Sovera

First foray with the Katana/Rad. Working pretty well. I decided to push it and went into 0x6 at level 8 to test Divine Avalanche, and, well, it worked. I did have to eat a few greens since I did not have the damage to whittle big groups at once with just Flashing Steel. I wasn't aware that the 50% crit is per enemy. Later on using it in Flashing Steel had it pop up nearly per use depending on how many enemies were around. This was a game changer when Lotus opened. Ended up doing Posi 1 at level 10 still at 0x6. Luminous bosses were a nightmare which doubled down by getting my recharged debuffed deep into the negatives at times from the Vhaz lieutenants. It reminds me that Clamour will ignore DA since most of her attacks are ranged or AoE, but we'll see. Posi 1 went well enough regardless and I ended up not dying once, finished it in 54 minutes which was okay considering my only AoE had been Flashing Steel. Posi 2 will have both Lotus and Radiation Therapy. Lets see how it goes.

God damnit, I keep saying Slashing when I mean Lethal. You'd think it would have sunk in already... Thanks!

I think that I found the solution for Radiation Armor's squishiness, but the pacing of the build is not very welcoming to actually try it in game. Basically, Katana. 'Immunity' to melee with minimal investment is a fat layer of minus incoming damage for the resistances to take over the rest of the damage. But the pacing is dire. Fly only at 30, only one ST attack until level 22 (17 exemplared). I can level taking the other ST attacks and Flashing Steel until 22, but the exemplaring will be terrible if it goes too far. That said it's niggles because otherwise Rad Armor needs something and it's not heals, it's the means to not need heals. And Divine Avalanche is it. Sure, there will then be ranged damage, AoE, etc, but if we cut a third of the damage out it's what the set needs to make damage manageable. In the end the AoE combo wipes out whole packs of enemies fast but in that small interval we need to survive which is what Radiation Armor was not being very good at. And DA recharges so fast it can be DA, Golden Dragonfly, DA, okay, already softcapped to melee, now DA can be relegated to filler once Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly are recharging. Katana is pretty decent at ST damage even if the AoE is a bit light but Rad Armor will help with that and Katana will help Radiation Armor. Also appreciated, but not a deal maker, DA animates so fast and has such a short recharge that damage procs do not do much in there (17% chance for a regular Touch of Death) which means it is a good place to place the 5th and last LotG. This places Hasten at 125 seconds and the FF proc will eliminate that gap. For those not aware (because we have new players around) Divine Avalanche is a power that gives 15% defense to Melee and Lethal. This power stacks three times so DA by itself can softcap defense (45% is the sweetspot), but since I was already building towards a modicum of Melee/Smash/Lethal defense by slotting uniques, plus the ATO giving 5% S/L and 2.5% Melee, DA does not need to be used three times. Even with Combat Jumping and Weave turned off we still are at 50% Melee defense with two uses of DA which, as mentioned above, happens in the first 3 seconds of combat. Even while leveling a level 10 SO or IO in DA is enough to have Melee defense at 40% with both defense uniques, (and since there is no reason to level without amplifiers this also becomes 45%) with two applications of DA which is already enough in the low levels to be immune to melee. But, even without fancy uniques of level 10 defense IO/SO a third application will still still put Melee at 45% which with DA having a native recharge of 3 seconds will happen very fast. Now yes there will be AoE and Ranged damage, but even so some of the Ranged will be Lethal (arrows and bullets are commonly Lethal damage (someone correct me if I'm wrong)) so even some of that that ranged damage will be deflected, but, most importantly, Rad Armor is a resist armor so it can handle that. What it couldn't handle so far in my playthroughs is TOO much damage incoming. Even what I said above about deflect a third of the incoming damage isn't correct since as a general rule mobs do few AoEs and most will run into melee or use melee moves if we are close to them. I might say melee is ... 50% of all damage (don't quote me) with 30% being ranged and 20% AoE. Might even be more skewed towards Ranged than AoE. Anyways, this is a lot of theorycrafting bla bla bla. I'll boot up the build and report how it goes. For now this is the basic sketch of the build. I will play it and refine once I see how it behaves. Since Sting of the Wasp is a hundred points more damage than DA there is something to be said about removing the slots from Weave and apply them there to solve the lack of ST attacks if exemplared. I know the regular way of playing Katana is alternating DA and Sting of the Wasp if not needing the defense since Sting does more damage, but eeeh, that's so tryharding. But it's viable and an option. Also, it allows to split Blistering Cold around and get 100% recharge resistance which is very important for resistance based armors. I've talked myself into it. Took the slots from Weave since it's just a mule for another LotG (though we have enough endurance to keep it toggled on, sure, whatever) and spread them around. But Sting of the Wasp is barely worth using with just two slots being a mere 50-ish more points. Still, it's good enough for leveling/exemplaring. With the changes the build now has 100% resistance to recharge debuffs and a 124 Hasten and still hardcapped to all (with Barrier) except a little bit in Fire, and the usual Rad Armor holes in Cold and Psi. There might be something said to tetris the bonuses and just reach 75% without Barrier so we can take Vigor instead, but I feel Barrier PREVENTS the damage and is good for cascading defense failures (which still hurt resistance armors) instead of trying to heal through it and once building towards having Barrier might as well account for the perma 5%. Time will tell. Scrapper (Katana Rad).mbd I can cobble a leveling build if new players need it, but I will level taking Gambler's Cut instead of Sting (at the extreme low levels it's better to have fast recharging powers) and Flashing Steel at level 2 until Posi 2 is done where I will respec into the build. Until Posi 2 is done we can do with a third attack and Flashing Steel works for the job.

