Spaghetti Betty

Hello again! So, I dusted off my SS/Regen for the first time in awhile. As, I was playing, an interesting thought occurred to me: How can I tweak this? I think this is something every theory crafter in this game can relate to. See, I was noticing a very key detail that has come to bother me in my ascent to Agent of Chaos. With the Gloom recharge nerf, I no longer had a seamless attack chain! In fact, it was pretty rough! So I did what any goblin would do, and I started brainstorming ways to fix that gap, even if it meant losing a bit of mitigation in the process! This is admittedly a very scary thought process when it comes to working with Regen, but that's never stopped me! After a few days, I came up with this! Kerpow! SSRegen2024 - Brute (Super Strength - Regeneration).mbd Now that I have the pretty picture in front of you, lemme go ahead and divulge what all has changed! A new, seamless attack rotation* - Whereas the old build was running something like (Punch -> Haymaker -> Gloom -> KO Blow -> [other things]), this one is possible of using (Haymaker -> Cross Punch -> KO Blow/Char). It also has a lot of new, fun tools, such as the aforementioned Char and Melt Armor. This helps immensely with damage! +-With Hasten active Slightly less overall mitigation - A smidge of survivability overall has been traded off. Fast Healing is gone, which is a penalty of about 100% regeneration. This build also has 4% less RES across the board. The biggest blow to mitigation here is the loss of Hand Clap. Having an AoE KD/Stun on demand puts in a lot of work, and I can really feel not having it. Oh well, I'll just play harder to compensate! Hahahahaha... Anyways, I'm pretty satisfied with how this has turned out! I even cooked up some demos for your viewing pleasure! Above, I drag this hulking monster through a controversial enemy group - the NuCouncil! Besides the fact that Galaxy soldiers probably have the most annoying new power in the game, this goes relatively well, even with all massive additions of Negative damage! I even make some cheeky pulls towards the end to really see what the build can do! And then, just for kicks, I took on a +4 Infernal! I figured this would be a pretty good benchmark, considering Infernal does a ton of common damage (Lethal) and a good amount of exotic damage (Fire). Yes, I did use a Lore and Evenomed Daggers, but they were there to speed the fight up. I still had to mitigate all of the incoming damage. This is a really good example of how close to the chest a build like this has to be played. I even left a death in at the very end, just to highlight that getting lazy just for a little bit leads to floor munching. I thought he was dead! We'll just act like it didn't happen. As always, I welcome all feedback, questions, or comments! Thanks for reading! *** ISSUE 28 PAGE 2 UPDATE BELOW *** Here's my Brute updated for the new revamp! Not much has changed slotting-wise, and the gameplay flow only changes in that Instant Healing is now a new toggle! SSRegeni28p2 - Brute (Super Strength - Regeneration).mbd

I'm pretty sure I've posted this concept before, but I decided to revisit it! The Sacred Duster, Street Justice/Ice Armor Stalker

The neat thing about farming with a Tanker is that any one of them can be built to farm with ease! Sure, some combos won't farm as fast, but the only real criteria to meet for farming is not dying!

Just my opinion, but all the bonus XP did was compel farmers to take their business to the lower pop servers. It missed the mark a little bit in moving permanent traffic from the two giants. It was a temporary bonus anyways, so I'm not really upset by its departure.

Looks great! I appreciate the flattery!

The easiest Tanker to play in the game is probably SR/Dark, IMO. You'll be pretty much invulnerable to damage by 35. Super Reflexes Tankers will have soft-capped positional DEF on just SOs. Simple IO slotting will put them near the Incarnate softcap. Dark Melee will bridge that gap with -Tohit, plus Siphon Life for a little bit of sustainability. Building for damage is also very straightforward, since your goal will be to build recharge for Soul Drain uptime. It's also extremely easy to build RES because Tanker things. And SR has built-in scaling RES bonuses if you start taking damage!

Cheesed to Meet You, Dual Pistols/Martial Combat Blaster

I love Fold Space! And this is coming from someone who got used to doing a lot of old school herding. It's definitely a misunderstood power and often utilized incorrectly. Communication (or godlike awareness) is key! Me and some buddies of mine have created some absolutely massive balls of chaos when using herding and Fold Space efficiently. It's one of the reasons our small-team beta testing of the Labyrinth went so well! It boils down to "something something great responsibility", or whatever the guy on the box of rice said!

