drbuzzard

As I like flight, it's pretty rare I take combat jumping (I like flight a lot). Leadership is a massive endurance hog, so I take it on well below half of my builds. I don't do speed pool unless I see that perma hasten is necessary to a build. What you're saying may be true to people who just hunt up builds on here and never make them themselves, but in general 'nearly every build' is pure hyperbole. Heck, the game would be so much easier if everyone took leadership (not that it is hard, but still, more boosts makes it easier). Heck, I'm rather shocked you didn't rant about the evils of fighting pool. I'd say that's more common that leadership for optimized builds.

I am reasonably certain the code requires periodic regen nerfs to remain stable.

EM is fast animation and quick strikes? Are you playing pre nerf EM or something?

Given that aggro is a function of enemy AI, I really don't get why people keep suggesting things which simply are not compatible with that. Sure ask for a higher aggro cap if you like, but asking for level or AT dependent AT is never going to fly.

Actually a 50 can't do that, as enemies are capped at 54 (outside of certain incarnate trials with enemy level shifts). A 49- however certainly can.

It's even worse than that. Anyone SKed to a team fighitng +5s would be a damned good approximation of useless since they would be fighting +6s and that's were the purple patch goes wild. You can see this one live fairly easily if you end up on a team below 50 fighting +4s since as is, you will encounter things which are the difficulty you set and +1 more than that value (so if you're on a 45+4 team, there will be 50s encountered). At +6 every drops off drastically (though it is pretty bad at +5 for that matter) to 1/2 of what you do at +5.

Not going to get into the debate about increasing the cap, but the number is a general one which can be changed. Over on WeHaveCake they set the aggro and AOE caps to 200 (which is the actual limit due to code).

Sonic is the only one of these I play, and I do consider it underrated. However, you are correct that it could use a bit of love. Liquefy, even on a perma-hasten build has too long a recharge. Honestly, while it is a good power, it's not anything close to an 'I Win' button, so the recharge is in the realm of silly (especially compared to a lot of the T9s out there). Sonic siphon, while I wouldn't skip it, is pretty 'meh' and could use a look. Perhaps the quicker animation like you suggest. That could help. Then there's sonic repulsion, which on its face looks like a dog, and should be skipped. However I teamed with a sonic once who slotted KB->KD into it, and dayum, that makes it into a great power. You put it on the same target as your sonic disruption, and you have a moving ice slick. It really is quite good. However, one has to know the trick, or it's a crap power.

Yes, it's a nice tidy solution for a number of issues, and also means one thing less I have to pay attention to clicking. I really don't like playing my Rad/SS tank all that much because of the bother of rage. You can't really run without it and be worth a damn, but paying attention to when to click it (and I avoid double stacking because I don't want twice as many periods of downtime) annoys me.

Given my druthers, I'd like it to be made into a toggle.

Perhaps they should transfer over the sentinel version and call it 'lazy regen' just so it's an option.

I am well aware of that. Though I have suggested people might like the other regen version to be made like sentinel regen.

Actually on a sentinel a big chunk of your survival is the toggle absorb shield, so it is more of the toggle and forget play style (which I like since I'm lazy).

Yeah, about time.

Funny thing is, I've found that sentinel regen is actually quite good in DA because it doesn't care about damage flavor, it's pretty much all just damage (I do have L/S resistance built up some, but nothing else. If things get hairy you pop a purple and on you go. It might actually be the best sent set in DA (though perhaps SR is better).

I was thinking a while back about how one would fix (rather in the sense of a cat) TW. So if we accept the premise that TW is balanced with SOs (which is debatable all by itself, but work with me), then the solution to making it a bit more balanced is to use the ability to cap the enhancement of certain powers (which is done in a number of places). You just tweak the allowable recharge on the powers in the set to be in line where one can get with SOs (or a balance point you desire). Arguably you could simply change the recharge to that SO balance point, and then make recharge changes impossible (even global). There's Victory Rush in game now which completely ignores all recharge bonuses, even global, so TW could be set up that way. It could still hit like a ton of bricks, just slowly which would seem to be the point of the set. The idea of helping the recharge on things, then capping it would be beneficial to any SOs users, but put a hard cap on the IOed out builds.

