Saikochoro

Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with energy blast so I would have to defer to people with more experience. However, some general points of advice I follow to maximize damage potential across pretty much all of my characters: - Higher global recharge will push your damage. Even if you may not have a single high damage attack, when you can cycle through your attack chain quickly you can do good damage. This is why most people focus on high DPA attacks because there is a point to where you are slowed down by animation times instead of cooldowns. -Procs will help increase your damage. Again, I don’t play energy blast so I don’t know what procs are available, but ranged damage in general has a least the gladiator javelin and apocalypse procs. I am assuming you will also have access to the procs in the knockback category. Procs do better in longer base recharge powers that don’t have a ton of recharge slotted. Procs go hand in hand with high global recharge. - Get your survivability to an acceptable point and then push the recharge and procs. I havent played sentinel Regen, but I have played the melee version. I focus on getting my clicks recharging fast (global recharge helps with this) and my resistances to a good level. As a by product my defenses are usually at a middling level. I also take rune of protection on my Regen characters (purely personal preference) on that one. So, a lot of this will come down to what your budget is for your character. Pushing recharge can get pricey if you are using purple sets and ATOs. There are cheaper options that will push your recharge, just not as much. The purple sets also offer the best procs. What is your budget?

My plant/savage dom is by no means low damage. It is a damage machine. It just also happens to control the battlefields as a by product of going ballistic. Can’t speak to controllers though as I don’t play them.

Yeah I’ve seen that thread. It is good information for baseline performance, but can’t really be used to draw conclusions for full builds. All sets get better with full builds. However, dual blades gets a ton better as you push the global recharge. Once you have enough global rech to do BF + attack vitals without gaps and always have two stacks of blinding fient up the damage is really good. Then you can push even further to get to the point that you can just do BF>ablaiting>sweeping. Throw in Achilles and FotG chance for -res and the damage is very good even if you don’t have one single power that’s hitting for 1k+ dmg. It’s a super fast chain the shreds enemies and happens to work great for both single target and AoE at the same time. I’m not saying that it is the best damaging set or that stalkers won’t do more damage. It’s not, and stalkers generally will always do better damage. I’m just putting it out there that dual blades on scrappers is not lacking in damage when built right.

I don’t have a build for you, but can give you some general build advice. Keep in mind this is my opinion and there are probably plenty who would disagree. Even though it is possible to do so, I would not try to softcap all the typed defenses. Doing so will require you to use up a lot of your slots and set bonuses on defenses, which in turn will neuter your global recharge potential and proc options. I would do the following instead: - shoot for capped s/l resists (or as close to it as you can get). - get to 40% for energy/negative defenses. You will likely have very little resistance for energy damage so you need to get it softcapped. -if you have the budget slot up the purples for that sweet recharge and also get fire resistance to boot. F/C damage is more rare, but you will have some defense and resist for it. - Take barrier destiny, which will get you the last bit to softcap for energy/negative. If you want to pick a different destiny you’ll have to get to softcap for E/N without it. -You are then free to take musculature alpha and assault hybrid. I used to love bio armor, but then gave up on it because I was destroying my offensive potential by chasing softcaps, which defeated the whole purpose of going bio armor. I have recently started getting back into it with the general guidelines above. My bio scrappers and stalkers now shoot have the following, which has made me enjoy it much more: -resist capped s/l with whatever defense comes as a byproduct of my other slotting goals -softcapped e/n defense (with barrier) - f/c defense and resist both at a moderate level -damage procs in all my main attacks -within a few seconds of perma hasten -quick recharge on my each of my sustain clicks. -I don’t usually take shadow meld because I haven’t found that I need it. If I do take it it is used as a mule.

Dual blades on scrapper has good single target and AoE damage. Stalkers will always have better single target damage, but when comparing just sets on scrappers I don’t feel that dual blades is lacking at all.

