Hjarki

Bio is a fairly strong choice for a Scrapper 'farm' set. It has the taunt aura, it easily soft-caps Fire Resist and the plethora of winter sets make hard-capping fire resist fairly easy. Additionally, it has strong regen so you can make up for the shortfall in Fire Resist and slightly reduces incoming damage. However, I'm not sure it's enough to really beat the Brute: Quills (Scrapper): 9.3842 / 2 * (1 + 1.25 + 0.3125) * 1.09975 = 13.22 Quills (Brute): 6.2562 / 2 * (1 + 1.25 + 1.75) = 12.5 Genetic Contamination: 9.3842 / 2 * (1 + 1.25 + 0.3125) * 1.09975 = 13.22 Blazing Aura: 9.1757 / 2 * (1 + 1.25 + 1.75) = 18.35 Spine Burst (Scrapper): (56.3054 * 1.1 + 2.3616 * 6.2562) * (1 + 1.25 + 0.3125) / (16 / 3 + 3.168) * 1.09975 = 25.43 Spine Burst (Brute): (37.5369 + 2.3616 * 4.1708) * (1 + 1.25 + 1.75) / (16 / 3 + 3.168) = 22.30 So even before we look at Burn, the Brute is slightly ahead with +125% damage. If we scale up to the damage cap: Quills (Scrapper): 9.3842 / 2 * (5) * 1.09975 = 25.80 Quills (Brute): 6.2562 / 2 * (7) = 21.90 Genetic Contamination: 9.3842 / 2 * (5) * 1.09975 = 25.80 Blazing Aura: 9.1757 / 2 * (7) = 32.11 Spine Burst (Scrapper): (56.3054 * 1.1 + 2.3616 * 6.2562) * (5) / (16 / 3 + 3.168) * 1.09975 = 49.62 Spine Burst (Brute): (37.5369 + 2.3616 * 4.1708) * (7) / (16 / 3 + 3.168) = 39.02 However: Dragon’s Tail (Scrapper): (73.9352 * 1.1) * (1 + 1.25 + 0.3125) * 1.09975 / (14 / 4 + 1.716) = 43.94 Dragon’s Tail (Scrapper): (73.9352 * 1.1) * 5 * 1.09975 / (14 / 4 + 1.716) = 85.74 Spin (Scrapper): (98.8472 * 1.1) * (1 + 1.25 + 0.3125) * 1.09975 / (9.2 / 3 + 2.64) = 53.69 Spin (Scrapper): (98.8472 * 1.1) * (5) * 1.09975 / (9.2 / 3 + 2.64) = 104.77 So our Scrapper would beat the Brute - at least not counting powers not listed - as you scale up to the damage cap or if you're using sets like MA or Claws. However, with Claws I think you'd probably have some survivability issues - both MA and Spines reduce incoming damage substantially. On the other hand, if you were actively using Follow Up, I think the Bio/Claws would probably beat most Brute builds and you could probably slot Spin with Overwhelming Force to cut down the damage a bit.

Damage Auras are great from the standpoint of convenience and low levels. However, they're not actually all that effective once you're higher level. They don't receive the increased radius/targets that conventional targets do and they don't benefit from recharge reduction. Consider Dragon's Tail. This is about 62.4 damage every 14 + 1.716 secs, or 3.97 dps. It's 16 targets with a chunky radius, but still not impressive. Blazing Aura is 11.6 every 2 sec, for 5.8 dps. But once you're 50 with all that recharge and Force Feedback in Dragon's Tail, you're probably doing 62.4 every 5 sec, which is 12.48 dps. Note: This is before any +damage, which affects both attacks equally. Indeed, this is why X/MA Tankers are so good at farming despite the fact that they only have a single AE attack - the Force Feedback doesn't just power up your Dragon's Tail but also effects like Burn.

