Shred Monkey

I split my damage dealers into 2 cataogires. Basically, are you 1. a boss killer, or 2. a multi-target AoE killer. My theory is this; if we all did AoE damage only, the Bosses in each spawn would die last, and the team's "success rate" would essentually be only the rate that bosses die... no other factors matter since they bosses die slowest. Therefore, if you've got a few dedicated boss killers, who do extreme Single Target damage who focus on bosses and nothing else, that speeds up the rate of the team going through a mission significantly, even though they're only hitting 1 or 2 enemies per spawn. But if everyone is a ST specialist, then you're slowed down chasing all those individual LTs and Minions all over the map. So a mix of both is best. And while you don't exactly have to pick one or the other... there's value in choosing a focus and maximizing that. OK.. that said, Explosive Arrow is certainly valuable is you're focusing on the AoE role.. which combined with the quick recharging cone attack of Archery, you're very capable of doing quite well. Plus having reliable ranged AoE knockdown is a really solid soft control, which dramatically boosts survivability beyond just building for high defenses alone. On the other hand... Ninja Blade has some really great ST damage. If I was doing an Archery/Ninja build, I'd probably build for High Recharge and Max my ST damge output. Plus, Rain of Arrows on a very a short cooldown is AMAZING, and that alone is more then enough to contribute solid AoE damage to any team. And therefore, as a ST speciallist, explosive arrow would be a power I'd drop.

When I'm going for maximum endurance recovery, I often end up with 5 slotted health.... with: Numina's Unique, Miracle Unique + Miracle Heal, and Panacea Unique + Panacea Heal... those last 2 pairs give 2% and 2.5% recovery bonuses... but that' s only 5 slotted. I could see putting the regen unique in the last one, but it's rare I would have that spare slot. I sometimes 4-slot stamina with 2 performance shifters and 2 Synapse's Shock to get a bunch of run speed bonus for cheap. But I've never 6-slotted it.

Those data miners who brought the truth of real numbers to the masses are the Heroes of our City.

As an alternate option, I'm thinking Staff/Dark/Leviathan Scrapper or Stalker. The staff has a trident option. Color the dark powers to be watery tentacles. I like Stalker/Scrapper over Brute/Tank because I've always wanted to have an excuse to use Waterspout. The "mental" part comes from controlling spirit sharks and water-like defenses. Might be a fun build, too. Good synergy in that you can get defense bonuses from staff to layer on the Resists from your secondary.

My Seismic/Martial blaster has been at the top of my alt list ever since I made him. To be honest, I'm not in love with the costume/concept of Prismatic Monkey, so I could see tweaking that. But the quick-animating attacks and the hit-and-move playstyle combined with ridiculous raw damage and solid survivability... it's hands down my top choice.

I aim for 45% across as much as possible. Although, just recently I started expirementing with only Ranged defense, but upping it to 60+ for incarnate content. I'm finding this is an extremely strong option. My standard test is the new Cimerora content turned up to 54x8, which even my tanks struggle with and can't complete the last mission, if they even get there. My Seismic/Martial blaster is currently my best toon for this content, completing all but the last fight before dieing when I had a bunch of Mino EB's spawn on me at once when I wasn't ready for it. I should add, that I chose this combo for all the knockdowns and that nasty AoE slow toggle, which allows me to kite and stay at ranged while putting out excellent ST and AoE damage extremely effectively. This combined with keeping ranged attacks floored in hit chance is what's working better than anything else I've tried. TL:DR... you can get away with 45% to ranged and stop there if you're not going into melee. Beyond that is for extreme cases only.

While anything can solo, I find I strongly prefer higher damage toons... the big difference between soloing and teams is how quickly you clear a mission. If you have a damage toon, you can clear missions quicker and keep things moving forward. Personally I really enjoy playing a blaster with high ranged defense from IOs. This gives me an added challenge of staying out of melee while hitting from range. It's also an extremely powerful setup for endgame play.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point a streamer with a decent following stumbles into our fine city and brings with him 1000 other players for a few months. As you all know, we've got a genuinely good game here. It seems inevidable that we'll eventually catch a wave.

combat jumping is my pick for 2 reasons. 1. It uses almost no endurance. No reason to even slot end reduction because you'll save at most .05 per second. 2. It's more fun. Hover blasting is like cruise control on a highway. But staying on the ground forces you to think and react the situtaiton to stay at range (a little bit) and it gives you more ability to move at the same time. Hover is just button mash attacks until you're out of targets, then move to the next group and repeat. I almost always have combat jumping on every toon. The ones that don't I notice it a lot when running around... the lack of control while jumping in the air is annoying.

