Bill Z Bubba

I thought something was amiss.... Is this because once upon a time we actually could get lvl 53 HOs?

DDR is too low for the amount of mitigation that relies on the set's defense values. It too easily succumbs to defense debuffs and is arguably the weakest armor set because of it. Well, maybe not as bad as regen, but it's close.

@3.5 mins

Had a bunch of transcendents sitting on my 2nd acct, so turned my old villain main back to his original powersets but as a tank this time. FA/EM, fully T4ed, musc, degen, assault core. Has better pylon times than my claws/sr brute and damn near hits my claws/sr scrapper's times. Where Aeon in the MLTF slaughters my claws/sr scrapper every time, this fa/em tank slapped Aeon down without breaking a sweat. Max diff ITF? No issues at all. Tanks are so OP. 🙂

On my earth/earth dom, I find that seeing three of those orbs out on occasion makes it a very useful proc for my aoe immobilize.

I'm still a scrapper. Skin isn't as thick but I do more damage. 🙂

Those gorram goalposts. And that's crux. (Completely 100% agree with full disclosure, by the by.) But it's the goalposts we're actually concerned with, right? Thing is.... I remember when the goal was to be able to survive a full spawn in the RCS. I remember when the max diff of the game was essentially +2/x2. The devs moved the goalposts. The SSPS folks moved them even more. I guess I just don't know where the goalposts are now.

I've spent a lot of brain cycles the last few days on this concept. I'm finding that it might not matter. I used to be a purist. Didn't PL. Didn't think incarnate powers should be used at all in pylon testing. Sort of. The baseline was important. Finding out what could be done with incarnates was added fun. But that forced the question, "If we allow untoggled hybrid, why aren't we allowing it toggled?" I fire that thing off every time it's up. I don't bother saving it for big fights because it's probably going to be clickable again during those fights. Same goes for lore pets. If I use them when I'm soloing hard stuff, why aren't I validating their effects when I'm testing pylons? They are part of the build now. The should be accounted for. And if all that is true, and we're constantly hearing from folks the necessity of, say, clarion for squishies, why aren't we considering everything else a player can get their hands on? Can you call a power a "temp" power when all you have to do is hit your base to refresh it? Or the P2W vendor? Hell, you can even hit the P2W vendor in Pocket D while on a TF. And if the amplifiers aren't counting as temp powers when you disable temps for a TF, who are we to say the game is wrong? Sure, the amplifiers may not be in mids to turn on but if they were, we would see builds utilizing them. Even at 50 they're only 2.5mil a pop. 60 mil for 8 hours of all three? That's nothin. I can that back in an hour or so. Is the purist still screaming? Yea. But I get the concept that a bunch of the rules we place on ourselves really are arbitrary. We can't bitch at one person using amplifiers and not do the same bitching at the folks forced to use clarion or rune of protection. We can attempt to make the argument that the amps are temp powers but they aren't. They can obviously be made, with no trouble, persistent in exactly the same way base buffs can be. I can't tell you how many times I've read "X hole can be easily filled with Y" so it doesn't matter anymore. We have people saying that blasters can tank. Game balance, as Werner pointed out, has sailed away. Is there really a difference between spending INF on I Win buttons versus spending threads for incarnate powers? I have to argue that the answer is no. Distasteful as I find it, or found it, regardless. Does this mean that I'm going to change the way I play? Or test? It already has. Blasters are more fun when they aren't licking dirt. Having persistent mez protection from 1 to 50 is a hell of a lot more fun that just having protection SOME of the time with Rune or having to wait until lvl 50+X for a T4ed clarion. Same is true for every other character without built in mez protection. And if *THEY* get to do it, why can't the rest of us?

Yes, we get it.

So NOW I know how to make my empathy/fighting pool defscrapper into a god. THANKS, MAN!!!

My biggest pet peeve? Approximately 85% of the human population. Also, I like mayonnaise and banana sandwiches. Or peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I'm good with either.

Yes, cuz using "I Win" buttons is a great way to balance a game. Yes, I use them as well when I'm not PLing alts to 50 and leveling them up normally. Why not? They're there to use. Why not build around those buffs? It's all just crunching the numbers to minmax anyway. Why run a max diff clear most ITF when you can just zerg the thing in 10 minutes at -1? Doesn't mean I'd shed any tears if they were nuked from orbit. Gods below, the hatred of bringing any type of sanity to a system under the idiocy that "all nerfs are bad and evil!!!" really needs to be purged from society. Among a great number of other things.

I would really like to see these being blocked to any character over level 22. Yea, I know, ain't gonna happen. And it's damn nice having constant mez protection without the need of Clarion or Rune of Protection for squishies but damn they are making a mess of things.

Unsure to be honest, but here's a fun post on the topic: Sooo, Longbow?

And I'd be ok with that if it were remotely true now. Which it ain't. If my EM/SR brute can't dish out better DPS than my freakin Claws/SR brute... when claws has some GLORIOUS AoE output, then EM is painfully broken.

HA! That's only cuz my darker stuff always got purged!

Woot. Usually when I insult someone I get a couple day ban for it.

I feel like I'm missing something. Did I insult anyone?

About that... In Mids with Arcanatime on, and Max damage selected (meaning all DoT ticks go off:) GFS is at the top. With Average Damage selected, it falls to #3 And with Extra Damage Ignored, GFS is STILL number 3: May not be true for other ATs as I didn't check, but for a brute? Yea, I'd be attempting to go cranked recharge and shooting for the Incinerate, Cremate, GFS, repeat attack chain. Disclaimer: Mids numbers may or may not be accurate.

While true, there are 50+ lvls to get through before you have that.

I hear ya. Trying and failing to come up with a way outside of PvP to test that... Anybody have any ideas?

Should work just like defense and come off the top, not the cap. And since resistance resists resistance debuffs, if you're that far over the cap, you'll probably never see your resistance for that type debuffed by said resistance debuffs.

Nice. Thanks!

I've got one! It's an excellent combo. Edit: Also have an earth/earth dom. So much smashy goodness.