Saikochoro

Most of my feedback is in the scrapper thread as I’ve only tested EM/SD scrappers so far. Overall, I love the changes. Power crash is not overly strong and EM is still far behind other sets in terms of AoE from what I have tested so far. However, this is a good thing as EM has outstanding single target damage. I think this is a good thing and how the set should be. I like the energy focus and release mechanic as well as how crits on scrapper/stalker heal instead of take away health with energy transfer. I think it was a good call to not allow full crit on total focus and to not allow crit damage on energy transfer. Unlucky streaks of non-crit energy transfer cans still crash your health without other sources of healing so that is also a good balance point. Lastly, I saw mention of turning total focus into AoE and I fully disagree with that. Energy melee does not need more AoE than it has already given. It should remain a top tier single target set and I think these changes accomplish that very nicely. Overall I am very pleased with the EM changes and proliferation to scrapper.

Some more testing. Compared to my t3 musculature only savage/bio my fully t4 EM/shield (not using judgment nuke) definitely does not have as much AoE power. The savage/bio easily outclasses it in terms of AoE. It also has some decent single target so overall clear speeds are faster than EM/shield. That said, EM does take out bosses faster for sure. After more testing power crash does feel pretty slow and is on the weaker side, but I think this is a good thing. EM should not have very strong AoE in addition to very strong single target. I think it is a good balance point to have weaker (though still some) AoE and stronger single target. So, I definitely do not think it’s just another Titan weapons, which was king of both. EM is still definitely single target oriented, which is great. More testing to follow.

Alright I put together a EM/SD scrapper with a decent build with all the goodies (perma hasten, softcaps, good resists, procs). My notes: -single target burst is very good. Top tier. This is expected from energy melee and I don’t think it is out of line honestly. -AoE damage is still on the lower end of sets. The added AoE power is nice, but not amazing, which I think is good. If I didn’t have shield to supplement the AoE, then I would still say several other sets do AoE a lot better. Again, I feel like this is as it should be. I did a few radios at +4/8 and taking out the bosses was nice and fast. The new AoE feels somewhat slow, which is okay. It did help take down some minions, but it felt better to cycle through the enemies using single target rotations. Overall clear speed even when favoring AoE powers didn’t seem overly fast. Other scrappers will definitely have faster kill all times. I think this set will really shine in AV encounters, which I think is proper. No doubt this is probably going to be the king of single target. My limited testing leans toward that conclusion. However, I think that is how the set always should have been. Making total focus not crit for the full amount was probably a good compromise and making energy transfer unable to crit was also good. I do like the heal from crit energy transfer, but even with the critical strikes proc in total focus I did get several unlucky streaks with non crit energy transfers that took my health down noticeably in an extended fight. Overall I am very pleased. I especially like that they doubled down on the single target nature instead of doing extreme AoE buffs.

The difference from Titan weapons is that EM does not have the same level of AoE power that Titan weapons had in addition to its extreme single target damage. I know they added some AoE damage, but I highly doubt it will be nearly as much as Titan weapons had. I’ll have to test. Though I think it’s fine for EM to have very good single target damage.

I would not consider a kill all a speed run even if it was accomplished in 30-45 minutes. If the team didn’t kill all it would have been done much faster. It does sound like a false advertising a speed run to me. I consider a speed run to be as follows: 1. Only fight the mobs around the sybils and recue them skipping all other mobs. 2. Only destroy shadow crystals skipping everything else. 3. Only fight the generals (including Requiem) and if necessary their immediate mobs. Then fight the Romulus and the computer. 4. Fly over and fight Romulus and his mob. Then kill the traitors on top of the two buildings and hill to get to the traitor quota. I have ran 5 speed ITFs this week. Three of them took 20-21 minutes. Two of them took 17-19 minutes.

Thanks for the correction. That was left over thinking from the melee version. That’s nice that they got it. I will make the correction in my post. That said, I still think chasing all the types softcaps forces one to give up too much on the offense front in terms of recharge and procs.

Well updating my computer seems to have fixed it. Still not sure what went wrong though.

I am experiencing a strange bug when I try to rearrange the windows on my screen. If I try to move any of the windows (power trays, character health/endurance/do bar, target bar, enhancement tray, etc) they immediately jump to the very center of my screen and then will not move from there. The only way to get them back to their proper place is to load from the default window file. I tried this on multiple characters and they all do it. I tried exiting the game entirely and logging back in and the problem persists. I tried exiting tequila entirely and then going back and it didn’t work. I then recalibrated the manifest and logged back in and problem is still there. Does this whenever I try to move anything. They all go to the center and wont budge. Any suggestions?

No problem. I love energy aura on any archetype that can have it. It is so well rounded and can be built very sturdy. It can fit in all the defenses it needs easily so slotting is flexible to allow for procs and recharge. Plus it gives you +rech to help you offensively. When you lean into bio armors strengths it will still out damage energy aura. However, energy aura is just great overall.

