nihilii

Blaster primaries, scrapper secondaries. Lower damage than blasters, lower defense than scrappers. Questionable inherent (controversial opinion?). Absolute thrill to play (HARD FACT).

It's going to heavily vary from build to build and even personal taste. But as rough, very rough guidelines, personally this is how I see it: - Alpha: if end is an issue, Cardiac on a RES build, else Vigor. On a defense set with end management, Agility is great. Spiritual is also useful if there's no great need for anything but recharge. Musculature is harder to justify on Brutes unless you're really not struggling for anything else, due to Fury the damage boost is relatively less than on other ATs (although it still boosts your Judgement and Lore as much). - Judgement: Ion, Ion, Ion. Not having to aim makes it invaluable (to me, ymmv). Honorary mentions for Pyronic (fast animation) and Void (PBAoE with strong damage debuff). - Interface: Degenerative -maxHP, it's slightly better than Reactive on bosses and above, and everything below melts too fast to care. Plus, most people still go for Reactive, and interfaces don't stack even from different players. - Lore: Longbow cataphract for taking down AVs and even tougher targets. Storm Elementals for versatile extra damage. I don't bother with support, even Adrenalin Boost isn't all that impressive compared to the damage output the right Lore pets can add in the right situations. I'm not a big fan of Cimerorans, melee range means they're likely to die in many situations where I actually need their help. - Destiny: Barrier as the default choice, thanks to the brute resistance cap it's almost always useful (if you're a resistance set you're probably lacking in defense and defense debuff resistance, and if you're a defense set you can use the resistance). Sometimes Rebirth to plug a heal hole, i.e. on SR. Ageless can help with end or generally be used in content geared to your strengths, i.e. farm maps. - Hybrid: Assault doublehit, accept no substitute. OK, you could also get the Melee +regen +res. It's really offense vs defense. In my opinion more damage is always useful, while more defense can be overkill.

May or may not matter to you: the Theft of Essence +end proc is fantastic in Ground Zero. If you're like me and use it as part of your opening salvo as you jump into a new group, you get a free refill of your end bar every time.

Yes, anything beyond 305% damage on your scrapper is wasted on powers where you already have 95% damage enhancement. Your damage IO set bonuses count towards the damage cap, so they won't let you exceed the damage cap.

To be honest, I love running all that content - at +4/x8 and solo, on teams, anything. It's the "Dark Souls" conundrum: one person will die twice and see the experience as an unbelievably tedious slog. Another person will die forty times and see it as an enjoyable challenge. (And of course, there's yet another group of hardcore minmaxers who will power through the whole thing without blinking and call both former groups "noobs" for dying at all.) We have another thread where people are arguing incarnate powers trivialize everything in the game. Ultimately, I think there's great virtue in the tacit admission players are looking for a variety of different experiences; giving them the tools to tailor that experience, a little bit of guidance, then letting them roam free. There lies the greatness of the game, if you ask me. From costume creation to the way you interact with the content, CoH embraces personalization to the point nobody will truly get the exact same thing from the game.

I got a bridge in Overbrook to sell to anyone who thinks travel power suppression happened because of PvE jousting. Special price if you think the Homecoming team nerfed AE XP because of server load, too. ;)

Strictly answering the question: Kinetic melee is pretty fluid on SOs, decent attacks of all kinds you can chain coupled with a solid damage/tohit buff that's going to have more uptime than anything else (save for Soul Drain in DM). Defense is king on SOs (well... king-er?), making Energy Aura a pretty strong contender for a secondary. Defense, resistance, a heal that helps with end management and an actual end management power, and a T9 with no health crash that also boosts your HP. It's really the full package before IOs. -- Questioning the premise: There is no need to grind to afford IOs. Going from lvl 1 to lvl 50, even on double XP (0 inf), you'll get rare salvage drops and recipes you can drop on the market for 1 inf and see what you get. Then there's merits you might acquire as a result of playing story arcs and TFs. Plenty of useful uniques can be bought for 2-5M a piece. Steadfast protection, Miracle +recovery, Kismet Accuracy (+tohit), Unbreakable Guard +7.5% hp, Reactive Defenses scaling resist, to name a few. Then there's sets of multi-strike and crushing impact that can be bought for 1M a piece and slotted in attacks for great power enhancing - and set bonuses on the side. Those prices are the lazy route, even. If real life means play sessions are rare, it's possible to put lowball bids on just about anything. I've bought more than 10 ATOs for 2 millions a piece. I've seen my auctions for Doctored Wounds fill up at 111k inf. With patience, there's a lot you can get for a fraction of the inf most players spend.

