Tocharon

while I won'r ruin what Sookie is, in the books its only impied she is a half-breed of whatever she is, based on Claudine's first talk with her, I think she can become a full blooded version of whatever she is

Also I think Jason isn't completely left out in gifts either, even though he may not have the same potential. Doesn't he seem a little TOO lucky with the ladies.

Lafayette (who if they were going stricly by the book, would've been dead in Season 1), I think is a witch/ warlock or whatever

from my experience it isn't a bad set for brutes, and actually is pretty solid, with that said there are some sets that will eclipse it in damage if thats all you want.

If you want burst damage this isn't the set for you(although its tier 9 does deliver some nice numbers)

The issues with the animation times is only really true with a couple powers, which aren't bad powers, but rather ones I'd save once you've built up your damage some, but otherwise keep out of your normal damage chain, those being the PBAE and the tier 9

What it does offer is damage mitigation, in terms of -damage and some range

While you don't get the instant recharge option like scrappers and stalkers( one of the reasons why some people dislike this set for brutes and tanks that and b/c unlike Build Up it isn't instant burst damage increase), PS can be used decently with brutes. It helps when starting off with a zero fury bar, to help build up that damage until you can get a decent amount of fury going, and once you get it going, having good damage increases once you do get it going.

Sets I like with KM in order
SD It helps shore up SD's survivability since its usually that one hard foe that your going to be more worried about, and between fury, AAA, and KS you can have some very respectable damage numbers with it
EA Theme wise it works great, EA does allow you to slot more in your melee set, and it does help out EA's survivability
WP WP goes well with everything
Fire I didn't have a chance to try this out, but suspect the new fiery embrace and KS may work well together
SR/Electric Both sets +recharge will help KS being available more, although SR needs the -Damage at high levels than Electric does.

One set I wouldn't recommend would be Stone, with its -Recharge, it makes it difficult to leverage KM's strengths

I can't wait to see how the VLA folks discredit Russell, no doubt it settles whatever doubts the Authority may have had about what Eric told them

I'm not going to give away what Sookie is based on the books, although I will say that I think they will go further with it, than they did with the books

I have a feeling that Lafayette may be something else as well

I really do want to see a showdown with Sam and his brother on one side, and the hillbillie werewolves on the other side.

working on a DP/Rad myself, and so far seems like a very nice build. I do have CC on my Dark/Rad Defender. Its not joke that the End cost of CC is a bit high

its up to you, you would be losing some of the flexibility DP has. W/O it your limited to lethal damage only, having a portion of your damage as either cold fire or toxic does mitigate the lethal resists

the fire rounds do offer slightly more damage

with swap rounds you have something many a energy blast type would want, that is able to switch off the knock back

And the secondary effects may not a WoW factor in terms of strength or duration by themselves, they do stack well with the debuffs in your secondary set. Personally I generally use the fire or toxic rounds, occasionally using the lethal rounds.

My advice, we now have dual builds, have one build with it, one w/o and let yourself be the judge.

is there something with the redside market? i know its always been more unhealthy than the blueside one but there is nothing on sell there except for quickfoots and unquestioning loyalities when I logged on this morning

ignoring pvp, the biggest issue I could see with claws, is that its damage is lethal, which is one of the most resisted damage types. <sigh> really wish they would introduce Typed Damage IO's, that is IO's more or less just like the standard damage IO's, except that the enhanced damage is whatever type of the typed damage IO

First +HP is the best way to go now, and resists are still reliable, although be aware of DR and all of the related changes( paragon wiki is a decent source here). Defense at the momment is a joke. For PvE is still decent for defense though.
I really wish the elusivity numbers showed( assuming their even still there)

For a while there, defense did outperform for a bit, although not impossible to break through. One of their big problems in balancing defense is not everybody even with DR has equal levels of acc/to-hit available, in fact those with high levels could if on a unreliable basis break through defense when defense worked, it was largely the crowd that w/o that had real issues hitting defense based toons. And defense was balanced against that bunch. Unfortunately, all of your serious PvPer's do tend to have high levels of to-hit/ acc.

i have plenty of experience with dom's, overall i like what they've done,
Now with regards to Psi.
Before Psi was really underpowered until you got PSW, and whatever problems Dom's had with leveling was more so with Psi. Now Psi is a solid set to level with, at the cost of course PSW being tweaked down some, which I am fine with. I still think even though Psi was brought closer to the other sets, there is still a lot of variety among the assault sets, and it still has its own place. And lets be honest here, between PSW and the upgraded Psychic Scream, Psi is still one of the stronger AE sets available to Dom's, the big difference here, instead of all the power being in one power( and a 9th tier power at that), its more spread out along the set.

