Sir Myshkin

Your factor, irregardless of its generosity, doesn't account for the AT-O increasing probability of critical chance, or the fact that it is possible to aggressively increase critical chance with Critical Strike being utilized prior to a key element attack. I did mass include an entire spawn in the concept of the critical example, but the theory still applies down to the singular element of a one to one mob case. Even if both AT's only ever implemented single target attacks, each effective critical hit is one less potential strike that the Scrapper has to make that the Brute inevitably still has to inflict. And yes there are wash out points where standard deviation of damage, minion to lieut to boss HP, blah blah, there are points where there's excess damage, but the critical system has a primary focus on elimination of lower threats faster. You also have Fury set at its expected topping line, but there's still the probability of boost damage like Build Ups where Scrappers get a larger boost than Brutes do on a per-power basis, and overall damage caps. Yes Criticals run on probability, but since they are a statistically measurable thing: If I'm surrounded by 10 things, and my chance to crit is 10%*, than my likelihood of hitting 1 in 10 is pretty assured. At a minimum a Scrapper will do one less attack than a Brute if we use the given static consistent values. Based off the 156 and 177 as an example base line, on a minion alone that's a minimum three hits each, either way, 30 hits for the Brute, 29 for the Scrapper, bare minimum Scrapper is net positive over the Brute. Every critical over that limit puts a check mark in the Scrapper's column. This is why Brutes should not be compared to Scrappers, and why Stalkers are the Scrapper counterpart. *Yes, we've acknowledge this isn't the minion crit chance but it's pretty math and the point remains

Just playing Devil's Advocate here on one small tid-bit of erroneous notation... You're generalizing Scrapper Criticals into an average performance value which, on a holistic value might make sense to some, but the topic of debate is really about individual spawn performance and it kind of matters for it to not be holistic, but per-unit. When a Scrapper criticals that value is going into a multiplicative state (for sake of simplicity I'm just going to say "double" even though that's broad and marginally incorrect it just makes the example easier to follow). If the Scrapper hits something and it crits from a base of ~156 to ~312, the Brute is still hitting at ~177, and must apply another attack on that target to create the same effect which increases the threat threshold with that target (and all surrounding targets) by the duration of the follow-up attack, and also decrease the available endurance pool by the associated amount. Now lets say the corresponding AT's above are using an AoE, and that the above calculations are its corresponding values, but it is the second swing of that attack, and the first did not critical, but the second did (for the Scrapper). The Scrapper has now cleared the minion-level threats in the group while the Brute has only managed to do about 60% of their total HP, and still has the upper Lieuts and Bosses to go that the Scrapper has now since moved on to. In this particular context the Scrapper is definitively ahead by X mobs, and depending on the nature of single target versus delayed AoE use of the Brute, the Brute will continue to expunge effort and endurance and potentially health. This effect is compounded by the utilization of the critical AT-O's from the Scrapper sets which are just two singular pieces obtainable at any time in the leveling process.

Scrapper, Criticals. That about sums it up. A close friend of mine tried repeatedly to roll my Regen builds on Brutes that were born on Scrappers and despite how good it looks on paper, it just doesn't work the same for them unless you tailor a specific way, but you have to understand Regen before you can get there, and you can't understand Regen until you learn how to play it, and the only way to do that is on a Scrapper. Titan Weapons is going to bring something to the table that is incredibly important: Soft Control. The knock effects in the various attacks are going to be crucial in helping to mitigate enemy turn time and their ability to bounce bullets off your skull, use them judiciously. I highly encourage you to invest in some of the core basic needs of the set early on so you can level and ride with them. Get your AT-O's (Split Scrapper's Strike in 3's), get a 5-piece of Doctored Wounds in Reconstruction and Dull Pain until you can swap them at 50 for Panacea's, Get Tough and Weave to layer mitigation and pick up the 3% IO's--you don't need a staggering amount of excess Defense just get close to 32.5% free-floating and toss Defensive Sweep up while you level and you'll have a brick wall to shove into anything that tried to take you on. Don't forget to keep Dull Pain up all the time, it's not there to heal you it's there to boost your max HP, that in turn boosts your Regen, and that is what heals you. A lot of players will tell you to keep purples if you expect to live, this is wrong, take oranges (t2 or better), they're not used to the idea of a character healing itself passively in 60/s so reduce the damage intake to as small a number as possible and your regen will overtake it 9/10 times. Titan/Regen moves fast and hard. It rolls in, lays the KD, crits out the spawn and breaks free, it doesn't give a lot of chance or time for the enemies to swing back, and with Criticals it doesn't spend a lot of time in combat. When you don't get that return fervor from the enemy groups, building fury becomes a tad bit harder, and this really doesn't want to sit in melee punching KD all day long. Better off picking up Foot Stomp for that.

