Sir Myshkin

Compensation by definition is to counterbalance an unwanted effect, so yes it is literally the act of. It would seem to me that you may not be fully aware of just how Stone Armor functions at this point. The stone toggles don't drop when going into Granite, they just go inactive/stasis. Granite has superior DDR by a small measure, which is a rather relevant need as well. Yes the movement debuff sucks and kind of pigeon holes a need for some kind of combat teleportation, but eh. Taking a snapshot from my Tank: That's in Granite with nothing else active but set bonuses. The build has Maneuvers to add in another 4% on top, if someone wanted to go the route of Weave that too would be possible (but realistically ends up with far too many excess power choices I felt). If I turn off granite and just have the core toggles active w/ Maneuvers (which I have/can/do): And that's with NO slotting beyond a LotG 7.5%, and Brimstone is just Psi IO's. Essentially an empty toggle with set bonus support.

Let’s be realistic, ya’ll would be busting into Granite in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the forced overlay rock look 😛 On a serious note though, building for Granite specifically can be an incredibly prosperous turn out. I have my Stone/EM pumped for Hard Mode with the debuffs compensated in IO bonuses, fully Res capped, packed Defense. Do i need to constantly run that way? Not at all, but when I drop out of Granite I’m still soft capped to defense and sporting good midline resistances, and now pumped by 30% damage due to my compensation. I don’t even have any of those other toggles slotted for more than fillers like the LotG 7.5’s. Stone can do a lot defensively now, but its money is in being able to grab both Res and Def in Granite. Don’t forget it has a hole in its DDR, rely too much on just the defense and it can haunt you.

I have to disagree with you. You are taking perception against your personal method of play. Right now I’m running Storm Blast on a Corruptor with Kinetics backing, and even with me pumping the team I’m still at the front dropping Cells. I also don’t wait for the team to drop them either, if I know we’re going into a commonly pulled area like on an ITF, I’ll start dropping the Storm Cell in advance. I might suggest stop running PI Council missions and try some more challenging enemy groups 😉

That's unfortunate, but I get it. I've seen how aggressive it can be, especially when paired with Storm Summoning, when a player I'd PuG'd with had everything set to fluorescent pinks for every single ability on both sides of Storm Blast and Storm Summoning.

The secondary effects on Intensify I'm still on the fence about from a value perspective, and that's all I can really say on that one. For Jet Stream, my absolute biggest complaint is the Repel. Yes they implemented a tool within the set to convert it to KD, but if that cone catches something that's just outside, or happens to run at the wrong time, or whatever, suddenly you've got one (or worse more) mob just flying off up and awaaaaay! It happened far too often for me to accept keeping it in my tray, so out of the build it went. 🙁 Well, can't say I've every played any particular Sentinel and been amazed at their clearing force, but the entirety of my Storm Blast experience has been on a Corruptor at this point, and it fares perfectly fine. I'm not saying just Storm Cell + Chain Lightning is going to AoE the mob down, but it will do significant damage, and Chain recycles quickly, and the other half of your AoE is the use of your ST attacks, but the point is to focus on the bigguns like Bosses, let the Cell trickle out and take care of things for you. Storm Blast's effects work a lot like how Contamination does on Radiation Melee, give it a few minutes to start spreading and suddenly orange numbers are popping up all over the place. Other than Cat5 really being a boisterous effect, most of the attacks can be toned a little with things like darker gray's or dull tones, have you tried doing that to shift some of the impact in the visual graphics?

I'll say the same thing here as everywhere else: You're playing it wrong. If you still have a temp power in your attack tray as a mainline power: You're playing it wrong. If you think this is a Single Target exclusive set: You're playing it wrong. If you aren't actively using Storm Cell, You're playing it wrong. I will acknowledge there are a couple of powers in the set that are easily passable like Gust, Jet Stream, and Intensify, and really Jet Stream is just a bad power (in my opinion) with that repel kick, but every set has a couple of powers you can skip, and really Gust isn't bad, and Intensify just has a crap damage boost that (on a Kin at least) makes it absolutely wasted time. This set does so much AoE damage inside Storm Cell it's gross, and if you're not seeing it, you're not taking that time to set it up and get there. Just Storm Cell + Chain Lightning produces a metric ton of feedback. Add Cat5 into the mix even though it takes a second to build, once it goes it's melting things down, and the entire time everything still suffers from the -ToHit and Slows. And ain't nobody can tell me Direct Strike lacks KAPOW because I use it to regularly snipe down Surgeons on ITF's

