Aracknight
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Posts posted by Aracknight
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So you may be asking yourself, "What is Martial Arts good for?"
Well, a few facts are in order to answer this question...1. MA Scrappers are mammals.
2. MA Scrappers fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the MA Scrapper is to flip out and kill people.Fungah, 1/18/2006
Before I even bought the game, back when I was researching it, this excerpt from a post was what stole my heart. I could read what powersets did and how well it did or didn't do it. I suspected Super Reflexes was right for my unborn Scrapper because I am a lifelong Spider-Man fan. But the post the excerpt the above is from is what convinced me, unbought and unplayed, that Martial Arts on a Scrapper was special.
Sure, at the time, one attack was ugly (Crippling Axe Kick), one did no damage (Cobra Strike), and one felt like it looked awesome, took a year to go off and would always, at the dramatically appropriate moment...miss (Eagle's Claw). But that guide taught me about soft controls, about how to layer in Air Superiority, and for the first six months my attack chain was Storm Kick-Air Superiority-Jump Kick (!!!!!!!)-Dragon's Tail-Eagle's Claw (After Cobra Kai, My mind refuses to not call this power Eagle Fang).
And it was awesome. The animations seemed to flow one into the other, I had a lot of soft controls that covered up the fact that I had no idea how to play a Super Reflexes powerset. I probably did crap damage but the unbridled joy I felt jumping around, flipping around, and knocking trolls around is probably the single greatest time I have ever had playing an mmorpg. I didn't know about Mids, and when Inventions first came out, I just threw extra stun and knockback into my Scraptroller powers and let it rip. And then when I did learn about Mids, and I learned about mitigation from many posts by Arcanaville, and that if I build SR correctly, I didn't necessarily need those soft controls and I could just slot for damage and wreck shit.
So with my scrapper built, I created five macros, one for each power in my attack chain, and each one of them began with Target_enemy_near. I would dial up...what is now known as +1/x8, scroll out the camera, dive into a map full of Council, and watch them FLY. The camera rotated every time I hit a button, and my Scrapper would kick or punch someone into the air and in the words of the Foo Fighters, he was done, done, and I'm on to the next one.
These days I know a little more, and the powers that be saw fit to tweak things, sometimes, that felt specifically for me. Cobra Strike got damage, but it didn't look awesome. AND THEN THEY GAVE ME AN UPPERCUT ANIMATION. Crippling Axe Kick was allegedly part of the best mathematical attack chain, but it's "Smell my foot! Now Smell it again!" animation was lame to me. AND THEN THEY GAVE ME A RIGHT HOOK ANIMATION.
Right?
So I have enough recharge to run Storm Kick-Crippling Axe Kick-Storm Kick-Cobra Strike and the obligatory single AOE Dragon's Tail for large groups. I have Crane Kick so I can run SK-CS-SK-CK at lower levels with no real drop off. I also keep Crane Kick as my finsher, because no matter how smart I get, I will never not love watching a bad guy ragdoll off into the distance, especially if they get stuck on a chain link fence. He's smooth, cuts through minions in one-two shots max, Lieutenants in two, and I probably aren't even doing it at peak efficiency because I like Tactics better than Focus Chi.
My Scrapper is a monster these days. I would read on the boards how Scrappers were usually run by min-maxer insane geniuses who wanted to do things no one else could do, like solo AVs, GMs, and Pylons. Some of you might not realize, but there was in fact a time when these things, while plausible, weren't necessarily possible. And I would try these things. I don't pull the insane times some of the legends of Homecoming pull, but I can do them. (Most recently someone yelled at me on Everlasting for fighting both GMs in the Croatoa War zone event by myself without inviting anyone. It took a while, but I took them both out.) Then I would go do them on a Stalker, before Going Rogue, and people redside would trip out and watch my Stalker, well, flip out and kill people. By the roomful.
MA/SR is special because it taught me how to play. It brings me joy no matter what. I even built a Tank and a Brute version after being inspired by BillZ, though to be honest, I haven't even levelled the Brute and I'm still not very good at the tank playstyle yet.
But when I get there, I have a feeling that's gonna be special too.
Peace.
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How about tying incarnate slotting to builds? Build 1 has these slotted, 2 could be different, etc.
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Hmm.
Defeat or gladiator badges could earn you summonable pets outside the arena.
Exploration badges could give speed bonuses.
