Bill Z Bubba

I can grok that. There's TONS of stuff, and more since HC started making changes, from a game/powerset/archetype balance standpoint that drive me up the freakin wall, but in the end, even that is meaningless. A ton of the changes I think should happen won't and in some cases they won't because it would tick off a ton of people even if it's the correct thing to do. Same case here. I'm in the middle of the lane because I utilize both styles of play and if something were to happen that makes it take me even longer to PL an alt to 50 when I'm of the mood to do so, there's other CoH groups out there. By the same token, if I *really* wanted my numerically pure CoH to exist, I could always build my own cluster and put in the time to make it happen.

That's pretty awesome.

But why is it an an issue? Because some people get annoyed at other people for not knowing the game as well as they think they do? So what? Because of the spam in broadcast or general chat? We're ALL here to play out our little power fantasies or just to escape reality. Why does it frelling matter a pair of fetid dingo kidneys if people farm to 50 or solo to 50 or use knockback or whatever else is the gripe of the day?

But then the nerf bat came with ED and GDN on top of it.

I'm not a fan of granite so I'll never play it on a tank or brute but the revision for scrappers/stalkers is fine. Easily permable HP buff. Damage buff. Get out of debt free card with the T9. Dark has DC for end issues, a very strong attack that also heals, the shadow maul buff was solid. Haven't picked up the new touch of fear yet but it seems to also have been quite the improvement. And of course, Dark's tohit debuffs help out Stone's defense. Solid combo, really. Last update, since we all know how this turns out: Spelunker badge on accident Lvl 13 at 2 hr mark, bumped to +0/x6 Lvl 16 2.5 hr mark, bumped to +0/x8 Lvl 20 at 3.5 hr mark. Lvl 22 at the 4.5 hr mark. Vahz Wasting disease is nasty. Still sittin on +0/x8 but could probably start increasing the level side without issue now. As with most scrapper combos, soloing to 50 is a breeze and would be even without amps and dbl-xp.

Can't cheat if there ain't no rules.

After soloing a swipe-only/inv scrapper to 50 with nothing but street sweeping and radio missions, and now soloing a normal dark/stone scrapper with nothing but the normal content contacts, to the OP and those that support the idea... /jranger.

Point of order! All of the T9s in Nin, SR and SD provide +recovery! (Don't take Elude and Kuji-In Retsu, people. Bad juju there.) Also... didn't know until just now that stalker Nin doesn't get Seishinteki Kyoyo. Shows how much I look at stalkers in Mids.

Truth. That's why claws/sr is so freaking awesome. Dead sexy slice-n-dice, nyah, nyah, can't touch me. I do have a claws/wp scrapper as well, but she's been stuck in the 30s and untouched for ages.

I'd play it.

Compared to scrapper spin of 9.2. On my final builds, it's a difference of Followup, Spin, Shockwave, repeat on the scrapper vs Followup, Focus, Spin, Shockwave, repeat on brutes/tanks. I concur that it's noticeable. 🙂 Edit: Course... on a scrapper now and I'm REALLY noticing how much more punks run away.

Buy Ultimate Insps from the fairy chick in Ouro and sell them on the market.

After defeating final bosses, last room full of hellions just stand there, marked as enemies, and you can beat them down for XP with zero risk as they don't fight back.

Kinda to show just how different things are these days.... Dark melee/stone armor scrapper solo to 50. Gonna keep a general log. Entered game, gave myself 50mil inf, 8hrs dbl xp and all 3 amps Used contacts starting with Azuria after street sweeping to lvl 4. Using SOs, improved when they turned red. Bumped diff to +0/x3 w/ bosses at 6. +0/x4 at 8. After 1:25 hrs, I'm lvl 10 and have a new contact in Skyway with one chance of faceplanting that didn't happen when I jumped into a group of CoT with a madness mage, 2 life mages and a bunch of the demonling things. I'd forgotten how many missions handed out by normal contacts are nothing but go hunt X# of Y. While I don't necessarily miss taking 4 months to get to lvl 50 playing 16 hrs a day, an argument can be made that we went well past easy mode a looooong time ago. Ran to contact in Skyway, she sends me back to KR. Yea... there's a reason I stopped bothering. 🙂

But if I were to solo level from 1 to 50 (properly, not like with that swipe-only/inv scrapper,) I could see going dark/shield. Tons of synergy there. Late edit: ah, hell, I ain't got nuthin better to do. dark/stone scrapper comin up.

Yup. 44.46% defense to all positions by level 19 with 3 defense SOs in the 6 SR powers + combat jumping. You get evasion at 12 and lucky at 18. I think that's why we're seeing things very differently. I focus on 50+ builds as I've mostly given up on leveling anything these days. My shield/nrg tank's last ITF solo time, after the phalanx fighting fix, at max diff with no insps/temps/amplifiers or faceplants was around 1:26, if I'm remembering correctly. (Found one screenshot at 1:30 but I remember beating that at some point.) Yes, I balance around IOs because they're available and easy to get. I may PL a build to 35 and load it up with basics and the normal uniques to get a better feel for it but for the most part everything I build follows the same rules if possible: Permahasten, very tight attack chains, softcap defense where I can, hardcap damres where I can, crank up HP, then regen. Specifically in that order. One of the biggest reasons I've found for this is just how many things in game I get to just plain ignore like stacked debuffs and end drains for no other reason that they never land. Whenever I've played sets like rad or fire armor, I've been dismayed by this. Right now, on scrappers at least, I'll always prefer the defense sets over the resist sets and do so entirely because of the 75% damres cap, with shield and sr leading the way mostly because of all the DDR they provide. I don't touch ice armor on anything because of its low DDR. And regen? It's at the bottom of the pack for me. Last note: I haven't taken elude since IOs were added to the game.

This. I have yet, after what.. two years now?, to create a single incarnate power from anything shard related. They all get converted to threads.

SR is a painful drag on the way up for scrappers, less so for brutes, but freaking awesome for tanks. At the end of that road, however, I place it just behind shield. As they say, late blooming but the bloom is good.

O.o Is there no cooldown on swapping builds?

He mad. 🙂 But I just got my 15th pt yesterday, so I expect that the next time a GM thinks I'm being abusive, I'll be perma-banned.

I'm in the "don't use 'em" camp. I have one final build per character and that's that. If I exemplar low enough that I lose the majority of my attacks, I switch tray 1 to tray 9 which has boxing, brawl, sands of mu and black wand waiting if needed.

I would certainly hope so if rectal bleaching is involved.

Yup. Wasn't the original forum cartel 10000 posts? I like watching the ratios between posts and reactions. The folks that have like 3 times the number of reactions to posts? They're the ones up to no good. Like the little cardboard target girl with the physics book in Men in Black.

Doubtful. We seem to have different build goals. Edit: And mine needs a respec to tighten it up.