Yomo Kimyata

You absolutely can, and the cooldown is much lower than swapping between builds. But you need to be out of combat.

Well, in that case, how about one free slot for every ten alts you have who are over level 10?

I'm surprised that you find the new Cleave has trouble hitting multiple targets? I will admit the old cone was laughably narrow, but I find that it I am fighting five or more mobs in melee range, I'm generally keeping 3-5 of them in target range just by nature of their attacks. Shoot, you can Cleave the target directly in front of you and hit the target directly behind you! A six foot diameter sphere is very friendly that way (just make sure you don't use the 40 foot range unless you mean to!). To each their own, but a Cleave-Swoop-Chop-repeat chain for ST and a Cleave-Axe Cyclone-Pendulum-repeat chain for AoE works wonders for me. Would Swoop-Gash-Chop-repeat get you slightly higher ST damage per second? Maybe, but I'm not fighting pylons, and 95%+ of my game play seems to be fighting more than one enemy.

I can't let a Battle Axe build without Cleave alone. It's like skipping Fulcrum Shift on a Kin. Here is a quick stab as to how I would slot the Battle Axe portion of a BA/Energy scrapper. You get a free power pool and epic pool to do as you will for five powers, and you get 15 free slots. Your choice on how to slot the ones I've got generic IOs in. I'm a HO/DSO and boosted kind of builder, but I kept this simple.

I'm not ready for this.

This is well worded and extremely accurate. I suggest that the bolded half of this paragraph should be stickied, and possibly be automatically inserted as a header for every single new post in this forum. It's common sense, but hey, it can't hurt to remind people.

With respect to the primaries, the standard (especially for the older sets) is to give up the PBAoE for a single target AS: Broad Sword, Claws, Energy, Martial Arts, Katana. For the most part, I *like* the PBAoE, so I'm generally not going to prefer the stalker version unless I'm really gung ho on the whole single target thing. Also, any non-standard Build Up power gets replaced with Build Up, and since generally the non-standard powers have more utility to me, I'm usually not going to prefer the stalker version: Claws, Dark Melee, Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee, Radiation Melee, Savage Melee, Street Justice. Psionic Melee is an oddball, since you replace Concentration with Concentration (which is *slightly* less powerful on the stalker) and I have no idea if the fact that it is not named "Build Up" means that the ATO proc does or does not work. Also, on Street Justice, not automatically going to +3 for the combo system is kind of irrelevant since the combo system feels like it is pretty much always at +3 anyway. Dark Melee feels like a double whammy -- lose all your PBaoe and the best build up variant in the game. Guess what primary my first stalker was? There are a few primaries where it looks mostly like a wash--losing an attack for a better attack in AS: Fiery Melee, Ice Melee, Savage Melee, Stone Melee, Street Justice. And then there are a few that look like pure wins to me: Electric Melee, Radiation Melee, Spines, Staff. I mentioned earlier that I don't generally love damage auras, and Radiation and Spines are made *much* better in my eyes with a fast single target attack. Personally, I love Lightning Clap as a power, but I don't think anyone else on the planet would miss it.

I think: I'd like to get some more melee defense in there, and I would sacrifice some of the global recharge you have in there currently to do it. I think you may be over slotted for endurance recovery, since DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura are great endurance tools. Here's a quick build I put together. Personally, I would use a bunch of HO/DSOs and boost things to bejebus, but hopefully this keeps to your vision: https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1646&c=732&a=1464&f=HEX&dc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

Cloak of Fear is a power that begs for an HO or a purple set that has Accuracy/Endurance. Fortunately, using a lvl 50 A/E Nightmare and/or Glimpse of the Abyss and +5 boosting it helps a fair amount.

Why not put in bids before logging off and then when you buy them, add them to your inventory before entering the mission? Or are you blowing through your inventory mid mission? If the latter, this is probably not a solution you want, but if you buy a lot of hero or winter packs, there are so many inspiration drops. Now admittedly they are dual and team, and you don't have any control over which ones you get in any given pack, but after opening a lot of packs, you will have a ton of varies inspirations. They are held in your Character Items inventory, which like email are available at all times, even in missions.