Someone else can correct me if I'm remembering this incorrectly as it could've changed in the time I was off from the game, but the PT+Heal proc won't fire more than one instance of itself in a singular trigger event, meaning even if it did get multiple proc hits you'd only get one actual return in that activation, so keep that in mind when trying to plan this thought process out. Should you include them? It doesn't hurt to have them sprinkled around, but there are mindful best practices for its existence like in Stamina where it's more assured and just gradual bonus health. If I were going to stick it into something like Short Circuit or Ball Lightning then look to make sure you've maximized your utility in your build, it may not be the best option to full burn that entire set in there when you can just use the proc itself in the last slot. Between the two powers your best option is probably Short Circuit since it isn't a damage focused power in the first place. I myself did try building with it in Short Circuit for a short period of time, but the evaluation had to be made on its contribution versus safety and net value in the build over other options (like better defenses). Leveraging a wider volume of defense in the build meant better opportunities for Energize to continue doing its thing leading to a dual combination of better health and fewer hits. Ultimately a singular proc of Power Transfer wasn't going to equate well enough to what 5/s of breathing room was going to earn me with my regen rate going strong at 30/s. So I pulled the plug there and moved the slotting over to something different that gave more Energy defense (an area the build needed, and one that doubles into Ranged and are both tied to a lot of status effects).

You could always look back to this test performed back in 2019 although it doesn't include the since-changed sets, the information is still useful:

Um, okay? Done? Yes as I mentioned I have Shadow Meld, but that's for book-ending around MoG and Alpha absorption as needed, it's not a constant-use power. You also miss presume that the build has some exorbitant amount of defense bonuses when it does not, I stopped it at 32.5% which comes fairly easily. There is a considerable amount of the pre-Incarnate content in the game that can be played without heavy supportive effort so long as the player is utilizing the sets at their disposal wisely. Titan Weapons is a very soft-control heavy set with knock effects making it possible to get into combat and keep spawns mitigated before they can be a threat. I have the ability to let a lot of passive regen work in my benefit. If I wanted to skip Shadow Meld I very easily could have in replacement of Defensive Sweep (which would even garner me the ability to stack it), but I don't like the animation or how it messes with my flow, so I don't. The point stands though that there are always tools available and ways to make the sets perform in powerful ways that don't necessarily require playing to unique categorical strengths like cherry picking Shadow Meld or IO bonuses.

Dominators, like, all of them. At the end of the day I feel like I've just transformed it into a Blaster with pocket controls and I just can't play 'em no matter how I mash up the power sets.

*watches the thread fill with Mastermind suggestions* Okay, So, like, I'm not a bandwagon kinda person and, like, I'm gonna suggest something totally, like, different, okay? 🤣 But seriously, there's actually a duo concept that's been in my back pocket for a long time that I just don't have the time or second person available to execute it with, but has a lot of high performance opportunities: Fire Blast / Electric Affinity Corruptors Normally I would suggest Defender in most things, but as a Duo these will loose their +30 solo bonus and pick up Scourge instead. The builds would ideally be identical in power selection and utilize each other for chain bouncing, double Faraday Cage for shielding with some key choice selection in other areas this combo will be able to pack in a lot of Res and cherry pick some good Def bonus structures.

