Banana Man

Fire/Fire, hands down. AoE, Single Target, whatever. Fire blast is the highest DPS primary for single target damage. Fire Ball is also a strong AoE option for how fast it is. /Fire is the best AoE set in the game, by far, and while it doesn't have any amazing single target attacks, it's top tier for single target damage. You have two damage auras, meaning you're doing extra damage twice every two seconds without having to animate anything. Burn is also a great source for applying the Fury of the Gladiator -resist proc, and procced out burn actually chunks enough to make up for the long animation. Fire Sword isn't a bad option either. Honorable mention: Ice blast: Basically fire but with worse dps (still very high damage, though). The area ice blast shines is farming, because ice storm and blizzard are better than other AoEs when you're above the agro cap. Psi blast: Used to be the highest single target DPS before it's snipe animation was lengthened. Damage type can be more useful in niche situations, so it's probably still solid. Really bad AoE though. Elec (secondary) can do extremely high levels of single target damage (charged brawl is REALLY good dps, and shocking grasp is solid too, and you get a damage aura), but it lacks AoE, and the set feels very clunky with the regen power being a click instead of a toggle. Dark (secondary) can let you maintain very high levels of +damage with soul drain. Edit: Survivability really isn't a problem on fire/fire if you build well and play aggressive. Once you're level 50 and all tricked out, everything dies so fast it doesn't really have a chance to kill you. Bosses of even level are 2-3 shotted, and minions and LTs will usually die to your aoes before they get more than one attack off. Further, if you actually build with any kind of survivability in mind, blasters can very (unnecessarily) durable, to the point where some people farm on them.

Yes indom. I think there's some tonight at 9 est, actually. Hop in the PvP discord if you haven't already. https://discord.gg/ACfXPxK

More subtle, earlier resets. If you're waiting til both your emps are down and you have blasters being cycled off your spikes to adapt, you're waiting too long. It's gonna be hard to flip a hard roll unless the other team really screws something up, so ideally you notice your own mistakes early enough to prevent getting rolled hard in the first place. I haven't been scrimming since I've been away, but I did play in one scrim with my team. In one of the games we were off to a sort of rocky start, so Vinnie changed up the targeting before things got too out of hand, and it worked out.

I'm being told that due to the nature of these changes it's a fresh wipe with no copies. I'm also being told that you can craft without salvage now on test. I'm sort of split on doing this next event on test or live. I'd like to do it on test, but I realize higher prize pools may not be enough to motivate people to spend an hour or so just for this. Maybe I'll do a poll...

Based on my limited and accidental testing, fiery embrace on scrappers, maybe tanks and brutes too does -nothing- in pvp currently Also, I'd encourage people to do some KBs on justin to see how this stuff is shaking out.

Emp has always been a thing, originators for that would be like i4 players.

Things being "viable" or "having a place" is based on circumstance more than anything. Those are really vague terms. Certain teams in the pre-i13 system could have rolled almost everyone else running blasters with randomized power-sets. But if you weren't running ice blast until issue 8, fire blast after that, or psi blast when it came out, you were hindering yourself, because those sets were outright the best. Those "good teams" could have run no blasters at all, instead electing to run peacebringers, and still beat 99% of the player base. But if you were running kheldians, you were hindering yourself. If you were running scrappers and tanks, you were hindering yourself. If you were running anything other than controllers, defenders, and blasters, you were typically hindering yourself. Just because it works against certain people doesn't mean it's good. Blaster secondaries other than /em were very usable, especially in duels, where things like devices, ice, and even elec were generally better than /em... I saw people have varying degrees of success on a multitude of builds across tons of ATs... but if you were dueling on anything that wasn't /rad, /cold, or mind/fire, you were going to lose to someone good playing those more often than not. One thing people don't often consider about the old pvp system is the combination of A: how much longer it usually took to level, accolade, and slot out characters; and B: how much harder it was to get accurate information about what was good and how to play it. Back then if you played something sub-optimal, you usually just stuck with it for a long time and made it work, and any advice came from your server's local RV population. Now, people get advice on a PvP discord full of veteran players and often have new builds level 50 and ready to go the next day. You did see more build diversity in the old system, but there is a very good chance that most of it was due to so many people playing sub-optimal builds (or playing optimal builds sub-optimally), allowing other sub-optimal builds to appear better than they actually were. For the record, I do like the pre-i13 system better. I think with the right fixes that system could be made to work again. Just "reverting back" right now would introduce many variables that we don't have enough data to make very educated guesses about (incarnates, sentinels), and would also introduce a ton of things that break the game. In i12 rules I could literally do 3-5000 damage in a 1 second window on a titan weapon/fire scrapper, about a third of which would be un-resisted.

You can already do this by typing /arenalist

The only thing more despised in this game than a Warshade.

make it drop bb

Warshade: essence drain: doesn't have a pvp value for damage. It does 47 damage instead of following the PvP damage formula, which would presumably make it much higher.

Speed Instructor Casey TF. Solo.

KB in the post-IO PvE world is negligible. Again, I'm not really feeling strongly either way on this change, but that part is not an opinion. Any character with a travel power can already get a free 4 KB protection, because slotting travel speed in PvE isn't needed unless you're going for a concept build or just enjoy going fast - ie, non-objective (but perfectly valid) reasons. Where do you really encounter KB mags over 4 in PvE? A few AVs? Pylons? That one earthquake event on that one TF where you go to a ruined skyway city? When you do need that extra KB res, the 10 KB protection base temp's cost is basically so low that the cost doesn't exist. I usually don't even bother getting the temp anyway, because one thing you can build for without much downside is soft-caped defense to everything, letting you mitigate over 90% of incoming damage on any build in the game while still having enough recharge to run perma hasten and enough damage to two-three shot bosses. In the rare event that I do get KBed in PvE, it's little more than a minor nuisance. As several others have already stated, you're greatly overestimating how much KB protection matters right now in PvE.

