Saikochoro

It took a long time for me to even get a level 50 on homecoming because of my altitis. I have subsequently created an alt power level account that helps feed that addiction quickly. That said, I have a discovered a few favorites that I keep going back to even after unlocking incarnates and giving it a 500m purpled out build. Not necessarily in order: 1. DP/MC blaster - this one honestly surprised me how fun it was. I’m all about damage so always went with fire or ice with a stronger secondary. However, no blaster has come even close to dethroning my DP/MC in terms of fun and playtime. It is in a league of its own for my blasters. This is the sole alt that holds the name “Saiko”. 2. Dark Melee/Shield scrapper - this also surprised me because, for some unknown reason I never really had internet in dark or shield. But after reading some forums I gave it a go, and boy am I glad I did. The synergy between the archetype and primary/secondary powersets is second to none. By far my favorite melee character. 3. Fire/Bio sentinel - the most surprising favorite of all because I had always had a “meh” attitude for sentinels because of their lower damage compared to blasters. However, really pushing the offensive capability of this particular combo created an extremely fun character that I play consistently. I have several others that I really enjoy and play a lot, but those were the three (out of ~80 alts) that came to the forefront of my mind. The most interesting thing is that I was surprised by how much I liked each of those combos because I was doubtful going in.

While I do think that people should be testing changes they have a vested interest in, I trust the devs to be able to differentiate feedback based on testing versus feedback based on theory. Again, I think people should be testing when they really care about something, but I can also understand some initial “thoughts” on changes based on the patch notes. For example, I provided my initial thoughts on the SOs/enhancement upgrade function before actually testing it. I have subsequently tested it and provided a little more feedback. Also, it is perfectly fine for people to dislike a change even if the set as a whole is just plain better. People may understand and totally agree that a change may be functionally superior than what is current on live. However, it is perfectly reasonable to still dislike the change for one reason or another and to share that opinion. What I don’t think is reasonable is to then say that the devs are being lazy or thoughtless in what they chose to change. Or to say that they don’t have any good reason for doing things and are not listening to feedback. Obviously a lot of hard work, thought, and testing went into this update even before the open beta. They have also engaged the community during the entire testing processes and even chose to forgo certain changes based on feedback. In summary, although we should be testing to provide solid feedback expressing some initial thoughts isnt necessarily a bad thing. Especially if those thoughts are then followed up with actual testing results. Disliking a change is also completely fine. Expressing dislike of a change is also completely fine. Stating the devs are lazy, thoughtless, and not listening to feedback because you don’t like said change is not okay.

Reward merits will definitely be able to fund the SO needs. One thing I’d like to mention. While I do very much like this system and the upgrade feature, people still need to be careful in using it. I personally think it is perfect as is, but I could see people going broke if they use it too liberally. I was doing some testing on it and when I hit the upgrade button with a full set of SOs at level 10 it cost 262,008 to upgrade all the SOs. Merit rewards are more than enough to cover this cost every few levels. However, if people try upgrading every single time they level up they could end up wasting a lot of influence. I suggest people only use the upgrade button every 3-5 levels. If someone just completed a task force and got a lot of merits, by all means upgrade more often. However, upgrading every 3-5 levels will still help people maintain good enhancement levels whilst not wasting a lot of influence on unnecessary upgrades. Again, I think the system is awesome. People just need to be conscious of how often they use it is all. Merit rewards can easily fund a reasonable frequency of upgrades.

One more thing to note about attuned enhancements. The auction house puts all enhancements of the same name into one pot. So a level 37 Crushing Impact Acc/Dam is the same as a level 50 Crushing Impact Acc/Dam is the same as an Attuned Crushing Impact Acc/Dam. This means that say I put a level 37 Crushing Impact Acc/Dam on the market and even if it is the only one for sale. You place a high enough bid on the attuned version of that enhancement and you will purchase my enhancement, but the market will automatically attune it for free. So, in general, if you want attuned IOs, it is better to just bid on the attuned versions on the market. It saves you the cost of a catalyst for each IO. Note, however, that the same is not true for ATOs/WOs catalyst process. If you want the superior version you have to bid on the superior version or manually catalyze the normal version. As for buying the recipes outright with merits, it is generally agreed that it is much more cost effective to liquidate the merits into influence and then buy the IO on the market. However, if you are merit rich and don’t want to deal with the market it is fine to buy the recipes from the merit vendors. Edit: looks like three of us were typing the same thing at the same time regarding attuned IOs.

