Umbral

It actually is. Comically enough, with IOs, it's actually one of the strongest powersets for a reason I'll let you know later on down.

The reason the set has endurance issues when so many people use it is because the set is designed using endurance as the limiter on performance, rather than time (as all of the other sets except for */Regen were designed with). Look at the sheer "wtf awesome"-ery of Dark Regen: you get a full heal on a 30 second cooldown. If something can't kill you in 30 seconds, it will never kill you (unless you run out of endurance).

You can't expect to play DA in the same way you'd play an SR or Invuln. It's a completely different beast that requires different tactics. Rather than trying to figure out how to kill the target faster, you've got to figure out how to kill the target more efficiently.

Actually, I leveled up my DA tank perfectly fine and I took every power except for CoF and ST. If you're doubling up on mez auras, you're doing yourself a disservice and most people find self-rezzes optional or pointless on virtually any build.

If you're having problems making DA work, it's not the fault of the powerset: it's the fault of your playstyle and the fact that you assume DA should play like every other set out there. The end costs of the toggles are actually rather laughable when you consider how much you're spending on click powers, so they're not the real culprit when it comes to endurance problems: overuse of Dark Regen (which, though it can be used every 30 secs, does not necessarily need to be used every 30 seconds; you'll fair much better if you actually let it sit there until it is absolutely needed) and probably some amount of overkilling (if they've got just a few hp left, leave em there and let DS and DR kill 'em).

One of the interesting things about DA is that, if you slot it with IOs to such an extent that you're actually capable of eliminating the endurance issues (which isn't hard), you're actually going to be stupidly hard to kill, especially if you add some defense to directly bolster your survivability. The Theft of Essense proc can actually make Dark Regen functionally free and +end and +recov set bonuses (not to mention Physical Perfection and the Perf Shifter procs) are rather prolific. You just have to aim for something different than most people attempt to do and have to play the set itself in a manner that most people aren't used to.

With DA, it's a game of resource management, not a race because, unlike everyone else, you (should) know you can survive it as long as you spend your blue intelligently.

We're on the Freedom forums. Nothing is supposed to stay on topic for more than 20 posts. I stand by my threadjackery!

Only because he actually attempts to score more often. We all know that Picard would be drowning in the ladies if he actually cared to put forth even the slightest effort.

Even with Tankers you're not likely to cap with just True Grit (or HPT) and the passive accolades. True Grit is a 10% +hp buff across all ATs and the Tanker HP cap is 170%. You'd need to make up 30% +hp rather than 40%. It's not impossible to cap an SD or WP Scrapper or Tanker, but it's something you have to specifically build for. Expecting to be at the cap with just the power and the passive accolades is rather naive though.

You're probably recalling all of my various rants at people concerning +hp set bonuses in the presence of Dull Pain (or Earth's Embrace or any other power that shares the same attributes), which actually will take you to within a couple hp of the max with the passive accolades.

And made me do a complete redesign on the algorithm I'm working on to generate optimum attack strings with basic attack information input. Stupid demonstration of situations in which pauses are better for your DPS than actually attacking. >.<

It makes perfect sense to those of us that understand it!

Are you attempting to pull the string on the back of your Umbral doll or squeeze the hand?

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Not always. I've actually found it best to shoot for positional on some sets based on what they can slot. I found I could get much better defenses and other set bonuses by focusing on positional defenses for my DM/Regen Scrapper (and, in fact, every */Regen Scrapper). It really depends pretty heavily on what sets you are using and what other tangential set bonuses you're going to need/want. If you've got a decent number of AoE attacks (Spines/*), you're going to get more out of positional than typed because there is much more, useful, positional defense in the Melee PBAoE sets than there is typed defense.

And, as I said before, one of the other advantages of positional over typed is that ranged and AoE defense are remarkably easy to get with little to no effort. The only "hard" part is getting your melee up. Filling your remaining defensive holes is incredibly easy (BotZ anyone?).

Those ATs that are soloing GMs (Controllers and Defenders heroside, with the occasional Blaster that got incredibly lucky) are doing so exclusively because of the absurd utility of -regen. The fact that they're doing so has almost nothing to do with the overpowered nature of any single powerset (though the Lusca soloers are all Ill/* last I checked and could do so exclusively because of the unkillable tankiness of Phantom Army) and more with the fact that AVs and GMs regenerate so much that -regen equates to hundreds of DPS against them.

