Meknomancer

I don't remember brutes ever having a specific role tbh. A little dps/tank/alpha taker jack of all melee trades. When red came in we were tanking with mm's pets, brutes not much more than a scrapper. How would more AT sets fix the buffs tanks got and the nerfs brutes got? That would have be answered by someone who understands the code better than me, i just suggest it as the simplest solution. An AT piece that drastically bumps damage on the brute or bumps aoe radius when it fires off or gives them something close to scrappers critical strikes or...or...or..... I'm betting theres a lot of ideas out there that could bring the brute back to what it was simply by chucking an enhance at it. And i'll repeat what i said initially: I don't have a problem with brutes damage, its more the constant buffing the tanker AT gets.

I don't have a problem with brutes damage, its more the constant buffing that the tanker AT gets. And the simplest fix and probably the most difficult to implement is to make more AT sets, only this time make ones that are good for the brute instead of the useless ones they currently have available. Makes me wonder how difficult it would be to proliferate current At sets to other AT's. How would a brute fare with a stackable resist and an absorb.

Screen 3-pets and minions will still be affected by those powers.

I love illusion on domi's, so what if PA isn't massive damage or taunting, your entire secondary is dps and there's just enough controls in the primary with gleam and flash and spectral to let you pummel everything. Its a fantastic set right from the beginning all the way up to 50 and into incarnate levels. And good as it is low levels its a totally different beast at high levels. Like every toon once its 50 and kitted out its a different experience.

Sometimes all it takes is the right name, a good costume and a respec and a toon goes from sitting untouched for a couple of years to being your current main. Sadly thats never been the case with mine. I made one of these back in 2020 i think it was. Love the costume you posted btw, especially the glowing yakuza shoulders, pale skin and the way you got the thorny stuff the right colours. I have a lot of dark blasters and this ones been played the least i'm not sure exactly why, its been pretty much unkillable since the last respec and it only runs about 34-5% ranged. I originally had double tentacles and vines which was nice but i found i wasn't using either much. The melee attacks got skipped every time, not because i hate melee'ing but because i hate both the animations the cast times and the puny dps. There's a reason you only see a few spines scraps/brutes/tanks outside of ae. Build still feels a bit odd, theres pieces in that don't make sense even when i look at it now but purely down to the secondary being just as odd. Absorb secondary's on blasters arent as good as the others, you only have to look at /fire and its massive recovery rates and even a single heal io in it giving your hp constant green tics. There was a few older respecs when i had endurance issues which is why i think i tossed a theft in life drain. So i end up with just the usual minimal picks, entangle is a force pick, strangler to stack with abyssal, spore cloud to stack with all the - to hit and its one of the few powers giving - regen to blasters. Not much to say about the primary, i never felt like it was one of the 'weaker' sets and i run life drain as part of the st attack chain as i do on all my dark blast toons. And you have Umbral torrent. Knock a mob down. Does it look like your going to get hit by something? Umbral torrent. Mob getting back up? Umbral torrent. Tied second best cone in the game, possibly the best. Range is ridiculous. I lost track of how many times i fired it off and aggroed 2-3 mobs behind the one i was aiming for. It recharges super fast. Slots an ff+rech. Perfect mob control. Umbral, Tentacles, Nightfall still one of my favourite combos and i try to fit them all in on every dark blaster i play. Problem with the combo for me has been having an ice/plant which i prefer and a dark/ninja, dark/devices and dark/time that all feel like a smoother play. I'd build in minimal defences if i were you, just enough so when you open up with nukes/cones all the - to hit stacks up and your pretty much untouchable. And i'd take life drain, even the small heal keeps you up. Current build (testing hammis to try match umbrals range or at least close enough so that i dont have to reposition constantly) :

Very old build not updated to page 5, when i get round to it i' ll definitely be putting more slots in howling its just too good and has too many uses and i hate running agility so i'll try to find a way to proc an ff+rech maybe in psi nado or sorcery's arcane bolt (not in current build) so i can switch in intuition radial:

