nihilii

I think anything can work. Pick what you like. Answers like this tend to be wishy-washy on other ATs, but the SCORE devs did a great job balancing Sentinel secondaries to be mostly even across the board. IMHO, /bio will give you the maximum damage. and /invul will give you the maximum survivability.

Team usefulness is always a touchy argument, but I don't feel this problem at all. A blaster cannot take +4/x8 alphas with the same level of comfort a sentinel can. A corruptor cannot push the same level of effective DPS a sentinel can (by effective DPS, I mean while /storm corrs can deal 350+ DPS, they're not going to do that damage in a fast-paced team against changing targets). Of course the two ATs bring other advantages. A blaster will deal significantly more damage. And a corruptor will be a significantly better force multiplier. Which is how it should be. Re: Opportunity itself, for me it's simple. Aim+Nuke (which we have up every 25-30s on an endgame build) + our AOEs wipe out all minions and most if not all lieuts, leaving no reason to attack anything but a boss in most cases. Which makes my Opportunity trigger on bosses more often than not. If Opportunity became a click, suddenly I'd have to spend time monitoring my bar and an extra click. Boo. Right now, I literally never pay attention to Opportunity, and run my attack chain as if it didn't exist. So I would lose DPS if I had to use a non-damaging click, not to mention the much greater cost in attention. Double boo. Opportunity is bad for some players right now, so this could stand to improve. But it would suck if the "improvement" turned out to nerf others. I'd rather see a rework that made Opportunity an instant recharging toggle like the /bio forms. Like the current behavior? Keep the toggle on all the time. Want to pick and choose your target? Use the toggle like a click when your bar is up. But admittedly, this would mean *2* clicks for players who prefer to click, one to toggle up and one to toggle down. That might be a problem.

/mental is good and probably what you want, but I agree with the sentiment people might underestimate blasters as a whole. You need about... 350? DPS to outpace a level 50 giant monster regen, and highend blaster builds can push 500+ DPS at range (I would build for range DPS if you want practical ST DPS, GMs aren't going to stand still without aggro control). GM hunting without -regen is definitely doable for blasters, provided they don't have high resistances to your damage type. And what if they do? Well, we are talking about a level 50 Giant Monster here. So presumably you have Lore pets that should help you dish out the pain (or -regen, yay Longbow). Under level 50, damage vs HP scaling works in your favor, decreasing the DPS requirement. I'm leaning once more on Frostweaver's side in liking /ice or /plant for the nice little chunks of absorb they get consistently. It amounts to much more than the +regen you get from sustain powers (against 1 target, in the case of DP), it stacks on top of your max HP, and there's no need to jump in melee range. It's great to have some margin of error against tough targets. Not required, of course, and players who need less comfort might get greater mileage out of a more aggressive build. I think there's leeway to build a blaster GM hunter in a variety of ways.

As a Fire Blast lover: uh oh. 🤣

I have a friend who takes Unstoppable on all his invul characters and use it to good effect. It's especially impressive on his brutes. He goes and tanks the final 7 in the LRSF or STF Lord Recluse, and because we tend to play as a duo and not a full team, it's 100% not something he could do without Unstop. Then he warns me when he's about to crash, hops away, uses a couple lucks, pops Rebirth/Dull Pain, retoggles and he's back to tanking until Unstop is up again. I don't recall the last time I've seen him die to a crash (I don't recall the last time I've seen him die ever on his invul characters, for that matter). In a sense, it's weird: because Unstoppable is so cumbersome to use for most of us, watching him make it work successfully to pull off "impossible" feats TRULY gives a legendary feel to the power. Everyone can Aim+BU+nuke, few can shrug off crash T9s like it's nothing. That is to say, I feel brute invulnerability has the best T9. Best = wow factor 🙂

