Stolid

More than likely it isn't an issue of -recharge resistance screwing people that play /Regen, though. It's whether or not you get the click power off before you faceplant, not necessarily if you have that click power up in time for a fight 1-2 minutes in the future (or so I'd guess, Arcana or someone else more inclined to do the math would know better).

The more prevalent issue with /Regen players is probably too short a timespan between needing to click a power and it being too late to click that power. And it's really only in heightened situations where I'd say that's common place--ramped up level/spawn size settings, etc.

I think a better place to start would be to see Resilience turned into a power that gives a meaningful amount of resistance (worth slotting it for resistance, that is), and have it apply to all damage types. That would help slow the burst damage issue that prevents regen players from having enough time to use one of their several clicks.

Regen and recharge resistance are good, but I find it unlikely regeneration will get them when it's only underperforming, potentially, at the top-end. They're much more likely to care if /regen is hampered in casual play.

The Snow and Cryogenic ones also work well, I'd say. =)

Thanks, Joe! I know I've heard about this before, but it seems hard to find out and double-check anywhere since it's such a non-issue for most Brutes. Kind of strange that it's set to do that kind of thing, but I don't imagine most brutes minding.

Best bet seems to try and go around or above mobs instead of through them if I can, in that case. Not enough power choices left in my build for Invisibility and Stealth, but I'll keep it in mind for future builds if I really want to avoid that.

I have a SS/WP Brute with Stealth + a Stealth IO in CJ for ease of mission completion, and even though those two combined should be enough to be undetected by enemies, sometimes mobs will still manage to see me (mobs like Carnival, that I don't recall have any perception buffs). RttC is not turned on (I always turn it off when I turn on Stealth).

Is something going on that I'm forgetting? I vaguely recall that maybe Fury is the issue? Does the check for Fury pulse and somehow aggro enemies, or is it something else and fury isn't an issue for this?

My only other thought is that it might be the Rage crash (and/or activation) that causes stealth to suppress, but I thought I recalled it happening even when that wasn't the case.

Anyone know anything about this?

I would love Ice Melee! I just don't like picking /Ice on Tankers because their damage is so low on top of Ice not being a huge damage dealer to start with. I think it'd be a lot better on Scrappers (or even Brutes/Stalkers).

I realize this thread is mostly dead and this horse has been beaten to death already, but just some idle musings:

* Remove the random critical chance from stalker attacks.
* Standardize all AoE's to be 50% crit chance (nerfing the 100% Burst/fireball, buffing the 30% spine burst.. nothing else comes to mind off the top of my head).
* Switch out which attack is lost from each Stalker primary for Assassin's Strike, to make it be a Stalker's Tier 2/1 power, depending on set. (This should, for example, remove thunder kick from Martial Arts, but remove Slash from Broadsword. Typically, the attack that is so low damage/quick recharging that most people skip it later on anyway)
* Add back in the power that the set's lost originally (Dragon's Tail, Whirling Sword, etc).
* Change the Stalker's inherent to be a gauranteed critical strike every fifth attack that hits an opponent. For AoE's, corresponding with the above, it's only 50% crit chance.

This allows a Stalker to be more precise with their attacks, typically will mean different ideal chains with Stalker primaries compared to Scrappers (leading to a somewhat different playstyle, where you plan out and 'combo' attacks rather than just fighting wildly and hoping for crits).

It should only last for a certain duration. Going 8? 10? seconds without attacking/adding to it--basically, going long enough to get hidden again--should reset it so you have to start over. The gauranteed crits from hide should still work, as should those with placate. But I think this is a much more Stalker-ish crit capacity than the 10% + 3%/teammate they currently have.

I tend to also think Stalker's should have their damage scale evened up with Scrappers (along with their buff mod for build up/etc), but that's nothing new.

I doubt it'll happen but I amuse myself with the concept anyway. Cheers, Stalkers.

Thirding this. Tried to tram to AP and got stuck. About 15 minutes later when I couldn't log in with that character (it gives me 'this account is already logged in' and '(character) is still logging out' messages), I logged into another in SC. Worked fine.

