Siolfir

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Immunity to EndDrain. Look in the AE and you should be able to find an all Sappers and walk through it with a smirk. (As long as you took Grounded.)

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I filled a map with sappers on my elec for fun. Let's just say that if you surround yourself on a map set for 8 with sappers, even elec gets drained.

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Ah, you did it on a map set for 8? That would be different than what I did.
Still, if that is what it takes to drain an /Elec, then we shouldn't complain. I tried herding Sappers on an indoor map and it took a fair number before the End bar started noticing it.

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And then you hit Power Sink and are good until it recharges again.

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But we're still meeting at Indy Port, so Siolfir can date an octopus.

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So I should bring the Warshade, then?

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Strangely enough, IP didn't lag me at all last friday.

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We will meet at Indy Port and keep the good streak going.

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Because nothing says "wear a bikini!" like lots of water, long beaches, and groping tentacles...



(also, I got the Brickhouse reference, just assumed others would also and didn't comment)

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Correction to the above: "if you're on a team with lots of damage buffs the brute will be outdamaging the scrapper."

If it's less than around +600% the Scrapper gets a better buff, and that's assuming you're using Fury to make up the rest of the difference.

Scrapper at cap (no criticals): 1.125 damage * 5 = 5.625
Brute: 5.625 / 0.75 = 7.5, or +650% damage; factor in a 10% critical rate and you end up with +725% damage needed to equal the Scrapper's damage output (6.1875 = (1.125 * 1.1 * 5) = (0.75 * 8.25)).

Unless you're pretty much capped all the time, the Scrapper is going to come out ahead with damage buffs.

1. DM is viable, certainly. Since PvP was revamped in i13 so that damage dealt in PvP is based on animation time rather than recharge (how it is determined in PvE) it's not the best set, but it's just as capable as most of the other Stalker sets. The tohit debuffs stack, but wear off rather quickly if you're having to chase your target which will often be the case.

2. Energy Melee was nerfed in PvE by reducing the magnitude of the stun in Total Focus and lengthening the animation time for Energy Transfer. As mentioned previously longer animation time = more damage in PvP so it's still a good PvP set. As for stunlocking someone, that's possible in PvE but not PvP for a variety of reasons. First, the stuns are much shorter (2 second base duration) and second, mezzes are suppressed to prevent just such a thing from happening. For more information about mez suppression I suggest poking around in the PvP section.

3. DM/Regen wouldn't be overkill, any more than Regen all by itself has a good chance at being overkill. Willpower is suggested because it has +perception, which Regen is missing. Oppressive Gloom isn't too taxing on your health since it's very minor damage, but it's difficult to use effectively in PvP because of the relatively small radius and point blank aspect; you'd also rather have the critical from hidden status than to break it just for a very short duration stun. Accuracy debuffing has issues if you're expecting to just not get hit - tohit buffs are rather common, and most PvP-built characters have plenty of accuracy and tohit bonuses so that they can hit defense-based secondaries.

4. If you want to be able to see your character all the time, you don't want to play a Stalker. Unless Hide is suppressed, you're essentially just a transparent outline with some effects from your armors on. Since I've never bothered using it, I don't know if the "Suppress Close FX" setting will bypass this or not, but it should prevent the game from drawing armor toggles/etc; this only affects the machine you're using, though.

5. Teleportation does not work very well in PvP at all - to prevent people from pulling hit-and-run attacks travel powers are suppressed when do nearly anything. Unlike all of the other powers, which are still able to move albeit slower, when teleport is suppressed ot does not work at all. Other than that, it's not that much endurance to get around but it requires more attention.

Also keep in mind that I'm a casual PvPer at best, and most of my experience was prior to i13 - I've tried it since a few times and simply don't like it as much. So take the answers with a grain of salt, knowing it's not exactly a PvP expert that's giving them.

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Am I the only one that leaves Sappers alone because they're not an issue and about as dangerous as a gnat? I'm more annoyed with the stupid gun drones.

