Sovera

As someone who did a Brute version of the Tanker Brunker build I have to say so many sacrifices were made to just squeak by, and even so there is a massive 30% less negative/energy resists compared to the Tanker build. But it does do a bit more damage on all attacks compared to the Tanker build. But the downsides (It's martial arts and not Rad) is no AoE until 26-28. Rad melee at least avoids this.

It's true that the MA variant suffers from the AoE angle, but ultimately it manages to pull next to the same (or better?) numbers than the Claws both in ST and AoE. It's just how the testing turned out. But then on top of having the same (or slightly better) numbers it also boasts of the full defense kit. This is mostly because of the quickness of Dragon Tail (1.87 VS 2.5) and the Force Feedback proc. While the numbers are smaller since DT hits like a noddle (I could never play MA alone) it churns out more Burns-per-minute which evens it out. This doesn't even include how DT offers soft CC and how its recharge is sped by its own the FF proc, or how it speeds up Consume and Healing Flames in the process. The best way to test is do something like clearing a farm map, time it, then do it with Claws. Spin hits for twice the damage of DT, and yet the times end being similar. That's why I advertise MA since as you've noticed we can plow through things that makes other tanks leery such as Carnies or CoT. That said Claws is super solid and suffers only for the lack of burst that BU + Gaussian allows. As for Burn it is chicanery involving pseudo pets. As you can see the animation and recharge time means the procs have a good chance of going off, but the little orange numbers that come after Burn's use is from a summoned pseudo pet. That pseudo pet has a second chance of activating the procs. It's a much lower chance than the initial hit, but its there, and it's visible as it takes chunks off low level mobs. A super procced out Burn is possible with two ACC/DM Hamis and then quadruple procs. This is because Burn has a negligible five endurance cost and once everything is in place even without recharge slotted in it only recharges three seconds slower than a regularly slotted Burn. The quadruple proc makes for mini nuclear explosions thanks to the row of 90% chance procs who then get the pseudo pet's chance to go off a second time. But ultimately those three seconds add up and in tests clearing a map I had the same results with just two procs as the current slotting goes. Since I exemplar a lot and at times lose many bonuses I preferred the full slotting for the raw stats.

Work, yes, it will, no reason why not. In AoE toggles its iffy and I would not recommend it. But the downside of placing it in an AoE is that you're not using those in single target scenarios which is why I would suggest finding a way to place it somewhere you would use in either case.

This part of the forum is thick with 'this doesn't bother ME, so it's not a problem. Also, the Devs Time Is Precious So No' (as if they had any sort of say on what the devs do or do not...). That said I believe you are wanting only the benefits without any of the drawbacks. While an extreme example it is not too unlike wanting the benefits of a defensive T9 but not the downside (the crash). It's an extreme example, but, I think fitting. Wanting the -fly is no different from wanting Super-Speed's super speed but asking to have it able to jump too so it can avoid walls. When you take EvM you choose to take the speed in order to get the -fly resist, which at some point you decide whether one is worth the other or not, just like we do with most choices (I'd love to have Fold Space in every character, but I'm -not- taking Teleport as my travel power, thankyouverymuch). That said I'm just giving my two cents, the devs will obviously do it or not as they see fit. More options never hurt.

All is good, you can hardly mess things. Even Fire Armor which is considered squishy solos +4x8 ITFs as seen a post or two under this one. If you're spoiled for choice and not sure what or how to build just copy something until you get your bearings.

Pre-emptive 'fun would be defense at 40%'. Ok, now he won't post it here since it's been said. Carry on.

As the (self-proclaimed) Fire Armor guru I whole heartedly approve of this thread. We will follow your career with much interest. On a more serious note I see nothing that warrants corrections, build's top notch. I would personally change the slotting to have two damage procs in Burn since it makes the skill bursty, or scrounge slots to finish beefing Gloom, or lower resistances a tad for the second ATO stack to finish capping them since it is so easy and quick to obtain, but it's almost cosmetic and as you've proved by testing it the build's standing firm. Now it is just you playing it and refining. SS is singularly well suited for the kill-them-first-before-they-kill-us with the massive burst that is double stacked Rage and KD Blow. Squishy fire armor indeed!

