Yomo Kimyata

One of the things I like best about Frostfire is that he was once just like me.

I will take Focused Accuracy, and two slot it with endurance reduction. For the most part, the reason one goes for Body Mastery is to help with endurance woes. But unlike other melee ATs, scrappers only get one spot to slot a Perf Shifter and that is in Physical Perfection. Conserve Power has such a long recharge that I've never found it particularly worthwhile. Focused Accuracy has one very important thing going for it -- to hit debuff resistance. I generally don't need much if any additional accuracy, but it's rather nice to not have my accuracy floored by an unexpected coven of Death Mages.

This is entirely you. It is completely irrelevant what AT or powers you have when you are on a team.

I am not going to cave to your "I WANT MORE DPS" request. Ice Patch provides an unlimited amount of survivability. Go find another set to cry for more damage.

Listen, I hate elemental swords, so all my ice melee characters use Frozen Fists. Is it better than Ice Dancer Sword? No. But it is worth clicking. I will go on record and say if you can't run Ice Melee from 1-10 with anything more than Frozen Fists, Brawl, and Kick, you are playing a much more difficult game than I am playing.

Absolutely not. Not even if you wanted to make this game "winnable" by toddlers. Ice Melee is already a top if not the top performer.

Endurance is going to be your bottleneck.

same as for everyone else, Snarky. 100mm inf per account!

The one thing that I try to do is avoid having only one type of damage across primary/secondary/pool/epic. Other than that, yes I will spend hours hacking at a Zeus Class titan with a broadsword

Well slap my belly and call me “Shirley”! Good to know that.

damage debuffs and damage resistance debuffs are two different things. Damage resistance resists damage resistance debuffs: if you have 50% smashing resistance, and you get hit with a 10% damage resistance debuff, that 10% is 50% resisted so you get hit with -5% smashing resistance for 45% smashing resistance. if you have 25% cold resistance then you get hit with -7.5% cold resistance for 18.75% cold resistance. I do not think -damage buffs are resistable.

Phi is a magic number. Yes it is; it's a magic number.

One thing I will say is that DNA Siphon can be an utterly fantastic offensive weapon, and I six slot it on every bio character. It's even a great place for the Crit Strikes proc on a scrapper. For an EM/Bio scrapper I would probably go with: Fury of the Glad -res proc, Superior Avalanche knockdown proc OR Overwhelming Force knockdown proc, 50+5 Armageddon A/R, Armageddon damage proc, lvl 53 D-Sync Drain (Acc/End Mod), lvl 53 D-Sync Reconstruction (Healing/Recharge). I never got around to making a scrapper, but my Bio/EM tank is probably my godliest character.

I've been culling as well. Mostly challenge characters that I was bored with the challenge.

Only one has a cocktail named after him. Et tu, Brute?

I'm complex. And irrational.

C'mon, I can't even pick my best scrapper!

(7^0.5) - 2i

Can you point me towards evidence in the code? Again, I'd love to hear that I'm incorrect.

I do not believe that is true. I believe that the critical strikes window needs to be active by the time the effect is applied. Let's imagine that you can hit Seismic twice in a row (you can't, but let's assume it's an identical power because I don't want to post two pictures.) When you activate this power, it will take a total of 1.716 seconds before any other power will begin (Arcanatime). So you activate the power and then there is a certain amount of time that elapses before effects take place. In this case, that is 0.833 seconds (Animation Time before Effect). Lots of things happen at that effect time, including damage and checking to see if procs activate. That's when the Critical Strike proc is checked to see if it activates. If it does, then you get 3.25 seconds of enhanced critical probability. Some of that time is wasted, since the power needs to completely execute animation and prepare for the next power, even if you have it cued up. In this case, your "dead time" is 1.716 - 0.833 = 0.883 seconds (which is really pretty low) leaving you 3.25 - 0.883 = 2.367 seconds of remaining active proc time. Now we activate the next power, which we are pretending is identical to this one. Is there enough active time left on the proc? Yes! all we need for the proc to be effective is for it to still be active in 0.833 seconds! So making sure that there is enough time for the proc to be active for the next power is satisfied. you'd think that would always be the case, but it isn't. there are a (relatively small) number of combinations that will never pass on the crit strikes proc to the second power because the animation time before effect is greater than the remaining active proc time. Now, how about getting more than one power in the window? In that case, you need to execute the entire second power and have enough time left on the proc to reach the animation time before effect on the third power. So let's say we can hit Seismic three times in a row. It activates the proc and you have 2.367 seconds or remaining active proc time. the second power execution takes a total of 1.716 seconds (again, Arcanatime) which means after the second power we have 0.651 seconds of remaining time in the proc window. Since the activation time before effect is greater than that remaining time, the proc window will not be open for that one. I'm quite sure that this is how it works, and I've had verification from others on this board, but I'm absolutely open to hearing otherwise. Without delving into the code you really won't know because the combat log doesn't tell you the probability of a crit, so if there is a crit on the third execution you really don't know if that was a boosted crit chance or just a regular one. Anyway, there are cases when you can get three attacks off with enhanced crit. But for the most part, I assume I'll only get one and I'll check to see if a particular combo is even possible.

Stone is an excellent, excellent set. Seismic has a high proc activation rate, but you're not going to get both mallets into the window. By my calculations, you'll have 2.367 seconds of active proc time and you'd need 2.648 seconds to get off both mallets. One mallet and Stone fists, yes. But I generally put crit strikes in Fault and count on getting just one power off in the window.

I *believe* that Power Transfer proc only works once per activation, i.e., you're not going to see it proc on ten opponents and get 50% of your health back. I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong. My experience with it is that 5% is a really small amount to actively notice. This is more of a commentary on what and how we observe things, but since it is relatively small compared to, say, the 15% of the Sleep proc or even an active heal that gets you 50%+, it's more of a background/regeneration type of effect.

Especially when a power set has been revamped since the original got 50ed. I do this a lot with other strategies as well -- what happens when I go from defensive to offensive and swap out Force of Will for Experimentation?

Ditto. Just because I'm slotted to the nines doesn't mean I'm not still trying to solo Bride of Hamidon.

Kin Melee gets a lot of hate, because people don't think it generates as much damage per xxx as other sets. That is, in part, due to the fact that most attacks in the set have -damage (which I *think* is not resistible?) so the intended tradeoff was less damage for more survivability. That said, if you are zerging content with teams in today's meta, many people only care about the almighty dps. Solo, you'll probably notice the extra survivability (Burst is your real friend, an PBAoE that drops damage 12.75% for 7 seconds. That's in addition to any damage resist you have.) I would think that KM and EA would match relatively well together. the -dam is functionally equivalent to +resist, which layers with the mostly defense-based Energy Aura. That said, the KM gimmick works better in my mind on scrappers and stalkers, since getting a crit on Concentrated Strike instantly recharges Power siphon instead of doing bonus damage. You lack that mechanic on Brutes and Tanks.