Without_Pause

I have a Fire/time Controller actively working on the second one. Leveling that on commons wasn't great. It got a lot more tolerable once IO sets got involved. I actively looked at set bonuses for reducing End cost. The Alpha slot will further take care of the issue. Its rather good right now at 42 though.

Read up on how to use the Market to gain a lot of influence. You can toss @Yomo Kimyata an email in game and they'll send you 100 mill. I only chase purples if I need that much recharge from 5-slotting it, or I want the damage proc. My builds to a default don't use purples and can be done for 500 mill rather easily. I have builds in their 30s fully slotted and sitting with 500 mill on hand. The easiest thing to do is find a build you like, get it to 50, and T4 everything. By the time you do that, you will be swimming in influence. You might even find some purples along the way, craft them, and sell them.

I like Def based armors in general. I like them more on Scrappers. /stone would be awesome, but even trying to minimalize it might not lead to the desired results. /sr, /nin, and /ea are far easier to pull off. /nin, and /ea offer End management. My /nin is too low to really comment, but I have /ea at 50 already twice with a third at 38 covering Stalker, Scrapper, and Brute. It's fantastic. Before getting the Energize isn't as bad as one might think for not having a heal as /ea can put up solid enough Def numbers. For Resist based armors, and yes, I would lean making these a Brute, /bio is going to pump out the most offense, but again, you need to minimalize the effects and that might not be enough. /rad is going to be a rolling nuke bomb via procs. Tough to minimalize, but it can be colored so there might be some colors which make it more tolerable.

I started to work on my Cold/water Def. I have four powers to slot out. So far Def numbers are higher with Res numbers being lower, but this is just me tossing in things versus a finished product, Def is more important than Res, and more so for a Defender. The shields would only boost the Def numbers all of the more. A Cold Defender would cakewalk to being Def capped on a number of types and positions and would be in the 60% range for S/L/E if they had access to the shields. None of that factors in Power Boost or Incarnates. Grab a Thermal friend and steamroll the game. Granted, you should be doing that anyway.

It might explain an uptick in my spam email, but I have filters for that sort of thing. It's all one click of 'Empty Folder' anyway.

I guess this makes me an end gamer as I slot how I'm going to slot in the end as well as I can. I clearly need to sub something else in if my end build uses a set I can't slot until 27 or 50, but the amount of slots I dedicate for it remain the same.

Are both top tier? Yes. The differences is how they feel. Energy is a single target death machine with one overly long animation time. It's AoE is okay. I will just point out you will lose count the amount of times you overkill various things. Having a damage aura will help in the AoE department. Energy also has some decent mitigation with its stuns. Savage pours out some of the best AoE damage, and more so for Brutes as Fury loves DoT. It's single target damage is okay. Part of the issue is that Hemorrhage isn't worth taking so you are pushed towards using both of the first two attacks as where other sets can skip one. You can take something like Gloom from the epics to help out with single target damage, but that also locks you into taking that pool. It is worth noting Savage Leap will help you keep Fury going as downtime between mobs is cut down as you zoom between mobs. I prefer it on sturdier armors as mitigation is minimal and Stone covers that. Me being me, I would pick Savage because I loath TF's animation time, and if I describe to you a Brute, Savage feels the most like what its primary would be about.

I two slot Stamina on my /stone Stalker and Brute. Using the +End Proc in Dark's heal goes a long way to fixing it's end issues. I do need to relevel a DA based character so I can further explore it at higher levels, but End honestly wasn't that much of an issue the last time I leveled it. For me, iIt partly depends on the AT and what powers they have. It also depends on how many slots I deem I can afford to put into them. I would outright question anyone saying they need to be 6-slotted. It feels like someone who never understood ED happened. If you 6-slot both, then your build is underslotted elsewhere.

I would suggest popping a respect in Beta and trying out Hurricane. If you want to be the bull in a China shop, that option is there. I used it on my Earth/storm far more as to paint the mobs with the debuff and leave it at that. Once Hurricane touches a target, that debuff sticks for 10 seconds. As does reducing their range by 60%. Your AoEs are ranged and the only PBAoE thing you have is your nuke, so running Hurricane outside of that shouldn't be an issue. I only leveled to 32. Look at it for the slotting or even IO ideas. I intentionally went on the cheaper side in certain cases. I did load up on one offs. You get some baseline def, and hopefully enough End management. Changing Tactics to an End Reduc helps as well. I also might favor a lower level build, and then a more end game one as I would weight the later ST attacks higher. If currency is an issue, I would start looking at threads on the Market forum. @Yomo Kimyata does a great job covering how he generates currency. You can also email him in game and get a free 100 mill if for no other reason to help with getting the Defender ATOs. Even on the high side those shouldn't be more than 96 mill. I prefer more in the 84 mill area. Defender (Storm Summoning - Psychic Blast).mbd

I might later pop an attempt and doing a quick run at the build. I kind of assume the level 32 area here. The biggest thing which stands out is the lack of Hurricane while taking Thunder Clap. The only way you have to stack the disorient currently is with the nuke so by itself it is rather lackluster. Hurricane is a huge To Hit Debuff. The second other thing is how poorly slots are done. Yes, Maneuvers is nice coming from a defender, but you have it slotted more than any Storm power or attack outside of Subdue. Similar in how you have slotted Tactics.

Damage type would also matter. I feel like I can always tell when a Fire blaster is on the team.

