Hopeling

Shadow Meld is a miniature version of Moment of Glory, very useful for mitigating alpha strikes. A snipe or an extra AoE is useful for some builds, although TW tends to not need any more attacks than it already has. The pet summons in patron pools can be fun. I haven't used Water Spout mysefl, but with a KB to KD IO, it shouldn't be any more disruptive for a scrapper than any other AT.

The Sentinel version of /Regen is significantly different from the Scrapper version, and arguably more appealing, or at least easier to use.

/regen was the original Scrapper-only secondary, and you don't see many people playing it anymore. I know some people think that turning IH into a click power ruined the set, but even after that it offered high performance. IIRC, @Werner's Kat/Regen was soloing AVs quite well for years.

There's no option for this at P2W currently. For common and uncommon salvage, I just sort by quantity and delete the largest few stacks when I'm running short on space. It's not even worth the time it takes to list or sell.

Sure. I'm just saying, if you want to compare it to -res, it's as good as -res alone, not -res and -regen bolted together.

I mean, Mu is perfectly workable too. I was answering the question of why people might take body mastery.

For what it's worth, if you're comparing it to -res, it's equivalent to just -res and nothing else: making the enemy take twice as much damage has exactly the same end result as shrinking their health bar in half. Or for the actual numbers on Degenerative, reducing their max HP to 9/10 is equivalent to making them take 10/9 as much damage. This can be made rigorous; -hp is exactly functionally equivalent to -res(all), except that it stacks multiplicatively with other resist debuffs instead of additively. Regeneration occurs in ticks of 5% of max hp. -regen debuffs leave those ticks the same size, but make them less frequent. -hp debuffs leave the frequency the same, but make each tick restore a smaller amount of HP. This does still make it easier to overcome the target's regeneration, sure... but so does -res. Either way, you need fewer hits to undo each tick. I mean, it's not wrong to say that -hp reduces the target's regeneration, because it literally does make them regenerate fewer hit points per second. But if you want to compare it to another kind of debuff, it's functionally most analogous to -res alone, rather than -res and -regen together.

Body Mastery offers endurance management tools, which WM/SD otherwise lacks. Between the mace attacks and Shield Charge, you already have a solid variety of ST and AoE attacks, so there are no obvious holes for epic attacks to fill.

FA also gives debuff resistance against -tohit and -perception. Since -tohit in particular seems to be a lot more common in PvE than confuse or fear, that's the one I prefer.

My first character back in 2005 and longtime main was a BS/Inv scrapper. I'd love it if what other people have said wasn't accurate, but it is. Broadsword is... serviceable, I guess. It's not crippled, but it doesn't offer any particular strengths over other sets besides Parry. Katana is almost directly superior; you used to at least be able to say that Broadsword had unusually large single hits even if its DPS was lower overall, but with so many sets that now have a Knockout Blow equivalent, Head Splitter is no longer exceptional. Broadsword is supposed to be pretty great on a Stalker, which at least play well to the "I want to deliver huge crits" Broadsword fantasy. On a scrapper, eh, I'd rather play War Mace or Titan Weapons at this point.

I'm seeing the same thing.

Achilles' Heel does not stack. It's worth slotting one, probably in Disembowel, and you can also put a Fury of the Gladiator proc in Head Splitter. I wouldn't slot multiple of either. I'm not sure about the Analyze Weakness proc, but I doubt it would be worth slotting multiple of them even if it can stack. If you need +tohit for the accuracy, I'd rather use a Kismet, but if you want it to pair with a snipe, putting one in a regular attack seems fine. Enhancement values are more important, especially acc/end. No amount of procs will help if the attack misses or is too expensive to use. Procs vs damage is a trickier question, but usually damage slotting is better than damage procs up to the ED cap. Typically you slot an attack with 4-6 pieces for the enhancement values, then 1-2 procs if they can fit after getting all the acc/dam/end/rech you need for that attack.

Yes, damage type is also a consideration.

I'm really happy about the Disintegrate spread thing. Looking forward to seeing how that works in play. Also, Barracuda and the Kheldians now know we exist:

Stone offers strong ST with fast animations, mediocre AoE, and lots of hard and soft control for mitigation. This means it pairs well with a secondary that provides endurance and some extra AoE, and can get away with being a little squishy. That's an exact description of /Fire. That's certainly not the ONLY set it could pair well with, and if your primary goal is tanking, /Fire may not be the greatest choice.

