siolfir

There's no doubt that Combat Jumping is a more efficient use of endurance, but CJ gets a LotG +7.5% recharge if I'm not adding any more slots to it - and other defense set procs if I am adding slots. Putting it in Sprint costs me almost nothing in slotting opportunity since it will only take Run and Jump sets.

It really doesn't, though. I mean sure, if you only count the enhancement slots that you add, there are 67 total slots placed at level 50, but that ignores the initial slot in each power (24 choices + 7 inherent, skipping the prestige sprints) for a total of 98 slots to fill for most characters. So the suggested 100 would actually meet what you're saying, unless you're talking about a Kheld with at least one other form. I'm not saying we need to be able to carry that many enhancements, just stating that it takes multiple respecs to strip a fully slotted high level character.

For the most part, I'm just adding a +1: the armor set tier 9s are almost always skipped, with a few exceptions (I'll take Parasitic Aura, for example). But I had a couple of nitpicks: Power Surge (Electric Armor) actually does plug a couple of holes in Electric Armor: the set has 0% Toxic resistance outside of it, and it also provides a ridiculous amount of Knockback protection (100 points) and the set's only Knockback resistance. The crash is too punitive, but let's not act like it does nothing for the set. Overload (Energy Aura) provides the same amount of +maxhp as Dull Pain, only it's fully enhanceable instead of only partially enhanceable. It's a weak form of mimicking resistance, but it's there. The set also has the easiest time overcoming the crash, as it's endurance/recovery only and timing Energy Drain right means you can prevent the toggle drop. I know we're not talking about accolade powers, but prior to IOs I made a point of getting Demonic Aura on all my villains, because 50% defense and 30% resistance to all but Psi was better than any of the tier 9s - it has no crash and is available to anyone fairly easily, and while it only has a 1 minute duration and as an accolade can't be slotted for recharge, it is up more often than I needed it due to global recharge bonuses. I consider it a "gold standard" for tier 9 armor powers, without it even being one.

Not to tie up too much of the thread on the tangent, but it's one of the badge titles that really needs renamed, and I brought it up because the name refutes the point you were trying to make about gaining respect by running it. I enjoy the LRSF, but every complaint about being "someone else's lackey" is exemplified by the badge title of the highest level Strike Force, which originally you couldn't even run until after you had already won your freedom by literally handing Recluse his head (well, technically his helmet, but it doesn't say that his head wasn't still inside at the time).

...and the Servant of Recluse badge. Generally speaking, I skip all of the pets and melee characters with electric themes (or a need for more TAoEs) get Mu Mastery, other melees get Soul Mastery (Gloom/Dark Obliteration is great, Moonbeam is nice as well), and for other ATs I either take Scorpion Shield for the defense or ignore the Patron pools. I used to take Mu Mastery for Power Sink as an endurance refill for my Ice/Rad Corruptor, but since nukes no longer crash endurance I just don't need it to be able to do anything. Compared to the ancilliary pools, I generally prefer the power order of the Patron pools, but looking at some powers - such as Soul Drain between Darkness Mastery and Soul Mastery - you can see inexplicable nerfs (10' radius vs 15', 240 second recharge vs 120) that really seem just to be punitive because you ran an arc to unlock this power instead of having it buried behind other utility powers (AoE stun, endurance refill, armor, self-rez). I have amused myself by taking Leviathan Mastery on a couple of catgirl characters so they can "throw fishies" at people, though. We may not have gotten Carp Melee, but Carp Blast was added years before shutdown.

That's your opinion, and you're welcome to it. I disagree with the premise that it would take away from Stalkers, though, and it's somewhat different in that a 1 second Energy Transfer doesn't rely on getting stacks of Assassin's Focus to hit that level of performance, it's just there when the power recharges at the cost of some hit points. As for the single-target focused Stalker sets you mentioned, Stalker EM would be directly improved by reverting the ET nerf, at least DM got the debatable benefit of the Shadow Maul change, and while Martial Arts needs help it is currently in a better situation than Energy Melee IMO. Eh... it adds up. Because you always have to wait at least one tick, that's a higher percentage of the DPA on fast-animating attacks than it is on slower ones. The issue with the slower animating attacks is corpse blasting and that misses have a huge impact on your effective DPS, but you lose a lower percentage of the DPA to mandatory dead time; that's why Total Focus is theoretically ahead of Energy Punch and Bone Smasher assuming you attack as fast as the game will let you and never miss. Regarding the first point, the PvP damage formula is based off of animation times. Increasing DPA by reducing animation time actually makes the set weaker in PvP, and in any case splitting the effect of powers for PvE and PvP has been possible since before the i13 changes - it's how unresisted PvP damage on criticals was done, for example. To put it simply, there is not and never has been an excuse to use PvP as justification to prevent a PvE only change to a power's effects. But the "even bigger numbers" won't matter unless you're soloing when you're wasting 1500 damage instead of 1000 hitting that corpse on a team. I doubt we'll see #3, since Bruising became such a sticking point in the Tanker changes: @Captain Powerhouse seemed dead set on not allowing it to stack (which was proposed several times as an answer to the question "what does a second Tanker add to a group" question) and honestly, stacking -resistance is one of the more useful effects you can get in the current game.

