Frostweaver

Well, let's face a simple fact. Dual pistols was designed, if not to exactly simulate, at least give a very strong nod to Starlord. The Idea of swapping ammos as a viable in-combat action is extremely appealing. Heck, if there was an 'air' swap ammo that gave several of it's attacks the chance to 'bounce', I'd absolutely use it, especially if it bounced outside of the aggro cap. Dual pistols IS a low damage set. Having the option to open with cold (for -rech, -dam, -speed) swap to toxic (minor -res, -def) and then follow up with fire or air (+damage, +targets) would not only be extremely fun and thematic, but it would avoid power creep because, in toto, the damage still wouldn't exceed that of a set like water, and would be a fun way to probe for enemy weknesses. As it stands right now, There's very little profit in switching out of fire other than a tiny hint of mitigation in ice and turning swap ammo off if you don't mind uncontrolled knockback. Especially when you consider that most pistols powers can easily slot -res already.

Good for you. Remind me what your Electric Blaster's Name is again, So I can make sure not to invite you when I need a real blaster?

So you skip a set-defining power that in essence replaces most set's biggest st attack outside of snipe, and declare that it's okay?

I formed a proper argumnent, your motivation is simply highly suspect. WHY are you defending a set that is clearly broken for blasters? And I didn't say that it was GOOD for defenders, I implied strongly that it was less utterly broken. Electric Blast underperforms across all AT's, it's simply that defenders and corrupters have a method to leverage it's crappy secondary effect. And if you had actually read my post, I was pointing out that the initial developers had a mean streak, not the misguided fools defending electric blast. Way to skim for Drama, buddy. But if you would like all the OTHER examples I have found of Statesman's 'mean streak' I would be happy to oblige you. @Galaxy Brain I was referring to the old expression 'nerf monkeys'. Basically those who mindlessly peck at a million keyboards trying to make something work, and then when they never come up with Shakespeare's complete works they attempt to prevent anyone else from succeeding where they have failed.

Why is it that there's always some monkey that takes it upon themselves to LIE and use words like 'objectively' to denote 'subjectively' every time anyone suggests a long-needed improvement? There's a lot of game both before and after level 50, sweetheart, and it's NOT that easy to softcap for most people.

Yep, every once in a while you get KB instead of KD. This is a problem for brutes, because their taunt aura tends to keep mobs close. Scrapper mobs run and return constantly though, which is why farming is so much more of a problem... but extra occasional KB is no more of a problem than mobs occasionally running... It sucks, but scrappers are not great for aggro.That being said, however, Shockwave is an alpha breaker, not a chain staple. But then, this is for you. Even a hint of uncontrolled KB can make teams give you the stinkeye, especially if it's a boss. Let's fix it. Hmmm.... You know what? I am going to totally admit you have a point. It can complicate things. I don't worry about it on my claws/bio, but if you underslot shockwave with Apoc +5's and give it two procs you can slide both force feedback AND sudden acceleration in there. That frees up a slot that you can dump into focus for the +6 s/l resist bonus, and because of overcapping you have the leeway to reslot tough, Proton, and Alpha with Unbreakable Guard. That brings your s/l defense up to 39%, which, with decay, is softcap and slows down your reliance on your heal . It also cranks your energy/neg resist a bit higher and gives you slightly better end management. Thanks for the Ideas, it DOES make the build better, especially for exemplar teaming. I will admit it. I was thinking like Farmer. Kismet speeds up farming +4's a minor amount, but in normal and incarnate content it becomes slightly less important. How's this look? Creating a build is a collaborative effort 🙂 This one is getting tweaked until it screams. Thanks for the feedback to your feedback, It led to a better idea.

