SeraphimKensai

When they exit, I'd think the geometry would push them to a valid place for a character. I could be wrong though, as my wife tells me I'm not always right.

It largely varies on the difficulty level your playing. That said there's been a few Empathy defenders to have solo'd things like +4 ITFS. It just takes build creativity and patience.

Welcome back folks. This week the discussion veers to all things that Smash. That's right we're talking melee combat. Feel free to discuss, compare, and contrast any melee Powersets in the game. Do you have a preferred melee set you enjoy? Is there one that you don't like? What do you find enjoyable about playing melee sets? Is there anything that holds you back from playing melee sets? Do you have any suggestions for melee weapons such as a hockey stick or a bass guitar? Do you have any interesting thoughts for a new melee powerset? Do you find melee to be in a good place now or does it need tuning? As always thanks for playing.

Lvl 5 is eligible to start a DFB via the LFG tab. That will auto zone you to the DFB instance. Select lock team and poof. About 10 seconds and your free.

I'd give consideration to either Elec/Psi - it makes a great sapper and although you might be standing in melee nothing will have endurance to really attack much and you'll have a lot of ranged tools as well. Alternatively: Plant and Dark control work great as a primary sets that do well at range. Secondaries to consider would include psi (although that does lean into melee with it's sustain and psi shockwave), otherwise Firey and thorns for more ranged friendly sets.

No tier rankings, just personal experience. HC has caused me to branch out (on live I never got into MMs the AT didn't really mesh with me). Now I have a decent cadre of MMs and fairly skilled at playing them (they still aren't my favorite AT but they can present a nice change to playstyle from time to time). I have 4 robot masterminds paired with either empathy, electrical affinity, time, and kinetics. I have a thugs/time, a demon/electrical affinity, 2 necro/darks, a ninja/ff, and a beasts/nature. Hands down my favorite is the necro/dark MMs. Hell I liked it so much I made a second one just for more zombies. It's strong has great survivability and ends up with an army of the dead. What's not to like. Having a second one just doubles that all up. Who knows maybe I'll do a third as well next Halloween. Thugs/Time is probably my second fav because double gangwar with power boosted/clarion radial Farsight/chronoshift. That packs quite a bit of power. Yes the arsonist is pretty stupid and pulls a lot of agro though. Robots are probably number 3 for me despite having 4 incarnate and IO'd robotics MMs. I had the robo/emo from early on as a re-imagined version of my old main. The other three were made after spending about 30 minutes one afternoon with @Neiska in a meteor farm to see their technique of using 3 bots MMs to agro and kill off the whole meteor in record time. Chaotic, but it worked, so I was inspired to make a mm robot team of my own. I later found that I could handle all three of them on an SBB and just invite one rando to fill out the 4th role. Demons are strong yes, but with elec affinity you want to keep them close by for faraday cage and chained buffs. It works and the combo does well enough but even though I have a lot of demonic inspired toons, I didn't really get hooked on this character. It was more let's build it and proof a point then anything. Ninja/FF was made as a joke, but then after the FF and ninja changes it honestly works. Yes the ninjas are still not tanks but the bubbles let them survive long enough to do some decent damage. Beasts/nature was an MM that I thought would be a fun theme to run, but my interest in it fizzled out before it really got going.

Poison/Rad. I play one myself it's a fun combo set, and you can build it to operate in melee and melt things.

Elec/elec would probably be better on a tanker. Easier to hit res caps, wider arc for Jacob's ladder and better AoE. Elec melee doesn't have anything that screams brute to me, but I'm sure if you wanted a brute version you could still make a pretty solid elec/elec brute.

I use a poison/rad def, a fire/poison corruptor, and a electric control/poison troller. Poison is a very versatile powerset and it's great that you only really need 3 (maybe 4 with poison trap as well) powers that are absolutely necessary. And they don't require much for slotting so it gives you a ton of flexibility for your other set and pool powers.

Water/bio sentinel works well. Otherwise water/storm, elec affinity/water work well enough as well.

The new version of mids uses a new file extension for some reason or another. You can still open up the old mxd files, but you have to save to the new format. I think mrb.

