Warkupo

I see the forum ate my first post. Le sigh.

An AR/Dev complaint comes up every couple of weeks in this board. You need only throw a stone a few feet and you'll hit one, so this is all going to sound very cut and paste. In fact, I might sit down one day and make a more thought out pro AR/Dev argument one day and save myself some time.

Understand that many of these are niche tactics. They aren't going to work unless you've built yourself for them, but then, that's part of making a character in the first place.

First and foremost, there's a general misunderstanding, I feel, about how to use Trip Mine effectively. You do not need to set up an elaborate trap and solo the entire spawn while you are in a group. While you are entirely capable of that, nobody is asking you to do so, and more than this, nobody wants to wait on you to do so. What you *can* do is be proactive about your mine usage.

For example, one of my favorite tactics is "Toe Bombing". Essentially, you combine Cloaking Device, a Travel Power (preferably SS for it's stealth) and/or another stealth power. Once you have achieved these things, run ahead of your group and set up the bomb at the enemies feet. As soon as you hear the 'beep beep' noise, run away from the enemies, usually backwards, and jump. While in the air, but still in range, fire off an AOE, typically Full Auto. If you were ever impressed by an Assassin's Strike from the Stalker Archetype, this should knock your socks off.

This quasi-nuke can be done in relative safety as the KB from the Trip Mine will typically keep enemies on their backs long enough for you to get out of range. It's more difficult to pull off in a tight space, but between the beeping and the knockdown you usually have plenty of time to 'Joust' away from the enemies. If timed correctly, you're team should usually be showing up as your bounding down the corridor away from the mess you just made. If they are not, throw down some caltrops, or, recharge permitting, another Trip Mine.

There's no reason you can't use Trip Mine during combat as well. It does a lot of damage after all, so you should be looking for any opportunity you can to throw one down. Do not simply scatter them about mindlessly unless you *know* that a group of enemies will be passing over it. Instead, think of them as a sort of long animation melee attack. Do not be afraid to use them because they can be interrupted, and do not beat yourself up if they do.

Usually you can look for the tank to have a nice group of enemies around him which you can toe-bomb, but you need to be aware of what your fighting, as many groups have AOE's that can make such a task difficult. Controllers and their group holds also make good candidates for their use.

As you approach 41 I urge you to take the Ice Mastery Epic Pool and Flash Freeze, a very powerful AOE sleep power. With proper slotting for recharge and sleep duration, you can keep an entire group of enemies, save the bosses, slept, which allows you to deal with the bosses without all the pesky minions bothering you.

Furthermore, you can toebomb+joust a group, sleep them, and then do it again shortly after, team or otherwise.

Caltrops are very useful as a sort of melee-mitigation tool. While you can scatter them about around the tank, I typically find them more useful reserved for myself; The Tanker will be fine without you. Due to how the AI works, once they are entering melee range they typically want to use melee attacks, but the caltrops prevent them from doing so as they become addled with the complication of attacking the blaster, and getting out of the caltrop patch. The amount of mitigation this offers is impossible to put into words, as it's not something easily measured. We'll just say it's "quite a bit". You can use this tactic for anyone else in trouble as well.


Smoke Grenade is often considered underpowered in light of what it used to be, but in the age of IO's and defense building I feel it's making a comeback. With 3 slots of to-hit debuff you can reduce accuracy by 7.7%, but I'd probably just stick to two slots and 7.3% reduced accuracy. Toss in Maneuvers from the Leadership pool, slot it up some, and you and your team can now be sitting on 10% defense to all types. Furthermore, Smoke Grenade gives a very hefty bonus to your defiance, and draws no aggro for it's use, so there's little reason not to be using it. Assuming you took my advice and got Ice Mastery, you should also pick up Ice Armor, which will add another 16% defense to S/L. All of this combined gives you 26% defense to S/L without ever touching IO bonuses. Add in Cloaking Device and perhaps Combat Jumping and you should be at, or just shy of 30% S/L defense, which should improve your survivability substantially.

Targeting Drone should also be slotted up for Guassin's Synchronized Fire-Control for the defense bonus the set offers and for the Build-Up IO. At very least the Build-Up IO, which will help take the sting out of not having Build-Up or Aim in your primary or secondary. That said, it's only a 5% chance every 10 seconds, and it only lasts a little over 5 seconds, but you will definitely be aware of when it has activated.

What else.... stack Taser and Beanbag on bosses... Don't ever use Time Bomb... I think that's about it for now.

