If he isnt willing to run rage, I suggest that your friend picks a different primary. Fury or no fury, much of super strength's effectiveness comes from rage.
Issue 21 will feature the new Street Justice set. It is not a free set, but it wont have rage (i assume) and so it might work better for him.
His other option is to learn to manage the rage crash. My biggest problem with it was that I could never tell it was happening until it was over and I had wasted a bunch of endurance. I preferred the old crash where you couldnt do anything. I deleted SIX different level 40+ super strength characters because of how much I personally hated the new rage. I tried and tried, believe me.
What finally did it for me, that made me *usually* realize it was happening is that I used the combat monitor and put my damage bonus in there and put it right in the center of the screen. Usually half way through the new crappy rage crash, I break out of tunnelvision/scrapperlock, see the red -9999 damage, and go "oh" and then I just stand there for 5 more seconds and let my recovery top me off (i always slot a miracle and a numina in any superstr character). And on some sets, including EA, you can leech endurance back while you wait.
Learning to stick red numbers in my face helped me, and now I can play SS without a disadvantage. If only I could make the big evil red numbers HUGE.
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan
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This x 1000.|
Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
If he isnt willing to run rage, I suggest that your friend picks a different primary. Fury or no fury, much of super strength's effectiveness comes from rage.
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I can't imagine my SS/EA without Rage. My solution to the crash problem is what was just mentioned - monitoring damage bonus in the attribute monitor window. Because it takes fairly minimal slotting to get Rage perma'd, you can negate the defense penalty with a click.
I'd offer comments on the build but am at work and don't have access to Mids. When did it become unacceptable to post more than data chunks? That's a weird trend.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
This is a pretty solid build. It certainly isn't cheap and the Gladiator 3% defense IO is completely optional. This is a complete build with accolades and t4 incarnates, but this shows you what a well built /EA can achieve numbers wise.
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When the new /EA changes hit live /EA is going to be VERY strong.
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I finally got my Mids updated and had a chance to look at both builds. Neither one is the way I've built my ss/ea, and there are some fundamental things that differ in playstyle that would keep my advice on the build as a whole from being useful. A couple of notes, though:
In the original build, you're better off dropping the damage/range from Dark Oblit and replacing it with the proc (your damage stat will still be at the ED cap, but your average damage goes up by 13 points) , and dropping the plain recharge IO altogether. It only gains you about 2.5 seconds on the recharge, and you can take that slot and put it into one of your 3-slotted defense shields for another LotG 7.5.
Plan on replacing the Efficacy Adaptor set with Red Fortune in Energy Drain when I21 drops. Keeps the 5% recharge bonus, gives you enough en/neg def to drop energy protection and use the slot to get Haymaker in the build and slot it up.
At least one more slot can be harvested from a 4-slot LotG by going Def, def/end, def/7.5 (as in build 2). Unless you think the 9% accuracy is a dire need.
I assume you're planning a Doctored Wounds set in Energize.
In the second build, Hurl should be replaced with Gloom (much better dps and exotic damage), with a slot moved from Soul Tentacles to get the 6-slot bonus from Thunderstrike. Soul Tentacles should die a horrible death and be replaced with Darkest Night, which both builds could benefit from (some re-ordering of powers would be required). In Footstomp I'd replace the damage and acc/rech Erad pieces with D/E and A/D/E from Scirocco's Dervish. Much more balanced power stats that way. If you really want the bonus HP from Erad (that's one of the things I built for on my ss/ea, who walks around with over 2100 hp), probably just replace one of the Erad pieces with D/E from something like Multistrike.
I'm not a fan of hasten in ss/ea, but that's a playstyle choice.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
I made that build on the fly in about 5 minutes so it was bound to be less than perfect.
That said on reviewing the build I agree tentacles is lame and gloom would be better overall and even for the specific defensive bonus's I was going for.
Darkest night imho is pointless with the build I posted considering even without the glad 3% defense io the build has no less than 52% defense to all types except psi, and 55% s/l and a whopping 64% energy defense. I took one slot out of hasten and popped it in gloom and slotted another set of thunderstrike's. I can see using darkest night for the -damage mainly, but even then it would only be used when av soloing while dark obliteration would be used constantly with footstomp. I will admit that stacking darkest night+the -damage interface would be a very nice combo for av soloing since /ea resists are paltry.
I have a lvl 40 SS/EA I'm about to dust off and get incarnate and io'd soon.
/EA is gonna be REALLY nice after the coming changes.
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Building for defenses that far above the softcap is not worthwhile to me, but like I said there are some fundamental playstyle differences that I could see reflected in the build philosophy. To me, you're sacrificing slots and shoving them into powers that don't need them (e.g., taunt**) for benefits that in almost all cases don't get you to the incarnate softcap, which is pretty pointless to try to reach anyway given the buffs that are constantly flying around from Destiny. Darkest Night is an additional buffer that can work with minimal slotting to protect from cascading defense debuff failure in standard content, and as you noted, to minimize the pain when it does happen.|
Originally Posted by Delerious
Darkest night imho is pointless with the build I posted considering even without the glad 3% defense io the build has no less than 52% defense to all types except psi, and 55% s/l and a whopping 64% energy defense.
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Of course, I wanted extremely high recharge, lots of +HP, good regen, and soft-capped to everything but psi. I was able to get that, but sacrificed things like slotting up the resistance powers, which I'm fine with. That may change with I21, since I'll probably open up several slots based on the changes announced thus far, but we'll see. I still need to find slots for Energize, too, and so far I only see 6 slots that I can clear, so...
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| /EA is gonna be REALLY nice after the coming changes. |
** = Full disclosure: I slotted Boxing, but that was for the purple set. However, slotting it for the 5 and 6-slot bonuses from Razzle Dazzle is potentially viable as well.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
My full build is only 1.6% off incarnate soft cap to s/l and energy is well over. Ranged is 41% to help with psi.
For this build I felt that uber defenses were more beneficial than uber recharge. Having over soft capped defenses helps during incarnate content especially during the labs and warehouse of lambda where many times your buffs wear off. Also during the ITF it is very noticable having above soft capped with all the -def attacks.
As you said there are clearly different design choices, but I don't sacrifice any slots as you mention simply because everything I wanted slotted is slotted. All my attacks are slotted fine and defenses obviously are more than fine.
Also consider the t4 rebirth. With the new changes this build most likely with the new +def aspect will be incarnate soft capped to all and have t4 rebirth+ energize. Also the passives are being increased a certain amount that hasn't been disclosed yet.
I personally feel having maximum defense, adequate hp and 2 heals with a little resistance is the best way to build an /ea, but everyone has differing opinions.
After seeing this thread I decided to make one of my own. Then liked it enough that I think I'll remake my EM/EA Brute to SS/EA.
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A friend of mine asked me to take a peek at an SS/EA brute for him. I cooked a build up, but I'm not entirely sure it's optimal. My experience with typed defense is mostly limited to capping s/l on sets like invuln. He did NOT want rage, as he has a tough time managing the crashes, and the potential -def.
I left the slots in CP blank in anticipation of the Energize change. I also told him that low level exemping would be a bit of a pain w/punch + boxing being most of his attack chain. Anyhow, looking for some input on the build.
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I did manage to softcap s/l/e/n/f/c, which was the primary goal. 58% recharge is a tad low by my taste, but I was thinking EA could easily run a spiritual alpha. Cycling CP and Energize should solve any endo issues.
Thanks guys! I'm always impressed with the build magic on the forums.