Lhanis

So, I started messing around with things on Brainstorm and think I've got an outline for what I'm hoping to accomplish, and some actual answerable questions for the folks who know slotting better. Outline attached below. Original concept was going to lean into Cloak of Darkness completely hiding your character and taking a weapon set with hover to float around as a haunted, cursed weapon. Thought it would be fun. But while testing I accidentally fell in love with Spinning Strike in StJ. Sweeping Cross being skippable also lines up with my original goal of a 6 power primary. Where I'm having trouble is figuring out how I should be slotting these powers. Scrapper's high base damage makes me feel like I should be taking advantage of it more than cramming procs in to do the work, but StJ also looks like a set that gets a lot of use out of FF procs and I'm not sure where to draw the line. With what I have, the crit-proc ATO looks like it would work best in either Rib Cracker or Shin Breaker (unless I put it in Dark Regen for giggles, but on paper that looks very expensive on End). Crit window looks about the same, but I'm unsure if it'd be better in one over the other - better chance in Shin Breaker, but SB also looks like it'll want Achilles in it where RC can't take anything interesting that'd compete for space. I chose Soul for patron on account of Shadow Meld looking like a dream come true for bolstering during alpha strikes, but with StJ already being very ST focused and wanting you to stack combo I'm not sure how important I should treat Moonbeam. It's hard to find advice/examples of the revamped Dark Armor, and I can't tell if Obscure Sustenance might actually be a better pick. The revamp turned it into a clicky with no target requirement and a 25% heal on top of it's already very nice +Regen/+Recovery (though Mids doesn't actually reflect this yet) as opposed to Dark Regeneration's expensive target-based heal. OS also can have a majority of it's buff made permanant quite easily, but it has very little options for slotting compared to DR. Soul Transfer has the same issue as above, and it does so many things now that I'm not sure what I should be focusing on with it. If I take OS over DR, it'd make a good spot for Panacea/PM sets, but I don't know if that's worth losing other things that can go there. Lastly, I'm curious if Hasten is even needed with a setup like this. With StJ getting 3 decent spots for FF procs, I'm wondering if I might be better served dropping it for another power/pool entirely. The attached build was put together with non-superior sets mostly just because I wanted to see what things would look like leveling. I'm not above using purple sets (I've got more than enough inf set aside to make a fairly expensive build) but I'd like it exemplar as well as possible since I spend far more time below cap than at it. The only thing here that's really set in stone is that I very much want Fold Space which pushes me into Teleport for travel, and that I want Hover for both concept and to make Teleport more palatable. Scrapper - StJ Dark wip.mbd

So I was left to my own devices for more than 5 minutes, and the intrusive thoughts won. So now I have half a dozen half-built variants in mids that I've been putting together while I am supposed to be working try to decide which one I want to pull the trigger on and actually roll... and I'm very quickly coming to realize I really don't have a clue what I should be building for on a melee character. For reference, a vast majority of my characters fall into the Defender/Controller/MM variety, where you slap in rDef sets between your procs and just keep out of reach. Something tells me Scrapper needs a bit more than that though. Dark Armor is a Res set with minor defenses and some -tohit and fear. Do I want to try and chase positionals for extra padding despite the lack of DDR? Should I be trying to ResCap instead despite the scalar and max 75%? Do I actually want Tough and Weave? If I do want Tough and Weave, which I assume I do even if Tough just mules sets for me, that leaves me in an awkward spot for power picks. To get everything I want into the build, I need a primary I can cut 3 powers from. That's easy for some, since I don't want Confront and you don't usually take both T1 and T2. Psi Melee drops boggle, Savage can skip Shred, etc. But I have no idea what others like Titan Wep, Katana and War Mace can live without. And after all that is considered, I look at my endurance and weep for what Dark Armor has done to me, and start asking myself if I really need Death Shroud all that badly. I realize I'm mostly just shouting into the void, and that none of this is really specific enough to get any actual answers more than "it depends", but I just thought I'd share. I really did not walk into this expecting to have to relearn my mids-fu.

