Parabola

Poison is a very weird set in my eyes. Lopsided and back to front. Most of its functionality comes in just four powers and most of the rest are totally skippable. And it gives its hard target debuffs first (for all those av fights we have at low levels...), but it makes you wait all the way to the tier 9 for its general mob debuff. No set should have that number of skippable powers or be that backloaded imo.

This is exactly what killed my attempt at this idea and every /en blaster I've tried. I end up feeling like my attack chain is an almost endless series of self buffs with the occasional attack thrown in.

True but spines is so light on single target that ripper is it's second highest dpa attack (at base values)... Spines seems to be in an odd place overall. Given it's popularity for farming I doubt it's very high up the list for buffs but if you exclude the farmers they are thin on the ground indeed. Actually I seem to remember one of the original devs, I want to say Castle, saying something along the lines of spines being outside the boundaries of the design parameters, and if he did look at it nerfs would result. I wonder if he had it confused with Claws 🙂. I think my biggest problem with the set is that it feels like it should be doing something really exotic with the 'neural toxin' damage but actually lethal and toxic are heavily resisted. Also the rider effects of slow and -rech aren't nothing but they aren't the most noticeably useful.

Here's mine. I built for tox/psi res on top of the usual stuff. Neg def isn't quite to soft cap but energy drain sorts that out.

I suspect this may set a new forum record for thumbs down reactions.

Remember though that resistance only resists resistible resistance debuffs. If the debuff is flagged as not resistible then you are going to suffer the full effect of it regardless of how much resistance you have. However, a buffer over the cap will still be useful to give you some leeway in that scenario. As previously mentioned the whole topic of game balance is very complicated. In many respects I don't think the original designers did themselves many favours in this regard. Much of the game that we know and mostly love seems to have been something of a happy accident of dodgy design decisions working out well in the end somehow. I imagine a truly balanced version of the game would have diminishing returns built into just about every mechanism and therefore operate within a much tighter range of parameters. But making those sorts of changes seems unlikely at this stage!

Trick Arrow (defender primary)/Trick Arrow (controller secondary). Lots of procs and a couple of pool attacks later and it would be a monster.

Complaining about a free server and comparing it to other free servers that nothing in the world is stopping a person from joining instead is really bizarre behaviour. As said above HC are going for 'as live' stability, other servers aren't. People just need to pick their poison.

☺️ I imagine that if nothing else it will be the potential that irradiated ground gives for afk farming that will drive changes. The devs have already expressed reservations about that 'activity'. I'm remembering the reactions the last couple of times the farming community felt targeted by changes... I wonder if the devs have considered changing the auto fire ability so that it can't be placed on a power with a damage component? *Ducks behind cover*

I can almost hear the rage quitting already.

Thought I'd have a crack at what this might look like if I played it. More damage but less defence (I don't bother much on Rad). I put in repulsing torrent and between that and burst there should be a decent amount of soft control, and the ff+rech procs will help recharge things like power siphon and radiation therapy.

I'm something of a dark melee on tanks advocate and if it's a straight choice between the two I can't recommend going brute. The aoe sizes is a factor (and an important one with DM as it really benefits) but an even bigger factor is soul drain and how it interacts with damage scalars. I advise anyone making this choice between tank and brute for this set in particular to build sample characters in mids and then have a look at what soul drain does to their relative damage levels. This highlights a general point about where brutes and tanks are; tanks benefit disproportionately more from moderate damage boosts. Sure, if you are at the caps like when farming the brute is still more damaging, but at more regular levels of +damage the tank often outdamages the brute (and hits more enemies, slots more procs and is tougher). Trying to pin down a sensible level to set fury to as an average is of course a variable in all this but it takes very high levels of fury indeed to compete when soul drain is hitting more than a couple of enemies.