I’m not at my personal computer so can’t post my build yet, but I have a few notes about how I have felt about bio armor since joining homecoming. Bio armor used to be my absolute favorite armor set, bar none. I used it all the time for any archetype that could take it. So much so that I ended up making a thread in general discussion to talk me out of using it. Many months later, it is no longer my favorite. It is still a fantastic set, but I have gravitated towards energy aura as being an overall better set in my opinion. That being said, bio is still great and its main advantage is the offensive boost it gives. When building be careful to not trap yourselves by building it the same as you would some other sets. Also keep in mind that bio leans towards typed defense rather than positional. I personally would not shoot for softcaps, especially S/L. You have to give up a lot of recharge set bonuses and procs to fit in all that extra defense. Plus you don’t have DDR. Edit: only the melee version doesn’t have DDR. Sentinel are special and they get DDR in athletic regulation. Shoot for close to S/L resist cap to take care of the majority of the s/l threat. You will still have some defenses for this as well, but won’t be gimping the main advantage of choosing an offensive set by chasing those bonuses. You can probably reach e/n softcaps without sacrificing too much. You should at least shoot for 40% on each of these because you don’t have any native resistance to these attacks. It’s easier to shore up the e/n threat via defense than resistance. I personally take barrier to get the last 5%. F/C you should be able to reach decent defense levels, but I honestly wouldn’t shoot for softcap. If you have purple sets those also usually offer some decent resist bonuses to these types to help in addition to your defense. Athletic regulation for sentinels is awesome and when paired with ninja run pretty much negates the needs for a travel power. I would push your recharge bonuses so that you can get your main clicks back quickly as they will be a huge portion of your survivability. This also benefits your damage by having a faster attack chain. Overall, if you really want to enjoy bio, then don’t gimp yourself by trying to make yourself as durable as invuln/energy aura/etc. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to handle a lot of damage, just lean into bios strength of offensive prowess. Some sets are just better offensively and some better defensively. Relaxing your focus on survivability a little will allows you the flexibility to really push the recharge and put in procs to make you really shine in the damage department, which is what bio armor is all about. Edit: Here is my fire/bio sentinel. I don't claim that this is the best build, but it has served me well. It is not my most durable sentinel, but still plenty sturdy and it easily does the most damage. It is very fun to play.

If you want something that is good for all content and decent at farming I would suggest a claws tank/brute/scrapper. Scrapper won’t be able to tank as much damage, but deals more in return. So you’d just need to be more careful in farms. If you aren’t building purely for a farm then you don’t need to go fire. If you happen to like fiery aura anyway, then that just happens to be the best farming armor. Other offensively strong armors that are good in all content include rad, shield, and bio. Though honestly if you don’t particularly care about speed you could choose just about any armor.

I was hooked on games from the first one I played. My parents didn’t really encourage gaming and never let us have any consoles. We did however have a PC that was only meant for work or educational purposes. I remember my brother got me up really early one Saturday morning a few hours before my parents normally woke up. He had gotten his hands a special floppy disk. He inserted it and booted up in MS-DOS. We then played Scorched Earth for a couple hours before reluctantly shutting it down, hiding the floppy, and getting back in bed right before my parents got up.

Usually you buy a lower level yellow recipe to keep crafting costs low. I use level 31 as I like the rare options in that level range. I then convert by type to get to rare, and then by rarity until I get a rate that sells for 2m+. At level 31, there are good rares in melee, pbaoe, ranged, resists, defense, healing, end mod, and a few others. So you don’t often have to use a lot of conversions to get to a good one. I think it is generally a bad idea to chase specific IOs, especially chasing within a set as that can waste a lot of converters. Only time I’ll use some extra converters is to change a defense IO to LOTG, but I don’t chase the +rech one. This can be very profitable, and it can pretty much always be done because it isn’t a niche. It is diversified so you can do it even if everyone else is. It is just somewhat slower than niches because of the number of clicks involved.

I will go based on actual time spent on the market including crafting time, but not time spent waiting for item to sale. My latest full turnaround session took less than 10 minutes crafting, converting, and placing on the market. I made a little over 135m after taking fees out when I picked up the inf on the sold items the next day. So that would equate to ~810m per hour. Taking out original crafting costs drops that to about 400m per hour. That said, I only spend about 10-15 mins on the market 2-3 times a week. So I don’t actually earn all that much. If I actually spent hours on it I would have much more than I do.

I’m not sure, but since it can take so many procs you are probably better off fully slotting out procs sans maybe one slot for a normal enhancement.

This is very true. I actually like that it can double stack for the extra DDR.

