Parabola

Oh indeed. I wasn't suggesting there has been malicious intent. It does look a little like people have voted to talk about the sets they like rather than ones that need it though. I'm certainly not saying dark blast is in the energy melee or trick arrow category either. I just saw the run of dark sets and thought 'great, we'll get onto dark blast in a bit, I can bang on about it's ease of use again'.

Yes the blue caves can be a pain to navigate but I think they look great and variety is the spice of life. My biggest complaint with them is how diffuse the spawns are. You end up with one group of enemies scattered over most of a room with los blocking terrain in the middle so getting them all together is a pain. That coupled with the ranged preference of the kind of enemy that tends to spawn cave maps creates significant frustration. If the mobs could be tightened up then I think much of the hate for blue caves might go away. It is true that the code that governs when enemies show up on the map could help out a lot more than it does. There are a million and one little nooks and crannies for enemies to hide in and the restriction that means you have to have only members of a single spawn left to see them is needlessly strict. Blue caves would benefit enormously from the enemies being easier to find but many other map types would too.

I really don't get on with kin as a set to play. It just seems like 8 fairly meh powers on the way to one really good one. Admittedly it also has speed boost but that does nothing for the user and even if I'm in a buffing mood I want more back than kin can offer. It isn't helped by fulcrum shift being the last power you get, that's a long slog to get to a set defining power. Kin doesn't do anything much to keep you alive and even with all the damage in the world there is a limit to how far the 'kill them first' philosophy can take you. Time however is packed full of useful and fun powers. Admittedly it also saves the best till last and for that reason I prefer it as a primary rather than a secondary but at least the road to get there is paved with good stuff. It has good buffs, good debuffs and mitigation that will actually keep you alive. Hosing mobs down with bullets while they crawl around, debuffed and periodically held, is just great fun. So I would go with time but I would roll this as a time/dp defender. Time is a superb support set for proc builds (filling in recharge, defence, to hit and recovery) and dp takes procs really well. I'd much rather get the survivability elements of the build in place earlier and push the nuke back than vice versa. Dp also gives you two decent early aoes so it's no real hardship to wait for it's later powers.

Kings Row is the best row. It's the zone that I remembered the most when the game was gone and the one that brought a tear to my eye when we got back. It has to be Perez Park for the hazard zone. I love the atmosphere. I have been known to hang out there for no good reason. It is ripe for a bit of content development too. Rogue isles unfortunately have never done it for me.

I love the feel of the low level game. I love the zones and the enemies. I particularly love the more down to earth stories. I also love the teaming dynamic at lower levels, with the team really being greater than the sum of its parts. However, not all characters are enjoyable to play at low levels and that creates a real problem. Some AT's and powersets within them have really back loaded ability curves. Controllers and Dominators are good examples. They are both transformed at higher levels by things like epic pool powers and decent slotting. It pains me a little to find myself blasting through the part of the game I prefer to get to the point where I have a character working in the way I would like. Several times I've done just this and shelved the character almost immediately due to lack of investment and not finding the high level game as satisfying in various ways. It's difficult to say what could be done to address this though. I've often thought that TO's and DO's should be removed from the game; you are already limited by slots without having only rubbish to put in them (I am aware of the changes currently in progress in this area). Even with all that though at low levels you are going to be limited by your available powers. Maybe there could be a case for a review of power order in the more back loaded sets to bring the powers that define the feel of the character a little earlier?

DA feels like a brute set to me. Damage auras work well with fury and afaik don't crit, higher AT res cap and aura taunt that a scrapper doesn't get. BS is possibly a bit better on scrapper due to meaty crits but on balance I would lean towards brute I think.

Just did a bit of testing and yeah i couldn't see the procs hitting the additional targets. Knockdown affected all though. I assume the aoe damage is affected by damage slotting and not a fixed amount? It seems ablating isn't the best power to proc out...

