Omega-202

I have tried numerous conbinations for Spidey and in the end, the best setups I've made were StJ/Invuln/Mu Scrapper and Crab/Mu Soldier focusing on the melee attacks + Fighting pool + Jump Kick and Leap Attack from Jumping, as an Iron Spider setup. Beast run is on a lot of the time and the crouch emote is hotkeyed. You might say that Invuln doesn't fit thematically, but I feel like it fits best in effect. My build is defense capped to all but Psi (fits Peter's super reflexes), has solid resistance to most damage (he's still decently tough), and has Dull Pain for those "dig deep" Spidey moments. The Crab version is also really fun and fits a more mature, later years Spidey who embraced the tech. Very similar defenses to the invuln build, and supplements the punches and kicks with some arm slashes. I have it as an alt build on my main Crab and skip all of the arm blasts. I still take Venom Grenade for effectiveness and because gas grenades are totally something the Iron Spider suit would have in its tool kit. The biggest thing was when I discovered how much the electric sets look like webbing when colored white. The Mu pool becomes a great "web" set if you go with a bright white recolor, with standard single target blasts, ball "web" bombs and tangling webs (immobs and holds). Saves you from having to suspend disbelief by using the Mace webs or the web grenade in Weapon Mastery.

See the above post regarding my opinion of Mace for Crabs. Generally, I will echo Seigmorag here: Mu has the best, most well rounded set. Mace has 3 real dud powers (web and the two blasts). Leviathan is killed by its long animations, and the awesomeness of Artic Breath isn't enough to compensate for it. Soul is pretty good and is very similar to Mu, but the Blood Widow pet is straight up suicidal because of its 90% melee attack pool. Mu gives the best of all worlds: pretty quick attack animations with good damage (except for Discharge), a ranged pet that survives with a fast summon time and useful prereqs so you're not taking useless powers. It's only downside is that the -end effect is basically useless. All of Mu's options are basically the "second best" version available in the PPPs (eg Mu Lightning is second best after Gloom), but together they make the whole pool pretty good.

Constant and consistent AoE damage, Defense capped, 50%+ resists across the board, provides 20-30% defense to the whole team and solid -res to help team offense. Also 6 pets as icing on the cake. Can "tank" essentially anything in the game (aka take the alpha and survive, not really aggro manage though), leading teams from the front, or run off solo or can sit back and just lob grenades on loop, while your pets shoot off wave after wave of Lightning Balls. I'll be honest, I've taken a break from the game for a bit just because I haven't been able to build anything that functions as well as that Crab build for general content at any level. It feels like "beating the game".

Beast Run Crabs are the best. Who needs a travel power with all the free options we get these days? Also, goes great with a "totally not Iron-Spider Spider-man" costume look. Alternatively, you can drop Assault and Vengeance and grab Stealth and Fly or CJ and Fly if you want the extra defense power for LotG. Generally, you can also check the below thread which has my OG build that Seigmorag used as a template. He dropped Omega Maneuver and Stealth for double assaults, which is absolutely a valid choice. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of double assault just because I usually find myself near the damage cap without them due to team buffs when teaming or via inspiration combine+use binds when running solo. To answer your specific single target damage issues, my general suggestion is that you have too many AoEs and not enough focus on single target damage. 4 AoEs is overkill and your only single target attack is Channelgun. I've expressed my general 'meh' attitude towards Leviathan elsewhere in this subforum, and I think its AoE is overkill when you already have Suppression, VG and Frag to cycle. The other three PPPs give you great single target options (Mu Lightning, Gloom or Shatter Armor) whereas Spirit Shark is a bit trash due to its animation time. Also, the 6th pet can help a lot for when you have that last boss hanging around.

You're getting really bad advice from Gulb. The Patron attacks are objectively great stats wise, and some are better than what you can get from your primary. Gloom in Soul Mastery is the best DPA ranged attacks for a VEAT (1.76 damage with 1.1 animation), better than Subdue, Dominate and TK and MBlast for burst single target damage. For AoE, the options in Mu and Soul have similar damage and faster animations than Psi Tornado and Psi Scream. Nearly every VEAT AoE is better than Dart Burst (besides Dart Burst's -Regen, which is paltry). See the data from the old City of Data site here: http://web.archive.org/web/20140705004729/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/archetype.php?at=13

This thread (as are a few of Dr Rocket's suggestions) is less about addressing an actual problem, and more about how Dr Rocket needs help learning to play the game we have. Doc, it is very apparent that you are not well versed in how the game works, or how to build your characters. May I suggest that you take a break from making suggestions and spend more time learning to play the game as it is?

I tried out a similar concept on test, trying to build an "Iron Spider" concept, using the melee attacks, supplemented with the Fighting pool, with Mu PPP recolored white for webbing. I caved and also took Venom Grenade, because its too good to skip, and still kind of fit the concept. In summary, it was pretty unkillable, as Crabs usually are, having capped positionals, about 50% resist to all but psi and decent recharge. The downside was that it was super slow. Kill speed, even with VG and Ball Lightning as an opening volley, was just not that great. The single target melee attack chain was just not hitting hard enough. I'd love to see what you come up with though.

