Redlynne

Back on Virtue I played a MA/SR Scrapper and for a number of years I used Thunder Kick, Cobra Strike and Eagle's Claw for opportunity stuns (as in "nice when it happens") and blended in Air Superiority for additional mitigation, since the KnockUP of Air Superiority would dump $Targets (including Fake Nemesis) on the ground and delay their attack cycles. Dragon's Tail was thrown in as opportunities arose. No Storm Kick, no Crane Kick, no Crippling Axe Kick. The way the combination was more of a Scranktroller. Here's what I came up with for a SR/MA Tanker back in May before I started playing, if you'd like to crib notes ... although to be honest the build could use a bit of an overhaul at this point (I've learned a lot since I first posted that build).

They should be comparable to prior performance. The differences there are pretty marginal. All of the major action was happening in the Human form side of things. Yeah, the Radiant/Incandescent/Radiant combo just hits like a runaway freight train, and because of the short animation time on Radiant Strike you can use Incandescent Strike in relative safety before hitting your $Target AGAIN with Radiant Strike to knock them over AGAIN before trailing off into the Glinting Eye/Gleaming Blast part of the attack cycle. Definitely makes for a great "finishing move" when someone else has aggro and feels gloriously Scrapper-ish. Group Energy Flight is the most easily sacrificed power in the entire build. In fact, if you're willing to cannibalize Group Energy Flight, Stealth and Grant Invisibility as your last 3 power picks you can swap in the Leadership pool instead and take Maneuvers, Tactics and Vengeance and not lose any Luck of the Gambler slotting while being able to add a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control Build Up proc to Tactics (which can have a ~41.5% chance to proc every ~10 seconds in a Team-8 context when the team sticks together). The Absorb from the Entomb proc enhances survival markedly. Conversely, the high proc chance of Blistering Cold (at 3 PPM) is already almost 90% for a +2 MAG Hold and additional MAG beyond that isn't all that useful (since the duration of the procs is only 8 seconds in PvE). So 1 Hold proc is sufficient to go from MAG 3 to MAG 5, but getting up to MAG 7 from 2 Hold procs doesn't help you all that much (except against Elite Bosses, and those are kind of rare to be honest). And besides, the base Hold from Incandescent Strike is 25.2 seconds while the animation and recharge times only add up to 10.33 seconds, meaning it's actually pretty each to double (and a half!) stack Incandescent Strike onto itself to put a MAG 3+3=6 Hold (with an extra +2 MAG proc on top of that) as a perma Hold ... meaning you don't even need the second Hold proc if you're expecting a fight with an Elite Boss to last longer than 11 seconds (and to be fair, most fights with Elite Bosses do last longer than 11 seconds when soloing). So the extra Hold proc just isn't adding all that much, while the Entomb proc is something you CAN'T get from anywhere else (except Preventive Medicine, but that one's different) and will enhance your survival while being the center of attention in Human form at melee range. Given the tradeoffs involved, I convinced myself (if not you) that Entomb was the superior option over Lockdown, partially due to the lower proc chance on Lockdown (2.5 PPM) versus Entomb (2 PPM as Normal but 3 PPM as Superior) and the Absorb gets added in the circumstance in which it is most necessary to have ... while engaging at melee range while in Human form. Still, the important thing isn't to have you play my build MY way ... but rather that you take what I've done and make it YOURS ... and if that means making alterations to better suit your preferences for how you'd want to play, then so be it.

Still not seeing a downside here ...

You mean some Stalkers wouldn't have to take the Fighting pool to get Tough (so 2 power picks) in order to slot a pair of +3% Defense vs All set IOs?

Working on it ... but if you've been watching the "saga" of my (now) v3.0.2 Peacebringer (which may turn into v3.0.3 thanks to all this Warshade research I've been doing) it may take a little while (just to write it all!). Edit: Whew! Took a look at my v3.0.2 Peacebringer build and realized that my Peacebringer and Warshade builds have ... diverged ... enough through their evolution processes to the point where even though I'm using the same "conceptual core" for both of them, the ... shapes ... of what they can do with their powers, and how those powers are arranged (and what slots they need) yield sufficient differentiation that I can't just "cleanly" port the core of one into the other, and vice-versa, seamlessly. So the end result is something where you essentially take different routes to achieve the same purpose(s) via alternate means ... which is really GOOD from my perspective, since that means it won't feel like playing one is the same as playing the other (with the serial numbers filed off).

