dzyp

I consider myself to have one truly elite character and it's a scrapper. By elite, I mean it can solo the first mission of a +4/x8 km itf with no insps and no deaths in under 30 minutes... including the ambush at the end. I've got tanks that can survive it but not really under 30 minutes. I've got other characters that do great until the ambush. Only one that can do it all: dm/shield. With harmonic mind I can easily run with ageless radial which means I spend a lot of time immune to -rech and capped DDR. Dark won't set the pylon world on fire (~2:30) but in actual gameplay where I can saturate soul drain it's a beast.

Running as a wm/bio scrapper, if I activate ablative carapace my absorption points will jump up to 1191, which is expected. However, if I don't wait for that to expire and hit ablative carapace again, instead of refreshing it stacks so when the previous cast expires the new absorption points is ~100 (ie, carapace stacked, I hit the absorption cap, then the first cast expired so my new absorption points is the difference between my cap and 1191). Note that this doesn't happen every time, I'd say somewhere between 25-50%. Could be a race condition. CoD says this should refresh: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_defense.bio_organic_armor.ablative_carapace&at=scrapper Attached a video of combat attributes: https://streamable.com/5eo9ej (expires in 2 days)

Energy/wp is no joke. I have it in scrapper form with et, tf, et, zapp, bs. Willpower makes for an excellent pairing as it's set and forget and can also heal back the -hp. Even as a scrapper this combo is a machine.

Skipped barrage and confront. Everything else is worth taking imo.

I also have an ice/rad scrapper and it's definitely a viable combo. I took a snipe from an epic pool to do maximum ST dmg but I end up with this weird attack chain of ice sword -> freezing touch -> ice sword -> cross punch -> moonbeam with the crit proc in ice sword. GIS is like GFS, just not all that great. That's my biggest complaint with the set: I've got 4 powers in my attack chain and only 2 are from my primary. From a numerical perspective it makes sense it's just kind of disappointing. You'll definitely want frost and frozen aura. Frozen aura reminds me a lot of footstomp. Combine that with proc bombing ground zero and you can do some serious aoe dmg.

I think we're just getting "burned" by circumstances re NC Soft, Paragon, etc. People play this game to feel like superheroes. Part of that is progressing and getting more powerful. Specifically, with the incarnate material, it's evolving into a God of some form and realizing the possibility of ultimate power. To modify any mechanic now to reduce damage or power when playing existing content is antithetical to the expectations players have when progressing in the game. I don't want my AoE nerfed so my next run of tinpex is harder, I'm a God next to those mobs as that's the spot I've "earned". When I look at other games (but I'm by no means an MMORPG expert), they typically get around this by adding new levels and new content. They introduce new endgame challenges that re-introduce the feeling of hardship or slightly modify expectations. As players, we rightly view this as another step in becoming Godlike. I think this content should also "spread the love" in regards to diversifying desirable powerset combos and the like. Enemies should deal dmg types not commonly seen and be weak to dmg types not often chosen. That gives reason to have variety and everyone a purpose based on temporal partitioning. And then, when the community has discovered all the meta and conquered this content they can feel Godlike again just before new content is released. It's pretty typical human nature stuff. You see new challenges which initially defeat you. You work hard and learn how to overcome the challenge. At some point you become the expert and the challenge is trivialized. The way to solve this is not by nerfing your expert status because that subverts expectations. It usually doesn't match real world experiences. In the real world, ideally you find new challenges. The problem we face is that there's no one really dedicated to creating new challenges for us (not to knock the devs, they are doing a great job, but I assume they all have day jobs). I assume it's quite a bit easier to nerf powersets or mechanics than to introduce new content so that will often be the path taken just out of expedience. It's how you'd optimize a problem of creating new challenges with tightly constrained time requirements. Although, I will say, I was pretty pleased to see some new mission content in the beta so I may very well be wrong. I hope I am because I want to continue my journey as an incarnate.

I'm relatively new to my fire melee brute but it's definitely lackluster. I'm not spec'd for st damage or anything but I only got 271 dps in a pylon test and that's with me spamming proc'd radiation therapy to drop regen and a -res in beta decay. Chain was incinerate, cremate, gloom. I think fire is just kinda broken. Fsc is an ok aoe power but breath of fire is just bad for melee. And for that sacrifice st dmg is just average. And fire comes with no mitigation either. It definitely needs to be reviewed for some changes imo.

I have a psi/ena scrapper on excelsior and it can hit hard I think. Joined a PUG the other day in PI for a +4 defeat neuron mission. Timed it right so I had assault running, gained insight, hit my BU power, and landed GPB. Hit for over 1k (there was a proc in there too). I don't know if that's good but I'll take it.

I don't think it's support as much as it's a few powerset combinations. Like a previous poster, I run a lot of tinpex as I enjoy it much more than the baf grind. While almost any team I'm on will get through it fine there is a noticable difference in times based on composition. A "slow" time is in the 16-17 minute range and a fast time is in the 11-12 minute range. And you can easily tell when playing the missions where you'll land. And the difference is not "just need more dps", it usually comes down to buffs and debuffs. Some time ago I was playing on a MLTF and the AVs in the final mission melted faster than I had ever seen. I asked after (I usually play melee toons) what that was and discovered the beauty of cold debuffs. That one alt had more impact on the hard parts of that TF than any scrapper, blaster, brute, etc. But if all you bring to the table is healing then yeah, you're going to have a tough time making a difference. But that's not all support is to me. So maybe some sets need some love but I always love seeing defenders, corruptors, controllers, dominators join the team. FWIW, and I think this is a funny juxtaposition, there are quite a few TW/bio posts I've seen recently where people complain they aren't contributing much to a high level team either. The king of damage complaining about contribution. Turns out, by the time TW actually animates its first strike the mob is already dead due to all the judgements and aoe available to everyone lol (this was my experience too, alone I could damage but on a team we usually moved so fast I had difficulty hitting anything still alive). Grass is always greener.