Sarrate

Gauntlet has a splash taunt effect (of the radius shown in real numbers or CoD) that can hit up to 5 targets. It can help (despite aggro auras) because it may hit targets not currently covered by your auras, and for targets already taunted the splash taunt will add a bit of threat as well.

That said...

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gaunlet = worse inherit in game.

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Yeah, it's not impressive at all. Some radii are prohibitively small, it has a tohit check, and is generally a wash compared to aggro auras, AoEs, and Taunt (the power). It's just a minor perk you'll likely never notice.

3 slotted TI, Uny, Tough + 1 slotted RPD = 90% s/l res for a Tank. (That's taking a bit less than half the damage you take now.)

DP +11% maxhp (Accolades can give +20%) = 3212, hp cap for a Tank.


[edit: Tankers also have a lot more defense than Brutes do, so it's much easier to get them to high levels of defense - even with just 1 mob in range.]

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If it is just like a bank mission I'd be willing to bet on me the first two, three or five times or so. Once the heroes realize what they are up against and decide to organize and work together we'd have a good fight and my team of 8 villains likely would get overwhelmed. But those first few times when people just lunge at my armies individually we'd butcher through heroes by the hundreds.

Sure, click on the doors to City Hall. There are 6 Thug/Storm MMs setting a trap for ya

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And if we blow up the Arachnos flier that got you there?

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Ouroboros...

Kruunch: Fault offers something to every primary, even WP despite how survivable you can build the set. It's not just for a squishy set like Fiery Aura. Fault takes a lot of enemies out of the fight which can allow you to regen hp, debuffs fall off, detoggle enemies, or even hold aggro. It's a multipurpose tool. Whatever you can accomplish now, you could accomplish more with it. There is nothing bad to be said about it except the accuracy penalty (which is only a minor factor considering the benefits and the mechanics of how AoEs do tohit checks). I would absolutely never skip it.

As for Tremor vs Foot Stomp... that is more than a vacuum analysis. The entire point of DPA is how efficiently you can deal damage over time. (Since you cannot alter Activation Times, they become crucial when computing how much damage you can do.) Stone Melee using Tremor pays for it by slowing down its single target damage to a much larger degree than SS pays by using Foot Stomp. (FS is superior to Jab and is about 92% the DPA of Punch. Compare that to Tremor which is only 32.8% the DPA of Stone Mallet - Stone's lowest DPA single target attack (not counting Hurl Boulder, of which it is still only 48% the DPA of).)

I mentioned the recharge earlier (as if it were on auto) to show the availability, even under best case situations (which is in favor of Tremor) it loses. The more Stone has to delay using it (due to other powers being activated, etc) the more ground it loses to FS.

That's not just number crunching, I've played with both. I like Tremor more than most people, I really do... but it's not even in the same league. Foot Stomp beats Tremor into a bloody pulp.

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Is balancing a set, any set, by creating a useless or extremely situation power really a good method of balance?

May as well just take the power out and call it balanced in that case.

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Calash: Yes, Hand Clap sucks. No, I don't think it sucking is a good thing. I don't think giving SS a Fault clone is the answer, though. That would be trading in a hand grenade for a nuclear bomb in terms of potency.

I have no problem with the mixed set as it is, but then again I'm used to seeing CoX's interpretation of Fire Melee. Of all the sword attacks, Fire Sword is my least favorite. It's alright, but it doesn't have the charm of the other two. FSC has a nice ripple of fire across the ground and a healthy 'crunch' when hitting multiple enemies. GFS's animation/sword look impressive, and it has a very identifiable screech (which just amuses me to no end). Fire Sword is just... kind of bland in comparison.

(I think the non-sword attacks are fine. Incinerate is a little strange, but not a big deal. I am very glad that Scorch has its new animation though. )

[edit: Okay, I'm also a bit tired of the Air Sup animation that Cremate uses - but that's a more global problem. :P]

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er...those grenades still drop you 40% resist to all and are auto hit. if there's two, you'd need 150%+ resists to all to actually counter them or you'll need room - and the threat - to move the spawn out of range

it's not 40% OF your resistances, it's a flat number. if you have 50% resistances and are in a grenade you now have 10%

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It used to be that way because they were unresistible, but that that was changed. They're no longer straight subtraction. Also note that it's -40% to s/l, but -30% to everything else. (The numbers are 11% higher because it's a +1.)

