HelenCarnate

/em polite cough Guts ... not a Scrapper. Just FYI ... ^_~ And yet Scrappers get Titan Weapons.

Scrappers are ... too strong ... for Super Strength. For a more "thematic" and comic book-y answer, Super Strength pretty much always shows up on the Brick Types ... not on the La Machine whirling dervish of death and destruction types, even even the "finesse" fighter types who win through "skill" rather than just raw (overwhelming) power. And nothing says finesse like swinging a giant hammer or sword what is bigger than you are.

And my brute with 65% Fury hits for KO blow of 636 with single rage without procs. I Footstomp for 248 without procs as well. I also have more HP and higher resists than a Scrapper and that is the trade off for not getting crits. Scrappers without taunt auras can already shed aggro if there is a tank or brute on the team so neither are really an issue. Consider that with Rad Melee (that Scrappers have) they can hit for over 466 with Devastating blow and that is just with a purple set, no procs, no rage, no crit and no Fusion. This is on an attack that has a base recharge of 8 seconds faster than KO Blow, so it is not that big of a deal if they do get KO blow with Rage as long as it is 80% per stack and not 100%.

You are level 15 and probably bumped up to 20 for the SF with at best DOs in your very limited slots. That is where the problem is. Most sets are terrible at taking alpha strikes early in the game without either lots of team defensive buffs or to hit debuffs in play or having a tray full of lucks. End game with Energy Aura you can get to the soft cap for everything except Psi and get close on Negative with just the 2 +3% IOs and regular IOs slotted in everything else if you take Tough and Weave.

Also no Energy Melee and no Ninjitsu for Brutes or Tankers and no Regen for Tankers either. Oh and no Stone Armor for Scrappers either. Not that there is a big line up of people demanding to want to make an EM/Stone scrapper, but still I would like to see all these ported.

Sadly, while a good technique, doesn't change the fact that it takes you out of aura effective range. True, but normally it is only for 1 tick which you would lose anyway if you are jumping out of range to position and then potentially another tick as you are jumping back in depending on your timing.

For a farming only build see post number 3 in this thread. My attack chain is Burn, Electric Fences, Ball Lightning, Atom Smasher repeat. Right as Atom Smasher is finishing casting Burn is back up again. The only break is to make/pop reds and hit Fiery Embrace and Fusion. I would lose about 9.6% defense if I didn't take Tough and Weave due to the set bonuses and the defense in Weave so yes they are needed. Now when on fire farms there is no need to have Tough turned on as there is no S/L damage to worry about but it is still needed to get to Weave and to add 3 Aegis for additional fire defense. With my build, it uses a bunch of Winter IOs which grant both fire/cold defense and resists. Thanks to the ultra high resists in Fire Armor already, this means I only need to run either Fire Shield or Plasma Shield and can turn the other off and I am still at 90% fire resist. That being said, I take this out on TFs and have no endurance issues with all the toggles running outside of things that suck endurance. While farming I never use consume and many times forget to click on Ageless as the only time my blue bar takes a hit is during hasten crashes while I am in the middle of casting the 2 end heavy AOEs.

If you are moving around enough to make IG unappealing then you will likely also be losing out on damage from your dmage auras as they only tick once every 2 seconds.

What effect, exactly, are you looking for? Effectively Irradiated Grounds will function and appear to act no differently than any other damage aura, it's just important to know that there are some slight differences in its actual functionality. In regards to "standing still" I get why you might think that, but no, you don't really have to. If you jump into the middle of a mob and the patch drops, or by the time you get your PBAoE off and it drops, that mob is effectively stuck and/or clustered there already and it'll do its thing just fine, you can move around as you need to still and, eventually, it'll re-center on you. I'd dare say that it ends up being a more effective tool that Quills. Your damage auras require you to be in the group, IG lets you plant it inside the mob and walk away. It'll still tick just like any other damage aura, slot like any other damage aura, look like any other damage aura. I'd say one of my biggest gripes when I ran Spines characters (Spines/DA and Spines/Elec), was that when I bounced around for positioning on Throw Spines, I was effectively loosing damage on the mob because my auras traveled with me. The ability to jump in, Burst, and then jump out while leaving behind one of my "auras" is actually pretty awesome. If you are in an open area target the mob closest to you. Then jump up 20 feet or so and hit throw spines. It is a 3 dimensional cone so at the end of the cone you have pointed down is a nice big circle. Not so effective in buildings or caves but outside it works great.

Basically low mag kb (under 1 IIRC) will knock something down. Higher level mobs have that mag reduced but still be knocked down. Conversely it increases on lower level stuff so those may get tossed back regardless. Also clockwork and some minions are weak against kb and tend to go flying even if they are equal level.

Yup, basically what Stara said. It takes "The best defense is a great offense" saying seriously.

DPA should be taken into account when you have more than 1 attack ready to go. Every other AoE you have does higher DPA so if you use it as soon as it is up instead of only when it is the only AoE you have, you end up doing less damage over time. I stand corrected from my previous post regarding the spines attack chain after doing more playing with builds. I had not factored in procs and with Positrons Blast, the DPA of throw spines increases to the point where it should be used as often as possible after Burn. So Burn, hop up Throw Spines, Ball lightning, Electric Fences, hop up Throw Spines, Burn then whatever is up out of those attacks. Spine burst is still a waste at perma hasten and really only there for a set mule. With that in mind, spines CAN be very fast at farming, potentially faster than Rad and even push SS but it requires much more skill than either of the other 2 sets. A lot of movement and positioning to make sure you get as many in throw spines as possible while still keeping everything in the burn patch. For some this comes natural, for others it takes too much extra time and they end up doing less damage and they are better off just spamming AOE in melee. For those people (like me), Rad will be better.