Think of it like this: ask a DM/SD Scrapper to solo an AV without AAO and an Ill/Rad to solo an AV without Lingering Radiation. The DM/SD is going to be able to take out the AV, but it will take longer. The Ill/Rad is never going to make even the slightest dint in the AV's regeneration. Personally, I think that was a major design problem in the game. When fighting the big bads, -regen is more powerful than any other effect anyone can bring to bare.

I prefer melee over s/l because it's a lot easier to load up on the stuff that they don't cover. In a debate between just melee or just s/l, the immediate answer will be to go with s/l because s/l simply covers more. If you're, however, asking whether I would go with positional, focusing on melee then ranged then AoE, or typed defense, which pretty much means just getting s/l, I'd go with positional because you're going to get a much better suite of defenses without completely compromising your build.

Typed defense is great when you know what enemies you're going to be fighting 90% of the time. Positional is better when you don't really give a damn and you just want to kill it.

And the question is then whether the reduction in survivability is actually enough to account for the absurd increase in offensive capability, especially when you compare the offensive contributions of SD to those of FA. If you actually look at it, either FA is way too weak or SD is way too strong (or, like me, you could also believe that both of those are true).

The fact that Shield Charge does more damage than Burn over a larger area and without scattering enemies or dealing the damage over an extended period of time should tell you something (not to mention that Shield Charge is actually better than Lightning Rod because its damage is applied over the entire area rather than applied in diminishing amounts the further the target is from the target point). The fact that AAO provides more +dam over time with a single target (19.38% +dam) than FE does (10.8% +dam), using only a single slot rather than the 3 that would be needed for FE should tell you even more.

When all we had was FA, the assumption was that you gave up a decent bit of survivability and got a bit less back in offense (which is even less than it used to be because all of the damage tools that FA has have been nerfed or ignored to such a point that they're largely useless or mediocre) and it made sense because a defense set should be worse at dealing damage than an offensive set. With SD, you're giving up a marginal amount of survivability and getting enormous returns in the form of damage. That should just scream wrong to any balance minded individuals.

I'm waiting for the complex mechanical questions involving the analysis and powerset comparisons so that I can actually have a turn giving a really fun answer. I really wanna make Turg's eyeballs fly out of his head with an explanation of average recharge contribution of non-perma AM and Hasten (used either independently and simultaneously) or comprehensive comparative analysis of survivability or damage capability for a full suite of powersets.

Yeah. BABs and Posi have rabid fans. You have critics with angry maths.

I don't replay any sets either and just started playing my new Fire/SD Scrap. I'd strongly recommend playing */SD. It's remarkably fun and, strangely enough, not nearly as squishy pre-IOs as most people I've talked to led me to believe. Ma/SD would be my recommendation if you don't want to replay any sets.

Not that I disagree with what you've said overall, but you've got a rather glaring error here. True Grit grants you a 10% increase to your max hp, slotted up to 19.5%. The passive accolades give you 20%. The Scrapper hp cap is 180%. You'd need to make up 40.5% +hp in order to get to the cap. You'd need almost every set bonus to get there.

The biggest issue I would point out is the fact that Maneuvers and Assault cost a great deal more (.78 end/sec) than Phalanx Fighting and Grant Cover (.15 end/sec). The benefit you're getting for that vastly larger endurance cost is marginal at best: Assault is a pittance of +dam on a Scrapper (and on almost any AT as well, honestly). Phalanx Fighting gives you the same personal defense that you'd get from Maneuvers and Grant Cover grants more defense to your allies than Maneuvers and some not-insubstantial debuff resistance. From a numbers perspective, there's no contest.

Good thing that influence/infamy isn't actually money.

You could quite easily explain it as the government agency or other organization being willing to let heroes borrow some of their special gear (or tamed pets, or whatever, honestly) in thanks for their contributions to the peace (or, in the case of villains, under threat of evisceration). It's, honestly, not that hard to contemplate ways to explain players getting their hands on stuff at the cost of inf.

Now, the biggest problem I can see, gameplay wise, is that prices are probably too low and it would be too easy to just spend loads of money and never have a problem with anything (except times in which you're not allowed to have temps). I'd much rather the summons were implemented as recipes to create temporary powers, and only for pets that don't already have rechargeable methods of reacquisition (i.e. no Vanguard HVAS because players can already buy him) and aren't unique characters (summoning multiple Arbiter Sands?).

