ClawsandEffect

Depends on the exact build. If it's a hover blaster then I shoot for ranged defense and pick a secondary that doesn't need to be in melee to shine. If I plan on being in melee a lot and there's no other particular theme I take Scorpion Shield and softcap S/L/E defense. Both ways are viable without sacrificing damage output. It's not so much that I'm worried about defense to keep my blasters alive. I want to keep them as mez free as possible. If the mezzes don't hit I can keep using my harder hitting attacks.

Thanks for owning up to it and apologizing for letting get the better of you. Happens to all of us on occasion. My argument against it actually has nothing to do with the visuals. Well, it sorta does, but that's a secondary concern. My argument against it is based in the fact that a temp power that exactly duplicates a power pick in appearance is a way of sidestepping choosing that power. That matters because a power pick, which you get a finite number of, is considerably more valuable than influence spent on a temp power, which is effectively limitless. If you get your way and the devs create this, what's to stop people from asking for a snipe power for their scrapper or stalker so they can take Body Mastery as their Ancillary for the extra recovery and just buy the snipe that is basically the only reason anyone takes any other epic pool for those ATs? I realize you cannot slot temp powers, but they are affected by damage buffs from other sources. It just opens a can of worms that can (and if my experience on both this and the old forum is any indication) will lead to people asking for ways to spend influence on avoiding having to take certain pools to get a single power they want. And they will point to this right here as their example of why they should get it, regardless of whether that is the reason you want this or not. You might be purely concerned about the visuals. Other people will look for ways to game the system with their own requests.

So let me see if I have this right. The visual of a jetpack that you'll be using for a few seconds at a time bothers you MORE than the fact that your character (that you have canonically decided through your build choices cannot fly on his own) is suddenly hovering in the air beating on something? Because, as someone else who builds for theme first, if I built a character who couldn't fly naturally and they were in the air without some sort of visual aid, that would bother me more than the jetpack. Regardless of their origin.

I have a relevant question that hasn't been asked yet: Why are you so dead set against taking Fly or Mystic Flight when you have acknowledged several times in this thread that they are better than the temp power? 🤔 I would think if you wanted your character to be able to fly under their own power, a version that you can actually slot and get set bonuses from would be the ideal solution? Is it because you want to buy your way out of having to use a power pool choice on it to better min/max your character? Please explain why you would prefer to have an inferior flight power (that you yourself pointed out) over one that can be slotted to make your character better. If I want a character to be a flyer, I take both Fly and Hover so I can slot a LotG in Hover and 2 BotZ in Fly (for ranged defense). That would make your character objectively better than a temp power AND have the appearance you want. But you don't want to do that. I'm curious as to why.

No. You haven't lost anyone at all. You're just being disagreed with and you don't like it. Everyone reading this thread is well aware of exactly what you want. There are just a number of us who don't think you should be able to have your cake and eat it too for approximately the same amount of influence I earn in 30 seconds in a fire farm. Every temp power in the game has a specific visual tied to it, precisely because it is NOT a power that is inherent to your character. It is literally something they bought. And from everything you've said here, it is plainly apparent that you want a flight power that IS inherent to your character but only costs 50,000 inf for a half hour instead of a power pool pick....like every other power that is inherent to your character. You want to have a productive discussion? Coming at people like they're too stupid to understand what you're saying isn't how you do that.

Your characters are so bound by their theme that a sorcerer would refuse to use a tech derived jetpack to fly, thus saving his magical energy for something more important? Even when the technology for said jetpack is readily available at retail stores all over the city he's active in? Seriously, according to the lore of the game, he can literally walk into a technology store and BUY a jetpack. The Hero Corps rep in Steel Canyon hands out hundreds of them like Halloween candy every day. Your character's origin doesn't matter at all to use one. Especially when they are apparently so simple to use that the Hero Corps guy will happily hand one over to a time displaced Roman Legionary who is still dumbfounded by the existence of cars. Sorry, dude. It really sounds like you just want Flight without spending a power pool pick on it.