Hmm, well, I play both extensively. Brutes do more damage, but the Tanker gets two pbAoEs.

Not sure what would fit. Rad Armor, sure, then maybe Spines with all the toxic DoTs. Rad Melee with the damage aura. Would it be too cheeky to suggest Fire Melee coloured green? 😄

Rad Armor does not heal half as much as Dark Armor. We can consider the absorb shield a heal and then, yes, it heals for roughly 50% of a bar, but on a 40-ish CD. Dark Regen does the same (60% heal with one mob in range) but every 11-12 seconds. But that said Dark Armor's heal is too strong (is that even possible?) and overheals gigantically. It does recharge pretty fast though and is available every 11-12 seconds or so unlike Particle Shielding but the less enemies around the more it becomes problematic since fewer enemies to hit, chance to miss and not get healed, and less returns from the Theft of Essence to pay for Dark Regen. Dark Armor is a bit of an odd duck without a real identity other than Dark Regen and the endurance costs are enormous as it is obviously meant to be paired with Dark Melee. Dark Regen has an accuracy check, and even if maxed out there is always the archaic 5% chance to miss which happens often enough to be a problem when fighting a single enemy. Then it has no KB protection which needs to be procured. Ugh. @DiscipleWay if you're really sold on the idea of Dark Armor then @Meknomancer's build is fairly on point (I would probably lower the defenses to close to 33% so a small purple will still softcap if the situation calls for a bit more oomph, and then spread the slots to split the Superior Blistering Colds and amp the slow resistance to 95% but it's subjective). Do stock up on Recovery Serums from the START vendor though. But if you're a bit new to the game I recommend an easier pairing like Fire/Stone. I know you said you particularly wanted to be a Brute but a Stone/Fire Melee Tanker is an AoE machine (it gets two PbAoEs unlike the Brute version that only has one) that cruises through the game barely touching inspirations starting at level 13 with minimal investment.

Do you want a traditional Rad/MA or a wonky one? Traditional is pump up the resistances. Wonky we put that +10% from Storm Kick to good use and pump our defenses to reach 45% to Melee/Ranged/AoE.... while also having 90% to all except Cold and Psi.

Hmm. The Fire/Rad really is a lot of damage. But god damn, I'm not used to dying once or twice per mission against COUNCIL, of all things. So much as a +2 spawn and I'm already wincing in advance. So I respeced into an early Tough/Weave and it got a bit better, though still dying once in a while. They are not fully slotted but I'm not sure that 6-7% resistances will make that huge a difference. On a Tanker it is not as noticeable, but on a Scrapper the Particle Shield power is not a good alpha soaker. It recharges too slowly to be up at every spawn unlike Ablative Shield. The only heal the set has is Radiation Therapy and that one depends on the number of enemies around, which, fair, slotted for heals would give 290 HP + 58 per enemy and be up every 20 seconds. Procced as I have it's 183 HP + 37 and up every 23 seconds.

