InvaderStych

I've done runs with my Psi/SD scrapper with and without VEAT buffs on the team and noticed a difference in durability with/without them. Psi Melee seems to do quite well on DASF, despite the minimal AoE it excels at eliminating priority targets and none of the AVs seem overly resistant to Psi, which can be an issue in some cases (Siege/Nightstar, for example). @Meknomancer - RE: Not a Tank/Brute/Scrap: Other than that it's been with the Fire/Martial blaster, and I don't think I've ever seen Inner Will fire off even remotely as often as it was during that run. Having that on auto seemed to help a great deal with mez. The "traditional" soft-cap build I've been running isn't right for the task though, too much investment in defense and not enough in offense, so I'm working on an alternate build that will be Fire/Martial/Fire - if I can figure out how to slot the damn thing. I'm torn. The way it is setup now lets me play more boldly and makes a good base for team buffs. OTOH, changing up the tactics a little bit and leaning on the team for survival means more delicious damage, so .... 🤷‍♂️ Blaster Experts? I know there are better secondaries for +dmg and other effects (the holds in /atomic might be interesting, for example), but there is something to be said for the "Free Break-Free" effect of Inner Will on Auto. Though Ripple 2 can make life tough on a blapper when the swarm comes to save the monstrosity. Hopefully switching to Hover/EvM from ground-pounding will help with that though.

Future attack chain: Burst of Speed -> Inferno -> Rise Of The Phoenix.

I mean, as one of the blasters on that 156 death run I feel it was more my role to provide the opportunities for it's use. 😄

Oh, yeah, no. My Fire/MC is far and away my favorite and most played toon, but there's no way I'd pick it to try to solo ASF. Mine isn't min/max'd either, but Martial is one of the most fun sets in the whole game, imo. They build great for solo play, especially with Inner Will, but mine folds like origami paper against strong AVs solo. Working up an alternate build with team support to lean upon in mind and keeping the spirit of the original build in slot one (with some minor changes, maybe) for more general use. It's actually sort of nice to have a reason to re-work the toon a bit. Honestly, Ripplesurge on the solo run was the most hectic of the fights. Rodney hits like a truck full of trucks, and I had to kite the battle where it is him and Zoe until all the adds were gone, then I could focus. But I had the most trouble with Ripple on that run because of his pets. Still though, on a blaster? Not sure I would have made it that far with mine. You are a more bold human than I. 🙂 Good point, but sort of a challenge in ways. On the one hand it's possible to duo-trio a run like this, though that doesn't grant the other players access to all of the dialog/text as hit happens. That's also dependent on finding willing folks to join a casual pace, read stuff run. Many players have multiple AT choices on hand to give it ago, but I also get that some (myself included) really only play 1-3 ATs primarily and folk's favorites might not be the "Solo Challenge" type. Not really sure what could/should be done for a solution. For the moment maybe we just need some willing "Tour Guides" for "Narrative Runs" where someone who wants to read through the missions keeps the star and the "Guides" are there knowing it'll be a slower run, but an easy DSO at the end. Sometimes there's a people solution, to what looks like technology problem. 🤷‍♂️

Yup. I haven't done that many runs on Live yet, but in each one several players had positive comments about this aspect, so I take that as a good sign. May I ask what the settings were and what toon you were using? My solo run was in Open Beta. The amount of time taken isn't really indicative as I stretched it over a few login sessions and took extra time to read. The Vanguard Ripple was changed between that run and release, so it might be worth me revisiting that fight under the same parameters and see if it is still do-able. FWIW: Psi/SD/Bod scrapper T4: Musc Radial, Degen Core, Melee (resist side) Radial(?), Rebirth Radial, Robo Drones Radial. Villainous +1x4 for everything up to Ripplesurge, then +0x1 from that point forward. Probably overkill to have dropped it, but I wasn't there to break the toon, lol. Skipped AV fights in the cavern Ripple. Easy Mode and I'm not ashamed of it. Wasn't for bragging rights, was for proofreading. 🙂 No reason to torture ourselves at +4 on Villainous just to read the narrative. 😄

