Redletter

Oh hey! Widows get +to hit for free, AND a toggle for CC defense by level 10! And Soldiers too! Why, that's JUST in time for Posi1! Could it be? Finally, at long last, the secret purpose of the VEATS revealed after all these years, at last? To spank the Circle of Thorns...?

Dom was my first read too, if only because Domination ALSO gets you out of any CC going around. My only problem with Doms is like, well, you live and DIE by your CC in the early levels since you don't really get to bulk up till later. Tactics helps that CC not miss though, which is always a bonus. My concern would be, somewhat obviously, END costs. Domination is a nice full END heal, but UNTIL then you're sucking down a lot. Do the CoT have resists to controls? I feel like they do, I can rarely ever hold a boss WITHOUT Domination. This was my second read! I figured like, a sword and board tanker or something? I know Shield Defense gets their Anti CC clicky fairly early, and broad sword's got some bonus accuracy AND -def stacked on it. I also considered Titan Weapons, because Titan Weapons are cool. Going along with my TW idea, i thought "Oh SR/TW tanker yeah? That's got DEF, a big ol sword that gives yet MORE def..."

So I've wanted to make a circle of thorns character for a while now, and while I fucking HATE Oranbega in game, I LOVE Oranbega as a story concept and roleplay tool. So, to sorta mix this together, I want to make a Circle of Thorns guy that noped out when they decided demons were the future and is now pretty hellbent on putting a stop to whatever psycho stuff theyre up to now. My goal is, mechanically, to make the character the biggest middle finger I can to the circle of thorns as early as possible. But, I have no idea what kind of character that would MECHANICALLY be. Part of me is like "oh well invul tanker, so Ruin Mages literally do NOTHING to me" but I don't know the faction mechanically well enough to settle on that. So, I turn to you folk! How do I make a character that stuffs these nerds into lockers where they belong?

Controller - Illusion Control - Traps.mxd This the new one, taking feedback from yall. While I was really disheartened by the knowledge that Seeker Drones couldn't proc anything more than Decimation, and that Time Bomb, in my testing, was not only incapable of capitalizing on all the procs it can take, but it's damage ROUTINELY underperformed when compared to Trip Mine! Which is... I don't know. I really wanted a big big bomb. It takes SO long to set up, and SO long to go off, you'd think it'd be dealing at least double the damage of Trip! But it doesnt, and that makes me sad. So, This build operates under the assumption that Acid Morter can apply procs, because weirdly enough, gas mine CAN proc and it procs REALLY well! So, if Acid Morter can proc, we're cookin' with gas! If it CAN'T proc, then like... I dunno. I'll cry, probably. No promises. I would if I knew how, I literally downloaded for this build and have NO idea how to use it beyond clicking things.

Oh! I thought making a new one would destroy the old one! If they can stack though, that's great. Im all about that, didnt know. So! I had NO idea about this, but, there IS an exception here! Decimation's "Chance for Build Up" seems to absolutely apply. So! Theoretically, you could have this AND a Gaussian's somewhere. That's like, ya know, novel at least! Also, in my tests, it doesnt seem like my procs in Time Bomb and Trip Mine go off. Im guessing it's for the same reason the ones in Seeker Drones don't go off? Because like, the power is techically casting a power of it's own, so only MY power has the chance to apply a proc? It could just be my luck though. Thank you all for the tips. I had NO idea morter was so good, and that time bomb was so bad. I... will probably KEEP time bomb for reasons (I may or may not have already bought all the enhancements for it...) I also had no idea that Seeker Drones DIDNT benefit from procs, which is really sad, I was REALLY hoping for like... batarang utility in these bloating buddies. BUT! The chance for build up still works on cast, so, I'll see if maybe I can work in a gausians somewhere to double up on the damage bonus for the novelty. Will return with a revised build, taking all this information into account.