Isn't this the aftercast? The Arcana time? Not all animations have perfect loops though where the animation ends precisely when the animation lock ends. Sometimes the animation ends before the lock and we are still there waiting. Granted, not a long wait, but, still noticeably there.

The, still, best example of this is Katana. Soaring Dragon knocks a mob in the air and then Golden Dragonfly does a knockdown. Used back to back it's really beautiful with the move visually going up, tossing the enemy in the air, and then GD being a little jump before slamming the katana down and the mob is slammed to the floor while still in the air from Soaring Dragon.

Mind that they run afoul of ED like every other IO. While people will swear on +5 every single IO the benefits are very shallow since ED makes sure of that. Some IOs can't be +5 like ATOs and event IOs. +5 is useful for a few things though. Two +5 level 50 recharges in Hasten will save one slot there. Frankenslotting bits and bobs and wanting to reach certain goals (accuracy or damage for example) then +5 helps. For example I slot three ATOs in some builds and then my accuracy isn't quite enough to reach the 95% chance to hit +3 so I slot a random accuracy/damage/endurance or recharge to reach my goals and then +5 it to squeeze a few % more. Remember also that most of the time it's better to ensure that IOs are attuned instead of boosted because when attuned the IO bonuses travel with you up and down the level range to the limit of the set. A crafted (or boosted) level 50 is fine for 50, but if we exemplar to anything lower than 47 the bonuses will disappear. But an attuned level 50 can go down to whatever level it can first be exemplared. For example a Luck of the Gambler can be slotted at 22. So an attuned LotG can be slotted at 22 and will grow with us to 50 (something that gives 32% at level 22 will give 42% at level 50), and if we exemplar down to 22 it will still work, but not if 21 (not the bonuses, but the raw stats will still be there). A crafted/boosted LotG can be slotted at 22 but the raw stats it gives at that level will never change. You can check the boosted effects in Mids. When you are picking your IO and before you click on it you press + five times to increase its boosted level, then you click on the specific IO.

Early acc doesn't seem necessary thanks to 'luck of the beginner'. But the early Kismet may actually quite smart as for one slot we avoid slotting all other attacks. I would need to check on Mids where the cut off is. I return from checking Mids. Mids does not account for 'luck of the beginner' that slowly wanes until it disappears at level 20 but just a Kismet gives standard attacks 71% chance to hit. Which means at least by level 21 it's not enough. Mids doesn't allow level 23 generic IOs, but a level 25 generic IO leaves accuracy at 85% by level 22 so 32% is almost enough against +1. I usually guide myself by Mids for the accuracy needed to hit +1 when compiling leveling builds, but now that I think about it considering the ATOs numbers we get are for level 50 the accuracy is most likely under the limit. Kismet is probably a good choice. (Man, I do my own chain of thought and my reasoning is better for it). I do always keep track of Last Hit chance and it reports 95% most of the time until fighting AVs and such but I think the Kismet could indeed be a smart thing. I already loathe miss the archaic 5% always present miss chance without adding even more to it.

Well, I talked myself into making the Claws/Rad build at least. A blasphemous one without Shockwave (but it's easy to just ditch GZ for Shockwave). All capped (with Barrier) except F/C/P and enough defense that a smell purple softcaps as a little something extra for survival. Scrapper (Claws Rad).mbd Claws/Stone is what I'd really like to try though, but fie to runners. Heck, even with Rad Armor I get runners. Maybe I should slot a taunt in Beta Decay instead of an endurance reduction. Another one I hadn't considered would be Rad/Rad, but Devastating(gly slow) Blow holds me back and the 'fix' to IG without giving a tune up for the rest of the set hasn't it in a great spot. But a little extra heal makes sense for a resist set (heck, almost as if they were meant to be paired!?).