Why yes, I do have an Electric Armor Brute, why do you ask?

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Ya know... I think the Science Booster takes care of the first part of Going Rouge.... Haha. Tran-sexuals of the world unite!

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I thought i16 was Going Rouge, since we'd be able to recolor our powersets.

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I like the idea in general, but I forsee one small problem with it - the defense (and defense debuff resistance) would be coming in far too late to be meaningful in a large number of situations. Here's the scenario as I see it: after taking several hits that have defense debuffs attached to them, your defense starts going up... you might even get to positive defense numbers at around 10% health!

It's a good idea in theory, but there are just too many defense debuffs around for it to work as an "after you've already been hit" sort of thing. Maybe if it started from a higher health percentage, and the debuff resistance scaled from 100% all the way down...

Hm.

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I'd rather bail hay than fight Malta.

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You ebil farmer!

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Factoring in a 10% critical rate and (the key here) no outside damage buffs, it's around 65%.

Damage buffs favor the Scrapper a great deal more, and if I'm remembering the math right a Scrapper with a persistent +45% damage buff is roughly equal to a Brute at 100% Fury (ie, impossible to maintain) with both of them using 95% damage slotting and a 10% critical rate on the Scrapper.

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- You now get experience points for kicking puppies.

- Two weeks later they nerf puppy farming.

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Nah... not going to say it.

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- When Going Rogue goes live Heroes switching sides to Villains get a permanent experience point bonus of +20%! Villains switching to heroes get a permanent state of Confuse that only allows them to attack their team mates.

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/signed, I can haz?

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And Mace Mastery has the uncanny ability to completely suck, so you wouldn't even take Leviathan Mastery while trying to gimp yourself.

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I thought the Immobilize was good? Or is that PvP only with the -Jump?

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The web immob is good for farming because you can footstomp and they'll be kb'ed even immobed.

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That holds true for all of the immobilizes except Electric Fences, though. And I'd much rather just have DN on them if I'm going to waste a long animation to cover a spawn.

It was valuable in PvP only, and Leviathan Mastery took that spot with the i13 PvP changes.

Who needs -jump when your single-target ranged attack does over twice the damage, everything causes suppression, and no mez lasts long enough to bother with?

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EM does great ST damage on paper it just the play still most people don't like.

Powerset DPS EPS

Brute Fiery 172.6 3.1
Brute Energy 157.5 3.3
Scrap Energy 151 3.3
Scrap Claws 149.6 2.9
Brute Claws 149.5 2.9
Scrap Fiery 149.3 3.1
Brute Warmace 148 3.7
Brute Dark 143.7 3.1
Brute Martial Arts 143.7 3.6
Scrap Strength 142.1 2.9
Scrap Dark 141.6 3.1
Scrap Martial Arts 141.5 3.6
Scrap Warmace 141 3.7
Brute Stone 137.5 3.5
Scrap Dual Blades 136.3 3.5
Brute Dual Blades 134.8 3.5
Scrap Stone 131.8 3.5
Brute Katana 131.2 3.2
Brute Battleaxe 129.3 3.2
Scrap Katana 128.6 3.2
Brute Strength 127.3 2.9
Brute Broadsword 124.9 3.1
Scrap Battleaxe 123.3 3.2
Scrap Broadsword 121.7 3.1
Brute Electric 106.6 2.9
Scrap Electric 103.6 2.9
Brute Spines 93.4 1.6
Scrap Spines 80.1 1.6

Takin from the scrapper form math doesn't lie.

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The game is not played on paper.

When you jump in the air to 1 shot a minion and in the 3.3 seconds it takes to animate your attack somoene esle kills said minion, you do 0 points of damage. That is not figured on paper. Also those numbers are based off of some pretty insane recharge times. Not everyone will be able to attain those kind of damage numbers. On an average recharge, EM is sitting in the middle, even on paper.

