Screwloose

Issue 6 Broadsword Dark Armor Guide by Dracomicon.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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Stamina, 3 slotted with +3 SO's grants 149% Recovery, or roughly 2.5 End/second if you have the normal Endurance maximum.

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So Stamina with about a 100% Enh bonus provides an extra 49% End recovery?

That looks much more like the sort of value Kamendae was talking about than the value I was talking about. And in relation to the OP's question it means those 3 extra slots get you about 5 Extra End per Minute, still not what I would call a stellar return for slots.

Heh, makes it easier for me to justfiy not taking Stamina on most of my characters I guess.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Kamendae

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I think your "base" figure for Stamina is off. Just going by "feel" Stamina doesn't double your end recovery at three slots (i.e. zero to full in 30 seconds).

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Quite possible, lots of things got tweaked over the last few issues and I have to say Stamina is not a power that I keep good track of.


Arcarnaville

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For comparison most attacks have an average 1End cost of End per Second, so the first SO End reducer you put in them will save you 0.25 End per second, about twice what you got for those 3 slots in Stamina.

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Much more than that; in terms of end per activation second the average is closer to 4end/sec. Slotting end reduce in all of your attacks probably saves more end than all of your toggles likely cost combined.

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True, but I look at it as 1 End per second per attack that you are cycling.

If you just cycle one attack then the End cost per second is End Cost / (Act + Recharge), but since you would normally be cycling 4 or 5 attacks in a chain, or just because you are spamming whatever has recharged, then you are likely to be spending 4 or 5 End per second for your total offensive actions.

Whichever way you look at it offensive abilities (ones which cause damage or distress to others) cost a lot more than personal defensive abilities and therefore save you a lot more when you slot them with End reducers.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Base End Recovery is 1.66 End per second.

Stamina gives you a 50% Bonus to that, so an additional 0.83 End per second.

3 slotted with SO End Mod Enh you get a 95% Bonus to the Bonus End, so that makes it 1.62 End per Second.

6 slotted with SO End Mod Enh you get a 110% Bonus to the Bonus End, so that brings it up to 1.74 End per second.

If you really really really have nothing interesting to do with those 3 slots you could put them in to Stamina for the extra 0.12 End per second, or in technical terms bugger all.

For comparison most attacks have an average 1End cost of End per Second, so the first SO End reducer you put in them will save you 0.25 End per second, about twice what you got for those 3 slots in Stamina.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Positron's (and Pohsyb's) Guide to Masterminds 2.0

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

1. Try asking in the Corruptor Forum.

2. Have a look at some of the links in the Corruptor Guides and faqs thread, top of the Corruptor forum. Anything on either of the powersets will give you some ideas and i saw a few Dark / * and * / Dark guides.

3. Also check the Defender guides and faqs thread. The powersets are identical and I am sure you will find Dark Dark guides in the Defenders.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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I have a DM/DA Brute that is looking into CoF and I'm trying to confirm the -Acc on it. I don't care about the Fear effect, I care about the Debuff because as a Brute, you want them still attacking: just whiffing.

If it is only 10% Debuff, then the power is useless to me. It would take 2 Accuracies, 2 End Redux and 2 ToHit Debuffs to make it worthwhile and if I'm only getting 16% Debuff out of it, than I'll drop it like a ton of bricks.

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From the info we got from the Devs regarding Scrapper CoF when it got changed through I5 and I6 the To Hit Debuff is 10%.

That might not seem like much, but compare it to other Scrapper or Brute powers. It is approximately equal to a 10% Def or 20% Res, except that Debuffs use Schedule A Enh rather than Schedule B.

CoF does suffer from something that all powers with multiple effect suffer from. None of the effects individually are superkiller, but together they usually give a decent return for investment. If you can actually use all the effects produced.

If you are running OpGloom then you are already Stunning most of the Critters that would be Cowered ny CoF, so that part of CoF becomes a bit redundent and then the To Hit debuff by itself looks a bit anemic.

As N-Oz pointed out the To Hit debuff is a great effect when you are teaming becuase it lowers affected Critters chances to hit anyone in your team, with anything.

For Brutes I don't think that either OpGloom or CoF will markedly cut into your Fury. With OpGloom all the Critters in the Spawn will get their first shot at you before they Stun, which is often your major source of Fury particularly in teams who might well frag half the Critters before they get to swing again. Equally with CoF. The Cower will slow the attacks of affected Critters, but they will still swing at least once, and maybe a second time if they live that long.

There are some reports at the moment that CoF for Brutes is Cowering LTs as well as Minions (which Scrapper CoF doesn't). If it stays that way I think it would make it a superior power to OpGloom. It would still require more investment, but it would give you a better power.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

This appears to be more of a question than a Player Guide, but anyway.

Slotting More Enh will always have an affect on your powers however.

As Enh that reduce things go by the formula
Modified Value = Base Value / (1 + Enh Value)
as the Enh value gets bigger the Modified value only moves closer to an effective minimum.