Sweet, maybe by then I've have figured out a primary and a concept for a /stone scrapper. 😄 😖

Keeping the Smelters off the tanks makes difference. Ranged (and Scrappers probably) should be focusing those down ASAP; side-effect of that is keeping their attention which keeps the debuffs off the tanks. At least in theory. _______________________________________________ There is a significant difference between Villainous and Malicious; it might be worth considering a Villainous run for content/familiarization before bringing in the extra difficulties at Mali and above. There is some seriously top-notch writing in this one, as well non-mission-objective clickies to explore, so just a thought, but it's worth a "narrative run" of one has the time/inclination. Yes, it is long, but really only at Mali and above. Vanilla runs (which still net merits and DSO tables, if I am not mistaken) will go much faster once more folks get the hang of the flow/etc.

Task Force Results: 156 Opportunities for Vengeance.

I don't know and will admit that I could be remembering incorrectly. IIRC this was the reason given at some point. Animations maybe? Again, I could be totally wrong, and if I am I'll strike-through my original post. 🙂

That likely means trading Granite for Geode. I have no opinion on such things, but just as an FYI. Stalker/Scrapper /SA == No Granite == Yes Claws. 🤷‍♂️

FWIW; I'm looking more at alternate builds now using Hami/DSO/Boosted IOs for stuff that disables set bonuses, so it stands to reason those builds would be setup with no incarnates in mind. Also FWIW: Settings like Malicious/Relentless still allow iPowers, and while they currently only apply to DASF, my understanding is that those options will become available for other content as well. More to come, I suppose, but now more options. Difficulty with/without iPowers; dealer's choice. Seems like a win/win to me.

Yeah. I'll skip the spoilers, but I suspect you'll enjoy one particular moment of taunting dialog from an opponent in upcoming content. 😉 And then there's the other absolute genius source of dialog that I suspect will be landing in this thread shortly after pg3 goes live.

Close the thread. It has been won. You are officially the first person I've ever seen/heard mention Kidney Thieves in a conversation without me having previously introduced them to the band.

The ability to flag toons as something other than human: Alien, Robot, Demon, Ghost, Android, Elemental, etc. Not in addition to existing origins, but along-side them. Still occasionally thinking about this idea in the back of my mind after briefly rolling it around in a different thread here many months ago.

I'm a bit confused here, so bear with me. Proc rates on SD/GC really aren't all that great so I am surprised by this slotting. At the very least I'd expect to see the +50% ATO piece in SD in order to setup GC and avoid reducing the firing rate with GC's area factor. I am just going from memory, which I probably shouldn't and should dig up the PPM calc lying around. They both look to be slotted at around 33%acc and 75%dmg - EDIT: Corection - ~37%/88% - that seems like a fair amount of lost base/crit dmg for the sake of a chance of (admittedly exotic) dmg types that won't crit, not to mention lost +acc, which maybe is less of an issue with Kat with it's higher base acc? So, ignoring set bonuses because I agree with your core point and am reviewing some of my older builds with such things in mind, this is actually more effective offense than slotting both to max stats with 5 pieces and reserving a higher PPM, VR %dmg for each?

Yeah. That was the joke. 😉 Which was firmly aimed at myself more than anything else. And even still I'll take the status quo over the early days; Netflix didn't have nearly "everything" when it started streaming, then there was this window shortly after Netflix/Hulu started their early originals where both of them and Amazon had tons of overlap... except for the originals ... even now with the splintered landscape it's still light years beyond what we dealt with growing up - crap VHS copies of everything that mattered. 😄

Not so much found, as this is from more than 10 years ago, but it is a sci-fi gem that I'm not sure got the attention it deserved in real time: http://www.mercurymen.com/