What is the point of using Hasten on a MA/SR Scrapper? Pretty much the only long recharge powers you've got out of your primary and secondary power sets are ... Focus Chi ... and Elude. Granted, there's a "max deeps" attack rotation of SK.CS.CAK that you could be reaching for which requires an "insane" amount of recharge bonuses, but that's pure single target (at which point you might as well be a Stalker?). Honestly ... if you're worried about the 59% softcap, switch to being a SR/MA Tanker.

Hooray for typos!

Easiest way to achieve that would be to convert Spirit Ward from the Sorcery pool and make it "do its thing" either as an always on Toggle of Absorb ... or as a Click power that can have a high uptime (perma not necessary, but 50-85% uptime is fine) on a short enough recharge cycle that Regeneration as a powerset uses it to "get past the alpha strike" for each mob grouping.

And just in case it interests you at all, the formula I used (in multiple steps) to get the additive before division reductive answer gets compounded into this "all in one go" version: (45-(1+.7+.825+1+.4969)*5)/(1+.7+.825+.4696)+5 = 13.3117945635 seconds And since 13.31 is a "more unfavorable" answer than 13.24 ... I'll stick with my math for this one. ^_~

It does. I'd been debating whether or not to put the Frozen Blast proc or the Razzle Dazzle proc into Gravitic Emanation on the Warshade build I'm working up (which is prompting yet more review looks of my Peacebringer build since I KEEP FINDING THINGS!!). The trick is that Gravitic Emanation a Cone attack with a MAG 3 Stun effect in it but it also does a MAG 9.35 Knockback. So I'm slotting it up with: Rope A Dope: Accuracy/Stun/Recharge 50+5 Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge 21 Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown 21 Superior Frozen Blast: Recharge/Chance for Immobilize 50 This combination then yields ... +26.50% Accuracy +49.69% Recharge @ Level 50 ... (45s base) +26.50% Stun duration (increasing from 13.71s to 16.96s) 100% chance KnockDOWN 100% chance MAG 3 Stun (for 16.96s) 89.04% chance MAG 3 Immobilize (for 10s) 50.88% chance per $Target (max 10) of Force Feedback proc adding +100% recharge for 5s $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)1 = 50.88% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)2 = 75.87% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)3 = 88.15% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)4 = 94.18% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)5 = 97.14% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)6 = 98.60% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)7 = 99.31% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)8 = 99.66% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)9 = 99.83% $Targets: 1 - (1 - 0.5088)10 = 99.92% Recharge time with +70% Hasten, +82.5% global set modifiers and +49.69% enhancement slotting but no Force Feedback proc: 14.89s Recharge time with +70% Hasten, +82.5% global set modifiers and +49.69% enhancement slotting and a Force Feedback proc: 13.31s (a reduction of -1.58s to Gravitic Emanation) That means that there's a "gap" in the Immobilize duration, but the Stun duration is easily perma (casting time for Gravitic Emanation is 1 second) with almost 2 seconds to spare. This turns Gravitic Emanation into an "area ghetto hold" Click type power (since Stun+Immobilize=Hold) which is able to affect up to 10 $Targets within its 45º Cone range of 40ft (jump UP to turn it into a PBAoE-ish attack around yourself for a Hop 'n' Pop use of Gravitic Emanation!) which will "freeze" Minions and Lieutenants, allowing you to deal with Bosses using Gravity Well (slotted for a 90% chance of a +2 MAG Hold on top of the base MAG 3 Hold), in a way that prevents wanderers/runners. I figure the only thing I'm missing is the bowling alley strike sound FX for how I've 4-slotted the power, given what it will now do ... Yeah ... it does. 😎

@Bopper ... what is the PPM and Immobilize duration+mag for Frozen Blast in the Target AoE sets? Found it in game ... 2.5 PPM ... but it appears to only be available in Attuned Enhancement form, meaning you can't artificially limit how much recharge you get from a Recharge/Immobilize proc from the Frozen Blast set.

