nihilii

This is the way. Also the way. One does not have to chase maximum DPS and 100% slow resist... but once you get hooked on the stuff, it's hard not to.

I suppose it depends if you have a specific AT in mind, but AE doesn't necessarily involve dualboxing. In fact, I have yet to be able to level a /fire character *without* AE. Inevitably, the easy pull of early 90% fire res pushes me to jump in an asteroid map. You start soloing it at +0/x8 lieuts, then bump it up to bosses by level ~16, +1/x8 by level ~22, and so on. For normal content, I'd guess if you're dedicated, you're likely looking at under 10 hours on most ATs. x8 is available to every character and for every mission, and luck insps are there to let you handle the incoming damage. Heck, I think my pure solo street sweeping Sentinel, no teaming and no indoor missions ever, got to 50 in about 12 hours. Insps, and amplifiers! The latter are cheap at level 1, cram 8 hours of all 3 and you will only have to replenish them once in your journey - or at least, they'll have carried you to lvl 30+.

Yes, because it combines top tier ST damage with top tier AoE damage and top tier force multiplying (-RES). And top tier survivability, because it does this DPS on the three "heavy" melee ATs. And, in the case of TW/bio scrappers, aggro control as well. StJ/SR stalker barely scrapes behind on one metric, ST DPS. It's behind on AoE (StJ is notoriously bad there). It's behind on aggro (has none of it). It's behind on force multiplying (none of it either). It's behind on survivability (not by much these days, but still). This is not a new point... TW discussions have gone on for months. Maybe some people are just new to them. But TW isn't defensible as balanced, with an objective look. It's overpowered in every possible metric, even at low level. Defensive Sweep is Divine Avalanche on steroids, as a cone - and yet top tier builds respec it out because TW is so powerful you don't even need a Divine Avalanche cone. TW does bonus damage according to the game formulas. TW is *more endurance efficient than just about every other primary*, but it also does SO MUCH DAMAGE that some players end up believing it is end hungry, because they think in terms of endurance-consumed-over-time rather than damage-done-per-endurance. The whole "X is only OP in pylon testings" is also another argument I wish we collectively agreed has been debunked enough. There are some builds that look especially OP against pylons, demon/cold MMs for example. Storm. Basically anything where you want a static target and you don't fully control your damage output. But TW isn't one such build. You struggle a bit against fliers and it's not as flexible as others due to Momentum, OK. But in 95% of situations this is moot. TW overperforms if you want to solo a +4/x8 MoITF, or a RSF/STF, or a Khan, or a Lambda trial. TW overperforms on regular teams. TW deals stellar ST damage and does so through an attack chain that does respectable AoE as well (and "respectable" becomes "fantastic" on scrappers with Critical Strikes). About the only argument against TW you might be able to make is that maybe, in the context of full teams of experienced players speedrunning content, you might be better off playing some other characters because managing Momentum isn't so easy and you might as well play a Fire blaster/corr with ~1s animations. Even then, that argument seems to pop up from players who, surprisingly, still play TW themselves, and still bring TW to highend content...

I'm hoping changes to PPM will aim to make the system more intuitive rather than scrap it back to what we had before. IMHO, intended or not and fully balanced or not, PPM has been the best change. It multiplied the number of decisions one makes with a build. Instead of sticking 5-piece and 6-piece sets in attacks, optimization now comes through careful mix-and-matching to fit as much procs as sensible while retaining appropriate % enhancements. Even previously nigh useless set bonuses like Accuracy have found a new worth, as proc loaded attacks can leverage underslotting with accuracy thanks to these set bonuses. The one arguable flaw of PPM might be the arbitrary nature of slotted recharge hurting your rate but not global recharge - especially because popular alphas boost recharge. Even then, even this aspect creates very interesting build tradeoffs, encouraging the use of a more diverse attack chain as opposed to just cramming as much recharge as possible in your best hitters. PvE builds used to be 100% about maximum defense and recharge, with every other aspect taken care of passively while pursuing these goals. Now we've got interesting choices to make about the damage output we want to reach and the sacrifices we're willing to make. 1 year and a half in of way too many hours toying with Mids, I still find new routes to explore every day for my characters. It would probably be fair to exclude alpha slot from the PPM calculation, if only to challenge Musculature supremacy ever so slightly. Beyond that, I'm not sure changes truly need to happen, beyond UI/UX design making the system more clear to players.

