ninja surprise

It's a common theme, make Regen immune to debuffs like slow, end drain, and -regen. But regen is already OP so not likely.

I have one of these and it's a royal hoot. I even use the 1st staff attack because it has a good debuff and it's fast in the single-target attack chain. I comfortably tank with it, even exemp'd down for low level task and strike forces. Presence taunt is garbage. Invuln has plenty of built-in taunt, so do your attacks, and the actual Taunt power if you want it instead of just hitting someone with your stick.

Just in case other people don't know: blocking insp drops doesn't convert the blocked insps into allowed insps. When the RNG determines an Insp will drop, and then determines the type, if it's a blocked type you simply don't get the insp. So if 1 out of 5 insps is purple, you'll only get 1 purple insp. If you want to maximize your drops, allow more inspirations through and use binds to combine them into the ones you want.

I use a toggle-on bind, so pressing F1 over and over turns on every armor power + the defensive stance. F2 does Efficient. F3 does Offensive. Way easier than trying to click the armors one at a time to turn them on.

I use 1,000 Cuts all the time. It's got style and flash and so do I. I'm super cool. Plus that's three seconds to type witty banter into chat while it animates! Who wants to spend all their time speed-clicking 1s powers anyway?

I have one in the high 30's named Snow Cyclone. It's a blast! You're right about endurance though. Even mostly IO'd out I can barely make it between EA recharging. I have more accidental toggle-drops with this toon than with any other, but it sure is fun.

Yep, it's been great for every AT except the melee ATs where it's long been at the bottom of the damage pile with low up-front/burst damage and low DoTs. I've loved it for style but always got frustrated how my enemies took so long to burn up vs any of the other weapon sets. And two of my favorites are Staff and Dark melee, which aren't on the high end of the scale.

Wait is Fiery Melee good now? Imma have to go dig out my old toons that led to massive disillusionment after so many tries! I know my highest levels are a Rad/Fiery and Shield/Fiery tanks... Looks like I also have Scrappers of the Fiery/Fiery, Fiery/Enery type. Huh, and a FM/Rad Brute. More alts to alt on!

I think @Bill Z Bubba could weigh in on whether SR/Claws is "making it hard on yourself" If you want a crappy combo try doing something / Ice Melee and only take the swords.

Stone Melee pairs well, and Shield has a good rock-looking shield to pair with it. Stone hits hard and Shield's +Dam makes it better.

I had an Ice/Stone on Live and it was a blast. All the knockdown helped survivability against tough enemies and it was a piece of cake to be soft-capped S/L/E/N by the 20's with cheap IO sets. A Shield/Stone is one of my favorite tanks, the other is SR/DM. Had an SR/Electric and it was a lot of fun but eventually I got tired of the lack of single target attacks. I think I was doing the arc redside where you help overthrow Penny Yin's family when I got burnt out on it. One of my friends mains on an Electric/Dual Blades and just loves it. My Shield/Stone survives better in the Dark Astoria arcs, but hers does just fine almost everywhere. A bad pairing might be Ice/SS so you're killing your defense all the time, or Ice/Spines for lots o' dots but crappy ST chain. Do anything /Psionic and slot for max knockup.

Yep - in-game stats show: Power Range: 40.00 ft. Effect Area: AoE -- 3.00 ft. radius (5 targets max) Attack Types: melee defense, lethal defense

Thanks! I'm going to give this a port to my current project: Axe / Electric Armor. I always had a soft spot for Battle Axe and the new version of it is a blast. My two other favorite brutes are: Miraculass - Staff / Invuln. Such a fun combo and concept with a secret identity and CC emotes. Fleas- Savage / Bio. Another superfun combo for when I feel like being more involved with clicking the Bio powers instead of being on Invuln's cruise control invincibility. On Live my favorite brute was Super Strength / Elec but I still haven't had the heart to recreate it. I still have the saved costumes though! I ported the concept over to a Peacebringer. New Battle Axe is a blast! The tornado attack is a sweet way of clumping up a spawn so you can chop 'em up. If you activate it while moving (like jumping from one spawn to another) it sucks them all through the air with you and drops 'em at your feet. It's hilarious! I was surprised to see that the T9 is a 40' ranged PBAoE and it's tremendously useful. They buffed one other attack into a PBAoe, so you have three AoEs and three single-target attacks, pretty good balance and dishes out plenty of damage with every attack doing knockdown. It uses a ton of endurance though, which is why I went with Electric Armor for the end recovery. Previously tried it with SR but burned out the blue bar so fast it wasn't funny. It'd be great with Bio, Energy Aura, Fire, or anything else with a Consume power to keep the pain train going.