Most importantly don't forget that you are part of a team. At some point, when enough blasters gather together it's far better to just concentrate on AOE damage to move through groups quickly than it is to try and show off your secondary. For some reason, AR/Dev's look at their group quickly obliterating enemies and feel discouraged because they can't set up a bomb, when they really should be excited about layering AOE's on with the rest of their friends. Between Flamethrower, Buckshot, M30 Grenade, and Full Auto, AR is at no loss for AOE attacks, and you should not be ashamed to use them over your secondary.

In fact, I feel Full Auto deserves some sort of special mention. We'll compare it to Nova since one of your posts mentioned it previously. Nova is very impressive doing 305 points of combined Smashing and Energy damage, but it's on a 360 second recast, drains the endurance of it's user, and requires that you waltz into melee range to pull it off. You must either do this at the start of the fight and leave yourself open to attack, or in the middle where it's effect would be wasted on enemies already half defeated. Full Auto on the other hand, is doing 178.6 points of Lethal damage every 60s, for about 15 endurance, at a range. While is is true that Lethal is more resisted than energy, bear in mind that Full Auto is doing 1071.6 (totally not factoring in animation time, it's a bit less than this actually.) points of lethal damage in the same time nova has done 305 points of Smashing/Energy damage. If you are combining it with a Trip Mine every time you use it the numbers get even more ridiculously skewed in AR's favor.

In short, I don't think AR/Dev deserves half the crap it gets. I think a lot, if not most, of it's negative review is due to players not really understanding how to use it, and getting hung up on it's little details. It's a set that really requires the user to know not only itself, but the enemies it is engaged with and the capability of it's team members. You must combine finesse, knowledge, and blaster aggression to use AR/Dev properly.

Didn't Final Fantasy Tactics have a class like this?

Anyway, I would totally vote for this.

Let's see if I can reach back the four years I've been playing this and recall my time spent as a wee lad...

...Nope, not recalling enhancement being an overly difficult dynamic for me to grasp, but then, It wasn't my first MMO either, so I was pretty proficient with menus. In fact, I recall feeling that I was rather surprised how little interface there was to clunk around the game, and how much I liked the enhancement system compared to say, loot. Mostly I was irritated that they changed the naming schematic for DO's and SO's, so I had to read the description of everything to have any idea what the **** it did. Now I just memorized the colours.

By the time IO's came out I was already a super cool information savvy kind of guy.

I beleive my opinion on a self rez ability can be mostly summed up by the existence of Vengeance on many of my characters.

I'll usually just keep a rez inspiration on hand, but I'm not taking a power dedicated to you screwing up.

GM's take very little time to kill, and thus, comparatively, give a very good merit reward for amount of time invested in taking them down.

No change is necessary.

If the game was any good, possibly. I wouldn't simply play the game because it has 'City of..." written on it, the same way I won't buy jeans just because they say "Levi's" on them.

I would also say S/L > Melee, but you will probably have an easier time capping melee with DA. It's also worth noting that, as a Scrapper, you will typically be *in* melee more often, so it has a degree more importance than if you were playing, say, a defender or blaster.

Go with Hasten.

This needs a more number approach. I honestly feel it's a mistake to take Tough/Weave on a Brute over Darkest Night when Darkest Night is so much more effective at mitigating damage for the majority of your gameplay purposes.

Darkest Night, when six slotted for 3 End Redux, and 3 To-Hit debuffs has an endurance cost of .33 endurance per second, debuffs an enemies damage by -21%, which is about the equivalent of having 21% resistance to *all* damage types, while also reducing the To-Hit bonus of all enemies by 16.4%. You would also need to take Gloom to get to Darkest Night.

Tough and Weave, when 3 slotted for End redux, cost .17 each, or .34 together. However, it is not very likely that you will be three slotting these powers for endurance reduction and still retain enough slots to get their resistance and defense values up to respectable levels without gimping the rest of your build significantly, so it is more likely you'll be spending quite a bit more endurance than that, depending upon your build and what you have room to do with it. Regardless of how you divvy up the slots, it should be noted that you will need to slot *both* of these powers compared to Darkest Night's one.

Tough, when 3 slotted for resistance, offers 17.6% resistance to Smashing/Lethal *only*. Assuming you are fighting enemies who have secondary effects, it is important to note that you will still take full damage from those other elements, such as fire, ice, neg, etc. This is somewhat less of a problem for Willpower because of Heightened Senses, and that you will dodge a good number of elemental attacks. Compare this to the -21% Dambuff enemies will receive from Darkest Night, and we can equate that Darkest Night is essentially offering a resistance of 21% to all types for every enemy affected.