Provoke needs 1 Accuracy, after which you can add in 1 Perfect Zinger proc for a 25.33% chance to deal 71.75 Psionic damage to up to 5 $Targets within 15ft of your selected $Target at a cost of ZERO Endurance (so damage per endurance is a divide by zero error). So for +1 slot you can turn Provoke into a damage dealing Target AoE Taunt. Invoke Panic needs 1 Accuracy, after which you can add in 1 Glimpse of the Abyss proc for a 21.48% chance to deal 71.75 Psionic damage to up to 10 $Targets within 20ft of your PC at a cost of 18 endurance. So for +1 slot you can turn Invoke Panic into a damage dealing PBAoE Fear. Unrelenting can be slotted with 2 Recharge 50+5 IOs and have a recharge of under 180s with Hasten and ~80% global recharge from set bonuses ... giving you a self-heal/self-rez power if your primary/secondary/tertiary powersets don't offer you one that you'd want to use. So for +1 slot you can have Unrelenting on a pretty decent uptime. The uptime on Unrelenting only gets better when blended with Click powers such as Chronoshift, Overgrowth and/or Power Boost(!) as well as Auto powers such as Quickness/Lightning Reflexes. 1 Pool. 3 Power picks. 1-3 added slots. ... just add Hasten and lots of recharge set bonuses. Pretty decent return for so minimalist an investment.

And that's not even considering using it on Pylons (or Lord Recluse himself!) in the (no longer) Statesman Task Force that takes you into Grandville at the end.

"The Derp is STRONG in this one ..."

Clever use of Dimension Shift in a team context requires the one thing that is in terminally short supply on pickup teams ... TEAMWORK ... and coordination. However, with teamwork and coordination it can be used effectively. Guess how much "work" that takes ... compared to playing brain dead like a fire farmer.

Right. It's the difference between "spike" damage that gives you Big Numbers Right NAO!™ and "pressure" damage that is sustained over a longer period of time for an even greater throughput potential with less "overkill" inefficiencies. Damnit ... now you're giving me IDEAS™ ... and I've already got a Warshade build I need to finish up and post ... /em whimper

Yeah ... it did. Mainly it was a matter of animation time to recharge time factors, and how that works better with the raw damage output (even as a One Slot Wonder™ power). So, to contrast what I had in in v3.0 and v3.0.1 ... where I got Radiant Strike down to a 3.3s recharge (and still do in v3.0.2) ... with 2 attacks that animate in 1.67s each you can do each of those attacks and take 3.34s ... meaning that Radiant Strike is recharged after only 2 attacks that aren't Radiant Strike (so you'd do T5H, T2H, T3H and then repeat) and have only a 0.01s pause to cover the "gap" between 1.07+1.67=2.74s of animation time and a 2.75s recharge duration on Gleaming Blast, for a total rotation duration of 1.07+1.67+1.67+(0.01)=4.42s. By contrast, when using Gleaming Bolt, Gleaming Bolt would animate in 1s and recharge in 0.56s so to get the same performance I'd need to do T5H, T1H, T2H, T1H just in order to spend enough animation time (1+1.67+1=3.67s) for Radiant Strike to recharge resulting in both a longer animation cycle of 1.07+1+1.67+1=4.74s on top of yielding LESS damage output over the entire rotation cycle (1 Gleaming Blast delivers 100.8 damage while 2 Gleaming Bolts deliver 39.54+39.54=79.08 damage in the comparable rotation) over a longer span of time (4.42s vs 4.74s). So ... faster attack chain rotation that does more damage in less time ... not exactly hard to figure out what the superior option is ... and that's before figuring out how to "weave" Incandescent Strike and Solar Flare into repeating attack chains while in Human Form. In other words, after the Radiant Strike (only) rotation factor gets considered, it's all downhill from there on which is the better option of the two. That "can't make up the difference no matter how hard you try" factor for Gleaming Bolt is what pushed me over the edge towards dropping Gleaming Bolt entirely from the build ... despite the fact that Gleaming Bolt actually is good and useful to have during Levels 1-5 before you get Nova form and you've basically got NO recharge worth a spit working for you in your build. But, again ... the gaps that open up in the basic attack rotation possible during Levels 1-5 can be filled in with P2W "freebie" attack powers, such as Throwing Knives (best damage output at Levels 1-5), Nemesis Staff/Blackwand and Ghost Slaying Axe/Sands of Mu. With the P2W "freebie" attacks you can make a decent enough attack chain to survive to Level 6 and Nova form ... at which point you essentially stop using Human form as your "go to" form for dealing damage until reaching Level 50 and Incarnate content. You basically start out Human form and then circle back around to it at the end, so as to get first Nova form and then Dwarf form fully slotted out so that they can be used at ANY time while leveling and/or Exemplared. So yeah ... it made that much of a difference ... it was rather surprising once I "washed it all downstream" into the work of recomputing the attack chain rotations, and perhaps more importantly, what the "tighter" chains using fewer attacks did for exploiting the duration of the Decimation Build Up proc within those chains thanks to the tighter sequencing made possible by switching to Gleaming Blast. It was basically ALL UPSIDE with the only downside being a phase of the game (Levels 1-5) that once you get past you'll NEVER need to revist, even if you Exemplar to Level 1 ... because with Nova form at Level 6, you can Exemplar down to Level 1 and still use Nova form at Level 1(!) ... and THAT is a tradeoff that is worth making in the long run of Levels 6-50 ... and beyond into Incarnate Levels.

