Bill Z Bubba

After watching this vid I went back into a max diff ITF with my earth/earth dom and focused heavily on quicksand/earthquake, basically spamming them as much as possible and it made a world of difference from a prior attempt I had made. So thanks for that Voltak.

I was about to ask what psychopath uses aoes during hard target fights but then remembered that my new db/ea scrapper is doing bf/ss/as/repeat. However, I seriously doubt it'll have an impact but will, of course, be testing it out.

You can't do katana or dual blades (or claws, which really should be on your watch list of awesomeness for its wondrous balance between single target and aoe damage, or titan weapons) with shield. But a willpower/katana tank would certainly be interesting. A shield/ma tank would also be quite good.

I concur. I get the same crunchy satisfaction from katana that I get from mace. Especially if the gaussian's in bu goes off along with the (edit) critical strikes proc in soaring dragon right before I land Golden Dragonfly. Quite glorious.

Shield. As much as I love SR, shield is just better... numerically. Can reach the same softcap, nearish enough DDR with doublestacked active defense, more base damres at 100% health but the kicker is the damage bonus from AAO. Regardless of what anyone might say to the contrary, damage is king in this game because we get XP by killin baddies. While SR's +20% recharge is nice, it just doesn't compare to a saturated AAO. And for a truly silly ride, go shield/nrg tank. The ST damage is insane and shield charge helps on the AoE front quite a bit.

Apart from ED (linked above) limiting the usefulness of SOs/Basic IOs past X number, if you are using SET IOs, there's a limit of 5 specific buffs. Example: If you have sets slotted in your build and 6 of the set bonuses grant +10% regen, you'll only get +50% regen as the 6th bonus will not function. A partial exception to this rule is with the Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge IO. You can have up to 5 of those AND 5 regular set bonuses that also grant +7.5% recharge.

I threw one into evasion on my claws/sr brute and found it wasn't worth the slot even just standing there surrounded by an aggro cap's worth of cimerorans. I'm sure someone else can show the math.

Which is why, to answer the OP directly on SR, it IS fantastic on tanks. Capped DDR (for all SR using ATs) means cascading defense failures don't exist, and between the scaling damres from SR with the added scaling DR from the Reactive Defenses Proc AND the extra damres from the Might of the Tanker AT IO proc, you can easily find yourself at 1/3 health with softcapped defense, capped damres and still have almost 1000 HP. Or in other words, immortality.

Based purely on the multiple runs I posted to the pylon thread, brutes were a wash on assault radial vs core, but both tanks, my sent and my scrap all had substantially better times with core, leading me to believe that anything with a higher base AT damage mod than brutes will also benefit more from assault core. Prior testing always put degen over reactive (but not by much) and of course, alpha musc core is the only way to go. This is all just hard target stuff. I've heard otherwise for farming and of course if you've always got a pocket kin capping your damage buffs, radial will be better instead.

Talking it over with @BillyMailmanwe concur with Underfyre. On Sents, you're better off going Dark Blast instead of Gloom on Sentinels. And from pylon testing, you're better off with hybrid assault core over assault radial. (On Sents, Scraps, Blasters, Tanks and Stalkers, so far.) So get out there and murder some hard targets!

Not that I've ever really noticed. However... Between this concept and offensive mode kicking off with dark blast, it would certainly be worth some pylon testing to find out. Or just doing some napkin math. Two attack chains: AB, AG, Gloom, repeat AB, AG, DB, repeat Haven't looked so don't even know what levels of recharge would be needed for that and if it's even possible. Gloom is doing 8 ticks of 11.6225 damage with a 1.848 Arcanacast time. 50.31 DPA Dark Blast is doing 52.8297 damage with a 1.188 Arcanacast time. 44.47 DPA Throwing in the other attacks, you've got total chain times of 5.94 secs for 350.8418 damage 5.28 secs for 310.6915 damage Over, say, three minutes you're looking at 10631.57 damage vs 10591.76 damage. Which, granted, ain't much at all and we haven't even figured in Offensive Mode buffs. EDIT: Ok, looking at CoD for Opportunity has me confused. Both modes do the extra -20% damres debuff but Offensive is adding... something... per damage type for 10 seconds, I think. But I am not groking what it's actually doing. If it's just adding a weak damage proc based on your damage type and following the same gorram PPM calculations as other procs, I honestly have no idea whether it's making up the difference between the two chains above. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.opportunity_proc&at=sentinel Thanks for making me look at this, @underfyre Last edit I swear... why does Flares have better DPA than Fire Blast on Sents and Blasters but not on Defs and Cors? MADNESS!

