Saikochoro

Scrapper is classic and will do more damage, but SR/MA tankers are insane. Incarnate level defenses. Capped resistances (when scaled). Super high recharge. You literally cannot die as a MA/SR tankers unless you are really trying to. Even then you might not. Also, the damage is actually pretty decent, especially if you throw in a couple procs. It’s also nice that eagles claws gives a damage bonus on tanks. My vote would be to go tanker.

If you haven’t already picked your character I’d suggest playing a kinetics corruptor or defender. One of the biggest fun suckers in the game is endurance problems (though he probably won’t have much issue with that playing a rad armor brute). But kinetics makes everyone feel more powerful as you buff damage up to obscene levels. You could go fire/kin corruptor. Or kin/sonic defender. Those would be my choices for a more supportive duo partner.

My suggestion would be to limit your picks from dual blades. Take blinding feint and those necessary for the attack vitals combo (ablaiting strike, vengeful slice, and sweeping strike). Blinding feint + attack vitals combo is your bread and butter. If you have really high recharge you can go for blinding feint > ablaiting strike > sweeping strike and ignore combos. Otherwise blinding feint + attack vitals is still great. Then grab everything else you want from the secondary and power pools. Then with what you have left you can pick up 1k cuts or typhoons edge. I always take 1k cuts just because I like the power even though it’s a dps loss over attack vitals combo.

Nope. I did a bit a theory crafting lower down on first page in this thread that would put most resistances in 80-90% range with 50% uptime. However, super reflexes on tankers definitely can have incarnate level defenses with capped resistances (when scaled with lower health). Super reflexes is pretty insane, especially paired with martial arts. If you are interested in my SR/MA build take a look at my thread in the tanker forums: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21033-meet-tank-lee-masr/

You bring up a good point about dual blades. If OP is wanting to get his katana fix he can do so with two instead of one and have some more AoE. That said, I still think ninja blade is a perfectly fine primary.

It was expensive because it has purples and LOTG. Probably 400-500m. But I’m a “buy now” type of person. So if you put in bids and are patient you could probably knock off 50-75m of the price. Even cheaper if you use converters for the more expensive items. For example, when I can’t get LOTG 7.5 rech for 6m or less, I buy the LOTG end/rech IO for 3.5-4m and convert to the 7.5 rech one. Sometimes it isn’t worth it, but most of the time you save money that way (unless you can’t get any within the set for <4m). It’s just slower. Also keep in mind that if you end up hating ninja blade / EA you can respec and transfer the IOs to another toon. The build is largely the same if you were to put in street justice or some other primary and would use most of the same IOs. If you pick a more resistance based or AoE based powerset you’d have to tweak a little, but even then you could sell the unused ones to buy the replacements. I personally don’t think TP foe would be worth it unless you just did it for fun. Your defenses and mitigation will keep you safe even in +4/8 settings, especially when rune is active. Just hop in and cut everything down with your katana. Just remember to use energize proactively. Pop it for endurance reduction before starting a fight. By the time you might need it it will be on cooldown. That way you will have good endurance management without scarfing down blues.

Take a look in your other thread “need help with ninja blade”. I posted my ninja blade / ea build there. You can work it a little to pick up AoE powers from patron pools if you want. I do not feel any desire to pick up additional AoE on it and like it just fine as is. Still kills mobs plenty fast.

What secondary are you going to use? I have one for energy aura secondary. Also, just general advice for picking powersets. While it definitely can be useful to gather opinions from others, don’t let those opinions force you into one set or away from another. Your own curiosity is a powerful force. You seem to really want to try ninja blade. You are going to be unsatisfied until you try it. Even if you try several other amazing combinations you will always have that ninja blade itch. Only way to find out if you will love it is to try it. Good thing is that it is easy to level, rename, have a ton of character slots, and you can respec to move IOs around.

My vote for dual pistols would be to rework piercing shot into a snipe/quick snipe. Make damage same as other snipes. Rename it perfect shot or something like that. That alone would be amazing.

