Riverdusk

Don't forget no double xp either (except for the rare "Double xp weekend" events) and no travel power until level 14. I do kind of miss the double xp weekends and crowds that would draw, and the fun of the marathon play sessions during those weekends. Didn't help my sleep schedule though. It is nice to have extra xp on demand now (for those characters I want it on), but at the same time it makes it less special.

I should have known better. Thanks for clarifying. I was fascinated with the interesting and different proc builds some people were coming up with to make some of the lower damage AT's more fun to play, guess it is only a matter a time before they put a stop to that.

That sounds more reasonable and glad you cleared that up. I was ready to roll my eyes again at another Powerhouse idea. The previous one being when he said if it was up to him he'd take away the taunt aura from any scrapper armor set that had one.

If you want more damage I'd say bio. I've heard good things about radiation as well, including the above post, but can't get past the graphics of the radiation set myself, even with it darker colored. That'd be the warning I'd have about bio to a degree as well. It also has somewhat "obnoxious" graphical fx to them, although a lot of bio armor's can be toned down with a Minimal fx option (which radiation armor bizarrely lacks as an option). However, the bio damage aura and its adaptation stances fx will still be there. If that is a concern for you or for a concept you might want to look at which one works better for you in that regard.

Cool idea as well, very old school.

I love hearing about interesting challenges people do in this game. I might try something like this some day, but I'd probably make an exception for salvage only. Don't think I'd like to be forced into doing AE that much. Continued good luck to you!

Not sure exactly how an AV ignores defense? They resist debuffs, they don't resist a player's built in defense. Some might have extra tohit powers or good defense debuffs, but far from all. I agree defense is less important on a dom than on most other AT's, but it is still useful. I'd be more with you if you said you can get it through temp powers or just saving purple inspirations the times you need it. That has merit. I'm with @oedipus_tex on the general priority.

I know there was an issue sometimes if the door you exited for his spawn was the one really close to the tram station. It was assumed he got zapped by a police drone the times he didn't show up in those cases. There also might be an issue if two or more different teams hit the spawn point close to the same time? Can there be two Babbages existing in the same zone at once? If it is the Weekly I could see that having a higher chance of occurring with a ton of people running it.

This actually seems to be the more common thought I hear during my gaming time. The devs seem to agree, as they've mentioned they plan to buff sentinels, although the thread I read compared them more to scrappers than blasters as what should be close to their baseline. Just thinking of them as ranged scrappers I think is a better comparison myself. My biggest pet pev balance issue among the AT's right now myself is resistance caps among the melee classes. If it was up to me scrappers (and maybe stalkers) would be 80%, brutes would be 85%, and tanks would stay at 90%. Would make playing a resistance based scrapper armor set not such an underwhelming choice and give tankers enough of a defensive edge that maybe the devs wouldn't be looking at needing to buff tank damage quite so much to try and compete. I have a feeling without the need for brutes to be the "red side tank" that existed when they first were created, something closer to that would have been done. Now of course if it was changed all the brutes would be up in arms about being nerfed, and they'd have every right to feel that way, so yeah, it'll never happen.

War Mace is definitely underrated and you are probably right, mace is just a harder theme to go with for most. There are some interesting weapon costume options for it beyond just maces though. I do remember it used to underperform and was then buffed, so some might still have an outdated impression of it too.

For crits you can't look at the in game power descriptions. They all are the standard 5% base to crit against minions which is listed and 10% chance vs higher than minions (which isn't shown, but it does work), unless the power states it is even higher chance (a few are). A midnight grasp crit on a boss is a beautiful thing and I have seen it many times, no worry. As usual for its damage, it all depends on what you are trying to do and what is being measured on a specific "test". In some tests (like in trying to clear a big mission of mobs), it can rate low because dark melee is single target focused. But you can look at the below linked thread and on it DM rates near the top (as it measures Single target damage) when you account for soul drain. The spreadsheet shows a lot and can be confusing, but for dark melee you have to look at the columns next to the main damage and those are its dps when under the effect of a 1/5 target soul drain. You can see how impressive it can get and with enough recharge you can get soul drain to be up most, or even all, of the time. So, you want to take down the tough targets there is little better than dark melee. You want to farm big mobs, look elsewhere.

Yep, probably just an oversight. Lich afterall does take it (and it is actually much better there as it affects more of its powers).

