Siolfir

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Except that BS is functionally the same as Ninja blade except with different recharge/damage/end values and animation differences.

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I understand what you're trying to get at, and even agree with it, but you do realize how silly this statement is, right?

"It's the same thing, they just changed the animations, endurance cost, damage, and recharge!" There's not a lot left to change in a melee set; consider: Swipe and Eviscerate are the same thing, they just changed the animation, endurance cost, dmaage, and recharge!

I have one Claws character, a Claws/WP Scrapper. I love Focus - it's a fast-animating, good damage (ignoring AS, second highest in the set for Stalkers) attack with knockdown that just happens to have range. You could skip it, but there are better options to skip IMO.

Blinding Powder is amusing but not great out of the box; it's a good place for an IO set mule and to provide a little -tohit to stack with your defense (and the demoralize effect from Assassin's Strike) but the durations on both the sleep and confuse aren't very long. It's absolutely wonderful with a full set of Coercive Persuasions in it, though - the Contagious Confusion alone makes it silly, because who doesn't want a Stalker with Seeds of Confusion?

Smoke Flash, I had on one /Nin Stalker and used a respec to get rid of it the next available chance because it was too situational and didn't do what I was hoping for. The animation was too slow to save you if you really need it for a panic button, it needs a to-hit check so doesn't work all that great at one anyway, it's occasionally difficult to tell what it hits since there isn't a "miss" message, it notifies mobs that you've affected them so that as soon as the placate wears off they come right after you even if they were ignoring you before, and it doesn't place you in a hidden status to get an extra critical. All of that said, I'm sure there will be some people recommending that you take it and skip Blinding Powder, because Ninjitsu is funny that way - your playstyle really determines more about what you want or don't want.

For switching to Dual Blades vs Claws, the disadvantages are loss of range and higher endurance cost and recharges (due to losing the secondary effect of Claws), but you get more AoE attacks (including the Sweep combo) and DB having slightly harder hitting attacks as a general case. The animation times are close to a wash, but the combo system has its own issues.

With a DM/WP I don't know that you'd want it for the endurance, either. I can see using it as a fast-animating (1.03s)AoE that happens to have a stupidly long recharge, and having it as a "just in case" for mobs that drain, given that endurance draining is one of the few issues that can exist for Willpower (along with extreme damage spikes and -regen).

I have Dark Consumption (picked it up at 18, Bill) on my DM/Inv at 22; currently I'm just using it as a slowly-recharging AoE since I'm hardly ever low on endurance with 3-slotted Stamina. I'm sure that will change later (I'm only running Temp Invuln, Unyielding, and Combat Jumping atm), but for now it's just an occasional extra bit of damage that with no damage slotting can still do a fair amount due to Fury.

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yep. as long as it is not the last one of the arc which gives you your patron power.

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Eh, more specifically as long as it's not he last one (door mission) of each arc. The first one giving you the badge to unlock the patrol pools is irrelevant.

For Ghost Widow:
You can't drop the fight with Numina.
You can't drop the fight with Ghost Widow.
You can't drop the fight with Citadel.
You can't drop the fight with Recluse.

The rest are droppable.

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To pull one at a time and make sure no others come the only reliable way I've found is you need a perma dom to sleep them all then pull 1 by 1.

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Or just someone who's really good with snipe pulling.

Of course, on many MoRSF teams you'll already be buffed to the gills so having an additional hero or two running into the mix isn't as big a deal as it could be.

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LOL true, btw what's the reward for completing a MoRSF again?
And it's a LRSF without dying right?

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As said, it's a shiny badge.

And it's no deaths, no temp powers.

Most AoE attacks aren't auto-crit from hidden status, there's usually a 50% (sometimes lower) chance; all of the single-target attacks are, though.

On a large team, assassin's strike and scrap away - the number of teammates within 30' of you boosts your base 10% out-of-hide critical chance by 3% each, up to 31% on a full team that all packed in close (note that this is for all attacks, even the AoEs have the same percentage chance). That's more than double the best chance for critical a Scrapper gets, plus you can add more with Placate and the initial hidden critical. If you're solo, it depends on your survivability and the mobs in question but generally speaking it's best to scrap it out once you have more than 1 attack other than Assassin's Strike (some builds take longer to reach this point than others). With Claws, just keep going.

*/Nin is a decent combination for Stalkers. You'll groan at lethal resistance later on (I have a DB/WP in the mid-30s and can't convince the rest of my teammates to run Carnie missions ) but generally speaking you'll do fine with it. Must have powers... eh, I'll let someone else speak for the Claws side, but the two defense toggles, the mez clickie, and the self-heal are the "must haves" from the secondary. Stamina is a playstyle issue; if you're on teams that never stop and never wait between spawns you'll probably want to pick it up. Even then, most of the time I put it off on my Stalkers to the mid/late 20s so I can get everything else set up.