I've heard some hype that you're working on this really cool AE story called JWTF? When can we expect to see that?

Agreed, with the exception of the slow resist implications.

Giving 20% slow res to everything actually is sort of questionable. Then again, you can slot like 80% slow res into every character now without that much commitment. What are the characters specifically that are having issues building into adequate KB prots for PvP?

Acrobatics is 9 KB protection in PvP, and also hold resist. You'd still be taking acro in PvP. I already don't take it in PvE. Between the base temp, defensive amp, basically having perma elude on every character because of how easy soft capping defense is, and how rare KB that matters is in PvE (one botz will usually suffice for anything), acro really isn't a high priority power on most things as it is, unless you're taking it for the hold protection, in which case its worth would stay the same. Going to your sg base every 1.5 hours really isn't that inconvenient imo, either. For the record, I'm not necessarily advocating for this change, but I really don't see a significant downside.

what's the build compromise of buying the super cheap base buff that gives mag 10?

-Most- melee characters don't need to build for KB protections, because their KB protection powers also provide KB resistance. Reworking mechanics in PvP would be a better, but also far less feasible and more complicated solution. You'd be surprised how much KB protection you can work into builds. Most of mine sit at about 43, with the potential to hit 47 with an unslotter to swap one enhancement. For most builds what this change does is make getting 8 more KB protection much easier, and free up 5 slots - which really isn't a radical change

I don't really see anything wrong with this. People are already building 46 anyway. All it does is free up a few slots, and get you 8 KB protection you wouldn't have otherwise (people are already slotting at least 3 botzph KB IOs, so you're only slotting two more than you were already). KB wasn't a thing in PvP, then the devs randomly made it one. It's a skill reducing mechanic without counter-play (other than just build over it, which also doesn't require any real skill), and really just serves as a barrier for new players who don't know they need to build around it yet.

Both bonuses

EA works fine in zones. It also gets slow resist. Snow storm: does basically nothing, except drop your FPS a little. Just run in a straight line or use a mez and it will get detoggled. Tar patch: Just leave the tar patch Glue arrow: You have tp resist, so if you get glue arrowed, it's probably somewhere you can just leave Infrigidate: Shouldn't really do much on its own with EA's slow resist and defense debuff resists, also, not many people are running colds The main difference between zones and arena is that zones are a much more forgiving, and slightly less predictable environment. I'm not saying something like /elec or /rad would be terrible. I'm not even necessarily saying EA is the outright best set in zones, but EA is definitely more than fine in a PvP zone, and I've yet to see any evidence that something else is significantly better, or better at all.

-Fiery embrace on scrappers (and probably everything save maybe dominators) does NOTHING at all in pvp. -Warshade version of phase shift doesn't seem to actually phase you, PB version may be doing the same thing. -Defender EF is only doing 30% -resist in PvP instead of the -40% it should be doing

AS has always been the primary function of stalkers in the arena since before IOs even existed. The entire villain ladder was based around stalkers landing the massive unresisted damage from AS to open up potential for corruptors to finish the target off with scourge. The only time in arena PvP I can remember AS not being relevant was dueling in the old PvP system on something like an em/regen, or during i15-i16 where there was a variant of a psi/em jump team that used two stalkers sharking. Stalkers have historically taken AS on arena builds, and any stalker that didn't have AS would have been absolutely laughed at in any higher level PvP environment (I'm not saying that's right or encouraging laughing at other players builds, but it absolutely would have happened). Using a stalker to stun targets would be really inefficient because 1. Other things can stun more reliably from range 2. Those other things can stun for longer 3. If your team stuns something, it's the perfect time for a stalker to AS that thing, but the stalker can't do that if he's the one that stunned it For an all around PvE/PvP build, EA seems by far the best secondary. It's already the best secondary in PvP, and a PvP built EA stalker will still have soft capped defenses in PvE, so it should transition pretty well. For primaries, it doesn't matter as much, but psi and stj are pretty good.

@mrchajper: basically, you make your own taunt aura. Always stay damage capped. Go to the first group, use burn, then fire sword circle. This should kill most if not all of the minions and lts. It's best if you actually jump your fire sword circle into the next group, so right as you land, you can que up combustion and then burn again to kill the lts and minions in that group - basically, you go group to group just killing the minions and lts as fast as you can (2 aoes should do it) and then once you do about 3-4 groups, you'll have a ton of bosses running after you. Pull the bosses into more groups, throw down bonfire, ice storm, blizzard, and then aoe everything down. Rinse and repeat. The undamageable lore pets can be really useful for pulling more mobs to you, as can NPC allies in the mission with powers like illusion or plant control. Rule of thumb is, if you're not way over the aggro cap, you need to be moving until you are. @purplereign: If you're talking about the PvE build, I made it with level 50 gameplay in mind. You can change up the order of the powers to your liking - it's possible I didn't even take them in that order and only did it in pines for slot reasons. If you're talking about that farm build, it probably only works with incarnates, because it will be super end heavy without ageless.