That's true! I think you did the math for Panacea in an above post, which ISN'T very rare, and still manages to get to like, what? 20mil or something? I don't know, I'd have to look up in the thread. But! I also kinda like, I touched on this by way of the whole "RNG is a bad basis of crafting". I didn't just mean for the materials, I meant for recipes as well. It's why I *really* like Market Crash and I'm kinda saddened that Market Crash's purple recipe reward is a once per CHARACTER reward, as opposed to a once per day reward or something (we've already kinda touched on how expensive materials can be on the AH -- which is ALSO the only 100% reliable way to get the salvage you want since apparently it will auto generate the salvage youre bidding for once you bid a certain amount, regardless of how many are currently listed). That's really wild, and I've heard like, a lot about Set IOs and the market and stuff from back duirng live, where some of these things would need to bought for multiple increments of the inf CAP which is like, insane to me. I will wholly admit I have the benefit of literally never getting even remotely close to that kinda of market culture, and while what you say is true... I appreciate this, I also have to say it's not a good idea to use this as an excuse. Youre perspective comes from having seen the market culture during times I've never lived in, and saying "oh it's not NEARLY as bad as it was before!" I used the purple as an example I just had one hand, but you can apply the EXACT same idea to most recipes. It's like... the crafting system is tied now so intrinsically to the market, that there's an argument to be made that you shouldn't even be buying or farming for the high rarity recipes at all because you can just buy the cheap cheap cheap yellow recipes, then, use converters to turn those low level, cheap, less rare enhancements into the ones you want. Because why would you spend 750k I mean, I think you just answered the problem. In another thread, I've mentioned Overwhelming Force, an enhancement set that's VERY good and can be farmed reliably and infinitely. Sure, you can't get a SPECIFIC io from the set just by doing SBB, but you can get them, 100%, every run. Doing this for Market Crash solves the scarcity problem. This, obviously, doesnt solve all my issues with crafting, and I feel like I've digressed from the point of "crafting" and now kinda strayed into like, how crafting and the market intertwine... which I didn't mean to do. What I'm saying is that you can do this with just about any recipe that isn't something you can buy off the workbench. A solution might be to make all recipes purchasable through the workbench. It's a wild solution and maybe not popular? But I think like, something has to give. If you're gonna keep the crafting tax, and the random salvage drops, then it shouldnt be a crap shoot for if I ever get a Gaussian recipe, or a Sting of the Manticore, or Sudden Acceleration or whatever. I also like the idea of like... giving specific entities in the game world specific drops. Nobody like Synapse much, but, what if at the END of Synapse you got a guaranteed Panacea? Citadel giving you the blues? Don't worry, you've got a a Gambler's waiting for you at the end? I dunno. I just don't like having to deal with totally random chance for crafting recipes, AND materials, AND having to pay for crafting the thing I wanna craft after already having to pay more than double the price of the recipe itself, because of the aforementioned totally random things. Again, like, i don't claim to be an authority on anything. Im not a crafter. Im actually allergic to the pixels they use for the workbenches.

See, and I thought they looked like this!'

Well yes and no. I guess I wasn't clear, what Im kinda saying is some of them are super fucking expensive, and some are super fucking cheap, and the market is very inconsistent and it's interactions with crafted enhancements is kinda borked to me. Just as an example: This is great. I can buy the IO I want from the market for a price that, even at a high ball, is at LEAST 100,000 LESS than just making it myself -- and that'd be the case if I actually HAD a recipe, AND the two ingredients on hand. I do NOT in this case, so my savings would be even MORE immense. But, let's break this actual process down. First you need to check if you have the recipe for one? If YES then do you have the materials? If yes, do you have the inf to make the thing you have all the ingredients for? It feels like that last INF cost is kinda superfluous to me. Just my opinion, it just feels lame to have everything I need to make something then be gatekept because Im poor. Is it really necessary? But... How about something a little LESS favorable... Now, you can either make this yourself for a smooth 600k, or, you can buy it from somebody else for... more at minimum TWENTY TIMES that, but good luck, since that 12mil number is HIGHLY specific, to the point where it's far more likely a person selling a Hecatomb to an alt of theirs than it is a genuine bid. This problem gets more exacerbated the more materials you need to check to see if youve got. Because SOME things are just a crap shoot to find, and that's where the market comes in AGAIN, to bump up the already often times absurd price to craft this thing I already have, even HIGHER. For instance, what exactly are we looking at if I DON'T have Hamidon Goo, Chronal Skip, and a Synthetic Intelligence Unit (the most expensive and hard to acquire resources in this recipe)... So... you're looking at a minimum of 1.5million... PLUS the 600k... so that's 2.1mil? That's still radically LESS than what you'd be paying for if you just bought it made from the auction house... but I feel like that's still 600,000 more than I should be paying. I'd have less of a problem if I didn't already have to pay a crafting tax. Also, where do I get these resources for crafting? Ya know, if I don't want to pay up to 150,000 MORE (per orange ingredient) than the recipe actually costs to make? Furthermore, can I get these resources reliably? I don't think so... So, do we call the extra 17~ million the market value of the final product a 'convenience cost'? Because even at the absolute MAXIMUM, this price hike is ABSURD. But, i've digressed. My point ultimately is that sometimes, it's cheaper to craft the thing you want. Sometimes it's not. This isn't reliable most of the time. And, the crafting system is fueled by an even LESS reliable resource gathering system. I don't really appreciate a crafting system that's founded on random chance. Ideally, the point of crafting is to OVERCOME the randomness. Crafting, to my mind, is something you should be able to RELY on. You can't rely on market prices being generous, you can't even rely on them being the bare minimum of FAIR. But you SHOULD be able to rely on the game's systems themselves. This isn't exactly what I would call "intuitive". I see a lot of room for improvement here, that doesnt force people to hop on a farm to participate in crafting culture. I agree with the spirit of taking a look at the crafting system sometime (not anytime soon, it's not nearly that important). It's not "Pointless" as OP claims, not by a long shot, I literally showed evidence that, in the case of the BEST items in the game, you're better off crafting with your own resources than buying the finished product on the market. Like, it's almost hilarious how much more cheap it is to use the crafting system in those cases. Like, any enhancement MORE than 1mil on the AH is probably better off being made by you. As another point in FAVOR of the system, I REALLY like that I can buy a recipe I don't have. Like, I don't need to go try to farm for a lvl 50 Damage IO if I want one, I can just open up a workbench and buy one. I really appreciate that!