No problem. The Ice Arrow slotting turns it into a fairly damaging attack as well as being a hold but slotting it purely for hold is a perfectly legitimate way to go too. I always build for recharge pretty much regardless of the character. Being able to cycle your best powers more quickly is never a bad thing. This also takes care of damage - +damage bonuses don't really offer a huge amount in comparison. For blasters the next priority is always some sort of self protection. For an all ranged combination like arch/ta going for ranged defence is a natural fit. On that subject, you've taken mace for your epic which may be for theme but if it is purely a tactical choice then it might be worth considering other options. The thing is that with ranged soft cap the s/l/e defence won't really be doing a huge amount for you. I've taken mu for charged armour so I can back up the ranged defence with a bit more s/l/e resistance. Also the spiderlings look cool but they are unfortunately not very tough. Another note is your endurance slotting. Blaster sustains (eagle eye for ta) give twice the base recovery that stamina does. A lv50 pure end mod enhancement in a sustain gives more recovery than anything else you can slot in a single slot, including the panacea proc. I've not played a blaster yet that I've managed to run dry with just a pair of end mods in the sustain, a panacea proc in the health base slot and a performance shifter proc in the stamina base slot. So you can save yourself some slots for use in other areas. I'd also consider your slotting in explosive arrow. The winter sets are very expensive and this isn't gaining you a huge amount in this build. I like to get a kb->kd in here to avoid scattering nicely bunched enemies and a couple of procs to beef the damage up. The sixth slot has a force feedback +rech in it in my build (I leave these out of mids because they distort the numbers but they are well worth slotting). Have fun with it!

I don't entirely trust pylon testing in general because whenever I do it repeatedly I see such huge swings in my times. I accept that a lot of that is likely user error but with the randomness of misses and proc chances it just seems inherently unreliable. I'm not prepared to grind out the number that would be needed to smooth all that out! Yeah it's really the tricky issues of whether to go degenerative core or radial and assault core or radial that I struggle with. Whenever I've tried to test it I've not managed to come to a definitive answer (unreliable testing again!).

Well, I clearly suck at this because my pylon times are an embarrassment! I can see that having devastating blow is a bit of a must though. Sigh ... At least that solves my dilemma though - I'll take all four single target attacks and put unrelenting fury in strike, brute's fury in smash, proc out siphon and hecatomb in blow. What incarnates do you suggest?

I've been following this thread with interest and it has inspired me to go back to my rad/sr brute and finish incarnating her etc. I'm a little disappointed to hear that the devastating blow rotation comes out solidly ahead as I have just dropped it and am much happier with the character as a result. I'm going to stick without it I think even if it costs me dps, a character I enjoy playing is always going to out dps one I never log into! My next big debate is the placement of the ato sets. Unlike stone I have no damage aura (obviously not going to ruin irradiated ground with an ATO set) and can only reasonably fit one of them into my main attack chain (and even then it'll be in contaminated strike with a slightly piddling chance to fire). Ideally I'd like to use the unrelenting fury set to help the sustain but I've no idea how much I'd be giving up in terms of extra fury and therefore dps. I'll go and do a couple of pylons on test to see if there is a big difference but I find pylon times so swingy that I don't entirely trust them. Does the brute's fury proc actually have a significant impact?

Here's mine in case there's anything that is useful to you. I accepted a hair off ranged soft cap to get very close to perma hasten (ff in explosive arrow and upshots will push that over) and to add resistance. Thinking about it I could easily swap out combat jumping for maneuvers to make up the difference. Not that it really matters with flash arrow in the mix as well.

I'm not an expert on Illusion but this looks decent. Couple of notes: Another slotting for phantom army might be 4 expedient reinforcements (all the ones with recharge + acc/dam) and two soulbound allegiance (dam/rech and chance for build up). I've seen it used in other builds and it's what I had planned for an illusion I never finished. The problem with slotting a power purely with procs like you have acid arrow here is that it still needs to hit. I can't see what your global accuracy is like (it should be decent because of all the purple sets) but I like to fit the kismet piece in somewhere on proc builds particularly if I'm not using tactics. You also look like you might be in danger of suffering end wise. Swap the numinas piece for a panacea proc at the very least but you might find you need to scrounge up some more slots from somewhere for more sustain slotting. That said you are running ageless and that may suffice if you don't plan on exemping much. World of confusion slotted with Armageddon seems quite an expensive way of getting another purple set into the build, in a power that isn't really all that impressive. Not saying don't do it but it might be worth looking at alternatives? Have fun with it 🙂

Sorry I can't open that - my mids is behind the game a bit. If you post a forum export I'll eyeball it. The FF proc gives 100% recharge for 8 seconds I believe. That's quite a strong boost but obviously short lived.