I got Apex down to 44 minutes. I don't think I can get 25 minutes with this character, but there's still some room to improve. Then I attemped to solo Dr. Kahn, because I don't recall anyone saying they'd done so, even though I couldn't remember why it would be impossible. (But I haven't run it in about seven years, so what do I know?) Mission 1 was easy of course. Schadenfraude was annoying to solo because he seems to have Siphon Life AND Twilight Grasp, both of which heal for about 8k, so he bounced around in the 10-50% range for several minutes. He also runs a lot, which is an issue in those caves due to LoS. Fortunately, two Chain Fences were enough to keep him in place, and he eventually went down. In the second mission, during the very short encounter with Reichsman, I noticed a problem which would also crop up in the final fight: his Fist of Tyranny is a mag 100 stun, which also deals about 75% of my health bar, and he's easily able to finish me off with my toggles suppressed. That's okay, though: Chain Fences has a -fly component, so I can just hoverblast him while out of danger. Fast forward to the big fight, and this plan works, if slowly. I was barely making headway except when my Lore pets were up. In the final mission, I got him to 75%. Nemesis came out, I tried to pull Nemesis into the hallway, Reichsman reset to full, bah. Killed Nemesis, fought until Lore came back, got Reichsman to 50%, Countess Crey came out. Started fighting her... wait, why is Reichsman suddenly back at 90%? ...he has Dull Pain. Okay, time to abort. It took me almost an hour to deal 25% then 50% of his health; I can't beat a 40% heal on what is ostensibly a 6-minute recharge, especially not once Unstoppable comes into play later. So! I can't solo this fight. To do it, you'd need two things: Very high ST damage. If Dull Pain heals 40% of his ~226k HP on a 6-minute recharge, that's about 250 HPS. This is in addition to his 113 hp/s regeneration, or 158 during Dull Pain. So overall he's recovering about 136k health every 360 seconds, which is about 380 hp/sec. Even with 600 DPS, you're looking at something like a 20-minute fight. And even then, Unstoppable might throw a wrench in things; ideally you'd deal psi damage so you can ignore it. An immobilize or -fly power to keep him and his stun away (Unstoppable probably gives him immob protection, so -fly might be the only option), and the ability to do that DPS from range, OR the ability to somehow tank his stun (eg Shadow Meld when he starts the animation) So you need a character in the upper echelons of pylon performance, dealing psi damage, and attacking from range. Even if you have people continuously fill your mailbox with Super! red inspirations, that seems like a high bar to clear... but I think it might be possible.

I noticed today that the Dr. Kahn TF has four Rogue Isles Villains EBs in a row right at the start, so it's probably not a bad way to get Villain Disruptor either. Kill the four bosses, log out to reset, repeat. Very soloable.

The Defiler has a Rain Of Fire-style power on a short recharge that deals decent damage, despite being untouchable. This adds more damage than any of the support buffs do. Enemies will indeed run out of Rain effects if not taunted, but I'm pretty sure damage patches have target caps anyway, so it's not a big deal.

It is. The enhancements are unique, and the normal and superior versions are not counted separately. If you slot 3 pieces each in two separate powers, you'll get the 3-piece bonus twice, even if they're all purple. It stacks like any other set bonus would. But you can't slot two full sets by making one of them purple.

Finally went and did MoITF correctly. Since Rommy runs all over the place without taunts, I decided to just clear the whole area before engaging, and after that it was easy. Apparently, if you fly far away really fast after he dies, the Nictii will just forget to rez him, then you have to kill them directly when you come back. That wasn't really what I intended, but it worked, so OK. I then attempted the same thing on +4/x8, died trying to rescue the first sybil, and gave up. I think I could do it, but I'd have to clear through rather than rush straight to the rescues, and that would take absolutely forever with my mediocre AoE. I may try +4/x1 at some point, but even that might just be an exercise in patience. Next, I tried to solo Apex like @nihilii mentioned in the first post. How on Earth can you do this in under 25 minutes? It took me that long just to kill all the War Walkers in the first mission. (Should I be trying to AoE them down? With Beam Rifle, I don't know if I can even do that efficiently, not to mention that the WWs don't seem to herd very well.) With no ranged defense and no toxic resist, Electric Armor is a very bad choice for tanking hydra pylons. I died a lot of times here. Should've loaded up on purples instead of reds before starting. When I zoned into the second mission, I encountered a bug where the game somehow forgot that I had an alpha power slotted, so it hit me with the "Emperor Cole's Incarnate Control" -4 level shift penalty. Thus I was level 50(-3), and really really confused why I couldn't even make a dent in three minion swords on the rooftop. Relogging once didn't fix it, so I relogged again, stayed offline five minutes, unslotted and reslotted my alpha for good measure, and one of those things fixed it. Battle Maiden is much more dangerous in melee than she is at ranged. Strangely, she's perfectly happy to sit at range and just crossbow you occasionally, even if you're on the ground and not very far away. This fight was much easier than I expected. That said, I should get some flying Lore pets. Robotic Drones would fit the aesthetic. My final time was 1:13. I could probably get that under an hour now that I know the drill and don't waste so much time on the pylons and the bug. I doubt I could get it much under 45 minutes at this point though; those War Walkers are a huge bottleneck.

