Umbral

It doesn't even tell us that. It lets us know which people have gotten people either agitated or amused/grateful enough to actually hit them with rep, or, as is just as common, whether a person has "farmed their rep" (such as happens with some of the people that have max rep but fewer than 500 posts).

The biggest problem with forcing names to be attached to rep comments is that it would oftentimes generate revenge rep at the person that did the neg rep in the first place. People wouldn't neg rep even when they felt it was appropriate because the other person would neg rep them right on back. Anonymity at least protects people from reciprocal reputation wars, which would be far worse than the anonymous spitballs that we have to deal with now.

My biggest problem with the rep system is more involved in how it displays and how easy it is to abuse. I've seen any number of individuals with barely any contribution and no real notice that have near full bubs simply because they posted in the rep farm thread. They didn't actually generate any real reputation so reputation itself doesn't mean anything. It also doesn't help that it's possible to get no rep from some approvals because of how the system operates, as well as high rep approvals/disapprovals having a gigantic impact upon reputation. 13 low rep approvals mean less than 1 high rep disapproval, which doesn't make sense in the least.

If anything, I'd prefer to have the bubbles system removed in its entirety and instead replaced with a flat reputation score and the magnitude of approvals/disapprovals to be more fairly distributed so that the earlier case of 13 approvals having less influence than 1 disapproval doesn't apply anymore. At most, a high value approval/disapproval should be worth maybe three times as much as a low value one.

Shield Charge and Lightning Rod don't list maz targets because they don't actually target any enemies themselves. They summon a pseudo-pet at the same point that you teleport that makes the attack. The attack from the pseudo-pet does have a target cap at 16 targets for both of the powers.

Not to mention that the name Boxing is already taken by a pool power.

As anyone that has ever run with me can most likely tell you, this isn't really anywhere near the Pisces player, though, you were really asking for it when you made it out as if every Pisces were the "mat". Emphasizing the negative self-reflective properties of Pisces without considering the positive (thanks to intense self reflection and consideration of errors, the Pisces is much more likely to do a large amount of effort to optimize a character, in order to minimize any potential problems) as well as emphasizing all of the other negatives without giving any real considerations for the positives was just asking for indignation from the Pisces.

A more fair view would assign the Pisces as the type to fill any role needed while within a team and express their indecisiveness by never sticking with a single archetype (seeing as 2 of the Pisces here both have rather full and varied stables of 50s). A Pisces on a Blaster would be considerate and wait until enemies are hit with -KB powers before letting loose with Energy Blast. The Pisces Scrapper enters Scrapperlock only when it seems like the team doesn't have need of his services. The Tanker Pisces would wait until everything is ready before herding everything and most likely be apologetic at any failings (re: "I should have noticed that loose agro. My bad. Sorry about that."). Etc.

Besides, we're a water sign: while we may like to flow around whatever tries to beat us most of the time, if you agitate us enough, we'll turn into a violent churning maelstrom of doom the likes of which you've never seen and destroy you, your friends, your family, and even your dog. We're touchy like that.

I'll share the tweaks when I finish them up (rather, I'll post them when someone asks to see them and I've got them finished). Right now, I'm working on getting rid of Weave in order to fit Physical Perfection in for better damage and endurance recovery while maintaining the softcap. I'm currently .5 +def(ranged and AoE) from my goal, so it's pretty close. I'm debating whether I should make some further build sacrifices or allow for infinite budget and add the Gladiator's Armor IO to Tough (which would allow me to tweak some other stuff as well). It's pretty close though.

That's the old version (re: not entirely up to date thanks to some new slotting I'm working on for the new one) of mine. It's nice to know that you like it though.

Interestingly enough, I don't actually have a DM/SR. Werner has Sergei, with which he has done amazing things, but I just use my knowledge of game mechanics and build optimization and design in order to make builds with many sets that I don't even have characters for.

Classic style herding isn't really needed or even beneficial anymore except in a few outlier situations. When I play my tankers, there are a few rooms that I always herd/pull simply because, thanks to group density and proximity pulls, it's impossible to keep all of the aggro on tough characters, generally leading to a death cascade, but, in general, if I herd, I herd in such a manner that I've got the next mob nice and grouped up by the time the rest of the group has finished mopping up the last group. The problem isn't with herding in general.