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yeah, I'm not looking to try to tank, it's more about solo performance against the enemies we all love to hate. Of course anything can be solo'd at +0x1 but that doesn't feel all that super, +something x4-6 with bosses is probably more the mark I'd like to hit. I'm looking to run a stalker solo through all the content both sides (maybe one per side I haven't decided) and so don't want to find myself several months down the line with something that simply can't handle some endgame enemies. My candidates so far are a KM/EA and a DB/SR. They are both characters that I have sitting around waiting for a reroll but I'd be perfectly happy to go with something else if there was a much better option. I have a 'I hate psi' build for the EA as follows: This does make a few sacrifices along the way to build up that toxic/psi res though. The DB/SR feels like it might be the stronger candidate even though I do love EA and the lack of a heal is a concern. It looks like it will do more damage, it has stronger defences and it has better debuff protection. Playing with procs I've spotted something odd about ablating strike - it's the finisher for sweep and mids seems to be calculating it's proc chances as an aoe rather than a single target attack. However if that isn't correct then loading it out with procs should turn it into a more than serviceable aoe at the end of each sweep combo. Or does it calculate as a single target attack when single target and then as an aoe during sweep? Does anybody know how this functions? Current build for the DB/SR:

MA is amazing on tanks but I have no experience with it on brutes or scrappers and you couldn't pay me to take it on a stalker. No aoe? Seriously?! I can't help noticing that as predicted our journey through dark sets has finished before we stopped talking about sets that are absolutely fine and got onto one that would have actually been worth discussing: dark blast. Obviously totally off topic now but please can we look at the structure of the cones in dark blast to bring them closer together in range and arc?

As the title says really. Which armour set would you like to have when you come up against the games more annoying enemies? I've built a dark tank to perform well against just about anything but of course stalkers don't have anywhere near as much res. Would an overcapped SR be as good as anything? EA can also get pretty tough but with a psi hole (at least sr covers most psi through postional defences) and much less ddr.

Loving this combo. My current build is here:

I have recently been playing a time/rad with more of a focus on procs. Time is a superb defender primary for proc builds as it helps all four of the things that become an issue when you mostly leave set bonuses out: defence, recovery, recharge and tohit. I much prefer this on a defender than a corruptor for a few reasons. Firstly you get farsight and chrono shift earlier which really helps the leveling up process - in a straight choice between delaying the nuke or chrono shift by 6 levels I'll delay the nuke. Also procs really do even out the damage differential between the two AT's and I've found scourge to be disappointing every time I've played a corruptor. If I want to simply blast away in a team then blasters seem by far the better choice - they can just build for defence set bonuses as they get so much damage and so end up being just as tough, they get huge recovery from the sustains and they are far simpler and quicker to use in combat with no buff/debuff prep time. At the moment I don't see the space in the game that corruptors are supposed to be occupying - squeezed out by proc built defenders on one side and the much improved blasters on the other. Scourge really could do with a buff in my opinion. Anyway - the current version of my build is below.

I was thinking exactly this the other day. Allow all contacts below your level to be talked to with the level range of each mission clearly marked. If you take a mission you are auto exemped down to the appropriate level. If you are leading a team the entire team follows suit. It would open up a huge amount of content to pugs without having to create anything new (although of course I've no idea how mechanically complicated it might be). The flashback system is only really usable solo due to the tf mechanics and there are only so many radio missions I can stand!

I had a plant/rad back on live and this has reminded me how much fun it was. The pairing has a certain synergy because plant loves recharge and end management and both sets mature early. I generally really like rad as a controller secondary as everything after level 20 is basically optional. This frees up space for getting the epic attacks in early which completely change how a controller plays. Rad is also slot light which is generally helpful. Chasing softcaps is probably going to be difficult with this combo but you have controls and debuffs doing much the same job.

I'm sure you've checked this too but just to make sure, you don't have the superior sets in game but not in mids or vice versa?

I'm finding myself wondering why the tanker community has such a tendency towards absolutism. You don't see the volume of 'my opinion is fact' or 'if you don't take x, y, or z then you are doing it wrong' in other AT forums. The biggest sin any player can commit is nothing to do with their build or even their skill at playing, it's being a rude or objectionable teammate/member of the community. In my opinion of course :).