Pishaw! Regen is awesome! Don't listen to any of them! I did (more or less) exactly what you're talking about doing with a Titan/Regen, even more so in the principle that it was deemed the riskiest option with Titan Weapon's animation lengths out of momentum (or even then just getting lost in momentum moments). I can roll around with that character in +4/x8 content pretty willy-nilly without much care in the world, and he is able to solo some of Linea's fabled 801 content at +2 (which for a Regen is well enough). It does take some commitment to get used to the timing and pattern of things, sure; I've got Shadow Meld > MoG > Shadow Meld > Instant Healing > SM > MoG > SM > Rebirth on recycle with SM in other areas as may be needed, Dull Pain on 'auto' and Reconstruction... well I often forget it ever exists because it doesn't get used that often. But this is all if I need to. I can run through Council missions all day long on my base stats and regen and never look back, so the content can play a part too.

Huh, I'm kind of surprised at how much Stone Armor really is glossed over with really only a couple of advocates to the cause. All of the negative's to Granite are easy to build out, and I don't have to invest anything into Rock or Crystal armor to get exactly what I need out of them.

I kept meaning to get around to making this post and forgetting, and then never making it down to my office at the end of the day and yadda yadda, here we are a week later and by-golly I'ma make the post! I wanted to talk about, or maybe more just show, the irony of what can happen in a Granite focused build when all the slots fall in to place. This is my "Hard Mode" Stone/Electric/Mu named BAUHAUS! I was looking at making an all-arounder unkillable Tank that could take advantage of extra AoE spread for attention grabs, some added debuff tickling, and elements of the attack set that would benefit Granite, Electric ticked a lot of those boxes for me (it comes with its own teleport!) and Rad can too in much the same way, so these should translate fairly well. There's the build. I can count on one hand the times I've used Granite for real, most of the time I run around without it turned on at all. In my pursuit of getting Granite to 59% typed Defenses and 90% Resists (and Psi as high as I could), I ended up with so much surplus that when I turn it off I still have enough to exist at soft cap for S/L/E/N and Brimstone still keeps me in the 80's for F/C resists. I am effectively still a very difficult to deal with Tank on that premise alone, but then there's all the other goodies shuffled in there with it like the 30% extra damage I get back that Granite isn't eating, all the slow debuffing is off, etc. There's also just enough global recharge to offset Granite's -Rech value too. Just some minerals for thought.

I prefer the "User" AT with the powersets "Having/Fun" on my teams, seriously. If I'm setting the oven and baking the team, whatever we're doing I'm going to be running at a level I know I can solo myself at the given parameters meaning everyone else is just along for the ride. I really want to one up this and make a character called "Just Damage" and exclusively only take powers that do damage. 😄 Edit: Okay, it came to mind super fast and I couldn't resist. I did have to give leeway on a few things because it gets hard to fill all the spaces without being forced to take something non-damaging (yay procs to bend the rules!). So this is Storm Damage:

Better to build quality of character than count; otherwise we will all just get dragged into Madness together! That is how you become legen-

Hmm interesting well then.

First and foremost, assuming we’re talking about a Tanker here, there’s not a lot of reason you shouldn’t already be Res capped with the very strong probability of having 45% S/L/Melee. While Scrappers do have a lower cap, Tankers stretch values further and Scrappers can full cap and achieve the 45% pretty easily. A general rule of thumb I build by on Armor sets once they start reaching cap levels is to go off the main form of protection and determine how to continue maximizing that once it “caps”. For Defense you can just stack more defense and also look for ways to help protect that defense with DDR like in Ageless Radial. For Resistance it’s self protecting and once at cap there’s really no purpose in having more, but you can create fake resistance in the form of -Dam which is almost like adding an absorb layer to your armor. Lower the damage dealt, and then resist that remaining portion even further.

