Res_Ipsa

I'm shocked that nobody's got Carnies = Juggalos.

My pet peeve is people who suggest that having pet peeves makes you some kind of hostile diva.

If one of the weapon models was a hockey stick, I'd totally make a War Mace brute.

Is there any kind of consensus around the Energy Aura secondary? I'm thinking of putting together a DB/EA Brute in Going Rogue, and I'm wondering how much pain I'm signing up for.

Any suggestions on getting through the painful parts of the level progression quickly, then, to the point where the build starts to come together?

I'm levelling a DP/Kin build, right now in the mid-teens (pre-Stamina). And the gameplay is so painful and un-Corruptor-esque that I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

My attack powers are Pistols, Empty Clips, and Bullet Rain. Typically I'm running with Incendiary Ammo when I'm soloing, and getting one to two stacks of Siphon Power (I don't yet have enough recharge to get two stacks of Siphon power going reliably, even when using Siphon Speed). I've got all the powers slotted with DOs (which I would normally not bother with, but I felt like I had to try something). And while I've played enough Defenders to know that Kin is a famously late-blooming set with a "the best defense is killing everything before it knows what hit it" playstyle, even with those expectations built in the damage feels really, really anemic, to the point where Villainous newspaper missions with a few groups of +1s are life-threatening. I'm ending a typical fight with half my health gone and completely tapped out END-wise. Switching to Cryo or Chem Ammo for the sake of some mitigation hasn't helped; the mitigation barely seems noticeable.

My comparison points are sets like Fire Blast and Ice Blast. These sets feel out-of-the-box powerful: the blasts and the AOEs hit fairly hard, and the secondary effects are noticeable. DP certainly looks cool, but is it really this much of a turkey in the early going when combined with Kin?

I wouldn't buy a "mutant" pack that contained, more or less exclusively, animal body parts for costume pieces. No disrespect intended to fans of such things, but to me when you say the word "mutant" in the context of superheroes, it conjures imagery of the X-Men, not catgirls or hentai. I'd be pretty disappointed in a "mutant" pack that went in that thematic direction, in much the same way I'm disappointed that the "science" pack went in the thematic direction of Dr. Frankenstein rather than the Fantastic Four.

99.9% of the time, when a contest or sweepstakes is void in your area, the reason is that your area has absolutely asinine laws governing contests and sweepstakes, such that only a crazy person would try to hold a contest or sweepstakes there.

Thanks for the replies; hearing good stuff. But it nonetheless prompts some other questions; specifically...

I'm new to scrapperdom, having played defenders and blasters pretty much exclusively since launch. I'm trying to get an idea of the survivability I can expect out of Dark Armor (specifically when paired with Claws, if it matters).

Observations?

I'm sort of scratching my head looking at that, because it omits Build Up, Havoc Punch, and Focused Accuracy.

I can see ditching Havoc Punch, though it effectively means you've got just one ST attack. But wouldn't you feel the loss of Build Up pretty severely? And is Conserve Power really necessary, given that you've already got Power Sink?

I'm kind of agnostic, at this point, about what and how many powers the pools contain, or how those powers are tiered. I'd just like to see more pools.

I don't underestimate the effort involved in creating pools, by any stretch. It's just that (a) most of the pools are at least somewhat useful to include in a build; and yet (b) because there are only four or so pools per AT, it's frequently difficult to find a pool that's a good conceptual match for a character's primary/secondary sets.

I know that's not a concern that necessarily moves the hearts of the efficiency-focused. But there it is anyway.

I'm in the same boat: I'm looking at an Elec/Elec scrapper, but have very little idea what I'm doing, and the Brute guides aren't particularly helpful since the sets diverge a bit and the gameplay is quite different.

Good thinking with Dark, there -- that seems like a strong fit. And yeah, I completely agree that, if nothing else, the APP effects need to be colorizable, just like normal powers.

I am on the cusp of hitting 41 with my Ice/Cold defender. Build is fairly cookie-cutter, omitting only Frostwork and Bitter Freeze Ray. Anybody got any suggestions for what APP will go well with this?

(I'm, incidentally, disgruntled that none of the pools are a good thematic fit. But that's a separate issue.)

In limited defense of the group of people who're most aggressive about either claiming the AT is broken or advocating the buffing the AT, I can only really think of one who's out-and-out claimed that the AT "sucks". Virtually everybody thinks the AT could benefit from some polish (which AT couldn't, after all?); the principal disagreement in the forums is over the magnitude of the problems and the nature of the solution. The divide between the people who think the AT needs a pretty fundamental overhaul, and the people who think the AT is basically okay but could use a nip here and a tuck there, does not appear any more surmountable today than it seemed six months ago, when I was a more regular poster here.

I'm in the "basically okay but could use a nip here and a tuck there" camp. I got my Ice/Ice to 40 and then moved on (I'll probably come back to her to earn her PPP at some point, but right now I'm levelling a Corruptor). While I occasionally wished for slightly longer holds or slightly higher damage, I always felt powerful, involved, and like I was contributing to my teams' (both small and large) success.

Good luck with your Dominator.

My draft guide to Sonic/Dark Corruptors.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
fighting brutes tended to be a very evenly matched fight before, and I think I'm in real trouble now. *sigh*

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, it was real fun fighting fotm Blasters that could detoggle multiple defenses with every other hit. You'd spend the entire fight retoggling, while not gaining any significant Fury in the process. Good riddance.

Get some range and <gasp> Blast.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I'll get right on that as soon as I actually get some powerful ranged attacks in my primary aside from my worthless, interruptible, blocked by going out of Line of Sight snipe and my nuke.

But I guess I can count on the oh-so-powerful Voltaic Sentinel to win my battles for me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, be grateful you've even got that much: FF Defenders just got told, in so many words, "Shut the hell up and buff, [censored]."

[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how come Dominators aren't Kings of PvP then I KNOW we (well, I) whine more than that.

[/ QUOTE ]

The dynamic actually has less to do with the volume of screaming than it does with which ATs the developers actually trouble themselves to listen to/communicate with. For instance, Scrapper issues consistently get committed followup from TPTB, while it took Defenders months to get _Castle_ just to look at their issues list, most of which he blew off without much explanation beyond "working as intended".

Not that I'm bagging on _Castle_, here -- he's a good guy. But he's just one guy, and judging by what we've seen over the last two years you'd be a fool to believe that TPTB don't give preferential attention to certain ATs.

[ QUOTE ]
If toggle dropping was a characters sole chance to be effective, then I think you need to be looking for a bigger problem here.

[/ QUOTE ]

"FF is working as intended."

[ QUOTE ]
snip

[/ QUOTE ]

While you've got your nose in your dictionary, can you look up the verb "to call" for me? I'd be interested to know if it's a synonym for the verb "to imply".

Bottom line: you claimed I called the difference trivial. I didn't. The word was never used by me. You can legitimately criticize my downplaying the significance of the difference, but you don't need to put words in my mouth to do it.