Zeraphia

I actually agree with you at this point, however, I'd be very cautious with this one. Rage could possibly take Scrappers into unprecedented levels of damaging territory and honestly the "crash" is as bad as people make it seem. I think thematically there are lots of reasons and concepts to pick SS for Scrappers, particularly those wishing for a sort of "Spiderman" character, he has super strength, and he is very durable, but not quite the "Tanker" of Superman. I think it is a perfectly reasonable request, though you may see Rage turned into something very different, right now as it is, Rage is being looked at for rebalancing across all ATs for its crash. I do think SS for Scrappers is something on their radar actually, but expect it to come about after the Homecoming team has decided what to do with Rage in its current form. TL;DR it is fully welcomed for me, but will most likely need rebalancing and shouldn't be expected for porting until they figure out the best approach to Rage.

I can remember this happening a few times, there is two occurrences I can think of, one of them is a little bit hazy/non-specific the other is very specific. The very specific instance was when I was going toward an MSR and I was fooling around just by jumping all over (I don't know, I just can't sit still on video games hehe) and a pylon that was located near the initial base definitely did give me the 5th tick. It was just right of the place everyone starts the raid on (I'm sorry I can't recall the name of that area Point Du Hoc? something like that) right in the stone fenced area. The non-specific instance was when I was going to a mission for LGTF and I was knocked back on my Blaster and received five ticks, I believe this pylon was located in the gated area and stands on grass.

1. Rad/TW Tanker if you want to faceroll anything, and I mean literally anything and do it all with the damage and just be busted through the roof broken. It is a powerhouse combo that can do as much ST DPS as most Brutes/Scrappers/Blasters. However if you want a badger that will just annihilate mobs fast asap and get through everything quickly, Fire/Fire is an amazing soloist at low difficulty that does extremely well in groups. 2. For soloing high-end you can get by with just straight up DPS via envenomed knives temp from P2W and that will inevitably give rise to TW/Bio, Rad/TW Tanker as mentioned, all an edge at this, Illusion/ controllers are also good for this if you're in the "classic" way. 3. Group DPS top-notch is Fire/Kin and Fire/Cold Corruptors, no contest. They will magnify their own high-damage Fire Blasts and the magnify everyone elses, these are powerhouse combinations that decimate things in speed runs. 4. The best "defender" for supporting I've ever found with Nature/Sonic, it is bananas how much +dmg, -res, -regen, resistance buffs, heals, absorbs, it's just godly what it does for teams and iTrials, one of the most fun and effective toons I've ever made. People will very much so notice you. 5. You may want a special Dom for the situations that specifically ask for mez. I've found that Mind/Fire/Soul is the best one overall and does extremely high damage (sometimes out-damages my Blaster) that can definitely provide the mezzing.

You know, I completely agree with you, but I do think that Kheldians as a whole need some polishing and perhaps maybe some different IOs could be thought of after the changes. That said +1!

Oh those damned Malta Guns, good lord, they'll chase you down half the map, do some nasty damage when everything else gets stacked on you, break your stealth constantly... What a PITA.

I LOVE your pun at the end there! And you are rather accurate, Fiery Melee ends up having an unfortunate place given it doesn't provide any other secondary effect, in addition to not being the highest damaging melee set for ST or AoE (which honestly it rightfully should given it literally in its description trades any other meaningful secondary effect for its DoT damage), has nothing to protect the user via heal or knockdown or even -tohit, it also has very poor -res proc abilities... I really couldn't justify making a Fiery Melee toon for another other than theme unfortunately. BTW - I loved your testing and data and especially the commentary sections where you describe the pros and cons of each set! Invaluable to new or even vet players!

I'm not going to call it "unreliable" but I'm going to say that it's not in the same sentence as those others you mentioned are. All fire effects have an 80% chance to cause their DoTs, that isn't guaranteed like the rest are. So technically no, it isn't the only one with a proc chance.

I will speak as having one of those Scrappers with Confront, it's definitely not the same thing as a Tanker. The reason my Scrapper has Taunt is to do things like maintain an AV's attention (such as LR) when I know I can take him on for speed running. Now as it pertains to a Sentinel, I just don't see why they really need a Taunt type of power, and honestly, I don't really see why Scrappers do either other than "lazy" porting (but IMO, the ship has sailed so far passed the shore on that one that it's not worth reforming every one of the 20? melee sets to replace Confront). Tanker vs. Scrapper really is a big difference in survivability in terms of dealing with the harder-hitting AV's and enemy groups along with maintaining their attention and I've definitely noticed that and I think trying to get the Sentinel to that level of Tankiness is clearly unintended and wouldn't be by the AT's design. I'll be honest, when I first saw Sentinels, I saw them more as "Blasters with an Armor set" rather than "ranged Scrappers." It was only after I saw from dev comments/comments from others that I really saw why I was disappointed in them, because I was setting an expectation for something that was clearly not supposed to happen. I then realized that I quite liked the idea of a ranged Scrapper and I saw that there are ways to improve its damage to get it to that point as well as interesting concepts to renew the game in a more fresh experience, which I think is healthy for a game as old as this is.

