Ratch_

Got really curious about Crit strikes locations in EM and there was some curiosity from others in the discord for me to run some tests and check the pylon time differences between crit strikes in ET or BS. Unsure of how to build a string for TF crit strikes but I think we can just reference nihilli's post for that. All these runs used t4 musc core, t4 degen radial, t4 ageless core, t4 assault radial hybrid (off). 15 runs with each build. (EM/BIO/SOUL) > Recorded Time || Time in seconds Crit Strikes in ET Crit Strikes in BS The overall conclusion I'm drawing is that EM is badass and does some pretty absurd amounts of damage.... Note: if I ended up converting the mm:ss format incorrectly anywhere, please let me know and i can update the averages accordingly. Also, thanks @Monos King for hanging out with me! haha 🙂

I don't know if SR would be the right secondary for this since your lack of a heal will start to hurt a lot when you finally get to the fight against Rom. Those autohit nictus will be a real challenge for SR, not impossible without good preparation - but potentially a different secondary would be more comfortable overall. I've actually done this before on a claws/fire brute. There is definitely something to be said in high damage being extremely useful against cims due to their insane cascading defense. There will also be some parts during this TF (namely the kheldian ambushes) where just having a barrier incarnate ready to go and a lot of damage to back it up proved to be extremely effective. I can see claws/sr cruising through quite a bit of the mobs, but just having difficulty in the final fight.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I did some runs on a TW/BIO scrapper with the only intent being seeing if the new Enflame would be a time saver or not. I did about 15 pylons in total, 8-9 of them with enflame and 6-7 without enflame. WIth enflame I was averaging around 1m25 -> with the outliers being 1m42 and one outstanding run at 1m16s. Without enflame I was averaging around 1m32 -> with less variability most likely due to me having had practice from the previous pylons. I never hit 1m25s without enflame. Fastest I got was 1m28s. Overall, enflame was cutting my time down by ~5s...10s at most. I would only cast it once since I was never going longer than 2mins so retoggling enflame would be a time loss since I wouldn't get the full DPS out of it.

That's understandable and I can see dmg differences. I was just hoping to be able to see a measurable difference in overall clear time to know if the damage buff (however slight) would end up saving me an attack or so. I figured I'd at least see a somewhat noticeable time differential i guess

That's my bad, I meant leadership assault. I was curious on how big of a difference a 10.5% dam difference would really be and I don't notice a clear time difference. I'll run more tests since what you said would probably still apply!

So has anyone tried this with leadership* assault toggled on and toggled off? I've done several runs on this tw/ea/mu scrapper and literally had no difference in overall pylon clear time with assault on or off. I'm still in the same 1m52-1m58 clear range very consistently. I was expecting my time to drop above 2mins but I'm not experiencing this at all. Hearing others experience on this would be helpful because I am thoroughly confused 😕

TW/ENA/MU Scrapper. Crit Strikes and FFB proc in FT. Goal is to sit at recharge cap as much as possible so that you can do the dream chain of: Build Momentum: FT -> Rend -> (Snipe/Arc/Whirling) -> FT -> Rend -> (Snipe/Arc/Whirling) on repeat. FT will benefit off of it's own Crit Strikes proc which is honestly kinda insane. On average, build momentum was active half/half since it last for 10s and kept recharge around every 20s. Hybrid Assault Radial (off), Degen Radial, Ageless Core, Musc. Core -> Avg. 1m 55s. Hybrid Assault Radial (on) -> 1m 30s.

TW/EA/Blaze scrapper (avg. 5.21 seconds) larger time variations were due to me somehow getting runners...seemed very odd since EA has a taunt aura like bio but who knows. Overall I'm happy with this scrapper. EDIT: Switched to TW/EA/MU (avg.5mins) I made a discovery during testing with the TW/EA/Blaze by hitting ageless right before fighting Trapdoor. If you sit at recharge cap you can FT -> Rend -> (Snipe/Arc/Whirling) over and over again. I've never seen trapdoor get bullied so hard. It's really kinda funny since you put the crit strikes proc in FT - but with this high of recharge and cycle rate your FT can benefit off of it's own Crit Strikes proc lmfao. So I went back, respec'd and now I got a build that can fairly regularly sit at recharge cap utilizing FFB in FT. I'm clocking in pylon times at 1:55 avg and 1:30 avg with hybrid assault radial toggled on. For trapdoor, I had to do a few rounds of practice but now I can regularly get 5mins solid. Pretty damn good for a non-bio scrapper