I'm trying the Fire Melee/Rad and oof... that's a lot of damage. When the whole spawn (even bosses) die in the first 10 seconds of combat it's a good day to play a Scrapper. But Rad is squishy as heck. I've only played it on a Tanker so I didn't notice it as much but on a Scrapper, as we level (and, to be fair, soloing at +1x8), it doesn't have the tools. Maybe if Radiation Therapy was properly slotted and geared towards heals. But as it is geared towards damage the small heal does help but without chasing recharge the set lacks a heal to recoup the constant damage. That said I can feel it slowly getting in place. Started soloing Yin at 31 and it was okay. No slots to go around and feeling the squish being forced to eat a purple per fight. By level 37 (I restarted a few times farming XP) I found a good cadence of BU + Greater Fire Sword (fishing for a 50% proc) + Fire Sword Circle. Particle Shielding is pitiful even fully slotted and its recharge is enormous so it would be ablated in those first seconds. Follow up with Ground Zero (not yet slotted with procs and so mostly used for the small heal) + Radiation Therapy (looking for the heal, but welcoming the damage). This coincided with Greater Fire Sword and Fire Sword Circle coming off cooldown so another hit from it and SFC would finish cleaning the group. Depending on crits the boss would be done as well. By then I no longer needed inspirations. Or I would. 80% I would be on top, and then 20% there would be so much incoming damage and no more clickies ended with me on the ground. Even fully slotted the resistances are not enough to really keep me up (currently 50%-ish) and it's a matter of kill first, though I'm used it from my Fire Armor days. I was being stubborn and trying not to use inspirations but found that even a small purple would usually be enough to keep me safe. Cremate reminded me of the good old days of playing Claws. That 100% chance (well, more like, 80-90% since the archaic 5% miss chance combined with Cremated sometimes not knocking down if the mob is doing an animation) allowing to be strategic, choosing to wait a second for it to recharge to knock a Freak Tank and then maul it while its getting up so it doesn't heal... Mmmmh, good times, good times. Despite the build not being as sturdy as I'd like I'm still sticking to it because I'm enjoying the damage (which is the reason I abandoned my Tankers to try a Scrapper in the first place). My next level will have me slotting GZ for triple procs which will double its damage. Ended up doing Yin in 57 minutes despite the big damage just because of the deaths and travelling back to the mission. Clamour wasn't terrible since she got whittled down and despite dying in the ambush thanks to her debuffing me she and the ambush still went down fast thanks to the AoE combo mentioned above. Rad Armor is very pleasing for those damage oriented (and anyone playing Scrapper is that, right?). I find it does the same job as Fire Armor for Tankers who want to do do more damage and in particular lack good AoE from their primary. It doesn't increase pylon times, but that's a niche artificial test. We don't spend 2-3 minutes hitting things outside of AVs and those are 5% of the game time. What we DO spend a lot of time doing is progressing through missions be it solo or in a team and for that Rad Armor works well. For my brief teaming during Synapse I took to alternating RT and BU for the extra AoE oomph. One group BU + FSC, the next ground FSC + RT. Worked pretty well. I was a bit tempted to play with with Claws considering Shockwave would add survivability, but Claws is the one set in all the sets that does not need Radiation Armor since Claws is self-contained in terms of AoE. There might be something to say about not picking Shockwave and instead rock the three PbAoEs and I could see it. I did that with my Fire/Claws Tanker since I prefered to be in the thick of things instead of bouncing to readjust for Shockwave. But even so I'm not sure. Spin has a beautiful 9.2 recharge that is unmatched anywhere and it probably does not care about extra AoE. I dunno, I might talk myself into it.

Fiery Melee. It's the best secondary we got ATM. Don't poo poo on it 'just' being the damage because dead things don't hit back. AoE starts at level 4. Shield as a defense set will NOT like have 20% shaved off every time Rage crashes and Shield has no clickies other than Shield Charge to make use of the main appeal in SS being the FF proc in Footstomp. AoE opens at level 30. If you like Shield hypothetically consider Stone Armor (Granite not needed).

No, the 'lots of KB' that was mentioned was from outside sources so it can be applied to any other secondary and not specifically to Fire Mele, and yeah, no soft CC or otherwise, but you won't need them to be honest. It his like a truck and you will kill ALL the minions in the first seconds of BU (+gaussian) + Combustion + Fire Sword Circle. That's mitigation too if stuff isn't alive to hurt you 😄 I haven't played either Shield or Dark Armor enough to give an opinion on which, but if you're considering Shield then consider Stone Armor as well for easy sailing from level 13 onwards.