Okay, I got bored and repurposed my claws/Bio Scrapper as a Claws/Rad, because the playstyle and strengths are actually very similar in the long run. There are a lot of play tips involved, so bear with me please, after the build. This build does NOT have hasten. It does not need it... Most of the single target attacks recycle so quickly than you can just sorta pick two you are fond of and cycle them with Follow-up and you are golden, and if you need to for exemplar purposes, you can easily swap CJ and slash or weave and slash to give yourself a heavier single target attack chain at 18/22. On Auto-powers: in teams, it is HARD to get an st attack off right in the beginning, with everyone throwing around AOE's. Also, mitigation support tends to be a lot better. In a team setting, I tend to put follow-up on auto so that I can race in and get that nice damage/accuracy buff right in the beginning, so I can follow up with an aoe and clear the stuff that the Blaster's aoe's left behind. Solo, however, mitigation is vastly more in my court and I have time to work my attack chain for maximum efficiency, so I put particle shielding on auto instead. When I am solo pushing the damage cap with reds, follow-up is sometimes just a waste of time. Spring Attack: I know it is an unpopular choice, but it allows you to put yourself right smack dab in the middle of a spawn without worrying about 'hang time' from stage-diving on packed mobs. It also is one of the two tools I use to utterly crack an Alpha, (The other being, obviously, shockwave) and, because of it's recharge time and aoe, it virtually guarantees a +100 10 second recharge boost every time you use it. Also, it's 'hero landing' which, while unpractical and murder on the knees, is incredibly cool. It also does a decent 250 damage right off the bat, which, when paired with almost guaranteed Knockdown, is a pretty good way to start a fight. Defense: Defense isn't capped, although it's pretty close. When paired with beta Decay's -5% to-hit, Stuff whiffs a LOT. You DO, however, have QUITE decent resists. The only thing you have to watch out for specifically is Rikti monkeys (and yes, the idiot clockworks in Unai Kemen's mission chain) and Seers. There's a hole, specifically, to ranged (not aoe) Psi attacks, and closing it would have meant too many cuts elsewhere. If you are going to face a horde of pure ranged psi characters that you cannot get into melee with, pop a purple. Or don't... ranged psi attacks don't tend to be that huge, and you have a LOT of regen, heal, and absorb. Your resistances are mostly sick, though, rubbing against the Scrapper Cap. Farming: The character isn't designed to Farm, although it can fire farm as easily as any character that lacks burn. That being said, though, everyone likes doing a little extra farming for recipes, loot, and especially vet level/incarnate rewards. This build can do it better than just about anyone that is not a dedicated fire farmer. Spin is SCREAMINGLY destructive, and you can play games with patrols that most fire farmers would be herding into a pack to deal with. There is a bit of -res, though, so expect about half the spawn to go running off and then running back if they survive your initial chain... but hey, that's what shockwave is for, right? Exemplar: Strike and Slash are literally the two best DPS attacks in the game. Even exemped down to level 8 you should still have access to both. You also keep access to spin and follow up, which provides more DPS than firey aura's burn. You keep your status protecting, You also have many powers at the earliest possible time to get them. Not much to tell other than that... It's the "Kitten Death from Above" build.

Defensively, it looks fine. Your slotting is pretty normal. Offensively... well. This is all opinion, so please take it with a gigantic grain of salt and do not take it personally... You have overloaded Ground Zero. It is truly NOT a good attack. It is a decent defense debuff for it's recharge, and it's a decentachilles mule, but it's not worth slotting as a full-on attack. The PVP sets, UNLESS you PVP frequently, kinda suck. You should be slotting for better bonuses. Moonbeam is an absolutely Brutal attack. it's got fantastic DPA, if not so great DPS. It's worth slotting, and there are some decent set bonuses. Hasten, and claws.... let's just say that Rad has you covered defensively, you seldom need much from it save the occasional heal and regular usage of particle shielding. Both of which can be easily achieved without hasten, and claws... never needs it, it is a VERY fast set. The FF procs are based on your attack's recharge prior to global recharge bonuses. This, of course, is increased by placing them in aoe's...aoe procs have a smaller % chance to proc, but a much greater number of chances to roll against. Ideally, you want them in attacks that, prior to global recharge, are longer than 10 seconds. at longer than 30 seconds pre-global recharge, your chance is near 100%. Note that ppm is an AVERAGE around which proc chances are based... while FF bonuses do not stack, my testing has shown that each instance is a separate PPM pool, with 'double procs' wasted (you cannot get more than +100 rech at a time no matter how many powers proc) Meltdown is in a weird place. It's resistance bonus is...kinda useless at the point you have it available. It gives you a 40% damage buff, which is fairly nice, and a 30% rec buff which... to be honest is barely needed with claws being such a low-endurance set. Even though it is nearly crashless, you would probably get a better result hitting Follow up PLUS radiation therapy PLUS shockwave in the same cast time. Combat jumping is VASTLY more useful than Super Jump, unless you have some personal objection to P2W vendors. Beta Decay- Another reason you don't really need Hasten. It also 'feels' underslotted, as putting a little -to-hit in it will dramatically increase your survival at early levels, and provide a decent reason not to worry about getting over 35% defense except in rare circumstance. In fact, it kinda makes shadow meld a big old honking waste of a power. Have you considered willpower? Can you invest in a purple or a winter set? ONE winter set in a melee attack is absolutely worth it, and so would a single purple set. Tell you what. If you are cool with it, I'd like to take a crack at your build. I have played both claws and Rad armor a LOT (although only together as a Brute) but I like exemplar builds and would like to try a bit of a changed focus aimed at improving your damage, ditching the need for hasten, and improving your overall survivability with fewer 'oh crap' clicks that only refresh every couple of minutes. Also, if You are cool with it, also let me know your character's 'concept' in order to help pick choices to fit in your theme.