Tried to log into a third character in AP and again failed to load.

Virtue server, like the OP.

Pertaining to all aspects of the Rage crash, I'd say WP is better. It has more endurance recovery to handle the -end, and the regen from RttC makes it a bit sturdier if you don't have it stacked and have to deal with an untimely crash that lowers your defense.

Once you get IO's and such, this stops being as important, as you can build to deal with it. If you're looking to ever double-stack your Rage, Invulnerability does get more out of +recharge than Willpower.

I don't care much for Ice Armor as a set, but I'd love to see Ice Melee come to Scrappers (and Brutes/Stalkers, the more the merrier!). I love the theme of the set but its lack of any real damage turns me off from it. I think it'll be fun on a Scrapper, though.

I might try Ice Armor out too, just to keep the theme. The cryogenic/snow auras look really nice and make the odd ice block chunks covering you not look so weird.

The crit chance part is right. The 5 second duration isn't, unless Arcanaville got that changed and I missed the memo. Last I heard, it was 2 seconds long, which means you have to queue up an attack before Eagle's Claw is finished animating to even get the benefit, and there's no possible way to get it to apply for more than one attack. Note that you don't have to activate the attack in that window to get the buff, you just have to queue it up within that window.

Best strategy has already been said: Open with Eagle's Claw, Dragon's tail immediately and enjoy the crit spam. I think I got lucky one time and had up to 8/10 crits. More likely to just see 3-4, but even that is a marked improvement over the typical 1-2.

It's a nice buff, but should be better documented. And have the duration improved a bit, for easier use.

I would go with Fire if you're not willing to side switch for Soul Mastery. Gloom really is worth the trek. You don't need more endurance management from Energy as a /WP.

You want them all, pretty much, aside from Resurgance and your T9. Both of those can be put off as late as you want, or not taken at all.

If you're looking to grab some early power pools (for Stealth/TPing TFs and such), you can delay fast healing until the 20's, as while nice it isn't going be a drastic hindrance.

I wouldn't recommend /Stone for general purpose builds just because of the penalties for using Granite. It's a great power and all, but you don't need that much survivability in general play. It's for people who want to be more tank-brutes than scrapper-brutes. SD and Fire are more offensive but can be made to be very survivable with IO's, enough for aggro control without gimping themselves.

People tend to say Invulnerability's exotic resistances are bad because they used to be much better than they are now (though I think people are mostly over that). They're decent. The issue was mostly that Invulnerability started as a resistance set, and mutated into a defense oriented one.

Also keep in mind that you're talking about a slotted Tanker's resistance values versus an unslotted scrapper's values in that comparison. Slot both under the same AT and you'll see they get a bit closer in value (Scrapper Inv: 23% eng vs. Scrapper WP: 9%).

As for Willpower, it depends more on defense for exotic damage types (F/C/E/EN), and resistance for Smashing/lethal/psionics. It has a litle bit of everything, but for energy damage it relies on defense, which as you know is overcome easily by the debuffing taking place.

It is an issue, but it's not as bad for willpower with RttC as it is for some others. Your best bet in scenarios like that is to pop enough purple inspirations head of time to softscap yourself, that way you avoid as many of the debuffs as you can. Against energy damage, at x8 it's unlikely you can survive when they get you to -45% defense and have a 95% chance to hit you.

Hit and run tactics work when that isn't an option. Once you see yourself getting debuffed in a major way, run away and wait for them to fade before jumping back in. puling them around a corner lets you do this and get them grouped to maximize your RttC buff and AoE potential on them.

Willpower is a great set, all in all. I do sometimes wonder how it'd be if the original goal of it being all passives had worked out, though. I'd still like to see a set like that, as bad as it'd likely be.

Fire Armor is good with IO's, build it up defensively and enjoy the built-in offense. Shield Defense is the same way, though they go about it differently.

Willpower is good defensively and can be made incredible with some defense.

