Bill Z Bubba

I'm trying to think of it in terms of how they were initially introduced. But then I remember all the screaming. Most of it from me. At release, Khels started out with debuffs that Cosmic Balance barely corrected if the Khel was on a full and balanced team. We finally got the devs to nuke the debuffs, but then we were left with an inherent that only functioned properly on full teams and dropped to 100% useless while solo. But even defenders now have an inherent that scales when shifting from solo to teamed. While I'd like to see something similar with Khels, again, not this thread. Just trying to come up with something to start with. I have plenty of characters that I've given up soloing with so I'm not pushing for that here at this time but I can't drop it from my head completely when I look at the VEATs soloing without issue AND bringing huge buffs to teams.

I have zero Kheldians now. Deleted the two I had after spending a night staring at Mids trying and failing to make something worthwhile out of my Warshade. Can't log in to verify but I think I have 2 bio tanks, a bio brute and 2 bio scrappers. Compared to a fully T4ed fire/time blaster, and the following in various states of incarnate-hood: time/fire def fire/dark troller earth/earth dom dark/time troller emp/nrg def earth/fire dom fire/dark cor dark/pain troller arch/ta blaster sonic/dark cor and quite a few more squishies that aren't 50 yet. So, no, your guess is wrong. Do I favor melee? Absolutely. And I have many non-bio melee characters, my three claws and SR using Bills at the top of that list. As for your experience with Khels, considering how many characters I have with better mitigation, better aoe AND ST damage and have it all without being mezzed when I drop out of dwarf form, I'd have to argue that no, compared to every other AT, Kheldians are not a balanced package at all. Compared to running at +0/x1 w/o bosses, sure, they're fine. Please remember that back on live, I had both a WS and a PB at 50 long before any tweaks and IOs and got them there mostly solo just like I did everything else. They're both cool as hell to watch, especially the warshade, but these days that's about the only positive thing I can say about them. Yes, we've all seen what a fully kitted out MFin WS can do right up until it hits a hard target and runs out of fodder. Then it folds like a wet napkin. No, I don't consider that balanced at all, again, when compared to everything else we can choose to play. But I'm not here to fix ALL of many problems with Kheldians. I was just asking for ONE tiny thing that would at least allow them to bring more to a team than they do now.

But it will stack with other set bonuses that happen to be 7.5%.

No, really, why not? They need help. A lot of it. Edit: But change the buff from other EATs. Slow resist don't cut it.

Fresh SR/DM Tank. Long story short, it really doesn't matter what you use. SOs at lvl 2 and DBL-XP make this game contemptibly easy. I mean, I could have spent this same two hours just powerleveling an alt to 50 but, honestly, this was more fun. And now I'll delete the character cuz I already have enough DM and SR users. 5:45am Lvl 1: Focused Senses and Shadow Punch. 18.5% Melee Defense, 115 HP, 7.5% DDR Can't buy SOs yet. Got DBL-XP, Athletic Run but no other P2W junk. Lvl2: Took Smite. Bought SOs. Endred in FF and Sprint. Acc in SP, Smite and Brawl. Heal in Health. Endmod in Stamina. Run in Swift. Jump in Hurdle. 18.5% Melee Defense, 127.9 HP, 7.7% DDR Lvl 3: Added slots to FF and Stamina. Added 1 Def to FF and another endmod to stamina. Lvl 4: Took Focused Senses. Slotted Endred. Now 5:56am, 22.39% Melee, 18.5% Ranged, 17.9% DDR, 159.04 HP Smoke break, coffee brewed, man it's cold up in MA right now. 12f. Brrr. 6:16am Lvl 5: Added slots to FS (Def) and Smite (Endred.) lvl 6: Shadow Maul (Acc.) Went to KR, talked to Detective for Radio. Replaced Endred with Run in Sprint since I have it bound to G and detoggle it when I hit combat. Waiting until 7 to update SOs. Melee 21.83%, Range 21.83%, DDR 20.6%, 196.94 HP Have I ever mentioned how much I hate that I can't click on the tram when the doors are open? 1st mish, Hellions. 6:30am Lvl 7: Slots added to ShadowMaul (Endred) and Stamina (Endmod.) Woot! Stamina fully slotted! Bumped all SOs to lvl 10. Bumped diff to +0/x2. Melee 22.75%, Ranged 22.75%, DDR 21.4%, 221.6 HP 2nd mish, Vahz. 6:40am Lvl 8: Practiced Brawler with recred. For now, only going to click it IF I get mezzed. MR 22.57%, DDR 21.72%, 245.55 HP 3rd mish, CoT rescue Ayn Race 7:02am Lvl 9: More def in both FF and FS. Bumped to +0/x3, made sure bosses were turned on. Is that on by default? It should be. MR def at 26.23%, DDR 25.81%, 277.91 HP 4th mish, more Hellions, big map, dinged twice. 7:25am Lvl 10: Took Dodge Lvl 11: 1 slot each in FF and FS. WOOT! FF and FS now fully slotted 1endred/3def. Melee at 36.93%, Range at 28.08%, DDR 34.45%, 344.31 HP 5th Mish, Skullz 7:48am 2 hours in. Lvl 12.5: Took Evasion and slotted with an Endred. Bumped all SOs to lvl 15. Melee 38.33%, Range 29.11%, AoE 18.5%. DDR at 38.04%. 381.56 HP Lowish recharge 180 melee cone, 4 ST attacks with SP, Smite, Brawl and origin power. ZERO faceplants. ZERO end issues. Still no amps, no P2W attacks, only using insps that drop. Cakewalk.