You still don't get it. It is not the fact that the secondary effect is sub-par. It is not... It is simply TOO late of a secondary effect, especially for the price in damage you pay. Every other set that has mitigation, that effect takes place IMMEDIATELY to mitigate damage the moment it is cast. Late Mitigation works fine for constrollers or defenders who have other sources of mass mitigation. And every other set that has decidedly BETTER IMMEDIATE mitigation, also have considerably better Damage than Electric Blast. The point is that EB's damage, especially in the form of Thunderous Blast, is dramatically unbalanced for a Blaster set. and the excuse that it is the 'cost' of such mitigation when said mitigation will not help against and alpha, which is what kills blasters, absolutely does not hold any water. Thunderous Blast and VS are dramatically poor DPA and DPS compared to every other set. The rest of the set is 'lowest' damage scale, which is generally reserved for sets that have meaningful front-end mitigation and a seldom-resisted damage type, such as psi and Dark. And the electric soft control is piss poor and is also lower damage than many of the 'hard controls' in sets with strong mitigation. There is nothing wrong with having a set that is stronger in theme than it is in-game, but you should not have to put up with a set that is HUGELY under par for said theme. But between you and me, I have been poking around in rarely noticed areas long enough to notice that The original Devs often displayed a mean streak. Electric Blast is clear evidence of that mean streak. And your apologism isn't helping anyone.

Because you do not play other sets and thus have no basis for comparison. It's like eating nothing but Horse manure all your life... You don't understand that food is not supposed to taste like that. And if you DO claim to play other sets and do not recognize Electric's underperforming nature, then I smell a bit more horse manure.

I think that the only thing DP really needs is better ammo buffs. Fire is fine as it is. Ice should provide a minor slow, recharge, and -damage. Toxic should debuff resistance and defense slightly.

"Finally! Someone recognizes my incredible value to the coding community!!" -COBOL

See, I disagree. The reason the set is tolerable for defenders is because on a Defender like Time, My primary takes so much of my attention that I seldom get any meaningful use out of my secondary. A powerset that utterly sucks like electric is therefore only a minor inconvenience... The secondary effect, as a defender, is vastly more important to me than the damage, because I usually have a team around me doing damage which my piddling efforts would barely influence. If I had taken dark, would have done it for the -to-hit. And I would NEVER take a set like Fire on a defender, because it's damage, while better, is STILL going to suck with defender's base. Like Tankers, Defenders are not really designed to LEAN heavily on their primary for survival/contributions. So a set that has a useful effect for a certain subset that barely uses it but is utterly trash for another is NOT a 'successful powerset'. Especially when only certain primaries can get any value out of the effect (Bubbles, thermal, sonic, traps, etc have absolutely NO value they can draw from endurance drain, there is nothing complementary in their primary to synergize with it, and they lean on their secondary more than some).

yeah, Herostats doesn't work so much, since no one has updated THAT since like 2012. but good luck.

Why not use Mid's reborn instead? Pine kinda dumped the Pines fork to work on the Mid's reborn fork. It won't be getting updated anymore.

The Best T9 is Destiny T4.

BTW, I played an incarnate mission from the Mot chains where, in fact, the spawn was bigger than 17 mobs and every single enemy was an EB. Yup, I was right. My brute rolled through it like tissue paper. There's a reason the Joker is BATMAN's nemesis and not Superman's.

yeah, but -end on a defender is actually a useful effect. We are not expecting to kill ANYTHING in less than 12 seconds, so sucking them dry to the point where they mostly brawl is a decent debuff to protect your team. Defenders don't really have that much problem with electric blast(except maybe wishing that it had more debuffs for better slotting options). It's Blasters That don't know how crappy the set performs at high levels that feel the shaft when they have sunk the time to get to 30+ The sniper changes improved things a little compared to sets without snipes, So electric isn't completely crappy anymore, but it's still considerably behind the lowest-performing alternatives. To be completely honest, I wouldn't even mind if they ignored electric blast on defenders/corrupters as long as they helped blasters. Even though my 'main' is a time/elec defender.