Battle Axe would be nuts. I eats endurance even through Recovery Serums ticking. Pairing with Dark Armor sounds like fuel for nightmares 😄

If you like Staff then go for staff since it fixes Dark Armor's endurance guzzling. Rad Melee guzzles endurance which will be very painful combined with Dark Armor. If you can live with Dark Melee then it fixes Dark Armor's endurance problems as well (almost like they were meant to be paired, uh). Other suggestions would be Fire Melee for raw goodness and having TWO pbAoEs that are a game changer. IMO the best secondary Tankers currently have.

I decided to try an Ice/Rad to dip my toes into Rad on a Scrapper. Ice helped in surviving and by Yin the set was beefy enough to survive without it. But the AoE wasn't super (again) despite Frost pulling the majority of the weight. Frozen Aura frankly sucks with double digit damage and without all the slots Ground Zero did not help much. Radiation Therapy is pretty nice once all slotted taking about half a +0 minion's HP. Not super amazing but it's nice when its real purpose is to replenish my blue bar. The Super Stunners were too much for it (procced as it is instead of slotted properly for recharge) but Gamma Boost fed me so much endurance that even Super Stunners were manageable. Before Gamma Boost I was getting detoggled. I found the ST lagging even with a fully slotted Freezing Touch and never did get past Yin as the slowness was getting to me (20 minutes elapsed before reaching the police station in the first mission, which is usually 10 minutes for my Tankers). I'll leave the build anyway. Managed to fix the small hole in Negative and Toxic so S/L/E/N/T are capped (with Barrier) leaving only Fire/Cold/Psi. Scrapper (Ice Melee - Rad Armor).mbd But testing Rad Armor worked better than I thought even if Ice Patch (and Frost) did a lot of the pulling. I feel more confident to try Axe. I did a bit of tweaking of the original build I posted above and fixed the Negative small hole it had so that S/L/E/N are capped (with Barrier). I could have tried to finagle Toxic as well if only I had two more slots to play with which is making me look at Ground Zero. To be honest I don't like Ground Zero. I don't like the long animation, I don't like the long recharge, and my one test with a character who had it fully procced the damage did not impress me either. But it's a nice initial burst and if my stint with the Ice/Bio taught me anything is that I can lure the mobs, open with BU + whatever power holds the 50% crit proc, then unload my AoEs. By then my Particle Shielding will have been eaten (surprisingly soaking little damage even fully slotted, almost feeling like it's soaking the full damage and not what damage goes past the toggles) which is when Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero can be used to both do damage and the small heal and get my green bar back up. Proceed with regular AoEs. With RT I decided to remove the damage/recharge/endurance slot and put a heal/recharge/endurance for a small extra boost in healing for a small damage loss (295 VS 287). It felt better for leveling since it is the only source of heals and there are no sixth damage slots anyway. The small recharge/endurance helps a bit while barely eating into the proc chance. But there might be something to be said in slotting an Overwhelming KD chance as the 6th for some extra mitigation though ( 9 endurance, 22 recharge 287 damage, 186 base heal + 37 heal per mob hit VS 11 endurance, 25 recharge, 303 damage, 147 base heal + 24 heal per mob hit + near certain AoE wide KD). Scrapper (Battle Axe - Rad Armor).mbd I'm tempted by a Fire Melee/Rad as well. Fire Melee is in a good spot and though Scrappers lack a second AoE (we do not mention Fire Breath in this house) RT and GZ are there to help. The ST is top notch and Cremate even comes with a place for FF to help RT&GZ. Unlike Axe it does not need four ST attacks which frees up powers and slots so it has much better pacing than Axe allowing an early travel power (gasp) and early Gamma Boost (double gasp, and just in time for Synapse too!), also allowing for everything to be capped (with Barrier) with the exception of Fire/Cold/Psi and just enough S/L/Melee defense that a small purple softcaps as an extra layer for survival. Scrapper (Fire Melee - Rad Armor).mbd

This is me and Fire Melee. Specifically for Tankers. Now we can argue the new numbers made it much stronger and ah ah you're gravitating to the FOTM, but, it's actually one big thing: - Two PbAoEs. Only Radiation Melee (Irradiated Ground as pseudo PbAoE), Savage Melee (but the pounce has a big recharge) and Axe (Pendulum is a pseudo PbAoE) can mimic this but have their own problems. But Fiery Melee (for Tankers) throws two big PbAoEs which completely change the pleasure of being neck deep in enemies.