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this is true if on a team, which is why when i team i make sure ih ave a sonic or thermal - or both - corruptors. i'm always amazed at how common both are red side. pretty easy to be running around with 80% resist to smash/lethal as a wp brute with just one, capped if in range of the sonic pbaoe bubble and capped if both and no bubble.

but redside, longbow are a far bigger threat in 8 mans than anyhthing arachnos has since arachnos has no autohit -40% resistance aoe's that stack from multiple sources and -800% regen grenades.

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While on a team, they can cover everything to the point you don't even need toggles. :P If you want to use that argument, then I could easily come back and say that those dreaded -40%/-30% res grenades that you keep mentioning are fully resistible. At 80% res, they'd only drop you 8% / 6% res each.

Still, I'm not sure why you mention s/l res when the problem with s/l def debuffs isn't necessarily increased s/l damage, rather the increased damage taken by exotics.

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I've already stipulated that FS is better then Tremor. I disagree to what *scale* it's better.

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Understood, I wasn't saying you didn't. I was disagreeing with your scale and provided my reasoning as to why.

(Btw, I like to explain why I take the stances I do so that people can either see where I'm coming from and/or point out any mistakes I may have made. So please don't misinterpret my longer posts as an attack - it's not my intent.)

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If you are going to add in Rage into the equation, then you'd need to add Build Up on the SM side, in which case the damage roughly balances (mind you I said *roughly*) out over the course of one Rage cycle (including the crash penalty).

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This is a fair request, as I did not count BU or Rage's crash before. So I'll count both this time (standard 3 SOs in each): Foot Stomp is still superior by 2.6 times.

(Rage provides superior +dmg over time compared to BU, even factoring in the crash. Don't forget the extra persistent +tohit, either.)

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Simply, it would take a fairly useless power that is virtually never taken (or never taken for the long haul) and replace it with a power that is uncommonly taken (and/or placed in heavy second builds).

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I consider Fault to be a cornerstone power in Stone Melee. I don't see any reason Hand Clap wouldn't be elevated to the same status.

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And keep in mind this is only my opinion (before this turns into a City of Numbers fest ... again) based on how each set plays and feels to me. Certainly very subjective.

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My opinion, as a function of both experience and math (which I've tried to keep at a minimum), is the opposite.

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When designing an attack chain to use for AV soloing, the only stat you're looking at is DPA. Endurance use is of course important, but it's not a big showstopper as all single target blasts across the sets have a proportionate DPE

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They all have similar DPE, but the EPS is very different. Think about it, if all blasts have a DPE of ~8, but one has double the DPA, that means it will burn up endurance twice as fast.

I agree that high DPA attacks is important, but so is endurance management (end redux, +recov, +max end, etc). If your chain uses up too much endurance, your damage output will then become constrained by your recovery. Good chains for downing AVs will have both high DPS/DPA and end management.

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I just read that the unique heals 10% of your AT's base hp at any given level. Would that change anything?

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It's not actually 10% of you base hp:

Panacea: +Heal/+End
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0.67000 Melee_Heal Heal (20% chance) If NOT on a PvP map [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]

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Melee_Heal
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Level Scr
50 96.381</pre><hr />

0.67 * 96.381 = 64.57527

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Question!

Panacea's Unique is a chance for hp and endurance, how would that relate to losing 4% bonus in regeneration?

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Let's see, Panacea has a 20% chance to heal 64.57 hp every 10 seconds. That's 1.2915 hp/sec (woo?).
[edit: Oh, assuming it's slotted in a passive / toggle.]

To compare that against a static regen rate:

Hp/Sec = (MaxHp * Regen) / 240

In this case, you're trying to compare 1.2915 hp/sec to 4% regen, so

1.2915 = (MaxHp * 0.04) / 240
309.96 = MaxHp * 0.04
7749 = MaxHp

So 4% regen would equal the Panacea if you have 7749 MaxHp, which is obviously impossible to attain. (With base hp, 4% regen is 0.223 hp/sec, at the hp cap it'd be ~0.4 hp/sec.)

So, the Panacea is stronger, but I'm dubious that 0.8915 to 1.0685 hp/sec worth the massive inf cost, esp since Regen has such little mitigation to begin with.

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While I agree Footstomp is better then Tremor, let's not over exagerate the differences. Footstomp has about 40% more damage (not exactly EPIC at the scales we're talking about here) and a faster animation. They both have about the same radius iirc.

