Bill Z Bubba

Granite and dual wielding specifically. TW, Axe, Mace work just fine. I don't get it either.

Yes. I now have a whip/rad MM at 38. Cuz masterminds suck but I need at least 1 of every AT fully T4ed/Enhanced.

I sure don't. Max diff is for max builds. (And usually only melee.) Anything less than that and it goes everywhere between +0/x1 and max completely depending on a massive array of variables.

I was pondering last night why they didn't go with assault/armor instead of range/armor for the Sentinel. I would have enjoyed that.

Absolutely true. I haven't even considered taking Elude or Unstoppable since ... well, hell, not since IOs were added to the game.

That's really all it comes down to, isn't it? Why run at max diff? Cuz I can. If I can't, I don't.

I'm finding that everything in Rad Armor is useful. Granted, I don't really *need* the +damage from the T9... Same goes for Bio Armor. Don't really *need* the T9.

ugh. Screw that.

Side question: Build Philosophy: Is parking in a PvP zone for the day job +recharge reduction buff a valid build choice for our testing purposes? Meaning, if I'm always going to have that buff, does it count? If that counts, does constantly staying buffed with base temp powers count? My gut says no. But then, I DO toggle on assault hybrid for my pylon runs because that's a power always in my tray and always fired off when available. Where should we draw the line?

This. I was feeling all high and mighty and immortal on my SR tank until I willfully aggroed two full spawns of Rularuu including a ton of Overseers and they chomped my ass into the dirt. Course.... I didn't pop any insps or fight back either. 🙂

Yea. @marcussmythe that was a damn fine post.

I knew I wasn't the only one.

I've no doubt that my times would improve by eating reds to the damage cap and bringing out lore/temp pets as well. Doesn't really tell us much, though. Kinda curious anyway.

I honestly wish I could offer some ahHA! workaround but the truth is I had four masterminds in the 30s/40s and now they have all been deleted. The OP's issue being just one of the many reasons that I can't play them.

Microcosm prompted me to copy over to beta and test something out for BZB scrap. Dropped hasten for assault. Dropped shockwave for eviscerate. Eviscerate and Slash both have Chance for Damres Debuff. FotG and Achilles' respectively. 3:05 1st run. Attack chain is Followup, Eviscerate, Focus, Slash, repeat. Huh. Same as my with hastened fu, focus, slash chain. Is that triple stack of FU on Focus really making that much of a difference? 3:47 2nd run. Attack chain was Followup, Eviscerate, Slash, repeat. Near pauseless. Huh again. 3:08 3rd run. Attack chain was Followup, Eviscerate, Focus, repeat, half second pause after FU. 3:33 4th run. Same as last attack chain but used ageless to get rid of the pause. Looks like its cast time was more damaging to the run than its buff helped. I expected having two damres debuffs in play would have made far more of a difference but just leaning on those gave the worst time. So far, continues to seem like the fu/focus/slash/repeat is still my best option. But it does take an obscene amount of recharge to get there. On the other hand, going with that 1st attack chain and no hasten, it's 100% end efficient. Downside to that, of course, I'd have to look at eviscerate's awful animation. EDIT: Went ahead and respeced my claws/bio scrap live. 1:54 is his best time so far with fu/focus/slash. But I'm about 10% short on recharge for a fluid chain.

Defense based sets getting detoggled by sappers? Huh?

It's listed as FSAA under Graphics and Audio, 1st section. I leave it off in game and force it at the driver level. Found that it's a bit clearer that way.

From discussions I've seen on the topic, the diminishing returns from having multiples in autos plays no role on when you have them slotted in attacks although there's some minuscule chance of the attack firing off on the same server tick as the auto which would then bring it into play. Buddy of mine loaded up an sr/elec tank with them in his attacks and was quite pleased.

It's not a gamble over time. My claws/sr brute averages around 4 mins on a pylon, fury sitting between 90-100% thanks to the +fury IO in followup. The claws/sr scrapper averages 3 mins, the passive +crit slotted in the unused swipe and the active +crit, also in followup, means they are in constant rotation. That's about 50 DPS difference between the two. Nothing earth shattering but it's very consistent. Edit: And, yes, the builds are identical other than the brute vs scrapper AT IO full set in followup.

Back before the snap, I turned my main into a brute because I found this to be true, but that was before the inclusion of the scrapper AT IOs buffing up the crit chances. Now, even though I can't verify against my old spreadsheets as I lost them, I'm pretty sure that even at max fury a brute is nowhere near a scrapper's damage output on either ST or AoE.

Random act of kindness! Oh, the humanity!

Based on the testing I've done with my sr/claws, tank, I have to move SR on up there to Tier 1.

Counterpoint: If you were having fun, you weren't doin it wrong.

O.o Went into Brigg's farm. Still have hasten on auto so not even using rebirth. Max diff. Not dying. Holy crap. Just standing there... 5 mins so far. But two max diff spawns of Rularuu with a buncha nasty eyeballs chompin on me did the job. Yay!

Totally forgot I had that Shield Wall +DR in the mix as well. It's really no wonder that my SR tank appears to be immortal in every situation I've thrown it in so far.