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Psi-Melee is more-or-less slotting of sets, with the possible exception of Mass Levitate, which I usually franken-slot with %damage and some boosted Accuracy/Damage/Endurance, If you aren't reaching into a power pool for another AoE attack to use %damage in, I suppose Psi Blade Sweep could do this, but it has a small area of effect and an 8-second base recharge time so it is "bad for %procs". The animation times for Psi-Melee aren't (AFAIK) really conducive to the Critical Strike's proc... I'd include it but it would probably just be used as a rather complete set. I'm not a huge fan of Energy Aura on Scrappers(*1). It is a good set, but my experience is that solo against +Nx8 at end game it can fold fast. This could be the driver taking it through a lot of different content, but it is my experience. It is a layered set, and you will need to take each power. I suppose Energy Drain could be skipped, but it helps mitigate the use of other powers. The secondary will be a mix of Franken-slotting with sets. Note: AFAIK, None of the powers take both Resistance and Defense pieces.For me, this means slipping in useful globals where possible. I like the LotG global for +Recharge, so I've slotted 3xLotG for the +MaxHP bonus. I would recommend trying to work in some sort of self-heal (or self-Rez)... you will end up using Overload, and there will be times when you get overwhelmed if you turn things up. (*1) I find it works great on Sentinels, because Sentinels can start a combat from range. It would probably work just fine on Brutes, because of the larger base HP.

Only rarely have I ever seen the person starting the Nemesis version get into trouble. The MM kamikaze I was referring to was from a character asked to stand in the back, and it happened AFTER the talker had already returned to the back of the map. As noted above, pulling small groups is not a problem.

The wedding event is trivially to start, and not at all difficult to finish... I'm surprised that this is that big of a deal. I've been on teams where people didn't know what they were doing, and things didn't go the way they expected,,, but if *I* missed something on some character, it is pretty easy to solo everything but the Nemesis option. We recently had a couple of negative Nemesis spins, but ultimately those just became a waste of time. The misfires seem to com in two flavors: The team lacks DPS, or certain team-members just aren't engaged with combat (lazy multi-boxers? who can say) The team lolly gags and doesn't engage all the necessary enemies with enough time to defeat them. I wasn't happy that we failed, but I didn't think it was a personal insult or griefing... just players being human. In the cases I'm thinking of, we did warn folks what to expect, a best order of attack, and not to lay around dead when the hospital is a short hop from the mission door. We had one mission where someone summoned Lores, and put them on passive! We had another where a MM kamikazed the lower-ranked attendees, took a 4 minute dirt nap, finally zoned, and came back in and did not resummon henchmen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LOL yes!

The low PPM, short duration and low magnitude make the Cupid's Crush %proc an inferior choice (by itself). There may be corner cases for powers/henchmen/pets/pseudopets where it makes sense, but I think I'd always opt for Damage/KB-KD/%KD over Damage/%Confuse. As @Onlyasandwich notes, slots in the henchmen are at a premium! I certainly wouldn't sacrifice the Soulbound Allegiance %BuildUp piece for it.

Yes! Those work just fine. (Edit: as long as the exemplared level is not below the level where the set bonus would be lost) Some common "mistakes" I would see in the past were things like putting pieces like Power Transfer %Heal in a self-rez power (it only works for 2 minutes after the rez) or Kismet in a level 49 toggle (only works if the toggle is active (or 2 mins after it was last active).

Here is a graphic mock-up (sorry no Mids) of what I'd suggest as a starting point for a Dardevil Homage using Street Justice/Willpower: This would not be the "leveling up" build, but it would be similar... I would slip in the globals earlier. I delayed some powers to have Unleash Potential at level 20, and I feel like I should comment on this choice. The build has 'enough' attacks that the character won't be waiting around doing nothing. Some folks may not want to delay Crushing Uppercut. Depending on Endurance burn, I find that powers like Quick Recovery can often be delayed. Mileage may vary. This build will have perma-Hasten, which I know appeals to many players. I'm not crazy about the slotting of Rise to the Challenge, but that set bonus was needed for perma-Hasten (without relying on %+recharge) and the %Absorb piece had to go somewhere. I shifted the slotting of Maneuvers and Weave, for exemplaring. Daredevil homages may want the Concealment pool instead of Leadership.

I've exported my Scrapper build for you to take a look at. It is a pretty straightforward build IMO, it may have slightly too many attacks for pure efficiency, but it plays well across all content. build-StJWP-Scrap.txt For the Daredevil homage, I don't think there is a particularly good choice of Epic/Patron. Weapon Mastery hits the 'ninja' notes, Energy Mastery is a fine neutral choice with Focused Accuracy and Physical Perfection; neither of those requires many slots. If I was going to rework *this* build into a Daredevil homage, I'd probably drop the Sorcery pool and Soul Mastery to instead work in Force of Will: Mighty Leap as the travel power <- I like the slow resistance, but more slots might be available when dropping Soul Mastery for more choices. Weaken Resolve as the 'radar sense' to find weaknesses (this is a one-slot wonder IMO, with just Accuracy/Debuff or Accuracy/Recharge) Unleash Potential, franken-slotted with LotG (+recharge) ,3x Shield Wall (+res, boosted defense, boosted defense/recharge), and a boosted (or HO) Heal/Recharge If a couple more slots are available, I like 4x Unbreakable Guard for more Melee Defense (Tough currently has 2 slots) Perma-Hasten is nice, but not entirely necessary.