Don't bother with Acrobatics, just pick up a -KB IO. Preferably a couple of BotZ -KBs so you can get the rest of the set to boost your ranged and AoE defense even more and aim for the soft cap on defense, but I'm using a Karma -KB (some of which I got on level 10-14 Bronze Rolls from AE, but I had 3 or 4 in base storage before i14).

As mentioned, for set bonuses aim for positional defense, after that it's a preference thing between more damage, hit points, or recharge. My DM/Nin is softcapped with Hide suppressed on melee and ranged with roughly 42% AoE, has around 50% global recharge + Hasten, and is capped on hit points with the accolades. You don't have to make many compromises unless you want to, and if you don't want to softcap you can always just go for recharge and pick up Shadow Meld from Soul Mastery.

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You forgot the most important part of your PvP experience! You didn't tell him "l2p n00b".

But at least they were playing the right AT to be stupidly belligerent - it even works most of the time against mob AI!

I've heard some people posting about it a while back, but I'm more interested in how you got blasters and defenders on an RSF...

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The poster is correct about the Defender being laughable weak as whole;

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snrk

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Add to this the MAG 0 resistance to the game standard of spam status effects, and you truly have a very weak class, forced into a life of slavery err servitude to other classes as a support class.

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Woe unto the poor Defender, having to deal with mezzes just like Blasters, Controllers, Corruptors, non-Domination Dominators, and non-Dwarf Kheldians.

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What I would like done to the Defended class to become a good overall flexible class than can group support (never as good as controllers) and can Solo reasonably well:

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Because after all, nobody's ever been able to solo reasonably well with a Defender.

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1. Give all primary powers of Defenders an ability to convey Status Effect Resistanes to otehrs and to themselves, it does not need to be exhorbitant, perhaps a MAG 6, which is half way between the 0 they have and the 12 of the Tanker;

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Yeah... not seeing it happen. See previous comment on the other ATs that have issues.

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Second change I would request is for the Defender to have an increase in their damage, it should be much higher than it is at the moment.

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It should be "much higher"? You really need to share those drugs - if it were "higher" it would be a Corruptor only with better mez, buff, and debuff modifiers. If it were "much higher" it'd be a Blaster.

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Third I would like to see debuffs to have a MAG intensity, this way the MAG intensity of a Defender's debuff could be set greater than those of a Controller. Sine debuffs now have a MAG value and can be resisted, improve the Defender's status effect protection powers (O2, Clear Mind, etc) to also provide a similar level of debuff protection.

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Since the complaints about mez primarily deal with the binary nature of the mag structure, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard for "fixing" Defenders.

Now, I'll admit that Defenders are one of the lowest damage ATs, just above petless Masterminds and just below Corruptors (unless you're dealing with EB+, then Scourge has enough chances to fire to make Corruptor damage almost equal the post-buff Dominators). But they're hardly "laughably weak", and if you're having such a hard time dealing with mezzes - which as stated above, is not something unique to Defenders - I suggest you don't have a clue how to play and should probably try to learn something called "tactics" before you start talking about AT weaknesses and making suggestions which just seem to read as "I want an AT with not only the best available debuffs, but high damage, mez protection, and while you're at it can you just give me a button making everything fall down as soon as I enter a mission too?" If you need that in order to accept the AT as viable, then it's not the right AT for you.

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Roll a Corruptor. Switch after GR hits.


Of course, you'll still get outdamaged by everything (on a "High" damage AT at that), but at least there will be one AT that's slightly behind you on damage.

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Since changing you colors will be -20% damage how many of the non-carebears will actually do this?

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That 20% is a maximum value. Remember, it scales depending on how far you deviate from the correct color.

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So if I color my energy blasts pink will I get the maximum debuff? Pink is regarded as the opposite of blue... Yay for gender colors? Anyways... -20 DMG for meee!

GV (Yes, I know this is a joke)

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*looks at Blaster Energy Blast*

*looks at Dominator Energy Assault*

*conveniently ignores different scalar values for attacks in poor attempt at joke*

It must not be 180 degrees out, the Dominator ranged modifier is 84.4% of the Blaster version instead of 80%. The difference is probably because they went with the same tinting as the in-set Bone Smasher and Total Focus which are more pure than the Blaster versions so get a 5% bonus. >.>

"This is the song that never ends.... it just goes on and on my friends..."

