Yomo Kimyata

Costume contests. Lots and lots of costume contests.

I can't imagine this happening for two reasons. 1. It's an old game with (what seems to me) a gradually diminishing user base. Is it worth the person-hours to the development team to develop and institute a spanking new system that may not be in use for that much longer, especially since there are kludgey workarounds? But more importantly... 2. I don't think the powers-that-be are willing to take even the smallest chance that they break the current system and have to deal with the fallout of someone logging in five years from now and find they are missing that one set of Bombardment they had sitting in the /AH interface. Even if there were a clearly stated plan and timeline, for example, for building an alternate /AH, allowing/requiring/mandating players to shift their items from one to the other, then sunsetting the old one, I feel pretty confident that mobs with poorly made pitchforks would storm the castle. Don't see it happening!

The display bug is frustrating, in part because it is not necessarily consistent. There are certain items that always show a false history. There are certain items that show either a false history or a true history depending on the refresh. There are certain items that periodically do one of the above, but that mostly are correct. I'm not as involved as I once was, but I'm seeing more and more bugged displays in the "periodic" category. The difficult part is that sometimes, sometimes those displays can be correct! In @Techwright's example, that display should not be correct based on how we think the AH process is supposed to work, so my assumption is that it's a display bug. Given that display bugs aren't supposed to happen (and I've only noticed that the last 5 are wrong, not #bid or #offered, but I'm not willing to bet heavily on that), it's natural to wonder if there is some fundamental screw up in the entirety of the /AH. Maybe but I've always found that it works as it is supposed to work. I have always written off the display bugs as some sort of memory bleed or whatever, and given that we have so many more market slots is it possible that we've overwhelmed the capacity of the /AH database? Dunno.

Perhaps I should restate this. I just don’t have experience with stalker placate because I never thought it would match well with my stalker style ( which is essentially the same as my toe-to-toe scrapper style). So “awful” is only in comparison to a placate that adds unique -dam res. that said, I’ve started to work in Misdirection on some of my scrappers and as long as I can tolerate Stealth as a defense power, it definitely helps decrease defeat time. So yeah, bringing it back around to scrappers!

Gotcha. On SR I’m generally going to have enough set bonii to soft cap without elude. That said, sometimes I take a T9 just for the endurance kick! (I’m looking at you Unstoppable)

You know, I've never used Placate in many years of CoX. Until I realized that powers like Misdirection and Smoke Flash had built in -dam res. Stalker Placate is awful. But -dam res placate is aces!

If going with Unleash Potential, I'd jam it as full of Heal/Recharge and End Mod/Recharge as you can. I'm not sure I'd add Shadow Meld to an SR build.

First of all, that's a much nicer spreadsheet than mine! Secondly, whenever tells me they are sad, I hope they can cheer up!

I'm a big fan of themed supergroups like this. I've got one based on the seven deadly sins, and one based on the five levels of DEFCON. The trick is using your imagination (and maybe some work in the costume creator) for power selection!

A problem is that even when we are responding to a specific question, we never really know who our audience is (and as other people read and respond, it gets more muddled.) You don't want to be the jerk who says, "Only me and my leet frenz can do this!"; nor do you want to be the jerk who says "Any dumbass can do this." Because neither of those seems to be true to me. Let me give my personal context. I apparently have 22 lvl 50 scrappers. I generally am running at +3/x8 in the high 40s and make it +4 at lvl 50 unless I have a lot of accuracy bonuses in which case I do it earlier. I'm pretty sure I've run every one of these at +4/x8 (no AV) through the Mender Ramiel arc and the Heather Townsend arc. I don't generally run +4 AVs because I don't find it fun to beat on something for ten minutes and I have to afk from the game a lot. That said, I run a lot of my scrappers through solo TFs. None of them is completely invulnerable. If I am fighting Council, I can easily zerg. Most radio missions are like that as long as you know who your first targets should be (sapper, dark ring mistress). When I am fighting Longbow, I would like to know if either of the bosses are radiation before I jump into the middle of a spawn, so maybe you snipe someone and make them come to you around the corner. I think that's pretty basic. If I'm getting bounced around by a few Singularities, well, first of all, I'm laughing like mad. Then probably hitting a few inspirations. My general strategy is to use inspirations if I need them, and convert to ones I need; I always forget about activating incarnates, and I think they are overkill, but the alpha and the interface are nice. Destiny is so overpowered. I don't think I'm giving up anything in damage other than not putting in damage procs on top of 95% damage. I also don't think I'm creeping along at a slow pace. But on a scrapper I've found that layered mitigation is important. There's the defense/resistance/healing triad, but I rely a lot on stun and knockdown as well. Also, kill them first. You *can* run +4/x8 from level 1 to 50 on any character. But that is so incredibly tedious that I don't recommend it. But if you want to solo +4/x8 on a scrapper at lvl 50, and you know what you are doing, it's there. It's not trivial and it's not unique.

*nods emphatically*

Domingator and accordion appear to have made it through the first round, and Domingator approves.

Oh heck, what am I supposed to do now?

No no no, what part of "conspicuous consumption" do you not get?!? Just delete it and buy new stuff! CONSUME!