Not sure about the performance on scrappers, but On Brutes it's pretty nice. You can sorta 'skip' blood thirst due to it having an almost negligible effect on your actual damage output. 33% is like..1/20th of our damage cap? And, when you are rolling at High fury, the frenzy stacks build and roll off fairly easily, with only the occasional 'accidental' exhaustion. Damage wise, it's a lot like firey melee with better AOE and it's cone can slot Achilles heel procs, with a bit less ST. that makes it a decent farmer. Still, blood frenzy SHOULD add a damage boost. Or even a proc bleeding effect to all attacks or something. A heal? Meh. Not willing to give up the aoe or try to figure out some obscure complicated way to use it.

I have been hard at work optimizing an sm/fa to try to create the 'spines fire killer', and I think I might have actually succeeded. At least as far as PL speed is concerned. The Trick is all in the attack chain. Because Savage gains a scaling recharge buff based on how much blood frenzy is available, you adjust the attack chain accordingly. Now, solo, the speeds are almost the same, as long as you try to keep at least 2 frenzy active... Not hard, when you consider that vicious slash provides 2 blood, savage leap provides 3, and blood thirst provides 5. Even the subtracted time due to vicious slash's single-target nature is accounted for. Savage leap also helps you move more quickly between groups, and ensures that you land in the MIDDLE of a group rather than doing the old "Stage Dive" that sometimes prevents Burn from being triggered. However, Once you get a second (or more) person on your team soaking up inspirations, the DPS takes a quantum leap upwards compared to spines and rad. You can keep your damage bonus at around 350+ with rending flurry (Your meat and potatoes attack) instead of at the 200-350% that the others have with a shortage of red inspirations, and rending flurry does some truly disgusting damage at 5 stacks, which you can follow up (after a 12 second delay) with one of the other 'frenzy builders' to keep your bonus recharge high. Like most people, I don't use the 'blood thirst' build-up very often after the start of the fight because the exhaustion mechanic is kinda sucky. It is more of a balancing act than rad or spines, but I don't play the OP's 'rule 1', and I never idle farm if I can help it. Note that, because of the end-reducing nature of Frenzy, as well as the utter lack of anything BETTER for your destiny slot, your end stabilizes rather easily. Rending Flurry will keep eating your Frenzy, but if you drop it on 2 or 3 frenzy, it will NOT have an exhausted downtime, and it is the #3 priority in your attack chain, after Savage leap and Burn. Savage leap is always your FIRST priority, as it's blood frenzy acts a lot like claws follow-up only with an actually decent PBAOE attached. Also, try to burn off 2-3 frenzy BEFORE you leap, by using rending flurry, so that you don't hit 5 frenzy and then force frenzy downtime.... although, to be fair, using rending on 5 frenzy is a heck of a kick in the pants to your enemies (way more damage than your judgement, albeit fewer targets) Remember, always use rending flurry before you leap. to burn off your frenzy so that Leap doesn't stack it to 5. Unless you REALLY want the big bass rending damage/radius and 12 second frenzy downtime. The attack chain is usually leap, burn, ball lightning, rending flurry, vicious slash, burn, cages, rending flurry, leap. Add in extra rending flurries and firey embrace/blood thirst as desired. Even if it's ready, don't do a vicious slash after a leap until you have had a chance to flurry to burn off frenzy. The Build: Please note, I cannot get herostats to work in any way, shape, or form. So all I can do is compare clear speeds with my rad/fire Brute, which is almost identical to the build presented as the 'new rad farming build' by the OP. Clear speeds are pretty much the same single-player with the rad/fire, and are considerably faster with others in the farm for PLing. I Enter with a Tray of reds like the OP, but I don't get as much 'slowdown' on a team after those expire.

Primarily because, you only need to take 2 powers, both aoe's, both decently slottable. Obviously cages isn't as good an aoe as ball lightning, but with only two power picks? Yeah. Cages also tends to reduce the number of mobs that get tired of you being unhittable and decide to run away. Not to mention the two of them allow you to slot both superior frozen blast (for fire defense) and And on static maps, as long as you move around the map correctly, the next spawn is never more than a ball lightning away. That keeps your aggro high. You Spring attack into a spawn to get right into the middle and then, while in the process of dropping burn, you target and hurl a ball lightning at the next closest spawn. When you get down to about half of both you drop another burn patch, throw out cages, and then repeat on another group, slowly clearing your way around the edge of the map to the middle. decent Timing will keep you aggro capped the entire way, without those irritating wall-climbers slowing down your finish. And of course ambushes... ambushes slow your overall clear time, but dramatically increase your inf/min, as well as keeping you target-saturated. My normal clear time on $comicon Fire Farm$ asteroid is about 4:25 or so. I actually found a decent farm map once, with static spawns and I think as many ambushes that the guy could cram into it. Demons, but he didn't make it 5 missions and he included both cremate and Fire sword circle... a poor design decision, since that necessitates turning on tough and fire shield, or using heal (a time waster) occasionally. but, it had almost double the spawns in it due to ambushes, and clearing it from one end to the other without strays was a breeze at about 6 minutes. Highest inf/minute ever. Unfortunately, though, I think the guy either took the map down or my memory failed utterly, because I could never find it again. That's why I write down all fire farms I find now 🙂 I love the comicon map, and especially love all the unique heroes on it, but mechanically, I am thinking it could be improved. I will not argue with the efficacy of spines for AFK farming, although Rad edges it out on active farming (achilles debuffs make a real difference). But, on Test, I actually have a savage/fire/mu tanker (with the Tanker changes) that edges it out... I will produce the build when, and if, the tanker changes go live. Would you care to see the savage/fire/mu I have been working on as a spines-rad/fire killer? It's not quite optimized enough, yet, but it moves between spawns faster and occasionally outperforms the 'premium' fire farming builds.

