Sailboat

What do you mean it's not a prerequisite? It could be. Fireball...which is what I assume most people who farm take Blaze mastery for...is the level 47 power. You have to take two lower-level powers as prerequisites.

Bear in mind my entire premise is that farmers (and many non-farmers) won't be slotting anything from Blaze Mastery except Fireball. The choices are:

Ring of Fire -- bad /useless with 1 slot.
Char -- bad /useless with 1 slot.
Fire Blast -- bad /useless with 1 slot.
Melt Armor -- not very good, but can add damage to your AoEs with only one slot.
Fireball -- the goal.

So, if you're taking prerequisites to get Fireball, leaving them one-slotted, and you're never going to click them, it doesn't matter which ones you take -- there's no reason to avoid Melt Armor because even if it sucks, you're never going to click it.

If you ARE, however, occasionally going to click one for a little usage, Melt Armor --even one-slottted -- can help a couple of fully-slotted AoEs do a bit more damage. Clicking Char, Fire Blast, and Ring of Fire (one-slotted) will NOT improve your attack chain in any way.

This sounds a little like you're saying "you might as well move around while waiting for Shield Charge to come back up, because it's not doing ANY damage while recharging -- you can't do that with Burn, because it comes back essentially as fast as the old patch expires," which doesn't seem to be in SC's favor as much as it might have seemed when you typed it. :P

Eh. I was watching a Korean War thing on the military channel tonight, and the fighter pilot wanted so badly to score a kill he violated orders and crossed into China and started shooting, risking a world war with China and a possible nuclear exchange (CHina didn't have nukes yet, but was still closely allied to the Soviet Union.

Military people and political figures have on several occasions taken risks like that.

Heck, right now all the countries on Earth are risking proliferation by not working all-out to prevent it.

There's one person I met in game only a few times whom I am almost certain was a Dev, based on the completely, dare I say suspiciously, bland account name, the character name which evoked a specific signature character indirectly, and the player's personality (seemed knowledgeable, but was more interested in how much fun the team was having than in tooting own horn). I'll never know though, and I haven't seen the account in years.

In a raw test of this thesis, I soloed a Controller at level 16 this past weekend, then on Monday underwent surgical extraction of a tooth. It didn't come out easily, and the dentist eventually sawed it in half and levered each half out of my jaw with what looked and felt like pliers.

I'm going to say I preferred soloing a Controller in the teens.

Or serious misunderstanding...or mis-match of expectations with reality.

For the love of God, Montresor!

OUTSTANDING typo.

Well, I'm just making a casual remark, not putting in the effort you have on this question, but it seems to me there's a possibly significant difference between solo and teamed. No Defender or Corruptor except Kinetics will be hitting the damage cap solo, except for rare instances of bingeing on red skittles. Scourge is also somewhat less important solo, I'd think, since it's most useful against AVs (because they last a long time at lower than 50% life). Lastly, Defenders who use use self-buffs or debuffs should get a little bit more effect out of them than Corruptors do, as I understand it.

“Then, Sir, we will give them the bayonet!” – Stonewall Jackson

As long as you mean resistance to, and not protection from, stun and sleep, that might fly. But significant status protection in a Blaster secondary is not going to fly.

See here for pics of the styles. Also, there are wings on the Hellenic Sandals, but I forget whether they flap when moving.

The point is, if he died, the damage would stop being recorded. Since it's such a huge amount of damage, we're kind of questioning whether he's accurately reporting the log or not.

As I stated, I don't now if the report would look like that if he was in bodyguard mode -- or would it just report the damage he personally took, not what was distributed among the minions.