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.

Stone Armor is plain better. Mostly the same defense numbers. Better resistances. A "better" +maxHP power, in that it recharges fast enough as a heal. Better +regen. Same damage aura. Better resists (endurance drain resistance is fantastic, whereas Ice's edge in slow resists is chipped away by Winter IOs). An extra damage boost. Much better psi coverage. Geode is a great Can't Touch This button, even if it breaks sometimes. Ice has a strong T9 for damage spikes and better endurance management. Even that endurance management isn't necessarily a clear win: some builds might prefer the passive +recovery of Stone, which also lets you slot an extra Power Transfer proc in there. Ice Armor needs help. It's playable (what isn't?), but there's no reason to play it. It's the Willpower of elemental armors.

Brute is the easiest for a truly broke solo challenge. This is because Fury accounts for much of your damage, and armors with just the base slot (or an empty slot really) are OK for low difficulty content. To refine further you'd want to go for the easiest enhanceless powersets as well. On the secondary side, /bio is clear winner. You get free tohit and damage (even if Brute doesn't care much about damage), + many end tools, which you will need more than other characters. On the primary side, Super Strength is a great pick as Rage once again takes care of +tohit and adds a bit of damage. But it is end heavy. Another approach can be to go for endurance light sets, like Claws or Energy Melee.

For each archetype, multiply the number of primaries by secondaries, minus incompatible powersets (like Shield + Titan Weapons). Add it all together. Multiply by 3 to account for a multiboxing setup. +1 over this result should be "too many".

Yeah, I think the most "conventional" path nowadays would be to run Haymaker -> Cross Punch -> KO Blow -> Haymaker -> Cross Punch -> [epic hold] as an attack chain. Proccing this out. The epic holds went from 32s recharge to 24s recharge, which is a perfect fit for this chain (near identical to KO Blow). Haymaker -> Mesmerize -> KO Blow -> Haymaker -> Mesmerize -> Dominate can be an alternative. It would likely do less damage but also be safer (you would sleep your target for an instant every few seconds and get a 40% chance for a large heal, it's almost like being Dark Melee with Siphon Life). (Arguably, if you are NOT concerned with optimal ST damage for soloing AVs, the good ol' Gloom builds might still work. In real gameplay one tends to add a Foot Stomp into the mix against trash mobs, while AV fights tend to come with teammates boosting your recharge.) I'd still embrace the new paradigm, for the sake of flexibility. If you go dark epic you can proc out the hold there *and* get Tar Patch, which is an excellent route...

This was the first reply in this thread more than 1 year ago, near universally agreed, and now somehow this is controversial. I think we're running in circles because some posters are in the "buff Brutes" camp to protect their overpowered Tanker or to hope for an overpowered Brute, and some posters are in the "nerf Tankers" camp because they're trolls who like to see others miserable. In truth there's solid arguments for both buffing Brutes a little bit and nerfing Tankers a little bit, my own preference would go to taking a look at damage scaling like ShinMagmus said and uhhhh even though it is my favorite buff ever, it's very hard to defend the Tanker p5 radius buff as balanced.

Power Transfer works in Harmonized Mind. Preventive Medicine cannot be slotted there - it's a healing set - but it will work in a passive like Health, or True Grit. Cardiac is a great pick. Given the damage stat is already so buffed with Rage, the opportunity cost of giving up Musculature is lower than it would be on any other character.

There is Entropic Chaos, but the heal is not as strong. I think we get the most bang for our buck with just Call of the Sandman. My planned slotting is: 4 apocs (damage proc + dam/rech + dam/end + rech/acc), gladiator damage proc, and sandman proc. Slotting recharge hurts the proc chances but is required for my build to chain Haymaker -> Mesmerize -> KO Blow -> Haymaker -> Mesmerize -> Foot Stomp. There's probably something smarter to do by including Cross Punch, which I tend to avoid if I can. It only boosts the accuracy and damage of Mesmerize, not the heal aspect. Yeah, seems like Ice Melee could be an interesting fit - it's another powerset with relatively weak native attacks who can use some shoring up from epics, too.

I think you've made the right case for either. Personally, I'd make it Shield/SS just to use an attack chain including Rage-boosted Mesmerize procced for heal, like discussed here. At 12s base recharge it's a great fit to replace Gloom, which used to have that same recharge but was bumped to 16s.

Wow, 45%? Funny how bias can work with "hit chances": from empirical experience, I assumed it was much lower than that. In fact I half-expected someone to come in with the *opposite* reply, using numbers to prove the Call of the Sandman proc would be a stupid choice... 😅

I use Mesmerize that way too and I think it's severely underrated. Could hardly believe we were getting this for Brutes/Tankers when Beta went public. Something that's easily missed, purple triangles on AVs don't include sleep protection. This makes for extremely easy soloing even on suboptimal builds or against tougher AVs, you have a panic button at any point in the fight. Basically impossible to die. Helpful as an opener too if you're typically on x8, sleep the AV and get rid of his squad first. Also a great help when fighting multiple AVs, just permasleep the ones you're not hitting. For that matter, it serves its purpose even as a one slot wonder. So this is an option if the only goal is a stepping stone to Harmonic Mind. On early/cheap builds I like to stick the Call of the Sandman proc in there, which does a 280 heal when it hits. The PPM is low so it hits rarely, but nonetheless it is "free" healing if I'm using it for the purpose of dropping enemy toggles.