Or get enough recharge and never use a single combo. My new DB just runs BF, SS, AS, repeat for ST and BF, SS, TE for AoE.

I took down 50 pylons in a single day for testing purposes.

Still takes threads. It's *almost* there.

Took me a second.

As Krimson mentioned, transferring threads to emps would please me. Buying threads with influence? Sure. There's already an inf cost toward building greater components from lesser components, why not have it go all the way? As it is now, I cranked up a new db/nrg scrapper, PLed her to 32, played into the 40s with basic IOs, and go her to 50 tagging along on some max diff ITFs. It took looking through just a few alts to get her 3 transcendents (150 emps) to get her started and I've easily got enough on other alts to finish her out should I desire. Total process time? Couple days? So none of this is a NEED but we didn't NEED access to capes at level 1 either. Some things are just pure QoL and being able to utilize our ill-gotten gains (that's tongue in cheek, my gains ain't ill) to hasten our ability to get T4ed sounds lovely.

Gloom has better DPA than Dark Blast. At least as per Mids.

Partially correct. Nerfing is what happens when something is initially designed incompetently and needs to be corrected for balance. I look forward to the new hard mode stuff but I don't see that it has anything to do with the OP. Being able to steamroll through DA repeatables fighting essentially +1s for +4 rewards remains silly AF. Hard mode options in various TFs won't correct that incompetently designed mechanic. Even alpha functioning everywhere was a mistake from the get go. Moving on is no reason to leave broken garbage broken.

I guess I should note that so far all pylon tests are also done with T4 Alpha Musc Core and T4 Inter Degen Core.

Couple more runs. I will be respecing the sr/claws tank. That's just horrible. Claws/SR Tank Core 5:19 5:49 5:50 5:48 5:40 Avg: 5:41 Throw out best and worst: 5:46 Claws/SR Tank Radial 6:55 6:33 5:43 6:05 5:40 Avg: 6:11 Throw out best and worst: 6:07 Fire/Bio Sent Core 3:34 3:59 3:39 3:14 3:25 Avg: 3:34 Throw out best and worst: 3:33 Fire/Bio Sent Radial 3:50 3:53 4:02 3:34 3:44 Avg: 3:49 Throw out best and worst: 3:49

Were you focusing on AoE output? I've got a staff/bio scrapper that runs both +damage forms and I found the AoE output pretty dang good. Course, bio makes all damage exceptional...

Here's the sd/nrg tank numbers. Tank Core 2:46 2:48 2:50 2:59 2:48 Avg: 2:50 Throw out best and worst: 2:48 Tank Radial 3:34 3:31 3:01 3:10 3:27 Avg: 3:21 Throw out best and worst: 3:22 Going to have to run 10 more with the claws/sr tank to see if it gets the same spread. And then a nrg melee brute. And my fire/bio sent. Probably the claws/bio scrap as well. Later. Need a break.

Not what I expected. Claws/SR Scrapper and Brute. 5 runs each with Assault Core and Radial. Core absolutely helps the scrapper but it seems a complete wash on the brute. Assault clicked with time starting. Pyronic core thrown in when up. Hasten on auto and practiced brawler clicked manually after allowing hasten to fire off. I'll do the same test with my sd/nrg tank later. Scrap Core 2:35 2:44 2:35 3:07 2:54 Avg: 2:47 Throw out best and worst: 2:44 Scrap Radial 2:46 3:03 3:39 3:21 3:07 Avg: 3:11 Throw out best and worst: 3:10 Brute Core 4:20 4:34 4:35 4:44 4:39 Avg: 4:34 Throw out best and worst: 4:36 Brute Radial 4:11 4:54 4:30 4:45 4:27 Avg: 4:33 Throw out best and worst: 4:34

I can find the hole just fine! It's my accuracy that's in question.

I just wish it was a better map. I hate the drop shafts as I miss them too often.