I got into Doms because I like reading build & concept posts on the forums and keep thinking, "OOOO that looks like fun!" Got an Ice/Nrg, Fire/Fire, Mine/Savage, and Dark/Martial each to 50 before giving up on them and switching to back Controllers and Blasters because the Doms just didn't seem to have the same survivability or defeat things quickly enough. Now I'm trying an Illusion/Martial because I have a sweet concept the Dark/Martial didn't quite match, so hopefully the fun quotient will outweigh the wimpiness.

... or make Phantasm look like a giant toad.

Dual Blades is a ton of fun because of all the sweet animations. I take all the attacks, don't worry about super high recharge, and just click whatever attack is up. This way I can slot my attacks for +Def/Resist/Health bonuses and I don't get locked into clicking the same attacks over and over. Everything dies fast enough that I'm happy.

Your build looks really spiffy but I can't live without Orbiting Death. I'm trying a variation where I keep it as a one-slot wonder. I just love its visual effects!

I don't know if it's coincidental timing but there was a game change that buffed the mez and other side effects of baddies. It was most noticeable on Crey. Doing a Manticore right after the change, it took us all by surprise and we wiped a bunch. For a Human Warshade, you have to make use of the Hold and Stuns at your disposal. If you stack the AoE stun with Inky you should be able to mez most the spawn and hold a dangerous lieut.

Interesting build! Do you mostly play in Dwarf, and do blasting in Human form?

(hate it when the forum does that)

And the other big difference is which powers you get when exemp'd for TFs, etc. If you'd rather have attacks, go Brute, if you want armor, go Tank. Same for Corruptors vs Defenders. I wonder how the upcoming typed defense change will affect Invuln tankers in particular, but also everyone else who capped S/L defense that'll now get ignored.

Wohoo thank you so much! If you want to add some icing on this strudel is it possible to: Make Amy targetable but immune to teleport to it's possible to select her and search for her with a targeting bind? Remove Ghost Widow's fly from that TF where you have to gather Scirocco, GW, Black Scorpion, etc and lead them to a big room? She flys into the ceiling or floor and gets stuck too. Thanks for all the fixes!

One the one hand there's the pure numbers, on the other hand there's look & feel. Since Fire supposedly gives up all mitigation and other secondary effects in exchange for pure damage, Savage and Staff with their knockdowns and self-buffs and other secondary effects perform better overall than Fire's middling damage spread out as DoTs.

Savage Leap is fine for damage in melee, it just doesn't build as much Blood Frenzy when you use it close to your target. But if you have it loaded with procs (I have the +Crit proc in there) it's fine to use it any time it's up. What's even better is if you have Combat Teleport to TP yourself backwards and then Leap back for the +Frenzy bonus. I'll sometimes just Combat Jump backwards and Leap forwards again, but usually just Leap in place for the Procs. I really liked my Savage/Bio but re-rolled as a Brute to get more hit points into Bio.

Savage is good with a +Dam secondary like Shield or Bio. Just have to get used to some DoT damage ticking by. Both it and Staff are still better than Fiery Melee. Fire is such a disappointment. Yes, a -KB IO turns Mass Levitate into Mass Backflip. It's pretty funny. I paired Psi Melee with / Stone to add the +Fire secondary effect onto the Psi attacks to maximize elemental damage. Yeah, I think my first toon on Homecoming was Spines/Ice because I thought two damage auras and stacking slows would be neat. I got it to 50, kept IO'ing it out, trying to make it better... but when I get that Tips mission with Devouring Earth and they drop that stupid Cairn that buffs their damage resistance and I can't defeat the stupid pile of dirt with my 3 single target attacks... poor Iceberg Lettuce has been languishing on the back page of my alts list for a long time now.