I thought it was a troll thread too, but as the OP keeps on going it does appear that they are serious. As a troll thread it was mildly annoying and not really cutting it as humor. As a serious complaint, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. People nowadays will find anything to complaint about. I’m thinking people should just stop feeding the thread.

@ForeverLaxxinstead of quoting and taking up even more screen real estate I’m just tagging you instead. First, I’m going to thank you for not including insults with your response. I appreciate that. Heated debates are completely fine and expected with balance changes. If you feel I have resorted to insults previously please let me know and I will correct any statements and apologize. So that said, thank you for your reasoned response. Now, back to our regularly scheduled argument. Each of your points have been brought up in the thread a number of time. It’s not that I don’t understand that arguments are there, we just don’t agree on them. I think I am just thinking of them differntly, not necessarily better, just different. Big picture: the devs appear to be trying to balance the secondaries in relation to each other. Whether we agree on all the changes is another story. Their goal does indeed be to try to achieve greater parity between sets and adjust safety levels of some sets. Big picture: in my opinion, keywords “my” and “opinion”, none of the changes to tactical arrow fundamentally change how it plays. It did get some range changes and I do agree it does change how it plays, but it doesn’t change its core. It is still a ranged secondary and not a blapping secondary. Like I said, big picture. So here are my final thought (famous last words “final”) on this matter. Do I like the changes? Honestly, not really. Though I am on the fence with oil slick arrow. Do I hate it? No, I don’t hate it either. Why? Because I feel like the set still plays as a good ranged secondary and none of the updates really change that. I feel that nerfs overall were probably justified because tactical arrow was a very strong secondary. I don’t feel like it was overperforming to a Titan weapons degree, but I can at least understand the adjustments. I also understand wanting to making adjustments to try to achieve parity. Perfect parity will never happen because each set has their own unique element, but I understand the goal. I don’t think either of us is going to convince the other of their opinion. That is fine. I just don’t see a point in continuing to argue it because we both have said our piece. The devs have seen both opinions and will make their decision. Unfortunately, we won’t always agree with their decision, but I think it is only fair to understand that they do have reasons for their decisions. And to them, their reasons are good. That is honestly my whole point in these arguments. I hope you can still enjoy the game even if all these changes go through.

The devs have already stated in the first post that some sets were too safe. Some sets had too strong of CC, and tactical arrow was able to do everything at range and thus never had to get into melee range. These things lead the set to have too much safety. They said they wanted to level the playing field. They nerfed the cc on some sets and nerfed the range on some tactical arrow powers to achieve a greater degree of parity. They didn’t nerf the range all the way down to melee range, but they did make it so they at least have to get a little closer. Tactical arrow is still a safe set and still a very good hover blasting set. The changes have been justified by the devs. People have tested the changes. Some hate them and some don’t. Just because you don’t agree with the justification does not mean the changes do not have justification.

Not getting softcap defenses on tac arrow is on you not the set. Tac arrow can be build to softcap s/l/e and ranged if you want to. Just because the set itself doesn’t include melee or pbaoe doesn’t mean that pool powers can’t be used for such. It is not unheard of to slot of pool powers or even to use them as mules. This is certainly not unique to tac arrow. Tac arrow has a big advantage of being able to do everything at range thus providing it with a good amount of safety. It can also achieve softcaps just like any other blaster secondary. Again, not achieving softcaps with tac arrow is a build choice.

Emphasis added by me to call out points. There has been good reason for this change and parity among sets is one the BEST reasons for a change. Like it or not, balance matters and things are balanced relative to other things performing similar tasks. As such, blaster secondaries must all have parity to a degree or else we have a Titan weapons issue. Parity does not mean exactly the same. It means that they are balanced. Tactical arrow was imbalanced because it was so safe. So they made some changes to it to bring aspects of it in line with other sets. Tactical arrow still plays significantly different than something like atomic manipulation or martial combat. So it is still unique. Just not as powerful as it was before. You say you like other changes and imply that they were good, but you don’t like this change. You imply that because you don’t like it it is bad, and any reasoning for said change is also bad. We aren’t going to like all changes, it doesn’t mean they are bad or not well reasoned. It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t listening to feedback. Listening to feedback =/= doing everything you want them to do. Again, tactical arrow will still play as a ranged set and is not in the slightest the same as blapper heavy sets. None of the nerfs/changes change that.

They are listening and paying attention to feedback. They have providing responses all throughout everything that has been tested, including tactical arrow. Just because their responses don’t line up with your view doesn’t mean they aren’t engaging the community. I don’t like the dark melee changes, but I’m not accusing them of not listening to feedback or paying attention to it. I just realize that they must not agree with my opinion on the change and that is okay.