You are probably right. I didn't see the levels in the OP, and missed the part about "not hitting a lot". However, I don't think that it still wouldn't be a close "race" for aggro when the Scapper only has to do 2/3 the damage of the Stalker to keep pace. Sidekicking is a hell of a thing for scaling up damage. Also to note, some attacks are better at pulling aggro than others. Debuffs and controls have their own additional threat scalars, so an attack that just does damage pulls less aggro than one that does the same damage and also debuffs/controls. I can't recall the sets that this affects the most.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Threat Scrappers have scale 3 aggro generation. Stalkers have scale 2. So a Stalker needs to do 150% of a Scappers damage to pull aggro off of them, all other things being equal. Stalkers may out damage Scrappers in the right situations, but you're not doing 1 and 1/2 times the damage. Other things to consider: are you running a -threat toggle? Superspeed, stealth etc.? Those could all be lowering your threat, making it even more difficult to pull aggro.

Please point to where I called you a name in that post. You don't seem to understand the difference between someone disagreeing with you and someone calling you names. Earlier in the thread, when I called you unintelligent, it was not an insult, it was a statement of fact because you have shown yourself to be just that.

@Outrider_01, Hey friend, you're not really helping the situation. If you're trying to explain something, it's a bad sign when you say "I'm just confusing myself" multiple times in the explanation. We've already tried pointing OP to the tooltip numbers, but the tooltips were the whole genesis of their confusion, because they can't figure out how Scourge works in the tooltip.

No, they didn't. I remember the exact post from the nuked thread that you're referring to, because I was the one who suggested it: a) Do it at level 50 on test (because we all know that damage scalars at level 1 are not accurate) and b) I said to use the combat log, not the floating numbers, as you have done, because floating numbers are not accurate and are rounded off. A Blaster that hits for 9.49 damage shows as 9 and a Corruptor that hits for 7.75 damage shows as 8 (and 16 for Scourge). The combat log gives you the real numbers. Now to make it exactly clear to you: 1) Go on test and make a Blaster and Corruptor, with a non RNG damage primary (not fire, because the chance for bonus burn damage over time is obviously confusing you) 2) Auto level them both to 50, or some arbitrary equal level that is above lvl 20, where the early game damage curve corrects itself. 3) Go attack the same basic even level enemy with a single instance of the same power. A simple test would be hopping over to PI, grabbing a Council radio mission at 0/1 and attacking a simple soldier. 4) Open the combat log and take a screen shot after a single attack (just hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard). 5) Post both pictures here. It is very obvious that you don't understand how the game works. You don't seem to get that people posting here have torn this game apart, and know everything about it. You're not finding some weird thing, you're just wrong.

No, that does make you better than other posters. A sign of intelligence is knowing how to recognize what you don't know and asking for help. Dumb people refuse to acknowledge that they may be wrong and refuse to (or are incapable of) understanding any evidence that goes against their beliefs. See OP as an example.

Yes. After it didn't just get closed after the first blow up, some people may have pushed the envelope a bit and forced it to get shut... Mods should shut this one before it gets bad. Also, I have to question the OPs new handle. Would seem that they had gotten banned and are trying to circumvent the ban with a new account. Pretty sure there are rules against circumventing bans.

Except they're not. The same person had a complete meltdown in a thread a few weeks back because they honestly believe that they are the only person smart enough to find out that Corruptors do more damage than Blasters. The thread got locked and nuked and no longer exists. OP is one of those cases of a person that can't be helped.

This thread should be closed. The OP posted the same thing back on December 4 under a different (but similar) forum handle. They are not going to accept any facts or arguments. They are either trolling or not intelligent enough to understand what is going on.

If it is any consolation, the infamous "RWZ pylon solo" build used Mace. But generally, I think it brings less to the table than the other options. Crabs benefit from PPPs for 4 things: better DPA single target damage, AoE immobilization, solid DPA AoE damage and a 6th pet. Mace tier 1 has a low DPA single target blast, with redraw, so that's not good. Tier 1 also has an AoE immobilization power that has a long cast, redraw and no damage, 0 for 2 there. Tier 2 has an AoE with low DPA and redraw, 0 for 3. The last two powers are the only good ones in the set. Shatter Armor is awesome, even if it is melee only. It does hefty damage and has a -res that stacks with all of your other potential -res sources. It's the reason the pylon build went Mace. The bot is also very good. In my testing, I liked it about the same as the Mu Striker, but it has a longer summon time, which is a bit annoying. So 3/5 of the Mace pool is duds. The other two are solid to very good, but you need to take at least one of the Tier 1 duds to get to the good stuff. I'd just take Webs, slot an Acc or the Chance to Hold proc and use it sparingly, if you wanted to take the set.