Even when on speed runs, I generally stay with the team and don't skip ahead even though my toons can handle pretty much everything. I play the game for the combat mechanics, not for speed. So why wold I skip fights? And, to be totally honest, I'm horrible at navigating caves, squeezing through doors, and finding glowies. That said, I think it should be mentioned that in hundreds if not 1000s of runs, I've never seen a non-speed MLTF, in case that's involved in this issue at all. It's simply not something people do.

Is that 108 runs of DFB or 108 play sessions running multiple times each?

I'm going ot go with Education. The world is having a crisis of incompetence, but people are too incompetent to stop it. I'd like to explain why, but it would get censored. ...which is the other reason why.

I didn't for a long time. Then when they redid the stealth pool I started using infiltration a lot as both a travel power and a LoTG mule. I've started weaving in other options but only if it doesn't hurt my offense or defense ability. That seems to be about 1/2 the time.

Blappers trade More DPS, for less survivability. The logic is that if you're not dying anyway, why not hit harder? Not to mention, having Nukes and other big AoE's on top of that ST DPS is a lot of fun. Also, Blasters get top tier endurance recovery powers, so that brings with it some benefits as well.

I use them heavily in my builds. My attacks often are proc-focused builds, and Hami-O's are the best way to get accuracy and damage in your non-proc slots. I also use them in travel powers to get both speed and endurance reduction. There are some other special case times I use them. I think it's good to consider them any time you're planning to slot an SO or a IO, just in case there's an advantage to getting 2 boosts over 1.

Just use Juant. It's got a longer range and faster animation then combat teleport, and it's up everytime I click it.

Yeah... well... that's how a lot of jokes work. That's what they want you to think.

I subscribe to the theory that Ninja's are not Japanese, Chinese, or even Asian. They're actually everywhere. The ones we know about are technically the ones who are the worst at being Ninjas.

I'm pretty sure I'm a unique player in this way because I never got into the first person shooter, mouse aim technique, so I've been doing something like this for decades on multple games. Right hand does all movement. Numeric Keypad 8 forward, 2 back, 4 and 6 rotate left and right. 7 and 1 move the camera up and down (or aim up/down when flying). Numpad 5 is autofollow my target. Numpad Enter is target nearest. Numpad + is cycle my target forward. There's some other targeting macros also available to my right hand, but probably unique to my keyboard. Left hand... 1-0 is tray 1, Q-P is tray 2. Tray 3 has all my toggles... I can click them with ctrl + 1-0. (attack chain is usually a combination of 2-5... with 1 being an AoE and 6 and 7 being slow charging nukes/attacks, etc) Space bar is jump. Function Keys are insperations and some keybinds. My mouse is just for clicking on the screen when I need to. I frequently play on a laptop with a touchpad and no mouse, so this setup is meant to be able to manage that requirement.

My strategy generally is to use standard SOs until level 22... then I dive into level 25 IOs (level 20 IOs are significantly worse then SOs). I continue to use level 25 IOs until I'm level 47 and can use level 50s. When I do that level 47 respec, I pull all my level 25 IOs out and save them in my base. This way I not only save buying replacement IOs, (or upgrade costs), but I can even reuse my IOs repeatedly for each new toon. I don't bother with the 30, 35, 40, and 45 IOs because that would use up too much storage space in my SG base for very tiny bits of increased power for the short period of time I spend leveling up. I also always use attuned Set IOs where applicable so they level up with you.

Don't forget, at some point, perhaps 3-4 seasons from now, this all leads to a story that sets up Rey's backstory and separation from her parents. It also will probably connect to Snoke and then Palpatine's return. It is clear to me that fixing Star Wars is Filoni's main purpose in life. Truly a noble cause, as impossible as it may seem.

Interesting conversation but the truth is that you should think of zones as set pieces in a movie. Boomtown is a burned out cityscape filled with buildings that are falling and housing hives of scum and villainy. This is the setting for many villains to hatch their schemes and heroes to thwart them. If all those buildings were fixed, then we'd lose that set piece. I could see an update like what was done with Faultline and Dark Astoria, to give the zone more gameplay value. But you wouldn't want to "fix" it. If it was actually fixed, then the heroes wouldn't have a reason to go there anymore.

I find it much easier to badge solo, or on a pre-made SG team specifically focused on badging. On most pick-up teams there's always a few people who aren't really paying close enough attention to team chat to know the team is doing something other then mission completion or kill all. That said, I would encourage everyone to try getting their teams to do badges. I think most people would do it if they are paying attention.

I love our dev's They have great wisdom and insight into this game. But the engineer with 30+ years of root cause corrective action experience can't help but read this and say to myself... "Um... yeah, but maybe we could fix the bug." I know Forum GMs don't fix bugs... but perhaps you could poke someone a little for us and get it moved up in the priority list? It would actually be an extremely significant improvement to the endgame if this didn't happen anymore. Thanks... keep up the good work. We love you.

That said, if they want to go back to something like we had before, I'll be happy to exploit the heck out of it.