True enough. Like I said, I accept the changes as is even if I personally don’t like them. I’m honestly not really bent out of shape about it. It was really the only thing I wasn’t super happy about in the issue. Plus I’m sure some people like the change so it’s all good. And you are right, it doesn’t mean that further changes may not happen in the future.

Since we are now getting into release candidates I just wanted to give my overall impression of i27. Overall my impressions are very positive as I like most of what was done. I won’t touch on everything I tested, but only the things I feel very strongly about. I know a lot of hard work went into this, so I appreciate even the things that I don’t like as much. Things I love: -Energy Melee revamp: knocked it out of the park with this one. This is about as perfect as I could wish it to be. -Energy Melee for scrappers: pure awesomeness. Thank you. -Ninja training revamp - love this so much. I am excited to make and play ninja blasters now! -Enhancement changes - pure genius. This change alone has made me plan a whole new playing experience that I will detail in a general discussion post once i27 is live. The only thing that I disliked enough to mention is the dark melee changes. I do not like the touch of fear AoE. I think it is much too weak, especially since shadow maul was nerfed for it. I think it would have been better just to buff up shadow maul. That said, even if this goes forward as is, I am okay with it. It won’t change my build as I will simply not respec into touch of fear. I will have a slightly weaker shadow maul, but I accept that. I still appreciate the work done on this set even if I don’t like it personally. I didn’t have time to test everything as there is just so much that went into this issue. I just have to say very well done and thank you for all the work you did on this issue. Thanks also for all the involvement in the feedback threads! I’m so excited for i27 to launch!

An Rad/EM tanker will do outstanding damage. Sure it won’t be as much as a scrapper, but it definitely won’t be lacking in damage.

I would go EM on scrapper purely because EM is new on scrappers and it is awesome. Having tested the new EM on each archetype I can say that scrapper is definitely my favorite followed by tanker. I personally feel that rad armor is better on a tanker than a scrapper. Tankers benefit more from higher armor multipliers, higher resist caps, and higher HP. Tankers will always have substantially more survivability than scrappers, but scrappers can still be built sturdy enough. I think out of the armors you listed above energy aura would fit best on a scrapper. That said, rad armor is still great on scrappers.

It still works perfectly fine as a ranged secondary. Absolutely none of the changes has changed it in that regard. Not even reducing the range on some powers. They still have plenty of range.

Red is easier to type than villain and gold is easier than praetorian. To be consistent it is then therefore easier to type blue.

I think your build is pretty good overall and agree that ageless will fix whatever endurance issues you are having. This would probably be true even if you went musculature for the alpha and assult for hybrid. Ageless is just awesome. Here are a few things I noticed that may be leading to some endurance issues: -Tactics - it looks like you are taking this for the extra to-hit. I totally understand not wanting to whiff on enemies, but given you accuracy bonuses this probably is not needed. -Assassins Strike - I see that you are proc'ing this out for max damage. This does however result in it having no endurance reduction. Given that this has a high endurance costs and low recharge, this may be one of the culprits as well. -Active Defense - You have two slots allocated to this. The way you have it slotted gives you about 5 seconds where you are triple stacked for the extra DDR. However, if you boost one recharge and make the other a endurance reductions that would help with endurance. And you would still have almost perma double stack. Here is a savage/shield build that incorporates your attack power picks, but makes several changes while trying to stay true to what I perceived your goals to be. Some notes: -All of this is assuming you are using agility alpha per one of the comments you made earlier. -I build to pick up musculature and cover the last bit of defense gap with barrier destiny. -Dropped leadership in favor of sorcercy. Two goals for this change: reduce number of toggles running and increase survivability and also get a travel power. By dropping these you are saving 0.6/sec endurance before factoring blood frenzy discounts. You also get 50% uptime on a crashless t9ish resist power in rune of protection. -All the accuracy bonuses should prevent you from missing too much even without tactics. -Changed Assassin's strike to traditional slotting instead of proc slotting - Partially for set bonuses to work and partially to help with endurance. This will do less damage than your version, but it will still hit very hard. -Changed hemorrage to 5 slot hecatomb + TOD damage proc. With musculature and slotting this should actually do more damage this way (at least according to mids). -This build will give you a 2/sec recovery/consumption ratio if you were to avg 3 stacks of blood frenzy. -Still took and slotted the two epic pool attacks. -Has similar recharge to your build. Here is the build: I am not saying this build is better than yours at all. Just giving some alternatives to give you some ideas on how to possibly adjust your build if you so choose.