Absolutely not. Ninja blade is a fantastic primary. It is tied with street justice for my favorite stalker primary. I don’t even take one of the aoes on street justice. I play them both single target centric and clear mobs plenty fast. I also have kitted out electric / shield and savage / energy stalkers. Both of those have strong aoe. Neither of them is nearly as fun as my ninja blade or street justice stalkers. I wouldn’t listen to the people that only pay attention to AoE damage. They are usually the same people who nuke a mob and then move on to the next one leaving behind lieutenants and bosses for others to clean up on mobs. Having AoE is nice, but not mandatory. Certainly not for stalkers who main claim to fame is outstanding single target damage.

I decided to do it once and bought 2 super packs. Got mainly temp powers. Didn’t make anywhere near even half of the 20m I spent on the two. I know it’s random and just happened to be unlucky. But, for me, it was a failed experiment enough to make me not ever want to do it again. It is exciting to open so I do agree it can be a nice little side activity. But it’s pretty crushing when you get temp power, temp power, booster, brainstorm ideas. I might try again at some point, but probably not.

You are correct. Central banks can manipulate the economy to certain degrees by using various methods. However, you are correct in that economic rules apply even when there isn’t a central bank to manipulate behaviors. I like to think of it this way: Say a barter system was in place and there was no central bank. Let’s say potatoes are a commonly traded commodity. Let’s also say there are 10 farmers who grow potatoes that are traded in a given community. There will be some sort of equilibrium that is reached. The potatoes value will reflect the equilibrium of supply and demand and also the level of trust that the community in general has in the potato being universally desired. This will happen even without a government proclaiming potatoes legal tender And trades running through a banking system. Now let’s say 10 new farmers come and start growing potatoes. All of a sudden there is double the amount of potatoes available in the bartering community. Do you think the value of a single potato will increase, decrease, or stay the same if there are no other changes? It will decrease because there are more available. It is human nature to devalue something when it becomes less scarce. People will start demanding 5 potatoes for a 2x4 beam instead of 3 purely by knowing there are more potatoes in the system. It doesn’t even matter if the person holding the potatoes has more or less than they did before the new farmers showed up. It is a function of the overall supply of potatoes in the bartering community. All of this is done without a central bank. It is just human behavior that is reflected in economic principles.

I recently made a claws/EA scrappers as well. Also a dual blades/EA scrapper. I honestly don’t know which one I like more. Both are super fun, super survivable, and shred anything and everything in their path. Still not as fun as dark melee/shield defense though.

If we are going on buy now prices: When I bought purples before they fluctuated between 20-23m. Now I can consistently get them for 17-19m. ATO were 9-10m. Now I can get them for 7-8m. LOTG + rech were 6-8m. Now I can get them for 5-6m. I will give you that this global does seem to fluctuate depending on time of day though. Performance shifter proc was 3-4m. Now I can get it for 2-3m. The global bonus PVP IOs (shield wall, gladiator armor, panacea) were all 12-15m. I can get them for 10-11m now. I was able buy converters for 70k before the nerf easily. From what I have seen prices have dropped pretty much across the board. I used to be able to sell sudden acceleration knockback to knockdown for 3-5m consistently. Now I convert past them because I can get them for 1.5 - 2m. The only thing I haven’t seen change much is miracle + recovery, which has stayed pretty much the same. This is also from a selling perspective as well. That said, our own experiences are anecdotal. The devs have more information than we do I’m sure and they said that the nerf had the intended affect.

Don’t know that it is a cure. I still have altitis. But dark/shield scrappers are an absolute blast. I have made 6 scrappers since I made my dark/shield and 6 scrappers prior to it. None of them even come close to as fun. In fact, the only character I have that is as fun (more fun actually) is my dual pistols/martial combat blaster. Out of my 70 alts, those two are by far the most fun.