The resists are only scaling, don't kick in until at 60% health, and come with Dodge, Agile and Lucky. Can't get Lucky until 18. (So many possible comments....)

I don't think you fully grok the power of high defense and tank level HP and what it means for slotting other powers in the low game. So I just cranked up an SR/DM tank and I'll update this post over the next couple hours as I drink coffee, wake up, and solo street sweep/run radios with this combo using NO amps, double XP and nothing but SOs.

I was saying it IS very satisfying. Huge PBAoE that sends a whole spawn flying into the air is niiiiice.

Not that I ever recall but of course we can't even use CoD to find that out now. As far as I can remember, aoe size and target caps were identical between brutes and tanks until the recent tank buffs.

Proof that I am a very lazy man. I haven't crafted a single IO since the first month I was on HC.

Everything I build is based off of Mids and CoD.

Never the optimal pick, but oh damn, what a very satisfying pick.

This post has been bouncing in my head and I hope someday you give it a retry on beta fully tricked out at 50. There's something deeply satisfying about having 4 attacks in my tray. On my mace/bio scrapper, ST chain is Clobber, Jawbreaker, Shatter, repeat. AoE chain is Jawbreaker, Shatter, Crowd Control, repeat. Sure, they're slower chains to get through but they hit like trucks. Edit: And just to be sure I wasn't addled again, went and beat up a pylon. 1:45 with assault core enabled.

I think I missed this earlier. And I completely understand it. /EA is far more clicky than /SR. On my db/ea scrapper, I find that I have to hit energize and nrg drain a LOT. Claws/SR will always be cruise control zen mode second only to WP on the zen but with much better mitigation. Claws/Inv would have identical extra clicks as Claws/SR, Practiced Brawler vs Dull Pain, but again, I find SR tougher than Inv. At least on tanks. For a brute, maybe Inv is better but I have my doubts. Pondering that further, Inv will also let you slot Gaussian's CFBU in Invincibility. Tough call for me.

I also don't do heavy crash T9s.

Not when it comes to procs. I tried a full procmonster build once on my claws/bio scrapper and found it far less than appealing.

Would have made more sense for the current +fury IO to raise the fury ceiling past 100 rather than just adding more fury and still capping. As it stands, it's barely a buff at all most of the time. And since brutes share damres caps with tanks, the other one should have been a proper buff to mitigation rather than the weak sauce it is now.

<.< >.> To be fair... my claws/wp didn't survive my latest purge. She was 45. Stripped and nuked just last night. Only WP user left is Bunny Fufu and he's still in the 30s. And has SS... so might get nuked soon too.

Yea. Don't know by how much though.

That right there is a reason I also have a shield/mace tank. Wish I had gone brute on that combo, though... but the macer predates the nrg meleer. Then again... PLin ain't nuthin. Think I'll reroll him into a brute soon. Not for any performance reason but just because I don't have a shield brute.

Mine's built for soloing, so yea, typical max damage. Musc Core, Degen Core, Assault Core, Pyronic Core. Found Rebirth Radial to be the most useful of the destinies for that build. Lore is always carnies, cuz DRM hotty.

Agreed on an SR tank. I'm gonna argue for Dark on the secondary. You won't need the tohit debuffs, but they'll help on the way to softcap. Siphon Life is the 2nd best attack in the set and will keep your HP topped off. Dark Consumption will be very helpful since you won't have any of the other available tools for end recovery.

Correct, Sovera. Incoming attacks increase fury, hit or miss. Side note: the more I play Invul, the more Shield>SR>Inv remains my opinion.

Cuz barrage. Honestly, if I could, I'd love to have a character that used nothing but Nrg-Barrage, Fire-Flares, Claws-Slash, Dark-NightFall, repeat.

Hey @Sovera Turns out I won't be respecing after all. Tanked an ITF last night for some of my SG mates and really enjoyed it. Felt like all that extra time spent smacking things around with BS, Bar and EP went a long way to having an absolute lockdown on aggro while also never being locked into the long animations meant I could just bounce all around the battlefield like a cracked up monkey.