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Note: That leaves Foot Stomp with a base DPA 2.17 times as high as Tremor. With slots and Rage, the difference is 3 fold. That's not insignificant. Due to Tremor's longer animation, their cycle times close as recharge increases.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>+Rech Tremor Foot Stomp
0% 17.3 22.1
25% 14.5 18.1
50% 12.63 15.43
75% 11.3 13.53
100% 10.3 12.1
125% 9.52 10.99
150% 8.9 10.1
175% 8.39 9.37
200% 7.97 8.77
225% 7.61 8.25
250% 7.3 7.81
275% 7.03 7.43
300% 6.8 7.1</pre><hr />

Even without any +recharge at all, Tremor still doesn't cycle anywhere near fast enough to compensate for the DPA advantage Foot Stomp has.
[edit: It doesn't even compensate before Rage is applied, mind you.]

I have Tremor and I thoroughly enjoy the power; in large groups I'd go so far as to say it's a large part of my enjoyment of the set. Even so, I'm not blind to how it pales in comparison to Foot Stomp.

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And HC would always play second fiddle to Fault due to having a 50% longer recharge, costing more endurance, and being a cone versus a true AOE.

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Hand Clap is an AoE, just like Fault. The only difference is Hand Clap is a PBAoE while Fault has a short 20ft range.

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I agree, Hand Clap is a pretty useless power that I don't think I'd ever recommend taking. Even so, you'd have to come up with a pretty good reason to buff one of the stronger Tanker sets. Personally, I think Fault is on the extreme edge of power performance. With just regular slotting, it can perma stun minions, stun lieutenants half the time, and knock everything down (bosses included). When you start injecting high orders of recharge, it's possible to stun bosses.

That's not something that should be handed out lightly.

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Not sure if I'd ever try it on a melee toon.

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I don't think I'd ever try that on a Defender. :P I can't help but wonder if that scatter is actually hurting your survivability more than it's helping. It's spreading things out so that DN, Fluffy, and DN are all less effective, while at the same time reducing your ability to stack tohit debuffs from TT and NF. Couple that with the fact you can knock things out of your own Tar Patch... Ungh. Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

If it's the mission I'm thinking of, that's not actually a defeat all. You have to defeat a bunch of unnamed clock bosses (and their surrounding spawn) to end the mission. You can only tell which bosses you need to defeat because they'll "BZZT" when you're close to them.

Still, very annoying.


[edit: On a second read, it sounds like you already know that. Umm, whoops. My bad.]

Note: If you activate Rage again, the def penalty will disappear. (The damage debuff will persist, though.)

Whether or not that will always be the case is a different story.

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i try to not build my wp scrappers/brutes/tankers for smash/lethal defense. just the exotics. outside of arachnoids poison claw none of the exotic dmg types debuff defense that i'm aware of - not counting pain in the butt circle of thorn earth caster thingies.

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Rad Blast has (very strong) defense debuffs. Thankfully, it's rarely used. (Vahzilok bosses, Shivans, Anti-Matter clockwork, Anti-Matter, Positron, Positron Automation is all I can think of.) CoT Earth Casters are actually smashing, the catch is their autohit Quicksand...

By the way, having lower s/l def is a liability to WP's exotic mitigation. Sure, there isn't many exotic def debuffs, but if you're fighting a mixed group (such as Arachnos), those s/l def debuffs can be exceptionally painful.

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(And in fact, Defenders and Arachnos soldiers/Widows also have a 0.1 Ranged_Res_Dmg modifier, while Tankers have 0.065)

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Note that the ranged def mod is for ally buffs like Maneuvers - Defenders are supposed to be better buffers than Tanks.

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The biggest buff was finally losing the defense penalty from Unyielding. A 5% penalty would drop end game builds from ~40% defense to ~35% defense with 5 minions be the difference in capping. This change was the biggest buff. The way the game currently works and the way builds flirt with the soft cap adding 5% effective defense is a huge buff.

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On Scrappers/Brutes, the debuff was 3.75%, not 5%. (It was originally 5%, but it was changed.) Still, that was a nice boost. The way Castle made the changes Invuln lost a bit of top end def, but gained more up front. This made Invuln's def base more stable, which I agree was a good thing.

I think you're both downplaying the def resistance Invuln gets, though. It's remarkably strong at 50%. Consider that Stone (out of Granite as a Tank) and Ice Armor only get 51.9% def resistance, or Stone (out of Granite as a Brute) only gets 41.52% and EA only gets 51.9% def resistance. Those sets have less mitigation backing than Invuln does, and its def resistance is competitive with them.