I run Bio/FIre and it's very solid damage. I don't think the burst damage powers are particularly strong. In a fire farm, you can just endlessly much reds and keep yourself near cap based solely on drops. In standard play, you're normally going to have a team able to buff you. Tankers also have relatively few ways to use Build Up-style powers effectively since they (mostly) lack big alpha strike powers. In terms of procs, Tankers get better return from +damage than non-purple procs. So 'proc monsters' normally don't work particularly well. So you end up with decisions like "do a trivial amount of additional damage or get +10% more recharge" that normally end up being decided in favor of recharge unless you're in a situation where you can customize your defenses with extreme precision.

With Granite Armor, Stone is as close to unkillable as you get. Without Granite Armor, it's still one of the toughest - and most damaging - sets around.

My personal choice is Dark Control/Storm. Storm has a lot of effects that want enemies on the ground, unable to be knocked back and incapable of running away. This tends to strongly favor control sets over blast sets or pet sets - most particularly pet sets that can -fly/-kb immobilize. Dark Control is one of those sets and its secondary effect (-hit) stacks well with Storm while also bringing some of the best overall damage with its pets.

Yes, you can build fire farmer Scrappers. However, I wouldn't recommend using Fiery Aura as your armor set. FIery Aura doesn't have a taunt aura and Scrappers are generally better off ramping up their own personal damage rather than relying on toggle damage. Something like MA/Shield is likely to farm as fast as any X/FA Scrapper while also being less likely to die and better at managing the crowd.

Gash is 71 dpa, Chop is 59 dpa and Cleave is 58 dpa. There are also questions related to rotation since Cleave's 15 sec recharge is much harder to fit into a rotation than Gash's 10 sec.

If you skip Gash, you only have two attacks in your single target attack chain (presuming you skipped the obviously skippable Beheader). For that matter, one of the two attacks you have in your chain is directly inferior Chop.

Does anyone know how much Opportunity the Sentinel ATO proc provides? I believe the ppm is 1, but I can't find information on the amount restored per proc.

Knockback can be resisted in two ways: protection and resistance. Resistance only reduces the distance of knockback (and is commonly given by Controller Immobilize, for example). Protection reduces the Magnitude of Knockback, meaning it's more likely to not function at all. Which (or both) do KB->KD enhancements provide? It seems like they should only provide Resistance - consider the Sudden Acceleration set where you have an entire set dedicated to amplifying Knockback and then the 6th piece is KB->KD. But I don't know a good way to test it, so I'm wondering if anyone has.

I'd make an argument for Electrical Affinity. Reverberant doesn't actually do all that much damage, so slotting pure procs tends to yield more damage. The question is: which procs? A single Melodic Binding will yield 3 attacks w/2 sec recharge. A single Hymn of Dissonance will yield 2 attacks w/4 sec recharge. A single Aria of Stasis will yield 2 attacks w/6 sec recharge. So while Hold (especially with Unbreakable Constraint) deals more damage than either Immobilize power, the combination of both Immobilize powers with Trap of the Hunter + slow procs yields more overall damage. With that in mind, no slotting strategy is ever going to make Reverberant a particularly useful pet. It just doesn't deal a lot of damage and the Cone-centric nature of the set makes using it as a control mechanism in anything except purely single target fights an exercise in frustration. Also, to make Reverberant useful, you really need a play a set with +hit bonuses to allies (Time, Pain, Empathy, Electric, Thermal all come to mind - might be others).

SR grants +19.5% to all positionals. Shield grants +15%. That's about 7% difference once you slot the powers. Shield grants +11.25% Resistance to non-S/L. Once you've fully slotted, you're probably pushing 50% on F/C (due to purple sets) and maybe 30% on E/N. Most decent SR builds will run in the 30% - 40% range for all resists, which scales up to 90% at low health.

SR tends to be significantly more durable than Shield due to the scaling resists. With a properly built SR, you're running around not only with nearly unassailable defenses but also capped resists. In contrast, Shield not only has less defense/DDR but has tissue paper resists against anything except S/L (and even hitting S/L hard cap on a Brute is tricky).

The trap itself pulses every second for debuffs/control that last 10 sec, for 30 sec with a recharge of 90 sec. I wasn't attempting to list every possible -regen effect but give a broad overview of what popular sets give.

