HelenCarnate

/Fire is the go to for farming as long as AE exists. Burn, damage aura and FE are tons of aoe goodness without a primary. Anything else will be slower. But if you are looking for fun over speed I would try Rad/Bio. Still 2 damage auras and Bio can be much more sturdy outside of AE farms compared to /Fire

Exactly correct. If you wanted a super fast farmer that can clear a map tailor made to do as little damage as possible to you while throwing mobs at you right and left, SS/Fire with perma double rage and around 45% uptime on FE was the way to go. Without massive recharge that combo is just decent and spines/fire does better on a much lower budget. Now if you want something that can tackle most content out there with various damage types and debuffs, that is a whole different story. My SS/Fire farms me money and IOs for the financing of my altiholism and that is what it is good for. I would have to make significant changes to be able to have that character in a high level TF without decent support on the team as well.

The sets are meant to be balanced around SO enhancements, on live it was always that way from my understanding. And? I was responding to those that said SS never gets mentioned as the strongest and I just showed that it can be the strongest in certain cases. I never said it should be changed. I made suggestions on how to balance if it is required to remove Rage but also made it clear I would much rather just see them remove the defense debuff from the rage crash.

It all depends on the definition of strongest. AoE farming with a brute with a low budget go spines. But if you have a high budget and build for tons of recharge SS/Fire is best by a long margin.

That would only be needed if there were an in game benefit to donations. I would like to see an option to automatically donate every month and then if more funds are needed open it up again for individual donations. The only downside I can see with that is that this community is so eager to help that with subs they may bring in too much.

Omg I totally forgot about the theft proc. Great advice.

WP has some serious regen available so defensive softcap is not as important. Aslo there are no powers in the set that benifit from high recharge (unless you plan on being dead a lot) so perma hasten is not needed unless it is required for a fluid attack chain. I like to build mine with high HP and high regen along with defenses in the 30s range so it is 1 luck away from the cases when you need to hit that cap.

Did something change where you can use more than 5 of one set bonus? You have 7 LotG + recharge. 2 of those could be just plain Def to keep the other set bonuses with just a hair higher defense or the def/rech/end one for a little bit more end/second.

No need. You're just overthinking it. Reread what I posted and you might understand :) You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up? It would not need significant changes. It would need 1 power change and an animation change. Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think. Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack. Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch. That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome. Oh my God, you're, you're so underestimating what losing Rage would do to the set. Every power in the set is balanced around the expectation that it'll have at least 80% damage boost at all times. How strong are you expecting this one new move to be, to make up for losing all that damage in every other power? Full disclosure. My preference would be to just drop the -defense from rage but I am not about to lie and say SS has always been fully balanced around rage always being on. There are 2 attacks that are balanced around rage. Yes I just said that, 2. An argument can be made for a 3rd and I will get to all of them. Start off with the tier 1. No other set has anything like the craptastic power that is Jab. There are only a few uses for this power. At low levels as something to do while everything else including brawl is on cooldown, this is a good attack to use. At higher levels this only becomes slightly useful when rage is going. At lvl 50 this makes a good mule for set bonuses for purple stuns for extra recharge, however with the AT enhancement sets having that 10% bonus as well, jab becomes even less useful. This power should be dropped entirely and all the other tiers moved up so Punch is tier 1. Now lets look at the tier 2 attack. Look at the other sets with a 4 second recharge attack and they all do the same damage including Super Strength. I am not counting Titan Weapons as its 4 second attack is even lower damage but has +defense build in. In animation time from fastest to slowest you have 1. Stone Fist & Energy Punch at about 1 second. 2. Punch (SS) just under 1.5 seconds 3. Beheader, Slash & Bash just over 1.5 seconds. This is the other attack balanced around rage. It takes longer to animate than the other punch sets that do the same damage so without rage it ends up being slightly better than the weapon sets. What I proposed is to bring it in line with the other punch sets and have this attack also about 1 second. Moving on to tier 3. Look at other 8 second recharge single target attacks and you will find they again all do the same damage including Super Strength with 2 exceptions that do more. Titan Weapons because that attack takes forever to animate and Fire because its secondary effect is more damage. Animation time fastest to slowest we have 1. Chop just under 1.6 (Arcanatime), 2. Pulverize, Haymaker (SS), Cremate & Bonesmaher at just over 1.7 seconds, 3. Heavy Mallet at 1.8 and 4. Crushing Blow at over 2.2 seconds. Having rage on all the time would mean that this power is better than the other sets instead of being equal. Tier 4 Avoid this like the clap. Tier 5 KO Blow. There is an argument to be made about this one having a longer recharge due to rage. It does the same damage as Total Focus, Concentrated Strike and Seismic Smash but takes 5 seconds more to recharge. However, it also has a much longer range, 13 feet for a melee attack. If you really want to balance this power because you believe it was only made that way due to rage, you would have to drop the recharge down to 20 seconds and decrease the range to 7 feet to be in line with the other powers with the same recharge and damage. I would not expect to see one change made without the other. Moving on past Taunt and Rage to tier 8 Hurl. This one is an 8 second recharge ranged attack doing 68.4 damage (brute). Only a few sets have ranged attacks. Hurl Boulder is exactly the same in every way. Impale gets the same base damage and the same animation time. In addition it gets extra toxic damage but also half the range. Kin gets a slightly faster animation but also half the range. Claws gets Focus but that is also half the range and lower damage but like the rest of the set it animates faster. Pretty balanced without rage. Last we have Footstomp. Don't even pretend that this one is based around being equal with rage. So like I said before all that you would need to change is 1 power and 1 animation to bring it in line. You could also tweak KO Blow as well. Some would be ok with it, others would not like the drop in the range. Personally I like the range but it does not make sense for someone to be able to punch someone from 13 feet away so I would be for making the change. So what to do with that left over power slot opened up by Jab? The sets that have their tier 1 and 2 attacks on 4 and 8 second timers also have a 12 second attack so that is what I suggested but it could be anything. Even 6 seconds like Barrage to give the set more flow or 16 seconds like Clobber for more HULK SMASH action. What I would like to see is an attack that would truly make the set unique because without rage and with the other changes it is basically Stone Melee with a better AoE attack and slower Seismic Smash. Something like a gut punch that could cause internal bleeding dot or -resist or a lunging punch aka Superman Punch with stun but the easier route would be to use an already existing animation like Stun from energy melee. Changing these things would be fairly easy outside of creating a new animation and that is all it would take to bring the set in line while getting rid of rage and swapping for BU. But just because you can do something does not mean you should. All I was doing is pointing out how it could be done without a rework of every power. Again, I would prefer to just drop the -defense, but at least I can at least admit rage is OP outside of the crash and a ton of fun when it is up and even more fun when you have high recharge and footstomp is popping off every 5 seconds.

