Stormwalker

See, this is exactly why (well, part of why) Kitten America uses those fancy Vanguard energy claws. I can justify all sorts of things with those just by chalking it up to "fancy tech does fancy stuff". The other reason is, of course, that they look cool, and I grew up with Star Wars, so I am a sucker for energy blades.

Pretty much. I'm not even consistent character-to-character. When I was on Live I played on Virtue and tended to put a lot of info in the description. Since I'm not on Everlasting now, I figure most people don't even look at them so I rarely bother. I still come up with elaborate backstories for my characters, of course, I just rarely bother to write up an in-game description anymore.

I like Dark Armor at high level once you have it fully kitted out, but hoo boy is it a pain to level because of the endurance issues.

This is certainly true. I don't team that much, and didn't team that much on Live, but on my Energy/Energy blaster I never once had anyone complain about my use of KB once the party actually got rolling. Had some people complain about it before we ever got started, though! I have rules on the use of Knockback as an Energy Blaster. I used to share these rules with my team before starting (I usually only team for TF's, so there was usually time while everyone got ready) 1). I will try not to KB your melee targets. It may happen on occasion, but if so, it was an accident and I apologize in advance for it. 2). If I KB a single Minion or LT, I am claiming that target and I will finish it, so you can safely ignore it. 3). If I use Energy Torrent, I will either hover over the spawn so they are KD'd instead of KB'd, or I will try to aim them toward the tank. 4). I'll warn you before I Nova so you know what to expect [This was back before KB->KD was an option, though.] 5). If something gets in my face and I don't have room to fly away from it, I WILL knock it across the room. It's the only defense I have. Those rules worked pretty well for me. Like I said, once the party got rolling, nobody EVER complained, so I feel like I was doing a pretty good job sticking to them. Also, Rule 3 reminds of a general tip for any flyer with directional KB - Hovering above a target transforms most directional KB's into KD. Know how to use this! And back on topic, I wouldn't want KB -> KD to be universal. Sure, KB -> KD is wonderful in Explosive Blast (honestly, I never took Explosive Blast before KB -> KD became available), but I sure as heck do not want Power Thrust (which is my "get out of my face!" button) KD'ing instead of KB'ing.

Unfortunately, I don't really have any better ideas. Mostly just advising that we remember that people who are new may not be able to have two builds and, y'know, not get mad at them for not being able to use the best solution available. Or, the wise words of Bill and Ted still apply: "Be excellent to each other."

You are making me want to play Jedi: Fallen Order again. Yeeting Stormtroopers off cliffs never gets old.

The problem with the "have two builds" idea for this is that if this is the unviersal solution, then anyone who is a relative newbie and not fantastically wealthy isn't going to be able to afford to have two builds, and is thus still going to get grief from teams because of their knockback... and these are exactly the people we don't want getting grief from their teams because we want them to stay around. Just saying. Hell, I haven't finished my first build on most of my characters yet (in fact, I only just completed my first build on my first character last night, and that's only counting the IO's, not the Incarnate stuff). And Ive been on HC over a month, so only sort of a newbie. Getting fantastically rich takes time if you are not someone who enjoys playing the market.

Just out of curiosity, is there a way to make a macro to target an enemy by name? I play with both hands on the keyboard (WASD and number pad) most of the time, because I have an old football injury from high school (broke a knuckle on my right hand, didn't realize it had been broken until too late to really fix it, so it healed slightly crooked) that causes me to have pain in my hand if I use the mouse too much, so targeting a single Dark Servant in the middle of an x8 spawn is kind of troublesome (mashing tab is not exactly efficient). And while there are very few enemies that would be worth having a target-by-name macro, Dark Servants and Sappers certainly do qualify. Usually what ends up happening is I Build Up -> Energy Transfer -> Total Focus -> Energy Transfer on the Master Illusionist, trying to put her down before she can summon all her friends, but ET and TF are so slow she almost always gets the Dark Servant summoned before she falls, and I can't get my target switched quickly enough to hit the Dark Servant before Build Up wears off, so I end up sitting there whiffing until Build Up recharges. Which, if there is more than one Master Illusionist, that much time not hitting things can be deadly (otherwise, it's merely an annoyance). The other option, and what I will probably have to do, is just hold my Build Up until the Dark Servant pops up, but that means not defeating the Master Illusionist before she Phase Shifts, and I don't like letting Master Illusionists live since they seem to be the only Carnies that are really dangerous to me.