I love dual blades. It has good single target and AoE damage. Blinding feint + attack vitals combo is your bread and butter. This attack chain feels fairly fast. If you get high enough recharge you can go for BF>Ablaiting>Sweeping, which is even faster. I only use 1k cuts when I feel like it, but not as part of a normal rotation. I paired my DB scrapper with energy aura. That is what I would recommend. Not only can it be built super tough, but it has +rech to help tighten your attack chain, and built in endurance management tools, which can help a lot.

I know you may be pointing your demeaning comment towards Oldskool. However, I understand that my tone may also have been demeaning. I can try to work on my tone in the future. I honestly just was trying to point out how you were coming across in the thread that was eliciting the reactions you were getting. My intent was not to be mean, but rather offer constructive criticism. I think back to last year when the servers were still fairly new. There was a huge thread discussing patch notes that included some nerfs to DFB. There was a lot of very heated arguments. I got way too heated and became downright insulting to a well respected member of the community @SwitchFade. It is probably my most embarrassing moment on this or any forums. @SwitchFaderesponded in a very calm manner and showed me by example how to conduct myself even during arguments on the internet. I have tried to keep my failure below in mind whenever I post. Excerpt below: You may have to scroll up a bit: So, I am not speaking from a high horse. I have been downright awful on the forums. I am speaking from experience. I am honestly just trying to point out how you were coming across so that it could perhaps be a learning moment. It was not in effort to tear you down.

I made an energy/bio/mu brute on the beta server to test out the changes. I wanted to see if it would do better than the scrapper given it would get the full benefits of fury, whereas EM on scrappers doesn’t get the full benefits of criticals. It still hits very hard and is fun, but I decided that scrappers were still better. This is okay though because scrappers generally do more damage anyway, but wanted to see if it would be different with the new EM. I’m pretty sure I have a mids build for it. I’ll post it when I can check. Edit: I can’t find the build for my brute so I will have to remake it at some point. So will be a while before I get back to it.

I actually started typing a longer reply, but then thought better of it so that I don’t detail the thread too much. Suffice it to say, I totally understand both sides of the “nerf hasten” argument.

1. I don’t take taunt on my brutes. They can soak the alpha and take aggro without it. If you want to skip it that is completely fine. It’s also completely fine to take it. Purely personal preference. 2. You’ll find that things like hasten come with some strong opinions. For me, it is a must have on all my 80+ characters. I don’t have a single character that doesn’t take it. Any set and archetype can benefit from higher recharge whether it be to recharge click defensive cooldowns faster or to purely have a tighter/faster attack chain. You’d be hard pressed to find a more valuable pool power. That said, it is not universally considered mandatory as evidenced by the replies already. Don’t feel pressured into taking it, but also know that it is a very powerful pick. Again, comes down to preference and is thus not mandatory. 3. Endurance consumption will improve with slotting and set bonuses (assuming you use sets). Most all sets have endurance reduction. If you don’t use set IOs, then make sure to slot some endurance reduction in attacks and toggles. 4. The difference between recovery and consumption is more important. I like to have at least 2 end/sec greater recovery than my endurance consumption. So if my consumption is 1.5 end/sec I shoot for 3.5 end/sec recovery. You have some wiggle room when you slot endurance procs like theft of essence. Invaluable endurance management IOs include: miracle + recovery, numinas convalescence +Regen/recovery, panacea +hp/end, performance shifter + end, and theft of essence + end. I slot miracle, numinas, and panacea in health. I slot performance shifter in stamina. Performance shifter proc can be slotted multiple times, so if you take physical perfection you can slot another proc in there too. And like others said, slot theft of essence proc in dark Regen. 5. I agree with others assessment to use IOs. 6. It’s been a while since I played with staff in mids. When you toggle on the forms and combo levels I would think you should be able to see a difference if you were to look at a power. For example lock the info screen on sky splitter. Then toggle on form of body and go through the combo levels. You should see the damage increase slightly with the stacks. I may be wrong though, I’ll have to get into mids and see later.

Perhaps. There will probably be plenty of people just flipping the packs so you’d have to price appropriately. Also, the demand for the packs themselves may be low for quite a while after the sale until the surplus of WOs goes down since that is a big reason to buy the packs in the first place.