SR has options to be sturdier: Shield Wall +5% res Reactive Defenses +3% res (also climbs on low life, so ~+10% when low on life) Tough +24% S/L res Superior Might of the Tanker +6% S/L/T/P res Superior Might of the Tanker proc +6-18% res Superior Gauntleted Fist +6% S/L/F/C/E/N res Getting all of that, SR tankers hit the S/L cap with ease and get pretty close against everything else once their life gets low enough. Also, SR is virtually invulnerable to defense debuffs. Doesn't matter how many you get hit with. If you get and slot all your powers, cascading failure cannot happen. Monitor your defense with combat attributes and see. The one thing I would love SR to get is the Master Brawler option like Sentinels get, but on Tankers this isn't even necessary as the Gauntleted Fist proc gives them healthy amounts of absorb.

TFs will always keep AVs as AVs regardless of your reputation settings. If you're struggling to outpace AV regen, powers like Envenomed Dagger (which you can buy at the P2W store) can give you a boost. Daggers do high -regen, so if you apply it consistently you will neuter the regen of most AVs of your level.

Individual powers in a vacuum don't mean much. The sum of it matters. Play EA. It's crazy good. It would be even stronger on a Tanker. I agree with the posters suggesting devs went a little bit overboard when they buffed it. As it lacks direct offense boosts like a damage aura, or damage buffing, or -res debuffing (still blows my mind bio gets all 3) and keeps a psi hole, that's kind of the "saving grace" from a balance standpoint. But it is crazy strong on everything else. IMHO, port Master Brawler to all versions of SR and then port EA to Tankers. Problem solved.

I predict it won't go live before Christmas. (and now it's guaranteed to happen within the next two weeks)

Well hey, if it turns out you are part of the majority in SO balance proponents, I would be the one with egg on my face and that would be pretty funny too. BRING ON THE DATAMINING!!

In the spirit of using this data for entertainment purposes, I'd love if IO usage could be tied to forum account so we could see how many of the proponents of SO balance only are truly on SOs. 😛

Unless I'm missing something, you could also buy an already attuned Defensive set and convert it into LotG. Cheap and low level!

I don't have strong feelings against Win10 or for Win7, but... If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that whenever people rush to say "it's not that bad", make fun of you for having questions, use acronyms like "FUD" and such, there's a huge underlying issue. Applies to products, people, ideas... Everything. This isn't even to target anyone in this topic specifically. Quite the contrary, and the near universality of these patterns in Win10 discussions is an even bigger red flag. I'll move on when some new software or a hardware change compels me to, likely a couple years after support is ended. I haven't even installed any update beyond Win7 SP1, years and years ago. There's the other side of the "FUD": according to the Newer Is Always Better lobbyists, my computers should be zombies part of a botnet, and my identity and bank details (all stored in plain text, mind you) have already been shared all around the world. Well... in ~20 years of daily Internet use, I've never been pwned (at least in any obvious way: no account hacked, no suspicious bank charges). When it comes to staying safe, basic diligence in opening email attachments and browsing with NoScript on seems to go further than keeping your OS up to date. Or I'm just insanely lucky. *shrug* Too much Win10 apologism comes from one of two groups: - power users (often professionals, who hold religious-like beliefs about how IT ought to be used) - casual users (who don't really care all that much for privacy or control, just want the thing to work) I'm sure the apologism is justified if you fall in either of the two groups. But if you're at the middle point between these two, the arguments aren't too convincing. Especially as apologists confuse their personal level of attachment to an issue with the legitimacy or lack thereof of that issue for everyone else. Nobody has ever been swayed by someone else going "lol your problems don't matter and your feelings are wrong".

