Demon Shell

I'm third/forth/fifth(/how many are we on?)-ing Earth Assault. From Stone Spear to Fissure, it's just one manhandling animation after the other.

I didn't realize this site didn't have automatic notifications when someone posts in a topic you made. I just figured no one ever replied. Thanks, you two!

The goal, as stated by the dev team, is for Brutes to have 90% of the survival of a Tanker, and for a Tanker to have 90% the damage of a Brute. Tankers will also, additionally, have the hit cap on their Taunt (which already reduces enemy range by more than the Brute version, allowing them to clump a mob up better/faster for higher DPS from the rest of the team) boosted from 5 to 7, larger radii on most of their 360 AoEs, wider arcs on most of their cones, and increased target caps on nearly all of their non-ST attacks. Brutes will generate Fury faster, though that isn't on the test server yet. I don't know that it's been stated directly, but the direction things seem to be going is that Tankers will be AoE experts while Brutes will outperform them in ST.

I had a Stalker that hung out at range a lot back during Live. Claws. Focus and Shockwave make it work a whole lot better. Especially since Shockwave has a chance to crit on every enemy it hits while Hidden. Of course, this was all before the Assassin's Focus mechanic was added. No idea how it would do now.

This is how I'm expecting them to ultimately implement permanent costume/transformation. Not a INF or merit sink, a check list. Get the Freakshow Tank costume by beating Clamor, Bile, and Derek, regardless of how you encounter them. Get the Coralax Red Hybrid by clearing the On the trail of the Leviathan, The Cult of the Shaper. and Old Friends, New Enemies, and New Opportunities. Et cetera. But that's not a grind. That's an unlock.

My dude, Scrappers don't need more than 3 melee attacks. Outside of DB's combos, TW's momentum, and utility powers like Follow Up or any parry-like, they only need the big attack, the not-as-big attack, and the AoE. Their mandatory T1/T2 are shelved and your forth/fifth attacks are from your Epic. If your build doesn't have the levels of recharge necessary to accomplish that, you'll need another attack. /Electric has one. My Sonic/Martial Blaster has been jumping into melee since level 10. Once I got Eagles Claw at 38, it just became normal. Clear out the group with cones/nuke, jump into melee and ST the leftovers. Do Incarnates make that easier? Of course. But by comparison my /Dark Brute wasn't complete until I had the debuff resist from Ageless Radial (because cascading defense debuff and, unlike a Blaster, I couldn't blow up Minions to cut the incoming attacks in half). My Blaster didn't need anything specific. I only got (and only use) Barrier so I can rez others, because I'm probably not the one dying.

Not to a group. Between Aim and Build Up probably not in burst either. And even in cases where they can, that's comparing average Scrapper ST (because your attack might not crit) versus Blaster AoE. Sustained ST I believe Scrappers are the winner over every AT. But that's why a Blaster's melee attacks are in their secondary and not their primary. Their primary job is to blow up the mob, their secondary job is to finish what's left, and melee attacks do that faster than ranged. And, with the i24 patch that we never got on Live, Blasters are more survivable than they used to be. Every single secondary has either a refreshing absorption shield, a sustained enhanced regen, or a heal (although /Dark has the worst of that with their missable non-stacking ST regen/rec). And something I feel isn't brought up often enough, that's in addition to some form of enhanced endurance sustain, which results in either an easier time running toggles, or less focus on end redux and more on damage/recharge. My /Martial Blaster has more rec than my Will/ Tanker (by no small amount either, it's like .6/s). And my Tanker has Physical Perfection on top of Quick Recovery.

Link Minds is currently showing that it is boosted by secondary enhancing effects, like Dominator's Power Up and Clarion Radial, but this doesn't work in game. Link Minds' defense buff cannot be boosted. The secondary boost from Power Up is higher in Mids than in game. Thank you for your work, and for any you may continue to do.

Came looking for answers about the Link Minds thing, appreciate that it was already here. As for Unleashed Potential, I am confirming that Power Up from Earth Assault is boosting the Defense effect.

Certainly. Blaster secondaries house their survival mechanics. Most of their survival mechanics are varying degrees of "kill it faster". Dead enemies don't fight back. The heaviest hitting attacks are melee, so a Blaster survives a longer engagement by killing enemies faster, which they will do in melee. A Blapper is a Blaster that lives in melee, like a Scrapper. Otherwise, a Blaster usually only goes into melee to "exercise their survival mechanic" toward the end of an engagement. There are secondaries with more utility in them if you'd rather stay at range. Energy Manipulation is a great example. As someone else mentioned, TA is entirely ranged. On the other hand if you'd like to give the open range/close melee playstyle a chance, /Martial is fantastic. It has it's own dedicated gap-closer button and the absorb shield will protect you, in my experience, more than the other secondaries in a 1v1 situation.