My example was a pretty clear example to show that it is pointless to try use inspirations as points in a balance discussion as is evident by the last sentence. You brought up inspiration usage to counter the weaknesses of bio armor. You say bio can pop 1-2 lucks to overcome its shortcomings? Any other set can chomp 1-2 reds and achieve the same offensive advantage that bio has when not at damage cap. At the damage cap the difference is minimal. At the damage cap the extra toxic damage is also fairly minimal comparative to the total damage going out. Inspiration usage is not unique to bio armor. It doesn’t help bio armor more than other sets. I will repeat inspirations are not a relevant factor when arguing balance. I will also repeat my opinion that bio armor is not an overpowered outlier. Other sets have advantages that bio armor doesn’t. Bio armors greatest advantage is offensive adaption. Offensive strength is not unique to bio armor as other sets have large boosts to offensive power as well.

I get that the extra tick of toxic that bio does is part of the offense perks of the set. However, the majority of the buff is due to the +dam with hardened carapace with offensive adaptation. I did some testing with my level 50 savage/bio scrapper. Tests done on level 50 Death Mage using vicious slash. No reds with offensive off: 432.82 lethal No reds with offensive on: 479.11 lethal + 28.14 toxic = 507.25 total. Toxic tick of 5.87% of the lethal damage dealt. With reds boosting me to damage cap and offensive on: 1,065.01 lethal + 30.95 toxic = 1,095.96 total. Toxic tick of 2.9% of the lethal damage dealt. Dont get me wrong, offensive adaptation does add a good damage boost. And the toxic tick is nice, better than nothing. However, the toxic tick from offensive adaptation is a fairly small portion of the added damage and is pretty immaterial when you are at the damage cap as the toxic tick barely changed.

Lucks can’t overcome the base to hit chance. Rages provide benefits all the way up to the damage cap. I know kins can provide a damage bonus, but if everyone is at the damage cap then bio/shield/rad/ etc aren’t really all that much higher than the competition. Most of the time people aren’t running around at the damage cap. Therefore rage inspirations can dramatically alter performance. Even so, it doesn’t matter if they are linear or not. Inspirations usage can dramatically alter the performance of a set and should not be used as arguments in how powerful a set is. I could pop a tray full of purples, oranges, and reds on my Regen scrapper. Then say how over powered regen is because it does insane damage, has capped resists, softcapped defense on top 1600% Regen with HP being capped. That would be a completely illogical argument. Inspirations should never be considered in balance discussions.

Inspirations shouldn’t be included to “prove” a set is overpowered. If you are going to argue luck inspirations make bio overpowered then I could say enrage inspirations make less offensively focused secondaries overpowered. This argument is a complete non-starter.

Shield defense has an even higher bonus to offense than either rad or bio. Some sets are more geared towards offensive power. I compare bio armor to other sets I play and if I don’t want to sacrifice recharge/procs and thus detracting from its offensive prowess, it is does not stack up defensively comparative to several sets. You don’t have to be soloing a buffed enemies +4/8 ITF to notice that. It is no secret that bio armor is strong offensively, but it does have to sacrifice to get to the same level of survivability other sets offer. That seems to be a good trade off for its offensive strength. Some sets offer better mitigation. Some offer better offensive power. Some sets are a mix. Bio armor is honestly not the top dog in any of those regards when factoring in all available sets. It may be high up on the list, but I wouldn’t even say it’s the best secondary, much less an overpowered outlier.

Well shield defense can get a larger damage bonus with AAO in addition to a telenuke. Rad gets a large damage bonus with meltdown that has pretty good uptime in addition to getting +rech. +Dam isn’t the only thing that boosts offensive performance. Several sets have large bonuses to recharge that neither bio or shield get. I actually used to really like bio until I found that I kept having to sacrifice recharge/procs to be able to get the same level of survivability as other sets. Not saying bio armor isn’t a good set, it really is, but I don’t think it is a true outlier.

Does the ninjitsu power that makes first attack from stealth on scrappers affect AoEs similar to hide on stalkers? Would shadow maul have 100% crit chance or only 50?

Every so often though I will find a nice niche to sit in for a while until the profit margin erodes. Then I just go back to converter roulette until I eventually find a new niche. I used to have a niche that I could easily make 8-10m per sale in profit. I kept it up for about 3 months, but did it in small volume to not arose too much interest. I did maybe 25-30 a week. Eventually the profit margin eroded to the point where I lost interest and moved back to converter roulette. I’ve done converter roulette enough to know all of the IOs worth selling on my given level range. It usually doesn’t take more than a few conversions to make a profit of 1.5-2m off a recipe. Sometimes I will convert more if I land on a defense IO.

Since posting earlier in this thread I recently finished a fire/bio sentinel. While it isn’t as survivable as my beam/EA it does a lot more damage and is honestly more fun for me.