Healing badges a bonus to healing, damage badges a bonus do damage, damage taken a bonus to resistance, time mezzed a bonus to mez resistance.
These could all be very small bonuses that could ignore ED like the Alpha slot does.
Might be something to this.
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Hang in there Variant. It took over a year, but I eventually got my main's name back on Everlasting.
Keep the faith!
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Taunt auras on Scrappers.
Hmm. I like the idea; I've asked for it in the past. I believe someone quoted one of the devs as giving it a hard "no," which no one wants to hear.
In the meantime, I'm happy to shoot a runner in the back with an APP/PPP power. They're free to die tired.
If it changes, I'll adapt. I will say this: when I broke out the Melee Hybrid Incarnate slot on an ITF, with its Taunt aura, I suddenly, for whatever reason, and no other changes to my build, starting taking a lot more damage than I did without it. For SR and other defense sets that don't "rely on it for mitigation"...I wonder if this might be a case of "Be careful what you wish for."
The more heat you generate, the more opportunity for RNGesus to forsake you.
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So the answer is Nerf Regen?
Groovy.
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3 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:
And as part of my own quirkiness I ran a /SR scrapper in Praetoria to level 20 without PB (on Live prior to being able to click when mezzed) just to see. Yay Ghouls are fun! And so was the market (as in what IOs).
When I first came to Paragon, I primarily soloed because I was on dial-up internet, so my slow zone loading screen was a hindrance to people who tried to team with me. I wasn't aware of builders, and IOs hadn't dropped yet.
I got into the 40s before I got high speed internet, and joined a team in PI who were absolutely flabbergasted how I had survived without mez/kb protection.
It's funny how not knowing how bad a thing might be makes it pretty goddamn fun. I learned how to use my MA stuns and knockbacks to protect myself from being attacked/mezzed/knocked back MORE than relying on my secondary skills. Back then Stamina wasn't free, so I made the active decision to not even run (or take!) my toggles because they were making it so I couldn't kick trolls. Cobra strike didn't even do damage back then either, and it was my number one defensive power because of the stun. Even today I rock Diamagnetic interface because of it's -ToHit functionality, which works great coupled with my defense.And maybe that's the real lesson. You get two powersets. Both matter, as does how you use them. And your choices, whether in a pre- or post- IO world should synergize to make the whole better. I understood why Health and Stamina were "mandatory." I guess the devs did too because they made a change to give them out for free. But to me other things, like Hasten, aren't, unless you're chasing bleeding edge attack chains.
And while I hate to fall back on it..."Git gud" is a valid critique of almost anything suggested to need a "fix." I think the reason I'm good at SR is because of my journey how I played through it and adapted to it. I thought "Crap, I'm getting hit. Quick, stun that fool!" instead of "Bleh, SR sucks." IOs just made the game Easy Mode for me. Most of the people here saying SR doesn't need much more than a tweak here and there, instead of an overhaul, know with great experience how it works. They know it isn't the one trick pony people less informed or expierenced think it is. Would all of this work as well on say, Regen? Maybe. Maybe Regen got nerfed, not because it was overpowered, but because adaptive players figured out how to make it overpowered with their playstyle.
Chickens and eggs, and all that.
It's easy to look at a spreadsheet and say it sucks. Sports teams do it all the time when considering their recruits. But tape don't lie. Your spreadsheet can say whatever it wants to about my ability to survive and take down a Rikti Pylon, AV, or Giant Monster solo both as an SR secondary and an MA primary on my Scrapper. But I can do that shit. I can't do it on my Tanker version though.
Not yet, anyway.
But either way, as a much wiser person pointed out earlier, no powerset exists in a vacuum.
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I don't think I have a favorite, although punching and kicking Council and Fifth Column nazis is fun. Oh, the Family is fun too, with their mobster suits and dialogue.
I dislike the Circle of Thorns mostly because of their maps. Whether in caves or Oranbega, they're a pain.
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4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:
I'm positive that you know as well as I do how OP that would be.
How else are we gonna Fix SR?
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10 minutes ago, ChocolateMercenary said:
I have an answer. Replace Elude with Strength of Will. Re-title SoW: "Close Calls", "Near Misses", or "Narrow Escapes". Spout some nonsense about how you dodge so well that you reduce damage from actual hits.
Or replace it with a version of Master Brawler that doesn't preclude Practiced Brawler. Toggle mez protection and an absorb shield, with the PB breakfree action? Yeah, that oughta do it.