I want to agree in general, because like, I think it's genuinely backwards that you need like, nearly as much INF to CRAFT something as to BUY it off the market (some cases, not all)? But like, none of the points you raise address that. You honestly just kinda sound like you're coming off ff14 (who's crafting system is ALSO a joke, it's just a joke with gameplay) and you're kinda upset that this... what? 20 year old game's crafting system isnt that. Like, I'd say it could use some refining. Like, there's no real way to farm specific resources reliably? Certain enemies have certain salvage drops, but the only way I've seen farming done in any reliable fashion is ON an AE farm, which many people arent spec'd to run. So the fact that say like, I need Psionically Charged Brass for something, and I have no real reliable way of GETTING that resource does kinda bother me from a crafting point of view, but like... this game is older than I am? Im not gonna fault it for not having resource nodes I can exhaust trying to get the things I need, when realistically, I know I could MAKE a fire farmer myself, and get in on that method (the only reliable method of which im aware) of resource gathering.

Literally more valuable than 60 Converters, for some...

As a casual person who tried to dip their toes into IO sets because "Wait, my Snap Shot can have a chance to HOLD?! Wow so cool!" had my buying a lot of crap that just isnt very good at all, being sold at frankly insane prices that fluctuate wildly (in some part due to how people who play the market, manipulate the market). I mean. I don't know the math, but buying Winter's and a catalyst (for 120 merits, assuming you don't have one of these on hand) sells for 20->30mil depending on the IO, which is 20 LESS merits than converters, for double the profit. These 20 extra merits could be use to buy converters, or, spent on a catalyst for the next time you get a winter's. What we REALLY need to talk about is how Overwhelming Force is a universally applicable IO set with great bonuses, that takes usually less than 45min to get (per Enhancement), but NO BODY seems to want to play the very fun Trial to GET them, and yet despite being in literally endless supply (it's probably easier to get an Overwhelming Force enhancement than a Super Inspiration) they STILL sell for 6m on average... and they ALSO cost 100 merits to buy off the merit vendor. Im not saying we should sell Overwhelming force for 100inf on average, but, I am saying I want to play SBB more, so start answering my posts in LFG or I'll be angy 😡

They said the same for Earth Melee! And for Earth Armor! I say, if Stalkers are allowed to become giant rock monsters, then let Dominators run around with 3 clones of themselves bullying Skulls! As YOUR President, I will make it my solemn duty, to see meet these allegations of "Overpoweredness" with total, bone shattering DENIAL whether these claims are, in fact, true or not!