flash arrow IS a bit like cheating, especially if you grab concealment or dump a stealth IO in sprint. It's not as speedy to stealth missions as pure concealment/stealth IO, but you can stand only a few feet away and grab a clickie without aggro, which is pretty nice. Also the -to-hit really helps your team, AND you can slot penetrating Ray with experienced marksman: fast snipe, and then slot flash arrow with siphon insight chance to hit to make that 1.5 second snipe do slow snipe damage. Not terribly cost efficient, but it lets you dump more ST attacks into your aim/upshot timer... It could add an extra 300-500 damage to your initial 'Kill the boss' chain, and potentially dump another couple of hundred in AOE's around that boss.

I have, on a blaster, the problem is not the arc, it's the 5 target cap 😛 I actually often add spring attack to farming builds. full target cap, force feedback chance for recharge that goes off EVERY time you use it, decent mitigation, good DPA, and with a few range enhancements it's a great way to hop to a new spawn quickly. It also allows you to jump into the middle of a spawn without having to worry about getting stage-diving hover that prevents burn, and breaks alphas if you aren't quite up on your defense yet. Definitely better than a single-target attack or melee cone in a farming build. I have spent, literally, tens of Billions of Influence and countless runs trying to tweak Farming builds to find the fastest farmer possible... So far, rad/fire/Mu still tops the list, and tweaks I find that improve other builds seem to work better on rad/fire/mu. Of course, it doesn't help that 'helper' toons and spawn drift randomize the map times so heavily... sometimes it takes 20 runs to get a decent average time, and I really dislike inconsistency. Maybe, instead of trying to find the ultimate build for comicon, I should combine a build with a more consistent map and present it as a 'package'. After all, patrols are primarily to allow AFK farming to clear a map, and probably slow down active farming. Ambushes, especially boss ambushes, and cranking exp rewards via super high resistance to damage types a particular build doesn't produce might be the key to maximize xp/inf per minute. I might even find a better build based on what a map is resistant to... after all, fire/fire/Mu only produces fire, energy, and lethal damage. Or maybe the trick is cranking up ranged defense and toxic/psi resist. This is getting very complicated 😛

I don't like the thought of Dull pain as an afterthought... It's +HP is staggering, I make it Perma if I can.

1) Cimerora is not the hardest chain by any stretch. You're literally talking about the easiest EBs and AV in the game. I am talking about the Dark Astoria mission chain that LEADS to Cimerora. The AV's and EB's might not be as 'tough' as others, but they are incarnate-level, not ITF. That means higher base accuracy and vastly higher toughness/damage. I barely break a sweat on ITF's with ANY Character. The Mott mission chain is another story. You are also regularly presented with spawns that are double the aggro cap. 2) You're describing how tough your sentinel is while flying against melee based mobs and having another toon soak the alphas. I think you missed the part where I mentioned soaking the alphas. And if I am out of Melee range, I am mostly out of the radius of my nuke. 3) while regen is great when in that type of role, so are most of the sentinel secondaries (i.e. tough enough to survive overflow but not main agro) This is not personal. The OP said "Tankiest", not 'capable of off-tanking'. Every sentinel is capable of off tanking, NO sentinel is capable of tanking for real, just soaking the alpha. To soak the hardest Alpha, you require 4 components. 1. The defense/resistance to deal with the damage 2. the HP to deal with the overflow. 3. The ability to quickly recover from the overflow no matter how severe, as long as you are not dead. Most sets have two of the three. Unfortunately, slotting-wise, the first one is by far the easiest to slot. The third one can be handled by primary/incarnates. The second, though, is the toughie... and that is where I think the question of 'tankiness' comes into play, and why I do not consider SR to be particularly Tanky. I am on Excelsior as well. Let's set a time, and go for it.