Something a bit different for me: Fire/Poison/Psi corruptor. The idea behind this toon originally is to be a force multiplier for a team - and in retrospect I wonder if a poison/sonic defender would be even more effective at this. But fire blast feels good and sonic doesn't so here we are 🙂 Anyway, i just did some solo runs through the trapdoor for some good measure and I could not survive 4/8 without inspirations. So i had to break the rule a slight bit and popped some impenetrables occasionally when things were rough. Fire/Poison/Psi Corruptor (avg. 6:53) I have no idea if these are good times for a corruptor or not. Frankly, soloing with this combo is rough - and I'll be glad to make it purely a teaming character if I ever decide to go through with building it on live.

Do you know if anyone has done this solo at +4 but got the Master Of? I'm wondering if I could do that last part or not without temps..maybe with a fire blast char or something claws could be quick enough?

I finally managed to pull this off, and it was insanely difficult. I completed this tf on 4/1 - for the first three missions it's overall pretty easy relatively. No issues, needed to pop an orange here and there for the Thorn Tree AV cuz of all the -def but got through it. First roadblock: Aeon. This fight will bring you to your knees if you don't eat some candy. That rad debuffer is an absolute nightmare. I died ~6-7 times before I finally got a hang of this fight. Second roadblock: Recluse towers. I gave up at this point in my first run. I just could not do it. Those repairmen killed my spirits. Watching the towers insane amount of health get huge heals was really really really soul crushing. So I abandoned the run and then went to sleep. Wasn't sure if I was gonna come back the next day but i respecc'd into a new build and decided I would just give it a try. With previous knowledge from the first run I made sure to go buy the signature summon (ranged damage) specifically just for those recluse towers. I hit up ouro to provide myself some super dual inspirations just for the recluse towers and off i went into the fray once more. Hoping that I would not fail. The result: I am very happy and relieved all at the same time. Those recluse towers had to have been the toughest thing in the entire game that I have ever done. I had to watch my inspiration timing, make sure my lore pets/sig summon lived, keep an eye on my health bar cuz recluse could reasonably 2 shot me until i took down the red tower and do the best I could at killing repairmen whenever they spawned. The issue i had on my first run was that I would be animation locked and just couldn't kill the repairmen before they healed the tower. SUPER FRUSTRATING. So i would bring the towers down to about half health, summon the pets and pop some dual team inspirations so they can live. Use my quick attacks occasionally but mainly let the pets dps the tower while I played guard haha.

I feel very torn on this because at one side I completely and utterly agree on the power strength of Rune. Giving resistance to everything is quite good on it's own, mez protection is useful to some ATs, and all the while being happily available to all ATs that can find it useful makes it a pretty insane option. It is hampered by the other power picks which for the sake of argument I'll try to not harp on. Looking at the power on it's own is where I do agree with the sentiment of not having any ground to stand on. However the perceived use (anecdotal) and the perceived strength does leave me with quite the disconnect. I personally use it on a spines/ice scrapper since the idea of cycling Icy Bastion with another clicky could make me insanely tanky. And even after moving my character to test on beta with the reduced duration I honestly didn't feel *that* much of a difference. It was definitely a nerf, but it was kinda whatever ig. After having spent some time reflecting, I have some thoughts on RoP and it's effectiveness. RoP provides X duration of +Res and +Mez, which I stated earlier I agree is pretty insane. Yet, no AT that I can tell can actually take good advantage of the power - where Mez is relatively redundant on armor ATs and resistance while strong on Squishies goes far less of a distance due to small health pools. And then you start to consider how taking sorcery means you lose precious opportunities for LoTG mules which RoP absolutely is begging you to have just puts the whole power in a weird place imo. It's strength comes at steep power pool pick costs, mule costs, and for something that'll only let you temporarily solve whatever hole is attempted at being filled. The payoff of RoP just doesn't outweigh the power slot(s) and pool costs (which hopefully in the future can be addressed/justified) but even then I don't see the team adding a defense power to the pool. That design constraint on it's own really dampens the overall opportunity costs for ATs that wish to take RoP. I realize I am taking an odd stance here, but hopefully I was able to articulate that while I think the power is pretty OP on it's own, it just doesn't translate that well in actual gameplay in my experience.

