nihilii

I multibox, but I would never do so on a team that isn't friends only. It just seems bad mannered. I don't care what other multiboxers do but I think anyone has the right to not want to team with such a setup.

Yes, for sure! I love duos, trios, quartets. At that size it feels like you're closely working with each other's strengthes; and with semi-optimized characters, most of the "tough" tasks are a good challenge. Even though it's happenstance, the game on x8 actually feels designed for 4 friends playing together. IMHO this is the peak experience.

What's your favorite thing you worked on that never made it live? And if possible, can you tell us why it didn't happen?

It cannot be helped. There's absolutely nothing in Fire Melee that could be replaced. Nothing at all.

To an extent this is true but FM is a special case because Tankers get Combustion instead of Cremate. They trade a little ST damage output for 2x the AoE output. TBH I find your reasoning justified, /EA alone is worth playing a Brute.

I think this is truer for SO builds but shifts somewhat on IOs + incarnates. During Meltdown, /rad can surpass 75% S/L/F/E/T res even before taking damage or using Barrier. Practically this means you will be hardcapped quite often, and S/L/E alone covers most of the damage the game throws at you. There is excellent synergy cycling Meltdown and Hybrid Melee too. Likewise, +41% damage (for Scrappers) is good but it's dampened by a 3s animation for 60s duration + 10s recovery crash. On SOs this is worth it. When you have Musculature and set bonuses and damage procs and a Gaussian proc in your Build Up and all, the juice is less worth the squeeze. No matter the AT, Meltdown as offensive tool never worked for me because Elude-like recovery crashes are brutal. The time I spend handling endurance at the end seems to counteract the benefit of +1 extra damage SO for a minute. Perhaps not 1:1, I think we come out ahead ever so slightly, just not as big as it might look on paper. The Brute faces the same recovery crash, of course. As you rightfully argue, Brutes get less out of +dam. So if Meltdown is slightly positive for Scrappers, then it should be less so for Brutes - neutral or perhaps even slightly negative. However, that is my point in a nutshell: the defensive boost of Meltdown is significantly more important, as going from 70% res to 90% res triples your survivability. I run tight end builds and have no discipline. Your mileage may vary. I could see Meltdown working well for someone who always activates the 3s animation while jumping and either always monitors their endurance or builds with enough surplus to cruise through the -recovery.

I'm quite fond of Vigor anytime I can get away with it. The combination of high accuracy and high endurance reduction opens up significant build freedom. Best candidates are Brutes, who get less out of Musculature than other ATs so have an easier time making the sacrifice. Ideally with sizeable +regen/heal/+maxHP components to their secondary. Something like /energy (to boost the maxHP in Overload) or /regen (to boost... everything) can get so much out of Vigor.

I think: - TW/ is such a powerhouse it will work well on either AT. It is very bursty and with long recharges so it does good with the Scrapper ATO. But it's no slouch on a Brute either. - /elec works better on Brutes for the reasons you listed (plus having taunt baked in your attacks is always nice on powersets with damage auras) - /energy is, in my opinion, significantly better on Brutes than Scrappers *if* you're willing to use the T9, as Brutes have significantly more HP than Scrappers. It's an excellent set for Scrappers nonetheless because /energy is already one of the greats before T9 use... - /wp would likely fare better on Brutes for the res cap (which you can hit on S/L with the T9) and higher HP to fuel regen. That being said, /wp is /wp... aka not very good relative to almost any other option, in my opinion. On Scrappers /wp at least comes with the advantage of a mild aggro aura, on Brutes this advantage fades as every Brute comes with an aggro aura

Radiation is a resistance/healing based set and Brutes have a higher resistance cap + a higher HP pool. Brutes get a lot out of Meltdown, whereas Scrappers bang their head against the 75% cap. As for Savage, it's not one of those sets that rely specifically on damage buffing nor does it have crazy synergy with the Critical Strikes ATO. While the damage balance always inches towards the Scrapper side, here the relative loss is smaller for the Brute than it would be for other choices. Given Savage/Rad, I think there's a strong case to be made for Brute.