I'm playing this Rad/Bio at level 50 right now. AE baby all the way, so I'm discovering everything now. Superior Critical Strikes proc in Devastating Blow. Recharge is set up so it goes off almost every cast. I have the other superior ATO for passive +crit. So I should have about 2 chances out of 3 to crit on my ~2 attacks after the Critical Strikes proc goes off, right? 10% base against lieuts, +6% from Superior ATO, +50% from Critical Strikes = 66%. But it just never happens. Devas -> Radiation Siphon -> Radioactive Smash, and I never get any crit. I fooled myself for a long time into not seeing the problem, because Irradiated Ground (the patch aura) does crit. Plus, with the flurry of numbers between the Rad Melee stuff and /bio, it's sometimes hard to see if a crit goes off or not. It seems highly improbable I can get the Critical Strikes proc to go off 10 times in a row and get NO crit with Radiation Siphon and Radioactive Smash, though. I'm puzzled by the whole thing. Do you have a Rad Melee scrapper? Do they crit (outside of Irradiated Ground)? -- Update: I am crazy. Sort of. Rad Melee attacks crit, only they don't show Critical when they do. Not above enemy heads, not in the combat log. Makes it hard to spot when you're running /bio and all sorts of damage procs.

The difference between OP sets and non-OP sets isn't nearly as huge as it could be. A TW/bio scrapper is maybe worth 2 normal non-TW and non-bio scrappers. That's big but not to the point the concept player is useless. If there was truly no balance and the ratio would be 10 to 1 rather than 2 to 1, I'd wager you would not find much diversity in scrappers. Case in point: AE farming. While there is a variety of power builds even in that scenario for good players (i.e. blasters, doms...), the difference between a /fire brute and a random build for your average player once you factor both power and ease of use is probably somewhere close to that 10:1 ratio. Sure enough, /fire brutes outnumber just about anything else in AE. So the normal game, being more balanced, sees some variety of builds. And AE, being less balanced, see much less variety of builds. To me this is conclusive evidence balance matters. There's yet another issue: absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. The number of players who quit the game because they're bored is invisible. There is one thing that is sure, player activity has been down compared to one year ago. Which can be for a number of reasons that aren't necessarily (and indeed, likely aren't, at least not solely) "boredom with build diversity". But still, extrapolating from the subset of players who still play the game is a bit like polling your current repeat customers for problems in your store. They might have something to say, but there's probably more info still in all the people who stopped coming.

Very few people actually enjoy unbalanced games. Think of how long you can play a video game with invulnerability cheats before you get bored. Challenge, or the illusion thereof, makes the virtual worlds go around.

I beg to differ on that one. For me, Energy Assault now feels like a set you have to micromanage in a specific manner in order to get best results. It doesn't help that Energy Focus is somewhat bugged and has odd quirks like the hidden timer on how often it can happen. But for the sake of this argument, even if Energy Focus was fixed, it would remain different. Same difference as between a scrapper and a stalker. One gets to hit, hit, hit, and always has the same reliable performance. The other is more conditional. In damage, most stalker primaries outperform most scrapper primaries nowadays, provided the scrapper isn't /bio. Performance isn't an issue. Playstyle is. It's one of these things you cannot understand if you don't mind the playstyle change or if it happens to fit within your own desired playstyle. But there's a very distinctive difference of feel for some people here. No need to shackle Energy Focus on EM when 1) Energy Assault exists for people who like that 2) very simple number tweaks can fix EM. Energy Focus would fix EM for a subset of the playerbase and involve a level X of development/testing effort, plain number tweaks would fix EM for the whole playerbase and require a level <X of dev/test. This makes the latter solution clearly superior to me.

I finely tune Mids builds days in advance, often while the character is still level 1. I go through leveling and/or a final respec. Then, once every power is picked, every slot set, all the hotkey trays filled... I notice there's a couple optimizations I forgot. Moving 1 or 2 slots in the entire build. And I ALWAYS notice this before trying out the build at all. Not in the many hours/days where I could have thought about the build further, but right after the process of setting everything up. Drives me nuts.