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Those numbers come from the "Common IOs" post that I link to in my sig, they're readily available for anyone with 42% recharge in all attacks.

Of course, those sets get rearranged quite a bit once you look at something with more recharge to it, which is why EM is "meh" for single-target - above average but not by much - and horrible for AoE.

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The problems with Leviathan Mastery are more about what else is available besides Leviathan Mastery.

Mu Mastery offers two ranged AoEs that aren't cones, meaning less positioning to get the value from them.

Soul Mastery has one good TAoE in Dark Obliteration, a great DPA attack in Gloom, and a huge survivability boon in Darkest Night. It's also got a cone immobilize if you really care about that sort of thing.

And Mace Mastery has the uncanny ability to completely suck, so you wouldn't even take Leviathan Mastery while trying to gimp yourself.

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3. Don't Touch the Peons: The big boss summons low-level flunkies who con gray to the players and have weak attacks. However, each flunky can heal the boss for decent chunk of HP, and once they're defeated, the boss summons a new set. The trick is to leave [u]one[u] peon alive and beat down the big guy or gal.

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Quite interesting. Seems like a solid way to allow single target specialists to shine since AOEs will have a high chance of killing the minions thus causing more to get summoned.

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Wouldnt single target attacks already outperform aoe attacks against a single enemy(boss)?

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Such common sense is lost on some teams...

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Well, it does sortof depend on set, too...

Barb Swipe vs Ripper
Havoc Punch vs Lightning Rod
Bitter Ice Blast vs Blizzard

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It would be cool if /Traps got Detonator as a T9 power, so you can use it to blow up your teammates

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^
This.
Want.
Now.

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Arcanatime

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...

...Gah. So all those fancy numbers we get in the game engine, all those built in calculations for damage per activation time... are all... wrong. That's truly evil.

Really, really, truly evil. And the sad part? It'd be trivial to fix. You just need to change what gets displayed to the user, after all, and computers are good at math.

I wonder what it says about me that this bothers me more than all the slow and clunky animations in EM?

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Yay, looks like a couple of people got the link for you.

As for why the "real numbers" are wrong in the game... I honestly don't think that the people who worked on those systems were aware of the situation until it was brought to their attention. Sure, they could list it in the real powers information now, but where are they going to put the explanation for people who ask why the numbers don't match up or start screaming "nerf" when the animation time shows the actual value?

If you're really bored (like I get occasionally) you end up making your own spreadsheet. So far the highest DPA attack I've seen is Blizzard, which once you convert pet damage to AT modifiers works out best for Defenders at scale 5.87 per second.

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Howling Twilight is -500% regen, not -3000%. Also, the end drain on elec is not nearly good enough on its own to be much of a detriment to anything (chances are the mob's hps will be going down at least as fast as the end).

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When talking about dueling (the OP mentioned that was the plan and possibly AVs), it's -3000%; PvP numbers. But yes, in PvE it's only -500%.

I'd actually recommend (the FotM) Thermal if you're planning on sapping, though. Heat Exhaustion is crippling.

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I know Heat Exhaustion is very nice looking (-Regen -End -Recov -DMG) But I don't see how 1 power that debuffs overthrows a set with 5 debuffing powers (Twilight, Darkest, Tar, Howling, and Servant)

Perhaps you could explain to me better?


[/Wishing I hadnt Deleted my Mind/Thermal Troller so I could compare right bout now]

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Because Heat Exhaustion can be kept on a target permanently, keeping them from any recovery beyond +endurance ticks from Performance Shifter or other drain powers.

No endurance recovery means they're not going to be doing anything except losing hit points - they can't run toggles, attack, or really do anything.

I got a bit distracted after my last post and haven't looked for a link yet; Arcanaville discovered it a while back when (iirc) she was trying to figure out why her numbers didn't match given the lag she was calculating.

Essentially, the game will only allow power activations on a 0.132 second clock, and one clock cycle is always wasted while it determines that you're not in another animation before it allows another.