Why not use your influence to buy inspirations either from vendors or the AH?

I built mine as a Carnie hunter, and I think it was the first Energy Aura that I took to 50. I've unlocked alpha (I went Vigor for both Endurance and Accuracy help). I don't recall having terrible endurance problems, but that was a while ago so I may have conveniently forgotten about that. So I went with Weapon Mastery rather than Body (Caltrops and Web Grenade). Also, I'm currently a big fan of the Frorce of Will pool and Unleash Potential as a multi-use savior. I would slot Energize and Energy Aura more than you have. Both of these help with endurance a lot, clearly, so getting your recharge as high as possible is always good. I'd prefer end reduction in Entropic Aura over procs. I tend to split Scrapper's Strike 3-3 for the extra defense, but I'm not going to quibble! Cleave, for me is indeed the right place for the Critical Strikes proc, and it's as good a place as any to put in a full set. You should be good with two FF recharges (in Pendulum and Axe Cyclone is where I put them) because as long as you are fighting big crowds, you'll have good odds to activate on every attack.

As mentioned, ATOs listed on the /AH are listed by fellow players, so your previous purchases depended on someone else offering what you wanted at 6mm. You may want to consider raising your bids, because 6mm seems awfully low by historical standards. You can, of course, purchase ATOs using reward merits from any merit vendor. The rub here is that it costs 100 merits to buy any given ATO, and generally you can use 100 merits to buy other items, sell them, and be able to buy ATOs in the market for cheaper. That depends on someone else having already put the ATO you want up for sale. Also, Hero and Vigilante packs will, on average, have 1.2 ATOs in them. There might be one. There might be two. There might be none. And of course the odds of one of them being exactly what you want are slim. But you can always use converters to change them into what you want. It just might take a long time and a lot of converters.

I have, and I *will* talk more about this in the future, but in general giving up a damage aura for Hide is, in my books, a pure win across the board. Mud Pots is possibly the best damage aura because of being able to slot Slow, but even so, I'd much rather 6 slot all my effective attacks than 5 or 6 slot a damage aura, generally. Exceptions: I need to slot superior avalanche somewhere; I had an extra power slot and wanted to put in one or more knockdown procs.

Now, let me start with one of my first alts on HC which was my Staff/Bio stalker. Staff: Losing Staff Mastery and Innocuous Strikes is no big deal. The only stance I have every used is form of the Body, and you get that for free as a stalker! Innocuous Strikes is a meh power with no real additional utility, and gaining a big ST damage dealer is great! Bio: I never really thought about it at first, but Genetic Corruption feels like an upgrade over Genetic Contamination. The sleep really isn't critical, but I can slot a purple set in there that helps me with good bonuses. Let's face it, we're not killing enemies with Genetic Corruption. I later made a Staff/Bio scrapper, and yeah, it was not as good a build in my eyes. What are your thoughts?

So I've been taking a little break from scrapping and leveling up some of my stalkers. Now I absolutely understand the difference in the ATs and the playstyles and so on, but I've found it interesting to look at the power differences across sets. Sometimes the balance is subtle, and sometimes I find there are scrapper builds that I would much rather play as a stalker not because I want high single target damage but because the powers work better for me. I'm focusing on the difference between scrappers and stalkers, but on a broader basis it's mostly similar to scrapper/brute/tanker v. stalkers. For the most part I haven't been delving into the difference between powers with the same name that might have different stats on City of Data (all hail Uberguy). Here's what I see as the differences, and please sing out if I got things wrong or missed stuff: PRIMARY: All Primaries: Lose Confront, gain Placate Broad Sword: Lose Whirling Sword; gain Assassin's Slash. Claws: Lose Spin, Follow Up; gain Assassin's Claw, Build Up. Dark Melee: Lose Dark Consumption, Soul Drain; gain Assassin's Eclipse, Build Up. Dual Blades: Lose Typhoon's Edge, Blinding Feint; gain Assassin's Blades, Build Up. Electrical Melee: Lose Lightning Clap; gain Assassin's Shock. Energy Melee: Lose Whirling Hands; gain Assassin's Strike. Fiery Melee: Lose Incinerate; gain Assassin's Blaze. Ice Melee: Lose Greater Ice Sword; gain Assassin's Ice Sword. Kinetic Melee: Lose Power Siphon, Repulsing Torrent; gain Assassin's Strike, Build Up. Martial Arts: Lose Dragon's Tail; gain Assassin's Blow. Katana/Ninja Blade: Lose The Lotus Drops; gain Assassin's Blade. Psionic Melee: Lose Concentration, Psi Blade Sweep; gain Concentration, Assassin's Psi Blade. Radiation Melee: Lose Fusion, Irradiated Ground; gain Assassin's Corruption, Build Up. Savage Melee: Lose Blood Thirst, Vicious Slash, gain Assassin's Frenzy, Build Up. Spines: Lose Quills, gain Assassin's Impaler. Staff: Lose Staff Mastery, Innocuous Strikes, gain Assassin's Staff, Build Up. Stone Melee: Lose Heavy Mallet, gain Assassin's Smash. Street Justice: Lose Combat Readiness, Rib Cracker; gain Assassin's Strike, Build Up. SECONDARY: Bio Armor: Lose Inexhaustible, Evolving Armor, Genetic Contamination; gain Hide, Boundless Energy, Genetic Corruption. Dark Armor: Lose Death Shroud, Cloak of Darkness; gain Hide, Shadow Dweller. Electric Armor: Lose Lightning Field; gain Hide. Energy Aura: Lose Dampening Field, Entropic Aura, Energy Protection, Energy Cloak; gain Hide, Entropy Shield, Kinetic Dampening, Disrupt. Fiery Aura: Lose Blazing Aura, Fiery Embrace; gain Hide, Cauterizing Blaze. Ice Armor: Lose Icicles; gain Hide. Invulnerability: Lose Resist Elements, Resist Energy, Invincibility; gain Hide, Environmental Resistance, Invincible. Ninjitsu: Lose Shinobi-Iri, Seishinteki Kyoyo, Bo Ryaku; gain Hide, Caltrops, Smoke Flash. Radiation Armor: Lose Beta Decay, gain Hide. Regeneration: Lose Quick Recovery, gain Hide. Shield Defense: Lose Phalanx Fighting, gain Hide. Stone Armor: Lose Mud Pots, gain Hide. Super Reflexes: Lose Lucky, gain Hide. Willpower: Lose Rise to the Challenge, Quick Recovery; gain Hide, Reconstruction. ANCILLARY: Body Mastery: Lose Conserve Power; gain Superior Conditioning. Weapon Mastery: Lose Caltrops; gain Physical Perfection.

Good, bad, Discord is the guy with the gun. (No guns were used in the creation of this post. I don't use discord because I think it is a pile of shit in terms of would want to get out of it. There's lots of good collaborative software out there for projects. There's lots of good posting software out there for putting your opinion out there. Discord is garbage for the purposes I would want to use it for, and if it's great for other people, hoorah, good for them!)

I've spent some time recently getting my KM/Ice scrapper to 50, and I will eventually get my KM/Fire stalker there as well. I'm always one to look at "underpowered" sets and determine for myself if I think that it is true that they are actually underpowered. First of all, the animations. Initially I didn't like them, and I guess I still don't. But when I checked in Mids, the damage per animation values weren't any worse that the other sets I looked at. I think that it's a perceptual issue, at least I think it is for me. Some animations I hate, because they are clearly superfluous and there to add time so that the power can be made higher damage. Anything with a flip, like Ripper or Eviscerate. But I don't mind things like Guarded Spin or Eye of the Storm, because the length of the animation seems justified. Hey, hold your horses, I'm break dancing here! To me, a lot of the longer animations for KM seem unnecessary thematically. But heavens forbid we make them shorter and take away some of our damage! So I think this one is a push -- I don't love the animations, but I understand that they are long because they enable the balance that brings higher damage. Second, the damage. It *feels* like less damage than similar sets although I'm certainly not quantifying this by parsing combat logs. And again, I understand why this is because the entire nature of the KM gimmick is that a successful hit on an enemy lowers the damage they put out. Not just to you, but to everyone on your team. It's the counterpart to the -to hit debuffs of Dark Melee (which is also not the highest damage set). And as far as I know, the damage reduction isn't resistible. So, again this one makes sense to me. The problem is that in the current meta, the tradeoff between damage inflicted and survivability is extremely weighted towards damage. It's really difficult to get defeated at all unless you are pushing the envelope, either solo or on teams. And thanks to SCORE and HC there is virtually no penalty for being defeated. I don't even know if XP debt even exists anymore, there are a multitude of powers to resurrect you, and even getting back to the mission takes a push of a teleport power button. If damage gets increased, then this continues to undermine the damage/survivability trade off. So I'm inclined to call this working as intended, unless you want to change "intended" to "survivability is irrelevant". Third, the strategy. In a lot of ways this set is like Claws. Melee + PBAoE + ranged cone + ranged, and a non-Build Up Build Up power. But the bells and whistles take a little getting used to. I'm only going to speak from a scrapper perspective, since I don't have enough data otherwise. At first I actually avoided Concentrated Strike. The animation was so long that I felt I was probably getting more done by using shorter powers. And the nature of Power Siphon leads people to try to get as many levels of siphon mode as they can. But eventually I came around to a different playstyle. Hit Power Siphon whenever it is up, and use Concentrated Strike so long as it is not overkill for your given enemy. A normal Build Up is 10 seconds of +100% damage and +20% to hit for 90 seconds of cooldown (which of course can be cut dramatically, but as a scrapper you can't stack it). Power Siphon is 20 seconds with a variable amount of +damage and +7.5% to hit for 120 seconds of cooldown. Getting it to reactivate resets the timer, and appears to stack, so every once in a while I end up with over +200% damage and 22.5% tohit. You can't depend on that sure, but by my observation the 20% activation rate on Concentrated Strike matches my results, and that means roughly one our of every 25 times, you are going to reset PS twice in a row and those numbers are wow. Now of course, you can't depend on that, but overall do I want to trade off a 10 seconds of +100% damage and +20% to hit for lower +damage and lower +to hit for 20 seconds? Depends on your build, but yeah, sometimes. Also, the -damage gimmick is mostly a gimmick with the exception of Burst, which affects up to ten targets for twice as much reduction for 7 seconds. My builds are focusing on Burst, Concentrated Strike, and Power Siphon. It seems to me this power set is working as intended, but the problem is that currently players intend it to do more damage rather than to do more damage in relation to added survivability. I doubt I'll ever play this as a tank or a brute, but I'll definitely work on my stalker at some point.

Boo!

Follow up question: I have a character that I want to dedicate towards helping others get this . He is 50 and has completed most of Makos entire arc( not just the unlock mission but way beyond that, but not completed.) can this alt pick up other patron arcs without doing it through Ouro (which would required people being on my team from the beginning)?

I used this on Live to great effect.

I agree with this. I keep trying to like SR, but my playstyle just has too many attacks coming in, and 5% of attacks getting through is just too many without mitigation. If you are playing x3, or on a team with a taunter then sure, it's great! But for me it's a numbers game and the numbers on the other side are many and irrational. Possibly imaginary.

An oft repeated request is the ability to stop receiving threads from content, and that would solve some of the problems. In SCORE and HC, the powers that be wanted to make getting all incarnates extremely fast and easy. The problem, it appears, is that when you have quickly and easily gotten all the incarnate powers you want, you are still getting drops that are no longer useful to you. So by all means I support being able to turn off all threads and shards.

I have at least one character that was bitten by a radioactive straw. Broke her back.