Speed herding is great for steamrolling because it allows for more efficient use of AoEs (because not every AoE is Spine Burst or Footstomp) and greater aggro maintenance, but classic herding is really rather useless because it's no longer possible to get the mega herds that you used to be able to get, which actually did make it more efficient.

PP is proc food. All the OP has shown is that the heal set +recov procs benefit from End Mod slotting within the same power, just like the heal set +regen proc have been known to do. This is known behavior and has been for a while, so it's not really new to all of us.

How does the Shoryuken have anything to do with "dirty fighting"? An uppercut requiring ki manipulation and years of training to master doesn't really mesh with a proposed set that only has 2 other punches, especially ones that are, by design, supposed to be without much style or flair.

As to the actual set, it gets a thumbs down from me. "Dirty Fighting" is less an actual fighting style, much less a cohesive powerset, and more a mentality you access when using a real fighting style. Acting as if a dirty fighting style is the only one that teaches you to go for the eyes, kidneys, groin and other weak points is simply ignorant. Any decent combat style that isn't just for show will encourage you to aim for those locations when you're in a fight specifically because they're weak points.

The knife and gun powers, which are the only real difference from any of the nominal "street fighting" powersets that are suggested rather often (which could just as easily be animation options for MA), don't even make sense within the confines of the powerset. Pulling a gun out of an ankle holster every time you want to fire it doesn't make much sense. Neither does pulling a knife out every time you want to slash with it. The idea behind pulling out the hidden weapon in a fist fight is that you're going to use it for the rest of the fight (though, in popular fiction, you're generally disarmed rather quickly because otherwise the fight wouldn't last very long).

You could just as easily make a character that is supposed to follow the "dirty fighter" archetype that you're aiming for here by asking for street fighting (or street fighting animations for MA) and following it up by making sure you've got a few temp powers (like the already mentioned revolver). In fact, it's probably a bit more likely because it wouldn't involve generating numbers for each of the new powers.

No, it's the Rularuu Katana. He got his Overseer badge and unlocked it.

Considering I'm more than confident that my builds are attaining a very similar level of DPS and survivability to yours, I'm highly doubtful that I'm sacrificing a particularly large amount of damage output in order to attain endurance sustainability.

I was referring to ST damage. The AoE disparity is rather well known and doesn't really have an explanation, especially since tLD does more damage through the same mechanisms and takes less time to animate for the exact same endurance and recharge costs.

Btw, 5000 posts!

I've built innumerable (well, not "innumerable"; more than 20 different scrapper builds that I've got saved) easily endurance sustainable builds without the advent of Physical Perfection (which would just make it easier), so I'm not entirely sure what your problem is. Claws/SR isn't a particularly egregious blue bar burner, thanks to the lower comparative costs of Claws/* attacks.

I'm not ignoring your earlier post. I'm just not seeing where you're having difficulties. Of course, endurance sustainability is something that I naturally build towards and have even begun doing so with barely a thought for a vast majority of my builds so it might just be something that I do that doesn't occur to most people.

Either way, you're losing sight of the actual meaning of the phrase I used that started this entire debacle. I was referring, explicitly, to taking every endurance management tool available to you just because it's there. It's very rarely a good idea largely because it's redundant for so very many builds and that's expenditure in your build that isn't doing anything for you except when you're hit with end draining powers.

Of course it's better to take everything you can whenever you need help getting to the point of endurance solvency, but, after that, it's pointless to take more because that extra endurance isn't doing anything for you. Take everything you can until you get to the point but, after that, it's best to limit any additional endurance assistance you get specifically because it's not doing anything else. This is why I brought up the similarity to the defense soft cap: you should take as much as you can to get to the point but, after you attain it, it just serves as a generally unneeded buffer.

I'm gonna have to say no. The entire reason why the t3 blasts have less range is because they require you to actually close with your target somewhat. Cone blasts have the shallower range because that range has a direct effect upon their area of effect, which is actually factored into the AoE damage formula (re: a greater area of effect means more endurance). Range enhancements are schedule B (20% from an even level SO) specifically because otherwise it would be too easy to increase your range to such a degree that no one else can attack you (a PvP issue rather than a PvE issue because of the huge increase to critter ranged attacks way back in the early issues).