Removing Taunt would be fine if the game behaved a bit more mainstream. Mobs we fight we fight until they die. Instead mobs invariably at 20-30% decide to leg it. All mobs. Every mobs. Even robots of psionic constructs, or ghosts. This is not a case of Scrappers stealing agro from a Tanker or if a Blaster and a Scrapper both hit the same mob it will choose the Scrapper. It is a case of the flee code being extremely, extremely, obnoxious. It adds very little to the experience and in the end it pushes the ATs with agro to the front when soloing and everything else has to bear with enemies sprinting away. But, you say, it's logical. They are running for their life! Well, sure, but after 20-30 seconds they return in dribbles. Lets make up our minds here. Either they are running for their lives and they just huddle to the nearest pack of mobs, or they are running for a bit and then returning later because... the brief sprint activated serotonin and they feel optimistic that they can take the guy who downed all its friends. So we can ignore them and move to the next group, and then if it's a kill all we need to back track and find that one or two mobs who ran off now standing where they were before, or we need to chase them. Or we play something with agro. For all of it's many faults WoW handles it better. Pretty much the only enemies that flee are humanoids. Everything else from animals to constructs will fight to the bitter end. Since it is not about fighting 7-10 enemies at a time it is fine that the single humanoid enemy we are fighting decides to leg it since we just keep on hitting it. But in CoH we have a dozen enemies and we might have half that who decides to run in all directions. While this is a bit of a tangent what I am trying to bring to bear is that more ATs wanting taunt is a symptom. The disease is the flee code.

Tell your friend to try a Tanker instead. Times have changed with new patches. Fire Armor + Claws will deliver, or Martial Arts.

I have been tinkering with this combo. I'm not 100% happy with it but mostly due to exemplaring. It's why I removed Flying which is usually my favorite travel power as I could only fit EvM by level 35-38. As it is I have Super Speed at 32 and intend to go around with Athletic Run + Sprint until then. Unsatisfying. This is because I want to fit Maneuvers as soon as possible to achieve about 40% as low as level 20. Swapping Maneuvers' for the travel power lets it be picked earlier and not rely on Athletic Run + Sprint until 32. TBH Athletic Sprint + Sprint + Quickness should be enough to travel around without SS, but there isn't much to take in terms of powers. Taking Fly instead of SS is also a thing though without EvM it will not reaching the speeds it could. I did keep Hover because I like it for combat positioning (no need to jump to aim Shadow Maul down as a ghetto PbAoE and body blocking isn't a thing) but for those who do not like it then take Combat Jumping instead. Because of wanting to fit everything in early Dark Consumption gets pushed back to 30. This lets it be available for when it's -really- needed, AKA Yin's TF. Until then even Synapse ought to be fine since mobs need to hit to debuff and it's SR we're talking about. I usually place damage procs on all attacks, but chose not to with Shadow Punch and Smite because their fast recharge and animation gives them a miserable 14-24% chance to go off. Due to personal preferences I also took Shadow Punch instead of Midnight Grasp despite MG being superior, but, I prefer to do pew pews fast attacks and without Shadow Punch low level/exemplaring will have gaps (which -could- be filled with Touch of Fear mind, so replacing SP for MG is a possibility). The build ends perhaps overcharged with endurance recovery since it has 4.22 EPS (more even since it has three Performance Shifter procs that are not accounted for in the 4.22) on top of Dark Consumption. This also on top of the 33% endurance reduction from keeping full stacks of the ATO in Shadow Punch. 395% regen (with ATO stacks, 275% without) doesn't do a looot, perhaps 32-ish HP a second, but frankenslotted Siphon Life is a bit beefier at 272 HP every 4 seconds which translates to about 13.5% of a full bar. Nothing to write home about but it helps healing the 5% hits that come through... ...in turn mitigated by a decent 53% resistance to S/L and 27% to E/N. It wont' save from auto-hits but those resistances will be beefed by SR's autos (at about 40% HP the resistances go up by 30% and keep on increasing). Single target rotation is a very simple Siphon Life, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch. For AoE Touch of Fear, Shadow Maul, Siphon Life can be repeated through eternity. Or Touch of Fear, Shadow Maul, Touch of Fear, Siphon Life.