There are miscellaneous aspects of Cold that PB will impact, but you have to think outside of yourself and remember you’re there to make the Mercs work, not yourself. You’re just “the man behind the curtain.” Also keep in mind that PB is short duration so you want it to impact clicks and things with long duration; unless you’re somehow making it perma it’s unrealistic to think about it boosting toggles. Having said that, PB directly boosts both of Cold’s shields by a decent amount, and they’re good for 2:00 a pop. It also impacts things like slows, -Def, -ToHit, so component aspects of things like Sleet will get bumped if you wanted; oh and heal effects so Frostworks. It could definitely give you a little added edge and make up some more ground to bring up Melee defense for the Mercs by including PB boosted shields… or you could just wait for a team mate to die and Vengeance!

Didn't know Strider had made a thread on this when they sent me a message, but I'll share the build here just for anyone else that's curious on it since I ended up rolling it for my own personal reasons beforehand anyway to test the experiment. My advice had been a Shield/KM to stack AAO for more -Dam, and of course going Soul gets Darkest Night as well, but my primary focus was also on damage potential on the upswing. Power Siphon has a nice 30/s arc (10/10/10) Up/Stable/Down that can be gotten close to perma without Hasten getting involved, then add Assault in there this thing shoots up to 217.5%, that's close to putting Double Stack Rage on notice. It also gives Shield Charge nuke level authority.

QFT As Nemu said having a purpose for each build is incredibly important, and sometimes it takes testing a set or combination of powers out to get the right feel for them before feeling comfortable with what that is. I spent hundreds of hours testing procs at the dawn of Homecoming and each major update that followed during that time before I started putting together the Mad King builds, let alone already being a comfortable build designer before that. The best thing I could add that often gets glossed over by experienced theory craft builders is this @Scarlet Shocker: Know your options and what you have on the table when it comes to IO's. Look at how the sets break down, what their bonus structures look like, get a feel for where you can resource numbers from. You don't have to memorize it all (although some of us end up doing it), but it helps to know if I said "Where can I get Energy Resists out of TAoE?" Where would you go? These things kind of go tandem once you get to a point of saying "I want to build X with Y and Z sets that does Support Role 2" You can best make that happen and know where to get the right slotting maximization to make that happen as Nemu talked about.

Fear is the least resisted form of control in the game and one of the most oppressive in 50+ content in particular. If an enemy can go BOOM and hurt you, Confusing it means, yes, it can go boom and hurt its friends too.

All I'm hearing is that Snarky is in fact a Unicorn.

I can definitely appreciate this. I have a character concept I yanked from the past into Homecoming when it started and rerolled him because I felt I never had a chance to really try and play his set effectively and wanted another go at it, but it still never really stuck for me and a lot of what was putting the whole thing together was the concept. A Dual/Cold Corr Anne Rice over Van Helsing Vampire where I felt the nature of his affliction could explain the movements and attitude of the gun styles. Instead I let it sit for a long time after it was 50 and not until recently did I roll Dual Pistols as a Blaster (DP/Nin) as a Force User (Jedi-adjacent) where I could toy back and forth between DP and a "Lightsaber" and found it much more enjoyable. The Cold side of the coin ended up in my Mercs/Cold MM after the MM revamp where it too also finds itself greatly more appreciated. Sadly I just find Peacebringers broken by the fact that they are offered so many powers and options and cannot truly take advantage of everything they can do, and I find it so unfair. They need more slots, like... A LOT more slots to really take advantage of what they could bring to the table and be more enjoyable for everyone instead of those few who manage to do bind-breaking tricks with macros and form swaps to really take advantage of Kheldian abilities across forms. Out of curiosity, have you ever tried a pairing of AR and Traps before on a Corr or Def? It would have a similar (but more advanced) play style.

