Sailboat

When people complain about knockback, they're almost exclusively complaining about AREA knockback. You knock a single enemy away from my tanker, and I don't care; you broke it, you buy it, and I'll leave him for you, under the assumption you have things under control (you're a superhuman, after all).

I admit I have seen people whine about single-target knb in-game a few times. In each case, I didn't and still don't get it. I knocked someone out of a debuff patch with my Scrapper's Crane Kick once, killing him in the process, and the debuffing player complained "you knocked him out of my debuff." Go figure. Dude, he's dead.

Now it's true AREA knockback can be mishandled. The usual reason is the player cannot change playstyle between soloing and grouping, and just wants to hit the same buttons he or she is used to. But that's often teachable, so I'm patient.

There are other powers/effects that can be mishandled every bit as badly as knockback -- one of the worst is mindlessly immobilizing groups when they are widely spread out, instead of waiting for them to gather on the point person (usually a Tanker, or another AT in that role). So if you're using immobilize to stop knockback, wait a few moments for the foes to clump up first.

Originally it seemed like Tankers had elemental-themed powersets and Scrappers had other sorts of sets, mostly (though not entirely) physical damage types. A lot of the craving for Psi and Energy Melee Scrappers was from players trying to get something other than smashing or lethal damage into a Scrapper's AT mod. (This was before Fire became available to Scrappers through proliferation.)

Post-proliferation, I think the Devs are no longer opposed to the idea of Scrappers getting Ice; I think they just haven't gotten around to it.

What's MSR?

Clarification: are these temporary, just for the Halloween event period, or permanent costume pieces we can use all year 'round?

Are the characters roughly comparable in global recharge? An older character with lots of global set bonuses can probably get a faster chain and thus pile up more Fury..could that be what you're seeing?

Well, the purpose of Incarnate stuff is for each 50 to have something more to do and not be "finished" at 50.

Your desire would seem to run counter to that.

Eh, you'll get a final answer, and probably make a post about it, and get hundreds of page views and scores of replies. But you'll still encounter people who insist it's the other way around and eagerly share that misinformation.

Having recently slotted up Fault on a Stone Melee Tanker (after foolishly ignoring it for a long time) I can tell you it by itself is an amazing amount of control and, if supplemented by another area stun like Oppressive Gloom, ought to be amazing mitigation. With slotting, the stun will last longer than the recharge, allowing you to keep foes indefinitely stunned if you cycle it. Fault has a mag of 2, with a 50% chance of an additional magnitude, and hence stuns all minions and half of all LTs it hits. PLUS it does knockdown and taunt.

Stone Melee has some knockdown and stun in other powers too, and the awesomeness that is Seismic Smash, a quick-animating extreme damage mag 4 hold.

It's not the perfect set for all needs -- not an exotic damage type, endurance-heavy, and limited in its AoE -- but Stone Melee is very good if you like melee controlling.

Lastly, it has thunderous sound effects and screen shake (if you're into that sort of thing).