Ah, so what you're saying is we need... Illusion Control... 2 Also, yeah! It didn't even occur to me that Illusion Control, shockingly, doesn't have a LOT of synergy with Domination as a mechanic. Can we change that? Proliferating sets always brings some changes! And I've gon on record saying Illusion could use a little makeover... Perhaps... NOW is the time for it? Devs? Please?

I mean, I don't think it'd be strong. I just want Illusion/Energy Assault (Or Psionic Assault, im not picky). I don't really care if it's any good, I play a Merc/Emp MM and AR/Regen sentinel just for the flare.

Why does Malaise get to have all the fun? As a more serious note, Im legitimately curious as to the limits that are holding Illusion Control to Controllers exclusively. Like, is it the coding headache? Or one of those 'balance' thingies I hear people cry about whenever we talk about why Scrappers aren't allowed to take Assault Rifle?

I don't disagree. But, like... concealment exists. I slapped that on my Beam/Dev blaster and loved every minute.

Good luck to your sports ball team of choice

So, I've fallen in love? Illusion/Traps is such a wild ride, I love it to death. But. I don't think I've played a single weirder class. The monumental cooldowns means EVERYTHING I do MUST has to be INCREDIBLY deliberate, since I can't even rely on Phantom Army to behave how I'd like it to. I want to clean up my build. Right now, it's a chaotic mess. Probably because I want like, nearly every power in Traps, more than half in Illusion control, but ALSO want more than half the teleport tree, hover and evasive manuevers for LotG mules, and some other ideas have unfortunately fallen to the wayside as other complications have arose in my theory crafting during play. So. I downloaded MIDS finally to just try and help me out. Controller - Illusion Control - Traps.mxd This is what I came up with. I did my best to make a compromise between my vision for the character, and what I want to actually be doing when I play them. My vision was for "Magical Clown Batman", but functionally, im pretty addicted to walking up to groups of mobs, laying down the trip mine, and watching the fireworks. Playing into that, I ended up dropping the seemingly obligatory fighting pool alltogether so I can take teleport, letting me teleport TO my prank victims and put the bomb right there AND to teleport victims to ME for MAXIMUM PRANKING. Haste is here because ONE thing I've noticed about this build, more than any ive ever played, is that it's got REALLY long cooldowns. Caltrops is something I want to take earlier, but don't know quite where to fit it in during leveling. Again, Im not like, married to this. I really wish I could fit the Sorrcery pool in here for a number of powers in it (pretty much everything) but as far as I can tell there's no way to fit it in and still get my 5 gambler's globals in there. Some advice, critique, and alternatives would be nice.

Wahlku? What is this... Wahluk of which you speak? Whatever it is, you'll need to explain it much more LOUDLY and SWIFTLY, I can not HEAR you when you're moving so SLOOOOOOW.

I would revise this to DP/Dev or BR/Dev nowadays. I just don't see AR as much. Which reminds me! Arch/TA blasters are 'cliche' too. Can you imagine? A bow user, USING a BOW?! How uninspired.

Thank you. I havent run through gold with a stalker since the placate changes -- they don't really matter TOO much to me, since Stalkers are, to my mind, more reliable scrappers anyhow so the fact ambushes appear more frequently than hami does on hamikaze night didn't exactly make them a NO sell for me (Stalkers have more than enough damage and defense, alongside scrappers, to pull their weight in Praetoria). Even without placate, Stalkers get hide, which means missions that are BASICALLY just "find the clicky in this HUGE sewer system then run to the end and kill a boss" missions become an absolute BREEZE for them since you're not stuck slugging it out with ever pack of ghouls between you and these things. But. Praetoria also like escorts, which coincidentally DONT like stealth also. So for Stalkers, it's a lot of ups and downs. Great class, I may revise my recomendation once i give stalkers another go through gold.

I mean, the most cliche builds are builds people play because they're thematically congruous. Rad/Rad Sentinel comes to my mind as the most cliche sentinel build, because it's the nuke sentinel. It... doesnt make it good. I mean, it's not bad, but like... it's a sentinel. Do you WANT to level a sentinel for content? What content NEEDS a sentinel? I mean. I dunno. But Rad/Rad is probably the sentinel I see the most. Because casting nuke, like, 3 times as your MAIN attack string is fun -- which is the REAL reason people play any powerset combos that they do. Plants/Nature Controller also comes to mind. Why is is popular? Is it because Plants and Nature are super strong? No, silly, it's because it lets people play as *LEGALLY DISTINCT PLANT HERO WHO IS NOT UNDER ANY MEANS POISON IVY*... Plants and Nature just HAPPEN to ALSO be super strong...