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Actually, maria has a random non arc mish that has anti matter. I remember saying to myself the moment I do things in order so I get antimatter, I ended up facing him 3 times. This isn't including the times he teleports douring the tina story arc. The problem is, sometimes maria won't give you more missions after tyrant. I don't know what triggers that.

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You're wrong about this, Tina has 3 encounters with him, the one he telports out of, the final arc mission and another (non-arc) with 10 or so glowies. I keep this one for friends who need him and just kill him and never click the glowies.

You cannot get him off Maria.

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The question is can you do the random no arc one in Ourboros like you do Marauder and Nightstar ?

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The reason you can get those two missions from Ouroboros is because they're badge missions. Since (to the best of my knowledge) the mission with Anti-Matter isn't , you would not be able to flashback to it.

Haters.

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It has good resistance to all power types

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I strongly disagree with this statement. WP has paper thin resistances to exotics (f/c/e/ne), 5.625% base and 8.775% fully slotted. It can be supplemented with SoW up to 23.4% - which is what Invuln can have all the time.

That's not to say that WP is weak to the exotics since it has a healthy dose of def.

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it makes up for this though by getting decent levels of defense just from the set to those same exotic sets, and one cant ignore the generous amounts of psi resists. since none of the exotics debuff said defense except arachnoids poison claws it takes very little to build up a decent amount of defense to the exotics which when combined with the regen makes them less of a problem for wp than for invuln.

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Which is why I specifically said that WP wasn't weak to exotics in the last line of that post. I was saying it did not have good resistance to all damage types like powerfuse said. That is all.

Also, exotics can debuff defense - see rad blast.

[edit: Btw, a lot of def debuffs come from lethal attacks, which WP has almost no defense to. This means that those attacks can cascade its exotic defense. Invuln's def resistance is also much stronger, mitigating this.]

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Lastly, we have Stone melee. Anyone can tell you, its powerful. Slow and usually full of heart felt misses. But never the less, it shines when its accurate. Deadly in the higher levels, but Fault and Tremor always make me reconsider picking it, or at the very least, make me skip them. Either way, its a slow build up for Stone M.

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Mind if I ask why you'd skip them?

Tremor I can sort of understand. It has one of the slowest animations and has a lower base damage than some, but it's still an AoE and it has a nice 15ft radius. Not having any AoEs is a real drag. (SS was getting tedious to me pre-38. To be fair, my SM is Fiery Aura, so I had Blazing Aura to supplement it.)

Fault boggles me, though. It's hands down the best control power Tankers have access to. I'd go so far as to say that Fault is a defining power of Stone Melee. I can't imagine ever skipping it.


Just my opinion, of course, but I feel both powers have their place in SM builds.

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It has good resistance to all power types

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I strongly disagree with this statement. WP has paper thin resistances to exotics (f/c/e/ne), 5.625% base and 8.775% fully slotted. It can be supplemented with SoW up to 23.4% - which is what Invuln can have all the time.

That's not to say that WP is weak to the exotics since it has a healthy dose of def.

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Hm, strange they'd update that bonus but not take a look at the rest of the stats.

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macskull: I can understand the radius (as it was never changed to begin with), but the target cap is odd. (For the longest time, the Defender version had no target cap, but the buffs were reduced when fighting higher level enemies.)

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So getting Soul Drain would be pretty helpful? Im leveling up a sonic/dark and i feel like im kind of lacking in the damage department

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Flareonic: Well, it's an extra source of +damage that you wouldn't have had access to otherwise. From the looks of the patron pools, it's your best bet (assuming you didn't skip anything better from your primary / secondary). Dark Miasma is also good at leveraging it since it's so safe. Having said that, it has a long recharge out of the box, so don't expect instant miracles after taking it - recharge slotting really helps it out.

You may want to give it a spin on Test to see what you think there.

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Yes. Found that out learning the LRSF. I was just saying that an AV should have mez protection like a player does. If that closes the sleep hole in some cases, so be it.

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What about the Immobilize hole? That's pretty much the only reason Controllers can get containment against AVs. (I know you suggested lowering the status protection MAG.)

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Again, the point is that I don't necessarily agree with AVs being team content. They should be easier with teams.

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If they're not team content, what is? Besides, if you make them too easy, soloing them ceases to be an accomplishment.

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That's almost an exception that proved the rule situation.

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I can't argue with this.