Sabrehawk

Unfortunately this sort of thing happens in most (though not all) RP communities that I've been apart of. It can be tempting to 'go meta'. But as the years go on I find myself favoring this approach less and less. I've taken to attempting to remain purely IC. Would my character believe them? Why not? Alternately would they believe the more outrageous claims? This can be just as interesting. For example, Sabrehawk in her early career believed some of the more extreme claims regarding power level. But as her career went on and she met some of the top dogs of the setting she noticed that the people she met in the field never exceeded a certain level of power. The people who made outrageous claims in the 'D, however, she rarely saw in the field and when she did (in IC missions) those people ate pavement more than the rest. Thus, she came to the conclusion none of those people possessed the abilities they said they did. Say what you will about the Grun'Tuk but at least the checks clear on time.

At the low levels Brute performs well above Scrapper in my experience. I am not an expert on every AT in the game but I suspect Brute is going to offer the smoothest experience as there's so many low level story arcs.

I suppose it depends on what you are building for. In my case I build for as much global accuracy, local accuracy, tohit and tohit debuff resistance as I can fit in while meeting my other build goals. This means Tactics, Focus Accuracy or Targeting Drone and Kismet. On top of this I try to stack +15% global accuracy enhancements from purples. Debuffs have been covered well above. However, some enemies also have a defense T9. Commonly Elude. The NPC version of Elude won't provide as much defense as player Elude. I think it's base defense bonus is slightly lower. In addition, it isn't supercharged by enhancements. Tohit debuff, elude, stacked Cim defense buffs and so on can lead to misses. Misses lower DPS. Lower DPS increases time to kill, increasing the amount of debuffs (further tohit, -defense, -resist or -end) that you are subjected to. Depending on the matchup (some armor sets suffer against specific enemy groups) lower DPS can be fatal. Another element to consider is your primary. Some attacks have defense debuff combined with buildup. On katana buildup (especially procced with Gaussians) can punch through some defense debuffs or enemy defense. You lay on the defense debuffs from katana during your window using attacks appropriate to the situation (AoE if fighting a large group, ST if trying to kill a lone tough/important enemy). Musculature is handy here as it increases the strength of your defense debuff. It can be layered with Paralytic Destiny which has a chance to apply a defense debuff of it's own. (When soloing hard content it can be helpful to craft a number of Incarnates to address enemy specific challenges.) It is important to note, however, that defense debuffs are only helpful if you can hit the target to apply the debuff in the first place. On sets without buildup (such as dual blades and claws) I have found Vigor to be useful in some situations. It offers a +45% local accuracy bonus to all your attacks. This is important because blinding feint and follow up must hit the target to apply their +10% tohit bonus. If you can consistently double stack this bonus you will effectively operate with an additional +20% tohit on top of what you already have. For example, a DB build I am testing has an almost perma +42.5% tohit. A number of procs may be of interest. The chance for buildup procs (Gaussian's and Decimation) are well known. There are also the Analyze Weakness and Siphon Insight procs. Each are 2PPM and provide +20% tohit for ten seconds. Most attacks in katana can slot Analyze Weakness so in theory you could maintain a near perma uptime. I assume the same is true of broadsword. Lastly, though it has been touched on above, attacks have their own inherent accuracy. The mechanics behind this are better answered by those more knowledgeable than I. But it is has been my experience that a 1.2 base accuracy attack is a game changer. Not all sets have an attack with 1.2 base accuracy. Energy Melee has two on scrapper; Total Focus and Energy Transfer. StJ has Crushing Uppercut and Psi has Greater Psy Blade. In my experience these punch through defense T9's quite well. Especially if preceded by buildup (doubly so if buildup is procced with Gaussian's). There are other sets with 1.2 base accuracy attacks whose names escape me at the moment. Of special note is Stalker. Every Assassins Strike/Stab/Slash/Slaughter/Scalp/Shiv/Shank/Slice/Slap has 1.2 base accuracy. Even in quick mode. This means an EM/ stalker could have three attacks with 1.2 base accuracy. Also worth mentioning is snipes. Slow snipes on scrapper have 1.2 base accuracy with the exception of the Mace snipe which has 1.25. Fast snipes, however, have 1.0 base accuracy once again with the exception of Mace snipe which has 1.05. In my experience the .2 makes a lot of difference but the .05 is imperceptible. I hope this is helpful.

The pretty long AE debate.

That seems like an issue between them and the farmer. If both parties are pleased, excellent. If not the unhappy party can depart.

Plus if you are blaster farming EBs can be lethal.

