Omega-202

...meh. I haven't used it in Zapp, but I tried it out on ranged epic holds and on lower tier blasts for other ATs. It should activate more with less recharge slotting (which, for my tastes, I think you have too much +recharge in Zapp, hurting your proc chances). Let's say you get it to a 30% proc chance (~50% slotted rech redux), and say you can cycle it every 10 seconds in practice. That's about 1.8 procs per minute. That's 80% damage boost for an average of 9 seconds every 60, or an average damage enhancement of 12%. That's not bad, but that's also assuming perfect usage. To me, it's just unreliable and I've never felt it was that great. Granted, as a Stalker, you'd need Gaussian's slotted BU, Musculature and Assault Hybrid running at max, with some extra damage set bonuses to self cap at 500%, so the Decimation proc would rarely be a total waste, but all the same, it doesn't ever seem to have enough up time to make an impact.

Edit: Fast snipe consistently does double damage crits from hide (not counting procs or Interface etc.). That includes the +tohit damage bonus. Original Post: Sort of... Hide doubles enhanced (and modified), non proc, non Interface damage on most attacks. But some are weird. Snipes are a weird case and I never finished testing exactly how a fast snipe crit from Hide works. From Hide, slow snipe only does a half crit. From the August 2019 patch: Epic Snipes Will now have a base 1.75 scale damage in their quick form. Every point of ToHit buffing the player has will increase or decrease this damage, up to a cap of 2.3 scale damage with +22% ToHit buff. Slow form will do 3.56 scale damage Slow form crits will do 3.56 + 1.78 scale damage. Scrappers should now properly crit 10% of the time, instead of using Stalker requirements. My limited testing indicates that something is also weird with fast snipe crits from Hide. It's possible its only a half crit, or its possible it doesn't factor in the 22% tohit bonus damage or something. My guess is that the crit doesn't count the + tohit damage bonus, meaning it is a crit off of a 1.75 base damage. So, while a fast-snipe might be your best followup out of Hide due to the high base damage (scale 1.75 crit), you need to use the fast snipe proc to do so, and Chain induction isn't very far behind in damage (scale 1.32 crit). To me, might as well follow up with CI and then Zapp instead of wasting a slot in Zapp to make it useable from mid combat Hide.

EDIT: After some new testing, I haven't gotten a random slow snipe after a re-Hide from the proc. I am not sure what used to happen, but currently its no longer happening. Also, the crits were consistently double base damage, so whatever weirdness I was experiencing in the past with "not quite double" snipe crits is no longer happening either. Revised advice is: use Zapp/Moonbeam directly after AS. By far the best bang for your buck for the follow-up crit with Electric Melee. Original Post for posterity: Yes, it can force the slow snipe, but its weirdly inconsistent. That is why I always use AS>CI or BL or in a pinch CB or Mu Bolt, and never AS>Zapp. Once you get used to the rotation, it really doesn't slow you down. Muscle memory will kick in and you won't chain AS>Zapp.

That thread was a dumpster fire. People claiming that Crabs do Defender level damage should have their posting privileges revoked.

Yeah, therein lies the problem. Widows do the VEAT stealth melee thing better than Banes. Crabs do the VEAT pet AoE steamroller better than Banes. Forts do the VEAT ranged DPS/CC role WAAAY better than Banes. Crabs do VEAT psuedo-tanking better than Banes. One of the other 3 VEAT branches beats Banes in basically everything. So in the end, Banes just bring...style?

Don't store yellow or white salvage. It's so cheap that it's always easier to sell what you have and buy what you need on the market. Even at "buy now" prices, commons are rarely over 600 and uncommons are rarely over 1,800. Store oranges if you want, but I always find we never have what I need in the racks and have to buy from the market anyway. That will free up a bunch of racks for more enhancement space.

One thing to consider is how lvl 44, 47 and 49 powers might be ones you don't need in day to day exemplaring, but are amazing set mules. My favorite example is damaging ranged holds with bad activation times or bad proc chances, that might not be great in practical use or available at a low level, but worst case, slap 3 extra slots in and you got yourself 12% fire/cold resist from the ranged and hold winter sets, always on, always available. I do that with Ice Blast characters who don't need Bitter Freeze Ray.

I know I've earned the shards and guardian on a few characters and they have yet to run out on anyone that I've kept track of. But does anyone know if it's possible to rearn a Renault SF power? Like can you get another after the first expires?

It has always been this way. I think this was one of those things that intuitively doesn't work in a way that makes sense, people thought they understood but didn't and then spread bad information for years until half the population just took the wrong info for granted. Edit: That's also why I'm always so loathe to comment on things I don't have some degree of in game experience with. There's so much "common knowledge" that is just wrong, but it's really easy to perpetuate it if you don't have first or at least second hand experience to show you if its right or wrong.

I don't believe that's required, but I can't say for certain. For example, the TP to base prestige power and the TP to base day job power are identical in effect but have separate timers. Same for the P2W revive and the day job revive. They have separate timers. I think there's something else going on with what you're talking about.

FYI, Musculature radial gets you the damage and -tohit as well. It also gives you endmod for Stamina and any APP/PPP end recovery power you might take, which is really useful because Illusion is so end hungry.

Sure, but also, it would make it so you can have 2 versions of TT. That right there means its available twice as often, including being available in back to back missions.

I like the idea of a SS accolade, with an update that also makes the SS neutral coop zones like the RWZ. I think it could just grant another copy of the TT power, instead of making it require having the prestige powers. That seems way too complex and makes it useless for anyone who doesn't have them.