Your numbers aren't accounting for server ticks which limit how frequently you can activate powers (aka Arcanatime) - which, if you're using the in-game numbers, makes sense since they don't use the right numbers either. And even if everything fell into place and Energy Transfer ended up with scale 4.56 (ie, 190) DPA, having one outlier power is what makes Stalkers competitive in single target damage to Scrappers - with three stacks of Assassin's Focus, any non-blade Assassin's Strike (the blade sets have longer animations) is higher DPA than even the old 1 second Energy Transfer. That was the damage fix for an underperforming AT. Here's a comparison I did with War Mace, Stone Melee, and Energy Melee in a different thread: It doesn't have strict damage numbers because I used damage scale, so to get damage you multiply by 55.61 for Stalkers, 52.8295 for Tankers, and 41.7075 for Brutes. If you want to throw in Scrappers then it's 62.56125; I didn't list it because they don't have access to two of the three sets. As for having Energy Transfer be an outlier in terms of DPA, how many other attacks in the game directly damage the user? That seems like a reasonable justification, although in reality that's a tradeoff for the endurance discount and lower recharge than a scale 4.56 attack should be.

I find this super interesting. I made my first empathy defender yesterday and I've already gotten three blind invites from different people all at levels 30+ higher than my character. I've also noticed that I get a lot of blind invites every time I play one of my alts that has "Doctor" in the name. They're PhDs, dammit! It doesn't have to be an empathy character. I've had the most blind invites when I'm playing Worst Healer Ever (who happens to be a Psi/Bio Stalker). As for the OP: if you don't like someone expressing an opinion, why should they listen to yours? If you don't like what they're saying, provide a counter. As many in this thread have said, if someone is asking for advice on what's good or bad, I don't plan on sugar-coating things. If they're dead set on playing it, then I'll wish them well - and depending on how nice I feel like being, may even help them further - but I'm going to tell them at least once that I wouldn't recommend the set, if it's one that I have played and hated. I'll even tell them why.

There may have been a misunderstanding, they may also have been wrong: GMs (and the devs) are human and can make mistakes (or just be ignorant) as well. My posts about this aren't to try to prove "who's wrong" but, since the thread is for helping newcomers, to not allow wrong information to propagate until, like this, people believe it is true without testing and discerning things for themselves. I didn't believe this was true until I tested it, because logically it makes no sense to get set bonuses on a power that's greyed out. But I tested it, and kept the set bonuses for powers that were unavailable. That's why I told you to bring back proof, to make you test it yourself. Seeing is believing. Let's look at what you quoted again: Specifically, the part that reads "you exemplar more than three levels under" - you exemplar meaning that your combat level changes to more than 3 levels under the levels of the IO in the set. So it's saying that your IO set bonuses turn off if the level of the IOs is 4+ levels above your combat level. And we've always been talking about the levels of the IOs themselves: even attuned IOs have levels, they just match your level until you hit one of the boundaries of the range that they can scale to. And they aren't, the wiki article explains what actually happens to the enhancement values. Some might not be affected, some might, and how much depends on how many levels you're exemplaring. There isn't a quick answer for other than "saying that it doesn't affect enhancements at all is incorrect," which is what I was trying to get across. The discussion about set bonuses came up on the side because it's counterintuitive and may affect people's builds if they think that they have to take certain powers early to keep the set bonuses when they exemplar, and they don't have to. This is correct - it's the level of the enhancement for TO, DO, SO, and IOs. IOs have different values based on their level, the others have different values based on your level relative to the level of the enhancement. What level you put the enhancement in the slot is never tracked.

