Ston

I don't think they "can" raise the heal amount because it uses a standard formula. However, maybe another effect could be added to it? Maybe a small amount of +regen?

It’s pretty hard to come up with a good test for that because there are too many factors. Best to just try it out against a variety of enemy groups. A build that is amazing for 4* hardmode TFs might be terrible for solo’ing +4/x8. A build that can solo +4/x8 ITF might be terrible at solo’ing Rularuu. IMO, it’s best to build around stats that help you regardless of enemy groups (max HP, regen, healing, absorb, debuff resistance, movement speed) and then getting any other stats from temp powers, incarnate powers, inspirations, teammate buffs.. (resist, defense, etc). In my experience, this allows you to perform well on most powersets against max difficulty content assuming you’re bringing a good kit of buffs, insps, etc. If you don’t want to use outside buffs like that, your choice of power combos and playstyles will be very limited.

ITF is kind of a niche thing to solo. A majority of your survivability will come down to defense debuff resistance. You’ll want to take Ageless Radial to boost that. And monitor it constantly. Whenever it starts dipping down, you need to disengage, hibernate, etc. Once those mobs get the cascading -def going on you, you’re pretty much out of luck. So it just comes down to avoiding that. As an example, watch how they handle the situation at 24:20 in the video. Once you get hit with a few attacks and your defense and defense debuff resistance are low, you need to run away or kite until your resources are off cooldown (Ageless Radial, Hibernate, etc) IMO, this challenge isn’t the best indicator of how a build performs. It has a very specific set of damage and effects you need to mitigate (lethal damage, negative energy damage, recharge debuffs, defense debuffs). If you’re on a build that handles those natively (like an SR or Shield tanker), you can do this in your sleep.

Here’s someone doing it with wm/bio if you need inspiration. Bio, Rad, EA, Shield, SR are probably your best bets on a Scrapper.

Willpower will probably never be able to solo that difficulty on an ITF. It doesn't have enough HP/Regen to mitigate the incoming damage. Willpower and Regen are, IMO, the weakest of all Scrapper secondaries overall. They don't really have any meaningful debuff resistance and no offensive tools.

Yeah it’s known to be a very underperforming set. Fingers crossed that it is on the devs backlog of sets to revamp.

Scrapper! Would probably work well on any AT besides Brutes.

I've done a bunch of runs and haven't noticed it making any major impact. Might hurt builds that don't build for accuracy/tohit but that's a useful measurement. You can get times where a Crey Protector will combine their AoE Force Field with Nemesis Vengeance and they'll be a little harder to hit.. But you don't need *that* much to get through even all those layers of defense. Think this would be different if there were sources of -tohit, but luckily this group doesn't have those debuffs.

KM/SD was one I quite enjoyed. Tons of +dmg between AAO and Power Siphon.

100% onboard with changes to Seismic Force and Meteor. If nothing else on Meteor can get changed, it really should have some kind of bonus damage/effect for the amount of time it takes to actually land. I don't think it should do the same damage as Thunderous Blast considering the timing involved (or even less damage when considering Shocked procs). When I was doing Pylon testing, I always found it was very hard to keep track of when enhanced Stalagmite would be available. IMO, it's unintuitive to lose your enhanced abilities after clicking Seismic Force.. especially compared to the combo system on Water Blast. Think there's a lot room for improvement there. Honestly I’d never play this set as-is because I’m not a fan of staying on the ground. And even if I were to tolerate that, I still wouldn’t because the nuke just doesn’t feel good to use.

@Spaghetti Betty Awesome run! First time seeing dark mastery in action, looks very strong on that build. Fire/SS has been a favorite combo of mine since live, very cool to see it still competing with other top sets, especially without an epic aoe attack!

Great run! Thank you for giving it a try! And yeah I didn't even realize crit kb was part of this until I got hit by one.. Pretty annoying. I think I'm gonna stick with this enemy group and try to adjust the mission settings to make it closer to trapdoor. Might be able to control how certain groups of enemies get spawned. But love seeing that tw/bio in action, making me want to make another tw character soon!

Thanks for the suggestion! Going to make an alternate version of this using mobs with no resistances. Thinking Battle Maiden warriors.

Anything unlockable with veteran levels should be purely cosmetic. Wouldn't advocate for anything that increases your performance.

