Saikochoro

I think this is really important to emphasize. The listing fee is extremely important to stop people from listing items for too much in attempts to drive up prices. This can still happen, but they run the risk of losing the listing fee when they give up and relist at a more reasonable price. Without the fee they have no skin in the game. This would be a flipper’s dream come true as they would be able to put upwards pressure on prices without any risk. Granted converters and whatnot severely limit a flippers power to manipulate prices, but I don’t think we need to enable them.

I do think dual blades is better than katana. Katana does have a nice party type power to boost m/l defense, but I don’t think it does as good of damage. At least not in my experience. The blinding feint + attack vitals combo also has the added benefit that your single target rotation also does decent AoE if you are surrounded by mobs. I don’t think katana is bad though. I do have a katana/Regen scrapper that I’m working on that I have been enjoying a lot. But why settle for one katana when you could have two 😜

Don’t be afraid of dual blades combos. All the melee archetypes only need to worry about one combo, if any, depending on recharge. Scrappers, brutes, and tanks just do blinding feint + attack vitals (ablaiting>vengeful>sweeping) on repeat. Stalkers just do the sweep combo whenever build ato procs or when it’s off cooldown. I ignore all other combos. If you have high enough recharge on scrappers you could go blinding>ablaiting>sweeping and ignore the combos altogether. I think all three of those combos are tough enough to handle any content and can kill AVs without a problem. Dark/shield needs minion fodder to fuel AAO and souls drain. So without minion fodder the damage does drop, but with saturated AAO and soul drain the damage is pretty ludicrous. Both others have solid damage as well. If you want a dedicated AV killer though I’d go energy melee/Bio armor. You don’t need any fodder for bio armors damage bonuses. And energy melee has pretty insane single target damage. This also does fine with general content. My personal preferences overall would lean me to dark/shield and dual blades energy aura. You could push damage a bit further on dual blades and pair it with bio armor as well.

I’m kind of wondering why this is even up for debate. The fee removes influence from the system. With how many people market and some to a fairly high volume the amount of influence removed I would venture to say is quite substantial. Of course it is not as much as the influence moved, but it isn’t supposed to be. Influence is constantly generated by playing the game (especially farming). I would posit that the market fee is one of the biggest influence sinks in the game to help combat the endless influence generation. IOs are constantly moving on the market and each one takes a cut out of the economy. The fee is not hurting anyone and is beneficial to the health of the in game economy. I see no reason to change it or worse remove it.

It is absolutely a solid choice. Still my favorite scrapper. And I do believe it is best on scrappers. I have played dark shield on scrappers, stalkers, and tankers. All are good, even stalkers since they get another high damage attack (assassins strike). Their ato also helps keep build up with higher uptime. I still however prefer would drain so I like scrappers more for this combo. It has the best synergy of all in my opinion and is very strong and a lot of fun. I also very much enjoy dual blades. It’s not “better” on a scrapper than a stalker, just different. I do think it’s better on a scrapper than a brute or tanker though. I have paired it with both EA and bio and it does great with both of them. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of my favorite three armors (energy aura, shield defense, and bio armor). I’ve come around a bit on ninjitsu as well, though I still like the other three better. Based on the scrappers I’ve made so far my favorites have been: -dark melee/shield defense -dual blades/energy aura -savage melee/bio armor

I voted energy aura as I believe it to be the best all round armor set. I also love both shield and Bio on stalkers. Both of those have more offensive potential than energy aura, but aren’t as well rounded in my opinion. Energy aura has healing, defense, resists, endurance management, and offense (+rech) covered. My energy aura characters never die even in psi heavy mobs. I’m never hurting for health or endurance. And I get to attack fast. Slotting is loose and easy enabling procs where I want them. It also allows me to build without incarnates in mind. Shield and Bio both have great offensive potential and can certainly be built tough (especially shield). They do however have tighter builds in my opinion. I always have a harder time allocating slots between set set bonuses needed for softcap vs rech and procs. It can be done, it’s just a lot tighter. Shield definitely has offense covered and even supplements AoE damage with shield charge. I actually think shield can be built tougher than energy aura, but it is pretty tight and might result in lower recharge. If shield had healing and endurance management covered I would rate it higher than energy aura, but you do have to get both of those via the attack set, IOs, or incarnates. Bio is great and fun. More click heavy than energy aura or shield, but very rewarding to play. In my experience it is the least sturdy of my top three, but still sturdy enough. It does however have the best offensive potential without having to need mobs surround me. It also has all areas covered (defense, resist, offense, healing, and endurance management). I think building bio can lead to traps though. Since it is possible to softcap all types (except psi) I think a lot of people try to do so, but it requires very tight slotting to do so. This leads to low recharge and little to no procs, which defeats the offensive advantage. When you build to bios strengths however it is amazing, just not quite as durable as shield or energy aura. Although I voted energy aura as the best, I like energy aura, shield, and bio all fairly equally. Shield and bio are super awesome, I just think energy aura edges them out all things considered.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem getting mezzed with energy aura. So I’ve never chased after mez bonuses. Leadership toggles can be expensive, but energize works wonders for endurance management. You could also go down a completely different pool power too.