Bring back the old ET animation. Port the Dominator Total Focus change (faster animation, still looks nice) to TF. Done. This is all EM needs. EM does not need an AoE buff or any fancy new mechanic that would distract from restoring/improving the original feel of the set, which, I think EVERYONE who got to play with old ET, would agree was awesome. I don't mean to poo poo on anyone's suggestions here; but there was something that was beautiful, and it would be better to make that beautiful thing available again. New mechanics can be used on new stuff or on stuff that was never fun to start with.

I would never mind having a copper buddy as my teammate. I don't think it is all that efficient, because you are going to be bound by your animation times at some point. So dropping the weakest (DPA, whatever) 2-3 attacks and picking all your relevant secondary clicks almost always makes you stronger, even if you 1 or 2 slot said clicks. At least my money is where my mouth is, because this is how I build most of my Sentinels. But I'm willing to bet your approach will be fine.

I have observed similar, unusual behavior since late August.

I like your new build a lot, florian. My one nitpick would be that Hecatomb proc is begging to be in Blinding Feint. You're going to use Ablating Strike as much as Blinding Feint with a BF -> AV attack chain, and BF has a higher base recharge so a higher proc rate. Nuke the Heca dam/rech for it (you have more than enough rech for BF->AV, so it just hurts your proc rate). AS could get another damage proc instead. And BF ought to have 6 slots too. I would snatch the defense LoTG from CJ. Only gives you +0.6% defense, even as a +5. You'll remain comfortably above 45% S/L defense if you ++ your IOs in Invincibility, Tough Hide and Weave. Then you can throw a Touch of Death proc in there. Those two changes would bump your BF from 160 damage to 265 damage, according to Mids.

That is such a good tip. 🙂

Wow, I stand corrected! Thanks for the heads up. So many builds to rework. I could swear it was one of these procs who work for 120 seconds after you use a power, and I never rechecked that belief.

Much of the following advice is strongly subjective, personal build philosophy. Pick and choose what you deem adequate for your goals. I would stick the Gaussian proc in Invincibility. It has a chance to proc for each enemy in range, and that stacks up nicely in crowds. In Blinding Feint the proc rate isn't so great, plus you really want all the damage procs you can fit in an attack. Ablating Strike loves an Achilles Heel's -RES. Sweeping Strike loves the Arma set (with proc) + Fury of the Gladiator -RES. You don't *have* to go that route, but if you want a significant damage output increase in prolonged fights, that's worth considering. I wouldn't bother with 3-slotting LoTG on a sky's-the-limit budget. Especially on Invul, as you will hardcap your hit points with Dull Pain anyway (that set bonus is wasted). +5 a LotG +rech and a LotG defense, and you reach almost the same defenses with just 2 slots. This gives you many extra slots to play with. Shadow Meld deserves more slots. Situational as it may be, the defense boost is massive. Better to have +18% when you need it than to grab +2% elsewhere passively, in my opinion. Even when we're talking 43% passive vs 45% passive. As great as the softcap is on paper, in the reality of incarnate content and defense debuffs and what have you, I'd rather have a stronger fast recharge defense power when I truly need the help than slightly better theoretical mitigation all the time. The Preventive Medicine 6-set bonus is juicy, but the proc is really great in a passive. I prefer to go with 5 Panacea personally. EDIT: as pointed out below, I am completely wrong on this one. Slotting damage procs in Nimble Slash feels wasteful. This is a mule power. You could get set bonuses with the slots, or move them elsewhere. i.e. if you're chasing S/L and the above tweaks suggested made you lose 45%, a 4-piece set of Kinetic Combat could help. Or you could even go 6 slot there with a Winter's set. Whatever suits your build goals. Moonbeam is almost always a great addition to an attack chain. It does feel weird on DB to take away the swords and shoot it between gapless BF->AV, but what can you do. I'd stuff an extra slot for a damage proc there. If you don't use -RES procs in AS and SS you definitely would want to use Moonbeam as much as possible (less opportunity cost loss, makes it your best attack).

Which is why we may as well turn the current situation into a social good. Adding an optional influence sink to powerlevel will not create any unwanted situation compared to what currently exists, and would benefit the rest of the playerbase indirectly (as does all influence destruction). Think of it as a voluntary tax on powerleveling.

This is true. It's time we speak up on the issue. I haven't seen a critical in weeks. I haven't played a scrapper in weeks, mind you, but the nerfing NEEDS to stop.

To be fair, MB is so much better (as you demonstrated) it's more a trap than a choice in reality.