Don't know if any of you recall Repeat Offenders, but they were a coalition of buff/debuff oriented SGs on Liberty (? I think). They had SGs based on one powerset required for membership. I was in the kinetics one with a kin/archery defender way back when. They also had rad/*, dark/* etc. They would run teams of these guys (and there were a few build requirements for the SGs, namely the leadership toggles), and everything was steamrolled by a rocket powered steamroller. I wouldn't mind throwing together something like that, but heck I can't get a consistent sentinel team together for the MoITF challenge, so I don't have my hopes up. Personally I think a stacked SoA team would be flat out crazy good.

Yeah, TW does throw things off, but I understand it will be getting put in its place, so I think my stalkers as king evaluation isn't terribly wrong, just premature.

I think the world of IOs allows for a lot more ability to boost defense than offense, so I suspect brutes will come ahead in this to be honest. About the only trick in a tanker's favor is that assault for tankers now gets a decent value (controller level) of 15%, so I take that a lot and it helps with the higher damage scalar now.

In ideal circumstances (as in somehow the pets all stay alive, which is doable on a pylon run, but not so much in normal TF play in my experience), a crabbermind does high end damage. I think they have very respectable pylon times. I have a SoA with two builds, one as a crabbermind and another as a ranged tank. The crabbermind does sick damage while the pets last, but I find that to be a small enough percentage of the time, that re-summoning pets on long timers annoys me to much and I play the tank build. The ranged tank is as you say- so so damage, but high team support. You did mention people thinking stalkers were a weak class- that's for people who aren't in the know. Stalkers are the highest single target damage class (unless TW scrappers throw this off too far, I don't follow pylon stuff much). I have a number of stalkers and recently have forced myself to build up some scrappers to see the contrast. There is no comparison, stalkers are flat out brutal killing machines that can reap AVs like they were summer wheat. They suffer a bit on AOEs in general, but dayum, their single target damage is brutal.

People used to know that stacked buff/debuff characters was how you broke the game. I'm not really sure how that knowledge was lost. However leveraging that requires people to stick together and coordinate, and again we're talking a lost art.

The tanker damage scalar is higher, hence the bonus you get from rage is greater. Brutes have a damage scalar of 0.75 vs. tankers now having a damage scalar of 0.95. So if we look at a brute at the fury cap ( which is around 80% in normal situations iirc, but I may be a bit off), that gives +160% damage plus normal slotting (gives close to +100% base damage, again, not quite, but I'm math lazy and like round numbers). That means a slotted up brute at fury cap does 0.75 *3.6 = 2.6 * base damage of a power. A tanker, however, with normal slotting (again rounded to +100%) is 0.95 *2 = 1.9 * base damage of a power. We then add rage which boosts the user with 80% damage boost. Brute goes to 0.75*4.4 = 3.3 * base damage of a power 26% increase tanker goes to 0.95 *2.8 = 2.66 * base damage of a power 40% increase We double stack rage and: Brute goes to 0.75*5.2 = 4.94 * base damage of a power 37% increase tanker goes to 0.95 *3.6 =3.42 * base damage of a power 80% increase So while brutes do remain ahead in damage, the gap gets smaller with rage (and even moreso with double stacked rage) and the benefits are more pronounced on tankers. In relevance to the OP, I've been build building some brutes of late to contrast to the many tanks I build to try out the big tanker buff. It's quite clear the damage gap is still strongly in favor of the brute, especially how easy it is to hold up fury now. However, if you pick a set which leveraged the AOE changes (war mace is a very strong example), tankers really do a great job of reaping crowds now, and hit notably harder than they did. The durability gap is also quite large. As with all things, there's that opportunity cost on making builds, and as you like durable brutes, you have to make a lot of design choices chasing durability on a brute that come much easier on a tanker. Getting to 90% resistance, or higher defense numbers is simply tougher. The tanker will simply heal more due to greater base and max hit points. I also make my brutes as tough as I can, and I've been playing the recent ones through DA missions, and the durability gap really shows there since it's generally about as hard as the game gets. The brutes will get beat down if I set to maximum, while my tankers will pretty much stroll on through. If the brute is durable to the particular faction attacks, the advantage in damage is evident how fast I can clear, but if there's a damage hole, the brute will have to be much more cautious or sets things much lower.