Also in Issue 6 a mechanism called Enhancement Diversification was introduced which reduces the effectiveness of Enh after a certain threshold value is reached. Basically that threshold is at about the value of 3 Single Origin Enh. So you can slot as many Enh as you like while they are Training or Dual Origin ENh, but when you are slotting Single Origin Enh the 4th and further Enh of the same type that you slot will have a much reduced effect.

Read Pilcrows Guide to Enhancement Diversification for more details.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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Surely Dark Armor cant be any worse than SR is it...? (I made an SR, got to 25, and deleted.)

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DA isn’t any Worse than SR, but overall it probably isn’t any Better either.

All Scrapper Secondaries got a nasty haircut in I5 and anyone who remembers what they use to be usually just has a stiff drink and tries to stop remembering.

SR is more random than DA. Any powerset that relies on Def is going to have good days and bad days. Some missions no one will lay a finger on you and the some it will seem like every minion is suddenly Zen Master of Kicking your Butt.

SR requires less brain work than DA. To get the best out of DA you really should be thinking about what toggles to run at what time. When to use Dark Regen. What affect your Status Effect PBAE powers are having on the bad guys. You can just turn everything on and burn a ton of End but at least some of the time some of that End will be wasted. SR you turn the toggles on and it is on. You can do a little toggle tuning with SR, but it isn’t anywhere near as necessary.

I chose DA for my first Scrapper because it looked like it had lots of interesting toys to play with and it looked like the Secondary least likely to succeed. It still has lots of interesting toys and is a little better than it was at release (non-stacking shields was the best looking worst working idea I have seen for a long time), but overall probably isn’t any better or worse than any other Scrapper Secondary.

Regards, Screwloose.
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

I am not sure that Amberyl is around any more, but for a more current look at Regen try EvilGekos I6 BSword Regen guide, link can be found in the Scrapper guides and faqs thread.

Nothing much has changed for the Katana side. Power selection is pretty much teh same, just remember not to slot more than 3 of any type of SO enh in any power and you will do fine.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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You need to add 3slotted Energy Cloak in to get ~ 25% S/L. Still that's kind of low-sounding -- I thought the set was supposed to have been buffed to get closer to 35%? And then still to come is the global def buff in I7.

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And when that To Hit calc change comes in a 25% Def will cut every mobs chance to hit you in half. Which seems pretty good to me.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

You are talking Resistance not Defense.

If the OP asked Castle about Defense then he would have been talking about the +Def powers not the +Res powers.

Res and Def both use Schedule B Enh which give 20% bonus for an SO and about 56% for 3 SOs. 3 Level+3 SOs won't give any significant extra bonus (about 0.45% each by my calculation).

Stupid

I sort of presumed that these were not counting the +Def vs All from Energy Cloak, they seem too low otherwise, and if it was just a fast look up then I doubt Castle did any adding up of numbers.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Well if you multiply those numbers out you get

Smash / Lethal = 0.1275
Fire / Cold / Energy = 0.15
Negative = 0.105

If you convert those decimals to percentages you get 12.75%, 15% and 10.5%.

How those values would be spread over the powers that EA has that provide Def I am not sure.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

ED is Enhancement Diversification a function introduced in I6 that means that Enhancements give a much lowered return once the bonus they give goes over a certain threshold value.

It is practically impossible to reach this threshold value with Training or Dual Origin Enhancements, but with Single Origin Enhancements it means that slotting more than 3 of a single type of Enhancement starts to return bugger all.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Guide to getting a super group off the ground.

Found that linked to in the Guide to Guides thread, looks pretty good.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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I love that little touch, it's so nice to see someone used again. I wish we had more stuff like that. Like some low level gang leader you beat up coming back as a member of the Council or something like that.

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There is a Freak Boss Furious B that turns up in a couple of different missions in differing circumstances.

Inside story arcs it is more common. There is another Freak called Ohms-(something) who you run across a couple of times in one of the Sharkhead story arcs and you see some of the named Family personalities twice in the Port Oakes Family story arc.

But I agree it does give a nice feeling of connection when you run across someone you have encountered before, not just another blah Boss.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Entropic_Shifts Robots Traps MM Guide

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything,"

In general Pulling is done by aggroing a mob, with a ranged attack or by proximity, then breaking line of sight so that the mob leaves where it is and comes to you.

Pulling can be used to move a spawn from a bad place to fight it, like right next to another spawn or on a narrow bridge.

Pulling can be used to make mobs bunch up by making them come around a corner. This makes AE Debuffs and Damage more effective.

Pulling can be used to move mobs into areas that have been prepared for a fight with Location based powers like Tripmines, Caltrops or Tarpits.

I think something many people, myself included at times, forget is that many CoH/V players are first time MMO players and simply saying “Lets Pull” doesn’t really give any information about what is going to happen.