Sure. I will give you two. I don't claim they are the best, but they definitely get the job done. Build 1: Quite a bit cheaper than build 2. Softcap to all positions. Decent recharge. Build 2: Controversial build. I respec'd from build 1 into this once I could afford it. Slightly better recharge (10% more). More endurance friendly as you no longer have maneuvers. Better damage on midnight grasp and shadow maul. Most importantly a trade off: ranged defense is only 41%, but I picked up rune of protection, which overs very solid resists with 50% uptime. I played build 1 for a couple months before switching to build 2. So far, I like build 2 more even though ranged isn't softcapped. This is only an "issue" when soloing as on teams either phalanx fighting or a teammate with maneuvers will put you at ranged softcap. Rune of protection however adds a good amount of mitigation for things that get through the defense. Siphon life then heals anything else. I have done +4/8 of many different mob factions (not just council) just fine solo even with ranged not being softcapped. You can also use these as a starting point. Build 2 could easily be made to softcap ranged defense with some slightly different slotting (even without maneuvers). I just didn't like giving up what I gained to shore that up and honestly didn't feel like it was worth it. I have not been disappointed so far.

Thanks for putting this together Galaxy! I’ve been hoping to see one for blasters. No surprises with the top performers. I had thought dual pistols may have ranked higher as I thought I had pretty good AoE, but B tier isn’t too bad. Still I wish it had a better snipe replacement than piercing rounds.

Certain sets shine on scrappers. For example, my favorite scrapper by far is dark melee/shield defense. I think this combo is the best on scrappers. Stalkers lose soul drain in favor of build up and damage multipliers are lower on the others than scrappers. Other combos are more thematic. For example, my captain America styled hero (StJ/SD) is a scrapper because he seems more like a scrapper than the other melee archetypes. Scrappers do considerably more damage than either brutes or tanks and a fairly survivable in their own right. I honestly don’t think tanks can even hold a candle to them damage wise. And brutes still are a fair bit below scrappers in terms of pure damage. I think stalkers edge scrappers out more than either tanks or brutes do. The problem is stalkers crush them in terms of single target damage, have just about the same amount of survivability, and some of the newer sets even have good AoE damage to boot. Plus stalkers have much more controllable and better crit chance. The only thing scrappers have over stalkers is that they don’t have forced stealth in all of their secondaries. That said, I think scrappers are generally just a lot more fun than brutes and tanks. And I like my dark/shield scrapper way better than any stalker I have.

Blaster dual pistols single target - 6 aoe - 8 utility - 8 style/fun - 100 100 trillion Google Plex Infinity Compared to something like fire or ice the single target damage isn’t really there even with procs, but it’s not horrible. I mean it’s still a blaster. I think it is one of the better AoE damage primaries though. Bullet rain is decent and short cooldown. Hail of bullets (when not bugged) is pretty good and can be on a shortish cooldown of 25 seconds or so. I think dual pistols has pretty good utility with its swap ammo capability and built in effects based on ammo. As for style/fun - dual pistols is the undisputed champion especially when paired with martial combat. Edit: more accurate style/fun number.

Welcome Back! Ice has pretty good powersets. Ice blast is great. I hear good things about ice melee and ice armor. Best thing about homecoming is you have 1000 character slots. So go crazy with making whatever combination you want. Homecoming has also made leveling and enhancing your characters much easier too. Have fun!

Can’t get much better than energy aura for a secondary. Though it might be fun to go shield as a secondary. Boost your damage and be a stealthy Captain America.