Amazon is the only one I maintain without gaps as I order some staples and many other things from Prime, so the streaming stuff is a bonus to that. Everything else I will sub/un-sub as the season/content suits. Hulu I'll keep around when my cartoons are in season, for example. I also keep a Motor Trend subscription for part of the year during the WEC/DTC/BTCC racing seasons, because MT shows a lot of EuroSport broadcasts of races in their entirety. Same for NBC's Track Pass for IMSA endurance racing here in the States... Though I understand that next year IMSA will be on Peacock, so I might have to bite the bullet on that. The big issue here is that American motorsports commentators are complete trash compared to the Brits like John Hindhaugh and Jeremy Shaw, so I listen to that while watching the NBC cameras. Which was frustrating as hell during Petit Le Mans recently as the video feed showed a freaking recap of the race over 2 of the last 3 laps of the thing, when there was a LOT of drama and over-taking happening for the championship positions in the top class. It was cuckoo-bonkers for them to have cut away from all that. Ahem... sorry. I know this is one of those things only I care about around here. 😄 I have yet to dive into Disney+ series, but was able to watch the first couple seasons of Discovery and the first season of Picard via "channels" on Amazon although I don't see that being a thing now that Paramount+ is up and running. I suppose once Strange New Worlds is actually out I may jump in for that one. I've not had Netflix for quite some time, I did the "BritBox" package on Amazon for a hot minute so I could re-watch Red Dwarf and also sort of got into a police procedural called "New Tricks" which was silly yet fun. One thing to which I have been meaning to subscribe is Criterion. Edit, because I was having this thought just the other day: The hilarious part of all this is that we are getting exactly what we wished for 10+ years ago: "This Cable Package Nonsense is Terrible! Why can't I just pay for the things I want to watch." 5 years from now: "OMFG! Why do I have to subscribe to so many things? Can't I just bundle together what I want on one website???" 🤣

Possibly not in the spirit of the thread as it's from the secondary, but ... lvl 10 - Burst of Speed There are a lot of mechanically vital choices at this "tier," but BoS is the winner choice at this level, imo. 🙂

Parabolic Flight with SJ+DJ. Launch and hold until at max height in the direction you want to go, drift the remainder, aim the camera straight down to "feel" the falling effect. Something about falling from great heights in video games has appealed to me ever since Tribes and jet-pack skiing in that game. Super Jump was the first travel I ever took in this game back in '04. Once I unlocked it I think I spent the next day or so while in game just jumping around and exploring zones.

It doesn't, though the immobilize effect still triggers in combat logs, and proc dmg still occurs occasionally, although at what seems to be a reduced rate. I thought I saw a very rare, 1-2pt dmg tick from MudPots bleed through while in Geode, but I couldn't repeat it so I figured it was just me mis-reading something in the scroll. Irradiated Ground, because it is a funky pet thing does continue to function while in Geode, again with procs firing at what seems to be a reduced rate from normal. I want to emphasize seems to be again because that's all from just observation and I didn't actually pull any logs to examine closely. The other thing about Geode is that occasionally it gets destroyed in very short order. I've been running Jenkins' Infernal/Portal mission just as an easy thing to try different /Stone combos with, at one point I used it while making contact with the portal and it was destroyed almost instantly. I thought it might have been a bug but it was just a big burst of incoming dmg. Same mission at +4x8 and the pet only lasts a few seconds against a full group from time to time. Having it explode as a pbAoE is actually a really good idea; trying to stay in it for 30s for the full Brimstone buff is going to be a big of a challenge. I do greatly enjoy that it changes appearance as it takes damage. That's a very nice touch! 👍 Edit: Has anyone been able to determine in Brimstone's chance to Crit is affected by Scrapper ATOs?