Welcome to the winning team. Praetoria in general is opposed to certain ATs, and highly supportive of others. Just in how it uses it's mechanics and how enemies end up placed. Things to probably not play in praetoria: Stalker - Stalkers are perfectly fine, but, Praetoria's favorite gimmic for missions is ambushes. These ambushes will automatically agro to you no matter where you are, or if your hidden or not. They WILL find you, they WILL break your hide if they damage you. This is ALSO true of certain missions where a fight starts after talking to an NPCS who turn hostile after talking. These NPCS will ALSO be immediately mad at you and ignore your hidden self. Sentinel - Praetoria loves tanks. Sentinels get defense ATs. Sentinels should not solo praetoria. Being tanky isn't enough. The sentinel is just too lacking in defenses AND damage to play the same games Blasters, Brutes, Scrappers, Tankers ect can play. Corruptor - Corruptors are in a weird spot. I say "Dont" because, if you're solo, a DEFENDER is probably a better option. There's obvious exceptions, I'd say a Fire/* corruptor could probably turn praetoria into a graveyard. But! I hold that a defender is going to probably be more fun. Things to maybe play in praetoria: Blaster - Blasters got the BIG damage. Praetoria has pretty big mob packs, so, big damage to clear those packs ASAP is really nice! Being able to do BOTH ranged AND melee is real nice too, so you don't need to worry about trying to kite Ghouls around for 6 seconds. The problem with Blaster is that blasters are blasters and the mean streets of praetoria taste as good as any other. It's not an insurmountable problem, you can solve it the same way all blasters solve this problem, but, it's worth mentioning. Dominator - Dominator is by far my favorite class (besides stalkers). I love dominator, and, praetoria's tight mob packs make them REALLY fucking susceptible to crowd control, which the dominator LOVES to see. As with blasters, they get ranged and melee too. Not bad. But... The lack of HEALING is a bit of a problem though. Liberal use of Domination solves most of these problems so, and as I said, with tight mob packs you can build that meter up nice and fast. Most missions I get to pop it off 2-3 times per mission. JUST try to make sure you have Domination ready for end of dungeon bosses (which Praetoria also really loves). Scapper - Scrappers got big numbers that occaisonally get much bigger. I find their crits to be a very unreliable gimmic that you trade far too much survivability to gamble on, in general. Now, some ATs get around this. Faster attack ats (like Claw or Savage) and very strong armor ats (like bio, shield, EnA) all do very well on their own to mitigate this opinion i have -- regardless, if you want to play melee in Praetoria, there ARE better ways... Things to ABSOLUTELY play in praetoria: Brute - Praetoria likes small, tight mob packs interspersed JUST far enough that you could, carefully, pull them one by one if you want.. but more often than not pull one or two groups onto you at once. That is why the Brute takes the very top spot on my list of classes to play in praetoria - you LIVE in this EXACT kind of mob grouping, and it will keep you knee deep in Rage. I went through with a Psi Melee/Dark Armor brute and crushed it at +2x2 and that was without ios. The BIG problem with this was the End drain, so to remedy this, I suggest Energy Aura, Electric Armor, or Bio Armor (in no particular order). You will want for nothing, you will destroy everything. You want a "Praetoria solo" guy? Psi Melee/Bio Armor brute. Elec Armor if you don't really wanna mess around with Bio Armor again (though, Sentinel's Bio Armor is very different than most other classes, so, ya know, take that for what you will). Tanker - Same story with brutes, just with more survivability and less damage. I've played through with a Shield Defense/Super Strength tanker from 1-50* through gold side content nearly exclusively (I hopped on a farm at around lvl 42 which got me the 8 i needed to reach 50). This was a very End hungry character since SD seems to fucking suck down Endurance and I don't know why. Regardless, I loved this toon from level 1 to level 50. It's fucking great, give it a try (just ya know). Mastermind - Honestly? I've never played content so well designed for masterminds. The mob groups are small enough that your minions dont feel overwhelmed usually (Ghouls get around this by being VERY FUCKING TOUGH) but I genuinely think goldside is the best side for masterminds. Go in with Robots/Rad, or (paradoxically) Robots/Nature and you'll fuckin crush it. The ONLY problem is that, due to how you'll be leveling, you won't be seeing your upgraded pets for a while. I personally thinks that's fine and gives a sense of In-Character character growth, but Im a roleplay idiot, and there's an argument to be made my mentality is stupid. I still stand by Robots/Nature though. Nature is SUCH a powerful, frontloaded set that the fact you'll be absolutely fine by level 4 at the LATEST. If robots arent your thing though, DEMONS will wreck shop. Like, good lord, will they wreck shop (I guess that makes sense though, since Demons were apparently released alongside Going Rogue...) Controller - Controller edges out Dominator in this field. Dominators go in HARD on the damage. This is fine, but, if enemies are all locked down, then, do don't really NEED to care about your DPS. So, I give it to controllers. For this, I would recommend Plant/Kinetics or Illusion/Traps. Or, you can do Plant/Nature, and name your character (fittingly) "Moral Fiber"... Defender - Defender needs an asterisk by its name, as it's the LAST thing I would recommend you play solo in Praetoria, but, it edges out Corruptors in my opinion SIMPLY because Vigilance is a very good passive and more reliable than Scourge in solo play, and, Defenders get better numbers on their support powers. Namely healing. I've run through gold side 3 times now with defenders. Kinetics/Water Blast was the most fun. Followed VERY closely by TA/DP which was my FIRST defender i played Goldside. The final one (who im still messing with) is Time/Seismic Blast and theyre doing very well so far. Since you said you wanted to avoid something similar to your Water/Bio sent, I wouldn't reccomend Kin/Water. However, TA/DP was a GREAT time, even if it was MUCH harder than I'd like to admit. TA is a great primary, and DP is a great secondary, BUT I was basically GLUED to the Acid Ammo to keep enemy damage numbers low enough that I could heal it with inspirations and the Defender Class IO that grants a PbAoE heal. Anyhow, that's my two cents. If you should change your mind about going solo, shoot me a message. I adore gold side, and have a number of toons who could run it along with you, if that's something you were interested in.

