Sailboat

At the risk of piling on, I'll add that my conception of Trip Mine is not that it delays the game, but that it moves damage into the future for me.

I can set up some mines, taking the time in advance, and then win the fight almost instantly. Or I can chain a bunch of attacks frantically, taking the time during the fight, and probably win. Or I can lose and take the time running back from the hospital. Any one of those ways does take time.

But only by setting up Trip Mines in advance can I use animation time and endurance NOW, get them back, but delay the damage (and the possible AGGRO) into the FUTURE. I can't think of other powers (except Time Bomb) that let me burn through animation time and endurance in safety and unleash the effect later on, when I'm ready.

What is the advantage of that? Burst damage. Burst damage is valuable in the game because it both minimizes the amount of return fire the enemies can direct back at you AND it minimizes the amount of life they regenerate as you try to wear them down.

You can stack mines -- which is like stacking damage -- which can be, with some patience, like stacking multiple-nuke-level damage up without getting any aggro and getting all your endurance back before the fight starts.

Properly set up minefields will destroy most or all of a non-AV spawn before they get any chance to regenerate from the damage. It's very efficient.

In fast-paced, large-headcount team play, it's less useful, as long as the team isn't taking a knee afterward to heal up or something (in which case you might as well have taken the time beforehand to set up mines). But there are lots of cases where one adapts one's solo playstyle or power choices for teamplay (and vice versa). Just as I don't say "gather for buffs" when soloing, I don't use trip Mine as much when teaming. but it's still useful to secure a fallback position, to prep for ambushes, and as a last line of personal defense. And small teams are often willing to work with a Trip Miner, either for safety or because of the comedic value.

Well, I compiled some numbers from City of Data.

Disclaimer: These are for Brutes only. I arbitrarily chose the sets I thought offered best sustained/chainable AoE. This resulted in Broadsword and Katana being left off the list despite their decent AoE. Fiery Melee maybe should have been left out too, now that I look at it. This does NOT represent the "best sets," only those likely to be suitable for my relatively-narrow intended purpose.

Late as I am to this party, I brute-forced my way through, uh, maybe 20 or so before landing 35C5-HSF9-ES5V-KH93-CFXS.

Eh, even for Titan Weapons, Willpower should have a ton of endurance. I wouldn't let endurance affect my decision.

Last time I Alphaed a Willpower, I went with Spiritual. Yes, Willpower itself gets virtually nothing from recharge (but of course Agility is also +recharge, so no better in that one aspect), but the +heal raises your base hit points noticeably, which works really well with your high Regen. And as noted, TW would love the +recharge.

That said, it's hard to get truly high defense on a Willpower Brute or Scrapper, so Agility won't be a mistake.

Forgot to mention: Shield by itself is pretty solid on a mature Tanker. With Combat Jumping, Weave, and the Steadfast +3% global alone, I am brushing the soft-cap at 44-point-something percent defense before level 30. Couple with Shield's other defensive aspects (the small -dmg debuff, the mid-range smashing and lethal resistance, the hit point boost, the DDR) it makes a fairly sturdy tank. You won't really need to depend on your secondary for mitigation.

I don't actually have a Shield/Mace Tanker at 50 -- Mine's in his high 20s. But I do have a Shield/Axe Tanker at 50, which is fairly analogous, so I'll take a hack at these questions if you promise not to bash me.

Another idea to further differentiate Energy Transfer from Total Focus -- maybe be give Energy Transfer an additional secondary effect of transferring some energy to the user -- stealing some endurance while it bashes?

This is more than a good idea, it's a fundamentally necessary idea if they want people to spend money in the market.

I am repeatedly deterred from clicking "add to cart" on things because I just can't stand not being able to see if I already own them or not. It's a computer program, for crap's sake, it should be able to track stuff like this for human convenience.

If I were to level-lock a character at 35 to generate lvl 35 recipes, what would be the best choice?

The primary would be fully available and slottable by 35, but the 9th-tier power in the secondary won’t be available and the 8th-tier won’t be slottable.

I’m pretty sure I still want a Brute for this work. It’s my understanding that the usual preference (assuming level 50) is the Super Strength/Fire Brute. But, because SS has only the one AoE, I think that anticipates heavy use of the ancillary or patron pools, which are not available at 35 (well, you can take one first-tier power, but not slot it). So I’m thinking SS isn’t as strong a choice in this case.

In lieu of SS, what? Fire Melee and Titan Weapons seem to have excellent AoE potentials. Claws is always a contender (especially with an Overwhelming Force proc in Shockwave). Staff is also full of AoEs. Other primaries offer other benefit, but for this build’s limited purpose single-target damage is less needed and we probably won’t need much mitigation from the primary.

As far as secondaries go, I assume the answer is still a Fire Brute. Fire matures early and has excellent mitigation if you pick your enemies, and although 35 won’t allow me to slot up Fiery Embrace, I would still get Blazing Aura and Burn. Other potential contenders might be Shield (for the AAO damage buff) and maybe Electric (great specific resist, damage aura, various goodies).

Any thoughts or experiences are welcomed.

Reiterating my old request for a tombstone-themed shield (perhaps for a Halloween pack?)

Last night I wandered over to Justice, where I tend to make punny names for the Iron Eagles hardcore group, and created a big yellow bird named SesameStreet Justice.

(The name field is one space too short for "Sesame Street Justice.")

I thought the wikia version is unreliable and suspect?

One of the things the Devs designed into the game was that some resources would be consumed. There was very specific intent to use up stuff, since an unending supply of new stuff is always entering play.

Ideas for ways to get around that and make salvage effectively "immortal" are going to face an uphill battle in persuading the Devs to drop this longstanding design philosophy.