My "main", both on live and here, is BS/Inv. It works pretty much as you would expect. Fair, but not great, damage. Good overall protection, but a bit lacking at the high end without judicious use of sets and set bonuses. Divine Avalanche gets you lots of melee defense (and it stacks!) so either put it in your rotation or build up your melee defense elsewhere. Katana gives you -def, and invincibility gives you +to hit, so once you start hitting someone you don't need to spend a lot of effort on additional +to hit or +accuracy bonuses. Other than that, everything pretty much works as advertised.

My go to slotting for WR is a boosted accuracy and a AH -res. You should be at 90% activation on the proc. And yes it's a proc bomb (as I learned on my Passive Aggressor) but the activation time feels long enough that I probably don't use it as often as I should.

From the wiki— These modifers apply to almost everything in combat: Debuffstrength, Mez duration, Knockback magnitude, and Damage are all affected. So “almost”…. What’s not included? -damage debuffs, anything?

This brings an additional question to mind. There is AV resistance to various things, and there is purple patch resistance (being lower level, like a 50 v a 54). I think I’ve got a handle on the former, but the description in the wiki on the latter is more vague. For example, is -damage resistance further resisted by +4, or is it simply a function of damage resistance regardless of relative level?

As mentioned, your opponents matter a lot. Any of the standard radio opponents at 50 are relatively harmless so long as you target the right enemies first; your biggest hurdle is probably overcoming lots and lots of -to hit. But when you get big groups of enemies that (sometimes accidentally!) synergize it's much more about your technique than your build, in my opinion.

I've got a DM/regen scrapper that can do it all, but don't have it in front of me. My BS/regen brute is also monstrous, oddly enough. To echo some of Betty's points, differ from a few, and a few of my own: -- You're getting an extra heal from Siphon Life, so I don't see a problem in four slotting Unbreakable Guard. You're not going to get a huge advantage from the toxic resist, but the 3.13% melee defense might well be worthwhile. -- Speaking of toxic resist, you can save a few slots by only 5 slotting your purple sets. Drop the damage, boost the non-procs to +5. You won't miss the toxic resist I promise. I also usually only 5-slot Avalanche and Blistering Cold because AoE damage generally isn't of a high enough magnitude to be worrisome. -- Splitting the Brute's Fury set 3-3 lets you double up on the defense. Defense is not your be-all end-all, especially with no debuff resistance, but it's nice to have. -- I'd target at least 75% slow resistance. Swap in the winter's gift 20% resistance for the BotZ -kb piece. You could split up the Avalanche or Blistering Cold sets, but I'd think more out of the box (3 slot Synapse Shock in MoG!) -- I'm not personally a fan of Cross Punch unless it's a full part of my chain, and the 50 degree angle never seems to work well enough for me, but to each their own. +ff recharge is marvelous on a regen, but you're hard pressed to work it in with a DM. -- Regen already has 2 1/2 oh shit buttons in MoG, IH, and DP. My scrapper currently also has Unleash Potential and Shadow Meld (which brutes don't get) and that's a little overkill. However, Darkest Night with a couple of lvl 53 Enzymes will make you untouchable. -- I'm pretty sure I no longer bother with Quick Recovery (although, again, 3 slotting synapse Shock gets you more slow resist). Unleash Potential is, to me, this incredible power that is up 1/4 of the time and lets you focus on regeneration or health or defense or all three. Have fun storming the castle!

I also try to avoid doubling up on a type in primary and secondary, but I'm generally always a fan of electric. A lot of that has to do with end mod powers that I'm generally not going to slot for end mod, and I get to use musculature alpha. Also Energy Manipulator: chance to stun is a criminally underrated proc.

Dope stuff. It's always nice to see this kind of rationale. Uun says it well I tend to focus more on stats over set bonuses nowadays, so I might +5 lvl 50 PotT as well as +5 lvl 50 Tempered Readiness for whatever stats I'm looking for. Usually that's A/R but I'm not wasting a D-sync Provocation on this! For almost every healing power I use, I'll either use 6 piece PM or 5 piece 50+5 Panacea. That decision generally comes down to whether I can spare the 6th slot or not (although finding two pieces of PM somewhere is always nice for the proc!) I'm all over the place when it comes to ST holds on non-hold ATs. It's hard to pass up the extra stat value from +5ing the purple set rather than the pvp set. This is why I love scrapper primary powers with a hold component, where I will slot the purple proc and +5 the A/R. It is a very minor thing, but I go with the Shield Breaker lvl 30+5 A/R over the AW lvl 50+5 A/E/R. I prefer the recovery set bonus over the regeneration set bonus, and you get slightly more A/R (although no E). Yeah, I probably blow too much inf on boosters compared to what it actually gets me, but what else are you gonna spend inf on?!?

I think of Mr. F, I think of him stretching and gyrating to stay away from harm. Super Reflexes. ?Beam Rifle/SR? sentinel

I actually like the concept of fury for brutes — the increase in damage when you are leveling up and running on it is noticeable and it adds a bit to a gotta smash em now mindset. at the high end, there’s not a lot to distinguish it though. As mentioned, fury build’s basically instantly to 85%. I haven’t spent one second of time thinking about how people would exploit this, but I’d like a slower fury build over a wider range. I think current fury Mac is ?+200? Max that to 350 and have it take 60 seconds of fighting to get it to 200!

hmm, looks like all the numina's can still be bought about 2mm, including the proc. Patience is your friend! Also, Snarky's advice is more or less correct!