I have been going back and forth on whether I want to buy some winter packs or not. I hardly ever use WOs in my builds (I have maybe two sets across my 80+ alts slotted). So, the only reason I’d do it is for profit. I suspect many more people will buy packs this year and thus the supply of WOs will likely be inflated for quite a while. So, making a good quick profit off the WOs is unlikely. Reward merits are always good, but that is largely up to chance. If I am patient I could always list the WOs or the packs themselves in 6-8 months to make a large profit. But at that point, I could invest 100-200m in my normal marketing routine to make a large profit this week instead of in 6-8 months. There is a possibility that the WOs could still retain a high value, but I think that is unlikely. So, since I don’t use WOs myself, and don’t want to wait months to reap the profit, I will likely not join in on the fun. But who knows, maybe I’ll buy 5 just for fun.

I love the new energy melee. I think the reason the energy focus mechanic hasn’t bothered me is because I always took and USED total focus. I always did TF before ET on live. So it was already natural for me to total focus into energy transfer. Ive been warming up to power crash on my new EM scrapper. I wasn’t super impressed with it in beta testing, but I like it okay. It’s better than nothing. EM on scrapper (EM/Bio) - can give stalkers a run for their money on boss killing. Hits so dang hard (2300+ on even con boss). I love it! EM on tanker (mine is SD/EM) - are tanks supposed to do this much damage 😜? Bosses melt so fast and yet cant do anything to me in return even if they had time to try. Pure awesomeness. EM stalker - more insane single target. I wasn’t as taken by it on stalker because they do ST very well in general anyway. So I enjoyed scrapper more. I will still have several EM stalker alts though! EM Brute - one of my mains from live (EM/WP) that I haven’t gotten around to remaking yet. I used to be a brute main through and through on live, but have left them behind in favor of scrappers and tankers. In beta testing, I enjoyed EM on brute the least, even though I thought it would be the best given that they get the full benefit of fury while scrappers/stalkers only get 28% crit. Overall, I love the new EM. It is extremely potent in single target encounters. Still isn’t the greatest at AoE so other sets will still have better clear speeds. But I think that is working as intended.

It’s all good. It was an easy conclusion to jump to since I didn’t clarify my point. So no worries. Like I said, I want everyone to be able to play how they want to and have no problem with people afk farming. Unfortunately, you are correct that there are plenty of people that won’t rest until everyone plays the same way they do. So, when the devs decide to change something I want there to be as little collateral damage as possible. Edit: I’m not trying to call out the devs. I’m sure they have their reasons. I was more calling out that there is indeed a group of players that like to force their playstyle on others.

I personally have no issue with afk farming. I just know that it will eventually be killed by the devs because they do have a problem with it. As such, I have tried to think of a way for them to achieve their goal without harming the efficacy of active farming. If they nerf rewards, then that harms active farming. If they nerf armor sets (fiery aura) or the go-to melee sets (spines, rad, claws), then that hurts all users of those power sets. If they nerf set bonuses to attack survivability, then that harms everyone. If they nerf various caps in AE (resist caps, defense caps, aggro caps, etc), then that harms active farming. I’m sure there are other ways of killing afk farming without harming active farming, but detoggling is the only one I have thought of so far. I am always one to advocate for people being able to play how they want to play. I also very much understand that there are only so many hours in the day. So don’t take my comment to mean that I look down on afk farming. I personally would be fine if they left afk farming untouched. It doesn’t affect me one way or another. However, since the devs have expressly stated that they do plan to address it, my hopes is that they will do it in such a way that active farming is largely untouched.

No problem. Leave me any questions in that thread so that I don’t derail this thread too much more 😉

If you are farming at level 50, my advice is to do standard rewards. You get influence from killing enemies on top of recipe rewards. You will get purple drops, but they are more rare than other drops of course. Depending on how long you farm it isn’t unreasonable to get at least 1 per day though. PVP IOs are good too. Another good money maker honestly is common level 50 IO recipes. These are around 100k per pop selling at a vendor and you get a lot of those. Farming below level 50 isn’t really that great for influence generation.

