Spaghetti Betty

Of course! The short answer is, "start with a little bit of spending cash"! You can use the exact same steps I start my Brute with on Day 1. Head to the START Vendor, pick up some Amplifiers (1k a piece at level 1) to give you an overall stat buff, grab Plasmatic Tasers and Hand Grenades for AoE, and use the Prestige Enhancements in your ST attacks for bigger targets! There isn't really a point to turning on bosses if they're just acting as giant road blocks as you clear maps. All you're doing is decreasing your xp gain overtime, so don't feel bad for leaving them off until you have a bit more power! Another piece of advice I give in the playthrough is to leverage damage procs over damage aspect as you level. In your early career, enhancement aspect doesn't contribute much to your overall output as much as adding another solid number to your damage will. You can see me use these to great effect with the Brute, effectively tripling my damage with the little amount of slots I have available during the lower levels!

Yes!

Well, it's kind of hard to compare the two! They both play a bit differently, CC being more of a baked in portion of Stone Melee's offense over SS being more about brute force. A Tanker is also going to be miles sturdier than a Brute. I will say, the Stone Melee Brute has been a breeze to level up so far. Fault just puts in so much work and comes in really early, where SS doesn't get going for quite a while, especially on a Tanker. My personal preference is still going to steer towards my Regen/SS Tank, just because I much prefer that playstyle, but I'd recommend the Stone/Regen Brute to a beginner any day!

You should try playing a Crabbermind!

I've been busy generating myself! Here's some of my favorites from the past year of experimenting! And here's one for the spooky season!

Hello, glad you're liking the Regen revamp! Yes, nuRegen is a bit more streamlined and user friendly, but a lot of its identity still remains intact. It's still going to fold easily to debuffs, so you'll have to choose your targets carefully before you crumple! As always, having crowd control options are a huge boon when running Regen. If mobs are unable to attack you, then that's less attention you have to spend on healing! I'd also recommend looking into pool powers and picking your favorite defensive clickies. Having an extra panic button online along with your other incredible options will keep you standing if things start getting rough. Might I suggest Rune of Protection? Of course, I'm always open to any questions you might have, and there's numerous threads floating around the various Archetypes sections where I've offered advice as well!

Hello! The OP is doing a spin on my Regen/SS build here! I'm actually of the opinion that SS is one of, if not the strongest pairing for Regen. SS Is a top 3 melee powerset for Tanks and Brutes, offering incredible output thanks in part to doublestacked Rage, making all damage options, in the set or otherwise, extremely effective! There is also a lot of crowd control utility in the set via AoE knockdown in Foot Stomp and Hand Clap(KB2KD needed). Rage crash also isn't a big issue, since Regen doesn't thrive on building DEF, and the end drain is easily managed!

I have a few annoyances with lab maps myself! There's one specific set piece which is a tiny room with an elbow ramp, some computers lying around with a tiny nook and some piping overhead. I can't tell you how many times I've tried jumping up to tag a mob on the upper level only to bonk my head on that piping! I just want to pull the mob down! I don't like the Lab Equipment room either, the one separated into quadrants with the chambers in the middle of each quarter. It never fails that there's a lingering bystander or two hiding around one of those preventing a Defeat All from clearing. You also have to get insanely creative with LoS pulling in some of those rooms. As a melee AT main, this is just another splinter into how long it can take to get through some of the larger instances of labs. And don't get me started on the GR lab maps! I hate those more!

Day 3 went out today! In this installment, we close the gap to 27 to officially start IOing our build! I do tease an installment where I go over my respec into our official build path and how I'm going to be resourcing most of my IOs and spending inf, but that footage was unfortunately corrupted. My apologies!

