nihilii

Adding Barrier and luck insps to all other powersets won't give them the extra damage output or the endurance tools Bio gets. Adding luck insps to SR or Shield won't help them survive. Adding Barrier and luck insps to Fire still leaves it behind Bio on KB protection, damage output, aggro ability (on scrappers), passive endurance drain, etc.. Adding Barrier and luck insps won't raise your practical HP beyond 4K on a Tanker, and so on. Try soloing a STF on a SR with Barrier + luck insps. Chances are LR will hit you with his end drain and detoggle. Do the same with Bio, it's not going to be a cakewalk but it will be easier. I absolutely count the potential of universal tools to patch vulnerabilities, the game is what it is and gives us what we have; and my conclusion is there are definitely holes that are more easy to plug than others. If you wanted to argue (i.e.) anyone soloing +4/x8 against all factions is overpowered, then we enter a semantic debate than anything. I could then agree with you everything is OP - and go on to argue bio goes much further in being overpowered than the other options. We'd be back to the beginning, with slightly different and more cumbersome language to describe the same situation. Bio is unbalanced compared to other powersets, is my stance.

I feel mob fear AI doesn't get enough praise for these situations. Understandably, we're used to the convenience of grouping mobs for maximum XP/time. But when it comes to solo play and survivability, it is a surprisingly efficient tool. My fire/rad Sentinel takes down Arachnos with more ease than my TW/rad Scrapper. Despite the latter having both more damage and more survivability. Funny how that works. I see people asking for Sentinels to get some form of punchvoke as a buff, and I'm like hmm. Being ranged + mob fear AI is what lets me take on AVs some of my meleers struggle with.

If you can manage his buffed version without incarnates, you're already ahead of me! Also of note re: the Nictus death stun. I did not get stunned once with basic mag13 protection. Rightclicking on the icon showed the stun as mag12, too. So I think it is likely the stuns others have experienced were Nictus death stun + some regular stun attack from either Romulus or the Nictus.

IMHO, bio armor is completely unbalanced, especially on scrappers and tankers. - the damage buff is good already, not conditional unlike Shield. It also adds extra toxic damage to your attacks, AND gives you +tohit. Makes the leveling phase significantly easier, and also a big advantage in the upper end of endgame so you can slot less accuracy / more procs. - the -res aura doubles as an aggro aura, excellent for Scrappers who don't always get one. That -res is significant on a Tanker (higher values). - absorption is underrated as a mechanic, probably because it's so new. It's essentially extra HP beyond the HP cap. Granted, you don't get the benefit of regeneration, but regeneration is mostly sustain anyway. What kills you are spikes of damage, which absorb protects against in an unique way. Bio gets more absorb than anyone else and this raises the ceiling significantly. This is so good you can run in Offensive Mode 99% of the time. - significant +recovery baked in. You can build a TW/bio character running what is arguably the highest DPS attack chain of the entire game (RA -> FT -> AoD -> CB -> FT) with infinite sustain before you even use Incarnates. - the two achilles' heels of many OP-on-paper builds are end drains and slows. But with Bio, you get 70% end drain resist and 30% slow resist. The end drain resist coupled with all your endurance recovery options makes you essentially immune to all but most extreme forms of it. And starting with a base of 30% slow makes it doable to get to 100% with Winter IOs. Bio essentially has one lone vulnerability, which it shares with many builds: lack of defense debuff resistance. You can patch that one vulnerability with luck inspirations, Barrier, Shadow Meld if scrapper/stalker, Vorpal, Divine Avalanche/Parry/Defensive Sweep; or you can even live through it in many situations with your copious amounts of absorb, heals and regen. For that one vulnerability that is far from unique, Bio gets just about everything else. Oh, and you look like dung by default and with most power customisations. THAT is the real drawback. Almost all of my melee playtime is on a bio character these days. The longer you play it, the worst it gets, as the very few flaws of the set become easier and easier to compensate. At this point I'm so used to the performance I don't want to see it nerfed, but I can't pretend it's balanced. Stalker and Sentinel versions of bio are more appropriate, IMHO. Once you remove the auras and once all the heal/absorb/regen goodness is scaled to a lower HP AT, it is not so broken.