What is it? I seem to always have one or two singular sets in mind that spend forever on the pre-drawing board. Not even the concept board but the "I really do want to play this, but I just don't know what to pair it with, or what to make the character around it, or if now is a good time, or I have all these other things I'm still working on... oh look this other idea came up and that's really cool I gotta do that first, and I'll just think about this one later... " *SIX MONTHS LATER* So yeah, I have wanted to get a War Mace character off the ground for like 18 months plus now, I've put builds together, I've toyed with some concepts, but I just never seem to be able to commit the character to creation before I end up stealing either their paired set, or their concept into another build! Character concept alone I've stolen three! Build pairings two! And it's rough because I've already got a pretty stable and complete collection that I don't like doubling up on power sets which makes it harder to more I do that 😅 My most recent build I had lined up was Shield/Mace as a Tanker, I was sold and just waiting for a concept to hit me, then today some discussions about Kinetic Melee were brought up and I was thinking about that pairing with Shield and a character came to mind and now I'm so sold on it that I'm pulling Shield away and doing KM again for the first time since the shut down and I realized "Dangit, I'm doing it again." Got me curious what's everyone else's one set, for whichever AT, they want to play but never seem to get off the ground?

Once upon a time at the foot of a great mountain There was a town where the people known as Players lived Their very existence a mystery to the rest of the world Obscured as it was by great clouds Here they played out their peaceful lives Innocent of the litany of excess and violence That was growing in the world below To live in harmony with The Lord of the mountain called Trash was enough Then one day Developers arrived in the town They came in camouflaged Hidden behind dark glasses and no one noticed them They only saw shadows You see without the truth of the eyes The Players were blind Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes Waiting for the sunset to come people going home Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head Now everybody dancing The dance of the dead The dance of the dead The dance of the dead In time Developers found their way Into the higher reaches of the mountain And it was there that they found the caves Of unimaginable sincerity and beauty By chance they stumbled upon The place where all good souls come to rest The Developers they coveted The jewels in these caves above all things And soon they began to mine the mountain Its rich seam fueling the chaos of their own world Meanwhile down in the town The Players slept restlessly their dreams Invaded by shadowy figures Digging away at their souls Every day people would wake and stare at the mountain Why was it bringing darkness into their lives? And as the Developers mined deeper and deeper into the mountain Holes began to appear Bringing with them a cold and bitter wind That chilled the very soul of the Trash For the first time the Players felt fearful for They knew that soon the Trash would stir from it's deep sleep Then there came a sound Distant first it grew into castrophany So immense that it could be heard far away in space There were no screams there was no time The mountain called Trash had spoken There was only fire And then nothing Oh a little town in Paragon The time has come to see There's nothing you believe you are But where were you when it all came down on me? Did you call me? no

I don't think you understand what the build actually does, nor the power selection choices. You were a bit too brazen in assuming what you were doing "fixed" anything, when in fact you robbed from global accuracy, destroyed the base resistances, took away the only means of mez protection, and improved absolutely nothing in the process. You need to go back to the drawing board on Enflame. With multiple procs the power has a chance of hitting against not only the entity that it started on, but those it spreads to. This is a great power to hit an EB or AV with and let them soak bonus damage up and spread it around. For spawn hopping drop it on the Commando and he'll spread the proc-happy fire around. Am I saying this should be in every MM build? No, but this is a build that has a lot of excess room and ability to multiply damage potential making Enflame a perfect choice here. And your "rework" of the Commando weakened him by forcing in an unnecessary defense proc when the Mercs were already at 45% AoE, you also stole his BU Proc and stole the Spec Ops Neg Proc which lowers both of their holistic DPS. The Damage procs only trigger in the powers that they associate with, not every ability in the pet arsenal. The commando only has on ability that gets -Def, the Spec ops have several. Hasten is 100% unwarranted here. It only adds marginal reductions (in seconds) to two powers in the build. FF+Rech backed M30 leverages far more than you realize and is all that is needed. Everyone can play how they choose, that's on them, but don't think you're going to make a better build than the Mad King on premise. My Mercs/Cold wasn't designed to be a "General Play" build (and frankly I don't see the auto-inclusion of Teleport and SS/Hasten into a build making it that either) when I focused on the Sorcery Pool and Soul Mastery. The character I built it for is a fanatical witch conscripted into military covert-ops whom manifests soldiers into existence based on her favorite sci-fi shows; and it works perfectly. Edit, For historical purposes, this is where the Spec Ops sit (-3.48 for Stealth bonus):