And, to continue the attribution of the quote: "Positron, July 7, 2006" Here's another note: "Issue 9 was released to the Live Servers on May 1, 2007." IOs were introduced with Issue 9. So, since I already said: I'm going to just assume that you have nothing else to go by.

It's completely, 100%, factually incorrect. Rumors and assumptions, not based in fact, turn into some hard-set belief like you are espousing, and it gets propagated by others because nobody actually tests anything before they try to correct people. Burden of proof is on you, you've been called out on your BS by multiple people, so please provide evidence beyond an outdated quote from before IOs were ever a thing.

This one's a good one - I did that too before I realized that I wasn't booted from the SG when I switched alignments. After that I put all of my characters into one SG and added the cross-alignment beacons, but it took a good month before that happened.

For anyone new looking in this thread for tips: in case it wasn't obvious, this is wrong. Which is why this was the next reply in the thread. In addition to the link, which explains the effect on the enhancement value, exemplaring also has an effect on your available set bonuses: excluding bonuses from PvP and Purple IO sets, which work all the way down to level 1, you only get set bonuses for the IOs which are no higher than 3 levels above your exemplared level. And since it's not immediately obvious and seems counterintuitive, you still get set bonuses for powers that aren't available to you as long as the level of the IOs slotted within them is within range.

While we're going over changing costumes, power customization can also be saved and loaded, and you can customize every power in a pool after you pick them up by selecting the "All Powers" option at the bottom left. The same is true for epics, patron pools, and incarnate powers. Here's what it looks like in the character creator (extended size to show the location relative to the arrows): And it will look like this when it's selected:

Stalkers have at worst a 10% chance to critical outside of hidden status with bonuses for nearby teammates up to 31% and placate isn't exactly useful for DPS most of the time. The Chance to Hide ATO proc, on the other hand... definitely worth it. Also, Assassin's Mark is fun when it triggers four times on 5 consecutive attacks, if you want to talk about RNGesus. Try it again and play it like a Scrapper. Or for certain melee powersets.

Probably due to Brute Fiery Aura having a taunt effect in Blazing Aura to keep things in the Burn patches and the differences between the epic/patron pools, but for that it just comes down to Mu Mastery having 2 TAoE powers. I'm not sure I really see it either.

Ahhh, where's the lolDA that would've been in the first few posts on the old forums? Biggest complaints for me are the appearance and KB hole (seriously it exists on 2 and a half sets - Fire, Dark, and Stalker-only Ninjitsu; at this point just give it to all of the armor sets and let the squishies use the IOs). I could see removing the accuracy penalty on Cloak of Fear given it's endurance cost, but since I don't plan on ever taking it unless it's buffed having terrible stats just means it's easier to work in the Fighting pool. Yes, it has more toggles than most other sets, but the resistance toggles cost less (0.208 vs 0.26 per sec), Cloak of Darkness is Weave with some stealth for less endurance, and the other toggles are no more expensive than any other damage aura (Cloak of Fear has a high cost per tick, but ticks once every 5 seconds meaning it's 0.52 end per second: the same as Blazing Aura, Lightning Field, and Death Shroud). I suppose you could give Dark Regeneration the DNA Siphon treatment where it also applies a small amount of +end per target, but it really is just a matter of managing toggles - something you have to do even more with Stone Armor, which has as many toggles (7) and only has one that is under .26 end per second. It's just that with Stone Armor you can't run all of them at the same time because Granite is mutually exclusive with 4 of the others (Rock, Brimstone, Crystal, Minerals) - Mud Pots costs more end per second than Cloak of Fear, though.

With the ATOs, or with a set that has +damage, the Scrapper is likely to consistently outdamage a Brute. Without the ATOs, a Brute will likely be at the same level of damage or higher from the first part of the fight through the rest of the mission. Slower Fury decay for up to 10 seconds after fighting and faster Fury gains for the slower-animating sets means that once it's built up you'll have a fairly consistent level for most of the mission. Let's just take a look at some numbers, using the assumption of 100% damage slotting and we'll throw in Bio's damage boost (25/37.5%). I'm using a scale 1 attack because it eliminates an extra multiplier and the point is to show comparisons with the same attack: Scrapper, no ATOs, 10% boss critical rate: 1.125 (AT modifier) * (1 (base damage) + 1 (slotting) + 0.375 (damage boost)) = 2.671875 * 1.1 (critical rate) = 2.9390625 Brute, 80 Fury: 0.75 (AT modifier) * (1 (base damage) + 1 (slotting) + 0.25 (damage boost) + 1.6 (Fury)) = 2.8875 Note that with if it was an external 25% damage buff instead of the different damage buff scales from Bio Armor, the Scrapper would be at a final value of 2.784375 (1.125 * 2.25 * 1.1) and the Brute would be doing slightly more damage. With the damage cap reduced to 700% for Brutes, though, there's no longer a point where Brutes will catch up once Scrappers pass them with +damage: Scrapper, at damage cap (500%), even with no criticals: 1.125 * 5 = 5.625 (6.1875 at 10% critical rate) Brute, at current damage cap (700%): 0.75 * 7 = 5.25 So which one does more damage is still debateable; it's likely to be the Scrapper, but if you're just soloing missions, didn't set your build up with the ATOs (the extra critical rate makes up the small difference fairly easily), and aren't running a set with sustained +damage then a Brute will probably work out better.