I would go as far as to say to pick three ST attacks if possible. T1, T2, and whatever is available. T1, T2, small gap, T1, whateverisavailable, usually allow a relatively gap free rotation, but the prestige attacks are very slow to animate and the origin power we start with is only good for the first 10 levels even with the recent changes made. By level 15-ish or so it hits for 5 damage at which point it might as well be removed from the tray. Two of the prestige enhancements in the T1 and three in the T2 cover the bases until level 10 when ATOs open, but despite prestige enhancements being better (those procs do a lot of early damage) I will still swap to the ATOs at 10. If you can afford the ATOs then my go to is splitting them. Three slots for each attack will do most of the work early on while avoiding the usual problem of having nothing interesting of low level to slot. I will usually place a 4th slot for one of the PvP quadruples since they can be taken at level 10 as well. It also frees slots to put in armor toggles though using inspirations and replenishing them from a vendor in a base via teleporter is the smarter going to consolidated low level squish. I'm soloing Posi 1 and 2 at 0x6 by level 8 using this strategy. I used to not slot Hasten until 22 but now with SOs I triple slot it as soon as I can as even a level 15 SO is worth 30%. Only after Synapse (even if I have outleveled thanks to double XP) do I usually use one of my free respecs and take the T1 or the T2 out depending on my end build. Yin is when we have access to most of the goodies and are not as constrained. As a Scrapper I will turn bosses on and go x2 since there is barely a difference and it's more XP. If I have early AoE (Frost, Spin, whatever) in whatever form I go x4 instead. I do the Hashbury (spelling?) arc(s). He's in the open behind and slightly to the left of Miss Liberty in front of the Atlas Hall. Finishing their arc gives another contact. Finishing that contact gives a third contact. Usually it's about 20-30 minutes to do all three and I'll be level 8-9 with 9 merits. 8-9 is great to start Posi 1 which will usually have me end at level 15-16. Doing Posi 2 (only solo this if capable of handling the AV) leaves me at level 22-ish.

Options, keybinding, 'move with camera'. Mess with all of those to find what you like.

It can be a weak agro aura that any Brute or Tanker can rip apart by breathing on it. But if we can't have a fix on the flee code then being able to keep agro would be great. Constant complaint from soloers is how mobs run away all the time. Yes, yes, there will be roleplay explanations. Don't care. The roleplay explanations fall apart when mobs will roll around in a field of napalm just because we used a Taunt skill. The best way would still remove the flee code altogether. Mobs shoot, mobs CAN run away from fields of napalm but only as far as to step out of and then continue shooting, but mobs will be in the fight until the end. Agro auras and skills have a motive to exist as tools to redirect the agro to the Brute/Tanker who is a lot sturdier and can take it. Yesterday I was soloing Yin and had a couple Freaks who jumped into the water, then ran up the dock, then jumped into a building and kept going. Normally I'd say screw 'em, but it was a kill all. This repeats itself ad nauseum for soloing

Without making a big fuss (you have some good points in there) but as we don't pay them we are not customers, we are guests in their house. We can come in, we can appreciate their decoration and furniture, we can appreciate their garden and choice in flowers and trees. But it's their house and their garden and we are guests admiring it. Paying game or what we have here we can/should still make suggestions because sometimes things that the devs are not aware of are discovered in such.

Hmm, after leveling the Axe/Energy to 32 I have to say... that the AoE is surprisingly... mediocre? I was expecting more from Axe. It's making me think about trying the Rad Armor variant and see how it survives The Energy Armor was at something like 35-36% (with amplifiers) by level 20-ish and soloed Posi 1 and 2 reasonably while eating purples. I'm honestly not seeing Rad Armor manage this when all cooldowns are big in the low levels and resistance armors suck compared to defense. I was surprised at how Axe managed to deplete the blue bar even with Recovery Serums.