It's because it's a pretty weak combo. The game is easy enough that you can do whatever with whatever but once the difficulty is upped a bit more the shortcomings become evident. Namely how Elec Melee has very poor single target damage and mediocre AoE and Regen doesn't do enough to keep a character alive once the envelope is pushed. You can prop both with fancy builds but it is, as the colloquialism go, polishing a turd.

When I solo Posi the only temp I use is Recovery Serum since our endurance at that level of slotting is ruinous. It's definitely doable on Scrappers and Tankers. But, I also go in IOed to the gills. Not one generic IO in sight, it's all ATOs or events (Avalanche and such). On generics the proposition would be a lot iffier. Also, when I say tanks I mean Fire Armor which has a definite damage boost in Burn other Tankers won't have. But yes, it's a slow whittling. A full team will probably kill him before he goes into second phase where soloing at level means he'll do all phases. At the top of my mind I think only Clamor can really hardblock because she distributes like candy the most OP debuff in the game: -defense. No one wants to fight an AV with defense in the negatives while also surrounded by regular mobs. So that one asks for a bit of strategy like kiting and breaking line of sight to kill the adds and only then go at her with scrounged inspirations.

What I meant (though @th0ughtGun corrected me) was that the procs wouldn't all go off at the same time so the damage tooltip would be misleading. Apparently Mids takes this in consideration and calculates an average. I confess I wasn't aware it even did this. But I'll stick to my guns for a while longer and say that testing is still something more comfortable to present than maths.

Am I blind or does Musculature not affect Touch of Tear? It does for other skills in Dark Melee such as Dark Maul, but I was messing with a Brute and noticed the damage of Touch of Fear did not budge.

Mids screenshots are not... exactly... good reference material. As you've said the comparison made is not flattering to begin with. Then you don't account that with your slotting Acid Arrow has a 47% chance for each proc to go off. Not for -all- of them to go off. 47% per proc. Which means the odds are reduced of having all four happening. On the other hand the Fireball will always do that damage. So since it's 47% we could say there's a 50% chance of only two procs going off (Bopper, don't look, I'm butchering math!). Now that Acid Arrow is doing 74 damage while the dominator is still chugging at 125 per cast, all casts. To be clear I'm not on either side in particular, but I do caution about glib comparing of numbers. I urge testing for these things. Find a nice group of +0 enemies (in the name of easy testing despite skewing things) and hover out of the way casting that skill until all are dead then report. That Acid Arrow is just -not- going to be doing a Dominator's Fireball damage.

All the time. Scrappers or Tankers. I think my last one had it set at +0 x6 and went it at level 17 or something. Your problem is two folded. A) you're really low level so don't have enough slots. And B) Super Strength sucks before Rage (the low level attacks are terribad too). Had you been Claws you probably would have managed it. Had you been Bio/Claws you would have probably walked all over it. I pretty much only play Fire Armor and Burn is a big help. If you want to try something new try Fire Armor/Claws or Martial arts such as I have in my signature. They both exemplar wonderfully. Super Strength is bad at low levels until Rage, and then only gets an AoE at 38. Even Fire Armor/Super Strength is better because Burn helps with no AoE until 38 The Fire Armor/Martial Arts did Posi 1 and 2 at +0x8 which says enough about the low key synergy of the combo.

I wouldn't go around blaming others for your decision. They have presented certain facts or opinions and you've made a decision based on them. You, not the poster. With that said I don't even know what builds you changed but all I need to see is 'defender and controller' and context to see you were probably trying to use the fancy procs such as holds, endurance drain, etc? Now that you have made the change I suggest you play the build. If you say you notice no difference before and after I will not be surprised. We have a number of people on these forums ready to swear how their sapping mobs is really really helpful and how their -ToHit incarnates really really makes a difference, but if we were to ask them to change their slotting/power picks I'm willing to wager they will not notice a difference. So please, chill, I'm pretty sure your change in gameplay/slotting won't even be noticed by anyone you're playing with.

