Captain Fabulous

Hurricane is awesome, but it's highly situational. Ideally you use it to push critters into a corner and lock them down. With a base -tohit of 30% (~46% fully slotted) it pretty much neuters anything it touches. The -60% range also forces critters to only use their ranged attacks unless you're literally right on top of them. Also great for boss+ fights. You can't always corral them if they have KB and/or repel protection, but you can absolutely debuff them. Another good use is to protect the back line from any critters that get peeled off the tank and coming bearing down on the squishies. The one thing you DO NOT want to do is turn it on and leave it on. I was recently on a PUG where the lead did this, and between him and a PB they were knocking critters all over the place, making my Scrapper's life pretty miserable.

I honestly don't think any one set is "best", or pairs better with Empathy than another. It's all just flavor and what kind of secondary effects you want.

I believe this is one of the rare cases where CoD doesn't correctly parse server data. This was explained in a recent post

Honestly I don't care one way or the other, but how difficult is it to sell off excess salvage and recipes when you're selling enhancement drops?

But this is exactly my point. Against trash critters defense is fine. Against tough critters, EBs, and AVs not so much. And Tough is only S/L resistance. If you're getting hit with something else it's not helping. While SR has nice DDR, a room full of +4/x8 Cimerorans are gonna slice right thru you. Numbers on paper are great, but they don't tell the entire story. There's a reason why Shield, Rad, Bio, and Invul are at the top of the list and SR isn't. I mean, you can test all this yourself. Hop on the test server and make a bunch of Scrappers with the same primary but different secondaries. Boost them to 50, kit yourself out with even-level SOs, set the slider to +4/x8 w/AV and take on different types of critters, AVs, and GMs and see who lasts the longest on average.

I seem to remember a time when you could stack both sets, but that's no longer the case. Now it's one or the other.

This is also good because if the detective doesn't introduce you to a new contact after the safeguard missions it means you've done everything. Aaron is given by either Sondra Costel or Officer Fields, who are given by Matthew Habashy. They have very different story arcs and you can only choose one of them. A good example of newer contacts/missions where you're not able to do both.

What I mean is, while it's possible to get every story arc or mission you can't get every contact because there is more than one contact that will give the same set of missions? So I shouldn't lose my mind if there are contacts I don't have because others in that same level range have already given me all the available missions? Amazing to me that after 20 years I'm still learning new things about this game.

That any set or AT can be godly with IO sets and globals and that they aren't a measure of how good a set is on its own. The game is balanced around even-level SOs. If you want to know how effective a particular set is or isn't that's what you slot. With enough INF you can make a Defender or Controller godly. It's irrelevant. It's not something most people are ever going to want or be able to do. Pretty much what I said but was then told I was delusional. 🤷‍♂️ Ah, but here's the thing, DEF is very dependent upon what you're fighting. As you pointed out, higher ranking and level critters will be able to bypass more of your defense, not only hitting you more often but doing more damage with each hit. Resistance is the same regardless. The benefit of layered defense and resistance is that the damage is spread out over time, greatly reducing the chance of being 2-shot, and allowing regeneration to do its thing. It also benefits you when you're hit by debuffs, as critters typically will only debuff one layer of protection at a time. On paper it looks better to have a large amount of one thing but in actual gameplay it's not, for a variety of reasons.

So the takeaway is that it's not possible to get every contact in every zone? Or am I missing something?

At most +2/x8, at worst -1/x0, depending upon the character and what I'm doing. Anything higher than +2 I find too difficult to hit consistently and takes too long to kill for my tastes. More often than not if I'm soloing I'm paying attention to the story so I choose to run thru the missions as quickly as possible in order to advance it.

Can confirm. Did a TF with him last night and all he did was try and drain the blood from already-dead critters. 😜

I'm a big fan of Stone. Greatly underrated set. SS is iconic and you can't go wrong with that either. Street Justice is also a fun set. Has a nice crunch to it.

Nope. It reads as "I'm not going to argue with you, believe whatever makes you happy." 🤷‍♂️ It has scaling damage resistance (all but psi and toxic) in the 3 auto powers which kick in when you're at 59% health for ~1% to a max of ~53% when you're at 1% health. While it's better than nothing for sure, it won't stop you from dying from a massive full-value hit when you're between 60-99% health.

I hear they do bus tours of Perez Park.

I guess we'll have to disagree. SR, like Regen, is a one trick pony, and we know the best armor sets have layered protection.

Did I stutter? SR is great until you actually get hit, which is gonna happen on average 1 in every 20 attacks. If you're down at least 1 HP it's very easy to get curb-stomped in one big hit from a +4 boss or AV, and with no heal or +regen you have no good way to recover your lost health without help. You're at the mercy of the tohit RNG. The scaling resists help, but only when you're low on health. Yeah you can fill all those holes with IO bonuses, but you can do that with any set or AT at this point.

Lots of Tanker builds here

Try: /em I don't get paid enough for this.$$petsayall You get paid?!

/petsayall You get paid?!

I am all for a spirited discussion, but I won't argue. It's a pointless waste of time. At some point you just have to agree to disagree and go on with your day.

The game has always been balanced around SOs because that's what's readily available to all players for a fixed price from vendors and as drops. The invention system and AH was always meant to be optional, not required. If you wanted IOs or even sets to become the baseline there would need to be a major overhaul of the crafting system and AH to greatly simply the process, cost, and availability.

LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! *look it up, kids

Invul, Shield, Bio, WP, and Rad are at the top of the charts because they have layered protections. not because they can easily reach softcapped defense via IO sets. That would be defense sets like Ice, EA, and SR. Regen is a one trick pony, and of all the protection types +regen is the least affective because it's almost entirely a reactive set instead of a proactive set. There's a reason it's so very rare to see Regen characters. As much as you'd like to think, it's not a case of you knowing better than everyone else, or that we simply don't understand how to play it. I don't see the point in arguing about it tho. If you love Regen and enjoy playing it, that's great. At the end of the day that's all that matters.

??? Rad has 2 debuff toggles and a click that reduces critter damage, defense, tohit, resistance, regen, and recharge. Accelerate Metabolism has a straight up +damage buff and gives mez resistance, recharge, and recovery. Choking Cloud will periodically hold LTs and under, and makes it that much easier to hold a boss. It's a pretty awesome set. Gravity's bread and butter power is Propel. Hit a critter with Gravity Distortion to trigger both Containment and Impact and it does a ton of damage. Lift also does more damage than most Controller single target attacks. Grav/Rad is a darn good pairing. I've had one since back on Live.