No need. You're just overthinking it. Reread what I posted and you might understand :) You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up? It would not need significant changes. It would need 1 power change and an animation change. Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think. Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack. Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch. That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome.

SS/Dark is a terrible combo. Both are quite strong separate but together they will kill your blue bar. Endurance is already an issue with /Dark as it has no way to regain endurance or mitigate recovery outside of slotting more end reduction. On top of that it needs 4 toggles to get your resistances to hold/stun and immobilize plus the damage aura. Considering most brutes endgame shoot for as high of S/L resists and defense which means tough and weave in addition to careful IO slotting. On top of being toggle heavy, the one heal in the set will kick you in the teeth for 1/3 of your endurance (before slotting). The good news about Dark Regeneration is that the heal portion is so OP that with no slotting for heals, if it hits 3 targets, you heal from 10% health to full so it is best to slot that for end reduction and recharge vs recharge and heal. Now combine that with rage crashing every so often and likely hasten as well and you end up chewing through the blues like candy. Now once you get to 50 and can get your Alpha slot, much of that can be mitigated, but the trip there will be tedious. Fire on the other hand has only 2 toggles on top of the damage aura and has consume to get your endurance back and a self heal as well. Of the 2 choices, I would go with /Fire first, use that one to farm up some money for all the Heal and Stamina +recovery and + endurance procs as attuned enhancements and then level the /Dark.

Suggested this myself a while ago and totally agree. My bunny characters will be happy.

Hold up, you can't just compare those two powers and then try to say that SS is suddenly OP if the rage crash doesn't kill you. You need to look at the sets as a whole. Compared to most other sets, without rage SS underperforms, and in high-level content there's a lot of s/l resistance set other power sets don't have to worry about. The defense crash needs to be removed for SS to be a set that is just on par with other melee sets. That is not close to what I said. Single rage yes it is on par with other sets. When you get double rage going on high recharge builds (my ss fire brute did this with 1 recharge IO) then things shift heavily in favor of SS. Personally I would like to see the Defensive debuff tossed and call it a day but if something had to be changed that would not punnish one type of build yet still discourage double stacking the suggestion I gave would accomplish that. Does it have to be the numbers I gave? No it could be tested and adjusted as needed.

If you are punching 3 times and run out of endurance it is your own fault. The only way (outside of fighting sappers or Mu) is to do like the OP and have terrible slotting combined with running extra toggles. Dark armor is the only set that needs work with endurance and that could be fixed with the change of 1 power. The other sets are fine.

Or since they have no downside just turn them into click powers. If the intention was to have them work for so long then recharge then have them work that way. It's not game breaking but it is an annoyance having to keep turning on something labled as a toggle.

Only if the rest of the set gets nerfed. It is fine as is within the set.

I had to micro manage more before the change. Your target constantly getting killed and your debuff put on cooldown doing nothing while you waited to apply it to something else that would end up dropping in a hurry. But I fully support the option decide which way you want things to work if that is something that can be done.