During the leveling phase, I think you can see great benefits for very little cost using a few staple uniques and the cheap sets. Those staple uniques would be: - Steadfast Protection +3% def - Gladiator Armor +3% def - Shield Wall +3% res (actually gives +5% res) - Reactive Defense scaling damage (gives at least +3% res) - Kismet accuracy (+6% tohit) - Panacea +HP/+end (slot it in Health) - Preventive Medicine +absorb (slot it in Health) Cheap sets: - Thunderstrike in any ranged attack - Multi-Strike in any PBAoE - Crushing Impact in any melee attack As for a level 50 build: This is built shamelessly for maximum ST damage and good AoE damage, and no care for anything else. It still manages to come 3% short of the softcap in F/C/N, which you could get with just a few tweaks (++ing relevant IOs gets you close). You could either go with Barrier + Cardiac for strong survivability, which coupled with Energize and Power Drain should do enough for your endurance, or embrace full offense with Musculature + Ageless.

I'm merely naming tw/bio scrappers to pick one of the most broken builds and argue we'd reach new levels of brokenness beyond that. There is indeed no point in making a tw/bio not-scrapper with this suggestion.

Still bugged right now. It will likely be fixed when the Tanker changes are pushed Live.

If the current changes go Live, Tankers should pull ahead considering their increased target cap and AoE size. Consider going from 10 to 16 targets is up to a +60% total damage boost (although you won't always have 16 targets in range, so less in practice). Tagging more targets is also useful. On the flipside, it already goes so fast with the current FotM builds, one might ask: why bother? When leveling a character from 1 to 50 takes 2 hours, building and slotting a new farmer just to shave (say) 10% off that time seems like a poor investment. As for influence, anyone who wants to optimize their gains will use the market. There is a very limited population for which Brutes vs Tankers might be a concern: hardcore gamers who play 8+ hours a day and level hundreds (not dozens, or at least high dozens) of 50s. When you play the game at this intensity, playing the market won't keep up with your influence gains from playing the game (nor will it sustain your army of alts). Anyone else? Play what you want, I'd be very surprised if you can tell the difference from a performance perspective.

OK. But, if this wasn't clear, I was musing about the ideological flip-flop that seems to occur regarding whether balance should be done around IOs or not. That's NOT an argument for nerfing brutes.

There is no possible way to implement a suggestion allowing this level of versatility without ending with one of two scenarios: 1) implementation balances top performing combos to be on par with the rest of the game, making anything but the top performing combos nigh useless 2) implementation balances around anything but the top performing combos, making the top performing combos so powerful there is no point playing anything else 1) would make the suggestion pointless. 2) would make tw/bio scrappers look like emp/dual pistols defenders..

Am I the only one who finds it funny "you shouldn't balance around IOs" but "lowering brute resistance to 85% would wreck the AT"? Very few brutes reach 90% resistance to anything without IOs or outside buffs, and for those that do, it's mostly against one damage type. - /stone against S/L - /fire against fire - /elec against elec - /invul, /elec and /rad using their T9s So, either /bio, /dark, /SR, /shield, /ice, /regen, /wp and /ea are all broken, or something doesn't add up here... 😉

While I have no problem with the suggestion, I can't remember the last time I saw someone die on a Freedom Phalanx TF.

Quick Strike, Smashing Blow and Body Blow are all very fast, and form the bread and butter of your attack chain. Granted, all other powers are at 2+ seconds, but I've leveled KM scrappers using just the 3 aforementioned powers and it feels like a buzzsaw. Got to agree on IO potential; even if KM never ends up as strong as the sets that start strong right off the bat, it makes a difference. Gaussian BU is especially nice because it turns Power Siphon into an actual Build Up. However, it's worth noting the scrapper ATO doesn't work on Concentrated Strike. CS has a built-in chance to recharge PS, rather than an actual crit.