That must be because the Power Siphon enables a "self buff" status which your other Kinetic Melee attacks then "key" to for the actual "siphoning of power" from whatever it is that you're hitting with all of your other attacks, and the siphoning can stack up to 5 ... meaning that there's a "wind up factor" involved in getting up to max -damage to $Target(s) resulting in +damage for yourself, but then a refresh on the Power Siphon after using a Concentrated Strike (that "crits" to zero the recharge time on Power Siphon) allows you to SUSTAIN that max stack of 5 for a longer duration. The net effect then becomes one in which Concentrated Strike "enables" a longer SUSTAIN of Kinetic Melee's equivalent to a Build Up type power than almost any other powersets, such that the "power" of Kinetic Melee isn't concentrated into a quick (10s) "spike" of damage potential, but rather it's oriented towards a more sustained "pressure" increase of damage that only requires $Targets who need to be hit to fuel it. VERY. COOL. 😎 That just means that you want to "shape" your attack chains such that the Critical Strike proc affects the "other parts" of your attack rotation than Concentrated Strike. When life hands you lemonade ... make lemons ... or words to that effect.

Mastermind personal attacks are ranged and can be used to "pull" $Targets from groups (and/or entire groups). Fighting pool attacks have a melee range "reach" to them.

And now updated to v3.0.2 ... enjoy!

You get 24 power picks between Levels 1-49 (and one of them is the mandatory tier 1 in your secondary). If you take 9 picks from your primary and secondary ... that leaves only 6 pool/epic power picks to choose from. So yeah, the power picks "crunch" can be real for some powerset combinations.

Look at the primary powersets for Scrappers ... and you might find your answers.

