Umbral

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few people keep saying Force Bubble doesnt use much endurance, not sure how you figure that...its alot more then Dispersion Bubble..

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Ummmm.....


<ul type="square">[*]Dispersion Bubble - 0.26 endurance per second.[*]Force Bubble - 0.17 endurance per second[/list]
Proof that you don't know what you're talking about.



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You *really* need to learn to read those entries Phil.

Dispersion Bubble activates every .5 seconds at a cost of .26 end per activation. That's .52 end/sec.

Force Bubble activates every .25 seconds at a cost of .1716 end per activation. That's .6864 end/sec.

Excellent job knowing your preferred powerset there.

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to the OP, I know you've already started a defender, but it seems like a troller would be better so you can get Indomitable Will...sure the bubbles will provide less defence..but with Indom Will you'll be detoggled less..

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Dispersion Bubble provides mez protection against everything except for sleep and, even then, with the I13 changes to mez, the only toggles that drop will be the offensive ones.

Does anyone else think that Reichsman looks amusingly reminiscent of M. Bison?

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umbral, you are more then welcome to join plan b... no1 ever gets kicked. ever. and the guys are pretty easy going and laid back.... really no politics what-so-ever. you will even get your own room to decorate. these are my RL gaming friends- the guys who originally got me into gaming ....

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I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way. I didn't get kicked. I left Top Ten of my own volition for various reasons I don't believe are appropriate to bring up here. I'd gladly take the invite though. I'm already lonely. T.T

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See, this is a good post from the type of person that I love to hear from. It's people like her, Arcanaville, and all the not-Razoras people in this thread that make these forums awesome. &lt;3.

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Saying Rachel and Arcanaville are from the same group of posters is just... wrong on so many levels...

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Just because it's expected - "No!"

Real answer? I don't see a problem with it. Though it might (MIGHT) not be doable depending on how the power's set up (I want to say it's one of the "summons temporary pet that actually does the heal," and that may cause the delay... so there may be technical reasons.) 100% speculation on my part though.

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This is why. It's the same reason why Rain of Arrows and other pet-for-effect powers don't check targets until the pet is created. You can see this reasonably easily with RoA. The targets won't be checked until about a half second before the damage actually starts because that's when the pet is generated. I don't believe it's possible for a pet to target check before it actually exists...

Of course, the easiest solution to this would be for the pet to simply be generated earlier on in the animation of the attack with a commensurate increase in the speed of the tohit check and delay in the pet's heal. Everything would stay roughly the same as it is now with the exception that the pet exists earlier on in the power's animation allowing it to target check earlier.

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Instead of darkest night for scrappers, I'd like to get tar patch - maybe an overall lesser version of it.

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I'd support that (along with some other -res, -dam, and other useful debuffs) and, if we did, we'd get a weaker version thanks to our significantly lower debuff scalar.

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Not just because of the archetype Mods.

Tanker Melt Armor was artificially lowered in debuff magnitude when added to their APPs, you can bet that Tar Patch for Scrappers would get the same treatment.

Thermal Radiation Melt Armor is a Scale 2 Defense debuff, and a Scale 3 Resist debuff.

Pyre Mastery Melt Armor is a Scale 1 Defense debuff and a Scale 1.5 Resist debuff.

If Melt Armor had just been ported to Tankers unchanged it would have been ~14% Defense Debuff and ~19.5% Resist debuff, instead of its current -7% Defense -9.75% Resist.

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There's also other difference to account for though.

Tanker Melt Armor recharges in 200 seconds rather than 150, has a max of 10 targets rather than 16 targets and radius of 10 feet rather than 15 feet.

In general, a doubling of the recharge time is normal. The APP Melt Armor defies that by a significant degree and is weakened in other ways to make up for it.

That isn't to say that I don't think it isn't too weak. I think that Castle, and Geko before him, has consistently made the melee APPs weaker than the APPs for the ranged/support APPs. Some of it is because it's harder to balance around all of the weird and funky powers that the melee ATs would actually benefit from, but it's also because they're naturally weirder powers. Damage and personal protection powers are pretty straightforward. Debuffs and support powers are less so.

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Instead of darkest night for scrappers, I'd like to get tar patch - maybe an overall lesser version of it.

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I'd support that (along with some other -res, -dam, and other useful debuffs) and, if we did, we'd get a weaker version thanks to our significantly lower debuff scalar.

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I don't think brutes should have been given access to darkest night for that reason. Mind you, it certainly helped my EM/FA out, and for that I'm happy, but I also know exactly what it's going to do for my FM/SD brute as well. And my SM/WP.

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I think it made a lot of sense for Brutes to get Darkest Night. Personally, rather than seeing the devs get rid of it, I'd rather they gave some of what it does to all of the Scrapper, Brute, Tanker, and Stalker APPs.

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I'm all for equality, but being equally overpowered makes little sense to me. WP tanks are already ridiculous. Giving them access to a tohit and damage debuff just seems dumb.

But hey, whatever. It'll stack nicely on SR's scaling dam-res.

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Well, most of this comes from looking at what all of the non-melee ATs get from their APP/PPPs. Extra attacks don't really add noticeably to our effectiveness. We've already got plenty of powerful attacks native to our primary. However, what the melee ATs do lack is some form of force multiplication. It would be less than any AT gets natively, but at least it would give us something. I think the biggest problem is that, where most ATs have a decent, if not better than normal, scalar for their APP/PPPs and noticeable benefits from them, the melee ATs get stuck with low scalars and largely redundant/ineffective powers.

I find it much better to slot for recharge than Def debuff because I'd much rather get the debuffs more often (thusly increasing their uptime) than have the -def be redundantly larger.

