PleaseRecycle

The difficulty slider is only relevant for old style blobs of enemies. The more complex encounters they're designing now are way beyond the scope of such a simplistic tool. There is no way for players who want an increased challenge to go to a difficulty contact and say "Yes, I'd like fourteen ambushes followed by three EBs, please!" To request that all new content be reducible to -1x1 in typical terms is to request that they never add anything more interesting than run of the mill spawns in differently skinned buildings. No thanks.

Well Johnny, you have to hand it to the Black Knights then because at least the eternal prison is wheelchair accessible.

I quite like the Knives' dojo. The whole point was that it doesn't have stairs because they wouldn't need them, what with their membership hopping around in a ninjaly manner. The maze with ambushes was also creative and fun if somewhat nonsensical.

So to rephrase your request, you want them to never force you to fight anything tougher than a lieutenant. That'd be just about the only way to ensure that squishies were guaranteed to win the fight without even kiting at all. Maybe they didn't get the memo that the only fun content is that which you can blow away in three attacks?

Three things: Instead of generic accs to supplement kinetic combat, consider mako's bite quads. Much more importantly, you need follow up in there like woah. That is not a claws power to skip. I strongly recommend dropping either eviscerate or energy torrent entirely and shifting that power pick and five or six slots to follow up. Finally, you have stamina way overslotted. In claws/wp's case, I'd put a single endmod IO into stamina and two endmods into quick recovery, as quick recovery is the more powerful of the two. The performance shifter pieces are less effective since they aren't pure endmod enhancement and the set bonuses really aren't worth it.

There is no tier 4 alpha boost that only gives +recharge, all of them enhance other incarnate powers in one way or another. Why does it bother you so much that some of them enhance different powers?

There are three other attacks in the set that can take a fury of the gladiator, all of which are worth using in their own right as well.

Sky splitter might not be very good if all it did were damage. As you know this is not all that it does so I'm not sure what else needs to be said. Get back to me when total focus grants permable slotted health and stamina, or significant resist all, I guess?

In fairness I will say that stalker staff does not get many of the benefits that other ATs' versions do. This is why I had to raise my eyebrow when all of the pre-release hype was about how it was clearly best for stalkers.

Actually, in even more fairness, let me append a bit more to my addendum there. From what I can gather, Reppu's staff character is a stalker. They get a whole other single target attack instead of innocuous strikes that has better DPA than any other attacks in the game in assassin's strike. Compared to that? Sure, sky splitter is crap, especially since stalkers only get form of the body and thus cannot take advantage of the fantastic buff that sky splitter provides under form of the soul. She may have a little method to her madness. Suggesting that a non-stalker skip sky splitter, however, is silly.

Don't skip sky splitter on a brute. Reppu's crusade against it makes up for its brevity, thus far, with its fanatical intensity. There is one skippable attack in staff fighting and it is mercurial blow.

It's way, way better on scrappers. If you want to go musculature, why not just make a scrapper instead? Personally I consider it to basically be one of the perks of the scrapper archetype that brutes effectively don't get.

Trilogy is detached from the zone's main arc and is 30-50 but it isn't a repeatable contact. I thought it was interesting as well, it certainly is unique among contacts! The whole randomized arc thing didn't really click with me, though, is it meant to be an allusion to something?

Oh yeah, and it has to be pointed out that there's arcs with typos and then there's Trilogy. By the end I was wondering if mechanically sloppy writing was part of the schtick. The point was always intelligible, at least.

As is clearly enumerated in Deuteronomy 22:31, autoagricolio is a sin. Ask yourself why you feel this temptation, and what you can do to overcome it.

Consider these convincing testimonials:

"[Dark] armor is a good set but in your case I suggest aegis" -Warner

"I'll never forgive myself [for making this horrible error of judgement (playing dark armor)]" -Dex Kais'n

"Take it from me: dark armor sucks!" -Mike "Positive" Mullen

It's pretty much unanimous on the forums that the technology does not yet exist to create a viable dark armor build. It just uses too much endurance. Many have tried, all have failed. Legends tell of the chosen one who will come from the east on a steed of pure blue and save us from this curse, but I say those are just old wives' tales.

I thought maybe I was going crazy so I just checked and indeed, divine avalanche still has a base recharge of three seconds. My question therefore is why anyone would put any recharge into the power at all? For instance, Werner, wouldn't you be better off with a crushing impact: acc/dam/end?

Interesting, Claws. So you must have five hecatomb including the proc in shadow punch, as well as total radial reactive, but what of the sixth slot? Tanker AT proc or damage proc of some sort?

Err yeah, if you think spin is terrible then I rest my case.

My ranged fort is one of my favorite characters since launch. I may or may not be misinterpreting Thoran's goals for the build but as I said, I think it's worth noting that this is implicitly a counterpoint to a melee heavy AV soloing non-support character. I feel much the same way about my fort as compared to my scrappers, which are far more numerous: If I care about soloing an AV, great, I'll bring a scrapper (or, as you say, use lore pets). If I want to do anything other than melee, that's where an ultra durable long range Swiss Army knife is pretty attractive.