While the 6 piece scrapper strike set bonus is nice, it isn’t make or break in my opinion. You lose out of 6% s/l, but I don’t really think you’ll notice. When rune is up it caps out s/l anyway. The guassians proc though is noticeable when it fires. It won’t fire as often as when you have it in a normal build up power, but it will fire every so often giving you a nice boost. The proc increases your damage and so it would apply after it hits and runs it’s roll. The damage bonus would then apply for 5 seconds (I think that’s amount of time), which is enough to go through the whole rotation. It’s not really there to make blinding feint hit harder, but rather because blinding feint is what procs it. While you can go for more toxic/psi resist if you want, I like having the extra damage from the -res procs myself. However, there is no issue with going for the 6 piece bonus on those sets. The sorcery pool is probably the biggest break from the norm. That is just my thing. I take it on EA, shield, ninjitsu, and SR because I can softcap without maneuvers on those and I really like the added mitigation. I also take it on Regen. Most builds I put up will have it in there because that is my flavor. However, it certainly isn’t required. You could go down the leadership pool instead if you wanted to and get closer to the incarnate softcap. Whatever works best for you and your concept. I have just found that rune of protection has worked out great for me.

Dual blades is probably my favorite melee set and energy aura is one of my top three armors. So its no surprise that my DB/EA scrapper is one of my favorites. This is the build I use. Here are the highlights: -Softcapped typed defense (except psi) with a little buffer on all except negative. Energy drain can be used if you are getting debuffed to provide some extra defense. -Use energize whenever it is up. While it is up you won't have any endurance problems and it provides a nice regen bonus. -I take rune of protection on my energy aura characters. It is up 50% of the time and offers a nice boost to damage resistance across the board. Basically like a smaller crashless T9. It stacks nicely with the baseline resists and set bonuses. -Hasten is a few seconds shy of perma. -Built without incarnates in mind so you are free to choose whatever incarnates you want. This build focuses on the blinding feint + attack vitals combo (Ablaiting>Vengeful>Sweeping). This is the reason that the critical strikes set and proc is in vengeful slice (we want sweeping strike to crit). Ablaiting and sweeping have the -res procs in there to help boost your damage. In my experience this does great damage and has the benefit of suiting both single target and AoE needs. You have typhoons edge for some extra AoE if you need it. 1K cuts is useable, but I really only use it as a mule for set bonuses and don't really use the power all that often. Play with the build to see the totals with rune on and off as well as with energy drain on and off. The Build:

Probably not. But even fully buffed it still likely wouldn’t hit as hard as energy transfer. And we got that.

One way to see the actual recharge time of your powers is to go under the windows tab in the options menu. Scroll down to near the bottom and there is a beta section. There you can choose to display recharge time son the power icon itself. Then activate a power and you will see the countdown timer start indicated it’s actual recharge. This timer will update in real time if you get various buffs that change your global recharge (hasten, speed boost, chrono shift, etc).

I like the idea of turning power siphon into a follow up/blinding feint type power more than the stance suggestion. I also don’t see a problem with power siphon just automatically putting you at max stacks for the duration. Sure it’s a big buff, but we have soul drain so I don’t see it being out of line.

I don’t think the Yin Stance would go over well. It would actively work against defense based secondaries and punish people who get to softcap. If this were to be done it would have to be changed to getting attacked instead of actually taking damage (I.e doesn’t matter if the attack lands).

The cool thing about homecoming is we have 1000 slots per server. So the brute isn’t wasted and you can always go back to it later if you want!

I know people don’t really like this answer, but the more important question is which one you enjoy playing more. In almost every case a scrapper will do more damage than a brute regardless of sets chosen. They just do more damage. Just like stalkers do more damage than both of them. So if all you care about is damage, then yeah the scrapper will do more damage. That said, they do have slightly different play styles. Do you like just being an unstoppable juggernaut of rage that gets stronger as you fight? Then a brute would be more your style. They also have a survivability edge. Do you enjoy those nice surprises when you crit for double damage on your biggest attack? Do you like being full damage from the get go? Then scrapper is for you. Scrappers get more mileage out of AAO than brutes and they have a higher modifier for shield charge as well. I honestly think both archetypes will do awesome with that combo. So it comes down to whether you enjoy brutes or scrappers more. My personal opinion: I like scrappers more. But that’s just me.

