Sovera
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Posts posted by Sovera
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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).
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12 minutes ago, BuiltDifferent5 said:
@Sovera @Warboss I’ve definitely been looking at Fiery Melee as well. I’ve been torn on pairing it with either Shield Defense or Dark Armor.
Is there one you’d recommend over the other? How are Fiery Melee’s end costs compared to something like Axe? Fiery Melee does seem like it can hit like a truck. Doesn’t bring any disorients or natural mitigation it seems but, like Boss said, you can slot a lot of KD in it.
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.
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Battle Axe would be nuts. I eats endurance even through Recovery Serums ticking. Pairing with Dark Armor sounds like fuel for nightmares 😄
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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.
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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.
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4 hours ago, nihilii said:
(...) But, I've had a recent experience that proved, at least in my case, it's not just about mechanics in a vacuum. Plain number tweaks with near identical gameplay otherwise can radically improve my enjoyment of a character. (...)
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.
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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.
3 hours ago, venetiasilver said:I tend to stay away from DFB's a lot.
My general play goes: Do I want the Isolator Badge? If no straight to AP.
Then I have 4 routes afterwards. First Step: Turn on Bosses, 2nd Talk to one of the Origin contacts, or street sweep till level 5 to get to the Hollows.
But overall I like this archetype, I've just had a hard time learning the pathological build planning to make the 1 to 20 experience smoother.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.
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12 hours ago, cptbarcode said:
OK, so I guess that's why retarget-and-follow no longer turns my camera to point at the new target. It's occasionally interesting to watch my character fight from the front, but it's not the way I want to play long term. How do I switch it back to the correct-for-me behavior of always centering the camera on my target? I mean, I like having the camera snap back to behind me if I've had the viewpoint turned around for screenshots or something, which was the good part of page 7, but mostly I want to have a toon's-eye view.
Edit: the important part for me is to recenter the camera on follow, because follow implies movement just like WASD do. That used to work, now it doesn't. Not sure yet what needs to be appended to repair 'follow', because the keybind is identical between Classic and Modern. ('camturn' is not it, it as no effect.)
Options, keybinding, 'move with camera'. Mess with all of those to find what you like.
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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
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11 hours ago, KingCeddd03 said:
If you're trying to continue a well-beloved game, there should be only the interest of the player base if you disregard what the PLAYERS including you are saying or asking for that means you never cared in the first place and this is a way to get money and fame @Luminara and excepting donations is a form of payment.
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.
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10 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:
In scrapper-land, I don't actually have a battle axe/radiation armor which I actually find sort of surprising. It should be amazing, and you should hardly need to worry about defenses with all that knockdown.
I have two different axe/ninjas due to scheduling error. I'm making one into a thematic hover blaster which is unfairly effective, but yeah, the hide aura is annoying. I want to see my outfit! I don't think I have mastered the art of ninjitsu at high levels of performance yet -- I would appreciate a little more spot healing.
I have a lvl 50 axe/energy who is a Carnival nemesis. It's an incredibly strong build.
Also for your consideration, how about Axe/Ice? They come for the Axe Cyclone; they stay for the Chilling Embrace!
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.
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I've started the Axe/Energy Aura. I'll post a leveling build for those newer to the game. But dang, level 7 and I have yet to see a single crit. It was so curious I posted about it.
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Just now, nihilii said:
Can confirm no aggro on Nin. It's the opposite even, you become stealthy and get higher crit chance.Welp, that reduces it to two 😄
Pretty tempted by the rad, but Energy Aura seems smarter. I do like early starts and defense sets is where the early start at.
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12 minutes ago, Owenknowone said:
What pairings would you recoomend?
MA does decent ST and mediocre AoE, Staff does mediocre ST and mediocre AoE, so, MA.
I've got an infamous Fire/MA called the Turtle in my signature, 45% to Melee/Ranged/AoE and 90% resists, but you can achieve the same with Rad Armor and Dark Armor just less damage.
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Guarded Spin gives 15% to Slash and Melee though I think (don't quote me) that's it's the only such power that stacks three times.
If you just want to pick a resistance armor then it can make you nearly immune to melee very early on with no investment. That's a fat amount of damage not being taken.
Picking a positional defense armor (Melee/Ranged/AoE) would be dubious since they already have melee toggles. You could at least ditch the one toggle that gives melee defense?
Picking a typed defense armor (Smash, Slash, Energy, Negative, etc) would leave you gross overcapped for Slash while still having to slot your S/L toggle to get Lethal up since the toggles are always paired (S/L, E/N, F/C, etc).
Picking Storm Kick would give you 10% to all.
For resistance armors it allows to exploit the IOs and incarnates and get 45% to melee/ranged/AoE.
For positional and typed defense armors the 10% allows to ease up on your slotting since 10% are accounted for. You can ditch Weave for example, or aim for incarnate level defenses and reach 59%.
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To top it the thread is not even looking at Concentrated Strike from the viewpoint of the non-crit ATs.
Sure, for Stalkers and Scrappers you use CS, maybe get your crit, get your BU reset, etc. But what of Brute and Tanker? No crits, and no changes to CS either. It gets all the downsides of CS but no reset to the BU meaning what point is there to use it?
I've tried it several times and have a KM of each AT at 50 leveled the old fashioned way and though it begins fun while facing mobs under level 20 with the chainsaw attacks it quickly falls off. Burst can do similar things to Dragontail to speed a build up but the ST fails to catch up.