>.>

<.<

What?

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Blasters and corruptors can have our stygian circle when we get their...ok, forget it. They don't have anything we need or want. They will just have to get by as subpar warshade wannabes.

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Although I wouldn't mind Fulcrum Shift all that much...

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I just use "/targetcustomnext enemy defeated" for easy corpse targeting. Bind it to whatever key is convenient and you're good to go.

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That's what I do. Have it set up for the v key (x is cyst>void>quantum>enemynear, c is enemynext, z is enemyprev, and shift-x is enemynear).

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All the Stalker primaries have the scrapper and Brutes tier 9s (M. Grasp, Energy Transfer, Eagle's Claw, Throw Spines, Shockwave, 1k Cuts, Golden Dragonfly, Lightining Rod...).

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Nit-pick: Total Focus is the tier 9 for EM instead of Energy Transfer; it's using the Tanker order. Although they did also keep the Brute tier 9, it's the tier 8 for them.

Oh, and one thing you can do with Broadsword you can't do with Katana/Ninja Blade? Fight right-handed. (everything else is pretty much a wash)

My best (for a Stalker) was 81.73 at level 24.

That's not capped, though.

I ran out of character slots on Infinity so started invading other servers.

I still consider Infinity "home", though.

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I'll raise you one better. Lightning storm, which most people would actually call a "pet" (rather than just a limitation of the engine require a pet) Attacks with a TAoE blast, but only accepts St ranged sets.

Do you go by how the power functions, what it actually does, or what it takes for sets

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Well, the powers I named are all "AoE damage" powers that summon a pet which uses a PBAoE auto power, so that's not all that different.

But the point remains that you can call TS (or Lightning Rod) a "PBAoE" because that's what the devs decided it was for accepting sets despite it not exactly being one.

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Claws should be able to maintain the high fury generation w/ the quick recharge attacks.

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The lower end cost and higher recharge will help maintain Fury at lower levels when "building most of your fury by being attacked" means "and chewing on lots of greens or getting healed a lot" because your defenses aren't developed yet.

So I'm guessing they'll start fast but slope off in the late teens or early 20s, then pick up again once you proc the heck out of your attacks.

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Spine Burst, Thunderstrike...

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Spine Burst survived because they remove Damage Auras even faster, but its the only offensive melee set with a damage aura so that wont happen again.

Electric's Thunderstrike is a targeted AoE. The PBAoE was Lightning Clap, and it got removed.

[/ QUOTE ]Thunderstrike isnt a TAoE its a PBAoE. lighting clap was removed because it sucked for stalker playstyle.

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Actually TS is a TAoE, the aoe damage radiates from the target of the melee attack.

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Both statements are true, and both are false. It's a TAoE that takes only PBAoE sets; the question is are you looking at the operation of the power (in which it's a TAoE) or what sets it can take (in which it's a PBAoE)?

If you go strictly by the operation of the power, Rain of Fire, Ignite, Ice Storm, Blizzard, and several other powers I can't remember would take Pet Summon sets instead of AoE sets.

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Have you already got a spot set out for hiding the bodies?

Just a couple of color changes for me:

Cherry Tart (Elec/Rad Corr) will be getting a red secondary, as will Cinnamon Drop (EM/WP Stalker)...

Now, depending on how I like the new animations Teri Belle (SS/SD Brute), Wild Razor (SS/FA Brute), and Saltwater Taffy (MA/Reg Stalker) may end up with a few changes as well.

And once I can change the colors of the Speed pool, each and every character with Hasten is going to have the color match their powersets.

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How am I supposed to meet new people and make friends if you're all hidden?


Mad Cat

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I use global channels or post in the server section.

Given that my ignore list has been completely full of spammers ever since the "spam" button went into the email system, I try to avoid the issue on my new characters by hiding them from searches so that that character name doesn't end up on their spam list.

I still want Stone Melee/Stone Armor.

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I ask this because I found out the other day when I created my Defender on Virtue that Infinity has one of the lowest Villain populations in the game. I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to see so many Heroes playing on Virtue at 1 AM. On Infinity, I'll be lucky to find 50 Villains playing during the evening.

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Does that 50 include all of the people who use /hide to prevent getting spam messages? I usually see a fair amount of people on redside on Infinity and don't have trouble finding teams when I look so usually felt it had a decent-sized villain population, but then again I'm usually logging off at or a little before 1am edt and almost all of my characters are hidden (it should be all of them but I'm forgetful and don't remember if I got everybody).

But yes, you'll find more people on Virtue and Freedom.