I have noticed this phenomenon as well more passively. It appears that not every pylon does this special case of a 5th tick. I have really nothing to add here other than to demonstrate that I have noticed this happening as well, so you're not the "only one."

I know you didn't ask for my opinion, but I'm going to give the general thought from most of the community on how to go about improving them: 1. The damage scalar needs to be raised. That's a pretty consistent thought about them. I fully agree, and honestly I think you could put them on the 1.000 or 1.125 scalar and be absolutely fine given that *they have no Sniper* thus will always be firmly behind Blaster damage. This is pretty across-the-board, other suggestions are a little more "subjective." 2. Opportunity needs to be reworked. There are a lot of opinions about this, and honestly I don't think you'll please anyone with just one solution to it. There is one pretty consistent answer though: it should not be tied or force you to pick both of your weakest ST powers in order to use your "inherent" to activate it. It isn't married to cottage rule so changing it to something entirely different isn't out of the question. Crits, damage bonus as your opportunity fills, raising the -res bonus, making it easier to fill, are all among the most popular ideas for reworking the opportunity. My personal favorite would be crits on a higher Scalar not tied to any powers and completely doing away with the -res, would be very flashy and interesting, would definitely make them feel like ranged Scrappers! 3. And there is the Defensive side of Opportunity... Lots of people gain very minimal benefit out of it and ignore it entirely and they also will never use their T2 for it to gain the bonus. Then there are others who really enjoy this benefit of opportunity and vehemently defend its effectiveness and would be very sad if it were gutted entirely. I'm of the opinion it may be wiser to just tweak the numbers on the basic secondary powersets slightly and improve their basic survivability rather than keep it at all, but I wouldn't be opposed if it was kept, I just don't want it to be the reason that it keeps from getting an actually great inherent offensively. 4. Some powersets need balancing. AR in particular can use some very serious tinkering in comparison to other sets. I'm really trying not to step on anyone's toes or generalize them, there are many different ideas about how to improve the sentinels. However, most will say: higher damage scalar, and a reworked inherent, details and how to go about doing that are very subject to opinion.

I'm sorry, but... I'm going to just vote no to this. Sentinels are not meant to be Tankers, this is a heavily misguided idea. They are meant to be like ranged Scrappers, that was confirmed by the Devs, and they will not be given taunts or increased AoE caps (this was in fact firmly rejected by Homecoming devs). Their primary is a blast, their secondary is a defense set. Their primary feature is damage, that feature is not as competitive as others with the same features, so it feels lackluster in comparison to everything else. Some may argue that's just the power creep and Sentinels are just rounded to where they're supposed to be but I think there is a more consistently agreed train of thought that Sentinels are under-performing across the board. What you're looking for is something like a Tank-Mage with no hard hitting damage, just really the blast set would (likely) do less than what we see Sentinels even currently have (which honestly I don't think is a horrible idea as long as it takes the damage hit). What you're asking for is an entirely new AT compared to what Sentinels are supposed to be and could very well be in the future. Personally, I would much rather have a "ranged Scrapper" come into fruition than I would a Tank-Mage.

I've ranked Stone Armor as the worst armor in the game due to its mobility being too punishing in the current state of the game. I'm sorry but as a Tanker, you need to be fast. You need to be leading the pack to do the "job" and not just trying to keep up from behind teleporting. Switching between Granite and Super Speed is the "best" solution I've seen to it, but it's a very clunky one at best. No one needs Stones for anything anymore, buffs and the kill rates of other teammates have nullified the need for such extreme defenses. Rad has almost totally eclipsed Stone as the "meta" Tank set by getting 90% of what Stone gets to protect itself and honestly having a lot better defenses against Psionic damage (which is in no shortage late-game) with 0 of the drawback and a lot of positive buffs... It's the harsh reality of how the game is shaped and how quickly damage is being thrown out that Granite has unfortunately lost its place if you're playing with minimally competent players. I'm being serious when I say I've never seen a Rad Tanker unable to tank what a Stone can with the right build. That type of content just does not exist right now, but I can indeed think of situations where I've seen Stones get crushed by very high Psionic damaging enemies, Rad does not suffer this problem. IMO, to be a very good Tanker, you really need mobility. You need to be as fast as physically possible in the game, I cannot stress this enough, and you need it to do your job as a Tanker more than any other archetype. Stone IMO pays the ultimate price for Tankiness, it's an effective "null." I like @Bopper's suggestion with Rooted. That aside, speaking from an artistic point of view, I think Granite could badly use a type of "crystalline" armor GFX option. 🙂

I'm sorry, I'm just going to have to vote no. I much prefer the updated Burn.

