Having trouble with every character near or after 40

btw - This made me almost spit my Mt Dew out. God that was hillarious.

From what I understand, a Fire/Shield scrapper and a DM/Shield scrapper have hit or gotten close to 300 DPS, but those were truly insane builds (approaching or achieving perma-Hasten)

I'm pretty sure Bill Z holds the record for the highest DPS done with a Claws scrapper, and he was around 220 or so I think.

I know my Claws/Regen struggles to maintain 160 DPS, I can hit 180 if I don't need to hit a heal and can just keep my chain running, but not consistently. 250 is well outside the realm of possibility for me.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I'm sure Bill went way above 220, but the machine thought it was a mistake so it stopped counting at 220. He defies (defines?) the laws of Scrapperdom.

Yeah, mine suffers a little because I have my chance for build up slotted in Tactics because unlike your SR, I actually need the defense bonus from it. I can probably afford tyo slot one in Focus, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

There's also the fact that I have to stop attacking so I can heal occasionally too. I build for a lot of passive regen so I don't have to interrupt my chain as often, but I still have to heal once in a while.

Mine is Claws/Regen.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

These two quotes tell me you have a fairly common misunderstanding about games in general.

There always are some people who demand three things from a game absolutely:

1) That the game not be too hard to play successfully as characters increase in power.

2) That character power increases in large, dramatic steps (not "only a tiny improvement.")

3) That the high-level game be challenging enough to hold their interest.

No game ever made can meet all three of those conditions, of course.

You can't start out comfortably near the power level needed to win every fight, increase your power dramatically many times over, and end up still challenged by the fights. It can't be done, period.

Most games opt for changing the middle part of that dynamic, and offer small, incremental improvements to characters as they develop. Those small, incremental improvements are the ones you are rejecting as pointless.

Lots of people have mutually exclusive wants, like wanting to be ruthless and powerful but also loved for your kindness. It's a human failing...not a game design problem.

How can you possibly talk about Soldiers of Arachnos (i12) and Claws/Willpower Scrappers (i11) WITHOUT talking about ED (i6)?!??!?!?

You got me there.

In Bizarro-World!

Short story shorter: If you even remember what Per-ED was like, then the quick tip would seem to be:

Start Over. It's a New Game. Completely, Utterly, and Totally New.*

* - (sorta.)

Uhm. The devs already gave you this option. If you weren't paying attention, the market merger has drastically slashed prices on a great many formerly hard-to-get items.

I'm finding this out much to my dismay right now.

BULL!

I will repeat again for effect.

BULL!

Use the extra slots to at least temporarily fill out the build in other places. If you need to go back and "fix" it later, that's what respecs are for.

Simply because you're at a loss as to where to place new slots doesn't mean the devs need to compensate you for a lack of build planning and imagination.

Hint: Leveling builds RARELY look the same way some of these respec-rework builds come out to be later on.

You don't NEED "billions" to get to 50. If you're in the L40 range right now, you can rather cheaply frankenslot your character (or go with standard IOs) and still be VERY effective.

The first trick is not to expect a fully purpled build all at once.
The second trick is to market patiently and effectively.
Craft any drops worth more than the components + crafting cost.
Sell whatever you don't use.
Rack up merits and alignment merits when possible.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Late to the party, but I'm seriously thinking that this one is "sig-worthy"!

Biggest reason it's still in the convo is his statement about impossible characters (i.e. pre-ED Willpower and mastermind characters.)

coming from someone who came into all this way way way after ED came along, it's do-able. I wish I had more slots to place. I suppose it's subjective of the toon though.

Look into sets for Health and Stamina. If I have extra slots (rarely do at level 40, with all attacks 6 slotted, toggles 4-6 slotted, passives 2 slotted) tack on another slot for Health and Stamina. But instead of 3 slotting SOs, using Stamina as an example, use 1 Common IO, the End+ only from the Performance Shifter set, and then the +10 End proc from the same set. Just 2 Common IOs will get your 2 slots within a couple percentage points of 3 SOs. The End+ only from Performance Shifter + that 1 Common IO will give you the same base result. The proc will have a 20% chance of popping an additional 10 end points every 20 seconds or so, plus you'll get a movement speed increase from the set bonuses. Similar things can be done in health. More health/regen and end/recovery will always be useful. Plus at level 40, you have malta and sappers coming up.

Then there are boosting swift, hurdle, and whatever other single slot powers you have (combat jumping, hover, fly, super jump, super speed, hasten?). You may not think you have a need for more, but so what, if you really have the slot, put it there.

Tack on in a few weeks/months when I-19 comes out fitness goes inherent and you'll have a few more power slots to put powers in that use slots.

Also, if you're playing and epic AT, and you have too many slots at any point, your build is probably missing some powers that you can use effecitvely. Similar can be said about almost any other set combo. On nearly every build I've ever come up with, I'm wanting more slots for something somewhere.

Actually ED happened as of Issue 6, so MMs and ED happened at the same time.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Bull ****....


You couldnt even make a master mind before ED took effect. They launched in the same issue.

If you think you have to many resources then level the toon put the slots somewhere and dont fill them. But if you want to be able to get those slots filled with more expensive set peices, why not dust off those level 50s, do some TFs and SFs earn some merits and do some rolls. If you dont want what you get sell them on the market.

But frankly even though you say that its little effect, the cumulative effect of slotting a second end reduction in all your toggles IS noticable, or slotting end red in those 1-2 big attacks that take like 15-18 end in one big chunk. there is always something somewhere that can be slotted, either recharge, end, def, res, it doesnt matter. Common IOs are pretty cheap to buy or make them yourself they are cheaper. Even 2 percent is 2 percent more then you had before.

Actually the ill/cold feel quite short of what I thought it would do, but still crushes anything else that has actually been made.

Basically bugged phatasm that usually dies well before it is recharged and the sleet bug that prevents stacking (that is huge) of the -res debuff means a major detraction of damage output.

My projections for the ill/cold (if the powers actually worked) was to be taking out AV's/pylons in around 100 seconds.

But that said, there is no reason for builds not to match what they can do on paper as long as you create the paper with accuracy. After all the game is essentially just electronic paper...

P.S. I had some pretty crazy expectation of my bots/storm, but low and behold key powers being bugged (plasma blast doesn't properly apply the -regen, and the sleet/freezing rain bug) really put a damper on that project. IIRC it his 325 dps (inc the mostly non-functional -regen) on a very lightly IO'd build. If I took my personal attacks and the powers actually worked it would be crazy. Sadly though, almost every toon I've pursued heavily I've uncovered large powers bugs. Either I'm just unlucky in my selection of power sets, or there are still a ton of bugs.

Well on the positive side, as long as you keep /bugging them they will get fixed eventually. and then the builds will perform as indicated!

i5, i6. I knew they both happend same time. Regardless, MM's couldnt be made before ED, and WP damn sure couldnt.

Unfortunately, not so much... I've been bugging powers for years, the only one(s) that have actually gotten fixed in that time are the traps powers that use the tripmine animation. But rather than actually fixing them to be what they were supposed to be they just changed the listed cast time to the much longer cast they were actually taking while bugged.

That's only a 'fix' in the sense that I go to the store to buy a product, get up to the till and it rings in at $50 and I say, "wait on the shelf it says $30" and the clerk walks over with his price gun and changes the shelf price to $50 and then askes, "does that fix your concern?".

The trick is that once the display is correct, then the rest of the world starts saying, huh why is this one $50 but the exact same one on the next aisle is $30? That's how the sets allowed for caltrops etc got fixed. Eventually enough people will point it out. I have a long-term perspective I guess =)