Traps tends to fall into the only-good-for-AV category. While it has a lot of useful effects, they're really hard to use in fast-moving multi-enemy encounters. In a largely static fight against a single hard target, they're decent if someone (or something) else is taking all the aggro. In terms of Trip Mines, they're an AE attack with a long recharge. That makes them good for large spawns, not particularly important for single hard targets.

Radiation has -500% Regen (which can stack) for 30s every 90s, plus a trivial -500% Regen for 15s every 300s. Cold has -500% Regen for 30s every 120s, which cannot stack. Thermal has -500% Regen (which can stack) for 40s every 120s. Dark has -500% Regen for 30s every 180s (stacking but doesn't matter) plus -50% which can potentially have about 5 stacks and another -100% Regen from the pet (somewhat unreliably). Electrical has -75% Regen that can realistically stack 5 times, plus a pet attack for -50% that can stack twice. Poison and Kinetics can probably stack -50% 7 - 8 times. Trick Arrow can, at perma-Hasten, reduce Regen by an average of -375%. From what I read, Regeneration has been normalized for higher health in more difficult content. During Archvillain resistance, debuffs are reduced by 87% and +3 level shift reduces debuffs by -33%. Stock level 54 AV have 30,677 health and regeneration 5% of this every 12 sec. So if you were able to completely shut down that stock AV's regen, you'd be doing the equivalent of 127.8 dps. To completely eliminate regen through the debuff resistance/purple patch above would require -1023% Regen. With that in mind, my suspicion is that Trick Arrow's ability to shut down his self-healing would have far more overall impact on the length of the fight. However, I don't have the exact data for that. I'm pretty sure the sacrifice mechanic is unresistible. However, the self-healing melee attack on the Nictus is about 420 dps (the figures for Augustus himself are based on a variable I don't know the value of).

First, I think this is easier as a Defender rather than a Corruptor. If you notice the build above, he needs to invest a ton of effort into Defense that wouldn't be necessary on a Defender - and that takes away from the ability to do things like slot procs. Let's start with the single target rotation. Water has terrible baseline ST damage. However, it does have an attack - Water Jet - that performs exceptionally well with procs. You can quad-proc it and get great performance with a rotation like so: 0s: Aqua Bolt 1.188s: Water Jet 2.772s: Aqua Bolt 3.910s: 1.32s of whatever 5.230s: Water Jet 6.814s: Water Jet 8.002s: 1.32s of whatever 9.322s: Back to '0s' above Each regular proc you put into Water Jet will (@0% internal recharge) yield another 15.6 dps. The Apocalypse proc will yield 30.0 dps. So you're looking at 75 or dps before you even get around to worrying about the actual damage of the attack (which is higher than any other single target option you have). If you were a Sentinel or Blaster you could use attacks like Taser or Sting of the Wasp. Toxic Dart is available, but it does weak damage with a proc-unfriendly recharge and in a pool that we otherwise don't need. So there are no perfect options. However, a combination of proc'd Infrigidate and Dominate/Char from epic fits the bill nicely. While none of these powers recharge quickly enough to be used twice in the rotation having both means you can cover both of the "1.32s of whatever" slots. Infrigidate is slightly too fast for our purposes, but there's a bit of lag between activations anyway. For AE, Water Burst and Geyser are obvious choices. Water Burst can make good use of Force Feedback, but Geyser's recharge is a bit long for FF to make much of an impact. A Corruptor should normally take Whirlpool for the Scourge potential and stacking slow with Sleet. For slotting, I'd probably start with the full ATO set in Aqua Bolt and the two split ATOs in Water Burst/Geyser, leaving sets like Ice Mistral or Artillery for Whirlpool/Sleet. Infrigidate would just take a panoply of procs, Dominate/Char Unbreakable Constraint proc + whatever. Water Jet would be Apoc D, D/E, proc and three more procs. Frostwork is probably a good place for Preventative Medicine. Heat Loss would probably slot +3.75% defense/+3.75% recharge from End Red sets. In terms of pools, you'd probably be going with Fighting, Speed (Hasten), Leadership and either Leaping or Flight (I'd veer towards Flight since it's a more useful defense/travel power for a purely ranged build). As previously noted, either Psi or Flame would be the Epic pool. Overall, you're just slotting for perma-Hastern (which is actually a wee bit too slow for the rotation above) and soft-cap Ranged.