Weave, when 3 slotted for defense, offers a defense buff to all types of 5.85%. That's about an 11% difference in Darkest Night's favor, comparatively.

Overall, Darkest Nights values are considerably higher, and only require two of your power picks to the Fighting Line's 3. Furthermore, while Tough/Weave are personal powers, Darkest Night is effective for all team mates close enough to benefit from it. Being able to provide such a large buff to your team can dramatically effect the team's overall survival, and only becomes more impressive as you begin stacking your debuff with their own buff/debuff abilities. Keep in mind also that you are a Brute providing these numbers, and have the advantage of also providing much higher damage and sustainability already from your gauntlet effects, and you can become a shining beacon in your team very quickly.

However, with values this high, Darkest Night is going to require that you be a bit more adept at utilizing it than the easier route of simply turning on Tough/Weave and forgetting about it. The level of difficulty in using Darkest Night effectively is going to vary from person to person, but I do not personally feel it is overly strenuous to use correctly. In fact, if you've ever played a controller, or similiar archetype, this should feel like a cake walk.

The biggest problem with anchor powers is picking a target to put it on. Hopefully after 41 levels of play your team mates know what an anchor is, but if people are routinely killing the enemy you place Darkest Night upon it might be wise to explain the effects of the power and how it works, and why they shouldn't be doing that. However, if they do kill your anchor, do not worry overmuch about it, as Darkest Night recharges in 10 seconds, and can usually be applied again during the fight. This *will* cut into your DPS, however, so it's better to avoid having to do this.

You may find that, on DB, you yourself may have difficulty not killing your anchor due to the AOE nature of DB. It's always more useful to place the power upon a Boss than anything else, especially considering that they are the enemy who is probably the one who needs its damage mitigated the most.

Another concern is that it is difficult to use Darkest Night on a DB because it can cut into your attack chain. Darkest Night takes 3.17 seconds to animate, which is quite a bit of time to be standing around inbetween combos. However, the period of time before a combo cancels in DB is about 6 seconds, which is enough time to use Darkest Night and then resume your combo. This makes all good sense when you consider that many other secondaries that require click powers can also be paired with Dual Blades, and that having the combo break too quickly would put those secondaries at a considerable disadvantage when coupled with Dual Blades. Considering the OP is willpower, whose only other click powers are a self rez and Strength of Will, I do not consider reapplication of Darkest Night to be threatening to your combo. The only real problem you'll have is that cuts into your DPS due to having to stop hacking away should your anchor die, and even then that's only if you judge the situation dire enough to need to reapply Darkest Night. Often you will find that it's safe enough to just finish the engagement without needing to reapply the power.

Darkest Night requires enemies be within the radius of the power to actually be affected by it. Those outside of this radius are not going to be effected by the power. Darkest Night has a radius of 25 feet, which, for perspective, is the same radius as Dispersion Bubble from the Force Field set. While this is quite large and will generally get the majority of your enemies, when aimed correctly, it will not always cover every enemy you are currently engaged with. Tough/Weave do have a benefit in this regard as they are always active, regardless of where your enemies are. It is always a good idea to fight within the radius of Darkest Night as a brute, using your taunt aura to pull them in melee range so they are affected by it's radius, and so that enemies who run off and then come back are more likely to be pulled in as well. It will often be the case that enemies will run out of Darkest Night's grasp in order to attack a ranged alley who is further away from the bulk of the battle, and the most you can do at this point is taunt them back.

It is also worth noting that Tough/Weave can be taken much earlier than Darkest Night. There's really no counter-argument to this, they just are, and thus will be useful earlier in your character's life.

Finally, Darkest Night is subject to the Purple Patch of Doom. Arch Villains and the like will not be overly intimidated by your anchoring of them. If it was your goal to solo these behemoths than Tough/Weave will generally serve you better as they are not subject to the moody AV's cheating aura.

Tough/Weave are generally easier to use, but Darkest Night offers much higher values with the added benefit of helping your team out as well as you. Furthermore, it is not as though applying Darkest Night requires some doctorate to use effectively; Many other Archetypes are applying similiar powers the entire battle and manage just as well for it. I have faith that even the SMASHiest brute can learn to utilize Darkest Night in a method which benefits not only themselves, but everyone they don't want to kill as well.

If I'm able to pull of DB/Regen without too much trouble, I can't see Darkest Night causing much more.

Gloom wouldn't fit, it was merely a general example.