I've never (ever) had a problem removing the endurance compromises in favor of superior performance. The only "big" compromise that you generally have to make at any point is taking and slotting Stamina (3 power choices and 2-3 extra slots). Of course, the big reason behind this is that many of the sets that I actually use already have end redux in them and it's actually worse for the build not to use those sets (re: ToD, Mako's, etc.).

The issue still stands that you can't just throw in as many endurance assistance tools as you possibly can and expect to crank your performance to such a degree as to need all of that redundant endurance. If you take Stamina, PP, CP, and the auto accolades and get all of those powers slotted decently, chances are incredibly good that, unless you're running */DA (which is the outlier because it's one of the few sets based around using endurance as the limiting factor to its performance), you're going to be running with a substantial endurance surplus. You can't just crank up your endurance costs to increase your performance because you've got extra endurance to spend. If you did, everyone would go for as much endurance as they could possibly get because it would have a direct effect upon their actual performance.

I don't think you quite understood my statement there. I was refering to the ability to do so beyond the slotting variability that you're refering to.

Sure, you can drop the end costs on powers to increase your gain in other ways (generally by saving slots), but there's no way to spend make any use of endurance beyond the point of sustainability. That redundant recovery serves to act just like defense over the softcap: it's only serving to act as a buffer against debuffs. In general, you're better off just carving it off and finding more useful set bonuses/powers.

Here, you're wrong. They have roughly identical DPA. This is why their attack strings can generate such similar DPS. The only reason that Kat pulls ahead is because of procs. The faster animating attacks allow for more proc attempts in any period of time.

I know. I was simply pointing out all of the BS attacks have worse recharge times than Kat attacks even though they've got roughly the same DPA explicitly because the damage formula isn't animation time normalized. The damage formula, by the nature of excluding animation time, automatically penalizes attacks that take longer to animate because those attacks, while having the same DPA (and therein the same potential contribution to overall DPS), will have longer recharge times because they deal more damage in a single stroke.

The penalization isn't anything that the damage formula was intended to do because it operated under the assumption that every attack was functionally the same for every variable that it didn't directly influence (re: damage type, animation time, debuffs). The penalization that I wrote about was the unintended natural penalization that forces BS to have higher +rech requirements than almost any other melee set in order to have an effective ST attack string thanks exclusively to the fact that it has long animation times.

I've found on my Elec/Stone Tanker that Power Sink and Lightning Field (for the continual -end) are vital portions of your survivability. I've got Power Sink slotted with 3 rech/3 end mod and Lightning Field slotted with 2 acc/2 dam/2 end mod which allows me to keep most groups attacking substantially less than they normally would without all of my end drain, which is a great boon when I'm fighting anything that isn't energy damage.

I've only just recently gotten Power Surge, but I can honestly say, from what little experimentation I've done with it, that it's quite easily one of the best tier 9 god modes I've ever dealt with. All you have to do is make sure you've got Power Sink and Energize up and you'll be fine and dandy to deal with the crash, which has the added benefit of pretty much anything near you in case you don't have either of those powers up.

Of course, all of this comes from my experiences on a Tanker, which means I'm getting a much greater benefit out of the mondo huge amounts of energy resistance as well as a greater benefit from Energize, so I'm not so sure how it applies to Elec Armor Scrappers.

I happen to be the original Umbral Fist, the DM/Regen Scrapper on Freedom. People always stealing my names...

Yes, it's thanks to the animation times, though not for the reasons you're probably thinking. They achieve roughly the same DPS through straight out attacks with their peak ST DPS chains (HS>Hack>Dis>Hack deals 547.8 damage in 7.656 seconds for 71.55 DPS and GD>GC>SD>GC deals 403.5 damage in 5.412 seconds for 74.55 DPS), but what really allows Katana to plow ahead is that, because each of the attacks takes less time to animate, it can get more proc attempts in the same amount of time as BS does. Kat gets substantially more from the AH proc than BS does thanks to the greater number of proc attempts per 10 second period, which allows it to pull ahead significantly.

It also doesn't help that the optimal BS attack string is substantially harder to get the +rech requirements for than the Katana attack string, but that's more due to the damage formula penalizing heavy hitting long animation attacks even though they've got generally sub par to average DPAs than to an specific imbalance between the sets. I'm still hoping to hear something from Castle concerning his attempt to address DPA in the damage formula. I know he was messing with it a few months ago. (If he hasn't and he's reading this, I've got a solution that he might want to try out).