Brute MA is arguably the weakest version of MA available across all ATs. EC doing +damage just doesn't do much for Brutes. Storm Kick's +def is admittedly nice as a buffer against defense debuffs, but then you're Shield so likely softcapped with decent DDR. Which makes most people yearn they had more damage instead. Shield doesn't get much of a benefit for being a Brute specifically, because the aggro aura makes up for the lack of punchvoke on Scrappers. And the +damage benefits Scrappers more than twice as much as Brutes, due to their higher base damage and nonreliance on Fury. I don't think you've missed anything. There's nothing inherently wrong or inefficient about a MA/SD brute,; but the above might explain the lack of discussion.

I PLed a Bio/TW Tanker, and did a few accolades - Invader for +5% HP, in the process of which you get the +10% HP temp and +5% end temp. Then Marshall for +5% end. Almost like having all accolades until the temps run out. Pylon DPS, with amplifiers but before ++ing IOs and accolades: 320. Awesome (no incarnates). I failed a first attempt just now. Amplifiers ran out as I did accolades (and AFKed), so no amplifiers. M1 was cake - even though it came with the realisation Defensive Sweep is essentially useless, without Shadow Meld and Vorpal as buffers. I get debuffed into oblivion no matter what. But Bio's absorb and healing combined with 90% S/L res and TW's knockdowns make Cimerorans more than palatable. M2 becomes a bit harder because of combined defense debuffs + energy damage. I'm sitting at around 45-50% energy res in offensive mode. Taking down the Cysts seemed alright enough with some kiting. But I got greedy and burst damage killed me. More caution would have done it. I kept going regardless. Defensive Mode seems much better than trying to overpower the Cysts with sheer damage. The extra resistance matters, same with HP and Absorb. M3 tested my patience more than my survivability. This Bio/TW took down Requiem in about 5 minutes where the SR/Rad took 10 minutes; and the Bio/TW was in complete safety. Likewise with Romulus, to the point I defeated him next to the computer. Funnily enough, my damage was so low the AoE damage from aura and Arc of Destruction lowered the computer's health at the same pace as Romulus HP went down. I did have to pull back when the second wave of robots came online, as Romulus defense debuffs + their energy damage proved to be too much. The Generals weren't too much of a struggle, although I had to jump away regularly. The biggest hurdle had more to do with the ambushes. +4 Surgeons aren't so easy to dispatch with no level shift and no Judgement, and I would frequently "waste" an entire cycle of chipping away at a General's health only to have a Surgeon restore him with a passing AoE heal. I hit a wall in M4. I started by fighting the Nictus in the air, with a jetpack. You can't use AoD in the air, so I went with the same adjusted attack chain as my scrapper: rend armor -> follow through -> crushing blow -> whirling smash -> follow through. Lower DPS, of course. Still enough to damage the Nictus through their healing; and in the air, whatever damage I took from the autohit Nictus + Romulus wasn't enough to threaten me through my clicks. However, this was very... veeeeery... slow. After 8 minutes, I had maybe 15%, 20% of the Nictus' life done. Multiply this by 5 (100% hp), then by 3 (3 Nictus), and do I really want to spend 2 HOURS tapping the same hotkeys to win a fight that is, in theory, already won? I flew away, and quickly crafted a Musculature T3 Alpha. Then resumed fighting the Nictus with my level shift. Unequipped the Alpha to try Romulus. Well, oof. Romulus Nictus packs a punch as a true +4. As Lex points out, his Sunless Mire is particularly devastating. When up, he would hit me for 1k+ on every other hit. I could manage that by kiting some or using Defensive Sweep, but I can't deal enough DPS doing that. Especially with his 3k heal. I tried everything I could think of, no dice. The Nictus boy stands victorious. In a way, it makes for a fitting end. Bio Armor feels almost overpowered considering the challenge. 90% S/L res + ample amounts of absorb and healing really can carry you through impressive aggression. The standard Romulus isn't completely helpless, but he is manageable. And then... his transformation turns him into your worst nightmare. Defense debuffs and self buffs and negative energy rolled in one, oh my. I am unsure where to go from there. This Bio/TW cannot give much more, at least in my hands. Perhaps Rad/TW or Elec/TW would fare better. But the DPS is barely enough as is, and Bio is by far the best damage option with Offensive Mode, -res aura and damage aura, Elec at least has a damage aura, Quickness, and great native end tools. Perhaps PPP shenanigans could help fill the gap, i.e. getting the Mu Striker pet? If the guy stays at range and adds ~20 DPS, that could be helpful. Wishful thinking.