Okay, this is a pretty far off the road kinda run but I was curious. I've been looking at seeing what it's like solo'ing the game with absolutely no incarnates at 4/8 difficulty. And to put it short, it's hard as hell. After four scrapper iterations i finally landed on something that I think has a real fighting chance at doing it. To satiate my curiosity, I decided to take it on a few trapdoor runs just to see how much of a time differential incarnates really make...and here are my results. Claws/Dark/Soul Scrapper (4/8, no incarnates, only yellows for blind) - avg. ~10:40 It took a bit to get used to, but after the first few initial runs I was getting pretty consistently almost sub 10:42. Runs slotted with alpha, destiny, and hybrid (not toggled) - avg. ~6:05 Runners greatly attributed to the large variance of times here. Incarnates shaved my clear times by about 4 and half minutes.... Edit: Also slightly unrelated, in case your curious this character has consistently gotten around 7 minute pylon times.

Hm, idk - I could see it happening. I don't see fold space getting the same treatment but letting a control power do it's thing doesn't seem like a farfetched changed in my opinion. It'd be a nice improvement for grav control.

Okay, i did a few more runs tonight with some...fairly nonstandard combos. First up: Blastshade. This is a Energy/Dark/Soul blaster with no slotted KB->KD ios, and Dark Pit has been slotted with Stupefy set so it also has a 90% chance 6.25 kb. To boil down the character, it's as close as I could get to being a warshade without being a warshade. It's using two sets which I don't regard as very highly effective in comparison to other combos with outputting damage but I did get some suprisingly (happy) results. It's no fire/fire, but with all the KB/Stun the game really does feel like your playground. Teaming not recommended...the amount of KB you do is uhhh...not okay xD. Energy/Dark/Soul blaster (defensive amplifier) I was honestly surprised to be getting fairly avg. scrapper times...maybe I am underestimating those sets. Particularly soul drain. Next up: Time to take a stalker around for a few runs..also with a primary I know many aren't too fond of. Fire Melee. Fire/Ice/Fire Stalker Honestly...i do have some thoughts on why stalkers have such a hard time getting close to scrapper times. I hear a lot about how stalkers are just better from having been around the discord for a bit but from seeing some data in here and from testing that I've done with them I would still prefer a scrapper for solo/smaller teams. I went fire melee because FSC is notoriously amazing on scrappers, and having just done a fire/fire and a fire/bio scrapper - this seemed like a decent option to get some valuable data to compare against. Fireball...is well, fireball <3. BUUUTT, the one thing that is really holding back the stalker is the 10s lockout on that ATO chance to re-hide. Seriously. What made the scrapper so effective at this was getting insanely high crit chances on AoE attacks with a high cycle rate. A stalker gets 2 reliable chances, 1 at opening cuz they are hidden and another once they get the proc. The issue is that at opening they won't always be grouped around for full target saturation, and if on mission start you won't have your Chance for Build Up proc up and running because for *some* reason you have to use that power per zone.... why? There is the issue of no taunt as well, but in all honesty with chilling embrace being heavily slotted for slow there weren't too many issues, YMMV. All in all, the two melee ATs fit in damage roles but their strengths are still clearly defined. I would imagine in a full team saturation that a stalker could arguably be doing more due to just base higher crit chance (30%) without needing any sort of reliance on a proc activation.

Yea, I've ran it on quills for awhile. The way it works is procs in toggles will run a check every 10s. So for quills, when you factor in Superior Critical Strikes is a 3.5ppm proc and quills has a radius of 8ft = the outcome will be ~30% proc chance on every target hit. This check however will only occur once every 10s. It's wasn't bad in practice when I ran it like that for awhile, but the lower cycle rate of proc chance would just mean that throw spines would do it better. The only pro of it being in quills is that it doesn't take any additional activation time from you. So you could easily get 3 attacks in that crit strikes period....but that benefit falls apart if you don't keep an internal clock going on in your mind of when that next 10s proc check period is coming up. Edit: Slight misreading of your post..the crit strikes proc last for a duration (~3.25s) and all primary+epic attacks will get the benefit of the additional crit chance. Quills won't eat up your chances at all since there isn't a max per say of how many things can benefit from critical strikes. It's just a matter of getting however many attacks that you can within that short time window. Quills does get that benefit, from my testing only primary and epic attacks can benefit from that proc. Of the pool power attacks I've tested, they don't seem to get the benefit.

