Bill Z Bubba

I do not. I have a claws/fire brute for farming and a fire/nrg tank that was an nrg/fire brute back before the snap. Fire armor is too squishy for me without tank values in non-farming content. I also don't have any dark, elec or ice scrappers. I didn't have regen either until creating the fire/regen scrapper the other day but that will probably just be slapped together on beta just so I can feel how horrifically weak it will be and deleted from live.

Nope. Death is a permanent hold. No runners or loss of DPS occurs. And it's not a dead horse when it gets discussed during powerset creation.

Even better than the original thanks to the absorption/passive mez protection from master brawler and what appears to be superior scaling damres. Sentinel: [MagExpr]% Damage Resistance (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy) for 2.5s (self only) for 2.5s Magnitude Expression: 0.004*minmax(60 - source>kHitPoints%, 0, 100) Scrapper: [MagExpr]% Damage Resistance (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy) for 2.5s (self only) for 2.5s Magnitude Expression: 0.003*minmax(60 - source>kHitPoints%, 0, 100) This appears to be stating that at 0 health, the scrapper would only reach +60% damres while the sentinel hits +80%. Course, they both cap at 75 so I'm unsure why they did that with sentinels. Maybe the lower cap on max HP that sents have?

Ding 40. This project has definitely fallen to backburner status but I'm still workin it.

Pfft. Challenge accepted.

SR for max sexiness. Bio for max damage. Nrg for max recharge. Inv for max toughness, I think, since claws can't use shield. But really... thanks to all the short activations, and thanks to being so well rounded on mitigation through knock from focus and shockwave and being finely balanced between ST and AoE output, claws can go well with everything. I did crank up a claws/stone on beta to max out and get some baselines and it looks pretty good. Not overpowered in any way that I saw, little extra damage from brimstone, and you'll need to be on your toes to use geode when the fit hits the shan. I'm not sure what I'll pair with it when it goes live since I already have enough claws goin, (but do I? can one have enough claws?) but I will have one. More than likely stone/stone or mace/stone.

I can grok that. I had to silence a bunch of sounds last time I tried out ice melee but at least it provides some mitigation with ice patch, freezing touch and frozen aura. Fire ain't got squat!

Due to another thread, I think a fire/regen scrapper would be a fine addition to this list. And I'm finding myself tempted to PL one and fully trick it out to see just how bad it would really be.

Finding areas of agreement often leads to compromise. But I can't reconcile this with the prior statement. Partly because of your next statement: Having different secondary effects for our primary powersets absolutely provides both flavor and different tools to get the job done and in most cases it works out quite well. But then there's poor ol' fiery melee. An attack set with absolutely no mitigation and a secondary effect of nothing but more damage and yet compared to the other attack sets, it's pretty much crap on the damage front. It's so bad that the only reason to ever choose it is for concept. That's bad design and creates an imbalance. And it's just one case where balance has been flatly ignored. And if something broken is never fixed, it does show a lack of care. It shows apathy. And that leads right back into why I end up getting fixated on these topics even when in the back of my head I keep hearing "ain't nuthin gonna happen." I HAVE to consider the state of taunt auras on scrappers broken because it's so easy to show the lack of balance that it creates. Create two scrappers, X/inv and a X/sr. On the whole, the two secondaries provide very similar levels of mitigation throughout the game but the X/inv is going to be more effective at doing the job of the scrapper simply because of the taunt aura. This isn't a flavor issue, it's a performance/balance issue. I get the argument that sometimes it's nice to not have a taunt aura. It's because I get it that I would actually be ok if all the taunt auras were removed. It's certainly not my preference but at least it would be balanced. I mean... regen already sucks enough as it is. Giving it a taunt aura would just be freaking mean, but again, at least more balance would be achieved and then maybe regen would get fixed. I just can't accept flavor as a worthwhile argument for leaving something imbalanced and thus broken. Course ... now I kinda want to make a fire/regen scrapper because that has to be the worst possible combo for a scrapper.

True but it's even more tankmagery silliness when you do.

You already know that I'm fine with either stripping taunt auras across the board or adding them to all but on this one point it should be noted that taunt auras specifically ASSIST in killing shit expeditiously by keeping enemies packed tightly for AoEs.

Should that be the next step here? To break down each of the 13 scrapper secondaries to show, without a doubt, the ridiculousness of the situation? Is it even necessary? It ain't rocket surgery. For those that are inclined to dive into such things there's already a massive amount of powerset comparison data available for us to peruse. Most of us already have a pretty decent handle on the mitigation rankings, on which sets to lean toward for more damage, which sets survive solo max diff ITFs and which don't, which get you through the Trapdoor test the fastest, which is the right one to use for taking down pylons (it's bio, we all know it's bio....) Or is that, too, just a complete waste of time when too many simply don't give a shit about game balance and don't care when things are broken when it doesn't affect them?

No, the tradeoff is I choose one of the 6 scrapper secondaries that have a taunt aura or one of the 7 that don't. And it's a crappy tradeoff considering that some with it provide numerically superior mitigation and/or heightened damage output on TOP of having a taunt aura. It's unfair, unnecessary and lacks balance. It's ugly game design and should have been corrected back on live. Just like brawl not critting or scourging while it is coded for containment and naturally benefits from fury and vigilance. Unfair, unnecessary and lacking balance.

Nope. But fury works on it and it does benefit from containment as well.

And you are not wrong. Things made a lot more sense when red was red and blue was blue. Now the waters are murky and convoluted but no effort has been put forth to purify anything and instead they were made dirtier by the recent tank buffs.

Tomorrow?!!? What the hell am I supposed to do until then? Adjournment denied! Also, why can't/don't brutes share that same luxury as they share the same powersets? As stated earlier, I don't need a taunt aura for fury generation on my SR brute.

A 5th option has emerged: Give scrappers the sentinel overhauls but with scrapper modifiers since none of them have taunt auras. So now we have: Do nothing. Remove all taunt auras from all scrappers. Add taunt auras to the scrappers missing them. Remove taunt auras from brute powersets where they don't exist in scrapper powersets. Give scrappers the sentinel powersets instead. My vote is for option 3 even though I'd absolutely love to have master brawler instead of practiced brawler.

Already stated the three options earlier. Removing all taunt auras from scrappers is number two. But there's also a 4th option. Remove brute taunt auras where they don't exist for scrappers. I suspect that would be the least well received.

Then no scrapper needs a taunt aura. They aren't tanks.

Agreed. But it forces me to ask why brutes aren't given the same option. I don't need a taunt aura in evasion to build fury on my SR brute. If I want more aggro I can use taunt.

Problem 1: This still forces 8 of 14 scrapper secondaries to take a pool power in order to function properly like the other 6 do without it. Problem 2: Doesn't help in farm land. Brute /fire runs the show there because brutes cap fire resists at 90% while scrappers cap at 75%. The brute's much higher damage cap in conjunction with combining insps to reds to stay near said cap means that the extra damage that might occur from scrapper fiery aura suddenly having a taunt added to it still won't help enough to matter.

Goes both ways. If it's truly insignificant, then it wouldn't matter if they were added in and standardized so that with future powersets no decision need be made regarding taunt auras. Going down the condescending path due a complete lack of any kind of cogent argument won't get ya very far.

I read it and said, "NO! I'm belligerent and haven't even begun my travels into the land of yelling at clouds yet! I'll do claws/sr instead." Course... he did still have a cigar...

But not when it's a brute or a tank setting them on fire! Then it makes perfect sense!