Sidious

This is true. BS is a single target melee damage power. You wont see them taunting a horde of mobs and taking them all out quickly. You WILL see them in the middle of said horde hack and cutting through them and eventually standing on the pile of bodies though. When in a group it's best to target a "hard" target (Boss, Elite Boss, AV) and just have the BS go to town on them. Otherwise they should be catching any enemies that haven't been taunted and bring them to the tank or going after enemies in the backfield. I want to say it's more of a "Beta" position for a person to play, but in a pinch it can serve as the "alpha" role in the team. (wolf pack terms not damage/strike terms)

I ran a BS/Regen Scrapper for most of Live until the end. I was in a SG with a Katana/regen Scrapper leader. We were pretty much the same build. So naturally there was always the talk of who would win. One day we were doing a SG PVP thing and he and I squared off. I housed him. Headsplitter, Disembowel, Hack. He was dead. Never again did I hear the question brought up. Then there was a TF we ran without a Rad for debuffing AVs. We stone walled on Recluse. The tank had no problem holding him there. and with the other DPS pouring on the pressure Recluse was steady at half health. Even with build up running he squeaked by at a sliver of health, then healed up once Build Up wore off. It was very frustrating.

Got any for a EM/Rad Brute?

I have a Brute that's coming up in levels and I'm looking to maximize his potential. So what do some builds for this look like? (he's only in the 30's right now)

Never underestimate what a devoted group of cultists and a virgin sacrifice can accomplish.

Did the Provost Marchand arc tonight. Fought Calvin Scott as an AV for 45 minutes straight while team rezed and died due to the Loyalists. Got him down low enough that the Loyalists healed him 3 times. Drew him far enough away, had my teammate to me out to the Loyalists. Beat them then took on Calvin again in the volcano. Finally, about to beat him.... cut scene and he commits suicide. I feel a bit robbed. I would rather fight the Giant Jade Spider repeatedly than have to fight Calvin Scott again.

Does anyone have one for the incarnate abilities?

Working a theme so I really want to stick with Elec Armor. I will try the other suggestions and probably play with it on Beta to see what helps.

So I made a War Mace / Elect armor brute (yes a Thor clone) and I'm finding the end drain on it just horrible. I've got to rest after almost every mob. He's not 20 yet so I'm wondering if it's worth it to continue on. I like the character, I just want to maximize his potential.

definitely the highest amount of "comic inspired" costumes I have seen since game start. I Love it!

So for myself I tend to do "homages" rather than direct copies, but a few do get in... My Hyperion costume. King Hyperion from Exiles. a Mary Marvel one. A Doom. I'm sure I could do a much better one though. Jason Todd, The Red Hood. Nightwing A 60's Batgirl Red Robin, if I recal I wasn't quite happy with how he turned out so I did some tweaking. Daimian "The Little Asshole" Wayne Classic purple Catwoman The much better Red Robin The Earth-2 Robin. Raziel Stephanie Brown, Batgirl Captain Nazi Berserker from X-Factor Malfactor (Doom & Enchantress' son from a What if...?) Protonic from the M&M Meta-4 setting. Wildstar from a L.E.G.I.O.N. reboot. Vril Dox, Brainiac 2. Donnar, my Thor clone from "Time Runs Out". a 60's Batman homage Nighthawk from the Defenders. Mon El from the LSH.

The only toxicity I've seen is on the forums and Facebook. In game people are civil if not helpful to others.

there is no threat. There is NO THREAT. Everything is just in your head. No one is coming to the servers saying the Assblaster79 has a costume that strongly resembles XXX hero. Players are going to name, and create costumes of whoever they want. You're just going to have to get over it or go play on a private server where you can moderate it. Up to you.

so I posted a few but here are more, because costume design is hella fun for me. This is my Adam West homage. simple but pulls it off well. I just wish the ears could be a bit better and there was an actual long scalloped cape design. This one is based off of Nighthawk from the Defenders. I do have to say he looks a bit better with Dark Armor Soul Noir eyes,,, I wanted to do a Mon El from the LSH costume. My Donnar character based off Thor from "Time Runs Out". This time showing his hammer/axe. My Stone/Invul Brute with a stone skin. My Stone/Invul Brute normal form, he's got a Roman thing going on because I really like that set. Again with the brute but it's the different Roman armor this time.

