Demon Shell

Jab has a 2 second cooldown. That's the problem. The other pools with 4 and 8 second recharge abilities (of which there are several) don't have a 2 second cooldown blocking you from picking the better moves until later (or starting with them). Which creates this issue you've decided doesn't matter: And yes it does. It changes what moves you have available, making pre-Rage SS even more painful. You could take Jab out of SS, move everything up a tier, replace it with nothing (so SS only has 8 moves instead of 9), and it would result in a better set than it is now with Jab, because at least then a Tanker would get Rage at 20 instead of 28. Realistically, you can up the cooldowns of each of the 3 first abilities to bring them in line with the other melee sets, you can do the same thing but also turn Haymaker into a cone, or you can turn Jab into a Parry-like, though that last one that would require moving Jab further down the tier list (Titan Weapon is the only set with a T1 Parry-like, and that's because Defensive Sweep is its only 3-4 second cooldown ability, everything else is higher). It doesn't matter to me which happens; they all carry the same effect of removing the 2 second recharge power and placing a 3-4 and 5-9 power in the T1 and 2 spots, while giving a use to the third power (a parry-like, a cone, a mid-range ST, whatever). . None of that has anything to do with the Hand Clap discussion, which only comes into play if Rage no longer stacks. As long as Rage stacks, the set doesn't need anything. Jab alone becomes almost as strong as the 4 second recharge move of most sets with their short build up active, and everything else SS has just goes up from there. If Rage stacking is removed then SS's DPS is average, has only one AoE, and at best half as many chances to proc Gaussian as other sets (so not just average DPS, but less chances to burst). It could use some small measure to bring it up, and Hand Clap would be an excellent candidate to do that with (since at end game a massive damage-less knockback that either scatters everything or has to be kb2kd'd, coupled with a mag 2 stun, is not a very good move (doubly so on a set with only one AoE)).

I have a character with 3 Knockback Protection via the PvP set bonus. I have an extra slot in its build and I'm torn on what to do with it. One of the options is to slot the +4 Knockback protection IO. But would this have much functional difference in PvE content? Are there many knockbacks that are greater than 3 but less than 7? I still need a set slotted into the power, but should I maybe drop the PvP set bonus in favor of a different set and just use the IO? I'm good on +rech. I'm good on +def.

Wait what? Parry-like powers don't stack on Tankers? That's messed up. Not necessarily. The Recharge/Endurance/Damage scale has never been part of the Cottage Rule. The reason Jab/Punch/Haymaker are so garbage is because of that scale. I mean, the actual reason is because moves aren't identically scaled based on animation time (if they were, 2 moves with the same end/damage/recharge would have the same DPA regardless of animation), but what are you gonna do? Review and alter the entire game to homogenize the numbers?. Jab/Punch/Haymaker sit at 2, 4, and 8 second recharges. Among sets with 3 ST attacks in succession, they usually sit at 3-4, 5-8, and 8-12. That shifts their damage/end scale higher. If you shifted Jab/Punch/Haymaker to 3/6/8 respectively you've have a slightly harder hitting, more expensive Jab and Punch, with an untouched Haymaker. 4/8/12 and you'd have much harder hitting, but more expensive attacks. Likewise with Hand Clap. Lower the recharge and/or add in a damage and -res component; its scaling wouldn't deal more damage than Foot Stomp.

Hurl is definitely a notch below mediocre, but I don't consider it much worse than Haymaker. If you were going Energy, Earth, Mace, or Leviathan, you could take Hurl over their ranged ST options. It has a higher DPA. The issue with Haymaker is it deals nearly the same damage as Cross Punch with Boxing/Kick (which, if you drop Haymaker to get Cross Punch, is only one extra ability choice assuming Tough/Weave). Only Cross Punch is a cone. And it comes with self buffs (+rech, +to-hit). Identical recharge between the two, close to the same animation time, and Cross Punch only costs 2 Endurance more. But this isn't an SS exclusive issue. Jawbreaker from Warmace and Bone Smasher from Energy have the same problem. These moves only make sense if you don't take Tough/Weave and have 0 wiggle room in your build for one extra crutch ability (and considering what you get out of it, that's going to be a much smaller number of builds than it should be).