I also prefer button mashing too, which is why I don’t afk farming. There are much more efficient ways of making money anyway. I totally understand being broke in this game. That’s how I was for my entire time on live and for a good portion of my time here on homecoming. Fortunately, there are a lot of great ways to make money depending on your preferences. Depending on how much play time you have, you can easily earn 100m + influence per week. No need to be poor! This link is a high level review of several ways to start making money fast. There are other fantastic guides in the guide section going more into detail particularly on enhancement conversion and farming.

Yes, get fire resist hard capped and fire defense softcapped, then put burn on auto. That’s basically it. Just keep in mind that the devs do intend to destroy afk farming with a merciless vengeance when they have the time. See below. So, I wouldn’t depend on it as it will eventually get fixed. I have actually thought a good way to destroy afk farming without harming active farming is to have detoggling occur in AE after a certain time threshold if the only active power running is done so with the auto command. That said, fire resist capped and defense softcapped brutes and tankers are the standard for active farming as well. So, even when afk farming is destroyed you can still use the farmer just fine.

War mace stalker would be fun 🙂. Assassins strike replace jawbreaker and placate replace whirling mace would the most likely changes. Just as long as they keep clobber and crowd control. Energy aura and Regen on tankers. I really want both of those armor sets on tankers.

I don’t do a whole lot of pylon testing. However, I have no doubt that energy melee will be at or near the top for single target damage. You cant go wrong with energy aura. One of, if not the best, stalker secondaries. You could also go bio armor for even more damage.

I’m not calling out anyone by name, but there was quite a bit of the negative feedback that was not negative feedback, but rather just insulting the dev team. Saying, “I don’t like X change for Y reason” is a far cry from saying, “I don’t like X change and therefore the dev team is lazy, thoughtless, has no good reasoning, and doesn’t listen to feedback.” Having arguments back and forth about who likes/dislikes any given change is fine and expected with big changes. However, when a negative stance is used as an excuse to insult the dev team, then it is expected that people would call out said insults. This did happen quite a bit.

So now that i27 is live and I already made the alts in the OP, here is my new list! Energy Melee / Bio Scrapper: Crit for over 2300 with energy transfer on an even con boss. Need I say more? Dual Pistols / Ninja Blaster: The inner zombie apocalypse enthusiasts always wanted a gun + sword combo character. The buffs to ninja training make me super excited. I’m also thinking of taking the teleport pool for this toon too! MA / Regen Brute: Not new and shiny I know, but it is a combo I always wanted to try on live. I had to leave the game before the powerset proliferations due to life circumstances. I was a brute main, but loved MA and Regen. I always said, “they will never give brutes either MA or regen.” Well, I’m finally getting around to making what I thought never would be. Bonus Alts: Electric / Bio Sentinel (I have a special plan for this one) and Dual Blades/ Energy stalker.

What does the error actually say? If you haven’t already, try closing out of tequila completely, then reopening it. This will make it revalidate. Then log into the game to see if you are still having issues. If you are still having issues, someone smarter than me will have to chime in.

I decided to give db/ea stalker another go. I had tested it quite a bit on test, but wasn’t super happy with it at the time. Probably didn’t help that I had been playing my db/ea scrapper a lot at the time. It’s been a little over a month since I have tried either. The recent thread asking about db on stalkers made me curious to try it out again. Now that I don’t have either version (stalker or scrapper) fresh in my mind I gave stalkers another try. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time I tested it. I still like the scrapper version and will not be deleting it or cannibalizing it’s IO sets. However, I did enjoy the stalker version enough to commit to making one on live. With the new changes to SOs and enhancement upgrades coming in i27, my db/ea stalker will be one of 4 toons I plan to level up without any power leveling. So I will definitely get the full feel of it by level 50. Then I can reevaluate which I like better: db/ea stalker or db/ea scrapper.