I have a fire/rad that never gets played and a rad/rad i quite like but didn't go the usual route of psi mastery its more of a themed toon and i had to drop a lot of procs to bump melee defence and i wanted mace to try the co-ordinated targeting and the pet. Not fantastic but i do have fun playing it:

Stop doing them? Why lol. As i said earlier i was the fastest player on the team, pets were set up and buffed and i was first to the mobs and already attacking before anyone else even arrived and needed a tp. I've been doing speed runs for as long as its been possible. Never had any issues with mm's on them til players started slotting incandes. Used to set records on live and when we got HC back i was teaching players how to speed tinpex for quick reward tables. 10-15 seconds means you only miss 1-2 mobs and that only matters on kill alls.

Masterminds slot aoe sets, Controllers/fenders/corrs slot single target so i assume last time you were running an mm. And this time your not.

This may already have been suggested (and probably has) . Theres a ton of work and effort put in by many players writing and creating story arcs in AE and some of them are exceptional. I know the devs have set up a reward system for the best posted but when AE came in on the live servers i always looked at is as a way to expand the game by players creating new content that fit with the games lore/canon/storylines that the devs could then rate and put directly into appropriate zones. We know its possible to put in new content, we've seen it with the last few pages from the Graveyard Shift arc to Aeon sf and the new cim arcs. Having played some of the AE arcs i wondered why its not possible to fit those in. At least one of them reminded me of the original red arcs starting in the mercy base that i would prefer as an option when i make a new villain. They are great fun but trawling through the AE to find them if you don't have a specific ID to search with makes me wonder how many arcs are in there that are hidden gems that could be placed in game as content.

I'd agree is the speed run was being run by other players who can speed, if i'm the first there on an mm and my pets arrive before any other player is close thats clearly not the case as i frequently find you have to wait anything up to 60 seconds or longer for slower pets like mercs/necro to catch up to you as they don't always 'port' in. In some cases i had to go back and look for them only to find they walked into some scenery and all i can see is the upper torso.

You have no choice but to descend to ground level if you need to apply the upgrades after re-summoning regardless of having group fly on, fastest thing to do is turn it off and then upgrade and turn it back on but that can put you in a difficult position. Either that or take a secondary that makes pets unkillable 😛

Never heard of anyone soloing the MS but i do remember a couple corrs duo'ing it regularly on defiant way back when. Fire/cold and an ice/kin corrs. I remember @River running the fire/cold but i forget who the other player was (i want to say @Linea but my memory is terrible and it was so long ago it may just have been a global that started with L)

Looks a bit iffy endurance wise with assault and tactics running, i usually try to find ways to stack up damage bonuses and toss in assault on top. Almost no resists but theres not a lot of reasons to go in melee i just toss in any old epic melee for a blistering set to hit roughly 45% s/l/e/ne defence and hope not to get hit. Just noticed theres 6 luck of the gamblers slotted, big mistake. Take 1 out of weave for extra f/c res. Edited. And realised its an out of date mids-terra firma can take to hit sets.

Your power picks, minus dark blast, hover is flight control and you have more than enough st stuff ( why would you not go intuition radial if you want range and holds? )

I've seen a ton of blasters lately with 0 defence murdering mobs in high end content and its possible they build this way so i'm not going to say 'Don't slot like that' or 'don't take that power' as i have no experience building blasters this way. My lazy builds take mace for scorp shield and just aim for 45% smashing and lethal. If i take a resist shield i usually aim for around 32.5% ranged and smashing and lethal or just go for 45% ranged defence although that usually means skipping out on some damage procs. You have literally thrown in every proc available in every power so i'll assume its just gonna be 1 of those kill first before the mob aggroes and murders me builds because as soon as they aggro on you, your gonna die without amplifiers and base boosts and insps. I don't have one so i can't give much advice, you'd need someone who played the combo and can make better builds than me if you want to keep flame mastery. I just threw it in my earthx2 blaster build and its a super lazy mace build i doubt it would put out 2/3 damage that yours would. You'd still have to boost all the def pieces to get to 45% s/l