Perhaps it was me miss-perceiving your point, which can happen as this is text after all. My point was that it seemed like you were saying that stacking more Blasters on to a team was going to make it deal the highest damage possible, which I pointed out isn't the case. The way it was worded was: it makes it sound like adding more Blasters is the way to achieve the highest DPS possible.

Sort of off-topic but I could support a sort of -res inspiration with moderation (I wouldn't want a team to be able to just stack them infinitely and be OP) but I can see where lots of sets are horrifically disadvantaged by their damage type. Some sets come with -res to help or in procs, but some are just totally absent of -res to help these sets at all, or it isn't consistent enough to count on (like a 1/9 chance to happen when the power goes off). I have no idea how to go about coding it and I really think there are more important things to focus on, but I can see sets like Psi Blast/Psi Melee really appreciating something like this.

True and false... TW/ scrappers are high enough damage now that even the most damaging Stalker (StJ/Dual Blades) with their -res procs has a hard time matching TW times or just being right on par with them. However, the guaranteed bursts for something like a boss or an EB are definitely and firmly in the Stalker's favor over uncontrolled crits (even if they are sort of controlled with the ATO to an extent.) So it's about 50/50 true about this one, but be cautious. How it ultimately comes down is that over time, TW will even out the difference of the highest damaging Stalker in ST, do just enough to feel fine, and will get substantially better AoE. TW/Bio is definitely broken though, and it doesn't reflect a true DPS comparison of Scrapper vs. Stalker in ST, where many of the Scrapper combos will not do the same ST DPS. Compared to Blaster? A fire/ blaster is definitely formidable, fire/fire will come very close, but still an StJ/Bio or a DB/Bio (with a TON of recharge) will out-DPS it. I would say that top Blaster combo is about 90-93% the damage of top Stalker combo. However there is a "dark horse" in Thugs/Storm, lots of Mastermind combos in general, but particularly Thugs/Storm will definitely out-DPS it. If this particular Thugs/Storm goes for it as well, they can out-DPS it by almost double. It isn't consistent obviously because of the nature Masterminds work, but it will definitely end up as the top. Ninjas could technically be higher but it never works out that way for them, the Ninjas don't have the same types of procs, they don't survive as well, and the procs that Thugs can run put them solidly ahead (plus the Tactics). Obviously as with Mastermind and Storm Summoning, the damage isn't completely controlled and is less versatile, pets can die, the peak damages require Burnout for double gang war, 4x nado & LS and triple Freezing Rain...

Simpler? Obviously not. But making your own AE missions isn't the same thing as he suggested. In the entirety of 99% of the contacts you do in the Rogue Isles as a villain, you are a lackey. Adding in this option to non-AE content allows you to actually view your character as the OP expressed as a *real* villain. Creating your own virtual arcs versus actually gaining this missions is a big difference in terms of the plot of that character and the story the character will have which I would think is an important story element to a super-hero/villain-based MMO.

Widow Claws in particular are the heinous ones that people really want fixed. It messes with their chains, and their attacks are used in Fortunatas. I can't speak on the Crab/Bane side, but I will say that there is absolutely a need for the Widows to get this update to make their chains more viable.

You have definitely got some warranted complaints here, no doubt. Psi Melee has the second** highest damage single target power in the game for Scrappers with GPB at base (after Rend Armor) and it accepts a boatload of procs, so its burst ST is obscene, you should have a very easy time downing a boss. For this reason, Psi Melee is usually seen as better on a Stalker where you can force that to crit into a real whammy. So a big reason this set falls in performance overall is due to the fact that the Insight mechanic is very short-lived and is on lockouts for large amounts of time. This should probably be addressed soon. The reason its ST isn't great is probably due to its obscene bursting damage ability relative to other sets. Your point about Mass Levitate, you must realize that it is a higher-damage AoE, Savage's Leap is more damage, but double the recharge. Savage also doesn't do the exceptionally heavy burst damage that Psi can in ST, even though Psi loses it in sustained damage. It also doesn't help that it is so highly resisted end-game. I'm also going to tell you that not every set will be Titan Weapons. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but expecting a set to be the "best!" at something would be a little bit disingenuous seeing as how we have more than 20 different melee sets spread across the ATs! Not every set is going to be a clear victor over anything, that's just how it will always boil down to, but I can definitely see them fine-tuning the Insight Mechanic and possibly improving some of the "lower" attacks.

Sentinel? Not really. Corruptor? Different story... Corruptors with something like /Poison and /Cold or especially Kinetics will in many cases out-DPS Blasters, and will significantly out-pace them in terms of their overall value in a group. However, you are correct that at just base damage Blasters will out-pace many combinations of those, I just think it's worth pointing out those exceptions.