SR is good by default and only needs a little bit to hit the softcap, letting you focus on your offense for the most part, but it doesn't do much to help you offensively like SD or FA.

Given what you said, I'd suggest SR or SD. Both are relatively easy to hit the softcap with (though it's a bit more work for SD, it pays off with Shield Charge and AoO).

Legacy build means it's before I19, when Fitness was made an inherent (gaining Swift, Hurdle, Health and Stamina all at level 2). If you're looking to update your build, first thing you should do is update it from that, as when you respec you'll get fitness as an inherent.

Edit: There's also no way for anyone to open the build in Mids, as there's no link where it says 'click to open..' and no data chunk.

I really would love it if Ice Melee was made into a scrapper/brute set.

But probably right, it's unlikely to happen.

They might have meant the fact that since they're both based around regeneration (to a point), they do better against larger amounts of small damage (which is easier to deal with), than to deal with the large spike damage of AV's.

I do wonder why they don't change all status protection powers to be toggles instead of click powers. The only case I know of off the top of my head where doublestacking your mez prot click power is beneficial is Shield for the extra DDR, and I don't see why they would want people to do that.

I would love it if they were all changed to toggles, as I hate the constant interruption and needing to be mindful if when it's ready to activate, if it comes up during a fight as I tend to queue my next attack while one is casting. But I suspect that if it's even on any list of changes to be made, it's so far down it'll never be done.

Is there perhaps a compromise to be found in the Musculature Radial Paragon, by any chance? Anyone have experience with that one? It adds less damage, but would boost your recovery from stamina some to help with endurance issues (I got an additional .11 end/sec with it.. which is not a whole lot, but would take several +rech set bonuses to get).

Right now I'm looking at my build having roughly 3 end/sec gain over what the toggles drain, is that anywhere near where you're at, Person? I know some of this has to do with how much endred is in the attacks themselves, but I've slotted them all as best I can with endred while going for the set bonuses I was wanting (mostly +rech/+hp/+regen).

Also it really annoys me mindlink causes redraw, just as an aside. Seems so silly that it would. :/

Do any of you happen to use something other than a Cardiac Alpha? I know it's good at all, but it also seems like the Musculature alpha would be great (the very rare being equitable to running double assault, minus the end cost), and I was thinking of doing that.

I also decided to go another way with things: Drop Strike and Eviscerate, pick up Gloom and Dark Obliteration in their places. Gives me three ranged attacks (two single target + DO), four single target and two good AoEs, a bit more versatility for hami or what have you.

Anywho, thanks for the feedback and insights!

I'm not taking all claw attacks, they just generally happen to be the best ones available for Night Widows. I take Build Up because it synergizes so well with mask presence's crit capability--I've tried both, since I take Follow up while leveling before the respec, but tend to prefer build up. I'm not really sure which is better from a dps perspective, likely follow up, but ehh. I'm not inclined to use follow up unless it's shown to be a huge difference in sustained dps.

So most people also do double assault? I plan to take the widow assault power but not the pool assault as well. It also seems a bit crazy that you're only at 7 minutes for soloing a pylon--I expected much better from a NW..

Thanks, though, you two! Pretty sure I'll be dropping Eviscerate at this point, but not sure if I want to replace it with another AoE, or drop it altogether. I could potentially get double assault in that case, and have five more slots to put into other powers..

My original plan for my VEAT was to take Poison Dart, Strike, Lunge, Slash, Spin, and Eviscerate, to have both a solid ST attack chain and to have more than one AoE power.

But in practice, I'm not thrilled with Eviscerate as an AoE (although admittedly, I haven't slotted it yet, and I'm just judging its AoE potential by how many targets are usually hit by it--2 normally, 3 sometimes).

So the question to other players of Widows: Do you take more than one AoE power, and if so which ones? A Build Up + Spin out of hide is pretty great, but typically more than one AoE seems wise since I'm going to be teaming.

8 Elec/SD Scrappers running Assault and Grant Cover.

I doubt it's the best, but it would be the most amusing to see in action.