I'm already taking one attack that I'm not using in that build, so that's one reason I'm disinclined to take another. Considering it, though. I did run into another situation where I like having Focused Accuracy (or specifically, where I find that I really miss having it on my Energy Melee/Energy Aura scrapper, since I have dropped it on her), and that's dealing with Carnie Master Illusionists. Or, more specifically, with their Dark Servants. At least, I think it's the Dark Servant that is debuffing my accuracy to Hell because once I manage to kill it suddenly I can hit things just fine again. But I get the Hell beaten out of me while waiting for Build Up to recharge so I can actually hit it to kill it. +37% global acc in my build is just not enough to do the job, it seems, but there's no place I can add more without sacrificing my soft-capped Negative Energy defense (which would then cause me a different problem with Carnies 😛 ). It's only really a problem when running on x8 when I can find myself facing 2/3 Master Illusionists at once (and Master Illusionists are the ONLY Carnies that are any kind of threat), but I died 3 times that way last night running Harvey Maylor's arc and it makes me very tempted to drop Overload and pick up FA again (with only one slot) just for situational use. I've never actually used Overload, anyway (I dislike hard crashes; the only reason I take Elude on my /SR's is as a Sapper emergency button), I just use it as a set mule.

Yeah, I like to have it for things like that and Nemesis vengeance stacking (not that I see that much Nemesis at 50, but some) where stacked defense buffs can make things super obnoxious to hit. No need to run it all the time on a build with purples, though, they tend to give so much +acc that in most cases its superfluous.

If it's anything like my DB/SR, it might have been sheer lack of anything else to take. I was just looking at re-doing my projected build for her, and short of taking another attack just as a set bonus mule, or possibly taking Stealth (which is not really in-concept), there isn't anything else I can see worth taking at Level 47 (Elude is already going in at 49, which is kind of a waste of a power pick as it is).

I'm going to be blunt, and... well, not really brief because I am not good at that. But brief by my standards at least. You and I fundamentally disagree. On basically every one of your points. We aren't going to find agreement, because not only are our viewpoints different, our objectives are different. You want to dramatically change the game. Don't even try to claim that you don't, because when you start talking about altering the defense cap, you are talking about dramatically changing the game. I don't. I like the game the way it is. I'm quite satisfied with it in its current state. Am I saying that it's perfect? Certainly not. A perfect multiplayer game has never existed and never will. Certainly there are some small things that I would like to see changed. But large, sweeping changes to the game such as changing the defense cap will completely blow up the balance equation, at which point we will have to start all over again from square 1, and by the time it's reasonably balanced again (remembering that we have a volunteer dev team who are not getting paid for this!) I will be old and grey (I'm already not young, and neither is anyone else who's been playing since the early days of Live!) and probably not playing MMO's anymore. Hell, Star Citizen might be out before that happens! I'll pass on big changes, thanks. Rearranging the power order of scrapper SR so the AoE defense comes earlier? I'm down with that. Think it's a great idea. Throw some debuff resistance at Regen to make it a little less punishing to play? All for it. Changing the defense cap? Hell to the no! Given that we want completely different things, and we aren't going to come to any kind of agreement, there's no point in going back and forth over it any further. I have already said everything that I have to say on the subject, and I am way too busy with work this week (major project with a serious time crunch, and on a short week, no less) to be playing forum warrior (something I should strive to do less of, anyway). I stand by everything I've said so far, and I don't think there's anything for me to gain by rehashing it all again. I'm going to spend what precious little free time I have this week actually playing the game instead of arguing about it.