First: Ew, Dominators, gross. Okay, moving on 🤣 A few things: with the changes to power selection order, any opening up that selection choice in the Tier 2 at start, there's really no reason to pick a power you just flat out won't ever use. Whirling Hands and Total Focus are your only access to a Disorient power, it might be worth slotting up that Bone Smasher to be a useful trigger against a Minion or Lieutenant to enter Energy Focus mode and then turn around and pop a boosted Power Burst on a Boss, as an example. Side tangent, having the realization that Energy Assault as a ranged set actually brilliantly works well with Symphony, Fire, and Earth control for their Disorient AoE's... Back on track: Since you're going for Sleet and Ice Storm, powers like Mass Hypnosis are probably wasted and going to find themselves shelved as "never used" in your power tray (especially if you team a lot) once you get close enough to start using those epic powers. I'm a huge anti-sleep person, any mez that breaks easy just isn't worth the cast in my opinion. Mass Confusion is really the biggest selling point of Mind Control compared to its counterparts, so I'd lynchpin all choices based off how that power is going to interact with everything else. Given that, tossing any consideration of KD conversion out the window, MC is going to have enemies running all over anyway, they'll just run back if they get KB'd. Terrify will be the "Opener" control, and Total Domination will be the support/backup control around Mass Confusion uses. Last thing is trying to round out survival in the build beyond the mez, so Hoarforst for a spike heal and HP boost, and grabbing Maneuvers/Tactics not only to get the bit more defense, but also fix accuracy and get that crazy needed Confuse and Fear resistance for late game content. This is what I came down to:

Is that Times New Roman? Hmm... and I see you don't have a watermark either. *shakes head*

It works for Cuba.

I wouldn't stress out too much about whether your "top tier" or not, if you're having fun with it then that's all that really matters! There's no real secrets to the pairing though. Energy Aura is a pretty straight forward set. Take most of what is offered from EA, you can likely skip Power Drain and Overload. Grab Tough/Weave to bump up your Res and Def some more and with sets you'll be able to fill the gaps on Defense to get to 45%, Maneuvers can make that a little easier if you want to add it too, but otherwise you'll have plenty of power picks at the end of that journey to play with a few epic choices. Do keep in mind, Radiation Blast's AoE side is really Melee focused between Irradiate and Atomic being PBAoE, and the rest (ST) being Range. You'll likely be moving back and forth a bit.

They're just not playing it right. I also hear tornadoes are good with Sharks in them.

yeah I get where you were going with the thought, I was looking at it from a Squish factor. Support classes tend to be ... squishier unless you push around building that way. I'll be honest, even despite you mentioning it, I completely glossed it, and forgot about Sentinels, but yes a Sentinel would do the job probably perfectly for you. Rad Blast/Energy Aura, and then you'd be able to grab a couple of control type effects out of an epic if you wanted. Gets your X-Ray, your ranged, and your ability to take a hit in one package.

Eh, that's kind of a tough one, Unicron isn't the kind of thing I'd initially think of as giving support, but maybe to an extent it's more manipulation so if you were going to go with something like a Corruptor, I'd suggest maybe Radiation Blast/Time Manipulation, but that doesn't quite give that... mass feeling of presence or size you could achieve with Melee. Going more for presence and longevity on the field as Melee: Radiation Melee/Energy Aura Brute (Since you can't go Tank) and grab the Laser Beam Eyes out of Energy Mastery Epic.

True Spoiler:

Actually a bit of discussion on Brute Regen over in this little diddy of a thread: Documented a few key case uses myself including completion of 4* ITF and I didn't even use the optimal build for it.

Want to point a out a small fallacy here about this. Individual duration's aside, everything a Tanker does is going to generate Taunt in regards to the aggregation of threat towards the Tank via Gauntlet and the fact that pretty much every Tanker power has some kind of set minimum Taunt duration, etc, etc. But there is a significant value difference in the actual power Taunt, versus powers with Taunt. Taunt itself, as a power, has a robust AoE of 15 feet on a 70 foot range and a base 41/s duration, meaning pretty much no target is really going to be outside reach. The other key element about this ability that is significant and exclusive to the ability is its -Range component, and this is the important part. If a Tanker is looking to focus on creating directed and controlled aggro, the -Range component is a big aspect of what brings enemies into Melee range and switches their gears over, minimizing likelihood of larger scale ranged AoE/Cone attacks, and putting them next to the Tanker directly whom probably has either an aura or other PBAoE they'll be using that will continue to hold that taunt effect.

I'm so glad somebody else remembered. They're a bit early this year though, usually this pops up around July, got ahead of themselves this year. Oh well.