Amazing idea for a new melee set. Would definitely "feel" different than other sets. I would play tf out of this.

Servers published on: Live & Brainstorm Mission Title: Clear Speed Test (Page 7) Mission ID: 61992 (live), 23935 (brainstorm) The popular "Trapdoor" test is now dead after the recent buffs to Council and Arachnos. I've spent some time putting together another version of this kind of clear speed benchmark and wanted to share it with you all and get some feedback. There are other good clear speed tests out there to use, but I wanted to make one where enemies have some resistance and a variety of attacks to fight you back with. Map Nerva Archipelago Outdoor Map I chose this map because it has fairly consistent spawn points. It is outdoors so it will allow for room for ranged tactics. The main drawback here will be that enemies have more room to flee if you do not defeat them fast enough. In my limited testing, the clear time is very slightly slower than Trapdoor, but close enough. Enemies Shadow Shard Reflections This enemy group is a combination of Council / Circle of Thorns / Crey / Nemesis / Rikti. It features enemies from those groups that are relatively easy to deal with. Enemy average resistance breakdown: Lethal (15.18%) > Psionic (9.41%) > Energy (6.43%) > Smashing (4.50%) > Fire (4.32%) > Cold (1.78%) > Toxic (0.18%) > Negative (0.00%) This is fairly close to what you would expect from most enemy groups. "Final Boss" The main boss of the mission is Roderick Mueller from the 5th Column. He's a pretty standard Elite Boss with 25% resistance to all damage types and no scary attacks. Notably more durable than Trapdoor. Rules Only auto temp powers allowed Only auto accolade powers allowed Only alpha / interface / destiny / hybrid (passive) incarnate powers allowed No inspirations +4/x8 as the standard notoriety setting *** The biggest pain point that can swing these tests are Crey Juggernauts with Personal Force Field. While annoying, you can always ignore them and come back to them. In my testing so far, they haven't seemed to impact the final time by much. Any feedback on these test parameters would be much appreciated. Hoping to get some results in this thread to compare! I really do miss Trapdoor testing as I think it was a great way to compare builds and see which combos had the strongest clearing power. Example run:

I think I see what you mean from this video. I think I'd prefer the older FX along with you, looks pretty cool. Looks like Fire Shield and Plasma Shield get the same ring FX from Blazing Aura, but without any pulsing.

Anyone have a link to what this looked like? Or a screenshot?

Some looks I've really enjoyed on my characters lately! Thinking Cap // Psi Melee Scrapper Alani // Elec Melee Scrapper Spacebound // Energy Melee Stalker Eliminate // Energy Melee Stalker By The Sword // Katana Scrapper Brightness // Peacebringer (Zenyatta homage)

Any chance on rule changes for Brute submissions? Or is it cool for me to use signature summons, warburg nukes, shivan, snowman, etc..? I think we’ve already reached a point where Sentinel submissions can’t be compared to Dominator/Stalker submissions.

Uncage - Claws/Rad Scrapper

Would be cool if they can make a force field aura that conforms more to the shape of the body. Thinking something like the sonic resonance auras but with the force field bubble FX. I love the idea though, would definitely use this for a few characters.

Players put a lot of work into finding those outliers. This is evident by Scrappers/Tankers being preferable 4* tank roles instead of Brutes. Also evident by DPS and durability tests done for all melee ATs. A lot of this comes down to minmax’ing their stats and making efficient use of their ATOs. If you set the bar at a mid point, the effort of maximizing those ATs is for nothing if the goal is for everything to be mid together. I don’t see requests for Brutes to outperform Scrappers and Tankers. I see observations that they don’t reach the same level of performance and should get changes to make them a more appealing choice than they currently are.

This is really discouraging when it comes to these kinds of discussions. I think the best design comes when you balance around the highest levels of performance. This way we can set the bar high and see what needs to be brought up.

Problem I see here is Tankers and Scrappers are better jack of all trades melee ATs. They can both do the job of brutes while having higher ceilings in durability or dps. Tanker because of recent buffs to their inherent ability. Scrappers because of ATOs. Brutes don’t really have anything makes them a good replacement for either of those ATs. Even if they can’t reach the same levels of performance, they should have a tool that’s more interactive that makes them at least a “fun” alternative to those ATs.