Saikochoro

My vote would be for energy aura. Has basically everything you need/want in a secondary. It’s not a brute, but my dual blades scrapper is energy aura and it’s great.

True. The fail of bullets fix is my serious prediction. My not so serious prediction: super strength added to scrappers as a full port with full strength rage using scrapper modifiers and no nerfs. Edit: decided not to fix the auto correct of hail > fail because that word is fitting of the ability without the fix.

As long as the hail of bullets fix gets in I’ll be happy.

I understand that, but it does have some AoE. It’s just not very good. Just like martial arts. Both of those were clearly meant to be stand out single target sets and thus have AoE that is on the weaker side. Right now, there are better single target alternatives to both that also have better AoE. What I’m saying is the AoE can stay weak, but the single target needs to be strong enough to the point that it’s weaker AoE is understandable. I understand, and can appreciate, the desire to buff the AoE of both sets. I, however, would rather them keep their single target focus and instead beef up their single target damage so they are top single target dogs. It’s only fair with the low AoE damage.

Don’t want to get boo’d off the stage, but I also don’t particularly want an AoE buff on energy melee. Sets whose main claim to fame is single target damage should double down on that instead of making every set AoE monsters. Energy melee should however be a super threat in single target. I think energy transfer should get a full revert of all nerfs. Given the self damage aspect of ET, I personally think this attack should hit harder than anything else in the game. Then if that isn’t enough, reduce the animation time of total focus slightly without gutting it’s damage. Those things alone would make me super happy.

I’m going to be honest. I’ve never really looked closely at the IO icon for guassians. That coupled with the fact that I have really bad eye sight, the only thing that caught my eye was what appear to be two red things sticking out the back of something. To me the red things looked like wings sticking straight up. So I always thought it was like a bird or a dragon haha.

Yes, there were skill arguments too. Often times that relates back to balance or class tribalism. Not always, but often. I still think that is different than arguments about how the game is played such as farming vs story content. The closest thing that I’ve encountered is the pve versus pvp arguments. For example, pvp people often disparage pve crowd skill. Pve crowd often disparage pvp crowds character. However, they don’t often argument about how you should play pve. At least not in my experience.

I mentioned Destiny 2 along with overwatch, swtor, and gw2. Toxicity is not the same idea as what has been argued in this thread in my opinion. I would say toxicity relates more to HOW people engage in arguments rather than WHAT they are arguing about. The Destiny 2 community was definitely more toxic in how they interacted. However, the arguments, while more aggressive, still mainly revolved around balance. Sure it usually devolved into “hunters are trash excuses for a human being” type insults, but it was still usually based on balance arguments. I would say overwatch is also more toxic than homecoming in that arguments almost always devolve into insults and even start with them. However, again, they are almost always based on balance decisions or the tank and support vs dps tribalism that game has. The homecoming forums do still get toxic with insults thrown around in the course of an arguments, but not nearly as often or as bad. However, the arguments in homecoming more often revolve around how people play the game (i.e. PLing/farming is bad), versus the game itself (i.e. balance). This community can be less toxic and more bossy at the same time. In my experience, this community does have a lot more complaints and loud voices lobbying for people to play the “correct” way than other games. But agree, the arguments usually don’t devolve into insulting cesspits as often.

In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head once again in this thread. It really does boil down to some people spending far too much time and effort worrying about how others play the game. I haven’t participated in a ton of game forums, but I have actively participated in swtor, gw2, overwatch, Destiny 2, and this forum. There are bossy people in each game. However I noticed that in each of the 4 games I listed above (not including homecoming) the mass majority arguments relate to balance as opposed to how people are playing the game. Each community had their own issues that were annoying. However, out of the games I have played a lot, and participated in the forum community, this one definitely wins the prize for bossy subsections of the community trying to mandate how people play the game.

You aren’t going to win any arguments by throwing around insults.

I often exemplar. I always pick the most useful powers (IMO) first as I level so that I’m useful at most levels. I ALWAYS slot attuned IOs.