I was respomding to your comment. But as it relates to Sentinels: they aren't useful in the current meta because they don't contribute anything useful at endgame. They can be built to be tough enough to be unkillable in 99% of content, they are end and mez self sufficient. So the fact that they bring such bad damage and nothing else of use is what makes them so lacking. So, back to my proposal, give them stances that each contribute an attribute to the team that is useful at endgame. Damage, recharge, power boost etc. and if its def/res/end/to hit/acc/regen, it needs to be really substantial because all of those are not very useful by incarnate levels.

I understand that maybe the forums are not representative of the larger population as a whole, but a few points: - Each of the standard squad runs at 40%+ defense (literally all ATs), are end self sufficient and usually mezz self sufficient. Stacking each other's buffs is NOT needed to get to unkillable status. And there's really not a lot of sacrifice to get to that in a build. Pick the right incarnates and slot the right sets and its pretty easy. - I haven't died in an Incarnate trial in forever and it has nothing to do with outside support. Please don't try and tell me that stacking buffs or anything matters in stuff like the Keyes trial where most publicly organized leagues have 75% of its members running around like chickens with their heads cut off. In my last 5 trials, I distinctly remember not being targetted for a single buff and having to hug a Fire/Kins imps to get a splash speed boost. - This isn't just something that I have experienced with my friends list. I just last week pugged a Market Crash at +4 in 16 minutes with randoms. Sure not pinnacle content, but way more Market Crashes are being run than Magisterium trials. If a group of 8 randoms can do that on tier 1.5 content, that speaks to an issue with the endgame balance.

No, I seriously mean everything at endgame. Unless you're playing with non-IOd and non-incarnate outed teams, damage is all that matters. Maybe its just the people I play with, but for us, the only way to get a faster ITF, MLTF, LRTF or Apex/TM clear is more damage when none of us are getting hurt, mezzed or end drained. This isn't a "learn to play" comment, but please go look at most of the complaint threads about how support isn't feeling very needed these days. It is a bit of an issue.

I think that speaks to poor balance between the stances and a systemic issue with endgame balance in the game than anything to do directly with the idea of stances. COX endgame comes down to one thing and one thing only: damage. Survival is binary, either you are tough enough to live at +4/8 (or +3/8 due to level shift) or not. More durability than that is wasted. Same for endurance recovery, either you can go forever or you drain, there's barely a middle ground, and extra recovery beyond "can attack forever" is a waste. Same with accuracy. But more damage is always better. That's the issue with Bio Armor. Everything but damage is binary while damage is not. But if you put things in the "non damage" stances that aren't binary, then we could have something, especially if they're group buffs. Hefty Recharge bonuses in an aura? Power boost effect? Or, the marginal benefit for the more binary attributes just need to be buffed. Hypothetical situation: A) 15% damage boost + 10% to hit boost versus B) 10% defense boost + 40% recharge boost + 50% movement speed boost; versus C) 15% resist all damage + 50% Debuff resistance + 50% Mez resistance + 75% Power boost and you now have a decent debate about which is better. There's going to be certain teams that wouldn't turn down C if you're heavy on squishies or B if you want faster nukes instead of a small damage bump. I don't disagree that Bio Armor does a bad job of selling stances, but that's a Bio Armor and balance issue, not a mechanics issue.

My understanding is that it is "per activation" and not "per target". So each attack generates at most 1 stack. I have landed Thunderstrikes that hit 5+ targets and only gotten a single stack. Also, it looks like Lightning rod grants 1 stack before/during the teleport, before hitting a target. Unless I am missing something, I think the old Red Tomax info is still correct.

A similar percent of MM's run petless. What's your point? You can't cater to 1% of the population. And the proposed stances wouldn't be anything like Kheldians. A set of mutually exclusive buff toggles is nothing like a full transformation that locks out 3/4 of your powers. You trying to equivocate them indicates to me that you're trying to poison the idea and are arguing in bad faith, or you're too dim to understand the proposal. I cannot understand how tacking on a set of inherent toggles is any more of a discouragement than Domination management or Opportunity v1.0. Hell, you want to talk about a mechanic that makes people not want to play an AT, look at the terrible set up Sentinels currently have. I have chatted with people in game with lvl 35+ Sentinels who still had no idea what their inherent does. One guy thought that triggering it was random. Stop projecting your feelings against something and trying to portray them as facts. Too many people in this thread are doing it.

Says the walking edgemaster cliche...

The biggest reasons for me are the extra pet and the extra blast. Gloom and Mu Lightning have better DPA than Channelgun or Longfang, especially Gloom, and especially with procs. The extra pet can be very nice too, especially since you're already specced for perma pets and are a walking buff beacon. Adding the Mu Striker's Ball Lightning to the Disruptor-bot Ball Lightning and your personal AoEs adds up to an even more devastating alpha strike. The extra AoE attack / Immobolize can be nice, but to me, its not needed. VG, FG and Suppression are really all you need. Then again, if its working for you as is, there isn't a huge reason to change. Crabs are one of the most powerful, low maintenance sets in the game, so its hard to go wrong.