I'd make an argument for Kinetic/Electrical. Voltaic Sentinel works well with 'busy' primaries since it continues to fire away even when you don't. Electrical itself is one of the higher damage secondaries once you drain endurance - which you can do with relative ease via Transference and Short Circuit. Endurance Drain also provides a degree of mitigation and flexibility of slotting for a primary that ordinary struggles with staying alive.

Salt Crystals isn't strictly necessary. However, it slots a purple set and gives a small form of self-healing. In terms of Flight, Hover-tanking can be useful with Staff since it has such a solid range and an emphasis on Cone AE. However, as with most builds, the goal isn't to copy it directly but look at it in parts. You want to get an idea how things can be slotted, what powers make sense to take, and what limits you can hit with the build.

You're talking about damage potential less than a Defender on these powers. Normally with a longer recharge, no Aim and no support set to boost their potential. Most of those powers aren't even close to what your Dominator could manage with their secondaries. Sure, Hot Feet is nice. But not because it's a massive source damage but rather because it's an additional source of damage you can just leave running without consuming activation time you're using for your (much better) secondary attacks. The Cone-centric nature of Symphony also makes it difficult to mesh with the melee-centric focus of most Dominator secondaries. It's one thing to build around the notion of opening up the battle with a single Cone Confuse before moving into melee. It's quite another to force yourself in a situation where virtually all of your AE powers require operation at range. For Controllers, it's a different story. The single target Hold becomes much more reliable when you've got a pet to repeat it shortly afterwards. While this could theoretically hold true for the AE controls, the combination of long delays, cone-based attacks and the damage component on the Sleep all undermine this functionality. The Controller ATO is much better (with its damage proc) than the Dominator versions for the pet. Controllers can counter-balance the pet's -hit and boost its durability. With Containment, Controllers deal more damage with the various attacks.

The purple patch does not provide resistance. It merely multiplies/divides the effect by a constant. Even if this were not the case, there is no 'unresistable resist debuff' (at least not any more) because that would be horribly broken against high resist targets. What this means is that, at least in terms of personal dps, Sonic double-dips purple patch penalties. If you're balancing Sonic around doing the same damage as a set like Energy against a +0 target including the -resist effect, this means it would deal about half the damage of Energy against a +4 target. Honestly, a better approach to 'fixing' Sonic might be to just leave Howl as-is and then replace the -resist on all other attacks with other theme-appropriate debuffs (-damage, knockback, etc.). Then you could just balance the entire set - excluding Howl - to deal damage like a normal damage set.

Tornado has a Mag 10 Fear as well, so while reducing the knockback helps a bit it hardly solves the problem.

We don't care about the individual debuff on each attack. We care about the total debuffing for the entire rotation. The total debuffing for the entire rotation of Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle is similar in size to the total debuffing for the revamped Sonic - it's just that Dual Pistols/Beam Rifle do it with a single attack that consumes a fraction of their activation time while Sonic needs to eat up most of its activation time to accomplish the same thing.

We're not. We're comparing Single Shot and Pistols to Shriek - and realizing that they're significantly better attacks that come in a set that provides roughly the same overall -resist debuffing.

I'm having trouble thinking of this as anything but a straight-up nerf of an already underpowered set. In terms of Defenders, the easiest way to see this would be to compare Beam/Pistols to Sonic. Both Beam and Pistols have standard, full power attacks and then also have a stackable -20% resist debuff that can be (almost) doubled to give them equivalent debuffing to the revamped Sonic. But the penalty Sonic pays for equivalent -resist debuffing is 85% strength attacks across the board. The nature of how those debuffs are applied is also problematic. It's one thing to pay a -15% damage penalty on Shriek the first time you use it. But every subsequent time you use this 3 sec recharge attack within the next 10 sec or so, you're paying the penalty while not receiving any benefit in return.