This is correct. If you're on a lag free connection this can be done reliably, just wait for the blinking icon to stop blinking; which indicates the power will crash next second, and that's when you hit Energy Drain. An additional trick can be to shut off your defense toggles preventively so they're already recharged the moment Overload drops. Overload by itself gives you enough defense in most situations. Most people consider the effort is not worth it regardless. You can just build for defense softcap + extra, pop luck insps, stack resistance on top of defense, There is a wealth of options available. Only go Overload if you specifically enjoy the Overload playstyle.

To be honest... since the Claws Brute/Tanker port I could ask myself the same. 😉 DB is first and foremost a nostalgia trip for me. My namesake on Live was a db/inv scrapper, which I took through all the challenge stuff I could manage at the same time. Meaning mostly lvl 50 AVs. How times have changed... But, trying to look at the plusses of DB objectively, we've got to give it to Sweeping Strike above all. Animates in ~1.5s, takes the Arma proc, takes the Fury -res proc, strong as a ST attack but happens to be a wide cone (especially on a Tanker). I'd say everything else in DB exists to support Sweeping Strike. Attack Vitals is an extension of Sweeping Strike, too. I couldn't tell you how much damage it adds. It's a ticking DoT, and I've never bothered to count. It also hits everything Sweeping Strike hits, as SS is the finisher; you get even more "free" AoE damage as part of your ST chain. It used to be BF -> Attack Vitals (AS VS SS) was the low recharge option, Empower (NS AS BF) -> Sweeping Strike was the mid recharge option, and BF AS SS AS with no combo was the high recharge option; with corresponding damage output. PPM system seems to favor BF -> AV above all. I was below 200 DPS on this Tanker using BF AS SS AS. BF -> AV pushes me to 300+. Bonkers. There may have been build mistakes in my original BF AS SS AS, who knows, but either way it seems DB, with its low recharge attacks, truly benefits from the low recharge approach to maximise proc rate; at least on Tankers.

My own Lore dies 99% of the time too, but I think it does help a lot when it survives. My Longbow had a chunk of time where it helped with Romulus; whereas with my own damage, it took me a long time to make progress what with Rom hitting his own self heals and all. I think the trick is to never change them from defensive mode, and use one GoTo command at a safe distance. As in, put that circle down a solid 30-40 feet away. Rom ambushes get tricky, but seeing as they always pop up at specific health % and from that very same door on the right, I would aggressively jump on them and wipe out most minions/lieuts with Judgement + AoEs before they even get to react. Dual Blades has an advantage here, it can finish the two bosses with Sweeping Strike's AoE as part of my ST attack chain. Loving that costume on Thurin!!

Food for thought: with STJ, I like to do Crushing Uppercut, Shin Breaker, Rib Cracker, [other big attack that is not from STJ], Shin Breaker, Rib Cracker. - easy on the fingers / muscle memory - gets you 4 normal attacks with a 95% chance to hit, so your chance NOT to have combo level 3 for CU is very low - goooood DPS. Gets you near 600 on a stj/bio scrapper with Moonbeam, for example Using Fire Armor, Burn would be a nice fit. For more regular Tankers, Cross Punch with -RES and Gloom seem to offer roughly the same value to the above chain.

It's not as good as Ice Patch or Bonfire with a KB-to-KD, but it is something. Sometimes they keep slipping. Sometimes they won't flop for a few seconds. It drains A LOT of endurance if you have many enemies around you. Overall I've never managed to make it useful enough for me, but it definitely has a non-zero effect.

My biggest pet peeve with KM has to be Power Siphon's 2 second animation. This has a performance cost. You're supposed to want PS up as much as possible, but to get in PS mode you have to spend 2 seconds of no damage. Bumping the duration from 20 seconds to 30 seconds would help, but it might be even better to just have the activation time be ~0.5s. It's pretty common for PS to be more than perma as is anyway, at least if you're a Scrapper and use CS. Also, can Quick Strike KB magnitude be lowered to 0.67 before anything else happens? It's the only knockdown melee attack with 0.70 KB instead of 0.67, which causes it to knockback blue con enemies. Meaning ALL level 50 enemies once you're levelshifted. Very annoying. I don't know how to "fix" KM as a whole, though. Its heavy reliance on +DAM means in order to not be underpowered on Brutes it would need to be overpowered on Scrappers.