Eh. As far as I can tell, the best possible attack chain for BR requires only 231% recharge in Piercing Beam, including slotting. In other words, you need about 140% global recharge - well short of perma-hasten, and quite achievable even without a recharge bonus in the secondary. Mine is Beam/Elec, which I've been very happy with, but lots of other secondaries would go well too. Offensive Adaptation is pretty tempting, enough that I was seriously considering rerolling to Beam/Bio for a while. I don't think it is important except for defense-based sets. Not to put too fine a point on it, but nihilii's Fire/Rad/Psi has I think something like 24% defense unbuffed, and that obviously isn't holding him back. I mean, most high-end builds will go for defense to some degree, sure - that's simply the best way to add durability via IO set bonuses. But defense isn't "softcap or bust". For sets with no native defense, getting to the softcap for even a single type or position requires so many slots that it may not even be worth it. I run around with about 33% S/L defense and less than that to other types, and solo AVs and x8 spawns easily, because 33% defense plus 70% resist plus 700% regen is plenty; if I need more defense for a particular fight, purple inspirations exist.

Not only was there no secondary that dealt toxic damage, there was no such thing as toxic damage. At launch (ie, when Dark Melee was made), Vahzilok zombie vomit dealt untyped damage (which meant it was unresistable), like the blue patches in the Tin Mage TF. Players thought that was BS, so the devs made up a new damage type for it. I believe that all damage buffs are, technically, a bunch of individual buffs to damage of each type. So Soul Drain was written to give the seven possible kinds of damage boost that existed at the time - even psionic, although there were and still are no secondaries that deal psionic damage. But I guess nobody ever updated it to include the new eighth type.

Even ignoring the increase in drops, Windfall is still +25% inf for an hour. I know the OP in this thread primarily emphasized ATOs, but those aren't the only thing you get from Super Packs. The ATOs by themselves don't earn back the price tag, but the rest of the contents make up the difference. I've been opening 60 super packs (30 H&V, 30 R&V, no winter packs) at a time for a while now, and while it is random, 60 packs is enough that my outcome always looks roughly like: ~75 ATOs (600m) ~50 converters (mostly used to convert the low-demand ATOs) ~50 unslotters (7m) ~10 boosters (14m) ~5 catalysts (15m) ~600 reward merits, with which I buy 120 boosters (168m) ~800 Brain Storms, which turns into 40 rare salvage (20m) Altogether that sells for ~824m inf, which is a profit of ~140m inf after market fees. It takes about 20 minutes to go through all the packs, claim all the items, convert them, and list them; it takes a couple days for everything to sell, at which point I do another batch. If anything, my estimates above are lowballing it, because I seem to make more than that per batch. Plus I get a nice stash of amplifiers, inspirations, rezzes, Windfalls, and Experienced to use as I please on any character. I don't think Super Packs are nearly reliable enough to be a smart way to grow your first fifty million inf. But if you have a few hundred million, they're a great way to turn that into a few billion.

Did you really spam this thread in every AT subforum? Ugh.

Despite what Mids says, Overcharge has a 90s base recharge, so you're going to be limited by Aim's recharge time unless you slot it a bit more. I'd rather have Refractor Beam than Cutting Beam if you can only have one. I'm not sure if that's actually a placeholder since Mids think Refractor Beam is a snipe. I'd trade one of those Panacea sets for a Preventive Medicine. Drop the FF proc in Charged Shot to make room; you won't be using Charged Shot much anway except to activate Opportunity.