it simply easier to focus on 3 positional defenses to get them comfortably above the cap as opposed to trying to do the same for the 8 typed defenses. This holds true not just for defense based brutes but any AT you wish to get some defense for. Now I'm not saying that typed defense is not worthwhile. I'm just saying that it just takes more work (and potentially more sacrifices/concessions) when it comes to slotting because you have to be more concerned with the IO set bonuses involved. Granted, if you're comfortable with sitting at about 45% defense then EA will do just fine. But for me, I like planning ahead for those contingency situations even if it's not an everyday occurance and 45% just don't cut it for me.

Also, in addition to my observations above I have an additional theory as to why a lot of people percieve EA as being inferior to other brute secondaries. In addition to their primary functions, each secondary generally have another area(s) where it is uniquely superior when compared to the others. For example WP has its high regen. DA has its crowd control, -tohit debuff, and the biggest self heal in the game. Fire has its burst damage boost and big heal. ELA has its unlimited end, -end debuff and recharge. Invul and Stone have their HP boost and high defense. SR has its scaling resists and recharge boost. SD has its massive AoE attack and persistant damage boost. EA on the other hand is like the jack of all trades defense based secondary as it doesn't really have an area where it actually outshine the others. As a result I could understand why some people would percieve EA as not bring particularly attractive. It performs well enough to be sure but the problem of being average or above average at everything is that you tend to get overlooked. EA isn't the only victim in this percieved discrimination either. In terms of resistance based secondaries, DA is often considered to be a jack of all trades set as well and suffers some perception issues due to it.