Parabola

Not convinced we need another of these threads ... What do you think is currently preventing this? Absolutely.

This is probably completely unrelated but my gaming laptop started slowing down recently and I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why. I stumbled across the answer by accident; if the battery was completely charged and it was plugged in it was throttling the CPU for reasons that surpass understanding. I've got into the habit of running it for a bit before plugging in and it's been right as rain.

Cold has to get a mention too. A s/l shield that also slots the Res uniques (in case you aren't taking fighting), a heal/max hp buff, a panic button emergency power and some utility powers. I've even found the sleep to be useful as a cheap way of breaking up alphas if my primary and secondary don't have something better.

There certainly is now. No. No, no, no, no. I'm guessing you've not actually played the set. So you haven't then. Which makes this all the more ironic. Actually, what am I saying. Devs, are you hearing this? Claws needs a buff. It's the lowest DPS scrapper set.

Rad/SR is a good combo. I like super reflexes on brutes in particular, the power order feels right, you get a taunt aura and it is plenty tough enough. Rad then fills in the healing gap and as you say can handle all damage needs on it's own. End use needs some management but that's about it for drawbacks.

Good to know - I was confident on the slow but not the -rech. Thanks.

Claws/energy is my current favourite. Claws is just great across the whole game, quick attacks and early aoe means it exemps really well and it is a blender of destruction at high levels. Energy aura can get very tough indeed, particularly with a bit of investment. I also have a claws/bio but ea feels far tougher and I can't say I miss any extra offensive poke that bio might provide.

A 'suppress other people's fx' option would be a welcome addition to the game. Maybe with a range of settings such as toning down the particle counts, enforcing default power fx or enforcing minimal fx etc. In busy teams the riot of competing power fx can be a headache inducing nightmare. I have had to turn my graphics all the way down before when things have got really bad but that's not the ideal solution.

If you're looking at dark melee give a thought to going tank instead. In my opinion it is by a distance a better set on tanks. The aoe's are bigger and easier to use, soul drain works better with the higher damage scalar and tanks are tough enough to freely build all out for damage. My stone project is a stone/dark tank and it's going pretty well so far.

Procs tend to be not great in aura powers, they only check every 10 seconds and with the large radius of frigid protection you won't see much happening for your investment. Slot it for end mod, healing if you can spare the slots and slow if you really want to leverage that.

Any attempt to claim that knockback isn't a contentious issue in this game is completely disingenuous. I have been asked/told to stop using certain powers and even had derogatory comments for just showing up to a team with a storm summoner. I've also had good comments after people have seen me play, I consider myself pretty well versed in herdicaning etc. That people are commenting with surprise on good storm use speaks to the problem though, they are far too used to seeing it go the other way. And I'm going to hold my hand up and say that I've too often been on the other side as well. I've been the one asking someone to put certain powers away and have left teams where it has become too irritating to bother with. Positioning is just about the only skill you need to learn in this game. How mobs behave, the geometry of powers and how to leverage the former for the best use of the latter. Kb, repel, tp, immob, etc, are all things that one player can use that directly affect the ability of other players to do the same. They are all interesting tools and they enrich the game but we shouldn't pretend that they don't cause issues.

Just a quick note on this. Bear in mind that procs don't crit. You can get to the stage (with both ato sets) that crits are doing a decent percentage of your overall damage and they are only boosted by damage enhancement and +damage buffs. So for scrappers and stalkers in particular procs can have a little less impact than they do for other AT's. By all means slot procs but I wouldn't skimp too much on raw enhancement to do it.

Old Propel is up there too. But it’s primary function was to look awesome and not deal damage! I'd suggest that the same could be said of thunder strike. That power has been the death knell for many of my attempts at an elec melee. 1k cuts is also at 3.4 I see.

If I can I generally try to max out slow/rech resistance. As you say they are really common, particularly in the late game, and they can be killers. To my knowledge 100% res makes you immune to these effects?

On the ground.

Time bomb? If that counts. Devastating blow and slow energy transfer are around 2.9 seconds. Thunder strike is 3.4...

I've been thinking of trying this. If any combination of powers can get around the lack of a taunt aura it'll be mud pots and ice patch. That said some of the scrapper taunt auras that do exist are pretty weak and struggle to stop a determined runner. I've been playing an energy aura scrapper recently and have still been chasing runners around. I'm assuming that for taunt to work it has to interrupt the ai decisions, mobs tend to start running and then seem to do a check to see if they are taunted. If they are they turn around and come back but for energy aura that little initial run sometimes seems enough to break the taunt and so they just keep going.

I'm a great believer in slow powers. They provide more mitigation than is commonly recognised as they mess with the enemy ai. Mud pots and ice patch should work very well together on anything close to you. I love the ice manipulation blaster secondary as it has exactly the same combination of slow and ice patch but of course that doesn't have the rest of the armour set to back it up. Yes, fury does buff damage auras. Frozen fists is skippable but greater ice sword isn't the best dpa attack in the world so you need a plan for what your single target chain is going to look like. I tend to not want to wait for epic attacks so I generally take gis and grit my teeth in the hope it'll get buffed one day. Build up is probably optional but even on a brute it provides a noticeable damage spike, particularly when slotted with the guassian's proc. I really wouldn't skip frozen aura, ignore the sleep, it's a mini foot stomp. Pool powers are entirely up to you. I would tend to go the fighting pool route rather than leadership, stone armour benefits from both the s/l res and the defence. I always take hasten too but that again is dealer's choice. For the epic I nearly always take physical perfection too. The end management is useful and focused accuracy is great for those irritating end game enemies that love to debuff tohit and perception. This sounds like a good combo, I could be tempted to roll one myself.

I'd be very tempted to call that second one It Might Be What It Looks Like

I believe scourge is included unless that's been changed recently. If the more detailed power data has two separate values, each 50% of the total then that's base and scourge. The representation of scourge numbers in game and mids are both wildly inaccurate* (again unless this has been changed recently, not in front of my pc to check). * Edit: inaccurate is the wrong word, misleading is better.

I take combat jumping on most characters and kismet is the first thing I slot in it. I feel it is just as helpful at the lower levels when you do not have much in the way of global acc bonuses as it is at higher levels when you are trying to punch +4's while debuffed.

I could see DDR in a set bonus being problematic from a powerset balance point of view. Only super reflexes can easily cap DDR (shield on tanks also, maybe?) and it is a defining characteristic of the set. I'd be very surprised if this was made more widely available. That said I am always looking for ways to shore up debuff resistance, particularly for armour sets that rely on resistance for damage mitigation and so eat a lot of hits. Recovery/end drain and tohit/perception debuff resistance might make interesting additions to future io sets.

All good advice above. It's also helpful to use the mezzing tools blasters have available to them. The stuns and holds aren't nearly as powerful as those available to controllers but they can make all the difference. Learn which are the most problematic enemies and get your mez in first, unleashing that alpha aoe rotation can wait a beat or two.

The devs not posting here doesn't mean they don't read the suggestions though, and I can understand why they might be reluctant to comment. Any 'I like this idea' comment would be taken by some as a promise that everything else would be dropped while they worked on this new idea, and negative comments have to be handled carefully to avoid unnecessary drama. I'm sure the devs would love to shoot the breeze on here and kick ideas around but they are speaking from the position of authority and that means they can't really do that.

Oh I totally agree that these discussions should be encouraged regardless of whether they've been had before. They seem to quickly reach a point where side arguments and semi personal (or overtly personal) attacks replace any useful conversation directly related to the op though. My comment really was that this thread seems to have reached that point and I was surprised it was still going.