Erratic1

My repeated experience raising 3 new characters (including a Tanker) is teams are primarily composed of Controllers and Tankers at lower levels.

Got it. The total updates, the value for the power does not.

I would trust @Psyonico and Uberguy on Evasive Manuevers. While you have given your attacks one more slot, I am going to do some math for you to show you why that is a half (well, one-third) measure. Unslotted, your Energy Blast attack does some amount of damage, call it X. Your target has N health. You will need to attack it N/X (rounded up) = K times to defeat it. Slotting endurance cost reduction means you can make more attacks overall, but you need K attacks. If you slot one damage enhancement which boosts your damage by 33%, then you need N/(X*1.33) = K/1.33 (rounded up) attacks. So you make fewer attacks and spend less endurance because you've made fewer attacks. So which was more beneficial to you? Slotting endurance reduction or slotting damage? Don't slot endurance reduction unless you absolutely need to, and generally don't do it on an attack before you've maxed out its damage. If you double the attacks damage by fully slotting it for damage you now use half the attacks, spend half the endurance, and it lives to damage you for half the time.

Ahh, I was just sitting on top of them. Let me go check with an attack. Edit: It never drops value on the Combat Monitor but I also get inconsistent "had a xx.xx% chance to hit" messages too. I'm inclined to believe you (and Uberguy) though and put it down to the Combat Monitor not updating to show a suppressed value.

Just flew a character up to white con targets and it did not supress while in combat. And when I toggled it off, their chance to hit went up. Seems to be working in combat. Between the top set of attacks and bottom, I toggled Evasive Manuevers off.

It is true, defeated defenders do no damage. Blasting things to unconsciousness is a good way to prevent that defeat in the first place. 😁 You do have the right attitude towards Choking Cloud--it is a situational power. A very useful one for those situations, but not something to be toggled on all the time. As for staying alive, Radiation Infection on things which get close (making sure to kill the anchor last) helps immensely. Moreover, at lower levels it does not need a lot of slotting to be going an awesome job for you. At higher levels, you'll want the slots to maximize its -To-Hit. Btw, this is utterly up to how you want to build your character, but Evasive Manuevers does not require you to be flying or hovering to work. Between Evasive Maneuvers, Weave, and the two +3% Def IOs, you could be up towards 26% defense, which then would leverage the -To-Hit Lingering Infection brings to the table. And all this without an IO investment beyond the two +3% DEf IOs (stick them in Tough). At that point you'd be pretty much minimally hittable to anything impacted by Lingering Radiation.

You have no damage in your attack powers. It is definitely going to require a more endurance to defeat things if you have to hit them twice as often as would be the case if you 3-slotted your attack powers with damage enhancements. Respec. Take 2 slots out of Choking Cloud, 2 slots out of Radiation Infection, 2 slots out of Health, and 2 slots out of Hover. Put those if your attack powers.

Dark Armor looks over and threatens, "Don't make me call up my friend Radiation Melee...I'll do it."

My first character in Live, at launch, was a Radiation/Electrical Defender. I soloed on her quite often, back when the level cap was 40. I remember street sweeping in Brickstown with her back in the days before there was Vigilance. I wish I still had the screenshot of her standing in the middle of a swarm of 5th Column safely setting off Thunderous Blast. Yes, a Corruptor will likely have an easier time, but it is not as horrific as is being suggested, particularly now with IO sets and pieces being plenty available. If you are running out of endurance on a Defender, particularly now, something...far from optimal is going on. Accelerate Metabolism will not be perma until you invest sufficiently to get global recharge to the point where you are doing perma-Hasten anyway, but it is helpful for when you are facing a longer fight both for +damage and +endurance.

The decompression of the database appeared to have failed, but when I restarted it again everything was good. Well, seems to have Regeneration powers available at the wrong levels.

It is a small amount which isnt going to stand up too well in the face of serious debuffs. I'm fine with that as the set has other tools.

The problem with Pyro/Dark is there are no bad powers, you want to take them all. Gotta focus and figure out what is essential and what can be lived without.