Simply being able to buy a temp power that costs what you get from the average RWZ raid with 400k influence (which most 50s should be able to earn solo in about 30 mins) doesn't really seem appropriate to me. The price should be substantially higher and most likely cost a bit of time investment to boot.

Actually, it will. Since */SR is completely devoted to damage mitigation, any source of damage recovery is going to provide a large increase in survivability. That's one of the big reasons why you see so much heavy enhancing of Health in most top end */SR builds.

Personally, the way I'd do it:

Health: Regen Tissue +Regen, Numina Heal, Numina Heal/End
Stamina: Perf Shifter Proc, Perf Shifter End Mod, Level 50 Common End Mod
Perf Shifter: Perf Shifter Proc, Perf Shifter End Mod, Level 50 Common End Mod, Numina +Regen/+Recov, Miracle +Recov

Of course, it's done that way mainly to maximize endurance sustainability with the fewest slots possible. With such slotting, Phys Perfection is actually giving you more +recov than Stamina and Health is giving you a healthy 122% +regen. If you had the extra slot, I'd drop a Numina's Heal/Rech into it so that you'd get a tad bit more +regen (138%) and more +hp. Anything over that is going to be wasting enhancement values. There really isn't a point, as far as I can see, of putting more than 3-4 slots into a single attribute power.

He might also be referring to farmers in that they'll get you up to whatever level at the cost of a certain amount of inf (i.e. "money (not real)").

Your opinions on farmers may vary.

Actually, it is. The only known case of it actually occurring (afaik), however, is the snipe attack that the Northern Lights from the Lord Winter raid use, which causes -KB/KU protection, allowing enough of them to actually knock back even IO'd out non-melee characters (i.e. those without massive KU/KB resist).

The no-PvP/Purps BS/Regen build I have achieves 566% regen, softcapped melee defense, and 132.5% +rech (including Hasten). The no-PvP/Purps Kat/Regen build I have achieves the same rech and defense with 607% regen. The no limit DM/Regen build I have achieves 560% regen, 35.5% melee defense, and 147.5% +rech.

Honestly, where regen on a */Regen is concerned, I wouldn't really set a goal. Slot up Integration to the redzone, drop some token heal enhancers into FH (and Health, if you took it), and then take only what tangential +regen set bonuses you can. Passive regeneration only amounts to about half of what your build is actually capable of from an hp/sec perspective and, even then, it's not going to actually do much without a good deal of defense and resistance to hide behind.

If you think there are teaming issues on Freedom, I don't even want to imagine what you'd say about the teaming situation on every other server. Freedom is amazingly active comparatively.

If you're having problems finding a team, my best advice is to form one yourself. It's not hard, especially since the SSK system hit and you can team with anyone of any level without any real problems: just open the search window and start sending tells ("level $level mish team forming, interested?"). I would still avoid inviting people substantially outside of your level range just because a level 4 in a level 50 mission isn't really useful and a level 50 in a level 4 mission is generally pissed because he doesn't have all of his powers, but you can generally form a team with little to no effort and a modicum of patience. Anyone that knows me can tell you that I'm always putting together pugs of all varieties at nearly all hours of the day and night.

The biggest problem you're going to find with this set is that the self damage is either going to be so large that the set is functionally worthless (who cares if no one can damage you if you can only survive for 30 seconds before you kill yourself?) or so small that it's only really present for flavor (just look at the "costs" of Oppressive Gloom and Energy Transfer), especially when you've got 3 toggles attempting to kill you all at once (and you will be running all of them at all times because they also form the basis of your mez protection).

Even so, it's hard to say how the set would turn out because you didn't give any numbers. I really doubt that it would actually be a "high risk/reward" set anyway since that's already what Fire and Shield are supposed to be: they're high risk because of their lower survivability and high reward because they grant greater damage capability.

Of course, another, not entirely unnecessary, concern is that the set would be completely borked with IOs. They give out gobs of regen and defense (which would work wonders with a set that already has high resistances), and, with the amounts of +regen (and +hp, which increases hp/sec) at the disposal of an IO build, you'd be capable of completely working around the problem of having a self damaging set. You would find the same problems with this set that are arising with Shield: it's roughly balanced in SOs, but there's no point to running anything else as an IO build because it just works so well with what is available.