While I don't necessarily agree with the suggestion, I do see the point: in many cases Hamis are irrelevant. You can get up to 33% for a boosted dual aspect level 50 set IO, which is what you get for the Hamis unless you combine them, and if the concern is 100% total enhancement per slot boosting a triple aspect purple IO gets you to 99%, although most of the time you aren't going to have them in the same power. You can also get set bonuses with boosted IOs, although they won't exemplar down and usually when I bother it's because I'm frankenslotting. While there are some that shine in certain powers, unless it happens to hit more than 2 properties in a single power, the actual value of a single Hami is pretty low. So do I think it's a good idea? Not really, because even if it went in I'm not sure I'd bother with HOs most of the time.

I actually asked what would happen when it was made unique and was told that it wouldn't delete or remove enhancements already slotted. My question (responded to in the next post): Apparently slotting validation happens more than we were told.

Starting power. That's what I mean I wish it came later in the powerset and was optional. I may be wrong, but I thought the intent was to question what purpose Gale serves in the set rather than the power order - which was pointed out in the first line of your OP. To which my response would be faster, but less controllable, pushing compared to Hurricane. If you're trying to move something a couple of feet, you brush against it with Hurricane and let the repel (with attached debuff) move it around at a fairly steady rate of speed. If you want one (or many) things sent halfway across the room quickly, for example because they're standing at long range because their AI is set to prefer range, then Gale is great for sending things over there. It has two pulses of fairly high mag knockback, so things are going to move quickly. If you hit (at reduced accuracy) and they don't have KB resistance/protection. And if it really was a question about what tier the power is? Well... yeah. Already answered.

No issues with any of the proposed solutions - Jab is garbage and the only nice thing to be said about it is that you don't have to take it on Brutes - but a nitpick on the chart: Contaminated Strike is including the bonus (AoE splash) damage for hitting a contaminated target (scale 1.008) - it's actually scale 0.84 damage most of the time so should be tied with that entire range of t1 powers, split into different entries like you did with Titan Weapons and Boxing.

To be fair, Proton Sweep was the worst melee cone before Shadow Maul was reworked, so at least it's consistent. Before the change, Shadow Maul was actually more damage than it should have been for its recharge and endurance cost if it was a single target attack, and it was a melee cone that could usually hit 2-3 targets if you lined it up. The smaller cones (Jacob's Ladder and Sweeping Cross) have the same animation times but do more damage (scale 1.5 vs 1.43), do their damage up front instead of as a relatively slow DoT over 3+ seconds, and the wider arc for Proton Sweep isn't really all that useful for hitting more targets (you'll probably get 2-3 on all of them).

Masterminds can focus fire on a target, but have no control over which powers are activated at what time. That's actually why pets no longer benefit from recharge buffs, because at high recharge the AI was getting stuck into not actually doing an attack chain and DPS was reduced drastically. Generally speaking, MMs can set pet actions (attack my target, follow me, go to a location) and stances (aggressive, defensive, or passive). That - and their Supremacy inherent, which gives their pets some buffs - are their only advantages over any other pet AT: pretty much everyone else gets "follow aggressive" AI, where the pets will follow you around the map but attack enemies within their aggro range. Personally I wouldn't mind the basic MM controls for other ATs but anything beyond that and the UI is getting to be atrocious: it's recommended that MMs use macros or binds over using the pet window already to the point where the game actually creates 3 macros for you when you enter the game as a level 1 MM.

Pretty sure you can also just drop between the elevated portion of the road and the building and enter the back door also. That's the same door I used the mission transporter to get to.