edit: doublepost

We need significant DPS for the final AVs. L54 AV regen is roughly 100hp/s. You deal 0.48 damage against +4s. So the best case scenario is about 210 base DPS. That DPS must be "real" DPS - not just ideal DPS against a Pylon, but DPS using whatever survivability clicks or repositioning is needed. My SR/Rad gets to about ~230 Pylon DPS, going all out with procs. Stuffing Might of the Tanker, and its recharge portion, into an important ST attack would not only remove a proc, it would also kill the proc rate for other procs. Likely dropping me a solid 10 DPS if not more. There are other considerations: - the build is extremely tight as is, and I need the +10% recharge from Might of the Tanker, as well as (if to a lesser extent) the +4% dam and +3% HP. - 210 DPS is really a "best case scenario". In practice, nictus Romulus heals, there's also the healing Nictus, and even regular Romulus has defense. Plus, we don't want to break even, we want to make progress at an appreciable pace. It took me about 10 minutes to take down Requiem! And that's with him hurting himself regularly for 130 damage ticks every 2 seconds while OG is up. Painful.

I agree, this can work very well for survivability. Only the damage is so low, it gets very slow. Even on my incarnate Claws stalker using Shockwave, Focus and Moonbeam, it felt piddly. A Tanker without level shift barely feels like it scratches enemies with ET. Then we run into the age old tradeoff: the lower the damage, the longer we have to survive; the longer we have to survive, the more likely we get unlucky. I think I'm happier with low proc chance to KD in a natural PBAoE. Gotta love these 15' radius PBAoE, especially!

Respecced to get Energy Torrent, and it helps. Although not as much as I hoped. However, great mileage out of grabbing a few more E/N res % here and there. The nature of SR scaling resistances, compounded by this challenge, makes every extra point exponentially more important. I died in M2 again... because I sat next to a crystal while on low health, and the explosion actually hit and killed me. Dumb mistake. There was nothing preventing me from jumping away on that last attack. Another helpful change was switching a Superior Avalanche acc/dam for the rech/KD proc in Atom Smasher. Even at a low proc rate, hitting 16 targets at a time guarantees some of them will fall down. KD is so helpful in lowering the incoming damage. I also have the Might of the Tanker set in Atom Smasher, so beyond build tweaks there was a change in playstyle that brought improvement: using Atom Smasher as much as possible against Cysts, to cap E/N res earlier. -- Edit: instead of leaving after my defeat, I kept going just to see how Mission 3 would look. I managed to defeat Requiem in about 10 minutes, thanks to his own Oppressive Gloom hurting him. As for Romulus... Forget it. Not only my damage barely outpaces his regen in the best case scenario, but I made a glaring mistake in my latest rebuild: I saw ~105-110% chance to hit and thought there was fat to be trimmed. I forgot that was a purposeful overshot. My Mids is set to display tohit against +3s, while we fight true +4s. Accuracy remains 95% against most enemies thanks to Radiation Melee defense debuffs. It wasn't a problem against Requiem either, despite his archvillain resistance. But... Romulus combines standard AV resistance with some passive defense, and that's a dealbreaker. I fell down to ~70% chance to hit against him, which obviously can't cut it with a base DPS of around 230. What would be the ideal character, I wonder. SR is nice for overall defense, but lacking endurance tools or offensive boosts beyond Quickness really stretches your resources thin to hit required DPS walls. Boring as it is to always go for these powersets, Rad or Bio paired with TW might be it. Both Rad and Bio offer numerous endurance tools and take care of healing. TW has defensive sweep, great DPA, better DPE than other secondaries, and tons of knockdown.

These worries were premature. I'm getting my ass kicked on Mission 2. I survive *most of the time* deep in the red, then it just takes Nictus getting lucky to send me to the grave. Soft control would be nice. The character already has/needs Conserve Power and Physical Perfection, so it would take only one more pick to grab Energy Torrent. And Weave isn't really necessary.

Right. Then we get into recording video footage. Then we question if the video was edited. It's endless. I have boundless appreciation for the friendly, high trust environment we have on these forums, this topic included. People sharing their thoughts and explaining rationale at length, with competition not against each other but rather the limits of what we can do collectively. True, it may mean there isn't that extra incentive of ego to push individual performance to the max. A small price to pay for that frictionless experience, to me. If elusive pro gamers want to share their insights or even flex on us, I'll take whatever hint or piece of advice that may be gleaned. Then it hopefully seeps to the collective. It's all good.

