Bill Z Bubba

I would have to argue that it's not the ATs that are unbalanced but rather powersets within ATs. The fact that my claws/bio scrapper can get under 2mins on a pylon while my claws/sr scrapper sits around 3mins while the bio provides arguably near equivalent mitigation is far more of an issue to me that AT balance and roles at this point. I'd have to argue, he says, while recognizing that booze makes me belligerent.

I would have to respond that the general consensus is wrong. And the pylon thread is a great place for data showing that. But so is actually playing each AT with the same sets. As I already have a BZB Scrap, a BZB Brute and a BZB tank, all claws and super reflexes, all I need to do is PL up the stalker and dump 750mil to kit him out. What I've learned, tested and expected so far? Exactly what I stated in the OP.

I have that reaction to warwalkers inside buildings with their top half phasing through floors.

Do you have FXAA enabled in nvidia control panel?

So is a tank Support or DPS? When Sentinel damage output barely keeps up with a good defender, how is the Sent DPS? (Note: some combos are very bad, fire/bio and sonic/bio are sick good.) When a tank can solo a max diff ITF, how is this tank then Support? That makes no sense at all. But now we have folks asking for even MORE buffs to this already power-creeped to hell and back game because their particular non-tank can't tank well enough. Or their particular non-blaster can't DPS enough. Or whatever. You get the point. We have tanks that can dish out mighty sick damage. We have scrappers built for control and support. We have controllers out DPSing EVERYTHING. Go read the pylon thread in the scrapper forum sometime for some eye-opening times. Roles? We don't need no stinkin roles.

1000 slots per server. Don't forget to also get the buff accolades.

Do the roles even have any meaning anymore? Did they ever? Since day 1 there were teams running without the tank/damage/heal role trinity and doing just fine. Conversely, you could always play CoH like that and still can, although I never see it personally. Even at the character select screen, under TANK you have Tanks, Brutes and both Kheldians. Has anyone ever said, "Let the Crab herd before engaging?" I just got done cranking up my 3rd BZB on Excel. SR/Claws tank. No accolades yet but fully IOed as per my latest tweaks to the main scrapper's build. For a test I dropped him solo into a max diff ITF. Made it all the way to Rom in the 3rd mission without a single faceplant and only quit at that point because my DPS is still low enough that it would have taken forever even though I did take out the computer and Requiem. I've no doubt once he's all accoladed and incarnated up he'll be able to solo it without issue. But is that tanking? Or scrapping? I'd have to go with scrapping since there's no one else around for me to bother protecting. What does that mean for roles in general? Should we even care as long as the job gets done and we're having fun? I'm leaning toward no.

Tanks should be tanking. Brutes should be bruting. Scrappers should be scrapping. Stalkers should be stalking. With my multiple Claws and SR using BZBs, I have found the following to be true. When it comes to mitigation, Tanks > Brutes > Scrappers > Stalkers. When it comes to damage output, Stalkers > Scrappers > Brutes > Tankers. This seems very well balanced. Is there disagreement?

Just as a followup (cuz I like claws, damnit!) yesterday I finished PLing my new BZB Tank to 50, this morning I dropped 750mil to completely kit him up. That's seems fair. On to the incarnate grind! (Which is still a million times better than it was on live.)

Heretics. Fruit belongs not upon pizza nor in beer!

Also true, except the /thread part. That never works.

I remember several 2bil inf IOs.

I've taken to turning emps into transcendents so I can email 50 emps at a time to another character on same acct. For unusable components, scrap them into threads. Buy utlimates and huge insps with threads, sell them for quick cash on the market. Step 3: profit.

iTrials where one would expect the lead tank/brute to already be heavily incarnated? And if smart, running barrier where even as it scales down, SR's passive resists will scale up. My current claws/sr brute sits at 40% S/L DR and 30% F/C DR, softcapped defense and 2250 HP regening at 32HP/sec before the scaling dam-res is even considered. Survivability isn't an issue. And no, blasters can't tank. They can occasionally survive alpha strikes. That isn't tanking. EDIT: Going tank with the same build: over incarnate softcap, 55% S/L DR, 36% F/C DR, 2800 HP and regen at 40 HP/Sec.

I see this posted all the time and always chuckle. SR has scaling dam-res that stacks on the Reactive Defenses-Scaling Dam-res Proc. More HP the SR user has, the quicker it hits the dam-res cap. Capped dam-res on top of softcapped defenses is far from "paper thin." No self-heal? True. It doesn't need it.

lol... wut?

I'm stealing this.

I looked at her build only to find that it was 75% basic IOs. Too many alts. I'll fix her at some point and try again.

Shield makes everything better. If ya like savage for concept, go with SM/SD.

"Energy Assault: New special mechanic. Most single target attacks have a 20% chance of granting Energy Focus mode. Hitting a foe with Total Focus will always grant Energy Focus mode. While in this mode, Whirling Hands will inflict a large amount of bonus damage. Power Burst will do some bonus damage." Thanks, @Bopper

Does some have a link to what the heck this is? I see that 2ndary attacks can put you in the energy focus state and the energy stored popup occurs, but I can't find any explanation of wth that actually does/mean. Thanks, -BZB

I must admit my amusement at myself for shifting gears so much during the snap. Disregarding my work on my claws/bio scrapper, I went from "DPS is all that matters" to "do I look cool while I'm beatin down the baddies?" Aging. It does things to your brain.

I'm not sure that it's KB. It acts like repel. Does the KB->KD from Overwhelming actually turn it into KD?

I haven't looked at all. Don't think I'm ever conscious of it showing up and certainly haven't been watching the combat logs for it.

It ain't great. Matter of fact, yea, it's pretty awful. However, I never faceplant and the aoe output from fireball, rain and inferno ramp up the kill speed on max diff nicely. Doesn't help that I have both Sent AT IO full sets in Flares and Fire Blast and a full Devastation set in Blaze. Attack chain is Blaze, Flares, FB, Flares, repeat. No hasten in the build. I have no doubt I could reslot for better damage, take hasten, drop flares for blazing blast and improve the time considerably. But then I'd be annoyed by blazing blast's repel during normal combat like I was before his last respec. Edit: Quick side note, if opportunity is up and I fire off flares and queue up fire blast, when both hit, I get both Offensive and Defensive Opportunity. Which amuses me.