This is just saying that the bad user interface works to your advantage because most people would rather play the game than fight it. This should not be the basis on which the user interface is designed. Imagine if any other commercial transation were carried out in the same way. "I'd like to buy this computer monitor, please." "Certainly. I have the price tag here." "And how much does it cost?" "I'm sorry, I can't tell you that. You'll have to guess." "Can I have it for £50?" "No." "£60?" "No." "How about £65?" "No." "Let's try £75." "No." "£80?" "Well, all right then." This would be rightly condemned as an absurd arrangement. It remains absurd here; and right at this moment when we have a lot of new players coming in who haven't internalised the market being horrible to use - who may in fact have played MMOs with non-horrible market interfaces (where of course it is perfectly possible to make money by being patient and clever) - is the time to get rid of this absurdity. The auction house is not a retail store, it is an auction house. It works fine as it is, no change necessary. I would have to agree, no change is needed to the way the AH works. If anything maybe the interface could use some work but it is livable. Few other games allow me to put in a bid for something I want and then pick it up if/when someone sells it at that price (assuming I am still the highest bidder of course). Most others have you constantly checking back to see if what you want is at the price point you are willing to buy.

From a selfish standpoint because I know how to build SS I would want the defense debuff simply removed. But from a balance standpoint I know that SS is OP once you factor in patron powers and ultra high recharge builds so something should be done to pay for that increase in power more than just a hit to endurance and taking a breather for 10 seconds. When you use BU, you use up some endurance and are stronger for a few seconds. When you use rage, you use the same amount of endurance and are stronger for 12x longer. Overall it breaks down like this. Endurance cost for BU 5.2 for 10 seconds for average of 0.52 per second. Endurance cost for Rage 5.2 for 120 seconds with 25 crash at the end so 30.2 total for average of .25 per second. If it is required to do something, I would much rather have rage cost increased up front as you would use more endurance to keep that damage active longer so an initial cost of 25 endurance with a crash at the end of another 25 would be a total of 0.416 per second for the damage increase with the difference offset by the 0 damage at the end. This would discourage people from double stacking unless they built for exceptionally high recovery and/or having to reallocate slots to allow for endurance reduction IOs in Rage.

Drop the defense hit and increase the activation cost to say 25. So it costs a lot of energy to start and you get hit again when it ends. If you double stack or start getting close to triple stack you will pay for it by getting worn out faster.

Although personally I like Soul for sets that are heavy on the defense although Pyre would fit your theme better. That extra -to hit meshes very well and gloom is a nice single target that hits like a truck (vs other ranged attacks for brutes anyway)

Here I thought this was going to be a thread about /Dark Armor

Super Strength is balanced around Rage. And more importantly, having it running full time. SS is a good and fun set, I like it alright. But I would consider it hugely disadvantaged in the late game if it didn't have perma-Rage easily achieved with 3 SO Recharges. Being purely smash damage, SS would start to under perform as other type-mixed sets started getting SOs. I would argue in end-game content Rage starts to become not quite enough. Rage has plenty of penalties to offset being round-the-clock. It's mainly boosting a set that's almost always resisted to some degree. It comes with an endurance crash. One decent enough to end you if you haven't been paying attention. And SS, being more resisted and therefore requiring more hits to defeat a foe, can sneak up on you with endurance cost. On top of that, you won't be doing any damage for 10 secs. After all that, it's really not necessary to lose defense, you've got 10 secs where foes practically get pot shots. I mean, leave it in there if it really has to be, but turning it into Build Up wouldn't a good route. Exactly this. Outside of footstomp, every single other power is the one of, if not the weakest compared to other sets when you look at damage per animation second. Hell, Boxing is even better than Jab. Ice is arguably better than SS outside of rage once you get some very high recharge. Frozen Aura is footstomp clone but with ice damage (less resisted). Now granted the radius is higher on footstomp but the damage is the same and the animation time is the same. Freezing touch only has a 16 second recharge vs 25 for KO blow and it animates much faster and is one of the hardest hitting attacks for brutes (by DPA). If you wanted to change Rage to Build up instead, the whole set would need tweaking. If it were my job to rebalance the set to drop Rage and change it to BU I would start by dumping jab and throwing in a 12 second recharge superior damage attack that hits like say Heavy Mallet from stone or Swoop from Axe. Then I would lower the animation time on Punch to be faster like Energy Punch as well. There could be other tweaks as well but that would be a decent start to bring it in line with other sets.

Fire Sentinel. Ivanna Burnham Demon/Thermal. Helen Carnate Rad/Dark brute. Emma Nation. Fire/Fire/Fire blaster. Anita Rezz Electric blaster. Tera Hurts

Not a fan of the change either. SS is now pretty useless on defense based sets unless you carry around purples to pop when rage crashes. If they wanted to eliminate double rage just have it not stack and cost more to activate.