@Ironblade and @Andreah have explained best and made the best suggestion. For drops, x8 is best. The level adjustment is probably best at +0 or -1 (for speed). The main reason to not turn down difficulty is this: attacks which do knockdown against +0 enemies can turn into knockback against lower-con enemies. This may or may not slow down map clearing. Higher con enemies yield more XP/inf upon defeat, but the drop rates are unchanged. My personal experience with RNG at level 50 is that running something like a 4-part arc at +0x8 (solo) and defeating every enemy on "large-ish" maps has something close to a 50% chance of dropping a Very Rare or level 50 PVP recipe.

Trouble is my business.

I believe they all start "Hick'ry dick'ry dock."

I'd provide a link... but hey, you are just trying to get me warned aren't you?!

Got to the page for Touch of Fear and open each of the two different effect links: The AoE effect: Threat, Melee AoE, Universal Damage, Tanker ATO The Direct Effect: Accurate ToHit Debuff, ToHit Debuff, Threat, Fear (this also has a higher base accuracy = 1.2) I agree that it looks to be a poor attack, but sometimes these things have a way of surprising me. My testing would be to leverage it as a %Proc, with boosted Accuracy (or Accuracy/Endurance Reduction), %Psi (perfect zinger) and then to pepper in Melee AoE %damage pieces for use when fighting crowds.

I enjoy the heck out of Force of Will; I hope you will too!

I've had good experience with %damage in Chain Lightning... on a Defender. However, even on the Defender, I don't have any other Storm Blast powers trying to leverage %damage. Setting aside the question of Storm Blast, I generally don't try to leverage %damage (via franken-slotting) in Blaster primary attacks. I will make an exception for all-Psi Damage Blasters, because eventually the game will throw enemies with heavy Psi resistance at me, so I rely on %damage to smooth out the play experience across different enemy types.

This thread has included discussion from non-GMs about the times we've received exactly the sort of warning that Snarky claims to have received, and the insulting posts were still present, so anyone can go judge for themselves if a warning was merited or not. In my own case, I got pretty much the exact warning Snarky describes, which was NOT a 'time-out'. My post that triggered the warning was absolutely not insulting, rather it was a simple, non-sarcastic, description of another forum user's behavior as sea-lioning with a link to the Wikipedia page. That user eventually got a warning (presumably for sea-lioning); as near as I can tell *I* got a warning because 'both sides', even though the explicit reason was 'thread derailment'. My warning wasn't the end of my world, and it isn't as if 'thread derailment' has somehow been extinguished... so while I didn't think deleting/hiding my post and giving me a warning was appropriate, if the GMs feel they have to 'both sides' out of fairness to finally give someone else a well-earned warning and tell them to 'cool it', so be it. In the Snarky case, he was being directly insulting, and the post in question had as much to do with "snark" as Andrew Dice Clay has to do with haiku.

I *did* suggest testing Touch of Fear. Per CoD, it looks like both the original target and the splash would be subject to the Perfect Zinger %Psi proc.

It is almost certainly a consideration of the specific enemy affecting toggles. I haven't done a deep look, but Fire was certainly always considered to be something of a no-brainer armor set.

Yes! My thoughts are somewhat biased by IOs and set bonuses, which are not hard to come by. For example, you can buy a Steadfast Protection Resistance/+3 Def (All) recipe with 20 merits, which is trivial to get from zone exploration (4 complete zones). Let's set this aside. I have recently leveled up a Radiation Scrapper that only has two "power" sources of +Defense, Melee via Katana's Divine Avalanche, and Shadow Meld at level 38 (plus set bonuses). It does just fine standing in the thick of things.

I don't think I've played Dark Melee since Live. Radiation Armor is IMO a pretty strong set. the combination should be fun, no reason to NOT try it! Opinions follow! -ToHit is IMO a sort of weird debuff, in the following ways. First: It isn't exactly reliable in the sense that not everything attacking (you) will be debuffed. For this combo, the Beta Decay (melee AoE) toggle should do most of the heavy lifting (for nearby enemies). I think that Beta Decay by itself can make a big difference in some circumstances, this is based on my Radiation Armor characters being the 'tanks' for Nemesis Wedding Event content. Second, -ToHit is one of the buff/debuffs on a lower enhancement scale, so in my personal opinion it isn't worth chasing too much (if any) enhancement of that, except mostly through Hami-Os. About the primary/secondary combo: I see a nice synergy between the PBAoE click attacks in each set... there are quite a few opportunities for %damage slotting. The drawback is that these are all generally long recharge time clicks, clustered at higher level tiers, so this is a case where Hasten should yield significant improvement (it wouldn't need to be perma IMO) in damage output. This combo feels (to me) like one that might be a bit dull to play at lower levels until you start amassing PBAoEs (and slots), after which you should be satisfied with it. I suggest taking all 9 of the Radiation Armor powers (I usually delay Proton Armor, as it isn't really needed at low levels and doesn't do that much at those levels, except maybe as a mule). T9 Meltdown is quite good, both as a power and how it fits in with the rest of the primary. I wouldn't delay taking it past level 32. From the secondary I'd probably take: Smite, Shadow Maul, Taunt, Siphon Life, Touch of Fear, Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, Midnight Grasp. If I had to delay any of those, it would probably be Dark Consumption, because of the 3 minute timer. The Powers I would look for %damage would be (levels listed when first available, I'd have to test the Dark Melee ones): Level 8: Radiation Therapy Level 20: Touch of Fear (the 8-second base recharge time is bad for %procs, so this requires the most testing IMO) Level 22: Ground Zero Level 24: Soul Drain Level 28: Dark Consumption If Touch of Fear turns out to be mediocre, level 20 might be when I slot in Hasten. Often at level 20 is when I drop in a capstone pool power, but I haven't put enough thought into this combo to offer any specific suggestion(s).