Warkupo

...It was using YOUR example. YOUR example provided two bosses, a lt. and two minions. Besides that, not the Lt. Just the two bosses. *I* Can probably survive the Lt, but I at least assume a typical scrapper can handle two bosses, so I let the Lt. go about his merry way. I have NOT implied you can do this while just staring at your monitor with a slack-jawed expression on your face. I have mentioned that I can survive with Siphon Life, my primary To-Hit, and my secondary. Any AT that cannot handle a Lt. and two minions needs to die. So I let them. You may view this as harsh, I view this as a required part of learning not to suck.

I have not fabricated any situations, I have completely lived within the realms of the ones you gave me, and then explain why I do not think ToF matters in them. Point being, I do not wish to keep playing "make up situations where ToF might be useful" until we find one.

Any potential usefulness ToF might have is invalidated because there are other powers you could pick that make ToF a superfluous use of your time. I've listed MANY reasons as to why I think this. When a power isn't needed, or doesn't do anything something else you can do can do *better*, I consider it useless.

*head desk*

No, it's not. It's a situation so incredibly common that I see it on a daily basis. I also listed why it's not a situation that requires ToF when the team has some level of competence.

Go read EVERYTHING I wrote, instead of picking a part you like and commenting on it.



And here I go breaking my promises.

The damage is on ME though. I do not care about the extra damage because I can already mitigate two bosses on my Scrapper, never mind my Brute and my Tank. I do not need Touch of Fear for it's mitigation, the mitigation I need is already in Siphon Life, my To-Hit, and my secondary. Additionally, once the bosses are on me, the whatever that is getting attacked now has the ability to focus on helping me defeat them, either through blasts, holds, heals, buffs, debuffs, etc. It does not take me a long time to get a single target to look at me, especially if the thing it's attacking is trying to get it to look at me as well. I can already handle the damage, I do not need ToF. I am able to do more damage because I'm not using it.

Your examples include far too much incompetence on the part of my team. If they are truly this incapable of protecting themselves then no amount of ToF or anything else I can do is going to save them. If **** has hit the fan, then I'm hoping we have a whole lot more to address it than my single, Mag 3 Fear effect.

Stalker is probably my favorite set in the game, I do not even sort of disrespect them as damage dealers. I'm not sure why you're telling me this, as I don't beleive I implied Stalkers were weak or something.

I will not continue to argue about it until we have formulated a scenario in which ToF was the only difference between life and death, as by the time we do we shall have reached a situation so incredibly out of the norm of relative gameplay that I will not consider it useful for this scenario that has less than a percent of a chance of occurring in actual game play. ToF is useless, and I am done repeating my opinions on it.

I cannot for the life of me get your build to open, so I'm going to just have to eyeball it.

Your set bonuses are pretty bad, there's nothing outstanding anywhere. You want to pick a focus for your set bonuses and work towards it. For general blaster play, recharge is your best bet. If you were still interested in a defense set, the one I gave you more than suffices that need.

Make sure all your powers are IO slotted with Recipes. This will increase every aspect of your power, usually capping out Acc and Dam, while substantially increasing your recharge and lowering your endurance use. if all of your powers are using less endurance you will find that you are far more sustainable in combat than before. Even if you aren't going to focus on set bonuses you should do this.

I've never liked M30 Grenade because it knocks everything in different directions, which really screws up the rest of your AOE chain. With enough recharge Buckshot, Full Auto and Flamethrower will more than suffice, else use M30 Grenade carefully.

You don't have a travel power at all. I suggest taking Hasten + Superspeed. Superspeed and Cloaking Device will cap out your stealth for PVE, which means you can do fun things like walk right up to a group of monsters, drop a Trip Mine, and then run backwards as it explodes in their faces. Hasten will increase the recharge of all your powers, meaning you'll be doing far more damage than someone without it. Considering the recharge on Full Auto, it's very beneficial to aim for Recharge Reduction on AR so you can get it working as often as possible.

if you take Super Speed you won't need Sniper Rifle either, as you can usually get by with Jousting. Jousting is shooting while you are jumping backwards. The result is that you wind up firing an attack at an enemy while simultanously landing far out of their range.


