Sovera

If you'll zoom in a bit you'll see that Maneuvers and Focused Accuracy (others too I guess) will have floating icons around you. FA shows reticules, Maneuvers has the little purple shields same as if we had eaten an inspiration.

Nothing has changed. I'm actually running this as a Brute as we speak. Level 49. As usual the same trade-off. More damage and also more squishy. But still decent with 45% and 90% to S/L (with Barrier) but down to something like 64%-ish (with Barrier) to E/N. It's the hole I could not patch for a Brute. The Tanker has it at 90%.

Same reason as for the rest: takes time and effort and they might even decide it should stay visible anyway. I found it a bit annoying that Afterburner got recently changed, specifically had the Minimal FX added because it didn't exist... and it has exactly the same FX as before despite being reported as it doing nothing. Unlike for example Minimal FX for Hover or Fly which removes the smoky trail.

I wasn't even aware of the difficulty level and everything else. Yes, that does put Wavicle's words more in perspective and I have to back down. Put that way we are more powerful nowadays.

Dian, buddy, you're once again trying to make things fit your decision on how things work. If you were to play something like GW2 back in the heyday there were 5 DPS in a group. Someone might take it up themselves to take all defensive stats and try to 'tank', but it would be sighed at once noticed because the game did not require it. You're trying to insert WoW gameplay in CoH. Next thing you'll be asking for a healer or only want to play when specifically a healer is in the team. Understand we say this not to demean you or put you down. We are trying to explain the game is a lot easier nowadays, a lot faster. And being easy and fast there is little room to go in with sword and board and using 'taunt' (ew) to be all classical tank. Just by existing a Tanker generates threat. All power sets have a taunt aura so just by brushing a mob they will hate you. So you can tank, you can jump in first, you can take the brunt of the damage and it -will- make the game easier for your squishy team mates. But you don't need to make it perfect because they are not fragile porcelain critters who will shatter at a mob's touch. This is further pushed by the fact enemies are invariably squishy too. We don't play a WoW where all instance mobs are tough elites with a ton of HP and who hit like trucks. Enemies are weak, have weak HP, and this too directs how the game is played. When one or two team mates can wipe a full spawn while you're valiantly trying to capture all the agro does this tell you that they are playing wrong, or that your views are outdated? Like many things in this game we need to see what is -really- happening around us and decide how we want to play it. Back in live I briefly played a Radiation defender and I would diligently drop my debuff toggles on enemies and have a macro saying not kill my toggle or at least kill it last. People did not pay attention. I would get upset. Then I realized there was no difference whether I did it or not. Even back then the game was too easy to try doing this perfect Cataclysm era dungeons CCing mobs and etc because whether I did it or not the enemies would melt and the group would be rushing to the next. This is what you should be looking at. This is why Tankers were an AT so little played except by hardcore tanking fanatics. The game does not ask for an impervious wall. it asks for a 'tough enough to survive' and to no one's surprise between buffs and debuffs even a Scrapper can do the tanking. Dude, again, it's not an attempt to be mean to you. This is text so I am insisting to be clear.

Fine until it isn't sums it up. But on a team it shouldn't be a problem. But it's not -that- bad. Keep in mind that my 'best' builds break a pylon in 4 minutes (with no -res shenanigans) and Ice Melee with Frost replacing GiS does it in 4:20-ish. So the difference is not that huge and even less in actual gameplay since we'd be spamming Frost anyway. It's something I'd suggest you try and see how it feels.

FA on a Scrapper is not the best choice due to not have an agro aura. Mobs just wander off at low HP and Burn makes them flee. A Brute or a Tanker would work best. You will want a few (between one and three, depending on comfort. I usually stick to one but have Evasive Maneuvers and high S/L defense) -KB IOs. They are cheap-ish at 1-2 mill a piece. One can go into your travel power, the other into a defense power, and the last on a resistance power. I don't have a specific WM/FA Scrapper build for you, only a Tanker one, but you can take a look and then get a handle on the slotting used and try to mirror it though the Tanker will get better defensive numbers.