This build, I hate saying this, but it tells me a lot about why you don't particularly feel your Blaster is as powerful if not more powerful than your Scrappers. 1. You didn't take Hasten, therefore you're not getting Snipe up as often as you could and you aren't getting Inferno up all that often either, you've basically shortchanged yourself. Hasten is a huge key to Blasters due to their nukes, you want their nukes up as often as possible and you want it for the Snipes. 2. Inferno is oddly slotted, most of the time the procs only add miniscule damage compared to what it normally will do just on base (by these procs you're probably only looking at about 10-15% more actual damage which isn't much when you're already going to be oneshotting +4 lei without them. 3. You should probably take End of Time as another AoE when Inferno is down and get Fury of the Gladiator for -res. 4. Scorpion Shield is an over-rated trick for Blasters IMO, my blaster has gotten better survivability off of popping purples/greens when needed diligently than I have with Scorpion, adding the resistance of something like Fire Shield was a much better investment... speaking of better investments, the FIRE POOL is a MUCH better pool than Mace by a MILE. Bonfire, proc'd out Char, and Fire Shield are vastly superior to the non-softcapped S/L/E you currently possess. 5. The slotting with your Sniper is off as well, you should always when available slot Manticore's, it gives very nice unique bonuses and a great proc, 10/10, and then slot the 6th as a glad proc unless you're running UG, then use an unslotter and place a Fast Snipe IO but honestly Glad is just superior for its damage proc. 6. Health is way over-slotted. 7. Rain of fire is cool, but you don't need it at all, it is one of the most skippable powers considering all your hits deal very high damage in bursts immediately. 8. Time Stop is also very skippable, the -regen isn't high enough to merit it even once stacked. In most encounters with GM/AV, just use the envenomed, don't try to stack these and hurt your DPS, it's not worth it. 9. You don't have Hasten to take RoP and make it up consistently. Are your pylon times with an Alpha +1, or Hybrid turned on? Those pylon numbers are actually really low considering what most Fire Blasters can do now, mine personally is at the 1:30's mark, however mine is Fire/Fire with proc'd out Char and well-slotted Ring of Fire and the Achilles -res from Burn.

It is a false assumption that adding more Blasters to a team is the way to achieve the highest DPS possible. It is not. Very often you'll find adding a Kinetics or a Cold Corruptor/Defender in addition to someone with a fast Sonic Blast chain will always yield higher DPS results because of the group amplifying than just flat out Blasters. I honestly wish more people saw those benefits and brought them to teams, that is truly at this point the most valuable contribution for a team you can possibly do. Kinetics and Colds overlapping is never a bad thing at all, it actually makes teams uber uber powerful. I end up playing my Fire/Cold Corruptor more than anything else, I mained my Fire/Fire Blaster purely for soloing.

Do you mean understand why SS is better for Brutes? Because it isn't honestly, it is just flat out better to roll as Tanker at this point for Claws/SS due to the damage buffs and AoE caps. 100%.

I'm of the opinion that you really can't argue FOR a Brute in most cases versus a Tanker, the only exception I've really seen so far that kind of goes against that train of thought is something like TW/Fiery Aura Brute, even then, there is a lot of argument defensively to go Tanker there, but there is a lot of argument to go for Brute offensively. Basically the change has made Tankers just *feel* easier and build *much* easier. Tankers feel much more damaging now than they've ever been and are dramatically more survivable than Brutes really are. Brutes suffer an HP hit, and overall defense base number hits, I would not call them a 90/90, I'd call it more like 75/85, Brutes come to about 75% the overall durability of a Tanker, Tankers do 85% in terms of damage what the Brute will dish out, and in many cases, the Tanker variation will just be flat superior (most Super Strength combinations of Tanker). It's a harsh reality, but I really struggle to justify even making a Brute for anything besides farming. I'm not saying they're bad at all, I'm saying what does it offer between Tanker versus Scrapper at this point? Go right ahead! Reroll them!

At bare minimum, please get a good T4 lore like Banished Pantheon core or something... I hate when people bring super low DPS toons to events (particularly of the controller/tanker variety) that either are totally superfluous or end up dead/aren't really contributing overall in terms of effectiveness. It's kind of sad when a task force takes double or triple the time that they should because people do not even attempt to do any damage at all or at least amplify others in some shape or form. I'm not saying this applies to you, a bit more of a "rant" from what I've been seeing lately. I don't know, it just irks me. IMO, Tankers are on the same damage scale as Dominators and Sentinels now, therefore, they should contribute to the damage output of a team. I'm going to state that in this state of the game, the need for extreme defenses is becoming more about what you can handle solo versus anything to actually contribute to a group, the group would much rather (in most cases) the Tanker be good enough to take the damage just enough and dish out superior damage than the opposite balancing.