I don't care if Staff's damage isn't great, Innocuous Strikes is just such a fun animation 🤣 Trouble's post about the ATO procs' placement the other day is actually what started this whole thing for me... it was interesting to see how much of an impact they have on the AT overall, and reminded me Scrapper was something I'd never really given a shot. I'll be honest though... it never even occurred to me that you could slot it in Dark Regen since it deals damage. That's a wild thought. Cheers for that!

That's fair, the way I wrote it is a little vague but it's also not an easy thing to put into words. By mechanically, I mean how it feels to play/tools it has available that I would want. Not necessarily whether or not it has an in-built mechanic like Momentum or Combos. Some examples: Savage Melee. I adore this set aesthetically, but my experience with it was frustrating. Back when Tanker gauntlet first got buffed, I rolled one with Savage - the End reduction was nice, and Leap is a wonderful tool, but the constant need to play around or against the bloodlust mechanic to keep yourself from getting locked out was not particularly enjoyable. Dark Melee. A generally pretty great set all around (especially on Scrapper, or so I'm told), but a lot of small issues that make it unenjoyable for me to play. Shadow Maul feels like it takes far to long, needing to proc bomb Touch of Fear to have a decent early AoE, and to be completely honost I would rather just have a normal Build Up over having to worry about saturation for Soul Drain. It's hard to give an example of an armor set here though. Mostly I'm looking at it from a tool perspective, does it have good mez prot, does it have a taunt aura (something I'm sad most Scrappers lack, but oh well), is it to clicky to maintain mid-combat, etc. It's why I clicked so well with Electric Armor initially, it just does everything I wanted it to without having to jump through hoops to get it, while also having some neat extras in speed and +End. The old iteration of Dark Armor would fall into that "dislike mechanically" catagory, which is why I'm asking about it. Hogs endurance, has to bring it's own KB prot, leans to heavily on Oppressive Gloom... all things that at least on a first glance may have changed. Cloak of Fear looks like it might be a much better pick now and potentially replace OG, Obscure Sustenance could be a huge help with endurance, now has KB prot in Cloak, etc.

I don't generally play melee. I've been here on Homecoming for some 6 years now and can count my melee characters that have made it to cap on one hand. A big part of that, I think, is that most of the melee and armor sets I like aesthetically are ones I don't enjoy mechanically. After a recent break and return to find the i28 page 2 changes though, I'm wondering if I shouldn't give it another try. I actually got rather attached to Elec armor on an E3 Sent a while back, and I've always wanted to do something with Dark Armor too... so I'm wondering how people have enjoyed the changes to them. I know resist sets aren't generally the domain of Scrapper, but it's also the only AT I've never really touched before and I feel like this is a good opportunity to fix that if I'm considering melee again. Long-winded preamble aside, I'm looking for: Thoughts on the Dark Armor changes? What to expect performance wise for a resist set on Scrapper? Primary sets that might be fun/pair well? Advice for a long time player but first time building Scrapper? That third point is definitely the biggest one on my mind. In a perfect world where Kinetic Melee didn't feel absolutely awful to play it'd be my first choice, but I've been down that road before. Any and all advice is welcome.

This table helps a ton... I've always leaned into just taking Brute instead because I never know how to properly make use of Scrapper's ATOs to capitalize on the fun factor of Big Number. Cheers, Trouble! Now you've doomed me to spiral back into crippling altitus.

My main hero vs my main villain? ... Being a bit of a trickster spirit, what side of the line my smol gremlin creature Lhanis is on depends largely on it's current mood and who summoned it. If Posi part 2 is anything to go by though, Lhanis beats Lhanis every time, no contest.

My first glance also missed the fact that most things can be set to come from the mace now, which is honestly kind of great too. I think even if I do decide to polish up the Huntsman, it's probably time to give an actual mace Bane a swing as well after all. I'll have to go poke around your updated page 7 builds for ideas while I work something out. Cheers, @KaizenSoze!

I'm a bit out of date, took a break just before Page7 hit live but have a huntsman build I was rather fond of and was considering dusting off. Did anything major change that would necessitate a build revamp? A quick browse told me that Heavy Burst is faster now and Wide Area Web looks like a solid upgrade to what it was, but aside from that I couldn't find anything significant to a Bane with no mace attacks. Probably another important question as well, though... now that it looks like the Bane mace attacks have largely been improved, has the gap between Heavy Burst/Grenade spam and an actual Melee Bane widened enough that Huntsman is no longer worthwhile?