Scrapper Concentrated Strike Level 32 Type Click PvE damage scale 3.560000 Accuracy 1.2 Modes required Modes disallowed Disable_All Range 7 feet Activate period - Interrupt time - Cast time 2.83 seconds Recharge time 20 seconds Endurance cost 18.512 Attack types Melee, Smashing, Energy Effect area Character Radius - Arc - Max targets hit - Entities affected Foe Entities autohit Target Foe Target visibility Line of Sight Nofity Mobs Always Self: Grant power: Power Siphon If source.Mode?(kSiphonMode) Recharge power set: Scrapper_Melee.Kinetic_Attack.Power_Siphon (20% chance) Target: 62.56 Smashing damage 160.16 Energy damage 57.09 Smashing damage 153.01 Energy damage 11.92s Stunned (mag 3) (60% chance) 2s Stunned (mag 3) (60% chance) -5.625% Dmg(Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 8s So ... instead of critically hit for 2x damage ... you get a 20% chance for an instant recharge on Power Siphon ... which lasts for 20 seconds ... Scrapper Siphon Power Level 6 Type Click PvE damage scale 0.000000 Accuracy 1.2 Modes required Modes disallowed Disable_All Range - Activate period - Interrupt time - Cast time 1.93 seconds Recharge time 120 seconds Endurance cost 5.2 Attack types Effect area Character Radius - Arc - Max targets hit - Entities affected Caster Entities autohit Caster Target Caster Target visibility Line of Sight Nofity Mobs Always Self: 21 * Set mode: SiphonMode every 1s over 20s +7.5% ToHit for 20s So riddle me this ... which is more valuable to you? 2x damage on ONE attack ... ... or extra damage on EVERY ATTACK you're making for the next 20 seconds(!!) ... Trick question. How many attacks can you squeeze into 20 seconds worth of animation time? Oh and one more notion to consider. I'm not seeing anything there on Siphon Power saying that Effect does not stack from same caster ... meaning you can potentially have more than one Siphon Power stacked at a time ...?

Yeah. I really REALLY wanted to make the T1H Bolt power useful ... not just "feel" like it was useful, but actually be quantitatively USEFUL. Being able to use the power in more than one form would help that objective, if it meant you only needed to slot 1 power instead of 2 ... but in the end it just didn't work out that way. I can easily lay a lot (and I mean A LOT™) of the blame for that on the fact that Kheldians were basically introduced into the game with Issue 3 and they never really got an overhaul after that, so a lot of the basic "shaping" of powers and what they do and how they "fit together" into an organized whole can be laid at the feet of the fact that Cryptic Studios basically built Kheldians for a game meta that Cryptic Studios pretty much moved away from within a year (with the Global Defense Nerf combined with Enhancement Dysfunction, and yes, I'm still sore about that decision some 15 years later, why do you ask?) leaving Kheldians essentially in the lurch as the game moved out from under them into what we had by the time of Issue 24 (and now 25+). So yeah ... pretty much the only time that the T1H Bolt power is "worth it" is Levels 1-5 before you can get to Nova form. Once you take Nova form at Level 6 you can Exemplar down to Level 1 and STILL use Nova form at Exemplar Level 1 and the attack chain that you can do with Nova form of T2H > T1N > T2N > T1N ... repeat ... is simply Too Superior(!) to anything you're EVER going to be able to do with T1H Gleaming Bolt, even if you're allowed to use Gleaming Bolt in Nova AND Dwarf forms combined (provided you slot for global recharge enhancement, which most Players will do anyway to get Light Form and Hasten to perma status). Pretty much the ONLY regime in which T1H Gleaming Bolt serves any useful purpose is in a build with almost no global recharge enhancement (note that the only source of this pre-Issue 9 Inventions was from Hasten!) in which you need to use Gleaming Bolt as a filler in an attack chain ... and even then ... that only makes sense if you're slotting 1x Acc and 5x Dam in an SO build (which you can't do usefully thanks to Enhancement Dysfunction and the "remedy" for that condition, Invention Sets, didn't arrive until TWO YEARS LATER in Issue 9!!). So once you get past Level 5, the first time, T1H Gleaming Bolt essentially becomes an "orphaned/vestigial" power that doesn't serve a useful purpose ... except as a filler attack (and even then it's kind of lousy). Yeah. I originally thought that Misdirection would be useful as a resistance debuff, and that Photon Seekers would be something you could cast "before" engaging and then jump into the pile and let the Photon Seekers help you "smash" piles of $Targets. Pulsar, I recognized, really had nothing to stack with, and as a MAG 2 Stun it's really only useful against Minions (which isn't much, but it isn't nothing either). So that was all theoretical at the time that I wrote in the v1 build. Needless to say, since then I've "learned how to play" again and gotten enough replacement experience of playing the game to be able to see better alternatives ... and that's what you see in the v2 and now (still in progress v3) builds. Speaking of which, I'm still writing up yet another iteration of the v3 build that's even better than what I've got posted right now, so look forward to that.