My build is probably weird and not something most people should follow, but here goes. 🙂 Edit: for some reason, the forum software absolutely refuses to let me post long exports. Here's the build code, in case you get Mids working. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1500;685;1370;HEX;| |78DA6594CB4F135114C6EF74A6560A9547690B0262A148E963DA5136BE8241DB6A8| |0A4DAB8346484496D5268D3D6445606A3716D4C34511E6A7C800B572AC67F42A3AE| |D4BD2BD4C4F7C2D4D3F90E589D49A7BF7BBF7B5EF7DC99993877A4E9516A7E4448A| |EC379BD5C9E1CA5FF8A51B24FE8D9DC94A85D0EBA3B599E3CA1CF668D6935992B19| |30F56DAC64CE168B8552454DE9D359A35216CE74A190573345C3986E3287E3865EC| |CCD665DE62499CB9EA9D00C4B994269CA28CDB5258AB9293599D7678CC90933EA5C| |07250FD37D486C5C55FAD125CED72B699B109A438CD24C8266979E29A6667BCC7C0| |23A9F32D7C0960FB2C979F292D9575E86A6DC642E805B16C1AD37984B601FF5C86E| |26AE4AF65AB9355BA697D61C58931D1EC9D4A263F08BFE26B987F805F30B346DE03| |80D4BD853E00E9820B591EB6B5C85D6F480790FDC769FB902B6DC0525AAC1C5BD72| |99DD93496946267BF32F640F7C0507BF81433F993EC9AC726837E649F26AE54A5A3| |564688B33236087CA8C81FD11F85E242F3777C3CDDD683FC93C0E7A33A042357AB8| |1B1EB6F5B683570784F0F18E7C5D889DAA3DA85C57E71B747FFB0BE62BD0FF12EC7| |F2DFEA9EB124DBBD8B7EB369E8CEE5BCC0570C7227389B90C5EA15A7AB8969E00E2| |1E25F472BCDE83E8C1CE03CCBDCC7DA07F3F7304B55CA3787DF095FBF84C223F987| |C2691EFE065B21AE03C0376D4B34B61CA4C1B38283105B8422182EC1B3C861A4209| |C40DCDA0CF211D671F5B20B34122F76B9510C6D9D8C2C3B08DC5414D031F928DCA7| |D51B92FFD74A67168B6F85BE4D4DE31DF83DDCAFFEFBA5FD978B1ABD59065356E51| |348BB2C7A20C5B94718B925636BF274232958696CDAF4475DD49AB12AF46B1BF4F7| |F3549F2F37BB50E7EACB70FC2FE73BD761DFB4F3B6BDEC871AA6E7CBA6EACD78DC7| |DCE4C6E3E7F4E0685CDF1F066CF48E| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Edit: so basically, staple powers: Blaze, Blazing Bolt, Taser, Targeting Drone, Aim, Field Operative, Inferno, Char. Since the rework, /dev is unique amongst blaster primaries in having an Energy Punch level attack that deal its damage at range, Taser. Well, that range is only 20 feet, but that's a step up from 7 feet. Many other secondaries get ranged ST holds doing decent ST damage, but with /dev we can get both by picking epic Char and proccing it out. So that was the goal here, dealing high ST DPS at range, running Blaze -> Taser -> Blazing Bolt -> Blaze -> Taser -> Char. To sustain that endurance drain, Ageless is a must. On the mitigation side, this character is meant for tough solo stuff (Apex, TinM, LRSF), so softcapped defenses alone can't cut it. The build hits ~29% to all which becomes ~34% with amplifiers, then one small luck is enough to softcap. On top of that, we can't get Clarion seeing as we've got Ageless. So I went Rune of Protection and Melee Hybrid, alternating the two gives at least 35% res to any damage type (again, with amplifiers). A more generic build, better suited for overall play, would likely go Clarion + Assault, slotting for endurance (reduction and recovery), shooting for the ranged softcap and picking Bonfire which is amazing mitigation with a KB-to-KD IO.

I've got a fire/dev, but not sure how to help you regarding your Mac problem nor what else to say. :P

You're right. The maximum absorb you can have is equal to your base HP, so you can stack up to 1205 absorb (from different powers/sources, you can't stack a 700 absorb shield with itself even if it recharges fast enough) on top of whatever HP you have.