The I27p3 endurance drain nerfs were massive and unwarranted. It was sold with a damage bonus for elec blast, but TBH the damage boost is minor and every other end drainer that isn't elec blast just plain lost utility. It was possible before with a lot of work, which made it suboptimal but a fun alternate path. It's not possible at all anymore no matter how many sappers you have on your team, you can have 8 characters spamming -END and -RECOVERY and you will still get hefty damage output from the AV. This is disappointing, no other debuff has been nerfed to this extent. Take a team with 8 characters dedicated to tohitdebuffs, or damage debuffs, or slow debuffs, anything that is massively resisted by purple patch + triangles + resistances; when you stack several dedicated characters to this purpose, you will see some effect, there is a point to adding more. However, endurance drain remains shafted due to the recovery floor being extremely generous for AVs. The only advantage you get is getting to drain the 800 initial points faster, but unless your AV has toggles that's almost useless. I think the absence of sapping as a popular build before i27p3 is enough evidence the previous situation was not a problem.

I don't believe Bio/Dark is a particularly synergistic combo, but I find the beliefs "-tohit isn't needed on a Tanker" and "Tankers need to run defensive over offensive" perplexing when put together.

Given the recent buffs, it's worth considering... That being said, I find it tough to break even just 300 DPS on a Fortunata (unless we include Claws attacks, but then that's hardly psychic). Whereas a psy/*/psy sent can dish out slightly more damage. The Sentinel has an easier time with healing/endurance too, and can reach higher passive survivability. The Fortunata has better team buffs and active control (which counts as a team buff too). Sentinal has some -res, Fortunata has no -res. All in all it feels pretty balanced between the two options.

I kinda strongly disagree with that. Several powers give exponential boosts while teaming. Leadership for example. Aggro auras. Buffs like Grant Cover. On the other hand, very few powers you'd skip on a dedicated teaming build would kill your solo performance. Most of the time it tends to be % differences. Qualifier: I'm obviously not talking about a roleplay build with 1 attack and the full Teleport pool, when I say "a team build". I mean a build similarly optimized for team play as a build would be optimized for solo play. Quite often the builds look mostly similar in terms of power selection, with a select clutch powers added, often replacing "boring" fillers like the Fighting pool; key assumptions diverging; slot choices changing a lot. Circling back to the above. I could hardly be convinced people are massively into team play to the tune of 95/5 when the most common argument for picking a secondary with aggro aura in the Scrapper forums is "to stop runners" (a small problem at best even solo, and completely inconsequential on teams where somebody else will have the aggro, mez stuff, or simply kill fast enough) vs "to keep mobs from hitting squishies". Some player behavior is irrational of course, it's just a video game; but at the scale we're talking about here?

An interesting question, but I think the spread is more likely something like 70%/30% than the 95%/5% permateamers picture in their head. Food for thought: outside of perceived support ATs like Defenders, approximately 0 builds posted in the Archetype forums are optimized for teaming. Whereas builders will juggle slots around for 20 minutes to squeeze out +3% DPS.

Claws/Stone sounds pretty cool... EM is a great fit. /stone has tons of regen and good maxHP so that takes care of ET when ET doesn't crit. Endurance management coupled with light endurance primary makes for an easy time putting it together; opening up Barrier (over Ageless) as Destiny with little DPS sacrifice, and coincidentally Barrier completes the layered mitigation of Stone perfectly. Finally, a damage aura is always helpful to EM. Axe is also good, pulling back things in your aura. TBH, I praise EM and Axe as synergy for just about any secondary 😅 ... It's hard for powersets to miss the mark when they're high damage and either 1) bursty and endurance light or 2) great convenient AOEs and ranged. Inherently flexible, opens up so many options.