I have been pleasantly surprised at lower levels (20s) just how survivable a Brute using Psionic Armor is while leaping into large groups, though some portion of that has come from Katana/Divine Avalanche. While the aforementioned lack of DDR means defense will not contribute much against certain foes, I am hoping the -Recharge from Impose Presence combined with Aura of Insanity and Psychokinetic Barrier will still provide adequate safety.

I ended up starting a Regen/Fire Tanker last night. Lived through some things I shouldn't have though also had a couple of instances of, "How'd I die so quickly" too. FM attacks come available so slowly. Ugh. Look forward to continuing tonight.

Wanted to try out the new control set and a Something Wicked This Way Comes thought came to my mind, so I paired it with Dark. Let me just say up front, a taunt column is a beautiful, wonderful, quasi-abusive thing to have. Posi 1, first group, toss out Glittering Column right before the melees run in and look at that, nobody takes damage before we lock things down and clean up. Sure, higher levels will no doubt make that less effective, but oh how I have loved it. And I noticed Glittering Column does -To-Hit, just like Darkest Night. Visions of Folding Space on top of a column and applying Darkest Night to keep things from hitting dance in my head just now. So anyone else giving this combo a go?

While the magnitude on Blinding Powder is not high, are you fight crowds composed of lieutenants? But I would agree with BP being the expendable power. I would not skip the Heal, even if you find you can only weakly slot it (mine is fully slotted but doubtlessly because more was being considered in set bonuses). I absolutely would not drop the Fighting pool. Its bedrock for achieving survivability. You clearly planned Willpower as part of your build, getting your travel power and having use for Unleashed Potential, so no, dont drop it either. I have never truly found Ball Lightning all that useful. So I would probably trade it out. But if you find it more useful than the Heal, don't change a thing.

I have SR and EA Scrappers and don't find Nin to be particularly weak in comparison. There are tradeoffs of course. SR neither heals nor recovers endurance but has the best DDR, though that means little against foes not inclined to debuff it. EA has healing, endurance recovery, stealth, and scaling recharge in exchange for weaker DDR and more clicking. Nin has healing, endurance recovery, stealth, enhanced crit chance from stealth, and Sleep/Confuse/-To-Hit but the worst DDR. Note: You did not take Blnding Powder either. If you are not taking and using the powers of the set, why are you expecting it to perform as well as other sets?

You didn't take Kuji-In Sha? If you want to live, why would you not take your healing power? You should probably take Tough and Weave somewhat earlier. FWIW, these are the numbers on my WM/Nin Scrapper:

Captain America is known for his leadership, the Human Torch is not. Do the pool powers have some sort of massive influence on most encounters or are they mostly rounding characters out?

I so want to run EA/KM but KM is soooo bad, I just cannot do it.

Perhaps it does, but most Brutes are chasing survivability and unlike Tankers that means scouring every IO set for things which boost their defenses--including their choice of damage sets. When Mako or Touch of Death is consuming 5 or 6 slots in an offensive power to get you to caps Tankers trivially achieve there are not many slots left to proc bomb with. And that before the extra shots invested in Tough and Weakness (you're likely to 5- or 6-slot both). All sorts of oddball Frankenslotting occurs in area attack powers to drive defenses. Of course you can choose to not be at cap; but that means something too as dead Brutes do no damage.

A Brute, on his own or even buffed by a single Defender/Corruptor, will not reach the Brute damage cap, even with maxed Fury. All a Brute gets from underslotting attacks for less damage is less damage. To be parallel with Tankers, in terms of build flexibility, a Brute would need to be capping their damage...ovecapping even.

I definitely want to do a Regen Tanker. The problem is I am not sure what secondary I want to try with it, especially in light of not wanting to repeat ones I have done recently. Currently I am weakly leaning Dark Melee, but honestly have no great thrill with that choice.

My guess would be that building to play exclusively on teams or only solo would be the far less common way to build a character, but heck if I know how to substantiate that. What I don't get, is why one would do so given every character has the option for multiple builds they can swap between every 15 minutes. So even if focusing on a style of play is what one wants to do, you can still have one character who can change their style.

When I set to x8 I get plenty: