marcussmythe

Could we get the older sets on par with the newer sets mechanically? :)

The one advantage I can see on the SR, due to its ability to comfortably overcap even the incarnate softcap, as well as carrying more DEF Debuff resistance than any other Powerset (to the best of my knowledge), means that in Incarnate content, the SR may delay or avoid the debuff cascade collapse that would otherwise claim it. This value may be questionable outside a solo context - in a team situation, your teammates may well be providing enough DEF Buff that the baddies cant start the cascade. That said, when I die on my Bio Brute in Incarnate Content, its very nearly always a debuff cascade collapse.

Ice Fire sounds tempting. Sure, Ice is about the worst damage set out there, but thematic, and all the slows.. ALL THE SLOWS. Plus Scrapper-Damage based burn. "Oh, you just THOUGHT you were running out of my burn patch!"

'Things Not Being in Melee' is a really great form of mitigation. Ive not done the math, but my perception is that most mobs have both ranged and melee attacks, and fire off whatever isnt on cooldown - and most mobs have lots of down time in their attack cycles. Thus if they are in melee, they throw all their ranged attacks and all their melee attacks. If they cant get in melee, they just throw their ranged attacks. Also, they do amusing things like run up the stairs, jump on the railing, jump out into the air towards you, punch you as they fall past, fall hitting the ground for damage, and then run back towards the stairs. The value it adds may only be comedic, but the comedic value is golden.

I have TW both with Bio (Scrapper) and with Dark (Tank Titan Weapons 101: You want damage? It does that. Single Target? Yup. AOE? Bobs your uncle. So much damage. My Tank (in momentum time) feels like a scrapper. My scrapper feels like something is broken in the game. You want soft control? Meet my knockdown. SO much knockdown. See those guys that were attack you? See them fall on their butts? Yup. Gnite, Gracie. You want to defense? Did I mention the first attack isnt really an attack, its a buff to Smashing and Melee Defense, and not a small one? (That said, it ISNT an attack, its damage is non-existent, dont spam without reason) Now, that's the pros. Lets talk about the Cons: It matures late. Most of the powers you take early? Yeah, youll be respecing some of those out for the better ones later on. So late. The character competely changes every time a new attack comes online. It matures -really- late. Until youve got a solid attack chain (I mean in your 20s) with good uptime on hasten and build momentum (even later on), its gonna feel reaaaaly plug and chunk. Brief windows of murdergod followed by loooooooong animations while you make a sandwich and wait for the blow to land. And then make another sandwich. It eats your END. All your END. The END costs are appropriate to the damage, and I think a bit more, and during Momentum bursts, you'll swallow your END like its not even a thing. Only character where I buy BLUES on the way out of the Hospital, rather than purples. And your best single-target chain has an AOE in it, so there goes more. Slurp Slurp Slurp. You know Conserve Power? The thing that Incarnates and IO sets kinda killed off? Youll be considering it deeply. Or finding a defender to hug. Hug your defender - they deserve your hugs. It eats your animation time. Not in momentum, want to attack something? EVERY attack, outside momentum, is a wind-up animation that makes Total Focus look quick. Your not going anywhere for a WHILE, have a snickers. And hope nothing bad happens while your swinging that big ole thing around, because if your desperately needing to CLICK TO NOT DIE, well, you wont be clicking. Debt gives badges! Yay badges! It eats your attention. Attack chains? You know where you look at your powers and figure out to do your real buisness youll need to press 1, then 2, then 3, then 2, then 1 again, and repeat, something like that? Yeah, theres none of that. Your 'Attack Chain' is 'what is the best I can fit in thats just finished recharging in the brief few seconds of momentum I have left so I can trigger the last attack while still in momentum time and maybe Build Momentum will be off CD by the time it finishes animating ohgod I had to stop to CLICK TO NOT DIE and now its all fallen apart time to start over' WITH MY DARK, END was a problem thats slowly being overcome by slotting in every trick for end reduction the IO world offers, by being very judicious in which attacks I use (will a smaller, cheaper attack finish off that minion? USE IT, dont spend END on the big gun just to see the numbers. Hit AOE nao or wait a second to catch more targets and also get a recovery tick? Yeah, wait, more targets is more end efficient.) WITH MY BIO - Everythings still a problem. She needs a respec and some TLC. I think 'Cruise Control for Cool' wont set in till early 40s, and there wont be any time where the looooong windup wont be painful when coupled with her CLICK TO NOT DIE secondary set. At least its not regen. That said, Bio Armor - in Offensive Adaptation - is the most +DAM to be found in Scrapperdom, outside of a Shield and an Audience... and power has a price, are you willing to pay it? If I really wanted to do Titan Weapons, for its own sake (and not as one of marcussmythes crazy 'lets push the edges of sanity, game design, and stability' exercises), Id probably pair it with Willpower, most likely on a Brute, and enjoy my +Rec and otherwise low-management defense set while I devoted my life to the care and feeding of an attack 'rotation' that is only slightly less intensive than a Feral Druid in Wrath. (If anyone else ever rolled that rotation in a raid, and reads this, you know what I mean)

Damage comes in with one or more types (Fire/Cold/Smash/whatever) and along one of three vectors (Ranged, Melee, AOE). Basically EVERY attack has a component from each category. Thus a pistol is a Lethal Damage Type applied on a Ranged Vector. A Rikti Energy Sword is Lethal AND Energy, Melee Vector. This matters because it checks the BEST defense to every keyword on the incoming attack. So you can basically try to raise your vector defenses (also called positional) or your typed defenses. All things being equal (and they never are) positional defenses ARE BETTER - since there are less of them, and once your covered, you have no holes. Further, a Sentinel, being a pure ranged attacker, can often build for just Ranged and AOE Defense - and use some form of flight to avoid most melee. You, being Bioarmor, dont get that option - at least not as much. Bioarmor already slants to TYPED Defense out of its powers. Now, we can ignore that and go for ranged and AOE - but thats going to be overly costly, IMHO, and Psionic and Toxic Damage arent all that common (also, you are Bioarmor. You heal fast). So, we probably want to focus our IOs on Typed Defenses. How much? The common targets for defense are 45% (basically everything hits you 1/10th as much as they would otherwise), or 32.5% (Because thats still pretty durn good, and a small purple will make it 45%). Now, its not utterly wasteful to go over 45%, because debuffs are A THING - but Id not spend much resources on it unless your a Defense Tank. A Bio Sentinel is neither pure defense focused, nor a tank. (theres essentially ANOTHER softcap up in the 50s, because certain special high-end content has special to hit bonuses. Dont worry about that, you wont get to Incarnate Softcap, and you dont want to wreck your character trying). So your sitting at 58.7% Energy/Negative. Im really curious how you got that. Thats crazy nuts high. Thats 'are you sure you dont mean Resistance' high. Thats plenty and lots and more than youll ever need. Id really look at your Smashing/Lethal Defense.. try to get that to 32.5, if not 45 (45 will be painful). Fire and Cold are also worth attention, but if your already at 40% DEF vs Fire and Cold, you likely wont feel a need to chase the last 5%. 'Pure' Cold attacks are very rare, and 'Pure' fire ranged attacks arent that common either unless your fighting a lot of CoT Fire Demons. But Smashing/Lethal are every gun in the game, almost.

My testing says 2% of toon Health times Activation Time. I'd like to see someone else test that to confirm or falsify. Tested further and confirmed... it is definitely HP * Act Time * 2%. Hmm. Well, that Milkshake -wont- bring all the boys to the yard, but a 2% Heal Per Second isn't nothing. Will help with chip damage at least.

Well, NOTHING is going to be best at EVERYTHING, even with a respec. I personally have a preference that runs to 'does reasonably well at everything' rather than 'does one thing perfectly'. I think Fire/Dark Armor is a good approach for this. Fire Melee has solid AOE and Single Target Capacity, and develops early. The only set that I can think of thats better at BOTH develops very late, and is very much focus, endurance, and stress intensive in exchange. So fire is great for what you want to do. It gives up secondary effects to get that damage, but TANSTAAFL, yannow? Dark Armor, interestingly, offers several things that Fire -lacks-. Its got a great self-heal, a DOT toggle to raise your AOE performance even higher, solid resists without a hole to ram psionic damage through, and two other toggles that offer fear and stun flavors of CC, at least against minions (and may offer some cool possibilities with late game incarnate stuff that your not worried about right now). Pick up taunt and pay attention to the CC in your auras, and youll be able to tank almost anything that wants tanking, eventually (Id probably still want the tanker AT if I was looking at an Angry Recluse with towers up). Your AOE DPS will be enough to feed you influence. Your single target DPS will be enough that 'Theres an AV in the mission' (eventually) wont mean abandon mission or stop and find friends (though friends are good!). Your Mes Toggles in Dark Armor will give you ways to interact with the game that isnt just 'kill stuff and dont die' - CC is fun. Debuffs are fun. You may find yourself struggling with Endurance in the early run - I advise NOT running any toggles you dont NEED RIGHT NOW. Most of the times the only ones you NEED RIGHT NOW are your Mezz prot toggle and your Smash/Lethal Toggle, turn the other ones (DOT, Fear, Stun, Fire/Cold, etc.) situationally, at least until your build matures. At some point, youll want to sit down with Pines Hero Designer and figure out what you want to do at lvl 50 when you have all the phat purple lewts that this game offers, in the form of enhancement sets, the bonuses they provide, and the incarnate powers.. but thats not a problem for this week - youll get there. Enjoy the ride. And dont waste too much time second-guessing your choices. If your having fun, you chose right, and as someone who played the game, those are NOT auto-self-gimping choices (Id tell you if they were, I promise!)

Eh, they murdered my main, Im not feeling generous. That said, their also not the ones making decisions, and I'm hopeful for better in the future. Even if we dont get it, Im still very much enjoying my Titan Weapons/Bio Armor/Spines/Dark Armor Crew, as well as my Fire/Time/Dark Corruptor. But I'll try to give numbers with less venom in the future. :)

Cheering for Shield is like Cheerleading for the Quarterback, who lettered in a few other sports, is taking all AP classes and is a Mensa-Spanking Genius, whose parents are Waltons and who is dating a member of the Royal Family. Sure, its great, but...

Fire is a very strong AOE Attack set (others are stronger, but have costs in other areas) Dark is a very strong resist based set with a PBAOE DOT aura that will help in killing crowds. I think you will end up, with time and investment, with a solid character who is capable of farming large amounts of influence. It will be weaker in this role than the classic Spines/Fire or SS/Fire or Rad/Fire Farm Builds, but be harder to kill and have a broader toolset in exchange. Having a character able to farm is useful - things cost money, and its very handy to have a high level character that can 'feed money' down to alts, or other characters worse at making it. However, farming is (for most of us) not the purpose of the game, and if one spends all ones time making the money counter go up or gearing out awesome alts, without spending time playing them, just to have it.. then one is a rich guy with nice cars and a huge bank account that never drives his cars or spends the money on things he then enjoys - because hes so busy making money. Some may find this rewarding, however - amassing having everything you want and more than youll ever need and then not doing anything with it is a common human pass-time. I think you will have fun with your character, and I predict you will enjoy it at least -slightly- more when you walk into the Portal Corps Plaza/Under the Atlas Statute and do not find yourself surrounded by a half-dozen or more exact clones of yourself.

Im also attaching a link to a google spreadsheet on DPS performance being built up by someone from the discord. I do not agree with all of his assumptions, for the record (+500% Recharge is an outlier, and probably makes TW look slightly better than it would otherwise). Also, assuming all AOEs are fully target saturated is a big swallow - and probably makes cones look better than they otherwise would (I tend to prefer PBAOE Radius, as its much easier to get max targets). He also appears to ignore rage, much less rage stacks, and I'm not sure about uptime on other buffs. HOWEVER - you have to select SOME basis to make your comparison, and its as good a one as any short of building IOed supercharacters on test and testing them ALL. There's not enough hours in the day. Ive pasted a link to that spreadsheet, in the 'Tank' section. It classifies DPS by various sets, in terms of both single target and AOE. I believe numbers present a stronger arguement than anything else can, and the numbers on Energy Melee speak for themselves. It is exactly at the bottom on AOE, snuggling it on Single Target, and worse than Super strength would be if you took Rage entirely away from SS. It would need an overall damage buff of ~68%~ in single target to match STONE MELEE (surprisingly the #2 damage set - but Stone has long been better than it was credited), and would need to nearly triple its AOE output to catch up with Battle Axe (also a better set than it usually gets credit for). I ignore Titan Weapons here because I'm less confident in the calculation behind it, when you juggle through momentum time and non-momentum time, etc. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19VuZ9zJ_8eKN11JytgaK9mt9Fy-8pjANopb-FGh68Uw/htmlview# As far as dev criticism, thats aimed at the old, live dev team. I dont have much gruff to yell at unpaid volunteers, and I'll tip my hat to them in passing. But the people that were getting paid? They either couldnt TELL that something was worthless (in which case they are incompetent), dont CARE that it was worthless (In which case they are malignant) or could see, and cared, but lacked the talent to fix it (In which case they should not be the developers).

I love some of the flowy sleeves/dresses the talons get.

Alternate Opinion - Due to the way the Fury Mechanic leverages a large bonus across a small base, a Brute will 'feel' the penalty of Granite less than a Tank, because its debuffing a smaller damage base, and theres a large bonus riding in on the coattails of fury.

Maybe we need to merge these threads. Weve got two going on now, and while Energy Melee needs help the way a 'if their not warm their not dead' semi-corpse fished from a freezing river needs help, it probably doesnt need two threads.

Thanks for that. Very insightful. +1, really. But can you tell me, is that KO Blow with rage on, or off? Oh, my sweet summer child. It gets much, much worse... Lets go at the far end. 3 Damage IOs in each - Knockout Blow - 132.7 DPA Energy Transfer - 139.1 DPA As above, plus Rage (you can trip and fall on perma-rage) Knockout Blow - 186 DPA Energy Transfer - 139.1 DPA As above, plus Double-Rage/Buildup/Build Momentum (Uptime on double-rage is higher than uptime on Build Momentum or Buildup - but penalties are piling up here - see 'Change Rage' thread, same forum) Energy Transfer - 195 DPA knockout Blow - 234 DPA Follow-Through -226 DPA Triple-Rage is possible, but I dont believe the uptime justifies the heavy crash. Still, theoretical triple-rage DPA would be ~ 280. Side note, based on above - Rage probably needs to retain some drawback, because its just silly good - though I wont argue with the people who say the DEF Crash is too much - Ive not played it. Trickshooter - as for Castle, Id say that at the time the nerf happened, PVP WAS a consideration, Energy Damage was considered a 'bonus' that had to be balanced against, and the 'set point' for game balance was WAY THE FUCK LOWER than later on. This is before they let Shield (much less Bio, or Titan, or Radiation Melee/Armor) into the wild, after all. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In conclusion: Energy Melee is and has always been, apparently by design, the -worst- AOE Tanker Secondary, tied for that job with Dark Melee. Dark Melee gets a self heal as part of its attack chain, a super-perma-buildup that requires only that you fight large numbers of foes (IE, it requires that you play the game at high level), and a useful debuff. EM Gets not these things. Every set, that is not one of those two, has superior AOE, or at least lots of other tricks, and the only set that shares the bad AOE of Energy Melee gets many other benefits of value far exceeding 'might briefly stun something that couldnt hurt me anyway' Therefore, it follows logically that (assuming all sets are meant to be of value, and that there are tradeoffs) that Energy Melee should exceed -every- other tank secondary in single target damage, including rage-stacked superstrength and momentum-managed Titan Weapons. Until this is the case, Energy Melee is a bad set, because the developers feel that it should be.

Please tweak to fit your needs - this isnt an 'Ive lived with this set for months and years' or even a 'I spent a week theorycrafting' build, its a literal driveby and hotswap from my Spines/Bio - Im sure the real build technicians can do better. But thank you. Also note - I think there is an unavoidable redraw animation with staff, so it may not give the same value it gives sets that lack the redraw lag. Heck, even with Spines, I -feel- like I'm losing time to pop the spines back out, even if Im told that the animation just plays faster to make up for it.

I summon my pets and lay down a Barrier Invocation. They live just fine that way. :)

Everything is good with shield that you can take with shield. Shield makes bad sets good and good sets great.

Before "it was because of PvP" gets too far again, let me try and clear some things up. Since Issue 4, the devs had the ability to make any power that targets a foe function differently depending on if the target is a Critter or a Player. That's how we had things like unresistable Defender debuffs, and triple damage Controllers, and unresistable Scrapper crits, etc. If PvP was really where Energy Transfer did too much damage, it could have done less damage to players since the introduction of PvP to the game. Even later on when the tech was introduced for one power to be able to redirect to different powers, Energy Transfer could have been left a long animation power in PvP, and had it's shorter animation time returned back to PvE if that was the issue. Knowing that, it's probably fair to say that PvP was not the cause. I'm not saying the animation changes to Energy Transfer were right. Far from it, actually. I like the look of Energy Melee, including the long ET animation, but the set no longer really excels at anything. Even as a concept pick for punch-y characters, Street Justice fits better. So I agree the set needs some work. All I want is for the story to stop being that PvP was to blame, because it really wasn't. Well, Id rather, for myself, blame PvP than to assume that the developers of that time were your choice of either 1.) Actively Malignant, or 2.) Broadly Incompetent

By matter of comparison: Titan Weapons: Follow Through: 90.88 DPA, 10s Recharge (Requires Momentum) Second Attack - Rend Armor. 71.22 DPA (I believe OUTSIDE of Momentum Time. For reals, yall) Mace: Clobber: 89.47 DPA. 14 Second Recharge. Mag 3 Stun (No drawback) Second Attack - Jawbreaker. 44 DPA, but recharges fast and knock UP Energy Melee: Energy Transfer: 69.86 DPA. 20 second recharge. Mag 3 Stun (Self inflicted damage) Second Attack - Total Focus, 46 DPA, same 20 second recharge. Psionic Melee: Greater Psi Blade: 69.77 DPA 15 Second Recharge Mag 3 Hold. -9.6% Recharge Debuff to Target (No downside, damage higher if focused) Second attack - TK BLow.. 9s Recharge, 57.69DPA, Knockup, and adds focus to make Psi Blade even more damaging. Superstrength: Knockout Blow: 66.66 DPA. 25 second recharge. Mag 3 Hold (No drawback. Set Bonus - Rage) Fallback is Haymaker, 42DPA, fast recharge, and the set still has rage. By comparison, then: Titan Weapons has the highest DPA, on the shortest recharge. It requires Momentum to use this attack, but by 50 with a plan, your in momentum almost all the time. And it has attacks to follow it that are ALSO silly DPA. Set also has great AOE. Mace has a better attack than Energy Transfer - more DPA, shorter recharge, same mag CC, and it doesnt hurt you. Jawbreaker isnt bad. And set has some AOE to keep its single target company. Psionic Melee has a basically identical attack to Energy Transfer - but its psychic damage, so you get to laugh at almost all mob resists. And it debuffs. And its damage goes significantly higher if you have stacks of focus (you have stacks of focus). And the set has two AOEs to the one of Energy Melee. Superstrength has KNockout Blow. Basically the same DPA, longer recharge, but it lives in the same set as RAGE. You know, Rage, its like buildup, if buildup was perma and stackable 2-3x. And some other decent attacks. And Rage. And an infamous AOE. And Rage. In light of the above, the only thing that justifies the existence of energy melee is the value of being pillow-fisted with pink-pom-poms. Its not middle of the road with pros and cons, its just actively, notably, bad. Reverting Energy Transfer probably wouldnt actually even make the set competitive with the later produced 'good sets' - Probably need to revist the animation time on Total Focus, and maybe give a bit of love to Barrage (say to the same DPA as Energy Punch and Bone Smasher - if you want the set to have a reason to be other than to by its choice indicate that you are uniformed, nostalgia-driven, or an active masochist.

The change killed my main. The only good selling point of Energy Melee was that it had great single target spike off of a fast-animating Energy Transfer. Nothing else. And that Energy Transfer could -kill you-, and certainly stung on any set without regen. If its necessary to hang the long animation on it -for pvp-, we can do that. But for PvE, lacking it, Energy Melee is an unplayed set and will remain so, and is an open wound for me going back to the early years of live. Fix it and I can play my main again. Nuff said.

Frankly, in its current form, its a pretty terrible set that basically goes unplayed on every archetype that has access to it. Signed.

I can only theorycraft on Stone, TBH - Ive not played it up. Id THINK the answer is 'being defensive against some and resistant against others is just fine, and youll patch up the defenses and resistance at 50 with IOs'. As for your auras - its one of the strong points of the set. If not immediately, Id think eventually. Beyond that, most of the experienced Stone players are Tanks - you might consider asking over on that board, probably more likely to eyeballs that have played the set heavily.

/WP is 'I just wanna play and not stress' incarnate. Stones will be a tough/unusual choice, and by its nature (IMHO) lends itself to 'I want to smash the game with my indestructibility and will pay any price to do so' rather than 'casual play'. Spines is a solid choice for AOEing down the baddies - which always feels good! Youll struggle with hard single targets (AVs will take some build planning if you want to solo them), but there aint nothing wrong with it as a set. That said, if your having fun, your having fun, and we can all go stuff ourselves. :) Id recommend leveraging the odd defenses of stone, and save Granite for an emergency power/I need to tank for the big group.