ninja surprise

You're forgetting that most blaster sets have crowd control: knockback, fear, stun, knockdown, slow, confuse, immob, hold, endurance drain, etc. Sure, a Fire/Fire/Fire blaster is pure damage, but Hot Feet does fear, Bonfire does KD/KB depending on slots, Rain of Fire does slow, -Fly, -Jump, Ring of Fire does immob, Char is a hold, etc. Plus, the inherent power means your first two Primary powers and first Secondary power can be used while you're mezzed so you can always attack even while held/stunned/etc. So approaching a spawn I'll pop some build up or aim, throw a Bonfire and Fireball, trigger Rain of Fire, and a lot of mobs will be defeated or flopping and the rest will be running around in a panic. I have Hot Feet running and drop a Burn. Some mobs run up to melee range, then get scared and run away. I keep blasting like crazy at whatever's closest or most dangerous, while mobs run in for an attack and then run away to get out of the AoEs. Pop inspirations as they drop because that's what they're for, and have a ton of fun. Blasters aren't just helpless damage dealers.

Do you mean it shoots energy blades?

In the Talos Island radio mission Defeat Hector and Guards, when Hector appears he says "We will bring this city to it's knees." Sure, if Hector was writing, he might not know the difference between its and it's, but spoken should be correct 🙂

This is a cool chart to map across ATs.

All good points, thanks! Good points - and I'd forgotten about most of the Shield skins, it can look like stone, energy, psi, darkness, etc, for all sorts of concept pairings.

What do you consider the "natural" pairing for armors that don't have a direct match? I'm making one of each elemental pair, and getting into ones I haven't rolled before. So far I have: Electric Armor / Electrical Melee Ice Armor / Ice Melee Fiery Aura / Fiery Melee Dark Armor / Dark Melee and I just made a Stone Armor / Stone Melee (I can't stand Radiation Melee so I'm skipping Rad/Rad) That leaves 5 more armors: Bio Armor Invulnerability Shield Defense Super Reflexes Willpower And a baker's dozen attack sets: Battle Axe Claws Broad Sword Dual Blades Electric Melee Energy Melee Katana Kinetic Melee Martial Arts Psionic Melee Savage Melee Spines Street Justice Staff Fighting Super Strength Titan Weapons War Mace What do you consider the "natural" or most thematic pairing for each armor? (Not looking for the overpowered min/max pairing, thematic only) I'm leaning towards: Bio Armor / Spines or / Savage Invulnerability / Super Strength or / Energy Melee Shield Defense / Martial Arts or / Street Justice, or the medieval one-handed weapons: Mace, Broad Sword, etc. Super Reflexes / Any of the fast two-handed weapons (Claws, Dual Blades, Katana, Staff), or open-hand attacks. But never Titan Weapons; SR is all about momentum. Willpower / Anything, maybe pair Titan here? Don't want sets with knockback because that defeats the mob-based regen. What do you consider the thematic natural pairing for the last 5 armors?

Seconded - Ice / Stone with all the knockdown and stun is a ton of fun.

One year later I wonder if @biostemrespec'd into Shadow Maul?

Oh yea, I forgot about Granite because I so rarely see anyone in that form.

Why do Scrappers get to do Claws / Stone Armor but for Brutes and Tanks (Stone/Claws) it's blocked? Particularly since Tanks can do Stone/Spines, and Spines has a lot of Claws-like animations?

I was going to make a /Claws Tank, and noticed the powerset description says Brute instead of Tank.

You're thinking about @Camel's cRuNcH guide. I did an ITF with him once, it's an effective build. He's got a bunch of other builds with EM there too, for your build debating.

I'm only on page 3 of the guide so apologies if this has been mentioned already - I'm trying out the Changeling build (23) and you have 4 of the Teleport powers, including Teleport and Combat Teleport. Combat Teleport is super fast and gives a brief +ToHit bonus, but you can also use Teleport instead and then pick another shield for a +Psi resist mule (or anything else, of course). I use Q to TP myself to my targets, like so: /bind Q "powexec_location target White Dwarf Step$$powexec_location target Teleport" And for Warshades with their inherent teleports: /bind Q "powexec_location target Black Dwarf Step$$powexec_location target Shadow Step" So I <Tab> to target something, then <Q> to 'port myself into kissing distance whether I'm human or Dwarf. Peacebringer: Starlette Warshade: Paranoid Heroine

Moonfire and Hess in Striga can be changed to Co-op.

A couple things: You were way high on AoE, but that's the least damaging type, with melee lowest, but that's the most damaging type. Did you really want Jump Kick, even though you didn't slot it for anything? If you replace it with Maneuvers you get almost 3% more def to all. Re-slot Kuji-In Sha with Numina boosts your Ranged. Replacing one slot on Tough with the Steadfast unique you lose the 2% set bonus but get +3% def to all, so you come out ahead. Lastly, you can replace one of the Gladiators with Touch of Death to get your Melee def up nice and high. You don't have to go this way but it gets your defense more even overall. Ninjitusu doesn't have much DDR, so high def keeps you from getting floored as fast.