FupDup

That's supposed to apply during PvP only, as seen in City of Data: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_defense.stone_armor.rooted&at=scrapper All other armor sets gain extra debuff resistances in PvP so this is not unusual. It would only be unusual if you got to keep that protection when moving back into PvE zones.

As a power, it truly is taken for granite.

No, it'll only go up to the set's maximum level of 30. The game will display it up to 50, but that's a bug.

DP as a whole is underwhelming. Blaster could be considered the "best" here not because of its own stats but because they can lean on their "secondary" set (preferably an ST-focused one like Nin or Elec) and basically ignore the majority of DP (the best way to play DP is to not play it). Defenders are an alternate option because their higher support modifiers make the non-fire ammo types a little more useful.

Most single-target KB is controllable to a degree, but AOE is where it can get hairy. I kinda wish that most AOEs were just KD by default and if the player wanted to change that then the onus would be on them to slot KB enhancements. Yes, this could/would lead to people who make that choice getting ostracized, but that already happens in reverse for people who don't slot KB->KD. At least this way, people who aren't aware of this dynamic are less likely to be affected by it (unless they happen to slot a KB enhancement unknowingly). Beyond that, for Energy Blast in particular, I wish it were revamped to allow more control over when the KB happens. One possibility would be to reduce the KBs to KD by default (at least on AOEs) and then make the Aim power grant increased KB magnitude for a few moments (kind of like the other unique Aim/Build Up powers, i.e. Charge Up gives End Mod). Or there's any other number of ways to execute it, really. It might also be interesting to revamp the Explosive Blast power into a mini vortex (rename to Implosive Blast?) that sucks enemies in like Axe Cyclone, to help offset the disruption created by other powers in the set.

Eh, Martial isn't a good example here because it has just 1 ST attack (or literally zero on a Stalker) that just so happens to benefit heavily from Gauntlet. If taken on a non-Tank, and not paired with an AOE-boosting armor like Rad or Bio, it most definitely makes a trade of sacrificing AOE. Like, if one was to make an MA/SR Scrapper or something, its AOE would be pretty low.

Look, there's a difference between giving Spines an ST damage buff and making it rival proper ST-focused sets. Basically, there's a certain minimum threshold for ST for a set to not feel awful and Spines falls below that level. Nudging its ST upward doesn't mean it's gonna out-DPS something like Battle Axe for ST.

This whole sub-debate is stupid. Let's just get back to gushing over Sniper Rifle Blast having an airstrike as its T9, as God intended.

That's definitely an improvement. I tweaked a few other things, namely trimming slots off Combat Jumping/Super Speed and adding a few procs to some of the attacks. A note on Ageless Radial is that it does help with DDR, but the amount it gives fluctuates (starts high and tapers off) so it shouldn't be relied upon too heavily. One thing that I didn't notice the first time around was that you had the Panacea proc slotted in Ablative Carapace. The issue is that the proc would only activate when you use the power, whereas putting it in an auto or toggle would let it work continuously in the background. As such, I moved it to Inexhaustible. I also enabled the 4 passive accolades for more max HP and endurance. Beyond that, this is probably about all I've got. You can try asking others for a more offensive-oriented version (load up on damage procs, remove the sets) but this build should get you through the majority of the game's content easily enough. Tanker (Bio Armor - Katana).mbd

This could potentially fit into a Sniper Rifle set, with the player character dropping a flare to call in an airstrike on their location before they retreat away. Like if their position got overrun or something. Or perhaps replace Meteor since that nuke's calldown delay is so long that it's actually considered a skippable power.