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4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:
Then you should review the logs. They'll show you what to fix. Cuz if you're dyin to 4 +4 bosses, you're build ain't right. Or you've created a build that should specifically run at a lower diff as we do with squishy characters.
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Upon further review, I have decided that "Fix SR" is the new "Nerf Regen."
It's said almost as often, by the exact sort of people who don't understand the powerset they are writing about, and soon will be taken as the same level of inside forum joke the latter has become.
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I believe in SR.
I have tried other armor powers, and found them all to be inherently lacking in one or more ways. Possibly I didn't play them long enough to learn them the way I learned SR, and I can own that.
But SR is the only one that I flat out believe in.
Arcanaville was part of a great mitigation thread on the scrapper boards during live that opened my eyes on how to layer things to achieve, effectively, immortality.
I don't use Tough, except as a mule for three uniques. I don't have Weave. I even use Musculature for my alpha slot.
I cruise at 45.8% to all three positions, with nothing but my SR toggles running, costing me a cool .53 end per second. 58 and change % on my Tanker version. Same story.
Some choose to layer in +Resistance in their builds. I chose to go with +HP (to leverage my SR passives) and +Regen and + Recovery with my set bonuses. And something has to go very, very, very wrong in order for me to eat floor.
Oh, and SR has an endurance management power. It's called Elude. If you built it right, you can still rock 23-25% DEF even with your toggles off during the crash. Eat some purple and blue skittles and fight the $%#$% on.
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Lucky is your passive AOE defense. You get it at level 28.
Evasion is your toggle AOE defense. You get it at 35.
If you had only written 38 once, I might have believed it was a typo.
I am shitcanning the rest of your post on sheer principle.
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I never see them at MSRs so I assumed they were funded by doorsitting AE farms.
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Hey man, do you know a guy named Jimmy? 'Cause you totally look like his brother, man.
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No Darkseid or Neron I guess.
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I guess the End(urance) really does justify the means.
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I tried to think about Regeneration as a "one trick pony" like some say Super Reflexes is, and so I built something as a thought experiment along the same framework. Where SR uses +Def to Melee, Ranged, and AOE, with one toggle and one passive for each, I used Regeneration, Absorb, and +Max HP instead. I tried to use powers that already exist or with minor alterations to fit the theme I went with. I don't like lots of clicks for "armor" sets because I'm busy attacking, so this is designed to be set it and forget it for the most part.
1 Rise to the Challenge. This is your +Regen toggle. It works better the more trouble you are in.
2 Ignore Pain. Basically Dull Pain, but a toggle. This is your +Max HP Toggle. Maybe it could go over the Hit Point cap?
4 Fast Healing. This is your +Regen passive.
10 Integration. This is your Mez resistance Toggle, with more +Regen.
16 I Can Take It: This is like Spirit Ward on yourself. This is your Absorb Over Time passive.
20 Inexhaustible. This is your + Max HP, + Regen, + Recovery Passive.
28 Warrior Spirit. This is basically Spirit Ward you can use on yourself. This is your Absorb Over Time toggle.
35 Second Wind: This is your click heal AND your self rez. It should recharge fairly quickly, and it could have a PBAOE Fear effect when used. (He got up. Cue "Oh Crap" face by the bad guys)
38 Moment of Glory. This is your T9. For better or for worse.
I believe that +Regen should have a resist -Regen component attached to it, sort of how Resistance resists -Resistance.
I also think that the Regen passives should have a scaling secondary component, but maybe it should be something like a scaling +To Hit and +Damage bonus that sort of signifies a "I can take it, and dish it back out" aspect along the berserker lines some of you have written about. Basically the lower the Hit Points, the harder you fight. Or am I thinking of the old old Blaster Defiance?
I've purposefully left numbers out of my design because it would need to be balanced and argued about to fine tune, but I feel like that the basic idea is to cruise at the Hit Point Cap, with Absorb Over Time running, and should be able to get close to the Regen cap (Basically, If SR can get to the soft cap on its own, Regen should be able to get to its cap too.)
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I'm not responding to this until at least page 3 when the sledge-o-matic shows up.
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The Adaptation Wishlist
in Comic, Hero & Villain Culture
Posted
The Belgariad. Discovered it in the 90's during high school. Re-read it once a year. It's a sword and sorcery (Sworcery?) series by David Eddings. Can't recommend it enough, but it'd probably be butchered on the screen.