First, I'm not, so that's moot. Second, I'm not interested in examining a powerset in a vacuum, because that isn't how the game is played. I've said that before. What I am interested is the performance that can be attained with a particular powerset while making use of all the resources that are available to me, within the scope of my character concept. And when you examine /SR in that light - which is the only light that matters to me, because it's the only one that actually impacts my gameplay experience - /SR performs very well. Every high-end character build makes use of pool powers and IO's. This is the way the game is designed to work! You aren't supposed to be running around with just your primary and secondary powers. You can't even actually do that! You have to take some pool powers, because your primary and secondary only have 9 powers and you get 24 power picks! Taking pool powers is mandatory. When you try to look at just a primary and secondary powerset, you are working with a hypothetical situation that cannot actually exist in the game. A build is the sum total of everything that goes into it. The armor set provides the foundation of your survival, and then you build upon that armor set with pool powers and IO's to enrich it. How an armor set synergizes with pool powers and IO's to enable a successful build is a characteristic off the armor set and not something that can be divorced from the armor set., which is something you are repeatedly trying to do. The quality of an armor set isn't determined purely by the powers in the armor set, but by the sum total of what you can achieve using that armor set and the other resources at your command. With /SR, you can achieve a hell of a lot. Not quite as much as you can with /Energy Aura or /Shield Defense, but nonetheless quite a lot. If you go back and read my posts about /Regen, you will notice that I have two complaints about /Regen. Fragility - /Regen's lack of debuff resistance makes it excessively prone to debuff-induced collapse of the set. This prevents the set from every consistently achieving the kind of performance that the raw math suggests it ought to be able to, because nearly every enemy type in the high level game throws some kind of debuff at you, and /Regen is vulnerable to them all, on top of its unique vulnerability to spike damage - a vulnerability no other set has, because every other set is built around mitigating a large portion of incoming damage rather than simply taking most of it and then healing it as /Regen does. Lack of build flexibility - the fact that Regen pushes you into taking powers like Shadow Meld and Rune of Protection inhibits your ability to make a truly custom build, and can be severely limiting to the ultimate potential of character concepts that don't allow for those two powers. Note that these are powers I specifically take on a /Regen in addition to the usual Fighting Pool, Combat Jumping, etc. that I take on every scrapper because the Regenner won't be successful at the high end without them. Now, you may be wondering: if I say that the only thing that interests me is the "performance that can be attained with a particular powerset while making use of all the resources available to me, within the scope of my character concept", then why am I bothered that /Regen pushes me into those particular power picks? That would be because of the "within the scope of my character concept" part of that statement. I'm never going to play a Scrapper who can't take Tough or Weave. Those powers represent skills that can be obtained via practice, and are open to pretty much anyone - and certainly open to anyone who is a melee combatant by trade. Shadow Meld and Rune of Protection are much harder to fit into a concept. This means that some of my /Regen characters, like my mutant Broadsword/Regen Praetorian whose powers revolve around a highly accelerated metabolism, will never be able to perform at as high a level as I would like, because she can't take the powers needed to perform at that level. This is never a problem for me with /SR, where all I need to succeed is Tough, Weave, and either Combat Jumping or Hover, plus a decent IO build. EDIT: Actually, I just remembered, I don't even necessarily need that much. Someone posted a suggested build recently for Claws/SR that softcaps all positions without Weave. I don't do it that way, but I could. Note that neither of these complaints claim that Regen can't perform at a high level. I know it can because I've done it. I also know you have to invest more resources and more effort into accomplishing that than with any other scrapper armor set, and yet in practice Regen is still not the strongest, at least in solo play (even if the numbers say it should be, once you have put in all that effort) because of the set's fragility (as defined above). Having to put in more work than any other set, and not getting the best possible performance in return for that work, is a strike against /Regen. Does it make the set unplayable? Not fo rme; I have several /Regens and I enjoy them. But /Regen could and should be better than it is for the amount of effort and resources you have to put into it to make it work. What I don't understand is why you seem to think it's a problem that /SR needs to add mitigation from outside the powerset, and yet you don't seem to think it's a problem that /Regen needs to add much more mitigation from outside the powerset than /SR does?! This, confuses me greatly.

