Riverdusk

Ah, the old "you just haven't had a good one" Classic. 😜

I've always thought it should be scrappers: 80, Brutes: 85, tanks: 90. Scrapper resistance cap makes it REALLY hard to justify playing a resistance armor scrapper (like electric armor) when brutes do about same damage and are ridiculously more survivable with it. Stalkers maybe should be 80 as well. But I can only imagine the brute screaming if their cap was nerfed at this point. Generally I like all the changes a lot. Now it is just a matter of fine tuning the actual numbers. If the buffs to damage/radius/range/caps need to be tweaked a bit, that's what the testing is for. I could totally see one or more of those being lowered a bit, but the general ideas are great imho. I had no desire to play a tank before and these changes would definitely make me rethink it.

Well, that has already sort of happened with the PPM changes. People regularly plan builds now trying to avoid slotting recharge reduction in their powers. I agree it is weird, but that ship has probably sailed as well. As to the other, Titan Weapons has been shown to be somewhat out of whack compared to every other melee set in single target (and it also happens to have some great AoE on top of it). So, I don't think comparing it to TW is particularly fair, as every set "kinda sucks" compared to TW. Good showing on that can be seen here: Tables are scrapper based, but same ratios are going to generally apply. Unfortunately SS isn't shown. Would love to see actual numbers on how it ranks instead of everyone just saying "SS is horrible without double stacked rage" or even single stacked, without any numbers to back it up. Main problem I see in SS is the first two powers (jab and punch) are such low recharge and low damage, they have a very low ceiling. Personally I would like to see jab and punch have their recharge increased to 3 seconds and 6 seconds with the appropriate damage increase. It'd help their DPA and the set's damage overall without a major change in its feel. As to rage, not being able to stack rage, but also no penalty seems fair to me.

Issues now fixed per the patch notes, yay.

Would be nice to see some improvements to EM, always liked the feel of the set, but never got far in it.

Electric Blast - Voltaic Sentinel still isn't fixed either. There are two versions: Defenders have one with lower damage and slightly more end drain (at max level 35.59 damage, -6% end), Corrupter/blaster/dom all have the exact same higher damage version with slightly less end drain (at max level 44.49 dmg , -5% end). Sentinels got the defender version, which logically makes little sense. I originally posted it here and a mod actually moved my post to the bug forum without me asking, so I took that as acknowledgement it is a bug anyway.

People are focusing on the blaster comparison, but the comparison given vs. corrupters is the one I more can't wrap my head around. Taking away the secondary (and are you counting scourge or not?), you are pretty much left with just the damage scaler of the AT as the difference. Sent range damage scale is at .95, corrupter is at .75? correct? That also means ANY damage boosts are going to put the Sent that much further ahead due to having a higher base. There are some minor differences in the powers damage/recharge between the two, but enough for that kind of overwhelming tilt?

The advantage of blizzard (and ice storm) I'd think is it not being limited to a 10 target cap. Seems in exchange they nerfed sentinel's ice blast single target damage pretty hard though in comparison to how it is on other AT's, not to mention getting rid of its ability to stack holds. One other notable of Ice though is that it is one of the few that is completely 100% a ranged set. Some don't care, but I know others find it nice that you never have to jump into a mob, you can just sit back and fire away.

I'd probably go with thugs/storm, but any of the top damaging pets with storm should do the trick. Liking my thugs/time and it does great damage while being very safe, but thugs/storm would generally outdamage it no doubt.

Sounds like you want an illusion controller to me (once their bugs are fixed, hopefully in the next week or so). Between the indestructible phantom army, and having a confuse power, they are probably the ones that can do more crazy end game tricks than pretty much anyone. As @Without_Pause mentioned Illusion/rad is a classic for this and works great., Illusion/dark, illusion/cold, illusion/traps would also work well. Illusion/time is also amazing, and cheaper to build with its recharge buff, but its -regen debuff is a little weak, so it may struggle a bit if you want to try soloing giant monsters. The right temp/incarnate powers could probably make it work though.

If it was only that. Sounds like NO enhancements are working in phantasm, phantom army, or spectral terror per this post: Enhancements not working at all in those pets pretty much makes the whole set of illusion unplayable to me. Really waiting for this to be fixed.

Some arachnos mobs have hold resistance/protection.

I did test it and correct, Soul Drain has no effect on bio's damage aura. Soul Drain does not boost toxic damage. Still a great pairing, but that part was disappointing.

The stealth ability also gives a huge boost to your crit chance on your alpha strike (when it is most important and least likely to be wasted on overkill). I found it a surprising boost to my damage.

Nature has a resist buff as well.

Always liked time's sounds okay as well, but I can understand. For me it is beam rifle, ice melee, and some others. I know there is the work around, but would be nice to have an option for minimal sound fx right on the power, like we have minimal fx for graphics for a lot of them.

Thermal would be on the obvious list I'd think, but you didn't mention it. Good match anyway. Most non obvious, (but still good), maybe nature?

Illusion sure seems to have gotten more than its share of bugs for this patch. Put mine on the shelf for now.

Good to hear it'll soon be fixed. Almost got me killed when I suddenly couldn't confuse or hold a boss I was fighting on my new low level illusion controller. Figured a bug crept in.

I'd probably stick with scrapper for BS over brute. Biggest advantage it has over katana is its big hits. The one time it is faster than katana is when you can one shot something that katana takes two hits to take out. More likely to do that as a scrapper than a brute.

Just to respond to this point, have you tried using the bind/macro to do this? Try /macro Caltrops powexeclocation self "caltrops" and that should do exactly what you describe. Just click the macro button instead of the caltrops button. Should work for all of those. There are even tricks to change the macro button to an image of your choice to make it look better, but that I haven't gotten into. You can also replace 'self' with 'target' to cast at your current target (I use that for phantom army myself). That would then solve that issue for you and still leave the option for those that like to be able to target it.

Wanted to let you know Bopper, that you and your build inspired me to try a Time/DP. Been testing it a little on beta server, will probably start it tonight for real. I was surprised that things seem to proc regardless of ammo type used (so force feedbacks proc even if you aren't using lethal ammo). That is amazing and gives DP more proc opportunities than I realized.

Nice analysis. Honestly though you could probably throw dice to randomly pick defender powersets, throw 8 of them together, and buzzsaw anything.

Stone Melee would like a word with you. But yeah, WM has a solid feel to it no doubt.

Yep, I always consider that as long as you hit at least 2, which isn't hard, it is worth using.