That was all with single Rage. Then I started going double-stack. Remember when I said SS was expensive? Jesus Christ. Between the -25 end on Rage's activation and Hasten's crash I'm losing an average of 35 endurance a minute without counting toggles or attacking. From the talk on here you'd expect the only thing it takes to double stack is recharge, but you need a TON of endurance management. And you can't even throw a Cardiac Alpha at the problem because those don't effect Rage's activation or Hasten's crash. During the Rage crash I'd occupy my time mostly with Taunting, using Energy Absorption, and casting Weaken Resolve, then readying myself to redouble-stack Rage once the crash expired. So, during the 50 second window where I was double-stacked and allowed to attack did I hit really hard? Yeah. Yeah I did. For as long as my endurance held out it hit really hard. The thing about SS double-stacked especially is that you don't see 2 half numbers pop out (from 2 damage-types) that you'd then add together to get the full value. You see one very, very large number. And when Gaussian proced at the start of a double-stacked Rage on a Weaken Resolved target, I saw the largest number I've ever seen on a +1 con enemy. And that was a situation I created in isolation. By myself. Was it broken? I don't know. It took a lot to get there, and I was exceedingly vulnerable to -end/-rec. If I was fighting something like the end boss of DA, Ageless T4 might not have been enough to save me from my own hubris. But I can say this, and this is ultimately why I spent the time I did on this post. A Brute has to build up Fury, a Tanker doesn't. And I would not want to see a Tanker in PvP jump up on me without warning and hit me like I hit that poor Storm Shaman. I know recharge is different there and you can't fully double-stack, but it only takes a moment.

Took my Ice/SS/Soul Tanker out again and actually fought stuff this time. Difficulty was 50 +4/8 in DA. I feel like no one ever adequately articulated just how expensive SS is. Like, I play a Fire/Dark/Soul Brute that uses Darkest Night, so when I say something is expensive, I mean "I just used Energy Absorption 10 seconds ago. Where's my Endurance?" Fought DA Tsoo, KoV, and DA BP. KoV were a joke, as they generally are. DA Tsoo was a little surprising; Rage's To-Hit buff (which I feel is not brought up enough) trivialized their Hurricane. The heal was more annoying than I remember it being on my Brute. Overall, pretty much just buzzing of flies. DA BP were a lot less dangerous than I was expecting. Their -end was effective and I did observe a -14%~ def debuff at one point, but even when my Endurance bottomed out in the middle of a fight I was still okay. Going to chalk that up mostly to Energy Absorption and being +3, though. My build had the following attacks on bar: Haymaker Knockout Blow Cross Punch Foot Stomp Gloom Dark Obliteration Once I got going I went ahead and put Haymaker away. It was a waste and I've already prepared a new build without it. I could have dropped Cross Punch instead and gained an extra 2 abilities, but considering the slots I had to work with I couldn't think of anything I'd want more than a cone. Worth noting, with how underwhelmed I was with Haymaker, Jab and Punch might as well not exist to me. Foot Stomp/Dark Obliteration/Cross Punch did allow me to kill groups faster than on my Brute (but then again my Brute only has 1 AoE). Also as expected, ST did feel like it took longer to take down a Boss. I had a pretty good time overall. The rest of this is about Rage, so I'll be posting it in the Rage topic.

October 5th, this is still happening to me.

BS/SR Pre-IOs the +Def from the Parry-like powers was a big deal.

I'm going to second just going with a Soldier. Bane or Crab doesn't even matter, all you have to do is keep your Leadership toggles up. Otherwise I'll suggest to you what I always suggest when someone wants the easy way, Dark Miasma. Not that it's especially easy to use compared to FF, it's just so powerful it doesn't matter. When a fight starts, Fearsome Stare. If there's time you can also Darkest Night but usually it doesn't matter. Someone take damage. Fearsome Stare. Then see if you can locate the person and stand near them before using Twilight Grasp. Or just stand there and spam Twilight Grasp between Fearsome Stares. Usually they can just come to you at their leisure. Did someone die? Firstly, Fearsome Stare. Then calmly find, walk over to, and rez them (or teleport and rez them). AV? Darkest Night. Then Fearsome Stare, followed by Twilight Grasp. And if you don't think anyone is going to die (which is usually), feel free to throw a Howling Twilight in there too just for the -Regen. Don't want to mess with a ground target power? /macro T powexec_location target "Tar Patch" Now you'll just drop it on whatever you're targetting. Feel free to do the same thing with Dark Servant and just drop it on whatever you're targetting. Chill of the Night is just an aura version of Darkest Night that centers on the pet; its best when they're near the enemy anyway. Whoops! Did you just forget to resummon Dark Servant for the last 3 missions? Who cares! Go ahead and resummon it now but if you forget again no one will notice! Most difficult part of Dark Miasma is remembering to turn off Shadow Fall when there's an escort.

I did try it out (even though I didn't need to, first post already said you can't do that) and... I crashed every time Rage stacked for any duration. Didn't matter if I let it expire and then tried to activate it during the orange circle anti-crash window or not. I turned Hasten off and let it fully expire, it still happened. I took Gaussian out and let it fully expire, it still happened. I let it fully expire and ZONED and it still happened. So... something is wrong. I think maybe if you let Rage stack and crash ever, you become cursed to always crash or something, even after you let it fully expire. According to the first post, once you let it fully expire you're supposed to start fresh. Edit: Or... maybe because I had it double-stacked and tried triple-stacking it during what would have been the anti-crash window?