Thanks for checking it. Looks like I will have to re-acquire those pieces so I can try it again myself. The set bonuses on Critical Strikes are too good to miss out on if I can help it. Oh, well, since I already have something in those slots, I can afford to bid and wait to get them at a good price, at least.

Hmm. Now I wish I'd left it that way so I could test it more, because I wasn't getting anywhere close to that. I was getting maybe 1 proc in 3, probably not even that much. I assume if it was that bad, you'd probably have noticed it on your DB/Energy, so I was probably just having a (fairly long, but not impossible) string of bad luck.

I was getting a pretty terrible proc rate, though I only ran it that way for a couple of missions so it's possible it's a matter of small sample size and I was just unlucky. Mids doesn't show me the proc rate for that particular proc for some reason.

I didn't even notice that statement. Yeah, I never had any particular problems soloing AV's on my Claws/SR on live (haven't done it yet on Homecoming, but that's because I still haven't quite finished her build yet. Though I'm quite sure I could do it as she is now,; she's probably already stronger now than she was on Live)

Well, I appreciate you saying that, but I do think there were others in that discussion who were legitimately trying to engage on the topic besides just me. I guess what I'm saying is that branding a bunch of people as trolls doesn't really help in creating constructive discussion. At any rate, I've already said everything I have to say on the subject of /SR, and at this point I've pretty much made all the suggestions I have with regard to /Regen, too, so at this point I'm just monitoring the thread to see if anyone else has any suggestions that I think merit further discussion.

I'm just going to point out here that you are calling those of us who disagreed with you "a gang of trolls" when you were the one throwing out insults at someone who wasn't even part of the discussion, and leave it at that. Oh, yes, and then insisted you were justified in doing so when you were called out on it. To the point that the thread had to be locked. Well, no, I'm not going to leave it at that, because there's one more thing I need to say. The fact that you call us "a gang of trolls" because we have the temerity to disagree with you says a whole lot about your attitude.

Being reminded of this thread, and looking back at arguments To anyone who says Spider-Man doesn't have real super strength, I am going to point out that he once held up a damaged building. A tall building. By himself. And that's straight from the comics, not any of the adaptations. He often doesn't USE his super strength in a fight because a lot of his enemies can't take it. When he throws down with people who can, though, he does. And to anyone who says Spider-Man isn't a scrapper, I don't know what comics they've been reading. I can't see him as anything else. He's a Super Strength/Super Reflexes Scrapper with the Leaping, Fighting, Experimentation (maybe? trying to work in his science aspects), and Web Shooter pools. And probably Body Mastery. Yes, he got to craft his own power pool, which is totally cheating, but that's what happens when your name is on the front of the book. And if you want another example of a Super Strength scrapper, I'll give you one. Namely: Rogue (as she was in the '90's X-Men books, at least. I don't know the current state of the X-books since I stopped reading them decades ago). She's undeniably Super Strength, and being more a Lightning Bruiser than a Brick makes her a Scrapper rather than a Tanker.

I see the problem now. I had full Critical Strikes slotted in Blinding Feint and it has way too much recharge in it and was nuking the proc rate. Looking at slotting it as follows (obviously won't have the superior versions until level 50, though) Superior Critical Strikes: Recharge/+50% Critical Rate Proc Superior Critical Strikes: Acc/Dam (picking up the 4% recovery set bonus) Superior Blistering Cold: Acc/Dam Superior Blistering Cold: Dam/End (picking up the 15% slow resist set bonus) Gladiator's Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage Mako's Bite: Chance for Lethal Damage (alternately, considering slotting Adjusted Targeting: To-Hit Buff/End instead of the Mako's Bite. I'm not sure the Mako's Bite proc will contribute enough damage to be worthwhile). Never mind, looked it up in Mids' and the Mako's proc is better than I remembered it being. Looks like (according to Mids) it will still recharge fast enough to make the attack chain go. I lose a bit of global recharge, but still only have a 3.5 second Hasten gap, that's not terrible. Also lose a bit of Accuracy, but I have Focused Accuracy so I am not at all concerned about that. And if anyone wonders how I am running this attack chain on a level 33, obviously it's not gapless yet. But it will be at 50, and right now I still have enough endurance problems that I don't really want it to be gapless just yet!