It is simply additive, as far as I recall. For example the equation is just: End cost = Base Cost * [1 / (1 + slotted end redux % + bonus end redux %)] So a 10 base end power, slotted with a +5 Purple Dam/end (42%), costs 7.04 end, and adding a global 3% end redux bonus takes it only down to 6.90 end. It's better than nothing, but the diminishing returns makes it so that powers with decent end redux slotted don't get a lot of benefit from the bonus end redux.

You have some very severe misunderstandings here. 1) You DO NOT lose set bonuses if the power is not available. If you have attuned lvl 30-50 IOs in your lvl 44 power, you still get the set bonuses down to 27. 2) A lvl50+5 LotG will give you more defense, but it means you don't get the bonus recharge below 47. That is a HUGE loss when exemplaring. 3) Purples are great, an probably better to slot in lower level powers due to the way that examplaring effects enhancement values. Purples, especially +5ed, give massive values which can counteract the downscaling when exemplaring. You might have 125% damage (scaled down due to ED) at 50, but that means you still get ~80% at 20. Edit: Reread your post and I misunderstood some of it, but my point 1 still holds. You definitely don't lose bouses in powers that aren't available.

If you have a lot of +recovery already, you get amazing bang for your buck from the +End bonuses. The larger your end pool, the faster your recovery also. Clouded Senses, Decimation and Annihilation are all great sets for it. While end redux has diminishing returns due to the (1/(1+redux%)) formula, + end does not, and achieves a similar result.

All 4 of the purple attack sets are that way. At 6 slots, they're all set to give waaaay too much damage, a lot of accuracy and recharge and some end redux. Regarding your comment on AtomSmasher and the proc, check out this thread for an explanation on how Procs work: In summary, its not really an issue if you can't use AS 4-5 times a minute due to recharge. The PPM calculation compensates for recharge, animation time and the area of effect of an attack. Atom Smasher is actually a fairly good place to put the Armaggedon set, and you'd get good mileage from the proc there. EDIT: Also forgot to mention, damage auras are usually "just ok" with damage procs. They can only proc once every 10 seconds so there's often proc attempts that whiff because you're between mobs. However Radiated Ground is a weird one. I believe it calculates on the standard 10 second window but it spawns a patch every 5 seconds, meaning it has double the proc rate of what it "should" have.

Throughout the course of the 1-50? Maybe not. But I've tinkered with Def/Cor builds that can compete withe Sentinels, durability wise. I had whipped up a Water/Storm/Dark build on test that had soft capped ranged def, Hurricane, 40-50% resists to all but psi, and pretty stupid damage for a non Blaster.

In case anybody is interested, I discovered an interesting quirk with a relatively simple bind I was playing with: /bind button4 "powexec_location target Translocation$$powexec_toggleon Mystic Flight" Now, I know what you're saying. "So what? You turn on Mystic Flight with one press and then TP to target with a second press and have Mystic Flight on." Yes, if you press the button twice slowly. BUT, if you double tap really quick, you take flight for a split second, teleport to the target and for some reason, the flight turns back off, and a lot of the time the Translocation animation "skips" and doesn't root you. I have no idea why it works, but I do know that I'll never walk to an enemy again. Essentially, the bind turns Mystic Flight into full combat teleportation, on the ground or in the air, without normal TP's slow hover period or Jaunt's limited uses. Really useful for any melee character than wants to be Nightcrawler, but hates Teleportations annoying hover.

Obviously power creep would be a concern for any new incarnate powers, but what if any further incarnate powers came with a debuff to compensate? Lets say the Omega slot works like the Alpha slot, with full ED immunity and different stat combos, but in exchange, it cancels the Alpha level shift, putting you back at 50? Or Vitae would grant a Hybrid-like toggle that upped one stat at the sacrifice of another while active, with a short duration (30-60s). Like one would grant 25% resist, but -3000% regen, so you might survive a burst better, but you couldn't sustain it. Or +60% damage but -1000% recovery, so you can fire off a burst but you'd floor your endurance almost immediately. If they want to stick with Genesis being patches, then just give them a 4s animation. Boom, nobody will want to use them.

There's some comments in that thread from @Captain Powerhouse, who is currenly in charge of such things. In terms of timeline, as you'll see in that thread, there's been discussion regarding a potential revamp for about a year now, but the world being as it is and the team being volunteers, who knows when we might see the update. Can't blame them because its obviously a group of volunteers and any updates at all are a gift.

Part tradition and part ease. Like others said above, its good "shut off your brain" teaming. And there's definitely something special about getting those office maps full of lvl54 Council tucked away in neat tiny alcoves and conference rooms and racing your teammates to see who can nuke them to dust first.

As a Sentinel, you need both to have the option of which Opportunity version you want to activate. However once some people reach level 50, the defensive version (tier 2) is seen as less attractive. A fully kitted out level 50 Sentinel is very tough to kill and usually has enough endurance, so some people prefer to drop the tier 2 blast and just activate using the tier 1 offensive Opportunity. The idea is "if you're unkillable and have enough endurance, then why bother with the version that gives you more health and endurance?" Other people disagree and keep both.

True, there are too few missions like that. Some of the later developed content is better about this. The Longbow base assault in the LRSF is one of my favorites for this reason. 3-4 people go for the bombs, the rest hit the fliers, reconvene inside to take on Crimson. That mission feels like a real comicbook scenario.

While I agree that the balance isn't that bad yet, I really don't see this hypothetical as being catastrophic. As it is, on a lot of min level TFs, everyone splits off in different directions and handles objectives independently. And I don't see that as much of an issue in the grand scheme of a superhero game. The Avengers don't usually fight huddled in a ball together. Flash and Batman never stick with the rest of the Justice League and Superman doesn't need to. It doesn't mean that they're not still part of a team, it just means that everyone performs to their level to contribute to the achievement of the end goal, whatever that is.