I'll throw a +1 for a Dominator! Since you're supposed to view controls as mitigation, you shouldn't feel pressed to use them if mitigation is already being taken care of! Some Dominator secondaries can really dish out some hurt if you invest in them correctly!

I could argue this is the symptom of a different problem, and that's that all of the goody two-shoes heroes are too afraid to hop over to redside and get Invader instead!

Maybe they should nerf Brutes so that Regen isn't an outlier for them!

No thanks! I'll just keep smashing the F keys when I finally notice my tray is full!

Regen, for sure! It goes from being a middling to underperforming set on a Scrapper, to feeling like godmode on a Brute. Trust me, I would know!

It's kind of hard for me to have a solid answer to this, mainly because the proposed issue stems from a solution that was introduced due to the root cause of said issue that is being proposed. Words are difficult! A lot of that legacy contact stuff (and even some of the newer contacts, e.g. Twinshot, the KR arcs) is a drag to run in a team. No amount of reward is going to change that. That's why things like DFB, DiB, the revamped TFs - and to a further extent, why iTrials are the way they are - were introduced. It was to give very clear cut content for any group of thumbed beings (and cats) to smash their keyboards at to gain decent rewards in a reasonable timeframe! It would be a little funny to double back and try to incentivize making players run content they think is boring and/or contrived!

It's all fair game! Leave your PvE pants at the door! That being said, there have been plenty of times I have just blatantly stood around under the globe in RV just to chat with the PvPers and convert IOs without a scratch on me. Maybe they saw me as some kind of weird mascot!

No!

Charts in a vacuum are not the same as actual gameplay. I have many debuffers that already turn +4 mobs into paper. Hell, my best AV/GM soloer is a Necro/Dark with no inherent armor, but once the -tohit starts flying, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference! And it can drop targets in a handful of seconds! I think buffing that any further would be extremely unreasonable!

It's a little tough for me to answer this question, because I hardly PuG nowadays. When I do, I'm definitely paying attention to what everyone else is doing, mostly because it gives me ammo for talking trash to my friends!

Um, are we playing the same game? Debuffs are the only way to solve some encounters, because mobs are simply too strong without leveraging them. You know what? Screw it. Buff Cold Dom more!

This was an all Ice team. If we were all running at level 8, the only real aoe control either the Dom or Troller would have access to then is Cold Snap. I love fear as much as the next guy, but even then, that would mean hitting any of the mobs once will let them get buffs out! Regardless, we triumphed with another insanely valid tactic: money!

We were running it at level, so no group holds. Our initial strategy was to try and get the jump on at least 1 of the mobs with Cold Domination and it didn't pan out. So, after the double Cold buffs went out, it was impossible to deal any real damage to them without 12 or so Precise Imbuements.

This isn't a PuG story, but I do have my own Posi 1 moment to share! It wasn't too long ago that I took my group of buddies on an All Ice Superteam. IIRC, we were 3 melees, a Dom, a controller, a corr, a defender, and a blaster. My stipulation is always that we run everything at +4. So, what follows shouldn't be that surprising! We make it to the end of Posi 1 and get wiped out by our godmode shadows in very short order. I think it took everyone unloading full trays of Super Team Duals to finally take it down! It was probably the most challenging and expensive Posi 1 I've ever ran!

You know where to find me!

I can also chime in as someone who has done meta and (severely) off-meta runs in Hard Mode. Anyone familiar with EV knows that his schemes are borderline torture, and while satisfying to complete are not fast in the slightest. But, can a 4* ITF be done with 7 Blasters and a Kin? I can personally say yes, but you might want to clear your day for that one. In comparison, a meta speedrun will clock in at sub-25 at the most optimal end and sub-45 with bad luck or a hodge podge team. Which run sounds more convenient? Also, I'd like to request runs be scheduled at 3 am CST so that I may join! Thanks!

Pudding Potpourri, Invulnerability/Psionic Melee Tanker