So, I have two DB scrappers, a DB/WP at level 44 and a DB/SR at level 33. And I've run into a problem on both of them that is giving me a bit of a headache. Where the heck should I put the Critical Strikes proc? The DB/WP runs Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals. I currently have the Critical Strikes proc in Vengeful Slice, which means it is consistently up for Sweeping Strike (which is the only AoE in the attack chain). This works OK, except that since the proc triggers fairly early in Vengeful's animation, Critical Strikes is only up for the immediately following attack, and not the one after it. That's... less than ideal. But it still seems to be the best option in this case. The DB/SR is a bit messier. She runs Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike. I initially put the proc in Ablating Strike, to give it the most opportunities to fire, but the proc rate is abysmal. Hardly ever procs. So I tried moving it to Blinding Feint. Proc rate there is only slightly better. Still very bad. I don't really want to put it in Sweeping Strike because then I don't have the effect for Sweeping Strike. So this makes me wonder if the proc is even worth it at all for my DB/SR. I admit that I am too lazy to do the math myself if I can at all help it, so I'm hoping one of y'all out there who plays a lot of DB already knows the answers here and can save me the trouble.

My initial build for my Energy Melee/Energy Aura had quite a bit of psi resist in it from IO sets. After a bit of tinkering, though, I ended up determining that I was better off having less psi resist (about 11% now) in exchange for more offense, focusing on taking out the psionic attackers first, and using Energize to heal the damage taken. You can get psi resist from purple sets (usually it's the 6-piece bonus), the Aegis unique, and the Impervium Armor unique, as well as other set bonuses. Of course, this strategy works for me partly because of Energy Melee's devastating single-target damage, which definitely helps with quickly weeding out the most problematic attackers in a spawn. Psi defense specifically is pretty hard to come by (the Impervium Armor set gives 1.88% at 3 pieces, so you can slot that in your resist powers if you want), but whatever pool powers you are taking to help soft-cap your other defenses (Weave, Hover/Combat Jumping, etc.) will give you Defense (all); combining that with the two unique IO's Bill mentioned will get you to about 20% Psi defense without any need to specifically chase it.

I have exactly one character that I have powerleveled via AE, and only up to 22 (actually, she's not there yet. AE farms are incredibly boring, so I have been doing it in small doses). That was because I wanted to try out the Sentinel archtype to see if it interested me, and I wanted to get to a high enough level to get a feel for how it plays relative to other AT's. Other than that, all of mine level the old-fashioned way. It's not that I really have any problem with people farming their way to high level? I just find it incredibly tedious. Also, I prefer to build stories in my head around my characters as I play them. I find that often as I am playing through story arcs and such, details about my characters' personalities and stories come to me that I might never have thought of otherwise.

The Energy Melee changes were really huge. I... kinda hated playing my old Energy Melee/Inv Brute, but I had to play her because she was my primary roleplaying character (I was on Virtue). By contrast, my new Energy Melee scrapper has very quickly become a favorite purely for gameplay reasons. And when I say I don't want to make the set hilariously overpowered, I mean I don't want Regen to either 1). trivialize high-end play, or 2). be far and away the best set. It's fine if it ends up slightly better than the others, since you have to work for that. But if it's a lot better than the others, well.. by definition that isn't balance. The thing with Regen is, because of the way it works, small changes can have pretty large impacts to its survivability. So balancing it is tricky.