No that looks like a sensible slotting depending on what you are wanting to achieve. Positron's blast has good bonuses and I often use it with another proc in the last slot. I can't see from this which pieces of positrons blast you have slotted though. If you have the dam/rech piece in there it will be slightly lowering the proc rate of the posi proc (assuming that is slotted) and the FF proc. Proc rate is affected by a few factors but the one we have the most control over is the recharge directly slotted in the power; the higher this is the lower the proc chances. However the FF proc in an aoe like psionic tornado only needs to trigger once on any of the mobs you hit so whatever its chances of firing you should see good returns if you hit enough people.

Thought I'd expand on this a bit. When I'm looking for a soloist I always think melee first. Not that other AT's can't solo well but melee AT's are more naturally geared towards it, particularly if the character isn't supported by IO's. All the melee AT's are well suited to soloing in their own ways but the one that I feel loses the least performance without IO's is the brute. The usual argument about brutes having weak ATO sets gets turned on its head here, I would seriously miss the ATO sets playing a scrapper or stalker in particular, but a brute gets comparatively little from its ATO's. I thought staff/bio could work well for a few reasons. Bio is a very good armour set that offers a mix of defensive, offensive and sustain tools. Every power is useful, including the tier 9, and the heal/absorb/regeneration mix will work pretty well without IO support. The adaptations also add flexibility to the mix, allowing you to react to different enemies as required. Staff isn't rated as an uber set but that is generally in the context of IO builds. Its performance ceiling isn't all that high which limits its popularity. But its base performance on SO's should actually be pretty good. It has three aoes which should be plenty alongside bio's damage aura, and it has a serviceable single target chain. It also provides stacking melee defence and some knockdown to help toughen up bio. And of course it also has forms to add further flexibility. Redraw will probably be the biggest issue with this. Sadly staff does not have a no redraw theme and bio requires regular use of the three click heal/absorb/regen powers. Even so I am seriously thinking of trying it myself. Its been so long since I played an SO only character that it sounds a refreshing change of pace.

I'd probably go with some kind of brute. Maybe staff/bio for the flexibility and they should work well together.

Oh ok, whatever. We are seeing different things.

I get use out of end drain and regularly drain ordinary enemies before defeating them. I'm not sure about av's but eb's can certainly be drained flat if there is more than one elec on the team. And as I said above even if you don't drain the enemy all the way the extra damage from shock isn't nothing. I'm picking up that you'd like end drain to do more but pointless is a strong word.

I have to disagree with this assessment*. If you frankenslot short circuit to bump up its end drain and use charge up to spike it you can do noticeable end drain even on a blaster. Even if you don't flatline enemies (and I do flatline them often) you can get them into the range of shock and do extra damage, which may not be huge but every little helps. Blasters usually swim in end so they don't get much from the end return mechanic though. Tesla cage is an odd one. I will always want to take hold powers so the extra mechanics are a nice bonus, and aoe of any description is never useless. The low base damage encourages proc slotting but that doesn't do anything for the chaining aoe, whether that is worth any extra damage slotting itself I'm very unsure about. All in all I was taking the power anyway so however I slot it more damage is always welcome. * You may be talking about team performance? There you will indeed rarely see anything drained enough to matter. Then again 'enemies are dying too fast for my (insert powerset mechanic here) to matter' isn't an uncommon issue. I've paired it with ice, and martial would be another good fit. The problem with end drain is if you flatline the enemy they will immediately run to the hills. Having a slow aura gives you time to then shoot the slow motion runners in the back which is hugely satisfying. Slow in general is fantastic mitigation as the ai often seems to get confused and enemies wind up faffing around rather than attacking.