I don't do much tank building but I'll take a stab at this... Firstly, there's the broad point to consider that Bio Armor is probably not suited for defense stacking due to its lack of defense debuff reduction (meaning that enemies with def debuffs can strip it off you quickly) and that it doesn't come with any positional defenses in its stock form, meaning that you start from zero. The set mostly relies on absorb and regen, so building high max HP and high global recharge would play to the set's natural strengths better. Also grab some slow resistance so that recharge debuffs don't slow down your clickies that Bio depends on. More broadly speaking, Katana is a set that has the ability to slot a lot of damage procs and benefits greatly from using that ability, but I'm not as versed in proc slotting so I'll stick to more basic advice for now. The things that stick out to me are: *In Ablative Carapace, the 6th slot bonus for Panacea (6% heal buff) isn't really very impactful so you can cut that power down to just 5 slots. *In Environmental Modification, the 6 and 5 slot bonuses in Shield Wall aren't very helpful either, so that can go down to 4 slots. *In Inexhaustable, the Regenerative Tissue set's bonuses and direct enhancements aren't very strong and could be replaced by something better like another 5-set of Panacea or PrevMed (or just 3 slots of PrevMed even, if you need the slots to spend elsewhere). *Super Speed should only be 1-slotted with Winter's Gift slow resistance. The ranged defense from 2-slot Zephyr is not useful to this armor set. *Divine Avalanche can be just down to just 2 slots for the Reactive Defenses proc and another Luck of the Gambler global recharge. It's pretty bad as an attack power and its defenses don't do much for Bio, so here it's just being used to hold important global pieces. *Combat Jumping can be cut to just 1 slot for the LOTG global recharge, because its base defense value is low (enhancements won't do much) and the base endurance cost is also very low. *Build Up can be 3-slotted for an easy bit of extra max HP. *Evolving Armor can be 3-slotted with Titanium Coating for a bit of extra HP and resists. *Hardened Carapace would arguably be better with 4-slotted Titanium Coating vs Aegis, but Aegis isn't a bad choice either for the extra resists at least. *DNA Siphon doesn't really need EndMod enhancement because Bio already has excellent sustain without, so it should either be treated as a healing power OR you can load it up with damage procs and use it as an AOE bomb. Since Katana is kind of low on AOE, the latter option is probably better here. *For Stamina, it would probably be better to either 3-slot Synapse's Shock for the slow resistance or 3-slot Shifter for the HP bonus. *Harmonic Mind can be cut down to just 1 slot since Bio already handles recovery very well by default. *In Lotus Drops, you might consider 5-slotting Eradication for the extra HP and the typed Energy/Negative defenses at least go better with Bio's natural defenses to those types (compared to smash/lethal/melee that start from zero). This also leaves room for another damage proc or Fury of the Gladiator -res. *Dominate should be slotted with some damage procs and maybe the Entomb absorb proc if you want, as a damage supplement that Katana very much would benefit from. Or even just slot the Apocalypse set if you want the bonuses, just don't leave it blank because Katana needs the extra damage support here. *Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly could both go down to just 5 slots, either moving the slots elsewhere or adding an extra damage proc or -res proc to each of them. *Your Alpha Incarnate slot probably should be swapped out because Bio doesn't benefit much from Agility's defense. The recharge is a bit more debatable, since Bio does like recharge...but the recharge given by alpha powers does hurt your proc rate if you have them slotted. Vigor Core is a really good choice here because it will boost both your regen and max HP, along with providing extra endurance reduction and accuracy as a cherry on top. Or you could just go Musculature Radial for the extra damage.

The issue with a crossbow in Archery is that it's not just a new skin, but also new animations. There are probably at least several existing animations from crossbows and even Beam Rifle that might be able to be recycled, but I'm not sure if there's enough for the entire set (and they need to have very similar animation times to the actual bow powers). The Dual Pistol "crossbows" still use all the same pistol animations so that was an easy copy-paste job.

It depends on where the chi is coming from...in Dragon Ball for example, every living being (including normal humans) has Ki (thus natural) and can learn to do stuff like flying and shooting energy blasts with it. It also depends on what the character has to do in order to get more powerful. If they have to train/learn new physical techniques, then that leans natural. If She had to open up a spell book and learn new spells, or find magical artifacts, etc. to get stronger then that would be magic. Mutant origin is more that you're born very different from the rest of your peers of the same species, which probably doesn't apply here (I don't know much about Street Fighter lore).

Can it be done? Sure, but it would have to wait until later in the game to come online (epic pools). Should it be done? Lolno. If you insist, the primary would probably need to be Claws (Focus, Shockwave) or Spines (Impale, Throw Spines) along with an epic pool of choice (probably Fire, Levi, or Psi), and probably Sorcery for Arcane Bolt + Enflame (using Arcane when it's powered up for max damage). Experimentation might be an alternative to Sorc but probably a bit weaker. The armor set would be weird to choose because normally you want damage auras, but if you want to stay at range then the damage aura is kind of wasted. There's also a number of armors with scaling buffs based on enemies in melee, so those would probably be avoided too if you wanted to commit to truly commit to it. That might just leave SR as the only one with no aura component at all?