If you want people to understand you then you need to say things to them in a way that gives them enough information to get your meaning.

Regards, Screwloose.
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

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The first post was a good start, please don't think I am criticising it.

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Heh NP mate, sorry I snapped, but there are some things that just push my buttons and sometimes I forget that others want different info than I feel the need for.

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But it was made MANY months ago, and there have been major changes to the game as well as a lot of time for people's real experiences with the abilities to be applied.

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I agree that ED has significantly changed many powers and powersets, but IMHO the Scrapper APP’s are sufficiently different in what they offer that a thematic rather than a numerical analysis is sufficient to let me make a decision as to which is right for me.

To get significant results from any power, APPs included, you generally need to slot them strongly. In some ways ED has simplified this as it lays out a boundary past which there is little point trying to push.

If you are looking at two powersets that are functionally very similar, say Katana and Martial Arts, then some numerical analysis might be useful in helping you decide between them. For some other AT’s even the APPs fall into this. Some Tanker and Blaster APPs are basically 3 of the same 4 powers with different FX renamed and one different power that isn’t too different.

With the Scrapper APPs we don’t have the multiple redundant copies of the power combinations we only have the 3 most significantly different versions of the APPs. If you look at what each APP does for you then IMHO how much it does it is less of a factor in whether you would take it or not.

If you are the sort of person who wants More End Reduction then how much damage Exploding Shuriken does or how long Petrifying Gaze holds is irrelevant as Conserve Power will almost 100% make you take Body Mastery.

If you are a PvP enthusiast then Focused Accuracy probably ensures you will take Body Mastery as well.

Dark and Weaponry both have useful Control effects and additional Ranged and AE damage which give additional tactical flexibility to those who get fun from that aspect of Scrapping.

I would say this is why there is little analysis of the different APPs for Scrappers. For most people the powers of each APP give such a different outcome that to be desirable the powers of a different APP would have to be vastly overpowered and even then some people would still pine for their FA and CP while they used a Mag 20 Hold.

Regards, Screwloose.
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

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what is EPPs?

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Epic Power Pools, got changed to Anciliary Power Pools after people complained that the powers in them weren't Epic enough.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

What's to know?

You can't Perma anything and don't slot any power with more than 3 of the same type of Enh.

IMHO ED/I6 won't change the APP that you might have wanted to take and it won't change the powers that you select and it pretty much won't change the way that you slot them.

Did you have some specific power that you were wondering what might have changed because of ED.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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One thing I seem to remember from somewhere (and it's what my SR does) is that 4 slots in the toggle defense and 2 in the passive is more defense than 3 in the toggle and 3 in the passive.

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I don’t think your 4/2 theory works.

Base for FF and FS is 12.5 and the corresponding Passives is 5.
Base for Evasion is 22.5 and for Lucky is 7.5.

2 SO Def Buff Enh gives a bonus of 40%.
3 SO Def Buff Enh gives a bonus of 56%.
4 SO Def Buff Enh gives a bonus of 59%.

So the fourth SO in FF gives a 3% of 12.5 bonus = 0.375 while the third SO in the Passive gives a 16% of 5 bonus = 0.8.

Total Bonus for 3/3 is 27.3 and for 4/2 is 26.775. It is not a big difference, but 3/3 is bigger than 4/2.

For the higher value AE powers the difference is 3/3 = 46.8 vs 4/2 = 46.275.

All presuming level+0 SO Enh and using the excellent Enhancement Diversification: A Players Guide.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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That really doesn't tell me anything useful...

Not much more to say without spoilers. All I can tell you is I thought it was worth the effort.

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Shrug. All I can tell is that you think it has some amusing dialogue.

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Depending on your point of view all content is just amusing dialog.

I ground out the mobs in Port Oakes because I am content junkie and want to see everything I can get to, on as many characters as I can where possible. Took me about 4 hours in two sessions with some VG teaming inbetween. I do think that the effort to unlock the unlockable contacts seems to be a little too much for the reward or unlocking them, even for a content junkie.

I don't recall any of the missions being particularly tricky or having super hard mobs or really revealing any major insight causing background info. But they were fun.

Also if you solo a lot you may run out of other content before you get to level 35 so unless you want to run Newspaper missions for a level or possibly more then having an extra contact can be handy.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

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This was fixed with the latest patch. The droning fades away after 10 seconds.

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If by fixed you mean still goin strong, then yes its been fixed.

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In Dev speak "The Latest Patch" means the one that hasn't gotten on to the Testing Server yet, or maybe the one following that. But at least it is good to hear that it is in the pipeline rather than sitting on someones desk waiting to be fed into the pipeline.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."

Heh it use to be 10 times worse, I think I've burnt out some of my hearing register levelling a DA scrapper to 50.

They keep saying that the looping sounds will be changed, if you can't wait for Hell to Freeze Over then check the Player Guides forum for a thread on how to silence specific game sounds.

regards, Screwloose.
"I am not young enough to know everything."