Hullo! I don't normally find myself here, either! Mostly because I feel like Defenders are super easy to build. Case in point, you picked a really easy combo to play! Time Manipulation is super strong with Defenders values, and Fire Blast is Fire Blast! The real cream with Time Manipulation Defenders is that adding Power Boost to your toolkit greatly inflates basically all of your numbers across the board. Using it before popping Farsight will allow it to pump out extremely good DEF numbers. It will also boost all healing you do while PB is active, which is double good for Time since it focuses on HoTs instead of solid numbers. Chrono Shift is also a fantastic buff that slaps a whopping +50% global recharge on your teammates in a big AoE and grants them massive healing over time. Give Temporal Selection to your Blaster and watch them have a great time! Stand in the middle of crowds and watch Time's Juncture cure any doubt that you'd ever get hit! So, saying all of this, the most important thing to point out is that Time Manipulators tend to have endurance problems! Chrono Shift's recovery buff only lasts for 30 seconds! With all of that out of the way, I did take the time to make an example of how I'd build one! Defender (Time Manipulation - Fire Blast).mbd Numbers are before Power Boost is applied to Farsight, but if my math is correct, using PB will put you just above the softcap! This will allow you to wade through combat pretty easily. Use Chrono Shift on cooldown to juice the whole thing up! For my Incarnate choices, I went all in on an aggressive playstyle with the Musculature + Ageless Core combo. This will pump your damage, solve any lingering endurance issues, and make Chrono Shift perma (Ageless displayed at 60sec for median effect)! I hope this helps!

While normally I would agree with you on that, Regen seems to be the exception to the rule in that your average player can't seem to get it to work solo at all! I try to avoid saying "skill issue" when that comes up. FWIW, I start the run at x8 and it only ever increases from there! The goal is to be tackling +2x8 pretty consistently by level 32.

My main Scrapper is StJ. so I can speak on that! The good news is it feels very fun to play! The delivery on every attack feels right, and the combo system is pretty straightforward and easy to pick up! Crushing Uppercut is easily one of the most satisfying things to hit in the game. You'll feel very rewarded for landing one! Now onto the not so great stuff! If you're playing on anything other than a Stalker, your damage is going to feel a bit anemic without extremely heavy investment. In fact, the only other AT that feels viable damage-wise is, in fact, Scrapper! It is entirely feasible to get into a rotation of (Heavy Blow, Rib Cracker, Shin Breaker*) -> (Filler**) -> Crushing Uppercut, but it takes a LOT of recharge investment to do it. But the payoff feels good! The set is also severely lacking on the AoE front. Sweeping Cross is a garbage attack and Spinning Strike's range is doody, but it's better than nothing. You're going to be pushed into pairing it with an armor set that can offer good endurance management, provides a bit of global recharge, and could possibly add to your AoE damage some. Which is why I landed on Rad Armor! I think Elec and Bio are also pretty decent pairings for it. *- Use these three in pretty much any order, just make sure whichever one you place your Crit Strike/Hide proc is last in the sequence! **- Any epic snipe is best, but Cross Punch also fits here!

I'd have to agree! While it's definitely a strong buff as a total package, it has become a struggle to get any real progression done with Reconstruction and a bunch of passives to start with if you don't know what you're doing. And I kind of get where they're coming from. It seems like the idea they're trying to enforce is "here is your built in green insp, go receive buffs." Which is not far from what Regen is really good at doing, but tends to lead the uninformed into believing they'll have to be carried for most of their career! Personally, Second Wind and Ailment Resistance could switch places, as I don't think debuff resistance and a tiny bit of max HP is as much of a lifesaver as another spot heal would be, but I'm not a dev! But these musings are why I reiterate that Regen is something you want to tackle after having established yourself a bit!

Hullo! I have a special(!(?)) surprise today! I think one of the questions I get asked the most is "How do I level up a Regen toon?! It's so weak!", and the answer I usually give is "PL to a comfortable level"! Well, I still think that's my firm stance on it, as Regen isn't something you want to start with as a widdle baby. As much as I love the set, it really has nothing going for it for, say, the first 20 levels or so! But, I thought I'd start a project that would entail me training up a Stone/Regen Brute from level 1 all the way to 50+! And I'm recording every minute of it for your viewing pleasure! I won't be joining any teams during this run, just to prove that it can be done completely solo with lots of application of resources and knowledge and lots of inf! Here is the first day of gameplay for your viewing pleasure! For those that wish to follow me during this adventure, I give a big thank you for your viewership! Episodes will come out on a triweekly schedule with the first two being live at the time of this post. Remember to stay tuned!

Not at all! Cross Punch is a much better power. It's still a cleaving attack, buffs your to hit and recharge on connection, and doesn't consume your Combo! You can nestle it perfectly between your other finishers as well, so it'll feel pretty natural hitting it before either Spinning Strike or Crushing Uppercut to keep your flow of attacks seamless!