I am totally ok with the DFB nerf, especially after last weekend. My friends and I were going to do some lvl 50 missions and TFs (normal stuff). Seeing as how we were 5 players, we needed 3 more. We get a lvl 50 (i Think he was a controller?) and soon start to realize he's only using the 2 basic powers, no buffs/debuffs from him and he's acting like he's never played the game before. So we ask him what's up? We find out that he doesn't know how to level, how to slot, or what enhancements are. We ask "Well how did you get to 50 without knowing this stuff?" He says that he's been DFB-ing and thought that this was all there was to the game.... SIGH. Rather than just kicking the guy, we then go a head and start teaching him how to play the game. We have to inform him what Contacts are and how to get missions. The point is that at lvl 50, we shouldn't have to teach you how to play the game. That's what lvl 1-49 are for. Hell, lvl 1-49 ARE the game, we don't have the end content that some other MMOs have. If DFB was't nerfed you'd be hearing A LOT more stories like this and people's morale would go down the toilet; both the power levelers that people wouldn't want to play with or would be bored at end game, or the experienced players who don't want to bother teaching the game you should have been learning since lvl 1. So as for a huge improvement to quality of life I like this. I also realize that the current layout of the game was for when it was a private server with a max of maybe 2000 players (I think that was the old SCORE max). That small of a population you need to make things a bit easier. now that there are somewhere like 91,000 people playing the game (Massively's numbers) the balance needs to slide. There's nothing wrong with that. Some (a vocal minority) wont like it. Some will. That's OK too. Play the game or don't, your call.

^^^ this Since Respecs are handed out rather freely now, maybe they could do something like this for the Terra Volta trial to bring back the value of actually doing the mission again. Just a suggestion.

Should have probably started earlier then. Bummer.

See this I can understand. I typically used DFB this way also, but we totally skip over DOs by doing this and that really doesn’t feel right. I’m ok with diminished returns after 10.

Bye Felicia.

Thank you for the QoL changes from Easy Mode.

My Thor homage's latest costume. Inspired by the "Time Runs Out" story arc. Why we can't have robotic LEFT arms is beyond me.....

You've also got a popular Youtuber actively streaming on the server and running an SG. it tends to attract people.

The thing that needs to be remembered is that the current game settings are the same ones they used during the 6 year hiding period when there was not a large enough player base to support incarnate trials etc. Things needed to be easier then. The fact that it's run this long like this has been a great help for players trying to regain what they lost at shutdown (self included). Now it seems they are trying to even things out and balance the game for everyone (never a bad thing). Some people will complain and throw up the "you're just trying to tell people how to play!" argument but the balancing is really helpful and for the good of all the players.

The OP indicates they're leaning into the incarnate system changes and such, but as Jimmy pointed out back on page 1, the Rebirth server is running a more vanilla version of the game without these modifications. They're also missing the content and QOL features added by i25, but the Ouroboros dev team will be working on some of those QOL features as their next project. and yes that's an excellent point to make.

I like your "Think global but act local" view. And I have no reservations about people that do Power level (just missing out on some fun content IMHO), I freely admit to using DFB to get to my 20's (being an Altoholic repeating the same missions over and over can become tedious). My main (i guess) gripe is... Why? I get all these things handed to me where's the impetus for me to actually do anything in game? I can make my own Superbase better than the batcave. Why do I need an SG? I can open my Incarnate slot and get all the threads/shards/whatever I need just by doing RWZ until my eyes bleed. Why should I do anything else? Without the adversity of mission, the game (for me, your mileage may vary) looses the sense of accomplishment. and yes No one is talking about turning off XP. More of turning up the difficulty in gaining it.