Let's talk AOE: Thoran said he wanted more. What AOE does a widow have? Why, spin and psy scream, naturally. Melee fort? Spin, psy scream, psi tornado, and psy wail. Hey, that's more aoe. Except, what's the point of using psi scream if you know you're going to be relying on spin all the time? Wail is exceptional, of course, every other spawn. The main difference is that you could add psi tornado as a crummy version of fireball with a long animation and added redraw. Wow, sounds great! Not much of a difference in AOE ability. Thing is, that's one way to look at it. Another way to see it is as the ranged power that it is. If you're not stuck in melee due to spin you can bombard spawns with scream and tornado from so far away they can't even retaliate. There isn't any redraw since you aren't using claws. Your exposure to DPS is highly reduced even if the enemy can return fire.

That's one thing that numerical power analysis is never going to be able to factor in. It doesn't really matter if you'd be doing better damage if you can't get close enough to use it for whatever reason. But for the ranged fort... Patches? Pfff. Autohit melee powers? Please. Overwhelming suppressive fire? Not bloody likely. The best part is that you can do almost anything you'd ever want to do while flying, making a total mockery of most situations in the game that were intended to be hazardous. Feel free to lay into a fresh spawn of Olympian guards on a UGT, what are they going to do about it? If you were in melee range, they'd do some comically large number of damage to you in their defense-ignoring alpha. If.

The way I see it you don't actually need to be bringing the top DPS at all times. Most of the time on a team you're surrounded by bricks of brutish beef who are happy to sit there pummeling things until their eyes glaze over. The buffs you confer to them are going to be sufficient to more than justify your presence. However, as soon as that strategy fails you will look like a clever cookie for being able to resolve the situation rather than twiddling your thumbs with the melee brigade.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that they wanted to use this character for pylon soloing. In fact, the OP explicitly states that his widow build is already perfect for AV soloing and he's interested in adding a second build with more AOE. If we continue to read between the lines we will discover that, since we are talking about a secondary build for a widow, he may be interested in some additional versatility that his widow lacks. Say, I don't know, the ability to attack at range? That'd be a nice contrast to a widow!

By the way, you aren't triple stacking follow up on anything except perhaps follow up itself, maaaaybe gloom? That chain is somewhere between four and five seconds of arcanatime, I cannot be bothered to calculate it exactly, but what it definitely doesn't do is stack three follow ups onto strike and lunge. Scratch that, I'm almost sure it's over five seconds because of the redraw for gloom. I doubt it has triple follow up at any point.

I liked that mission. I can't say I didn't throw out an, "Oh COME ON!" or two at the barrage that just wouldn't end, but I felt that the difficulty was balanced almost oddly well for City of Heroes content (played on x3 with a level 30 scrapper). As I always do on non-defense-based characters I was carrying a tray full of medium/large lucks, you know, for those special occasions that never actually occur. I popped my last phenomenal luck with two EBs remaining on that sucker. No deaths but an ample supply of close calls. It was a very refreshing change of pace!

I seem to recall it having a difficulty warning, but of course I scoffed at it even as I wondered if maybe this time they were serious... They were, as it turns out.

The hedge maze certainly does a number on the ol' GTX 260, though. Ultra mode works fine everywhere else but the framerate did add a wrinkle to that fight.

It would be too good. The devs said as much in almost those words. If you like having recharge be a feature of the alpha slot, you have to be willing to accept that it won't work on other incarnate powers.

The reason to go melee fort instead of ranged fort is slightly higher ST damage. The reason to go night widow instead of melee fort is slightly higher ST damage. If you're willing to lose a little ST damage to gain all those other fortunata perks you shouldn't find it difficult to accept that one might want to go ranged fort at the cost of a bit more ST damage to gain even more perks. By going melee you lose the gigantic survivability advantage that range offers for fortunatas as well as the massive hard control built into their single target chain. You could take and slot dominate and subdue on a melee fort as well, but what else are you going to sacrifice for those extra three melee attacks that require full slotting to be effective? How important is eking out single target damage to you? How important do you think it is to your contribution to a team?

This is now more true than ever thanks to incarnate powers. A ranged fort can get plenty of bonus damage, a melee fort cannot ever do their thing without all of the drawbacks melee entails. See the many, many threads whining about how unfair incarnate trials are to meleers for more information.

Fact: Staff fighting does not do damage. Proof: Have you ever seen a good player playing staff fighting? No. Good players use super strength, or sometimes more average sets like titan weapons. Here's an easy test: look at the buff bar on the team window. The alive guy at the top of the list should have a "rage" icon next to his "burn" icon. A handy mnemonic is, "If you don't see rage, you should be in one." If you see "momentum," don't panic, that is also acceptable. Staff not only does not have rage, it does not have momentum. Wow, nice balance devs, if I hadn't already unsubbed because of m$rty you can bet I'd be taking my business elsewhere due to this flagrant disregard for basic decency. A slap in the face? Not even. More like a knee to the groin. I'm literally seething in my chair.

I'm sure they'll get right on it, Microcosm, what with this air-tight case for buffs.

"What the... a power is unsatisfactory?"

"It's worse than that, Synapse, it clearly says here that this power sucks."

"We've not a moment to lose, Arbiter Hawk! Lives are at stake!"