Thanks, someone else tested and confirmed that is correct. So, still a bug, but a very minor display one instead of the 30% or so damage nerf I was afraid was happening. That is good to hear as I love my pet beasts. Course the easiest fix for the display bug would be to just disallow resist slotting in Dire as the only resist power it has (Will of the Wild) is flagged as "ignores buffs and enhancements" so they do nothing anyway. Not sure if anyone would be upset because they are using that as a mule for anything (maybe the +3 def IO's?), but that seems like a bad use for a pet power.

I was about to do the same test after someone mentioned in the bug forum that it was just a display bug. Thanks for saving me the time and good to hear. It is weird that resist is able to be slotted in Dire Wolf at all. Will of the Wild is the only power it has with a resistance buff but it is flagged as "ignores buffs and enhancements". Guess maybe devs originally had plans for it to be enhanceable. It really doesn't needs it as it stands now, the power caps s/l/c res at 90% all on its own while it is running when you combine it with the Pet IO's and Dire's natural resistances. Good enough for me.

My Dire Wolf is just like a regular wolf, but dire.....so it is extra tough.

Would love to see some Necro results. Thanks for all the testing!

Not yet. I just did a search on the bug forum and found someone else posted about it there May 28th with no responses. So it has been bugged for a LONG time now. I bumped it there to concur with their experience.

Had to do a search to find this. Yes, just noticed the same thing. Still not fixed and a pretty big nerf to Beast MM damage. Seems that damage enhancements in Dire Wolf are on the ED scale for damage resistance.

So, finally enhancing up my beast Dire Wolf and noticed a weird thing. Damage enhancements in him seem to be on the same ED scale as damage resistance enhancements instead of regular damage. I have 91.5% worth of damage enhance slotted and it is only showing him getting 60.7% out of it for damage boost (after ED). It even for some reason lists a "Resist Damage" right below "Damage" on the tool tip for him on the enhance screen (also at +60.7%) even though I haven't slotted for resist damage and it does nothing for his stats. This is somewhat seriously nerfing a big damage dealing part of Beasts MM's. Surprised I haven't seen anyone else talking about this as it is a pretty clear bug. Only heard it mentioned offhand in the DPS thread in that in testing it was noticed the dire wolf was at a lot lower damage enhanced than the other two pets even with the same slotting.

Just got to the point of slotting up my own dire wolf on live server and noticed the Dire Wolf issue as well. From what I can tell damage enhancements in him seem to be bugged to be on the same ED scale as damage resistance enhancements (which of course are affected a lot lower for ED purposes). Starting another thread on that as that is a pretty big nerf of a bug.

By that time your pets are killing things and still protecting you and pulling aggro, your teammates are (hopefully) doing the same. Sitting there mezzed for a bit usually isn't going to ruin your day. Farsight doesn't drop during mez since it isn't a toggle, so you should still have good defense (along with set bonuses). Eventually of course there is also Clarion which makes it all moot. As usual it all depends on the situation. In some cases it works fine, other times it doesn't. Just giving it as another option.

As a /time, once you do get enough defense that you can survive anyway, jump in yourself is another way to go. Time's Juncture debuffs them and annoys them, they attack you (while you are in bodyguard), and all your pets retaliate.

Haven't really done any tests like this myself, but @StrikerFox watching your beast video I wasn't seeing any crits? My beasts get the "crit" message constantly and of course that would greatly increase their damage. I missing it somehow or are pylons immune or some other weirdness? Just found that strange and have a real hard time believing beasts are even worse than mercs, in general play anyway. Hasn't been my experience, albeit just going by general feel here. Also don't seem to see stacks of pack mentality showing either (once you did expand the pet buffs on the window), which is of course even more damage, unless I'm missing that somehow or you have some kind of buff display option set that doesn't show them.

Just a warning if you haven't tried it by now, that proc basically gives a graphical effect equal to tesla cage (they are held in a ball of lightning). Hopefully that doesn't mess with your theme.

In character creation you'll see them listed under detailed power info under the last power of the combo. So for instance under Typhoon's Edge you'll see it say -7.5% defense and -7.5% tohit for 20 seconds on target "Only when weaken combo is completed" Weaken and Empower are fine early on and that's when I used them, but I think in the end attack vitals for single target and sweep (for AoE) are just more useful, imho. I respec at lvl 32 and switch to attack vitals and sweep as the two combo's I keep. At that point you can have attack vitals down to level 21 if you exemp, so you'll usually have it. Go lower than that and you can either just deal with it or find a way to keep nimble slash instead of dropping it like I did.