I give up on characters when I find something that does their job better. I’m much more about powerset combinations than about themes or backstory. I gave up on my dual blades / bio scrapper when I found that my dual blades / energy aura scrapper was much much better. I gave up masterminds completely. Tried several into the 20s. Took one to 50 with a full build and incarnates. Just couldn’t get used to them. Partly because it is hard for me to figure out how to build them in terms of their pets (getting Pets to softcap defense hard cap resist). I haven’t figured out how to see that in mids so that doesn’t help.

Honestly 100 per day is pretty easy too, but even with limited play time 100 per week is a super achievable goal.

Claws/EA scrapper is a superb combination that is good for all content. Great choice!

You honestly don’t need to use the auction house hardly at all to make decent influence. It seems that you are able to have a pretty decent amount of time available to play the game. It also appears that you enjoy teaming. I would suggest that you start running some task forces. It is pretty easy to accumulate ~100 merits per week running task forces. Especially if you run the weekly strike targets. Take those merits and turn them into converters at a merit vendor. Then sell the converters on the auction house. Converters are in such demand that you could even list them for 1 influence each and still get a good price for them. This would only require a couple minutes at most on the auction house. Literally just listing the converters and then collecting the influence. 100 merits will get roughly 16 million influence (accounting for fees) on a somewhat conservative price estimate of 60k per converter. And it would be super easy given that you seem to enjoy teams and also seem to have a decent block of time to play. Some activities such as the Hamidon raid will reward 80 merits with a single defeat that takes 30 ish minutes between forming the raid and doing the monster hunt. That’s just one event and bam 80 merits. The imperious task force (ITF) is run all the time and takes 30 minutes give or take a few and rewards 26 merits. It is always easy to find an ITF team. If the task force happens to be the weekly strike target you get double merits. I once accumulated 400 merits in one play session without a whole lot of planning. It just joined whenever people advertised various task forces, which happened to be weekly strike targets + some raid runs. Those 400 merits = ~ 64m influence. Granted you often won’t get that many in one play session, but they can accumulate really quick throughout the week.

Just want to provide another opinion on ToE +End. I had originally planned my rad/ss tanker to take this proc in radiation therapy, but found that I honestly did not need or even want it. Rad offers so much endurance management that I didn’t need the proc and used the slot for another damage proc instead. Seriously, I could attack continuously and keep sprint without any endurance problems even as I leveled. I’m sure it is nice to have, but I don’t think it is necessary for rad armor. I’m not trying to say the proc is a bad choice by any means. I’m just saying, rad is one of the armors that have great recovery/endurance tools built into the set already. Just putting this out there so that people don’t think ToE is an absolute necessity. Rad armor is one of the few armor sets on which I have never really felt the endurance consumption pain.

If you aren’t set on invulnerability I’d mention trying Energy Aura as the secondary for dual blades. It is a great secondary that has a lot of build options. Main reason I am mentioning it is because my dual blades scrapper has energy aura secondary. It is outstanding. Chews through enemies very fast and is very survivable. I personally haven’t played invulnerability on a scrapper, so I can’t offer any insight on the secondary. However, I do like dual blades the best on scrappers.

I really enjoy my savage melee / energy aura brute. Great survivability and great damage. Savage leap is very fun and lets you engage enemies with a boom.

Well said. Though, I think it’s incorrect to label a player selfish because they don’t go out of their way, or gimp themselves, to help others. While it may fit the literal definition, the connotation is negative. There is nothing negative about playing the game in the way you find fun. This game is a hobby and by default it is for personal enjoyment. If a player finds satisfaction and enjoyment out of prioritizing the team over the individual that is perfectly fine and many people appreciate that. However, it is not in any way wrong to prioritize individual preference while playing a game that is meant for fun. A player can still contribute meaningfully to pretty much any team as long as they have enhancements slotted (doesn’t even need to be IOs) and tries to follow instructions when teaming. They don’t have to go out of their way to work in recall friend or unnecessary leadership toggles into their build to be a team player.