That's fair enough. I do often lean too far towards the assumption that someone is referring to me when their comments are not directed, but leveled towards a group with whom I agree in spirit, if not in attitude or word choice. I saw those comments leveled at you and they were also useless, petty, counter-productive. I am sure you can also see how, as someone who both disagrees with you and is trying to discuss these questions constructively that when blanket accusations of "supermansplaining" are leveled upon those with which you disagree that I too would feel as attacked as you did from the comments leveled at you, directly, by others: There's nothing disingenuous about my position. I would love to see scrappers actually have their own play-style that differentiates them. Technically true. Scrappers are *already* Nerfed Brutes With RNG Burst Dmg. To answer the remaining questions: 1. I wouldn't know. I don't team with teams who routinely refuse players based on AT or Powers selection. I have no problems with people looking for a particular team composition for theme or challenge play, but as a matter of course if a PUG team is being picky about AT/Sets I know to run away quickly. 😉 I suppose another exception is a team nearly full looking to fill a gap - nothing wrong with that either. I think we all know the line I'm drawing in the proverbial sand here. 😄 2. Yup. Psi/SD routinely pulls aggro away from Tanks and Brutes. On the road to 50 so did the Savage/Invuln. Kat/Rad, same story. Pulling aggro off tanks all day long. The only reason it doesn't cause issues is the lack of difficulty in the high end game. I have a distinct feeling that when people are doing no incarnate runs and Relentless DASF it will be much more noticeable. In the case of the DASF, there are enemies there one will want to chase down with extreme prejudice and a taunt aura isn't going to make one bit of difference in their behavior. As a sign of things to come, the mechanical efficiency of auto-taunt may decrease with new content. 3. So, in this theoretical situation there's also no Controllers or Doms, no Defenders or Corrs? "Tanking" is just a form of "Control" if one breaks down the core of the game far enough. I am missing something in this question. Scrappers should have taunt auras just in case a team can't recruit a brute or a tank? That doesn't really speak much for the perceived value of the AT. So, I'll pose the same question again: Is there a series of +dmg changes to Scrappers in exchange for removing taunt from all secondaries that you would feel is balanced enough against Brutes without stepping on the toes of Stalkers?

Ok, a lot to digest here since I was last in the thread, some very valid points made, and I think perhaps we should back away from the question for a second and try to settle upon the identity of a Scrapper, as the question of Taunt has been brought up in several threads since the release of Stone armor for Scrappers to Open Beta. Absolutely. At the moment we seem to have camps who are focused upon the mechanical efficiency of the taunt mechanic while others are focused on trying to nudge scrappers into something more unique than just a "Less Durable Brute With Critical Hits." 1000% agree with this idea. I would re-phrase that people care about how taunt makes the game mechanically more efficient/simpler to play. Which is totally fine. I get it. But if that is the desired play-style, Brutes are around the corner. So, for sake of balance - because @Bill Z Bubba is the most correct when it comes to balance issues between scrapper secondaries - although it is far more than just taunt/no-taunt that differentiate them, imo. Adding a taunt to /SR or /Nin (thematically, why, really?) isn't going to make them suddenly faster in Trapdoor clear times than Bio or /SD simply because those sets have tools that dramatically increase damage output. However, the converse is also true. Removing taunt from all of the scrapper secondaries isn't going to change the performance rankings all that much either. /Fire will still be too squishy for most outside of dedicated team-only builds, /Regen will still be broken, etc etc ... Undeniably. A Taunt aura is the most mechanically efficient was for a melee toon to solo through content expeditiously. The question is do we really need 3 classes of melee with that as a focus? This is a non-issue on teams; and when I solo "mechanical efficiency" isn't really my goal anyway. So how about this: how much of a damage increase to scrappers would it take for the trade-off of losing all taunt from the ATs auras in order for that to feel balanced against your Brutes? Is it possible to give them said increase without stepping on the toes of Stalkers? Should it be a base dmg increase? A cap increase? Target Cap/AoE size buffs? People who's primary focus is maximum mechanical efficiency will be bothered by it, mostly when solo. As it is a non-issue on teams, I don't see why the entire AT needs to be relegated to the role of "Nerfed Brute with RNG Burst DMG" simply for the sake of mechanical efficiency. Please stop making value judgements about what other people consider fun. Save that sort of vitriol for Facebook, it serves no purpose here. I don't think wading through static mobs that are racing to be the first to die in the swarm around me is all that fun or interesting, but I see no reason to pass judgement over those that do.

If Inner Tube ever does actually get movement, someone needs to write some kind of "Lazy River" bind set for collecting River Rat. Something that just points one in the appropriate direction after each is collected, and hits auto-run, or something. 😛