The formula for "Arcanatime" on an animation then is (ROUNDUP(listed animation time/0.132)+1)*.132; Total Focus having a 3.3 second animation time works out the best the most efficient possible, given that the animation takes exactly 25 "ticks", meaning on the 26th tick you can activate another power.

I don't know if it's been stickied or not and was about to log off of the boards, maybe someone else can link it but if not I'll look tomorrow.

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Total Focus is, oddly enough, the second weakest attack in the set, though this is possibly justified by its 100% chance of mag 3 stun.

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Just a minor nitpick on this point - once you account for server ticks not allowing you to start a new animation, Total Focus is the second best DPA in Energy Melee, and Bone Smasher slightly beats out Energy Punch.

The problem is that means your "best DPA in set" single target chain is a 2.67 second attack (Energy Transfer), then 1.5 seconds (Bone Smasher), then 3.3 seconds (Total Focus) and back to 1.5 for Bone Smasher again. This does not work well for Brutes (although they can use Gloom for a great DPA attack), but can work well for Stalkers and Tankers - which is why you'll see those ATs playing it more than Brutes.

The damage scale/second of animation for the attacks works out to the following:
Energy Transfer: 1.57
Total Focus: 1.04
Bone Smasher: 0.96
Energy Punch: 0.95
Barrage: 0.83
Whirling Hands: 0.38

For comparison, Seismic Smash is 2.07, Gloom is 1.33, and the pre-nerf ET was 3.84.

Put me in as a maybe for this with Scorching Hot - 38 Fire/Fire Blaster and the only character I have on the server that can get into Cimerora. I may not be awake in time.

If you're enjoying it, more power to you. The "don't make an EM Brute" memo was the patch note that said "Increased animation time for Energy Transfer from 1.0 seconds to 2.67 seconds", followed closely by the one that read "Reduced the stun in Total Focus from mag 4 to mag 3".

The long animation for ET killed the feel of the set for me (I liked the fast attacks and having Bone Smasher at 1.5 being the "long attack" in the chain) and that's why I stopped playing it, and while you can still do decent damage with it against a single target, it's not exactly a contender for best single target damage and has poor AoE - both damage and mitigation - to pair that with, which is why the number crunchers stopped.

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The devs hate Stalkers.

That or else they decided when porting EM to Stalkers that they didn't want it outperforming the other sets by that drastic an amount, and they limited the criticals on it so that they wouldn't be double damage; the "critical" value on Total Focus is equal to the damage from Energy Transfer... which is already double the value of some of the other attacks in other sets (Eagle's Claw, Golden Dragonfly) and some powers (One Thousand Cuts) have slightly reduced criticals to be equal to that damage scale. The only non-AS attack available to Stalkers that hits harder on a critical in PvE is Midnight's Grasp.

Brutes aren't borked - they're arguably overpowered, if you listen to the Tanker and Scrapper forums.

Energy Aura is better than it ever has been, since the positional set bonuses which were all over the place and typically 2-3x larger than the typed defense bonuses were made to include half of their value in typed defense as well. It's much easier to softcap everything except Psi, and if you can tolerate the long animations of your "best" attacks in EM you should be fine.

Elec/Elec isn't a bad combination either, but Electric Armor has a post-IO reputation for being frail because it doesn't have any self-heal, no +hp, and doesn't have any layers. If you use Power Sink offensively with Lightning Field to drain mobs and keep their endurance low, you can still get good mileage out of it, but while it's one of the better sets with just SOs it doesn't benefit as much from IOs because the devs have this twisted idea of how available +resistance set bonuses should be compared to +defense. Since it only has resistance and endurance drain working for it, there's nothing to really stack the other bonuses with and going for +defense will net you smaller values that go away quickly because there's no defense debuff resistance. But it's still sturdy when built well, it just requires more effort than Willpower, for example, or more IO investment than Super Reflexes.