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I'll tell you why, because Scrappers are so awesome already that giving them actually useful APPs will make them uberly over powered that Castle's head would implode.

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I don't think brutes should have been given access to darkest night for that reason. Mind you, it certainly helped my EM/FA out, and for that I'm happy, but I also know exactly what it's going to do for my FM/SD brute as well. And my SM/WP.

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I think it made a lot of sense for Brutes to get Darkest Night. Personally, rather than seeing the devs get rid of it, I'd rather they gave some of what it does to all of the Scrapper, Brute, Tanker, and Stalker APPs.

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Because everything goes better with Frankenstein.

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The monster or the doctor?

The problem with applying the GM code to Perez is that the comparative power of the mobs that are in there is pretty low. There's a reason we don't fight Hellions, Skulls, Vahz, or Clocks after level 20: they're weaker than they should be.

I'd say sonic blast as well. +dam coupled with -res is a truly beautiful thing, and, by the time you hit 22 and get SOs, you should already be dancing with the tohit cap.

I think it took me 3 months and about 250 hours of mostly soloing to get my namesake Scrapper (Umbral Fist) to 50 back in 2004. I "took it slow" mainly because I wanted to complete all of the content. I distinctly remember finishing all of it at level 47 with no upper end TF to help top me off (and no auto-exemping either!).

Rather than getting proliferation, I'd much rather get an overhaul. There are too many largely useless things in the Scrapper APPs imho. I'd be happier if there were more things like FA and some buffs/debuffs that would actually allows Scrappers to get some force multiplier powers rather than even more attack options.

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since both ff and cold have the same defense values

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They don't. Get your information correct please.

As strange as it sounds, I've found myself at an impasse with a large portion of the members of my old SG. As it stands, I'd like to find another that would fulfill much the same role: a group of competent people to hang out with in game.

Anyone who's got an SG to toss at me feel free. (Or, if you'd rather I take this elsewhere because I should know better than to bring this up in this forum, I've got no problem doing that. I just feel that this forums is a much better place to get specific attention than the SG&amp;VG Recruitment forum.)

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(Actually, I know you know it, since you posted in the thread I made that ended up discussing it)

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You sure about that because I don't recall making any kind of post involving that in a thread started by you. Maybe you've got me confused with someone else like you have confused situations with completely different ones throughout these last few pages.

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Nope, never done that. I've sometimes wondered how it would play, though...

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And you'll probably complain that MM damage is to low if you ever do play it.

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also remember that almost all the attacks of Katana can use the achille chance to -resist IO, which basically improve the damage output.

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Both sets can. Katana just gets more from it because it's capable of getting off more attacks because the animations are faster.

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saturday would work best for me, i will take the noon spot if no1 else wants it

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Too bad I already called it way back on the second page. The J-Forces are scurred of my incredible Top Ten skills that they're repeatedly forgetting about me.

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So can that 50% base tohit number that all bad guys have be increased with tohit buffs, or is it only the accuracy side that can be buffed? (speaking strictly PVE)

For example a custom enemy in an AE mish hits build up which gives a 20% tohit buff, the 50% in your equation is now at 70% correct?

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Yes, the baseline chance to hit can be increased by tohit, which is then modified by their accuracy. This is one of the reasons why many min/maxed */SR scraps bite it so quickly in AE. Tohit buffs are exactly the same as def debuffs only they can't be resisted (by the target, that is).

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And Controller FF does let about twice as much damage through as Defender FF. (30% vs 40% Defense, or 35/45 counting the big 3 plus Maneuvers.)

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Actually, 35% v. 45% +def isn't "twice as much damage". It's thrice as much damage. 35% +def is 70% mitigation. 45% is 90% mitigation. 30% incoming damage v. 10% incoming damage. You are right on 30% v. 40% however. 60% mitigation v. 80% mitigation.

Keep in mind that Defenders don't just support through their primaries. Depending on your choice of secondary, you can contribute an even larger amount to your team. Of course, this requires that you actually choose an appropriate secondary. Force Field gets a lot of its effectiveness from it's paired power set though. It only takes 12.5% of your time to get 90% of the effectiveness of the power set. The rest of the time you should be spending supporting your team through your other means.

Archery, Energy Blast, and Radiation Blast aren't going to provide much in the way of additional support. Archery just lends more damage though it's significantly less than it could be thanks to the Defender damage scalar. Energy Blast doesn't provide much more real effect from knockback than the Blaster version but is significantly lower damage. Radiation Blast suffers from a largely redundant secondary effect because most people are already dancing at the 95% tohit region as soon as they hit SOs, if not before.

Dark, Ice, and Sonic Blast are incredibly useful. Dark drops -tohit, though this becomes less useful when you start getting a fully built FF/*. Ice, as previously mentioned by RadicalGirl, has the holds and slows. Sonic just has loads upon loads of a rare and highly useful debuff: -res. It's also got some control to make it even better.

Electrical and Psionic are middling in their performance. Psionic is like a less dangerous Ice Blast. Electric does the least damage and has the least reliable/effective secondary effect of all of the Defender blast sets.

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OP said:

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What I mean is that Cold brings similar defense values to the table

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It does? I have a vague memory of it bringing "not nearly as much" but I don't recall the numbers offhand.

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FF brings 25% baseline +def (15 from shields, 10 from bubble). Cold brings 20% baseline +def (15 from shields, 5% from fog). Also, something to keep in mind, is that bubble provides global +def whereas fog just provides positional.

To get enhanced numbers, just multiply by 1.6. FF gives 40%. Cold gives 32.