Naraka covered most of it. I'd add Stone Melee. An Ice or Earth Control Dominator with the Thorns or Stone Melee secondary can look all crystal.

I'm rebuilding my old SR/Rad Tanker for the no incarnates challenge. Going all out with procs, it merely hits 220-240 DPS against Pylons. With heavy end problems too, despite Conserve Power, a Theft of the Essence proc in Radiation Siphon, full "traditional" end slotting with Miracle, Numina, couple perf shifter procs... 220 DPS slashed to 48% against true +4s, that's 105 DPS. Level 54 archvillain regen is, what, 101 per second? Boo. Maybe the true "Tank God" here needs to be an Ill/Rad controller or somesuch. 😛

SR with Ageless Destiny (left tree) is IMHO the go-to build for Arachnos. Ideally a Tanker, but a Brute or Scrapper might do. Stalkers might get a little light on HP. As mentioned, there is at least one Tarentula Mistress (lieutenant) per spawn, guaranteed, and their defense debuff being autohit means you need the DDR. Then, Ageless gives you enough +recovery to sustain your attack chain and essentially ignore endurance drains. More power to people that can, but I have never been able to do reliably well against +4/x8 Arachnos on a resistance build. Including Fire Armor with Consume, or Elec Armor with capped S/L defense, and more. I will be OK, as long as I pop lucks/Barrier/Shadow Meld and eliminate Tarentula Mistresses fast. But every now and then I slip up, and death happens. This is why I have to give the nod to SR+Ageless. That combo doesn't rely on your own ability to be proactive, instead it just nullifies the two main Arachnos hurdles passively (well, you do have to click Ageless every 2 minutes, but basically you can do that on auto; as opposed to a short duration +DEF buff you want to pop in advance). Make it SR/Dark or SR/Rad for a heal in the secondary. Or go ultimate damage output with SR/TW. SR/Claws could also keep them flattened on their back. Then you have a build that crushes, not merely handles, Arachnos.

Easiest way is to set up Base Tohit to 48 in Options -> Configuration -> Exemping & Base Values. I used to be one of these persons who overbuild for accuracy and tohit. I hate missing! Nowadays I shoot for barely 95-100% against +3s. It works. I definitely notice a difference on a regular basis. It's rare *not* to run into at least one circumstancial situation per hour where I will whiff for at least a few seconds, where my previous way of building would mean no whiffs ever. But in the grand scheme of things, opportunity cost is real. ~2% more whiffs are worth enduring if it buys you ~10% more damage. Numbers pulled out of my ass, the real ratio is probably even more advantageous to damage over accuracy.

I find Banished Pantheon brutal, even at "+1"/x8, and well in league with the hardest "+3"/x8 of other factions. Ancients of... something, the radiation attack ones, are the culprit. Lieutenants and bosses, they both bring massive defense debuffs. Many of my characters who handle +4/x8 against most factions will fold against some BP groups. I blink and suddenly I'm at -50% defense, and all sorts of OTHER debuffs and damage start piling up and kill me in a split second. Very few enemy groups do that at "+3"/x8, let alone "+1"/x8. Awakened, PPD... It is quite a treat to play that old "Close the dimensional ruptures" mission from Unai Kemen on +4/x8. New Banished Pantheon mobs, no level shifts save for alpha. An excellent stress test most of my characters do NOT pass without severe inspiration usage.

That seems unfair. We're at least equal parts conservative hystery (as a group, resisting the changes anyone else proposes) and self-absorbed new-is-always-better (as individuals, when it comes to our own changes).

IIRC, the ambushes aren't actually endless. But they will last for a ridiculous amount of time. Go with Jackstar's solution (stalkers or scrappers).

Arguments against TW being OP always stretch the fabric of reality. "I don't see ANY TW/bio scrapper! It's strong but it's NOT popular!" About that... ...we have actual data from the developers back in March showing TW/bio was topping the popularity chart for scrappers. By a HUGE margin compared to any other combo, save for Elec/Shield. And Titan Weapons itself is the most common primary in level 50 scrappers. By a healthy (+~50%) margin over the second place. Yes, TW scrappers don't overshadow everything else to the ridiculous extent fire brutes do. It's understandable if you can't spot trends unless they're really obvious, but that doesn't mean the trends don't exist. When in doubt, hard data beats personal perception.

