I give up... What about Inventions?

Among his other qualities, Sam is also proud. I sent him a set of mako's and touch of death and he sent them back. I think he wants to learn how to do it and how much effort it takes, even though he doesn't like it.

I can appreciate that.

I hate doubleposting, but I think I edited that first one a little too much.

It's also worth noting that that primarily applies to players who are dancing at the limits of their mitigation. If your mitigation is capable of handling 2x8 content, but you're only running at, say, 0x6, that's a gigantic margin of safety, and even the extra to-hit from Incarnate enemies won't overcome it. You'll find yourself taking more damage, sure, but you'll still be very safe.

See, the thing is, I don't really have a problem on most of my characters. I get that having enemy to-hit jump is a pain for everybody, but my other characters at least have something else to fall back on - heals, debuffs, resistance and so forth. SR has quite literally nothing BUT defence. Yeah, there are quite a few nice debuff resists in there - run speed and recharge speed that I can think of - but strip my Scrapper of his defences and he has nothing to fall back on. The scaling resistance of the passives? Those don't really do much.

I guess - as usual - that's mostly a problem for SR, since both Ninjutsu and Energy Aura have other mitigation tools, but even so, it just strikes me as unfair. I can't really imagine what my Bots/FF Mastermind would go through, but at the same time... He's a Mastermind. Half the time he can forget he even HAS a secondary and do just fine. I'm sure he has enough spare performance to absorb the to-hit difference.

I guess the problem is I don't build to fight at +4x8. I build to fight at +0x2 with some degree of comfort. Granted, most of my characters can handle, say, +0x3, but it's no longer comfortable at all and it gets both a lot slower and a lot more dangerous. When you play at +0x2, there isn't much left to drop TO. I can go -1, but that won't make Dark Astoria enemies any lower in level. If anything, it'll make my companions level 49, making things even tougher. I know, because I did. Going down from x2 to x1 is also an option but again - the difference isn't that great, and I still get massive spawns tossed at me because that's just how those missions are designed.

It doesn't feel fair against SR, is what I'm saying, and I have a LOT of SR characters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well there's Vengeful Strike, which is 100% knockdown.

Yes, there's Air Superiority if you'd favor. There's also Spring attack for area KD. There's tough and weave. Aid self may not be usable in combat, but you can forego more of your green inspirations for more +def, +res and +dmg inspirations instead. Remember, inspirations are there to be used and since you're melee, you don't need breakfrees, you don't need to bother with awakes, you're not fighting foes higher level than you so you don't need insight, so that just leaves blue, green, orange, purple and red. Find a way to eliminate another (hows your endurance? fix it and you don't need blue...take aid-self and you don't need to rely on green, cap defense and you don't need many purples...)

If you've got enough attacks, you can eliminate one for better utility or trade one for a different flavor attack. You don't seem to be getting all that much from Weapon Mastery (IMO) except web grenade. Mace Mastery has a similar power but with a hold instead of an immobilize.

Then there's incarnate powers. Interface has some nifty debuffs that may increase your survival a good deal (especially since +0 and +1 foes won't resist your debuffs much).

But this is just speaking in generalizations, not on your character specifically. The way I see it, practically any concept is workable and can be good thanks to IOs. Even your character can be made really good with what limited tools it has thanks to IOs. If you're unhappy that your concept isn't just well out of the box, that's what IOs are for. That you don't want to use IOs to fulfill the concept better is the problem.

Yeah, I guess you can boil down the argument of 'why can't my character concept just kick butt with her limited tools and without needing to fiddle with IOs' but that's a hugely deeper issue. There's a reason we can't just make any combo of powers too...

PS: Not talking down on your character. I'm just not in agreement that the end-game is always going to favor IO builds. Really, it's all do-able with just insight (err...forethought). Having a character with a multitude of tools/is a generalist gives you options and after that, inspirations.

You just have to look at your build and notice: What can it do? Then think What should it be capable of? That doesn't always line up with how the game interprets balance so sometimes you need to cheat...enter IOs.

Sidestepping yet another "you refuse to min/max" argument, I remember something that pissed me off so much more than the basic to-hit - half the Talons of Vengeance seem to have essentially auto-hit patches like they're raid bosses. And that's not just the occasional elite boss like a Keres, oh, no. Every frikkin' "Prophetess" lieutenant has them, either in the "rocks explode out of the ground" or the "lightning field" or the "burning ground" variety. I know they're not auto-hit, but I ran build you gave me, with Elude and with two medium purples all at the same time and those patches were still hitting me with 85% probability.

Yeah, I get that I need to avoid them. Eventually, I learned to take out as many Prophetess Talons as I could, then run in circles until all the patches were expended, then keep on targeting Prophetess enemies. I know, I know, they're avoidable. But it's just Watchers and Quartz all over again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My /SR scrapper is moving through Dark Astoria pretty well, and he's not tricked out or anything. It starts with setting the difficulty slider appropriately.