I ran with a maxed out Spines/Ice scrapper for awhile..and i'm afraid i haven't found a fantastic spot for that critical strikes ATO. With the powers i took from spines: Barb Swipe, Lunge, Quills, Ripper, Throw Spines - each attack never really felt great with that proc. If impale got a buff then that would be the perfect place imo with it's slightly higher recharge rate and it being a ST attack would really give it a better rotation. I personally ended just putting it into Ripper since it was an attack I would always use, regardless if i just needed ST or AoE, and it also offered a decent proc rate. Throw Spines felt really reliable but it wasn't useful or reliable on an AV (ST only situations). If that doesn't bother you at all, then I would say throw Spines is a really solid spot as well. Edit: Spines could definitely go the route that Katana does and put it into Barb Swipe like some put it into Gambler's Cut. It wouldn't be reliable, but in my experience you use barb swipe all the time. I like the consistency of it in Ripper since I like crit'ing on my throw spines but Barb Swipe honestly could be an option.

I've been a bit weary at making a broad statement such as this since it leaves me open to being wrong to exceptions but here would be a general rule of thumb about this and DoTs that crit. If a power with a DoT does a big chunk of it's damage at the start then more than likely it's DoT won't be included with the crit damage. If it's all DoT then it'll be summed and added onto the power as a big instance of damage. potentially barring exceptions, i don't know all the powers in the game 🙂

The total damage dealt in those hits would be added up and tacked on as a single instance of damage on a crit. https://cod.cohcb.com/html/power.html?power=scrapper_melee.staff_fighting.innocuous_strikes&at=scrapper Breakdown: 20.7704 points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) every 0.4s for 1.7s (100% chance) -> On a crit: 20.7704 points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) every 0.4s for 1.7s (100% chance) + 103.8521 points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) (5-10% chance)

Eh, it's whatever makes you happy. I've seen plenty love all ranged blasters before - usually going atomic, devices, or energy manip as their secondaries. You do end up missing a lot of powers but it can leave your build with quite a bit of room for some interesting takes. From a numbers perspective, your best DPA attacks will come from a mix of melee and ranged - so in that sense you could say you are doing it wrong if you are only wanting to put out as much damage as possible. If you wanna be an all ranged blaster that uses dark manipulation for the secondary, then I would suggest maybe you're doing it wrong haha 🙂 The design for that secondary really won't bring any benefits unless you are close. For the most part though, Blasters have enough attacks at their disposal to allow for both playstyles while still being effective and that's why I love them.

Ragnarock to me will always be a giant banana resting on a rock

Secondary Powers for scrappers can not crit. Someone would have to provide some insight if lightning rod from electric melee crits but as far as I know a psuedopet can 100% crit as long as it's coded to do so. Irradiated Ground from rad melee is a pseudopet that can crit. Sorry, but I haven't actually done electric melee on a scrapper yet - hopefully someone else can pop in here and answer if lightning rod can crit. For more clarity: Primary + Pool + Epic powers can crit, but pool powers from my testing don't seem to benefit from the +50% critical strikes ATO.

It's a mix of it depends. For the most part, powers that have DoT as it's damage will work normally but the crit damage occurs as the summation of the whole DoT in one instance of damage. So for example, incinerate from Fiery Melee will just apply it's original DoT on top of a big instance of Crit Damage. If incin does 25 fire damage over 5 seconds, then it'll do 25 fire damage over 5 seconds plus 25 damage on the initial hit if it crits. The exceptions are powers that have DoTs that are outside of the damage formula. Greater Fire Sword for example has a 80% chance for additional fire damage. This DoT is not included as part of the powers original damage as DoTs tacked on this way exist outside of the damage formula. So an example of how this would work: Greater Fire Sword say does 15 lethal and 20 fire damage. 80% chance for 5 ticks of 4 fire damage. On a crit it'll just be 35 fire damage (the 15 + 20 combined) and still the 80% for 5 ticks of fire damage.

It definitely is wishful thinking. Maybe one day though 🙂 To me it is more fitting of a power to become the sustain over Touch. The sustain just feels tacked onto Touch while at least with dark consumption there is some resemblance of sustain already having existed on the power. I can see for consistency's sake Death Shroud just becoming the sustain power but Dark sets to me have always run a bit different and I enjoy keeping them on the more unique side of things

I got a energy/dark/soul blaster that let's me essentially play a warshade but on a blaster 🙂 Dark manipulation isn't the strongest secondary imo, and for the most part elec manip just does it better since I personally think Build Up is more valuable for blasters...but I would be lying if i said dark wasn't a damn good aesthetic. Soul Noir costume selection for the win. Edit: I should probably shout out Smite, that power is love. Dark Manip is a weird secondary but i find it damn good fun. It would have been amazing if the sustain got put onto dark consumption and performed similarly to drain psyche.