There's a two handed broadsword model available for Katana as well. It actually looks really good with the animations.

Congrats. My DA/BS tank just got his T4 Alpha. I had to do it with threads and Empyrean Merits because he has had 4 Shards drop for him TOTAL. I usually try to at least use Shards and Notices to craft my T3s, but it wasn't an option on that character because he only ever got enough Shards to craft a single common component. I've been playing him consistently through the Dark Astoria content. He hasn't had a Shard drop in over a week. Your experience is your own, and by no means reflects the experience of others. Not everyone ever gets enough Shards to be useful for anything. Since I've already got the only power you can use them at T4, any more that I have drop will be completely useless for anything but converting into threads.

This. I have a tank I'm working on. His Alpha is already tier 4 via the threads/Empyrean route. Why? Because he has had a grand total of FOUR Shards drop in that time span. Getting rid of Shards I'd be in favor of.

Gonna have to disagree on Shield Charge at least. Not breaking Hide means you can knock the spawn down and follow it up with an AoE that will crit, assuming your primary has one.

And if I recall correctly Lightning Rod and Shield Charge both will not break Hide.

Almost every power in the set can slot an Achilles Heel -resistance proc. I built a Rad/Rad with the intent of making it a proc monster.

I'll share some of the things I think about when deciding on powersets for Scrappers. 1) Is it defense based, resistance based, or a blend of the two? Defense: SR, Ninjitsu, Shield, Energy Aura, Ice Armor Resistance: Electric Armor, Fiery Aura, Radiation Armor Blend: Willpower, Bio Armor, Invulnerability, Stone Armor Regen: Regen I prefer the defense based or blended sets for Scrappers. With a resistance cap of 75% and lower HP than Tankers or Brutes, I've never gotten good results out of pure resist sets. YMMV, but that's my experience. Primaries: First and foremost....does it look cool? You're going to be spending a lot of time watching those animations. Best to pick a set you won't get tired of. Street Justice has my personal favorite animations, but opinions will vary. Damage output is important, but if you hate the way it looks you won't have fun playing the character. My suggestion for a combo to try: Street Justice/Ninjitsu. It has positional defense, which is generally superior to typed in most cases (it will defend against things typed can't). It has a click endurance refill power on a fairly short recharge. It has a self heal that is roughly equal to Reconstruction from Regen. If you hit the softcap (fairly easy with this set), you can skip the last 2 powers in Ninjitsu and be just fine. It also isn't as slot hungry as some other secondaries. You'll feel a little squishy until you get closer to the softcap (45% is your goal), but once you get there you'll feel pretty sturdy. Street Justice is my pick for primary here, but honestly you can go with whatever you like the look of and you'll be fine. Ninjitsu doesn't really lend itself to one primary over another.

So change the game so the difficulty is balanced around what a min/maxed character can do instead? No. Because that would make the game literally unplayable for the people who just want to log in and have some fun beating up bad guys and don't want to spend hours outside the game poring over spreadsheets trying to make their character 0.001% more efficient at taking down mobs. If you want more challenging enemies that don't die in seconds, the content in Dark Astoria exists. If that was what the general population of the game wanted the zone would be crowded with players looking for more of a challenge. The fact that DA is generally a ghost town and I see people looking to form Council radio mission teams is anecdotal evidence that people generally don't want enemies made harder to beat. They have that option already and choose to fight the things that die in seconds instead.

You used a lot of words there to tell us you don't understand how this game works. What you said there might be true in some other MMOs where having a role to play means you suck at doing literally anything else. That's not true here. A good tank should be balanced between offense and defense. If you swing it too far towards defense you'll have dead teammates because they inevitably agroed more than the agro cap and you were tar-pitted in a spawn you couldn't kill. Too far toward offense and you have dead teammates because you either couldn't manage the agro or couldn't survive it. And the best teams are the ones on which a dedicated healer with no blasts is utterly useless, because no one is taking enough damage to necessitate healing being someone's only job.