In PvP you use Defense and Elusively both. To the best of my knowledge the formula is: HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × (1 - TargetElusivity) × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ). I wanted to focus on this, as I don't have a lot of spare time at the moment and I feel this probably best illustrates what I am trying to say. But first, I can see that the thread is getting a bit heated. I don't want to contribute to that. I don't think is necessary for one, and for two, I think you've raised some good points elsewhere. For example, I strongly agree with you that /SR (on Scrappers and Stalkers) is an underperforming set. Perhaps for different reasons; I feel like the wheels fall off /SR when it's faced with real challenges, like 801 and the like, but I feel you raised an excellent and counterintuitive point. Perhaps most importantly to me you raised an interesting point. Now to my point. You were responding to this by me: Let me try and explain what I mean. Imagine that we have an X axis and a Y axis. X represents the build. As we move across the X axis all possible builds are represented. The Y axis represents the content being run. As we move up the Y axis we move across all combat content in the game, from the tutorial to every story mission the ITF, the ITF solo, 801s, all types of PvP and so on. We could then move across the X axis to any possible build and move up or down the Y axis to see that build in action against any piece of content whatsoever. If we went into the code of the game and changed one variable we could then see the impact of that change upon every single possible build and every piece of content. Let's say we went into the code and added one (1) damage to every attack. The game calculates your damage as normal, then adds a single point of damage on the end. Then we go back and scroll across every single possible build matched up with every single piece of combat content. Not all builds are effected equally but by and large the effect has been both small and most builds have seen their combat performance altered by similar magnitudes. Now lets say we change the hit calculations so that every attack has a minimum of 10% chance to hit rather than the 5% that we have now. Then we go back and take a look at how all possible builds are effected by this change in all possible content. What we find is the magnitude of impact varies highly between the build in question and the type of content. For example, very few builds would be effected by this change during the early levels. The beginning of the game would be largely the same. But as the difficulty of the content became more extreme so too would the distance between pre-change performance between the same build in the same situation and post-change performance between the same build in the same situation. But this change would not impact all builds equally. ScarySai has posted a Rad/SS Tanker build in the Trapdoor thread which produced some stunning times. Mids tells me the build has 21% S/L and 29% melee defense. This is an extremely high performing build and it's wouldn't be effected by these changes very much at all. When I take a look at one of BZB's Claws/SR Scrapper builds, Mids tells me it has 50% melee, 44% ranged and 49% AoE. This build would be strongly effected. The more a build depends on defense the greater the magnitude of the impact of this change. The more difficult the content the greater the magnitude of the impact of the change. The impact of the change does not scale evenly with level, across types of builds or across content. Some builds would be virtually unaffected as would some content. Other builds, and other content, would see a night and day difference.

We may have different concepts of what 'break' means in this context. Personally I would say that if a change in the mechanics of the game make a character capable of doing content at +4x8 no longer capable, or even close to capable, of doing said content then that build has been 'broken' by the change. However, soloing the ITF is not the only thing that would change. BZB is well known for soloing the ITF but he is not the only one who enjoys this activity. Personally I enjoy soling certain Dark Astoria groups at +4x8, solo bosses on. I suspect that several of my characters would no longer be capable of this. We clearly have different ideas of what 'break' means but I would view that as breaking builds that I have found enjoyable for a long time. But there are other changes. How would this effect high end content? Soloing Aeon's Strike Force or running Linea's 801 AE mission series? What about PvP? What you are proposing is a mild change to some content and a monumental, earth shaking change to other content. The magnitude of impact of this change on content does not scale linearly with the type of content. It might change nothing about the leveling experience for most sets. But other sets, at the extreme end of difficulty, would be devastated. There is some daylight between a change to a single powerset (Regeneration), in a single mode (PvE) and a change to a fundamental mechanic of the game that effects every character and every type of content, but not evenly. A buff to Regeneration in PvE affects players who use Regeneration in PvE. A change to the hit mechanics effects every single character in the game, but some far more than others.

Yeah, let's just buff a set that under performs in endgame PvE. Not the first time nor the last. But for the love of all that is (un)holy don't go fiddling with core mechanics. The number of things that would break I don't want to imagine.

Welcome!

I have pondered doing something like this as well. Basically a Batman build where the character is deliberately as expensive as possible. Purple sets, hamis+3 and so on. Was never sure what it would be best on.

I am perfectly happy with the crafting system as it is. If it isn't broken, well you know the rest.

Yes. I AE farm every alt to 50. There are two reasons for this. One, I just enjoy the endgame content more and made an alt to experience it through the lens of a different power set. Two, I work a lot of hours, have a single day off per week and only can play in the early AM these days. So I need to do everything in the most time efficient way.

Weapon sheaths. The NPC options.