I had time, so I did another. Still not min-max'd, but a much more thought out build than the ranged fortunata meme. Global: @farsinger AT: Widow Powers: Night Widow Pylon Time: 199 Seconds 0x8 Time: 347 Seconds 4x8 Time: 480 Seconds Character Name: Lhanis (Optional) Comment: This one had a significantly easier time with the pylon, as expected. Clear wasn't bad either, but I noticed that I had a lot of trouble dealing with runners on Ston's map which dragged the time out. I honestly expected the clear and survival to be better than my fortunata with how reliable Spin and Eviscerate usually are, but I guess Psychic Wail is just that good. There was going to be a third build, my fort!hybrid, but during pylon testing I was noticing an odd gap in my attack chain and, lo and behold, a handful of my skills straight up didn't have any enhancements. Woops. I play it so infrequently I didn't even remember it wasn't finished. The rest of my roster also leans towards heavy support and various controllers, who likely would have a DNF in at least one category, so that's probably it from me unless I decide to dust off my Dark/Dark Offender. Thanks for putting this together, I definitely learned a thing or two about my builds here!

While I usually build for comfort and theme over function, this seemed like a fun way to compare my builds to each other even if they won't be anywhere near what others can pull off. So I threw my ranged-only Fortunata into it just to see how bad it really is. Hoboy. Global: @farsinger AT: Widow Powers: Fortunata Pylon Time: 807 Seconds oh god why 0x8 Time: 317 Seconds 4x8 Time: 421 Seconds Character Name: Lhanis (Optional) Comment: Since the build is mostly just a chill one for when I don't want to have to think, it skipped most of the melee options. This means clearspeed revolves almost entirely around Psychic Wail's cooldown... so I'm not surprised to see how little variance there is between 0x8 and 4x8. That said, even if I knew my pylon time wouldn't be great I still didn't expect it to be that horrific. Staying ahead of the regen was a struggle the entire way, I definitely felt the lack of hard hitting options there when I have no debuffs to make up for it. Yeesh. I'll have to put my actual Hybrid and NW builds to the test too, just to see. I'll throw them on here when they're done so y'all have something to compare it to. (Edit: I initially misread the rules for this test, and ran the test without Ageless running. I have since re-run it and edited the times. Originally, they were pylon-839, 0x8-343 and 4x8-442. Not a huge difference, but still.)

I've played a lot of EA and a bit of MA, and I definitely agree that they are both very busy sets that really want you to focus on them. Interestingly, MA seems to fill a similar niche to Kinetics for me in how you are largely focused on juicing your team's damage, though there's more control and defense in place of the sheer power Fulcrum Shift provides. EA gets some of that, but its more similar to Empathy's spot-healing and support like Tidge mentioned above. The biggest difference in playstyle in my opinion is simply that EA suffers when the team is mobile, it really wants people to be stationary and together for chains and Faraday Cage... not a problem when everyone's pummeling down a hard target, but awkward elsewhere. MA is much more... free, I feel. Toroidal is a fire-and-forget aoe buff, Shifting tides anchors to a player, Barrier Reef (MA's alternative to Faraday) is portable and follows you like a pet. My preference is definitely MA. There's just something about dropping a Tidepool on enemies, using Whitecap to teleport into it for debuffs and CC, and following it up with your PBAoE Nuke to shred an entire group (which usually results in Tidepool triggering a frenzy and amping the damage boost it provides you to deal with anything left standing) that does it for me in a way EA simply can't replicate. Even if MA wasn't as good as it is, it just flows (pun intended) so much better than EA to me.

I don't much agree with what's in the Widow subclass section in regards to Fortuna (or the poor treatment of my dear, sweet Heavy Burst), but it's nice to see the VEATs getting some attention from folks again. The note about the inherent just about killed me, thanks for that.

Warshade and Dark Armor VFX options for Aether?! Customization for Widows?! You spoil me, HC! 🎉

Ya'll have always been awesome, but now it's official! LONG LIVE CITY OF HEROES! 🎉