To summarize:

-Take Super Speed + Cloaking Device
-Lay down a trip mine at the enemies feet, and begin running and jumping backwards as soon as you hear it beeping.
-As soon as you jump, Hit Full Auto. You will be out of the enemies range of fire, and they will be hit with Full Auto.
-Finish off anything still alive.


Smoke Grenade is a useless power if you are not building for a defense set. The piddly amount of damage mitigation you'll be getting from Body Armor is not worth even taking the power. Do not Skip Cryo Freeze Ray if you're going for the Mutitions Mastery pool. At least don't pick it over Survaliance. And if you are going to take Survaliance, which I don't recomend doing really, slot it up for recharge and acc, not defense. With IO sets and targetting drone you shouldn't be missing normal enemies.

Once you have a Hold in your build, you won't need Web Grenade. You shouldn't still be using it anyway, you should be stealth toe bombing and using AOE's. Go ahead and remove all the slots from it, and only use it if you're fighting an AV or something where the -recharge might be beneficial.

Combat Jumping isn't worth taking if you aren't building for defense or getting a Travel Power. You can probably drop it from your build as well, though the Immob protection is useful.

I guess if you wanna play on the weakest solo difficulty possible, sure. By that logic you don't ever need IO's for anything.

You should never be using Time Bomb. By the time the animation finishes and the countdown is over you've wasted a good 24 seconds. Far better to just Toe Bomb, that is, setting down a trip mine close to the spawn while fully invisible and then running backwards as it goes off. The KB it causes combined with SS or SJ will ensure that you are out of range by the time everyone gets up again.

There is so much misinformation about AR/Dev I think I will write a guide for it one day.

Which, as I've already mentioned, isn't as useful as defense. Especially not for a blaster who still takes full mez effects regardless of how much resistance they have. Should my Blaster get hit with that 5% chance a ranged attack has to hit me (in combination with the -50% recharge he has in all of attacks), I can simply use Hoarfrost to restore my HP and make me sturdier than I was a moment ago. Again, I've also already mentioned this strategy.

The resistance you can gain from the other epics is NOT better mitigation than the defense and utility you gain from the Ice Epic.

I don't *need* to avoid melee range. This has many useful applications, such as being able to throw down a Trip Mine wherever I please (and the AOE potential is *incredibly* worth doing this), stay within buff radius of the defender/controller/whatever, not accidentally aggroing other groups because I'm trying to stay at range, etc.

Ranged Defense is not at all trivialized by having S/L defense. While there *are* ranged attacks that have a S/L component, they are not nearly as abundant as melee attacks. You will be very vulnerable to many different attacks if you only slot for S/L defense, unless you can somehow *also* raise all of your typed defenses to equal values, which I do not see happening. You are also vulnerable to just about EVERY ranged control, and there are a *lot* of them.

I've sacrificed absolutely nothing in order to take Ice Armor. All the Primary/Secondary powers I would have picked without it are there. My ranged AND AOE defenses are still high, and with smoke grenade my ranged is *capped*. Not to mention that the Ice Epic pools has it's own share of rather nice powers *anyway*, with Snow Storm very much complimenting a defense set by slowing the incoming hits that are already likely to miss me anyway, and Hoarfrost covering the hits that *do* go through, so it's not as though I've missed out on anything but not taking some other Epic Pool.

Having melee defense is not a detriment. All it can do is help you and make you a more useful player.

This character is fun *and* optimized. It sacrifices nothing to do this.

You are not seeing the whole picture. S/L defense is not a simple typed defense, it is the equivalent of melee defense. *Most* melee attacks have a Smashing/Lethal component to them, so building up S/L defense is the equivalent of building up melee defense. Unless you simply don't beleive a blaster should have any melee defense, there is little reason not to achieve it.