Inner Light, Peacebringer Siphon Speed, Kinetics These changes don't alter how Rage works. You didn't like Rage before they proposed this. Does it though? Double-stacked or not, Jab still sucks. It causes Punch and Haymaker to both be one notch below where they should be on the recharge/damage/endurance cost scale because of it (2, 4, 8 instead of 3-4, 6-8, 9-12). Hand Clap doesn't deal any damage. That's fine in Electric Melee, it has a ton of AoE. But SS doesn't. Those are both independent of Rage. Not that Rage should double-stack/crash, those just happen to be issues that need addressing regardless.

I always assumed the -Dam was "spam taunt" time. I didn't realize you had any offensive options so I found this very interesting. I've never made an SS build before but I did just now in Mids (Ice/SS/Soul) and ran across something I wasn't expecting. If you get your recharge high enough that you can maintain a 100% double stack of Rage, can you activate the second Rage inside the new Rage safety window to only have one crash every 2 minutes but twice as much +Dam/+To-Hit? If no one knows, I'll probably test that later tonight.

I didn't say that. I didn't even insinuate that. Is that a thing? Can you Judgement while Rage-crashed and still deal damage through the -Dam debuff? I've never played SS. I asked, as a post game option not available to any other offensive set, if you could double-stack Rage and Judgement nuke. Although come to think of it you could also Foot Stomp, or Knockout Blow if only one enemy is left. You obviously wouldn't always do that. Unless you're ending an engagement or whittling down a large mob it would cause a massive dip in your DPS for a burst that fell short. It would just be an available option. If it can or even should ever be done. I have no idea. That's why I asked.

The game's difficulty is balanced around SOs. If IOs were truly never taken into account Willpower's T9 wouldn't ignore recharge.

So, something I didn't understand before. You can still double-stack Rage? Like double-stack, Judgement nuke, and shrug off the crash while you walk to the next group? I thought the crash avoidance was just a "pay attention" mechanic.

You're perspective is appreciated. Regrettably, you were one of the only people in the last 2-3 pages that had anything worth commenting on. All I was pointing out is that SS's Rage isn't the only power to require constant observation to maximize performance. That doesn't mean Rage should work that way.

Seems that anyone that enters the courtyard can't leave unless they get turned around from Mob presence. Map in screenshot should show where I was when I stumbled upon this.

Peacebringer. You're welcome to hit Light Form as often as you can, if you're okay with losing half your endurance even more often (and unlike your health, which resets to full before being cut in half, you straight-up lose 50 endurance). Edit: It sounds to me, more than anything else, like Hand Clap should gain a damage component.

This was happening to me too to I sent in to support. They said they're having an issue with the server and are investigating.

On the one hand, I don't really care because I'd get both anyway. The only T1 support move I absolutely can't stand is Infrigidate from Cold Dom (At least PFF from Force Field can take a LotG). On the other hand, every other set with an AoE heal has it as their T1. Dark, Empathy, Kinetics, Pain, Thermal, and Radiation; Time and Nature are the only ones that don't. I don't know if that's enough to site a precedent, but it's weird.

That makes sense. And they do. The bonus to -Dam on Darkest Night too. What I'm not sure of is why. With the boost to -Res removed this just results in a buff to Soul Mastery specifically (among Epic Pools). The reduced -Res values can be seen in Arctic Breath and Melt Armor. The modified Def/To-Hit Leadership values are also still there. Assault has been brought down to 15%, which is still higher than it was before.

A few of us mentioned (quietly, under the screaming) that it was mitigating the value of endurance for Tankers as an AT. The only reason it didn't turn into an argument was... because no one argued. Why it's being removed entirely instead of reduced from +20 to +10, I couldn't say with any certainty. Maybe internally the time-to-kill was measured such that it was no longer seen as offsetting anything. Do Tankers still have modified -To Hit values in their Epic Pools?

I won't choose while I'm also begging. Thank you.

Why are you doing this? Out of the thousands of people that play this game only a very, very, very small minority of us want the permanent costume powers to actually use, rather than just lord over others as something exclusive. Just give us the costumes. If you want to make them inordinately expensive or difficult to obtain while the contests provide a chance at an accelerated acquisition, fine. But there's no reason for this insurmountable limitation. Edit: For clarification, I'm specifically talking about these, all of which were for sale at one point in time on the market. Carnival Coralax Freakshow IDF Knives Malta PPD Android Rikti If they wanted to keep other costume transformation powers exclusive, like DE, Hordlings/Hellfrost, Red Coralax (which was the one I had), I'd at least accept it. The above were available to everyone that had the PP to grab them during their sale window.

File under "cool, but impractical". I'd love to see that added.