eknudson

It doesn't suggest that there are any special requirements about where enemies have to be defeated-- so far I don't see anything that does but it's sure a rumor in-game and people get MAD if you're defeating enemies anywhere else.

Is it true that enemies must be defeated at the banners inside the circle? I see this mentioned in-game a lot but I don't see anything on the wiki to support it. The defenders are quite happy to stay at range so without a taunting tank it's not that easy to pull them in and any pets are quick to attack them wherever.

Thanks to everybody here! I decided to eventually respec to have both shadow maul and cross punch (and in another level, Fire Ball). What I've found matches the above, plus one thing. I just did a couple tests on some opponents with no difference in smashing vs. negative resistance. Cross Punch does basically 68% of Shadow Maul damage-- with a much shorter activation time, and slightly higher endurance cost. The 50 degree arc on cross punch does make a difference--noticeable but not huge. It doesn't debuff ToHit, but does have a nice chance for knockdown. Cross Punch CAN crit for a scrapper. You hit Gunslinger with your Cross Punch for 129.5 points of Smashing damage. You knocked Gunslinger from their feet! You hit Operation Officer with your Cross Punch for 129.5 points of Smashing damage. You hit Operation Officer with your Cross Punch for 77.49 points of Smashing damage CRITICAL

WP-- all powers except resurgence and optionally strength of will. Adding Tough and Weave helps enormously with survival and since you're running both Stamina and Quick Recovery you can easily manage it. Maneuvers and CJ are nice to have for a bit more defense. The build posted is pretty expensive but it has capped defense for many damage types and both high defense and loads of resistance to the rest (Smashing, lethal, psionic).

That's it! I had to search the forums here for an answer-- apparently a lot of people have opened tickets instead! Did feel like something should have made it a little more clear though I confess I didn't read the mission text closely enough. Laura should have been some kind of glowie, or moving a little, or flagged, or... something. This should help enormously.

So I wasn't the only one who got stuck on this mission for a while trying to figure out what the heck to do? Thanks for the fix!

Is there a way to target the quartz eminators without targeting the quartz minions? I don't care about the latter but my /SR scrapper really wants to see the former dead ASAP.

I'd say for solo or small teams that a brute's going to be better. For a duo with an emp defender, I would definitely say brute-- with permanent fortitude on you and regular heals, your brute should very rarely die to the kinds of things you'll see on a duo and a tank+emp defender will pretty much NEVER die but you'll take far longer to actually kill things.

Snipe-related Archery question-- my blaster is a probably going to respec fairly soon and I'd like to respec out of snap shot and take explosive arrow-- in your experience, with the snipe change, do you see any problems with a single target attach chain of aimed/blazing/ranged and AoE of rain/explosive/fistful (ideally with a kb->kd IO in explosive)? I wasn't sure prior to this change that I could get a consistent attack with just aimed/blazing but now snap seems possibly replaceable.

At 50 and with all this in place, you've gotten great S/L defense, and as I said above if you have that kind of inf available for this build then ignore my concerns. You're not actually running Cloak of Fear here, though. Not sure if you've tried running CoF on a /dark prior to heavy IO investment. My god that's a heavy toggle, requiring heavy slotting to overcome its terrible base accuracy and when already running dark embrace, death shroud, murky cloud, obsidian shield and cloak of darkness you'll have a hard time doing any attacking. Doesn't look like you have knockback protection until 50 when you get sets, which is annoying. Especially when knocked back just before launching Dark Regeneration. That's a death sentence. Once at 50 with these IO's and the Energy Mastery epic pool you're in good shape. Getting to 50 is the hard part. I had to run Oppressive Gloom on my scrapper because it's so much more effective with limited slotting and the end cost is trivial. OG is absolutely anti-fury but without it or CoF the three resistance toggles just don't let you live between Dark Regen cycles.

95% sure that something TRYING to hit you creates fury, because when I've played a brute that had a mostly defense-based secondary I didn't notice a difference in fury generation compared to a resistance-based secondary.

Dark can work much better on a scrapper. There are just so many /dark powers that are at best not ideal on a brute-- cloak of darkness? A stealthy brute? Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom reduce incoming attacks and so reduce your fury, and your T9 is a self-rez. Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, and Obsidian Shield are solid amounts of resistance to all but those 3 alone are just inferior to many other set's defensive abilities.

Anything/dark might require a little different playstyle on a brute, it seems like. There was even a guide on the old boards on why you shouldn't play a dark armor brute... as i recall a lot of it involved how /dark is a little fragile without one of its defensive toggles-- oppressive gloom or cloak of fear-- and both of those defenses inhibit fury since they reduce incoming attacks. If you can invest enough inf to add good defense to dark's good resistance, then never mind. Edit-- here's the old dark armor post-- http://web.archive.org/web/20080621195328/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=10200470

Thanks-- Pine's is helpful for most things but it doesn't show the base accuracy of glue arrow. So I wasn't sure if it was like Flash Arrow which as I understand is auto-hit in PVE but needs accuracy for PVP or if the slow and the damage are separate with the damage taking an accuracy check. Wish there were some acc/rech IO's out there I could slot into it if the latter.