My hope is, after doing this with Psi, I hope they take a look at Gravity, I know if they did so, there would be a lot of happy Doms and Controllers. Even if they just swapped worm hole and dimension shift, and maybe increased wormholes radius a little.

I want to say 20%-ish for squishies, and maybe 40%-sh for non squishies

Bad news though currently in pvp, defense really doesn't work right now. Right now on my defense toons, I would be very happy if I only got hit 80% of the time, based on what I've seen( and you really have to monitor your combat window for this), even with toons running the maximam amount of defense you can away with under DR, you tend to get saves from the streak breakers, and the very occasional odd hit or so, but thats it, dissappointing if you really did work hard trying to maximize your defense

BS side, other than being melee attacks, they really do hurt being on the receiving end, so not bad there.

SD side, kinda blah. To put it bluntly defense doesn't really work well in pvp right now( if at all),
Basically the issues involved in defense I believe,
1) How do you balance defense to be balanced in a world where you do have people with very high accuracy and/or to-hits exist alongside people with nothing more than 2 SO's worth of ACC if that. Apparantly the answer was to balance it against the latter, meaning your defense effectively doesn't exist for the former
2) Elusivity wasn't a bad idea, they did apparantly bring it down when it seemed overpowering, however it isn't in the Combat Statistics, so many of us are unsure exactly how it works. But getting back to my point, ignoring debuffs, you have defense and Elusivity vs. to-hit and acc, of those four numbers, only elusivity is a fixed number that can't be improved, which may explain why defense works horribly
3) Being honest hear, I would prefer they revamped that entire line of combat anyway, the way its set up now, is a real headache in math. I what I would propose, is simply combine( again debuffs aside for a momment but they would be combined as well), so your left with nothing but Acc and Defense, with only 2 values, it should be easier to balance both against each other than four values. In terms of to-hit buffs and debuffs, they would become acc buffs and debuffs

sad to say the best defense right now is HP for pvp, I can see the argument for PvE, but defense just doesn't work at all

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they're also relatively more survivable than many MELEE builds out there

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not by much, not with with the current pvp rules


Gross exaggeration is gross. Switch the word melee to squishy I will buy it, but melee, come on seriously? And even then I would say emps and pain doms are infinitely more survivable.

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the real killer for for Forts is defense really doesn't work well, and their damage was nerfed bad, your basically a defender w/o any nice buffs/ debuffs/ heals in the pvp zones,

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It's amazing that this is still subject to argument.

Are blasters overpowered in PvP? Yes, of course, and they SHOULD be - they're damage machines, that's their role.

If an empathy defender can perform as well, then why even have blasters in the first place? Every AT has it's role, and it so happens blasters are DESIGNED to blow **** up... it's what they do.

A good way to destroy a game is to overbalance it, to say "okay, everyone is as good at everything, on average, as everyone else" (as an example, look at 4E D&amp;D, which is so overbalanced that it's become totally mechanical and tedious).

It's silly to complain that stalkers are too stealthy, blasters do too much damage, tanks are too hard to kill, ad infinitum. That's why there are teams - to allow different specialties and strengths to synergize and compensate for collective weaknesses.

The day an emp can hold his own 1v1 against a blaster is the day the gates of Hell will disgorge its army of carebears into RV; me, I don't want to be there

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i don't think its so much wanting an emp defender to have a realitic chance of going 1 on 1 with a blaster, but a redside AT, just one redside AT capable of having a realistic chance.

at any rate this will be moot soon enough, with GR, it'll be city of emped up blasters on both sides anyway.

a weird thought, assuming no major pvp changes between now and GR, and if what happens is what I suspect, that is pvp becomes City of Emped Blasters, will we hear calls to nerf Red Emped Blasters?