My own tests with procs didn't show them having a huge impact on the long run. I have the tests posted in the Brunker thread in my signature. Even at the start/middle of the thread I can be found puzzling why what started as an amazeballs procmonstered Burn (incidentally a -very- good carrier for procs) did not show a particular benefit over a regular slotted Burn despite the huge disparity in damage. Later on I ended up switching to a non proc monstered Burn because the raw stats meant more uses even in the lower levels, and also because I could make use of the bonuses. And yet, and yet, it is tantalizing to see a 200+ damage increase (further increased by Burn's double interaction with procs, which -should- have pushed the proc approach further), but testing, not maths, showed there was no great difference between both. Now, -res procs do make a large difference, but mostly because pylons are the damage test and not AVs. Tested (again in the signature) and -res had negligible (against AVs) to no impact in actual gameplay (maps). Again, no math, just actual tests. Unfortunately with Pylons as the subjects of damage tests -res procs will always have such a large impact (25% ish in my amateurish testing) that the discussion will give them more weight than they deserve. As if we fought +0 enemies that don't resist -res effects on a regular basis. My last slew of tests before I went to play SWTOR for a month or two was me trying to improve the damage of a Fire Armor/Ice Melee and I won't bore people with the numbers (again, signature) but nothing I did really changed it. More procs, less procs, quadruple procs. The 5% whiffing accounted more than anything for the slight differences in numbers. This, to me, after multiple tests until 3 AM, tells me that procs don't have as much impact as people might think they do. That said I've relegated all my testing to the Tanker AT and perhaps with other ATs this changes, though I remember many many moons back testing a Rad Melee/Bio Scrapper and posting on the Pylon thread over the Scrapper forums how I kept removing procs to fit more bonuses but it didn't seem to impact my times.

Quite right, I just want people to be informed before making their decision. I don't need to say the number of people who go around with buggy or underperforming incarnates while declaring they really 'feel' the difference. But once knowing the things and still wanting to give a whirl then absolutely.

I'll be honest with in that using procs for stuns and holds has little value. Holds and stuns have durations which are shortened by level difference. They also have magnitudes. A boss' stun protection is invariably 4. Most procs (most, but not all) have a magnitude of 2. So you would need a second proc to hit in the small window in which the effect of the first was still up in order to sun a boss. Now, we can still stun minions and lieutenants... but those aren't dangerous much. Just killing them achieves the same purpose and a damage proc hastens that. Basically, yes, it's an option to use fancy procs, but the system does not reward you for doing so and you will not really notice a difference. But to answer your question Chain Induction ought to have a chance to hit multiple enemies with its procs. It's not a big chance for the chain though, it is more for the initial hit.

S'troo, but I wouldn't do that to a new arrival.

I did not try MA on a Scrapper. But on a Tanker MA's AoE damage was like watching paint dry, it will definitely enjoy a second AoE and Dragon Tail is going to act like a nitro boost with FF. If you're going to aim for incarnate for melee and splitting your ATO it opens possibilities like ditching Cobra Strike and instead taking Crane Kick with another FF and a KB>KD.

Uh, so you do. I must be becoming blind in my old age. *checks again* Yeah, everything is in place, nothing much more that can be added other than maybe considering taking the hit to damage and switch to Brute. The 10% defense from Storm Kick would alleviate a lot of your slotting choices (though not particularly helping in the EPS other than the stacks of recovery from the Brute ATO). I believe this is as good as it gets and it's pretty damn solid.

You can skip a lot of the more tedious slotting by grabbing Weave. I know it's going to increase your EPS when you're already complaining about the costs, but Serums cost near nothing at 10k a pop and can be stacked to 50 when purchased. Once at 50 you shouldn't even need them with Ageless be it yours or of other people. You could then drop some of those 6 slotted Makos, change the Performance Shifters in Physical Perfection for Synapse, full Touch of Death in Eagle Claw for Hectacomb, or move things so you can have a FF proc in Dragon's Tail (not that you have a lot of CDs to begin with, but it's a damn waste not abusing FF in Dragon Tail). This all hinges on being comfortable spamming Serums while under 50 though. *scoffs at non Consume characters*

Fire Armor/Martial Arts. Shout Hadouken at mobs while wreathed in flames. Tank 99% of the game at near Scrapper speeds (better in fact when leveling/exemplaring to low mid levels).