All of this is entirely true but isn't the whole of the story. We don't attack constantly so we alternate between periods of high endurance use and recovery. Running toggles doesn't massively increase our endurance use as such but it does cut down on our endurance recovery. Slotting attacks for end reduction is vitally important but if you are running so many toggles that your net recovery is minimal then you are going to burn yourself out either way. The answer is of course to keep an eye on the whole picture, slot attacks for end reduction and try to keep a decent net recovery so you can keep downtimes to a minimum. As I said, I think it's perfectly fine to take maneuvers on a defence tank. I just put the endurance use comment in as a bit of balance as I couldn't see any other reason why it would be considered such a bad idea that it represented 'a failure'.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement. Tanks get good modifiers in the leadership pool and getting defence from maneuvers might free things up elsewhere in a build. Also your teammates get to benefit. The end cost is a major consideration on a toggle heavy AT though.

It's not so much the mitigation (it debuffs damage as well as slowing) but the aggro it generates that makes it a must have. Nothing is stickier than an ice tank running icicles and chilling embrace.

You leave out energy absorption?! It fixes end problems (which are a real thing on ice tanks) and provides extra defences to provide a buffer for debuffs or shoot for incarnate caps. Sure you can do almost anything with IO's and incarnates and can likely build so much defence and recovery in that you might not need it eventually, but levelling and exemped down it's got to be easier to have it surely? This is true but I still took it on my ice tank. In an ideal world the tank would never be in danger of going down and so the power would be completely redundant but accidents do happen. At that point you can pop hibernate and run the risk of losing aggro and not attack while you get some health back, or die and definitely lose all aggro and not be able to attack. If you die and get rezzed then you have to toggle up, which is a bit of a process on an ice tank, but hibernate avoids that too. And it works perfectly well with just the base slot. I certainly don't consider it a must take but I always would.

Was going to write a big long thing but it all boils down to; less arachnos, more agency.

The difficulty of the game in teams, particularly at high levels, is something of a hot button topic around these parts. There has been significant power creep over time and this always was designed as an mmo that could be solo'd. We now have the situation where people are teaming on characters that are perfectly capable of handling the same content at maximum settings solo and this of course has an impact on the experience of their teammates. At lower levels where characters are less developed this is less of a problem but there the tendancy is for content to be run at easy settings for maximum kill speed. This has the same effect for characters built more with support in mind where they can feel like a fifth wheel. However, when the going gets tough a debuffer (or a good controller) can make all the difference. One answer to all this is to make your own teams and crank the difficulty up until the kill speed drops out of the cakewalk bracket. Also don't be afraid to ask for the difficulty to be raised when on someone else's team. I've had refusals but never seen anyone get upset by this. Another thing to be wary of is joining teams running at a very different level to yourself. The xp is fantastic as a lowbie joining a high level team but you won't feel like you are doing much. Ultimately this game is designed to be very casual friendly and solo friendly. All characters are expected to contribute damage and not all support powers are going to be needed in all situations. If you find yourself in such a team then concentrate on blasting away or leave and do something else if that's not proving to be fun.

I've been giving this a bit more thought and decided that I'm going to drop mace and go fire. I don't strictly speaking need an epic shield because of ranged softcap, to hit debuffs, immobilize and knockdowns. Adding bonfire into the mix just sounds like fun. It also makes this build even closer to my ta/dark defender with bonfire subbing in for oil slick arrow. I put the two side by side and it's amazing how well the defender compares in terms of damage (many, many procs). Not as survivable though in most cases and the blaster can bring the hurt constantly whereas the defender is a nightmare on the blue bar.

Because of everything really. Mag 3 hold with good duration on a shortish cooldown with no crash. On a blaster. Cap P has said he screwed up with this power in particular and it will be 'adjusted'. I just hope the nerf hammer only hits this power and leaves the rest of the set alone (which is top tier even leaving this power out altogether).

Oh sure there are trade offs. Mind you the regen that the numina proc gives you seems functionally irrelevant to me. Regen in general needs to be huge in order to make a real difference. I guess what I'm saying is that I have a priority order for adding things to health and stamina that looks like: panacea > perf shifter proc > miracle > perf shifter end mod > end mod > numina proc. Don't get me started on my real pet peeve which is blaster builds that mule the sustain and then slot health and stamina out...