Perhaps filter the email itself? It is not very elegant but it's what I've done since I keep getting notification emails.

We will have too agree to disagree. After a few years of putting builds together I can say I have no character who casually has perma hasten, perma 300% damage (who can still use Build-up afterwards. Was BU perma too?), perma softcap and probably perma capped resistances. The only thing that does not make me insist is that I did not play pre-ED so I'm just going on what I have read. And from what I have read is that pre-ED players had double the current Incarnate AND the IO power we now have. Which is already considered too much until new difficulty levels are placed in.

I feel you're overexaggerating a bit, Wavicle. I didn't play before the big nerf. I actually started in Issue 6 and people were still reeling from ED. But from what I've heard then no, incarnates are not as powerful as pre ED. Just to start with Regen is garbage and no incarnates and IOs makes it survive without playing the piano with the Regen clickies. And even then one small slip and it dies. We don't nearly get Hasten perma 'out of the box' by just adding more slots and we certainly don't go around with the equivalent of triple perma BU by having things six slotted for damage. We also don't get softcap defense. I can just barely get 40% by squeezing a ton of IOs and sacrificing things like recharge. I could push it to 45%, MAYBE, and it would mean even more sacrifices. No, Incarnates and IOs certainly give a lot of power but pre-ED was nutty by everything I read and jolly good riddance. The game was not sustainable. It sounds like it was as much fun as playing with cheats on, which is a very short term thing before boredom comes in.

It is. As the first post says the usual test for how much damage a build does involves going to the Rikti Warzone and then try to put one of the pylons down and check how long it took. You can see this in a thread a bit further down from this one. This is also a test for damage but involves clearing everything including the final boss.

I can imagine those ghosts being a problem with all the debuffing and being ghosts so they float and ignore the ice patch. I was doing redside and fighting ghost pirates and ghost arachnos and they were being annoying with all the fleeing and becoming invisible. I rush Focused Accuracy at 35 to avoid the -tohit. It saves from Banished Pantheon, from CoT, from Tsoo, from Cabal, and of course from Arachnos and the smoke Grenades. But until 35 (30 exemp) we gotta work with bursting the problematic mobs with BU. Not having it properly slotted might be a disfavor. To be honest I don't fear Malta because going full damage means bursting things dead but a slower approach would give them more time to fight back. This was a thing back in Guild Wars 2 where the meta was going full on damage and I stubbornly refused because I didn't want to be squishy. It took a while of wearing more armor with defensive stats instead of full damage stats to realize a 30 second fight might extend to 45-60 seconds, which gave more time to get hurt once we ran out of dodges and had to kite. This does not mean it is the appropriate method to use here, or the appropriate method for every person in a one size fits all, but it might explain a bit your woes as you try to straddle the fence. Fortunately respecs are simple and cheap so you can keep on testing stuff. Your problems with sapping seem weird though. Consume gives a 98% protection against sapping and no sapper can get through that, but Consume does need to be slotted otherwise the protection is just 50% (if I recall correctly). With a two minute CD on the sapping protection and a one minute recharge I found difficult to be caught with my trousers down. Do remember pre-emptive Consume needs to hit something for the buff though. Ah yes, I took a peek at your build. That Consume slotting might explain your sapping woes. Both it six slotted with Synapse's Shock and six slotted Bombardment will push your E/N up. Bombardment has all around great bonuses unlike Ragnorok. An unslotted Heal is also not going to do you favors, but as you've already noticed the game is not that demanding that you can't handle things with your own spin of the build and you did a good job cranking up psi and toxic so high. Once all three stacks and Barrier's 5% are going you got both pretty close to the cap.