That said there is no need to make a big seven headed hydra out of this. It has not been tuned up because it just hasn't passed by the dev's hands due to several other things having been done instead. Once it does it will be good. They have a good track record of tuning lagging sets into becoming actually desirable.
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8 minutes ago, JayboH said:
There isn't a ton of sets that do. There is a few that have a 300% aura I think but you are right, Mud Pots does not have it on Scrappers.
Now that you mention it I'm not even sure that Ninjutsu has it. That would narrow it down to just two.
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2 minutes ago, JayboH said:
I have an Axe/Stone build for a brute if you want to convert.
Nay, Stone has no agro aura for Scrappers. I Mids-d up one for Tankers but felt it would just be more of the same.
Thanks for the kind offer though o/
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Been messing with Axe in Mids since I've been wanting to play a Scrapper and be damaging. My problem is that I like being tanky, and I like being tanky early which is why I stick to Tankers with whom I solo at +1x8 from level 15+ onwards. Scrappers have never quite been there for me in that aspect.
So I have this Axe/Rad. S/L/E resistances get capped with Barrier's 5%, there is a nominal 33%-ish defense to S/L/M so that a small purple puts those three at softcap for a bit of extra survival (no big tradeoffs for it). In the past I have found resistance based Scrappers pretty terrible as they are squishy, but Radiation Armor has tools for survival. Radiation Therapy heals, makes endurance problems a joke, AND hurts the enemies, Ground Zero does the same. Particle Barrier is a substantial alpha eater tool too.
I like the premise of wandering into a group of enemies and unloading four PbAoEs (Pendulum is pseudo PbAoE). Axe Cyclone takes very well to procs (70%) so it's triple procced. Everything smells like it would make any spawn have a bad day the moment it walks in.
Scrapper (Battle Axe - Rad Armor).mbd
Axe/Ninja is a staple. Softcapped defenses without Weave, crit from stealth with Shinobi-Iri (maybe worth investing a stealth IO to be completely invisible for setting up the initial crit), mediocre resistances, good endurance and heal clickies. To be honest it is petty but the clickie CC resistance is what is holding me back since it's always a nuisance to remember. Terrible DDR but kill-before-being-killed suits Scrappers. Three free powers to do whatever with.
Scrapper (Battle Axe - Ninja).mbd
Axe/Energy Armor is as basic as it gets. Also softcapped without Weave (including negative), same mediocre resistances, toggle CC instead of a clicky. Slow recharging heal because of the end discount that, honestly, is not needed in a set that has such a fast recharging Energy Drain. The extra defense from ED is just fluff as even catching 10 people in it will only give 3%. Mediocre DDR that won't stop cascading, but same as above. Two free powers to do whatever with.
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47 minutes ago, Snarky said:
Oh i do not play ranged. I literally stealth right into the biggest spawn i can find and nuke. If stealth is broke or the enemies have ability to see invisible i eat a small purp and go in. Just bold as if i own the place. Nuke and aoe chain.
I just threw a build together and have 6x over force in bonfire. It is excellent and i love it. I should look at the build and see if a “build goal” might help. I just enhanced each power individually with the most bang for the buck, ATO, winter, purple OF etc. then standard globals and procs
I only played Blasters a few times, and the best ways I remember were going into a group, NOT use Aim and Build up and just use the nuke and all AoEs. Nukes are so ridiculous that they don't need the help. Then the next group while the nuke is still recharging, DO use Build-up + Aim and unload the AoEs. Backed by both Aim and BU and Gaussian the nuke is not needed to wipe the group.
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I just built one as a Scrapper since I wanted to go ham on damage. On a Tanker there is nothing bad to point out. Axe is an endurance guzzler but Rad handily takes care of that. A procced out Radiation Therapy heals and hurts the enemy, ditto on Ground Zero, and then Axe's two PbaoEs means we can start a fight unloading four PbAoEs two of which heal.
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41 minutes ago, tidge said:
I kinda agree with this... although I have a slight caveat that some powers (like the early S/L primary powers) can be delayed for a long time. For example: I usually don't even toggle on S/L resist powers unless I am tanking for a large PUG.
I had the same idea (for Battle Axe), and I changed my mind....mostly because Fold Space was IMO completely unnecessary for the kind of Tanking I wanted to do, and it also required multiple slots to be any good if I wanted to use it... it needs both Recharge and Accuracy, otherwise it is just another power that will show its timer. Even as an extra 'Taunt' I don't like it on Tankers. YMMV.
What I did instead: I took Shield as the primary, and only went with Combat Teleport. With the Battle Axe set, this Tanker has no problem gathering up enemies and jumping between groups.
A bit unrelated but Axe having so many powers that are good is a 'problem'. Well, the real problem is Cleave. Cleave's awkward recharge forces a 4th attack to not have gaps. I'm sorely tempted to ditch Cleave, blasphemous as it might, to free a power and make the attack chain more relaxed. Otherwise I only have Fly at level 30 since there are too many good picks.
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Feed me a taunt aura! And no, 50% uptime incarnate is not it 😛
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5 minutes ago, Quietdraco80 said:
So far it's mostly what sets to look for in the build I linked in as well as how many slots for each power I should be looking at.
Again, signature, Turtle, leveling (and final) build 🙂
Different Axe builds, but which to choose?
in Scrapper
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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.