DPS is not what you should be looking at. Look at DPA.

It "should" prevent knockback by changing it into knockdown instead.

WP is probably the least hurt with rage crashes due to having extra regen built in. If you plan on skipping rage you may as well just play stone melee. It is basically the same but with better single target damage and a longer casting aoe.

Null the gull in Pocket D can change you to Villain. I would do the Black Scorpion arc instead. Once you do the arc for any patron you unlock them all. Only 5 missions and one is a kill all that you can auto complete.

Fireball is great by itself compared with Ball Lightning. Mu is better overall for farming due to the addition of another large, fast casting AoE in Electric Fences. If Mu did not have both and only had Ball lightning, then Fire would be the way to go. As far as team play it depends on what you are fighting and what level. High end stuff I have had no issues with my pure AoE farmer build since a decent amount of S/L resist and defense is build in as a side effect of the set bonuses for Fire Defense. I have about 5% less resists and 33% S/L and 32% Melee defense. Most of the time there are team buffs going around that fill any gaps other than toxic or psi damage. Low level stuff however can be painful with having to rely on temp powers and brawl and I have been slowly getting a second spec together with better offense for lower level content. I will probably use that for high end TF/SF as well due to needing more single target damage on AV fights and it will include Ring of Fire and Fireball. Still undecided between Melt Armor and Fire Blast though.

Please don't give them ideas.

I don't use rad smash (unslotted) -- atom smasher, burn, and ball lightning. If those are recharging you should be using the time to pop build up/fusion/reds. If all of that is recharging, toss electric fences or consume. Or use the ranged attack to smack something nearby and drag it in to the fire. This mostly. I have 1 melee single target attack that is a mule for set bonus and for taking down wandering bosses. Everything else is aoe. I can cast Ball Lightning, Spine burst, Electric Fences, and Throw Spines before my burn patch disappears. Can Burn patches stack? Not sure having burn patch up 100% with Atom Smasher is better than Burn minus 2 tics, Electric fences, Throw Spines, and Spine Burst. Spine Burst is utter crap for farming lvl 54 mobs. The DPA for Atom Smasher is far higher but still the least out of the Rad/Fire build. The real damage from fire farmers comes from Burn, Ball Lightning, Electric Fences, combined with as much recharge as you can get to make those up as often as possible. Because those are not quite an attack chain even with high levels of recharge, you are left with 1 AoE to use from your primary. If you take a Spine/Fire with perma hasten and have your AoE attacks set up in order of DPA, Throw Spines will be used the least and you will never use Spine Burst unless you are ignoring inspirations. Even then you would be better off waiting that brief split second and using another attack than using Spine Burst. Now because Throw Spines is a somewhat narrow cone, that means you have to sometimes move out of melee range (taking your damage aura with you and potentially pulling mobs off of your burn patch) if you want to ensure hitting as many targets as possible as you won't always have 10+ mobs in front you. The other option for those more skilled is to jump up about 20 feet (also taking your damage auras with you) and then hit throw spines at your nearest target directly below you. Because it is a cone it will hit everything in that area. So either way, in order to make Throw spines as effective as it can be, you lose damage from your damage aura and it costs you time in moving or jumping which also means lower damage. Just ran the 5 story Comic Con arc with an average clear time of 4 min 40 seconds per run. Full clear each run, timer started when I started moving and stopped when mission objective was clicked. Spines doesn't come close to that. The reason Spines is more popular is because someone mad a video about it. It is easier to get to 50 solo with spine burst being available at low levels and it is still effective even though it may not be the best. The best is still SS/Fire but now far less popular due to the -defense hit from Rage crashes. That being said, with macros to combine and pop reds Rad/Fire is very close and can be equal and in short bursts better depending on luck with inspiration drops.

I agree. But it's not going to happen. You get 1 auto power and thats it. Someone smarter than me can tell you how to set up a macro/bind to hit hasten when you hit another power as a work around.

Even better on a 4 foot tall character. The standard mob hight puts your tatget area at groin height for most mobs.

The next 4 IOs I would get are the uniques in Miricle and Numina and Pan...something or other. The PVP heal one. Slot those in Health. The Performance Shifer Chance for endurance as well and pop that in Stamina. That should reduce if not solve most endurance issues. Can't look at the numbers on everything elese until I get off work and can use pines.

I run in first, take the alpha, spam AoE. Green bar debuffs are great taunts

I don't use rad smash (unslotted) -- atom smasher, burn, and ball lightning. If those are recharging you should be using the time to pop build up/fusion/reds. If all of that is recharging, toss electric fences or consume. Or use the ranged attack to smack something nearby and drag it in to the fire. This mostly. I have 1 melee single target attack that is a mule for set bonus and for taking down wandering bosses. Everything else is aoe.

Need to see the build to try and solve the problem.