It's true you can find a variety of edge cases where it makes sense to trade speed=reward for safety, because else you'd die and get 0 reward. But those are edge cases, irrelevant in a statistical manner, within the context of choosing whether to implement a global nerf. So they never could hold much water as justification for PvE travel suppression, to me. Especially as, at the time, game mechanics weren't as creative. Mobs had mostly standard powers. The highest reputation we could reach was +2/x1 ("Invincible"). So either you'd face, say, a +2 Tank Freakshow, or some kind of archvillain; and in the latter situation, jousting also tends to hurt your chances, because archvillain regen makes it critical to deal a certain amount of damage to win at all; and in the pre-IO, pre-incarnate world, where we also knew much less about the game, maintaining those levels of DPS weren't a given. Arguably, even today, jousting against (say) Protean isn't actually efficient. Building for softcap defense, popping lucks, or using all kinds of other "traditional" strategies where you can stand still and pummel the guy for the full power of your attack chain will prove more efficient. Jousting is an universal trick but not a gamebreaking one, it can be used as a bandaid to patch situations that would be difficult for a given build, but it won't allow you to obtain rewards at a greater pace than the best builds. Much like you can snipe mobs of a +4/x8 group too tough for you to handle from the air in full safety, but despite facing 0 risk it's not really gamebreaking when another character will be built to wade right in the middle of that +4/x8 group and defeat it at a much faster speed. Empirically, we can see from the prevalence of fire farmers versus the prevalence of hover snipers which route people go for, too.

It always seemed like a shaky explanation to me. Apparently, jousting was never a problem for the full year or so until the Arena was introduced. Then, it suddenly became one. In PvE, jousting is inherently counterproductive: the cornerstone of PvE is the reward:time ratio, and you maximise that ratio by having enemies tightly packed together and attacking as much as you can. Jousting trades attacking speed for defense, and scatters enemies. On the other hand, in PvP jousting was always the clear strategy from Day 1. More casual players quickly complained their purely melee scrappers and tankers couldn't compete. Everyone would bring Superspeed and Superjump, and even Whirlwind to bypass animation rooting. What I think is a more realistic take on what happened: PvP was the newly introduced baby, one the devs were likely hoping would be as big as PvE and one the devs were already banking even further on as CoV was in development. But most of the playerbase was quickly turned off by a much more fast-paced competition than they expected from their relaxed wish fulfillement video game. Devs scrambled to fix what they felt was the most glaring issue. Because of time crunch, they nerfed travel for the whole game rather than create complicated, dedicated rules for PvP. And to avoid further bad press turning a playerbase even more reluctant to try out PvP, they pinned the nerf on supposed PvE exploits. We will never know for sure. I certainly struggle to take old dev words as gospel when they go so blatantly against logic - and this was during Jack's tenure, too.

I'm going with this as well. I sometimes build attack chains where the recharge required fits by 0.2s or 0.1s, and those calculations (and the attack chain) would break if arcanatime wasn't in place.

Both powersets are excellent choices and should go well together. Going from stalker to scrapper, you will find StJ gets an excellent extra attack in Rib Cracker - not necessarily the damage itself, but that it does native -RES, rare and prized for melee characters. AoE can be a bit disappointing by scrapper standards, it's once again just Sweeping Cross and Spinning Strike (if you care to take these powers at all). But! If you're open to IOs and specifically procs, you can proc out your PBAoE heal, Radiation Therapy, to turn it into a decent PBAoE damage. Later on, Ground Zero can also be procced to get close to mininuke levels. So /rad does a good job fixing lackluster stj/ AoE, good synergy in that sense. Beyond that, if you're looking at the highend, one of the best attack chains (if not the best) would be Crushing Uppercut -> Rib Cracker -> Shin Breaker -> Moonbeam/Zapp -> Rib Cracker -> Shin Breaker. Lucky you: Moonbeam comes in the same epic as Shadow Meld, for a +DEF buff perfectly complementing Radiation's pure resistances. There's of course other ways, just as valid, to build the combo. Rad Armor is fairly versatile in offering you +RES to all, decent healing/absorb, some PBAoE damage options and an aggro aura. It has great end recovery too if you don't want to wait for Incarnates. Your level 2 passive gives surprisingly potent end recovery (it won't show up in Mids, but it rises as your end lowers). Particle Shielding comes with sizeable if unenhanceable +recovery. Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero can both take a Theft of the Essence proc. Solid powersets on their own, solid choice together.

Consistently awed and humbled by the dedication this dev team has to fix issues most pro studios would simply stuff in an "unsupported" folder and never bother to look at. You guys are truly the best.