Also of note you can slot multiples of them now, but only the mez resistance bonus stacks. The +25% regen is unique. (So, don't slot more than one. ;) )

Tentative bump for attention. What better way to spend Summer than fry things with a fixed Blazing Blast?

So let me get this straight... If you repeatedly suggest +5 slots are a great sacrifice in Aim, that's OK. But if the first two of my points amongst many states that in my opinion, Aim stands to get more than one slot. I'm "narrowing on one singular statement" and "telling you fire is hot". Nevermind that my greater following point was that you don't need Gaussian. That there are numerous other ways to reach the softcap. That you are likely to get there as a side result of pursuing other things. A greater point you choose to slither around, and focus on misrepresenting my argument instead. Look... Softcapping Sentinel SR is easy. Period. You're somehow struggling with that, yet you're also a power gamer who knows everything about recharge times and synergies, to the point it's insulting to say anything on the topic. OK. I mean no condescension by pointing out Aim/T9 synergy, just information. Personally, I went half of May with Gaussian slotted in... Tactics, because I completely forgot about the PPM change. Wow. So if I'm being condescending here, it's really myself I'm calling stupid. I'm not some mindreader to know what you know and don't know, especially given your vague dialectic that I would say switch the goalposts, but in truth the goalposts aren't even defined. You're sometimes talking about Sentinel SR, sometimes other secondaries, sometimes melee ATs, sometimes builds who don't have money, sometimes builds who don't want to slot Aim, and so on. Are you a roleplayer on a shoestring budget or Arcanaville reincarnated? I don't know, and you're not making this easy by staying purposefully vague about your goals. And it's always worth thinking about lurkers, who tend to outnumber posters 10:1. Information that's not useful to you might be useful to others. Bottomline: 1) SR sentinel can be softcapped with CJ + Tough/Weave and set bonuses acquired as a result of chasing other things. 2) Sentinels stand to benefit from slotting Aim beyond the default slot. If you disagree with either of these statements, then feel free to debate these instead of attacking my intent.

Going to third /sonic. It was already fantastic because you get -20% res per attack. Now that nukes don't crash and that you can slot a KD IO in Shockwave, its AoE went from pathetic to doable. So your time/sonic will solo AVs *and* +4/x8. Enjoy. I'd definitely go with Power Boost for epics. Extra defense beyond 45% helps you withstand defense debuffs and incarnate content.

A few things come to mind: - are you so starved for slots 5 slots to reach the softcap is a great sacrifice? - are you really one-slotting Aim on Sentinels? There's perfect synergy with your T9 primary (same cooldown) and the Gaussian chance for BU. Every Sentinel build built for performance should aim for at least 2 recharge IOs and the Gaussian chance for BU, IMHO. - you don't need to use the Gaussian set. I picked it for simplicity, and because it's a (to my standards, YMMV) common build choice for other reasons. It's likely you'll reach the softcap through pursuing other things, because many valuable sets for +recharge, +HP or what have you give +def as an aside. Slotting your 2 ATOs will give you +5% melee and +2.5% ranged, for example. Fancy a full Numina set in Master Brawler, which gives you a meaty +3.75% S/L res as an aside? There comes another +3% ranged. Stick a winter set anywhere (because adding slow resist to Quickness is suh-WEET, let me tell you that), and the end bonuses give you more defense. My fire/SR/pyre sentinel is sitting at 59% melee, 52% ranged, 51% aoe *without ever consciously thinking about defense set bonuses*. I'm not sure what sacrifices I am making. Blaze is slotted with the Apoc proc and a pvp proc, Cremate with the Hecatomb proc and a damage proc, and I'm sitting on perma-Hasten with Vigor as Incarnate. Which could be swapped for Musculature, really. OK, I don't have 2 damage procs in Flares, I stuck the Opportunity ATO set in there... But I think any claim this would be a great compromise would be reaching. So, I don't know. Maybe I'm jumping the gun and overreacting to the language you're using. But sacrifices, compromises... All seem very strong words, from the perspective of someone who shot way past the softcap without trying for it. I read your whole post - the following sentences talking about SR - so assumed you eyerolled at claims of easy SR softcap. My mistake. And again, I'll admit to possible bias. Let's chalk it up to us sitting at either end of the perception spectrum, which makes it hard to reconcile your take with mine. If I could marry Sentinel SR, I would...