I was used to the defender glue arrow and I was expecting a simple but useful slow and noticed orange numbers going up... it looks from the planner like glue arrow does a surprisingly good amount of damage, though spread over a long time. How are you slotting glue arrow? Is the slow still auto-hit, and do I need to slot accuracy for the damage part? Worth slotting it more than I planned or does the DoT just take too darn long on a good team to matter? If an enemy is the patch for the full time, it looks like glue arrow does far more damage than explosive arrow, and it's toxic damage.

How much damage does Cross Punch do? The description in Pine's hero designer says "moderate" but doesn't give any numbers. It also says "if you have also trained Boxing, this power's damage is increased by 15% and will increase your recharge and accuracy briefly". My DM/SR has boxing but I never use it. I'm thinking about dropping Shadow Maul for Cross Punch. Pretty sure it does less damage and uses more end but the slightly larger cone and half the cast time might be worth it anyway. But I'm curious what the damage actually is if anybody knows and what it means to have "trained boxing".

Hmmm.... distortion field looks fun and thinking about it more, when I solo (which I do a decent amount) a single target hold is really handy for preemptive attacks on annoying mezzers. I may have to take everything at least at first and maybe respec later to omit something I'm not using.

Very helpful guide! Any skippable powers, especially for a corruptor or mastermind that doesn't get a choice on time crawl? Time stop looked like something I might not need, but that -regen would be hard to give up.

Thank you! I think your use of hidden sections is making the guide a little hard to find-- I did a search for "Distortion Field" to see which guides discussed that power as an example, and yours doesn't show up in the search results. But it looks very much like was I was looking for! Thanks!

I read through the initial post, which honestly is mostly a build and didn't see that there were a lot of replies. I'll read through some of the rest of the chain where you've answered some questions! I see some other builds that skip some powers that you've taken early and slotted heavily-- like distortion field and time stop. And while you take temporal mending very early, you don't get around to slotting it for quite a while which is interesting.

Anything would be helpful-- there are a few time/ or /time guides but none that I see so far go into much detail on what they picked, why, and how they slotted it!

I can't find a guide so far that talks about the Time Manipulation set in much detail-- what to take and what to maybe skip, slotting priorities, redundant powers, etc. Does anybody have a write-up or a link to a guide that covers Time?

I find it great for soloing. It's not as great for team play except for elite bosses and archvillains. Old guides from before the melee range was increased in I13 were a lot more negative on shadow maul. The depth increase to 7' made the cone a lot more viable.

Here's a relatively inexpensive soft-capped DM/SR I'm working on. Not perfect but it gets you to over 45% with a little headroom. Ignore some of the level placements. Also not sure yet what I'll take for the last few powers. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.96 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Level 50 Technology Scrapper Primary Power Set: Dark Melee Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Speed Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery Hero Profile: ------------ Level 1: Shadow Punch C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(17) Level 1: Focused Fighting S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A), S'dpty-Def(3), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(3), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(25), S'dpty-EndRdx(25) Level 2: Smite Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Mako-Dam%(23) Level 4: Focused Senses RedFtn-Def(A), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(5), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(5), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(29) Level 6: Shadow Maul M'Strk-Acc/Dmg(A), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx(9), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(9), M'Strk-Acc/EndRdx(11), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(13), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15) Level 8: Siphon Life F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(A), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(34), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), H'zdH-Heal/Rchg(34), H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx(36) Level 10: Practiced Brawler RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx(15) Level 12: Agile DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(13) Level 14: Combat Jumping DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(43) Level 16: Dodge DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(17) Level 18: Dark Consumption Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(A), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(37), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(37) Level 20: Quickness Run-I(A) Level 22: Super Jump Jump-I(A) Level 24: Boxing Empty(A) Level 26: Soul Drain Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(A), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg(27), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(40) Level 28: Lucky DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(31) Level 30: Tough S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(31), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31), RctvArm-ResDam(33), RctvArm-EndRdx(33) Level 32: Midnight Grasp C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(37), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(42), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43) Level 35: Evasion RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(36), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(36), RedFtn-Def(45), RedFtn-EndRdx(48) Level 38: Weave RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(39), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(39), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(39), RedFtn-Def(40), RedFtn-EndRdx(40) Level 41: Touch of Fear SipInsght-ToHitDeb(A), SipInsght-Acc/ToHitDeb(43), SipInsght-Acc/Rchg(46), SipInsght-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(46), SipInsght-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(46), SipInsght-%ToHit(48) Level 44: Hasten RechRdx(A), RechRdx(45) Level 47: Conserve Power RechRdx(A), RechRdx(48) Level 49: Physical Perfection EndMod(A), EndMod(50), Heal(50), Heal(50) Level 1: Sprint Empty(A) Level 2: Rest Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift Empty(A) Level 2: Health Heal-I(A), Heal-I(45) Level 2: Hurdle Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(29), EndMod-I(33) ------------