I tried a few dominator combinations into the 20s and early 30s, but never really found one that clicked with me. I finally tried a plant/savage dominator and found that it is very satisfying and fun to play. It feels strong and visceral. Deletes entire spawns pretty fast and has strong single target to boot. Never really had much fun with doms until I tried this combo.

There is, but this is the fix should come through with page 6.

It’s not hatred. Just a matter of avoiding a type of team I have no desire joining. If a team leader goes so far as to require discord, then they will likely do that often. Putting them on global ignore, then facilitates in removing them from possible teams to join. As far as voice chat, some people just cannot do that for various reasons. So there is no problem with them ignoring team leaders who require it. Like I said, I’m all for people having the freedom to team how they like, including requiring discord. However, that also comes with the freedom of people to ignore such teams. I would also put people who go in and investigate slotting and power choices or go so far as to require set IOs on global ignore also. I personally have 500m influence builds on most of my toons, but I don’t want to deal with that type of high maintenance, micro managing team leader. Player preference isn’t matter of hatred. It’s honestly just a matter of focusing my play time on teams that I would enjoy.

I have never used discord and never will. I have only ever been on one team where discord was even mentioned as an option. The leader said something along the the lines of: “We are on discord if you want to join, but don’t have to.” Even then the leader and others typed in chat the entire time. I’ve never been on a task force or trial where pertinent information was not shared via typing. Personally, I would quit a team that “requires” discord and put the leader on global ignore. Not everyone can do voice chat. I’m all for people being allowed to do what they want on their own teams, but I also reserve the right to not want to deal with such teams.

My biggest advice is to not relegate yourself so specifically to one way of playing a role. If you are a tank your job is to manage aggro AND deal damage. Fortunately, tanks are designed such that dealing damage helps tremendously in managing aggro. If you are a support, your job is to support through buffs/debuffs/healing AND dealing damage. It is always advisable to take, slot, and use attacks on all archetypes regardless of chosen role. Second piece of advice is to play the content that you enjoy whether it be radios, task forces, AE, badge hunting etc. Task forces and story content will have the best rewards because they offer reward merits, which can turn into influence easily. However, if you are willing to put in minimal effort into using the market and converters you will never have influence problems ever again. Spend 20 minutes even just once or twice a week crafting level 31 yellow recipes and converting them to desirable rare recipes and you will rake in hundreds of millions of influence much faster than any other method. Plus it has the benefit of keeping the market of desirable IOs well supplied. There are several good guides on how to do this and it is pretty easy. Using the market is also level agnostic meaning a level 1 can do just as well as a level 50. Level 50’s only advantage is more slots on market/recipe/salvage. If you don’t want to bother with enhancement conversion my advice is to do 1-3 task forces a week. This will get you between 50-75 merits each week even more if you do the weekly strike targets. Then go to the merit vendor and turn all of those into enhancement converters. Then sell the converters on the market. 1 merit = 3 converters = ~180k influence. So, even just 50 merits a week is 9m influence easy peasy.

Okay I had a chance to review your build. There were several things that were keeping you from reaching softcap, but were fixable. I am posting two builds for you. The first one i tried to keep as true to your build as possible in terms of power choices and procs. I made some changes in defense slotting to make it so some set bonuses weren't being capped. IMO chasing psionic resistance on energy aura is not worth losing softcap on a defense type so you do have less psionic resistance. Second build: This is what I would personally run. I dropped the leadership pool and picked up sorcery to get rune of protection. This will boost your resists into nice solid levels with 50% uptime, which is more than sufficient. Your endurance management is also quite a bit easier. You don't have as many procs in your attacks, but they had a low chance anyway so you aren't losing much. Also, i didn't chase FF + rech, as I feel that your global bonuses and entropic aura bonuses will be more than sufficient. Just note that this build is quite a bit different than yours. Just putting this out there for food for thought in working your own build.