There were Scrapper yellow-mito tanks pre-incarnate. Certain armor sets are better at yellow tanking, regardless of which AT had them. They were rare because they had to have taken their auto-hit AT taunt, and when else, pre-incarnate and outside of Hamidon, would a Scrapper ever use the taunt? No one cares anymore because Rebirth will turn the entire yellow team effectively invincible (provided EoE) before and during every engagement. There's no reason to take the taunt at all anymore. Their auto-hit AT taunt either needs some additional effect, or it needs to be cottaged.

A -rec on the nuke, when coupled with the -end, would have a similar effect as a stun/hold. Given the option to jump in right after and SC, it wouldn't even need to be a very long -rec, just enough to stop an Alpha.

This is why I suggested adding -rec to it. Doesn't its short help text say it's supposed to have that anyway?

Regarding the secondary effect, give more/all of Electric Blast's attacks a chance to restore some endurance. In this way the focus of the set moves away from damaging enemy endurance and toward mitigating the cost of your own powers. And speed up the animation on Short Circuit, as OP suggested. It's the main -rec in the set and it lasts 10 seconds, but nearly a third of that time is spent in the animation. Edit: The nuke should also have a -rec component to it.

I don't know where to ask this. Does anyone know which story arcs are Coralax or Red/Living Coral-related? Some of them are obvious, like "The Cult of the Shaper" and "On the Trail of the Leviathan", but I know there were others.

IOs exist. They're cheaper and more accessible now than ever before. Ignoring them creates the disproportionate issues we're having now with double stacked Rage and TW having momentum for way longer than it would with SOs, leaving other melee sets behind. SO balance is just a matter of if you can clear content within an acceptable time-frame. We're past that. We have to look at IOs now. Not necessarily a fully purpled out build, but people are going to use Gaussian, that effects damage caps. They're going to use Luck of the Gambler, that's a significant recharge boost. These things can't be ignored anymore. +0/0 is not balanced around IO sets, but inter-balance between primary/secondary pools and different ATs must take IOs into account.

It's great being able to see pets' resistances, mez protections, and damage as a feature! Not sure how accurate it all is right now, though. Hellfire demons have negative resistance to Energy/Negative/Psionic? And when Arcnanatime is turned on pet DPA goes bonkers (375 DPA on a single Cold Demonling). Edit: And when I turn on Enchant Demon those Hellfire demon resistances go down further and extend to other resistances as well.

I'd like to hope resistances are being looked at to make them more diverse, and not strictly easier or harder. Although, end game enemies could maybe have any 0% or lower resistances brought up to 10-20%. I've always felt the greater issue is the damage-types enemies use against us. Not just that there's too much of a focus on Smashing/Lethal/Energy, but the lack of Fire/Cold/Negative, and especially Toxic.

I have a Fire/Dark/Soul Brute that runs Darkest Night with no Accolades. If you want a Dark/TW Tanker, go for it.

Hi. Sonic Blast vet here. The answer to worst Blast set is absolutely not Sonic, and it continuously amazes me how often people misunderstand or underestimate the set. That said, it wouldn't really matter if it was the worst Blast set or not for the purposes expressed by OP, because Sonic doesn't play like other Blast sets. If you're goal is to teach people how to play a Blaster, then to me that means you'd want something with the least deviation from the Blast formula: 3 progressively harder hitting STs, a cone and targeted AoE (one of these probably has a chance to KB), Aim-like, snipe-like, an ST CC, and a nuke. Most sets only deviate in one or two areas from this for X-factor. I'm not saying its the worst Blast set, but it sounds like you want Archery. The only thing it doesn't have is a proper big-boom-style nuke. For similar reasons, I'd go with Electricity Manipulation. Archery/Electric.

Brutes have 90% the survival of Tankers. Tanker HP cap is 3534. Brute HP cap is 3212.7. 3212.7 / 3534 = 90.908% Sorry. 91% the survival of Tankers. Citation

What do you know? A quick search on the page for "Pylon" revealed that they have a second Swarm Missile that's 8. Such a good page!

Thanks! This is great! Sorting the list by KB mag there's quite a few between 3 and 7. And while I knew there was certainly a few between 3 and 4 (I've felt the difference), there's more between 3 and 4 then between all of 4 and 7. I think I'll keep it at 7 for variety's sake, but the real take away is that 4 seems to be a much more important number than 3 for KB protection. There's some really noteworthy ones, like anything with Telekinetic Blast or Swarm Missiles having a KB of 4 (which are most VGs with robots or psychics, including Rikti Pylons).

That's not possible. Recharge cap is +400%. Lowest you can get Fortitude to is 12 seconds (or 1/5th its base recharge).