I know it never got finished, but I'd still like to see someone take a stab at developing the arrival of the Battalion with the Coming Storm line since it's mentioned in game already.

I think based on his there's nothing to do thread he's getting them to 50 and then parking them. I'm not sure if he's still investing in IOs or not. Yes that 4.5 neg energy res can be very helpful on some toons especially when going for a 4star ITF, as that's a ton of negative damage.

You can always look forward to the next new powerset so you can finally clean up this city............ Janitorial Melee with a hovering buffer for a travel power. Clean those mops so you can clean up those streets. Hellions won't even be able to react when you've sprayed Windex in their eyes.

Typically 3 slots: LOTG 7.5 and a +5 Shieldwall Def and Def/End will get you a significantly to the point that excess slotting for def is lost due to diminishing returns. That seems to be my preferred slotting on a lot of def powers, but I'll find ways to make use of the unique +res and +tohit IOs.

I don't have an issue with this, and from a QoL perspective could be interesting base jumping from a skyscraper down to stop the Outcasts down below. It may not necessarily have a lot of salience, but could be a useful addition.

I guess that's your prerogative but my FF defender has Dark Blast as a secondary, and gets a self heal and blasts that are synergistic with the defense im giving my team. Additionally the added immobilization cone with tentacles helps control the battlefield keeping mobs in place so they can't get to ranged ATs with heavy hitting melee attacks, and an AoE stun that takes 10 minions and lts out of the fight for about 10 seconds at a time. Defenders blasts still have the highest debuff/buff modifiers in the game so using a set that offers debuffs and not using those abilities is a bit asinine to me anyways. Sure if your secondary is fire blast, you'll not out compete a fire blaster but it can still be useful.

Random drops or buy in AH

Rumor has it that originally the powerset was going to be based on this... https://youtu.be/xer32BmkORk But it got adjusted to what we got. Sure there's a bunch of fx, but it doesn't really bother me personally.ni could see it potentially causing issue with people playing on potatoes though.

TW/Bio was so over performing that when it was merged it left it still an extremely viable powerset. Previously it was so over the top that you had to disregard performance to roll any other melee set for a scrapper. You'll find it still does well. Bio still works great as always as well. Yes there have been a number of changes, I'd suggest looking at the development sub forums and reading the patch notes for pages 1-6. Otherwise welcome back and have fun.

^this right here. Otherwise I wouldn't mind using it as a stress test for some of my toons to test what they can handle.

Welcome back once again folks and thanks for continuing to participate in these. I figured with the recent launch of Page 6, this seemed like a good time to discuss the Brainstorm test server. It's gone by a number of different names (remember Pineapple?) but it's been around to help stress test new development and also give you a chance to test out some new builds for little to no time/influence investment. Do you utilize the public test server? Why or why not? If so, what do you test on it if anything? Proposed changes that have made it to public testing? New AT/Powerset Combos? Builds that you're still trying to tweak more out of or not quite sure about committing to spending several hundred million influence? Or maybe just to shoot the shit with some friends and try content with a completely random toon, or pvp? I mainly use it now to test out some new changes and powerset interactions when I'm theory crafting new toons. In the old days prior to the original sunset, we had a pretty decent pvp league with official support which seemed like a great use for the old test server, you might remember the old golden titles in players that won events there. as always thanks.

Honestly EM/Bio is a great pairing. I personally play it as a Stalker myself. But I also have Bio Armor on Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers. I think survivability they can all be made fairly resilient. EM is a great set overall as well. I honestly don't think you can go wrong with this pairing.

A lot of us proc slot Rad Therapy and Ground Zero for damage procs. It's like having 2 mini nukes. It makes for some satisfying damage.

You get slow res based on Fallout Shelter, Winter's Gift 20% unique, and then as a 2/3 set combo for various winter sets. I don't have your build up in mids as I'm at work stuck in a 3 hour webinar. Have you considered using Melee Core, Meltdown, Rune as a rotation? That way you won't need to slot for 90% res, but close to, and then make up the difference running one of those toggles. That might give you some more slotting freedom. Also given how much recovery rad armor gets... what's the point of conserve power and physical perfection? I don't think you'll get much ROI on those. You could look at Focused Acc at least imo. What incarnates are you looking at slotting?