Dark melee is one of my favorite sets. I honestly think these changes are overboard. It is already has strong single target damage especially given that soul drain has such high uptime. I don’t think siphon life needs to have higher dpa. It is already a decent attack and doubles as rotational healing. Making touch of fear a nuke on top of buffing shadow maul is just asking for the set to be subsequently nerfed. I don’t want another Titan weapons. I’d argue to scrap the touch of fear changes altogether and just buff the range and arc of shadow maul. I don’t think every set needs to have great single target AND great AoE damage. Balance wise each set should have a scaling mix of both. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have fun with the OPs suggestions. I just feel they are too much and the result would be overpowered. Just my opinion.

Honestly can’t tell if the OP is trolling or not. You’d think something like this would be obvious, but sometimes people can surprise you. This sounds somewhat reminiscent of the east/west versus grass/snow argument in SWTOR. Most people gravitated toward snow/grass because it was easier for people to understand and identify faster. Red/blue is just easier to type. That’s said, it honestly don’t matter.

Ugh I feel for you. My biggest mistake was 100m. Put one to many zeros on a pvp IO. It’s never fun when that happens. At least it made someone else happy though right? To make me feel better I told myself it was someone who is new to the game, just worked a 14 hour shift at work, got the baby down to bed, and just needed to take some time to decompress. Then logged in to see that a pvp IO that they got as a lucky drop the week before sold for 110m influence!

Glad you are liking your sav/shield stalker! For endurance concerns, you might try using rending flurry at 3 or 4 stacks instead of 5. You get better bonuses at 5 stacks, but it also consumes your blood frenzy stacks. I have found that rending flurry with 3-4 stacks is still a good AoE on a decently short cooldown. Given the recharge of the power it also should be off cooldown by the time you build up 3-4 stacks. This will help with endurance because blood frenzy gives you an endurance discount and by not using rending with 5 stacks you won't become exhausted. Instead you will have a constant endurance discount and +rech bonus. I usually only use 5 stack rending for the opening strike on a mob. I will use the 5 stack hemmorage on EBs and AVs, but otherwise usually use it with 3-4 stacks. It does reduce your damage somewhat, but you are rewarded with more uptime on higher recharge and endurance discount. If you want you can share your build and I can try looking at it to see how to fix your endurance woes. I always build with the intention to take musculature alpha, degenerative or reactive interface, and assault hybrid since I am pretty much always playing a dps role. If I can't fix my endurance needs via slotting I usually turn to the ageless destiny, which makes all endurance problems go away.

No problem at all. This is probably my 5th or 6th iteration of the my dark/shield build so it is the product of a lot of trial and error, but it is finally what I want it to be. I'm glad you like it. I used to also only take sorcery on blasters, but once I realized that rune of protection is basically a weaker t9 armor power without any crash and a high uptime I saw a great opportunity to bolster up my melee toons. It is a staple on all of my energy aura characters. I even take it on some of my tankers! It is one of the best pool powers in my opinion.

I actually usually auto complete the second to last mission because the boss is always hiding in the weirdest spots when I go through the arc.

Sure. I can post it once I am able to get to my personal computer. Keep in mind that I made a pretty large concession in my build that many likely would not agree with. I conceded a little ranged defense to pick up a lot of resistance. To me the extra resistance mitigation was worth more than the loss of ranged defense. I have played it extensively after my respec and have no regrets and is still one of the sturdiest and best damaging combos I have. Edit: Build is below. The concession above was 4% ranged defense because I chose not to pick up the leadership pool. I value the extra mitigation given through 50% uptime on rune of protection more. That is a personal preference. You can forgo the sorcery pool to pick up leadership and thus maneuvers if you like. Also, I did not pick a destiny. So you could go barrier to cover that last bit to the softcap if you want. I have not found the loss of 4% ranged defense to be a problem though even on +4/8 solo content. Granted I don't Werner rules solo MoITFs. Make sure to play around with the soul drain and AAO values to get a good idea of the damage with various buff bonuses. Also see the difference between with rune and without for the resist value. As a side note, after testing the dark melee changes on beta, I will not be respecing into touch of fear. I’m not very impressed with that AoE and don’t want to screw up my build to get it. Shield charge + shadow maul is enough AoE for my purposes.

I don’t know that I would call it an emergency, but Regeneration has long been known to be in need of some changes. I’m sure many would agree on that. So, with that I am going to link to @Bopperrework from the Regen weekly discussion. If this were implemented I am pretty sure I would be even more excited than I am for the energy melee beta. Granted this is a rework more than an emergency numbers change. Still I think Regen deserves it.