Snipped except for the part I wanted to address. I appreciate that this is your opinion and you are entitled to it, but it is definitely just an opinion. Single target focused stalkers are far from useless. They have value in every fight. They will melt the bosses faster than most others and can tab target through the rest with usually a single attack to mop up their remaining health. I have zero problem doing my fair share of killing even on level 50 teams full of brutes and blasters. The most time consuming parts of missions is killing the bosses and straggling lieutenants not the minions. Opening salvos of AoE will likely kill most of the minions, and is often overkill with wasted damage going to the same target, but fail to kill the bosses and many lieutenants are still alive. In fact, I find that most of the group uses their nuke or AoE and then immediately moves on to the next mob leaving the bosses and a few lieutenants behind as they don’t want to deal with them. Stalkers will kill these faster than anything except perhaps a blaster, but usually the blaster is already at the next mob waiting for it’s nuke to go on cooldown. Lastly, a lot of the game does revolve around killing EBs, AVs, and GMs. Stalkers are fantastic for these fights. I think most people are so focused on chasing AoE that when they do decide to fight the boss themselves they are unsatisfied with how much longer it takes to kill than nuking 8 minions. That’s why they leave it behind for others to fight. Stalkers do single target best, and it is honestly an important role that a lot of people choose to ignore.

I wouldn’t disregard ninja blade as it is still an awesome primary. I think the main complaint about it is lack of AoE. I personally don’t follow the AoE fetish on stalkers. While AoE is nice to have, stalkers have always felt more like boss melters than trash mob killers. Their abilities gear them more towards single target damage and I think that is fine. So, I don’t write off sets due to lack of AoE. And I don’t throw in a bunch of epic/patron power pool attacks to make up for AoE. I go in a kill priority targets and then the rest and it’s still fast. My favorite primaries are: -ninja blade -street justice -savage My favorite secondaries are: - energy aura - the best one imo - shield defense Each of these sets do wonders on a stalker.

Any game I play is subject to break periods. Doesn’t matter how much I love the game there will always be a break period. The break period usually lasts 1-3 months during which time I play some other game or don’t play games at all. Eventually the itch to make a new powerset combo or revamp a build comes along. So I log back in and before I know it I’m playing several days a week, which for me is a lot. I do the same thing with books, tv, and other entertainment.

Disclaimer: my thoughts will be colored by my personal paradigm of being generally anti nerf. I would rather buff “weak” things than nerf “powerful” things in general. Yes, outliers exist that don’t necessarily fit that mindset, but I generally go with that. I know that leads to power creep, but honestly that has never bothered me. With IOs and incarnates that ship has sailed so anything extra doesn’t really fundamentally change the game to make it much easier than it already can be for some. So, with that said, here are my thoughts. Fury - Very strong and perfect inherent power. Rewards a brute for doing what brutes do best. Assassins focus/assasination - Very strong and synergistic with ATOs. Some may consider it overpowered, but I think it’s great. I think calculated criticals are more fitting of stalkers than scrappers so the predictable crits are good. Critical hit - I feel like this is lacking, especially compared to stalkers inherent. It doesn’t provide a consistent or predictable benefit like the other melee archetypes. I would change critical hits for scrappers to function similar to brutes fury but still be critical damage as opposed to straight damage boost. Have base critical hit chance be low (lower than it already is). Then fighting will fill the “critical bar” similar to fury. The more full the bar, the higher the crit chance. The cap would be higher than what they currently have. The actual percentages would have to be tested. This would make their criticals more reliable especially in longer fights (AVs, GMs). Defiance - I think this is powerful and perfect. Fits in well with their lack of mez protections and makes them more powerful as they continue attacking. Opportunity - needs reworked in my opinion. Feels too complicated compared to other inherents and not as rewarding. Forces you to take both t1 and t2 powers to take full advantage of the inherent. I think it should be simpler and more rewarding. I think the inherent stacking - res is good. Since sentinels are a damage archetype I think their inherent should be damage focused. Options are: -res/Regen, straight damage boost, criticals, or something new like + rech. To put in a new flavor I’d say rework it to have opportunity grant + rech. This could either be ever increasing similar to fury to a cap, or a large temporary boost when the bar is full. The stacking -res would help the damage, but having a decent +rech would help them attack faster and thus achieve greater dps. Would open up more build opportunities as well with less focus on global recharge. Biggest issue I can see with this is on teams that have a lot of recharge buffs going around that could lessen the usefulness of +rech. However, I think it would be useful in most situations. These are the only inherents I feel strongly enough to comment on.