I agree that I haven’t ever found the psi hole to be anything more than a minor annoyance in rare instances. Worst case scenario a purple or two will save the day, but I have found that those types of situations don’t really occur all that often. I almost always take rune of protection on my energy aura toons just because it gives a nice boost to mitigation. Between that, energize, Regen, and the little psi resist I have as a by product of my normal slotting I don’t have an issue. The only time I have had an issue with toxic damage enough to prompt popping a some purples is soloing apex/tin Mage with the hydra pylons spewing heavy toxic damage. Other than that I have had zero problems with toxic damage.

I can’t speak to anything pvp related so all of my opinions are purely pve. I think ninja blade would probably be better than psi, but they’d both get the job done. You do not need placate on any stalker primary, including dual blades. The only dual blades combo I use on stalkers is the sweep combo whenever build up is off cooldown, which is quite often thanks to the assassins mark ATO. I honestly never take placate as the stalker guile ATO has made it obsolete in my opinion. Dual blades is top tier. If you want the end all be all of boss killers though you’d probably want to go energy melee. With the i27 revamp energy melee is a single target monstrosity. I think dual blades is more fun though.

The savage/shield might feel a bit redundant if not superior to the elec/shield. However it would still be fun. What are you looking to focus on? Do you want to be the boss/eb/av killer? Or do you want to help take out the trash? Either focus is perfectly acceptable, but it would help to know. Ninja blade will be a good boss killer, but not so great a trash mob clearing. Psi will do good on bosses and okay on trash clearing. Staff has a good mix. Savage will do great on both. I personally usually go for primarily defensive secondaries over resistance sets. But I’m sure resistance ones are perfectly fine too. I know it wasn’t one of your options, but might I suggest dual blades? You will have outstanding single target damage and you will also have good AoE damage as a by product of your single target rotation. Dual blades has become one of my favorite primaries on both stalkers and scrappers. Pair dual blades with energy aura and you will never look back. Or even bio armor and just laugh as everything in shredded to bits in front of you.

No archetype is useless. I can’t think of a single time I have ever heard of a tanker being turned down from a team. I personally like tankers more than brutes. They are easier to build tough than brutes due to their modifiers and their damage is not lacking. I don’t think you will have a problem finding teams with a tanker regardless of the content. The most important thing is to play what you want to play regardless of other people’s opinions.

I built several dominators before I got to one that stuck and I actually enjoyed. Plant/savage dom. I basically play it like a blapper with some control thrown in the mix. It is very satisfying.

I ate my words when I said I probably wouldn’t buy a lot of packs in the beginning of the sale. I found that I thought more highly of the winter Os when they were 7m a pop instead of 20m a pop and so ended up slotting them more. I bought a total of 66 packs, which was a fairly significant strain on my liquidity. Even though I do market a fair amount I make alts pretty much non stop so I never actually have a lot of inf on hand. I may end up using a lot of the WOs that dropped for me, but I plan to sell 50 of them for hopefully 15-20m a piece at some point this year. That way I will recoup my costs. I did get 975 merits to fund my enhancement conversion so that was a nice bonus.

I suggest also buying the base transporter from the p2w vendor. It cost 1m and has a 10 min cooldown. Activating the power will then allow you to enter a base from passcode. I have found that this power is up pretty much any time that I would want to use it.

I haven’t been disappointed with my fire/bio/psi sentinel. It has very good damage. I have been disappointed in all my other sentinels, but not that one. That one is pure gold. I am however in the process of leveling a elec/bio sentinel. Will see how that one goes.

I personally wouldn’t take shadow meld on a armor set that has soft capped defense. I suppose you could use it in case of cascade failure, but at that point I’d rather just have a few lucks in my insp tray. If you just have a free power pick that you don’t know what to do with, then it certainly won’t hurt you to take it.

I’m not trying to be antagonistic. I’m honestly curious how pocket d is less accessible than before i27. What makes it less accessible with i27? Is it just the lack of being able to use the basscode prompt TP from anywhere? I have found that even just having the base TP has been enough since it has a fairly short cooldown. I’m with you on the SO changes though. I slot them up at level 2 and keep them until I’m in my 30s. Then I transition over to IOs. The SO change alone kindled an interest in the low level game and I have since leveled up 5-6 toons without any power leveling of any sort due to this. The SO change along with the EM changes are my favorite things about i27.