You do not need the resistances if you can dodge the attacks. In fact, with Blaster HP and lack of mez protection, it's far more beneficial to build a blaster for defense.

*Edit*-Generalizing Statement are bad, m'kay?

In general SO play, definitely. If you build for a defense it quickly becomes important again, however.

Either way, you don't need to take it until late (if at all.)

I don't really like either. One is ranged though. One of my complaints about ToF is that it's a melee attack, which is usually where the AOE's are going off. With the ranged version you can at least Fear the enemy away from you, so it's not being hit by AOE's, and not being a problem. That and Scare is part of a set that's more thirsty for mitigation. That said, I still wouldn't pick either of them. The To-Hit in ToF probably makes it better, though.

I'm not 'wasting my attacks trying to get their attention' as my ultimate goal is to kill everything, which includes whoever is attacking whatever I have decided to protect. My damage doesn't become less suddenly because I picked a new target. I lose damage walking over to this new target, sure, but I was going to do that if I used ToF anyway. The To-Hit in my attacks is still being applied to protect this 'whatever', so it's not as though that's going away either, though I do have to build it up on this new target. Given how quickly Dark Melee animates, however, even this is not so great of a problem (Dark Melee is in the top 2 for highest DPA builds because of it's type and how quickly it animates.) The enemy at my back is still safely being mitigated through Siphon Life, which is what I was *primarily* relying on anyway, and one of the primary reasons I don't think ToF is needed.

Now, assuming I'm a scrapper or a brute, I'm probably going to just kill the enemy until it's dead, then turn around and finish off what I was on before. if I'm a brute, I have punch-voke to aid that goal even further. If I'm a tanker I just taunt the thing and never bother with any of this. If I'm a stalker... Whatever, that thing is probably attacking the 'whatever' because I used placate, so I don't really care (joking).

I don't find Touch of Fear a good damage mitigation in the first place anyway, I'm certainly not going to trust it to defend this 'whatever' that's in danger and then go about my merry business.

And who is this 'whatever' I'm defending anyway? Why are they so completely helpless that the only one that can save them is me? Do we not have a tanker or a controller or anything that is better equipped to deal with this situation? If so, how is it that we're in this big team in the first place, I certianly can't handle a group sized spawn without at least a controller for support. If we're on a low team why can't they handle the scant 2-3 enemies that are attacking them?

To be honest, I've probably let the 'whatever' die because I don't feel they're useful.

What is the acronym MM referring too? Nothing I can think of called "MM" has Touch of Fear. I know Mastermind has Fearsome Stare, which I consider to be better than Touch of Fear, and Mental Manipulation has Scare, which I also consider marginally better than ToF, but I cannot ascertain what you are referencing.

To adress your concern, however, no, I do not beleive damage is king. I have a hard time playing "blappers" because I feel that, until you have enough mitigation to survive an encounter, damage is secondary. It is difficult for me to fully accept that damage=mitigation, despite my comment about dead being the most powerful damage mitigation (and it is). Which is not to say you shouldn't be doing any damage until you can survive nuclear holocaust, but you get the general idea behind the statement I hope. I do not feel that Touch of Fear is needed in order to survive an encounter, and I've already listed reasons why I think it's a waste of time to use. I will respect that others do not feel the same, of course, and I will at very least accept that FEAR is not a waste of time.

At any rate, let's move on. I don't want to turn this thread into "Let's convince Warkupo ToF is awesome." Not that I'm not enjoying all the attention I'm getting.

By that argument, DP is better than archery because it can escape it's lethal damage more often than in just a single power. Smashing doesn't count.

*shrugs* I find that beating enemies in the back of the head works fairly good for getting the heat off other team mates regardless of what AT I'm playing. Standing closer to it than them is also greatly useful. I make this kind of assist all of the time, and I've never needed ToF to do it.

Oh really? I don't suppose you know why that is exactly?

And I only saw like, five pistols. I do hope they add more. I want an eyeball pistol that looks at people while I shoot them.