My thoughts are pretty simple. You will have fun with it. Dark blast is one of those sets that rarely if ever gets boring. I ran a dark/time a couple years back and i built it pretty much the way i imagine your looking at doing now. It was great. It was slow. Playing dark/nin and dark/dev made me re-evaluate the slotting. The attacks stack up the - to hit debuffs to the point where 45+ ranged is irrelevant. Torrent ensures the mobs aren't able to attack anyway. Open with that and the tentacles and even if the odd one to the side hits you , life drain is there. Your about to build your dps toon as a tanker. When you build your tanks do you build them as dps?

If its a tank i usually go 2 builds, 1 will be for proper tanking and built to survive and the other for soloing and built for damage. But even the tankiest build can slot procs and should because it'll hep the teams dps. I get that @WumpusRatyou might want to make it the most survivable you can but how long are you prepared to sit in a mob and wait for attacks to recharge then click them and watch that attack hit for almost no damage. Having played a bunch of tanky tankers where you can hop in a mob and throw an attack on auto and go off and make dinner and come back and find the mobs still there and you haven't even taken out the minions i wonder at the fun factor. Isn't it more fun to have a tanky tanker that also puts out damage? I'm not saying go mad and slot 4 procs/attack, but even 1 in each makes a massive difference and generally the 6th set bonus is junk. Its the reason i dislike invul so much, you almost have to 6 slot everything, taking that junk slot in order to get to the point where its survivable where any other tanker primary gives you far more slotting flexibility. Why 6 slot avalanche/blistering cold for f/c/aoe def when you could use it for a damage proc. Why be force picked into an epic power or 2 just so you can use 5-6 winters bites and 5-6 entomb for e/ne def. None of the other tanker primaries force this on you, they let you go for the fun stuff like soul/mu. Your right i do have an opinion on what slow is same as everyone else and a tanker that takes 7-8 minutes to plow through a +4 mob isn't fun its just boring especially if i can do it in less than 2 minutes and have near the same survivability to the point where its not even noticeable. Watching a tanker team mate running his invul/? just waiting for the recharge on the 1 pbaoe attack they have to come back up and then clicking it and watching the mob laugh at the puny damage compared to the other team mate running a ?/? murder half the mob in 1 chain of aoe and then hop ahead of the team leaving the rest to mop up is what a tanker should be. They should be crushing half the mob and moving on it keeps things interesting and makes sure that the tank is doing their job of taking the alpha. Theres 0 reason on HC for a tanker to have low dps considering they got a bump every new page that came out and have what may be considered the best AT sets unless that tank is specifically built for hardmode content. If you build it just for survivability and don't run hard content then whats the point of it? You could of built in way more damage and be just as survivable as you are now.

Doesn't look quite right and the rech seems a little off but who doesn't want fold space on their tank (especially that dark tank for a tight soul drain) I couldn't give up superspeed so i ended up dropping cloak of fear:

I know its an old thread but i've seen more than a few darkity/dark sent builds lately running either dark/soul epics and some chat on forums. So went back over everything other players were putting in and had a look at their much greater experience with the sets. I gave up on mine the thunderstrike sets alone made me cry. After a good few hours in mids and looking at a few builds @oldskoolposted.....i went in the complete opposite direction 😛 First i looked at the AT sets, melee defence and e/ne defence, devs must have made them that way for a reason i thought. I'll build for melee and play it as a scrapper. That worked out ok for a while but the endurance issues were a pain and cardiac meant the already measly damage didn't improve. So i dumped leadership.....and fighting and somehow ended up with every travel pool (can't get enough of fold space) and decided scrapping is the way to go, with some control chucked in. Shame i can't replace all the ranged attacks with melee powers from the epics as i would definitely do that if i could, sents play so much better in melee and just about every combo runs powers in the primary/secondary/epic/patron pools that require you to be up close. Ended up renaming it, putting it in a different cossie and looking for powers that synergise. Primary was easy its all - to hit that stacks up. Sents get the best epics/patron powers but 1 set is so far out in front of the others its laughable. Psi has better recharge and slotting options luckily thats good for a theme and.... Oppressive gloom with Psy Shockwave for stuns. Abyssal and Dominate are a stacked hold. Then i run into problems, i take the powers i want, chuck sets in and its a complete mess of tiny resist numbers and no defence whatsoever. Even if i wanted to put fighting and leadership back in to bump the numbers theres no slots left. I look at the build and theres not 1 single enhance in it that doesnt look essential apart from the 1 slotted mass hypnosis that is a force pick to get dominate and psy shockwave. Few hours more and i'm building it for melee defence and e/ne def with as much res as i can get. Trying to keep the power picks, i combat tp into the mob aim-fold space-nuke-dark oblit-psy shockwave hit obscure sustenance at some point, which says pbaoe but is in fact single target and doesn't seem to do anything but my regen jumps just enough that i can fire off a few life drains and keep my hp up. I know sent life drain is the worst and the way i slotted it makes no sense, although the same could be said for OS but the blue bar can drop drastically and the theft procs seem to keep me afloat since i dumped cardiac. Really needs some pro eyes to look over it, i had to give up hasten (threw in fly, i was sick of trying to tp my way through mission tunnels) and all but a tiny bit of my recharge to fit in the picks i wanted. It kind of works, its only a small purple from softcap melee/e/ne def and just about scrapes in enough res to survive but the accuracy is pretty bad, almost as bad as the damage. It plays more like a controlling scrapper but with none of the oomph. Combat teleport while hovering and Fold space makes it fun and that makes it playable.

No expert on elec tankers. Turn off power surge. Click info bottom left. Thats your resists now. Here's how you could toss pieces in roughly, you'd have to shuffle in power picks and sets etc. but you look like you know what your doing. Check resist numbers. You should be aiming for something like that and i think you could do it no problem (empty stuff was just me using a very old build i have and swapping in kinetic melee just so you can see the melee defence and resists) :

Its not much but some def is better than none, looks like you skipped reactive scaling piece 🙂 Might look like recharge is worse but theres an ff+rech in shockwave. Resists look about the same. Tried to stick with your picks but sirens song is superior to howl now and buys you breathing room:

Then i'm sure this is exactly what your not looking for (i'm already imagining 4 thunderstrike and 2 artillery sets) 😢

@BazookaTwo not sure i have but if i do its all good, pvp chance for damage procs arent limited to 1/toon. Ah you mean the glad chance for toxic? You can throw in as many of those as you like. 1 per each ranged attack that can slot it.

I have one with a couple of builds on it i can switch between depending on how i feel or the situation. I don't bother aiming for 45% to anything as its got enough ff+rech slotted that power boost tends to be up all the time and i can just leave it on auto which is a good thing as its easily the clickiest blaster set by a mile with hasten-power boost-energize-boost range, before you even consider hitting build up. One runs mace and hits massive s/l defence with pb on for melee'ing the energy attacks, the other runs munitions when i just want to hop around the mob and is extremely squishy and best used on teams with a decent tank. I took a lot of the slotting for both from some of @Nemubuilds and then fiddled with them to fit the way i like to play. Rifle/Nrg/Mace. Turn on PB and you'll get defence numbers. Total focus/bone smasher/energy punch sets can be moved about, TF is basically being used as a mule and can be swapped out for slug/bean bag/ignite. Munitions build only hits about 40% ranged with PB on but runs a t4 barrier to carry it through.