I too have a crippling addiction to capitalism

I would argue that is somewhat the point? Stalker's arent meant to tank, theyre not even technically intended to "scrap it out" it just so happens they can do that very well. To the contrary, theyre clearly intended to act as single target assassins -- having an innate taunt kinda defeats the purpose (not that they CANT or SHOULDNT have a taunt, Stalker's make great agro manipulators) so, while it IS annoying to have to chase runners, I would say it's not something the class as a whole needs. And, likewise, damage auras are an iffy thing to work around when you consider "Hidden" is their gimmic. Scrappers and their crits work no matter what, all the time, the fact they can crit on any attack is their gimmick so the fact some of their AoE damage auras CANT do that is kinda lame -- but a stalker's gimmick is directly hindered by a damage aura. Don't get me wrong, these observations are important, but I'd argue they're purposeful and not a proliferation or balance oversight quite like... This. To me, as a person who's like, who NEVER played this on live for more than maybe a week and was too young to understand the landscape even then? This seems like a deliberate bit of design intended to milk as much personal investment from Scrapper/Stalker players (time, money, ect), ESPECIALLY given how both the scrapper, and namely, the Stalker, stand to benefit FROM their ATOS -- like, the Hidden and Build-Up reset procs are LITERALLY GAME CHANGING for a stalker. The boosted crit chance is also INCREDIBLY welcome on the scrapper, since it gives you MORE of your gimmick that has a DRAMATIC impact on how you fill your "role" in game. Meanwhile, tankers just get tankier and brutes get more damage (or more fury, which equals more damage). This makes sense, sure, and really I don't know if I'd do anything different, but I would also argue these ATOs arent nearly as necessary as the stalker/scrapper ATOS, and that presents something of a conundrum in class design. Again, in fairness, the stalker doesnt seem to have been conceptualized to WANT to be surrounded. So they dont get a stacking bonus for being surrounded, in the same way they dont get a taunt aura to encourage enemies to surround them. I digress though. What's interesting is that Staff Fighting's stance gimmick is ENTIRELY abandoned on the Stalker (unlike Bio Armor, who's mutually exclusive toggle gimmick remains intact). Instead, they get the offensive stance for free, forever, and while that's nice it is one of the most notable differences between the melee sets to me.