Shred_Monkey

As with most secondaries... DM, having a self heal in it's attack chain, is a very solid addition to /elec. With these 2 sets you'll have enough endurance recovery ability that you could drop the fitness pool at some point... which opens up other interesting options. I'd build for recharge to get energize and soul drain up as much as possible.

Elec/shields get it's 2 defining powers at level 32 and 35.

The simple answer is... YES. Take stamina.

To say "NO, you don't need it." Means tayloring large parts of your build and play style to make up for not having it. There are a few exceptions on toons/builds that have other means of gaining endurance. But in all cases, if you don't have stamina, you need another plan for sustaining endurance.

I find it quite amusing that a day later, we still don't know the answer to this question.

When you're looking at ST damage, if your AT has blaze... that's the set with the highest attack chain.

edit: Did someone actually say dark?

It's really simple. There's 2 types of buyers.

1) People who buy now for whatever the current list price is.
2) People who bid lower then the current list price and wait a few minutes/hours/days... depending on what the drop rate is of what they're bidding on.

The people who fall into catagory 2 are not the ones paying 100K inf for a common salvage and then complaining about it.

The people in Catagory 1 are mostly likely buying from a flipper. I am a flipper. When I set my price so that I'm the lowest price of anything listed. That means I just lowered the price of what I'm selling for the next buyer. Someone else may come along after me and list for even lower, so that they now get the next sale instead of me. It's a guessing game, so generally we have to anticipate a price that will cut out our competition... which means, Eventually we're actually drop our prices so low that other people are not willing to take such little profit and they flip something else instead. The end result of everything I'm discussing is a LOWER price. Not a Higher price. That's not some economic theory model ... that's what actually happens, as explained by the a person who's doing it.

Take flippers out of the equation and prices go up for the catagory 1 people, not down. Sorry folks, but flippers are good for the "casual" player whether they understand it or not. That 100K common salvage purchase? THAT is what happens when the flippers run out of supply and someone thinking they're gonna make a fast buck lists something really high. THAT is what you'd pay without flippers.

And they guy who thought he'd make a fast buck? He sold 1, maybe 2 for what is really peanuts in this game and wasted a market slot with overpriced salvage for the next 2-3 weeks or until he decides to unlist at the inflated price and dumps his stockpile for what's probably a net loss.

Pulled this of Bestbuy website just now. From my limited knowledge it looks comparable to Father X-mas's $1200 build with a less powerful graphics card (yet still able to run ultra mode, if I'm not mistaken). But I suspect I'm missing something. What do the experts think?

Does it have adaquate power and cooling?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Dell+-+S...&skuId=9697488


Thanks

I would agree with starting on Freedom because it's easier to get Pick-up groups there. Every server has some jerks and such, and freedom is no exception. Try not to sucked into the "AE farms" as that isn't representative of what the game is really like. You could hit level 20 using AE farms in the first few hours of game play and not know anything about the game or your toon. That's not a good way to start/restart your experience here.

As for what to play... that really depends a lot on you. Scrapper is a good option as you can't really make any mistakes that will leave you wishing you picked a new combination at level 50. Elec/elec will have good AoE damage and it looks cool. It can be built to be very survivable. All "extreme survival" builds cost a lot, so if you're worried about spending influence, it doesn't matter if /elec is not as "uber strong" as some other sets.

You might take a look at /Shields. It is pretty popular right now because it *is* very strong, and even more so if you decide to invest a lot of influence in it after level 50.

Once you've made a choice, come back often and we'll give you more advice and math then you can possibly imagine on how to turn whatever you select into something fun and powerful.

Welcome to the forums and to the game. This is a great game for casual players, I hope you stay a while and enjoy your time here.

I'd start with Chimera since he's easy to get to and will usually stay in melee once he switches to melee.

You're stopper will probably be endurance. Without seeing your build, we can't know if you're handling it well enough or not. The fight will probably take 6-10 minutes... so essentually you have to build to never run out of endurance.

I've played ST monsters for most of my CoH career. When teamed I target and kill bosses as fast as possible... I sometimes get frustrated if I'm on a team where after I kill the bosses, there's still a bunch of LTs running around with silvers of health left for me to go hit 1 at a time. AoE attacks and damage auras are great for solving that issue. It doesn't matter if it's a scrapper, blaster, controller, or tanker, I'm in favor damage auras.

BF>Attack Vitals is a nice mid-to-high ST damage chain, with good AE built in and doesn't take extreme recharge. Once you have this chain slotted out, there's no need for other chains unless you exemplar.

I like to add in Typhoon for extra AoE damage. I also do not like 1K Cuts.

And btw, _Pine_... that signature is the best I've seen.

All the expected forum drama aside, (OP, don't take it too seriously, the forum regulars regularly tear into each other with much more aggession and fervor then they applied to you in this thread).... I happen to agree with the OP's take on spines/electric.

That's been my new toon of late. I picked that combo thinking, "ok.. this is gonna suck but I wanna see what I can make of it." I've found that energize is indeed a very nice power as it gives the set exactly what it's lacking. I've found that endurance is very very managable, although it's not because of electric's endurance powers... it's because spines is very easy on the endurance bar. I hadn't expected to be able to run an attack chain non-stop with both toggles on 100% of the time at level 20, but I did quite easily, and for damage output, that damage chain + toggle damage put me right in line with the other scrapper sets. It's really not until you get into high-recharge chains in the end game that spines falls behind in single target damage.

I do admit, as Umbral pointed out, that /fire may give me the same playstyle with a better heal... the reason I went with /electic was for the tier 9 power. I've generally always ignored tier 9s, but I figured while I'm doing something new, I might as well take a tier 9, too. I may still re-roll as /fire as the self-rez power is a toy I've always wanted to play with, too.... plus when I look at my end build I'm not really utilizing the tier 9 like I wanted.

That said, I do have another motive in this build. I've always maintained (as may forum regulars do) that any/any scrapper can solo AV's. Conventional wisdom may indicate that, if there's an exception to that, spines/electric (or spines/fire) might be it.... so once I hit 50, I'm going to solo a pylon and some AVs and run a few variations of the RWZ challenge just to show it can be done.

edited: (did i really say "regulars regularly" ?)

I use it for a power not in my attack chain, to avoid having to move my fingers off my attack chain buttons... (click mezz protections... hasten... energize... etc)

Excellent. I hadn't found that article yet.

While we're at it... suggestions on the version of Windows to get? ... assuming I'm going to be able to find somewhere to give me options.... I get the sense from posts here and elsewhere that Windows 7 isn't friendly yet.