EDIT: useless post, I was being a twat that day (apologies to oldskool!).

You will be able to chain Blinding Feint - Attack Vitals consistently way before perma Hasten (and you want to use Blinding Feint, the damage boost is too good to pass). If you're getting perma Hasten levels of recharge, the dynamic generally becomes to forgo combos entirely and run Blinding Feint - Ablating Strike - Sweeping Strike - Ablating Strike, which does slightly more damage. Personally, I like sticking to BF -> AV, and not sweating recharge too much as a result. Thanks to the "bonus" combo damage, you're not losing as much as you would on a powerset where you're downgrading your attack chain. And it leaves you full freedom to build for defense, recovery, what have you. :)

Weekly bump for the most important issue that has ever plagued Paragon City. Due to this problem, the OP has abandoned Sentinels for Corruptors. Who knows how many more players silently did the same? Thousands? MILLIONS?! Every day, droves of Sentinels hang up their cape, never to be seen again. All because of Blazing Blast. Please fix, pretty please.

Pretty damn awesome. Can't wait for the video :D

Bit of a tangent, but I think it's not illogical to be dubious of Water Spout specifically. It makes your DPS great against a lone, immobile static target. But in many other situations, the DPS gain is negligible or even null. Hasten, Assault, Quickness, incarnate passives will boost your ST DPS whether you're against a pylon, jumping from group to group gunning down minotaurs in the ITF, chasing down a flying Diabolique... You get the idea. There's nothing wrong with Water Spout for what it is, a great situational DPS buff. But if you want to use pylon tests to extrapolate your overall performance, things get muddier.

But disabling common/uncommon drops doesn't mean you get more rare drops, it just deletes them out of existence. Which is a bad thing for salvage, since everyone uses salvage. You really want Luck Charms to be 500k a pop again? Personally, I delete all common and uncommon salvage drops once there's no more room. Opening up the market interface and dropping stacks of salvage, limited to 10, to get maybe 1k inf out of each just isn't a good use of your time when you earn almost 100k inf for killing one boss (on a finished character, once you slap on double inf). So the effect on market supply is 0. You're not getting my commons either way, they're vanishing in the ether. :P As for the hypothetical slippery slope argument ? It's hard to believe people who would normally sell their salvage would suddenly disable it if given the option. It just makes no sense!

If you like knockdown, it's worth noting kinetics has a native power for that: Repel. Slap your KB->KD IO in it and you've got your KD aura for one power pick, with a radius of 9 feet too. Whirlwind is only 7 feet, if Mids is to be believed (haven't played with whirlwind much so I don't know how the two *truly* compare to each other).

And now this is impressive again. Thanks for proving me wrong. ;)

Yep, it's still fast. No question. We're just moving from "WOW, this is unbelievably fast" to "oh, ok, that's pretty good". I'll agree discussing intent isn't all too interesting here. But for the purposes of discussion, it's better to label what you're doing properly. People don't exactly think "no bosses" when they mention +4/x8, so the omission begs for confusion.

So a friend helpfully pointed the REAL trick here when I showed him this awesome video of a plant/martial dom "clearing +4/x8 no cc": - name your bosses "Boss" - downgrade them to lieutenants - record in potato quality Consider me trolled successfully. :P

The Overwhelming Force KB to KD unique IO can be slotted in Blazing Blast (same with any attack that doesn't accept knockback enhancements). So, that's one problem solved. However... Blazing Blast is currently bugged and does much less damage than its listed numbers. The damage is about the same as Fire Blast. For twice the end cost, and more than twice the recharge. Ouch! ;) Unless you like the reliable soft control, it's more than safe to drop the power. Fire Blast ends up *superior* in damage, if only because it lets you run a better attack chain. Blaze - Fire Blast - Flares is trivial to attain, while chains with Blazing Blast will have to stuff a second Flares or Fireball in there.

Man, you just know everything don't you. Thanks :)

I'm confused about Power Boost, and the enhanceable RES explanation. Fade from controller's Darkness Affinity has an enhanceable RES component. Yet Power Boost boosts it. What gives?