Hopeling

Tangentially related: I used to get 20 stacks of Experienced on every character from vet rewards. Is there a way to get it now, besides the occasional one from super packs, and the 5 from the anniversary event?

For what it's worth, doublehit actually does neither base damage nor full damage; instead, it's a weird PPM proc whose damage depends on the recharge and area of the power it's slotted in. If you want the math, I made a spreadsheet before shutdown. Neither is strictly better overall; Radial tends to be better for slow attacks, single-target attacks, and ATs with lower damage modifiers, while Core tends to be better for the opposites. The other big difference between Core and Radial is that core needs to build stacks, while radial does not, and of course radial isn't limited by the damage cap. But for farming and with a brute, that's not much of an issue.

You need 97% tohit, ie, 75% base plus 22% from buffs. There's a display bug where the game allows fast snipes at 22%, but doesn't show the ring until something like 22.5%. So if you have exactly the right amount, see if it works even though you don't have the yellow ring.

War Mace is quite good. It's good at both ST and AoE. Crowd Control is the easiest melee cone you'll ever use; a 180-degree arc is simply ridiculous. Also, Shatter is a Headsplitter clone, except with a 45-degree arc instead of 19 degrees, so it's an honest area attack instead of "sometimes you can hit two guys instead of one". Smashing damage isn't a huge downside; it's less resisted than lethal. Robots in particular tend to have high lethal resistance and NEGATIVE smashing resistance!

To my knowledge, there's still no way to get safeguard badges that you missed without a lowbie's help.

Port Oakes, supposedly. I don't know exactly where, but I assume he appears in your contact window once you have the badge.

They're saying that the badge you need is Hero Slayer, which is and has always been awarded for defeating NPC heroes like Doc Quantum or the Freedom Phalanx members, not for PvP kills. This badge unlocks the contact who gives mayhem missions. I don't believe this contact was ever available on live, but the Hero Slayer badge is the same as ever.

Yes, the damage formulas do not consider animation time at all. The early devs literally thought that animation speed wasn't important; they thought about cycle time (animation+recharge) instead of DPA. Of course, this was wildly wrong: when Claws got faster animations, the devs thought it would be a small DPS buff because the cycle time decreased only slightly; in fact it was an enormous buff because every power's DPA went way up. Once they realized that fast powers are much better, they wised up a bit, but they tended to just pick animation speeds that kept DPA within the range they wanted, instead of literally accounting for it in the formula. For example, all of Water Blasts's single-target powers have pretty similar DPA, while a launch set like Ice Blast has DPA values all over the place.

I was pretty involved in discussions about PPM close to shutdown. I have no idea if the .75 factor in question was actually implemented, but I suspect it was, since Synapse's other proposed changes (raise base PPM, calculate from enhanced recharge, cap proc chance at 90%) did go through. It should be straightforward to test directly: slot a proc into a power, cast it a few hundred times, and see how many procs you get. Once you have enough data points, it should be pretty clear which of the two formulas is giving the correct value. Doing this by hand sounds super tedious, but I seem to recall that HeroStats could keep logs of things like that, which would let you get that data through regular play. If anybody remembers how to do it, go for it; otherwise I'll see if I can figure it out.

Typically, no. The resistance debuff is quite small. Look at it this way: a 2.5% res debuff proc for 10 seconds basically adds (your DPS on that target*.025*10) damage. A DoT proc does five ticks of 13.39 damage, or 67 damage. That means you need to be doing 67/0.25=268 DPS *per target* just for the -res to break even, and in an AoE situation that's basically impossible. If you're building only for ST damage and you have an extremely strong build, you might possibly be better off with the -res. On a team where the -res boosts everyone's damage, that math changes, but it's also very likely that other people are applying the Reactive -res anyway, and it only goes to 4 stacks. 2-3 attackers each with a Reactive Radial t4 are going to keep the target at 4 stacks pretty reliably.

This is kind of just a lowbie problem in general, especially for sets with damage auras (which are expensive). Toggle Electric Field off when you're not fighting groups, and don't try to run Fighting or Leadership toggles until the endurance is under control. More importantly, slot your attacks for endurance reduction. People tend to blame endurance problems mostly on toggles, but even with a damage aura, the majority of your endurance is spent on attacks. Thanks to Fury, brutes can get away with slotting damage barely if at all for quite a while; try slotting your attacks with something like 1 accuracy, 2 endurance, and 1 recharge, and then maybe think about damage enhancements. Frankenslotting is always a good option too. At low levels, you're better off with 3-4 attacks that each have 4-6 slots, instead of 6 attacks that each have 3 slots. Electric Armor in particular gets *much* better on the endurance bar later on: Energize is a beefy cost discount for all your powers when the buff is up, and Power Sink will refill your endurance on command. But those don't come into play until 28 and 35 respectively.

My main is a TW/WP scrapper. He's plenty durable. Brutes have 12% more HP and the same resistance/defense numbers, so they're only marginally tougher. Brutes also have a higher resist cap, but /WP doesn't have enough resistance for that to be super relevant except with inspirations or Strength of Will. Rend Armor crits are super satisfying, but on the other hand, a brute would have a reason to take Taunt, and the TW definitely has the game's best taunt animation.

Yes. The game applies your stats to the power, and powers like Aim buff your stats. I don't recall whether location AoE powers take a snapshot of your stats at the time of casting, or if they update as your stats change. If it's the latter, then when Aim wears off, your Rain of Fire will start doing less damage.

