Sovera

Got it on my toggle which is probably not the best use, but meh.

I'll be honest with you that defense will probably make you feel better than a resistance set, but it's true that those 5% hits will accumulate and you'll need a heal. It's why I don't play shield or Super-Reflexes. That said you could pump your resistances more and minimize your problems, then aim for something like Rebirth as an emergency. You can easily survive on greens bought between missions by typing /ah. For example you forgot the 5% global res unique and have slots dedicated to things you have no need such as AoE defense. Try this for example. It's not perfect but you can tweak it to your tastes. You get more S/L and E/N resistances, a worse Hasten, better recovery, etc. I suggest you keep One With the Shield as your panic button + recovery button and alternate using Conserve Power for your endurance needs. Use Ageless for more recharge and more recovery, or, use Rebirth instead. Like that you get two panic buttons instead of just a boost to recovery, something you can replace for Recovery Serums if you find Conserve Power + One With the Shield somehow is not enough. You don't need Cross Punch. You can run a near infinite loop of Total Focus, Power Crash, Whirlwind Hands, Power Crash. Repeat.

You're getting consistent 30 seconds better than I was so I want to dissect it and look for improvements. Thanks for the build, bro o/ Yeah I see it now, that -res in Burn is probably what's skewing it even when not using Gloom. Did you consider the Superior Unrelenting Fury in Whirlwind Hands? You'll lose 5% recharge but get better raw stats and more S/L resistance/defense. As for the Evolving Armor it's what gives the -res effect and since it's a perma effect that doesn't rely on procs I'd like to compare the numbers since I'm a big believer in testing instead of mathing it out. I -could- build it and run it, but since you already got it all set up it would save some time.

Somesie, can I tempt you into a run with Evolving Armor turned off? Just to compare the numbers. And could I tempt you into sharing the EM/FA Br00t build? By the numbers I'm assuming Gloom is involved.

All good points. There is one last thing to consider which is the duration of the 50%. At 3.5 seconds and assuming it procs when the hit actually hits then an option that would make TF enjoy the proc will eat 2.8 seconds of those 3.5. Where in TF it lands, then ET (1.2), Energy Punch (1) leaves it at 2.1. Ample time to still land Bone Smasher and thus have all three within the 50% buff.

Yeah. You take a Stalker and the ST will improve. Same defense as a Scrapper, same damage as well. No agro auras though. Or you take a Brute or Tanker and pair it with Fire Armor and you can also pup the ST damage with Burn and Fiery Embrace. But outside of those two options Electric Melee is neither very good for AoE nor ST. It does look great though and in a team you should not notice with everyone helping pitching it.

Might as well take Burn tbh. It is still a chunky attack that double dips into procs and if you're following a Tank they are providing the agro aura so mobs don't run off. And with Scrappers and Fire Armor being squishy dropping Burn that makes mobs run away is a form of CC. Not being an -actual- CC but rather a coded thing even the romans with their uber CC resistance shouldl be fleeing. Great to get a breather and drop some trucks of pain via TF and ET. Then they return and Burn's up again 😄

My attempt at a full on damage character. The results are pretty nice though without -res involved it does not look so at first glance. 2:49 2:32 2:30 2:15 with Assault clicked. When we see times of 1 minute (pre nerf TW) and 1:30-ish and less for Scrappers a 2:30 does not stand out in particular, but without -res it achieves the time through brute force. The pylon test also does not reflect the ease with which this build can approach a spawn and terminate it with a Build-Up + Burn + Whirlwind Hands and then mop up with Total Focus and Energy Transfer. Even while leveling I was killing +1 bosses with Total Focus + Energy Transfer + Burn without red inspirations or using BU. While this is nothing particularly extraordinary I just mention it to say that the AoE keeps up with the single target damage which is something EM lacks. The build makes use of a Brute's higher cap and has 85% resistance to S/L and 40% to S/L as well. Barrier finishes capping both. Unlike the Tanker the E/N remains a weakness with a mere 58% (62% with Barrier) but there is nothing new there. Keep trucking and once it gets sour use Barrier to survive. Otherwise just kill them first which this build is very well equipped to do. The unsung hero is the ability to stack stuns. Even AVs stagger drunkenly and it was the very rare PP who managed to pop their T9 when TF + ET landed on their face and kept them stunned. While this is not on the level of an Ice Patch it does have value. The build has a slow start until ET. It picks up with Burn that gives it the AoE edge it needed while giving the single target an extra oomph but it's definitely ET that gels things together. Some small tips: Don't feel forced to waste Energy Transfer on something that would die to Bone Smasher or Energy Punch. Total Focus is pretty slow so pretty much find a target at full health for it. Anything not at full health will probably die to Energy Punch + Bone Smasher. Once getting a feel for this it can be played with and it greatly minimizes hitting corpses after that long wind-up. I found it a good approach to TF one mob, ET a different one, then Burn would kill both. If there is a boss do focus on it though. Jumping into a spawn and using TF + ET gives time for the mobs to wake up from their stupor and approach. Now's the time to hit BU + Burn + WH. What looked like the best use of BU would be BU , TF (2.8 seconds), ET (1.2 seconds). That makes 4 seconds. Using Burn straight away falls within Gaussian's proc 5 second buff time (even if the buff falls before the animation has ended it will still count). The ST rotation can be easily made into: TF, ET, Burn, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher, Energy Punch. The last energy punch will happen with TF already almost up but it lines Burn to come after ET. Alternate BU and Fiery Embrace on a fast team. BU for one spawn, FE for the next, BU is back for the third. Fourth spawn will have neither. Start over at the 5th. For solo just abuse FE when ever since it is common for BU to be back for the next group. Burn followed by Whirlwind Hands lines up both AoEs to come back up at the same time. It avoids playing the piano with the AoEs when we can rest assured both can always be used together. If there is need I can whip a leveling build for this.

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.