I don't 100% remember what was supposed to be there because Mid's had a bug with Beta Decay back then where it was missing enhancement options. If I had to guess I think it should've been the Psi Damage proc from the taunt set, but ultimately I never proceeded with that anywhere as it wasn't worth the slot. Is it Axe/Rad you're trying to do as a Scrapper? I do have something more current for that if it is:

It's not that bad, not until they also take Storm Summoning, and then switch all of their powers to "Bright" color tint with with the highest florescence pink they can choose. My eyes are still bleeding from that one. o_o

Just adding a bump update specifically to this thread because it does have considerable impact on key elements of multiple builds and will likely change some prospective choices. Eventually Mid's will get updated with these changes at some point and I'll look at reworking a couple of builds with some of the changes, until then this is notation: Per Issue 27, Page 6: Blast Power Set Updates Assault Rifle Slug Cast time lowered from 1.67s to 1.4s. Beanbag Lowered cooldown to 10s. Increased damage to scale 0.98. Added PvP Damage (1.43 scale). Sniper Rifle (Quick) Cast time lowered from 1.67s to 1.17s. Ignite Incinerator replaced with Ignite for Sentinels Lowered cooldown to 14s. Now does DoT over 5.5 seconds to a single target, for a total of 3.146 scale damage. Partially front-loaded. If target is on the ground, Ignite leaves a fire patch at the target's feet. Other foes standing on the patch take fire damage and will try to flee. Can target flying enemies. Flamethrower DoT now is applied over 4.7s, down from 7.1s (same damage). Full Auto Arc increased from 20 to 90 degrees. Dual Pistols Suppressive Fire Cast time reduced from 1.67s to 1.5s. Recharge reduced from 20s to 8s for non-standard ammo. Incendiary: Scale 2 duration Mag 3 hold (stacks). Damage increased to 1.64 scale. Cryo: Scale 4 duration Mag 4 hold (replace). Damage increased to 1.64 scale. Chemical: Scale 8 duration Mag 3 hold (stacks). Damage increased to 0.87 scale. Standard: No change from Live. Still 20s cooldown. Piercing Rounds Resistance debuff now is applied while using any round type, stacking changed to replace. Duration of debuff increased to 15s. A ring icon now pops up to indicate the last use of Piercing Rounds was over 13s ago. This QoL change helps optimize reapplications of the debuff on a single target.

I've been sitting on a third build for a while now that I could respec into but haven't, partly because "eh, lazy" and partly because I feel like I'm still pulling crazy things without making the change to something "better". I pushed Revive into that build thinking "I'm sure this is probably a wiser choice, I'm sure I'll need it in Hard Mode..." Kinda feeling like just taking a handful of Super Wakes would be easier than prepping an entire power slot choice now though, I would've gotten a lot more mileage out of Vengeance! The irony!

There's not max limit you can put in the build, but there is a naturally occurring limit to how many you can reasonably fire at any given time, which is three. Due to what it takes to get the power to fire, where you can put the proc, and the chances to get it to fire, there's no possible scenario to get more than that, and that's a very slim and short chance to happen. The proc just stacks its time duration each time it goes off, but it's pretty possible to keep 2 going for a long period of time (I've gone as long as 30/s straight before). You'll want probably two in quick attacks, maybe three if you can, obviously Lightning Storm and maybe any other big activation ability or wide cone/aoe like Gale if you need a triggerable use.

I will say the only thing that has marginally irked me during the entire run so far with this toon has actually been the Claws part of the dynamic. I love Claws, always have, but Regen doesn't exactly bring anything to the table to improve damage performance, and Claws somewhat suffers in the true +4 world when it comes to pumping out big orange numbers without debuffs. If I hadn't already invested the time into a TW/Regen Scrapper a couple years ago, and spent the time on this project, I'd consider rolling something else, but that isn't gonna happen now.

4* ITF, ~12 of those deaths were mine. The very first Hostless we encountered snagged me and the team didn't react fast enough, I had two "dur" moments were I got distracted and didn't activate a corresponding power in time to save myself, roughly five deaths to Dex, and four to Romulus and his ridiculous 3,000pt hits. Only two Barrier's on the team, so no major reliance there, support was a single FF, an Empath, and a Traps, partner "tank" was another Brute, there was a Human-Form PB, and two other Blasters, a very unorthodox run. So there it be, Regen took on Hard Mode and won.

I can say from personal experience I stopped calling out getting mezzed because people stopped carrying the tools to prevent it, and that was a long time ago. A little bit towards IO's, a little bit towards Incarnates, a lot more towards folks trying to find ways to shove things into builds and decided to skip powers they felt sacrificial.