Fire Armor is based around resistance, so trying to beef up its defenses is a bit of an uphill battle. And even if you did build up the def, there's no DDR. I think it would be easier and more efficient to go for resistances, max HP (up to the cap or close to it), global recharge, and slow resistance. Play to the set's strengths.

Low level hero radio mission, Get a Dragoon Ball: It should say "mighty" rather than "might."

Another note in regard to the solo thing is that some content pretty much can ONLY be run solo because of low interest. Sure, a Positron TF or whatever can fill up quickly enough, but most random story arcs (especially redside or goldside) aren't going to get much attention or interest in the LFG chat (which is mostly just an endless tide of blueside TFs and ITFs with the occasional iTrial or redside SF mixed in for flavor).

It's especially weird because normal healing enhancements also some bundled with absorption, so the way alphas are set up creates an inconsistency/confusion point. There are a few Sentinel unique absorb powers to add to that list (Regen, Invuln, SR, and Ice armors all have one), but otherwise yeah it's pretty uncommon.

That last .6 saved us from sure destruction by making it 4 sixes instead of just 3.

I wish that VEATs had something like Body/Energy Mastery, at least in regards to the endurance sustaining auto powers (I feel indifferent towards the laser eye beam stuff, maybe replace with shurikens or something). This would be on-theme for the highly trained human soldier thing they got going and fill a gameplay niche that none of the patrons really touch on.

Correct, the Absorb component doesn't do anything. Alphas only enhance your existing powers, they don't give you new stats in a category (i.e. a character with no defense powers won't gain any defense from a defense-based Alpha power). Dull Pain's max HP would only be enhanced by a healing Alpha like Vigor or Spiritual (but Spiritual's recharge messes with proc rates, if you're loaded up with them).

Sents have a much smaller variety of melee powers to choose from and have to wait until epic pools to get them, so Blasters still (rightfully) pull out ahead of them in that aspect. Then there's Defiance, damage caps, weaker sniper replacement powers (where applicable), AOE target caps...The rationalization still holds up in that example.

On one hand I get the logic of Pacify and Confront being opposites and never wanting to be taken together... But on the other hand, Pacify does fulfill an important role as an easily accessible Placate power. The only other generic Placate is Misdirection, which is a T3 power with a very slow recharge time. Maybe Pacify could be moved to become an extra T1 choice for Concealment, but that might be stretching the definition of what constitutes a "stealth" power. I think the easy way around that issue is to just not arbitrarily limit ourselves to keeping pools at only 5 powers each. There are lots of neat ideas for more pool powers in existing pools, and we shouldn't have to play a zero sum game to get them (for example, I'd like a taunt aura in Presence as a second T2 choice).

Blasters having a high melee scale is appropriate because they're an AT that is supposed to be the glassiest of glass cannons. The only issue here is that there are several ways to undermine the "glass" part of that equation while keeping all the "cannon." Tanks on the other hand are the beefiest thing in the game, so it's kind of silly for the biggest slab of beef to reach similar melee damage as the bleeding edge glass cannon class.

Brutes are kinda weird because they sit in-between two other ATs (Scrapper, Tanker) rather than being a "pure" AT specialized into one job. And it's also kind of hard to go away from that because being a bruiser/offtank is a part of their identity, and it's a common archetype in games like these so it really should exist in some form (not everything needs to be a holy trinity specialist). For now I'd stick to some light to medium tune up changes rather than reinventing the wheel. Namely: 1. Increase the base armor modifiers and base HP to sit between Scrapper and Tanker more properly, rather than having equal armor mods to Scrappers and only a tiny bit higher starting HP. For armor, given that Scraps are 0.75 and Tanks are 1.0, I think that 0.85 is the highest we could go without stepping on Tankers' toes too much. For HP, Scrap starts at 1339, Brute is currently 1499, and Tank is 1874. Brute could probably nudge up to the mid-upper 1500's range. 2. Fix the ATOs to ignore level difference, and probably just replace the +Fury ATO entirely (Smashing damage proc?) because of how easy Fury is to build/maintain. Or, maybe reduce the proc rate but make it give a really high value, so that we could actually push our Fury over the standard 80% cap once in a while. 3. Tanks probably shouldn't have 95% of the melee damage of a Blaster, so we could nudge their melee modifier down to 0.9 (currently 0.95, Blasters are 1.0) to make the damage gap between Brute and Tank a little bit wider without crippling Tanks or making Brutes into upgraded Scrappers.