I was leveling an EM brute but I gave myself a break since the damage was being definitely hindered by me being too shy to use TF. If it was not at full HP I'd rather not use it so there was more time with Energy Punch and Bonesmasher in use than TF outside of finding a lieut or picking out the initial bosses. But just for the heck of it I'll keep leveling it again. I know on the Tanker it was a bit better without Gloom (something like 3:20 without -res, so not a huge improvement on things like Claws or MA without -res who do it in 4 minutes) but between being forced to take Barrage and the awkward recharge of TF (and me not wanting to use slow ET (TF is quite enough on slowness, thank you very much)) maybe I could have improved it further. Gloom just messes up anything it touches though. The time went down to 2:30 with it so it's a powerhouse all on its own.

That's pretty cool. Good job on using a different clip for the big guy!

I was trying to make Rad Melee work without the use of Devastating Blow.. and it kinda not really works. It's great for leveling since +1 mobs are pretty squishy, but I could notice it was not really brilliant in the ST department despite melting enemies just fine while handling a boss. I took it to the test server and it's as I thought. Even with incarnates and purples it was still a 4:40 time. Overall not -terribly- worse than the standard 4 minutes of other sets and I could have slotted both -res procs into Irradiated Ground for better pylon times, but since I don't find them useful for gameplay I kept the slotting as if for regular playing. Devastating Blow is needed for better damage. Or is it? Respecing out of Contaminated Strike for Devastating... gave about the same time. A bit worse actually but the pylon was almost dead then I whiffed and it regenerated so I'm not holding it considering it was one try only. Still, 4:55. Devastating Blow lacks the oomph to merit using it outside of a build that has room to maneuver a lot of damage procs because it's a great carrier for them. In the meanwhile I leave the Contaminated Strike build since it's still a great little thing to passively murderize a spawn while we hit a boss. I messed with the previous build of this combo to reduce the EPS imprint since the build drinks endurance and it now has the almost free Combat Jumping instead of Maneuvers, got rid of Assault for more -slow in Temperature Control, and now no Tough is needed to be toggled to reach 90%. I ran out of interesting powers to take and in the name of helping the endurance guzzling Conserve Power got picked.

We were specifically talking about the fear effect in Burn and how it was rolled back.

You make a good point. I'm so used to my own testing I just looked at the numbers at face value.

I suggested using it since I remembered other posts about the combo which in turns has different slotting ideas (mine for example always revolve about using Barrier to finish capping defenses and resistances which isn't for everyone) -and- offered a build for your question about the combo you were asking about. As a '44yo' myself I will say that you have a remarkably thin skin for a '53yo'.

Actually I was typing it and thinking of WoW's thing of giving the offense cooldowns (our version of Build-up) a global cooldown. A very very very very badly received decision that generated pages and pages of complaints to no avail. While not on the level of the Fire Tank nerf I believe some more voting with the wallet would help devs realize things are not all quantifiable as spreadsheets may make them believe.

Voting with the wallet is the best thing. Not long forum diatribes which are then ignored even after reaching 20 pages of protests.

Scrapper and Tanker only 😛

I'm just part way leveling an EM/Fire Brute and I got to say that the joy of playing the Rad/Fire is just gone. It may certainly do more damage in ST but I'd rather be punching a boss in the face and have triple DoT action chewing a spawn. On the EM I'm throwing Whirling Hands on CD but eeeeeeh. Gently Caressing Hands even after the tuning patch. On the Rad I was having so much fun I soloed everything, even Synapse (and finished on a respectable 1h36 which is times I've had with full teams) and Manticore. Kinda pondering dropping the EM and go mess with a Claws/Fire. I know Brute is not the best to leverage Claws but it does not magically make Claws bad. It's still slicing and dicing fury with a full attack chain by level 18. And Spin.

It's easy to be biased against Ice due to Greater Ice Sword being the third attack that should finish the attack chain, but it sucks. This leaves the second rate option of using Frost or persevere with Greater Ice Sword. But, once we are actually playing the game using Frost neatly on CD between Freezing Touches and Ice Sword it all coalesces together. It just does not do the best single target damage, but I call it the Ice Patch tax.

Yeah, it was that confused me 😄

What makes Electric Armor do more damage than Fire Armor? You'd think a second BU and Burn would handilly tip the balance.