Scrappers arguably get the most out of Shield Defense due to their higher damage scale and damage buff modifier, and it doesn't have enough resistance that the lower resist cap is especially relevant. So yes, it works at least as well for a scrapper as it does for a brute. Elec/SD is a classic for the double telenuke. DM/SD is a strong combo with great synergy; DM has a heal and endurance recovery which shield lacks, and /SD has a strong AoE attack that DM lacaks. War Mace works thematically and offers excellent ST and AoE. Almost anything else pairs well with /SD too, honestly.

BS has been directly outclassed by Katana for quite a long time. It used to be able to at least say that it had especially large hits even if its sustained DPS wasn't the highest, but with Clobber, War Mace beats it at that, and many of the other post-launch melee sets get KO Blow-esque powers that hit harder than Headsplitter. Its AoE damage leaves something to be desired, and its only other unique thing is Parry, which is dramatically less valuable in a world where every scrapper can be plenty durable from IOs without compromising their attack chain to do it. It's no worse than it ever was, so it's certainly not unplayably bad, it just doesn't really have anything that makes it stand out anymore, and has generally been a victim of power creep. I'm not sure it's better on a stalker in an objective sense, but at least stalkers play well to the Broadsword fantasy of "I want to do big single hits" thanks to AS and autocrits. Using Headsplitter from hide and killing two lieutenants in one shot feels pretty good.

TW is a very late-blooming set; it won't feel very good until you have Whirling Smash and Arc of Destruction with some slots in them, but at that point it really takes off. As others have said, it's also pretty thirsty, so a secondary that helps with endurance is nice. The Momentum mechanic means the set isn't actually slow overall: it's one slow attack, then four fast ones, then repeat. But that slow attack is frustrating when you miss (and don't get Momentum), or when you're doing things like badge hunting where you have to wind up again every time you see a target. Titan Weapons was released well before shutdown, and definitely has sound effects. It has a ton of whoosh sounds and not so many impact/explosion sounds like Super Strength or Stone Melee, so sometimes it sounds a bit like Wiffle Bat Melee, but it has sound.

Neither, actually. Imagine that each power has a bar that fills up as it recharges. Recharge buffs make the bar fill more quickly, for as long as they're up. The bar only ever moves upward, it just moves up faster or slower if you have buffs or debuffs. Unfortunately, the way the game displays recharge is weird, so the icons bounce all over the place when buffs/debuffs are applied or expire: the size of the icon is supposed to represent how soon it will be up, relative to its recharge before buffs - not how full the imaginary bar is. If you use a power with a 20s recharge, and at the 15s mark you get hit with a -300% recharge debuff, the game will show you a tiny icon because you won't be able to use the power for 20s, even though it's 3/4 recharged. This is also why, when you get hit with slows, your powers seem to sit at the smallest icon for a while before they start growing. So Force Feedback helps all your powers come back faster, whether they were cast during the FF buff or not. The icons shrink when the buff expires, but the game isn't taking anything away from you; it's just updating its prediction of when the power will be available.

TW/WP works really well. It was my main on live, and I remade him for Homecoming, and he's still as excellent as ever. If you like the idea of TW/SR, consider TW/Nin. This plays up the dichotomy even more IMO, and the endurance refill would be really helpful for TW's thirst.

Soloing AVs is easier with Incarnate powers, but if you can solo an AV without inps/temp powers/Lore pets, your build is still doing pretty well in terms of damage, durability, and endurance.

There's little need for Heavy Blow or Sweeping Cross, except maybe at low levels when you don't have the other attacks yet. Placate is also pretty optional in the post-ATO world.

I thought that characters with original Stamina didn't get inherent Stamina, at least not in the initial patch. Maybe that changed later.

Now that Focus exists, using AS from hide mid-combat is essentially never worthwhile. You're better off using your Focus stacks on AS while not hidden, and using any Hide crits for an AoE power or strong non-AS attack. For example, AS with Focus crit - ATO hide proc - Crushing Uppercut is a great combo for Street Justice, doing more damage in less time than an AS from stealth.

Any */fire brute will be a pretty solid farmer if the primary has halfway-decent AoE. SS/Fire used to be the popular build. Brutes work better for it than scrappers, because of the resist cap and because they get a taunt aura so things won't run from Burn. If you don't want to do fire farms, there are lots of other options. Elec/SD is a classic, and works fine on a scrapper; other primaries could also work. Ultimately, if you hate farming, you could also just... not farm. You can make pretty good inf from merits and maybe playing the market a bit. I purpled out multiple 50s on live this way, and IOs are only easier and cheaper to get on Homecoming.

Besides what arcanaville said about mindset, brutes just literally get less benefit out of damage slotting than scrappers do, both in absolute terms (lower base damage) and proportional to their total damage (because Fury already gives them a lot of +dmg). Three damage SOs roughly double a scrapper's damage, but for a brute with 80 fury, it's only about a 36% improvement. So even on a pure min/max basis, lowbie brutes will tend to slot more acc/end/rech and less damage than scrappers do, especially at low levels when you don't have enough slots or strong enough enhancements to just do everything. When leveling a brute, I often don't slot damage AT ALL until I start using IO sets...

I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're asking whether using the hide proc for another attack is better DPS than hardcasting AS, the answer is pretty firmly yes.