I was on a Posi 2 TF a few weeks ago and a player couldn't find Faultline. I do mean after instructions, and then I came back and gave even more detailed instructions until they figured it out. They literally went to a wrong zone even after being told where to go. I do remember doing a SF for the first time about a year ago, it was such a blitzkrieg I always felt behind. and what we did was a blur. I think it lasted all of 15 minutes due to the speed run nature. It finished, and I went, 'Well, that happened.' I get speed running various things, but I don't think I enjoyed that SF even 1% and again, that was my first time running it.

Single Target: 1 Acc, 1 End, 3 Damage, Optional 1 Recharge. Multi-target: 2 Acc, 1 End, 3 Damage. This is on a basic SO/common IO level. EA offers +Recharge so that will help in that regard. You can pick up Hasten as well and 2 slot it with Recharge. I would say for combos, Attack Vitals will be the best one with adding in BF to get the benefit of it and Typhoon's Edge for more AoE.

In the end there are no best combos for max DPS for DB. I forget what the ideal chain is. I just know it needs a high amount of recharge. By no means can this be copy/pasted, there are some ideas here to look over. I would skip over 1K cuts and its ridiculous animation time.

I also found this thread fairly informative although as always, any data which is based on pylon and Trapdoor testing should be taken with a grain of salt as they use non-general gaming builds.

Savage stands out on a Brute more due to the DoT nature of Savage. End reduction is universal for any AT and the +dmg technically works better on a Scrapper. It's basically S tier on any AT which has it despite Hemorrhage being skippable.

Try 35-50. My auto default is doing the one newer contact's arc to hit 4. Run a DFB with a team so I can go to the Hollows, pound out the first two contacts in the Hollows solo while teaming for Frostfire at +2, being level 13, and no 2x XP booster, and that can be done in a night's session. Next night I go do the Posi TF. I'm like level 17 already. I can do the Midnighter's arc or some other arc and ding 20+ in no time if I'm teaming. On the opposite end, I ran a team for Tina's arc at +2, went through 9-10 missions, and got all of 1.5 levels. WTF is this 1-22 slog? I would be insanely okay if 2x XP boosters never existed. I would also be all sorts of fine if AE was locked out until a player dinged 50. Lets be honest, vets know how to get to 50 asap without AE anyway. So no, this is not some terrible restriction for vets of the game. What honestly blows me away is the lack of in depth guides for power sets. This game is old. There is no sticky in each of the AT sections or the guides section where a player can come in and look at a run down of each of the powersets and come away with a solid idea about about the powerset and ideas for slotting. We have players with hundreds of characters. Some of them have 100+ characters at 50. Even on the 'lower' end having 40+ characters isn't that out of the question and that's just on Homecoming. Odds are that player had just as many on Live. And yet, where are the guides to the things we are playing? That's what new players need. In the history of the game the Scrapper forum has been one of the most active, and yet as of late it feels like there might be one post in a week. Fine, all of the pylons have been soloed. Trapdoor is seeking retirement, but where are the guides? And yes, the kettle being black, I am currently waiting on some things to happen in my life so I have more time to sit down and write out some guides to some of the things I have played.

If/When you do switch in purples, put in the damage proc for Hecatomb versus the D/R IO since damage is already so over the ED cap, and recharge is partly so.

I'm not saying get rid of 2x XP boosters. What I am saying that those might be my most love/hate thing which has gotten added, and it is far more on the hate side.

You should take the primary and secondary data and incorporate it into the actual build area so it is a single column format. Case in point, in the Build area, I would show what sets are used for the power selected just below where the power is listed versus in a completely different section.

My guess is the +Recharge it offers aids the other attacks to where it increases DPS enough to warrant being added in. I also know Gloom helps Claws for DPS, but I can do a attack chain without it, so I never grab it. As the OPs states, these are builds done with a specific goal in mind. These are by no means builds you are going to see doing everyday content. My biggest take aways are just how poorly Kinetic and Psionic perform and just how good Battle Axe is. This confirms my initial plays of the Kinetic and Psionic. Kin is just simply too slow for the damage it produces. Let it be a slower but harder hitting Claws as there is virtually a 1:1 correlation for powers between the two sets. Psionic has an issue with Insight. More so since Boggle helps trigger it but it is poorly implemented. Almost no one wants to take Boggle when other sets get actual attacks which are used in attack chains. Rename Boggle to Insight so that's where it gets generated and make it a toggle. Two easy fixes for sets in desperate need of balancing.

I thought about that after posting. People would instantly go that direction in terms of thinking before ever really thinking Red Hulk. This is why it is so simple to avoid being so obvious, and yet people feel like they have to do an outright copy.

I'm drawing blanks on the names of the games partly because it was some time ago, and I never played them, but there have been character designers which go into far more detail. I still think CoH is really good despite its age. I recently took a character and redid their look. Even though the new look is incredibly basic, the change is significantly better. I was poking around and went, 'Wait, when did this pattern get added?'

I think it should be fine. You aren't even referencing one of the many versions of Hulk. I don't think any big green skinned guy = Hulk needs to really happen considering the trope of green Martians. I'm not sure how much adding in a bio would help the case, but it wouldn't be difficult to give the character a bio which further pushed it away from Hulk. In short, if this character is an issue, then pretty every time I log in I see a character in violation. It is kind of frustrating that you could simply make a non-green skinned guy and no one thinks about Hulk although I wouldn't recommend being red skinned.

Read the room. You're quoting something from 6 days ago.