Personally I don't know that it's desirable to spend a lot of effort on increasing redside population. Even when the game was live, and there was a whole lot more resources available to put into things, the devs couldn't really get people to go redside much past the launch of the CoV game. I remember during that issue Redside was busy, but after that? Not so much. As someone mentioned redside on live was ~20% of blueside, which isn't very far off the stats which were just presented for Homecoming. Not exactly sure how anyone imagines that a staff with much more limited resources will be able to do to change that. Some minor tweaking of rewards and alignment powers? I know I won't care in the least. Though on a positive note, it does beat the idea of cutting off access to ATs to try to force players to the other side. That would be a total train wreck. I've never had much incentive to play a villain, and while I did get all the villain ATs to 50 back on live (playing) on redside, I have no desire to do it again. We're in a legacy game here and I'd just as soon that if work is going to be done on the game, it not be an attempt to shoehorn people into playing things they don't want to. Allocating resources to what people want to do instead of what people don't want to do makes a lot more sense.

Electric armor starts slow, especially on brutes. I'd suggest more team play. Ride the task force wagon on up the levels. Once you hit the 30s you should be reasonably durable. It will also get you past the factions which are heavy on toxic and negative energy (though CoT is always around, there are more options). You should try to get missions fighting clockworks since you will resist energy damage and the endurance drain well. Though really electric is a bit of a tricky set to make properly durable. Looking at your build, I'd add fighting pool so you can eventually (with IO sets) cap your lethal and smashing resistance (tough is what you want). Honestly I don't see why you have 3 travel pools. Pick one, and for that I'd suggest leaping pool as grounded means you lack knockback protection in the air (and teleport is a pain to use without binds). Also for attacks, I would suggest if you're doing basic common IOs, do 2acc, 1 end red, and the rest damage depending on how many slots you feel like allocating. Truthfully, I'm of the opinion that electric is hard to make tough without IO sets. As it sounds like you're pretty low level, I'd consider making the character again (you have 1000 slots, so no need to delete) but to War Mace/ Willpower. Willpower is quite durable and actually gets most of what it needs to be good fairly early on. It will need IO set bonuses to tank for a team without support, but soloing it will be plenty good.

I didn't particularly want to find numbers to show why I greatly prefer War Mace over Battle Axe, but you've been kind enough to provide them. The way I evaluate a set before making an alt is to look at the DPAS (damage per activation second) for the attacks, and if the numbers are good, I go with them. The problem with BA vs. WM, is that the DPAS tends to be weaker across the board (I'm not going to post numbers because I'm lazy, and because the provided numbers will make my case). So let's make a simple bit of math using the provided numbers to make my case. WM smashes a pylon in 1:15 (or 75 seconds) and BA does it in 1:45 or 105 seconds. For the sake of easier math (this way it gives round numbers), I'll call the BA number 100 seconds (which means I'm being nice). Then we pick a nice round number to call the health of the pylon to make the math easy, say 30000 HP (because again things give round numbers, and yes I know it's not the real number, pylon math is a lot more complicated since it includes regeneration). 30k/100 = 300 DPS vs. 30k/75= 400 DPS. Hence WM is about 33% better than BA at sustained DPS given the numbers (better in fact since I was kind to BA). Is this night and day? I suppose that your mileage may vary on that evaluation. Between the way lethal is resisted so strongly at high level and this numerical difference, I have no interest in playing BA again. Anyone else is certainly welcome to play it, as it's not an awful set. Heck, I finally got a Titan Weapon build to 50, and while I know it is the numbers champion, I didn't like playing it at all, so perhaps BA will suit someone better than WM. Terrible, no. It's pretty middle of the pack. It's just that you picked War Mace to compare to, and that's simply a very strong set which is notably superior across the board. If you compare it to katana or Broadsword, it will likely fare quite well.