MTeague

You also need to be able to pass the mental hurdle of "but if I frankenproc, that's a power with IO's from four different sets! the set bonuses! won't someone think of the poor abandoned set bonuses!". That's the hurdle I'm still stuck on. I can proc out a couple powers per character (ie, Infrigidate on a /Cold), but I start to agonize over lost set bonuses if I go too wild.

The advantage for Scrapper to me? Nobody really expects me to tank. They all expect me to scrapperlock.

Most fun for me? Beast/Empath. Note that I say "Most Fun". I do NOT say "most effective." but concept wise, my Beast/Empath is a Crazy Pet Lady who treats her spirit animal guardians like housepets, and is all "AAAAAAAH YOU SHOT DAISY!" when mobs shoot at the T1 wolves. They're all named like normal housepets. I took Boxing and Kick and Crosspunch to get right in there and melee alongside the pets (also helping keep them in range of pet aura IO's and Supremacy, and making it each to catch them all in healing aura, and because the Fighting pool attacks are DIRT CHEAP compared to most MM attacks. I made the character 100% as a joke idea, but it proved to be very fun and the character grew on me.

I wouldnt' object to that. But keep in Mind, Fearstome Stare does zero damage. Terrify is a primary AE nuke for Mind. Get containment, Terrify. I would not want to lose that damage output. If I have to keep the damage OR get -ToHit, I'll keep the damage.

Math is super important! Without math Google Maps couldn't tell me where to go, and I couldn't order dinner online! We neeeed math!

Single Target Sleep is how Mind parks EB/AV's. Don't yank that away without giving Mind something else in it's place. Although I do agree, don't be messin' with Confusion. Loooooves me some Confusion.

Which is just begging for the "It's not how you say it, but it is how I say it." Although there's something to be said for the wisdom to pick your battles.

Clearly, Ms Liberty is NOT two places at once. One or both of them is a Nemesis Automaton.

I mean, Blaster Primaries are better at Ranged Damage than....pretty much anyone else. So in that sense, they're King of Ranged. But I agree, they're not JUST ranged. Quite a bit of their secondary trees are chock full of melee powers, and degrees of control (some soft control, some short-term hard control). And heck the primaries are worthy of discussion of debuffing or soft controls that some bring. Where you solo and say "Get Outta My Face!" with Power Thrust / Ki Push, or whether a tanker is holding aggro for your Fire Blapper as they Fire Sword Circle down a crowd of mobs, or whether the Controller is locking mobs down helpless for your Martial Kombat blaster to bamph in with Burst of Speed / Dragon Tail, they have solid melee options as well. Some players may 100% ignore those, but doesn't mean they're not there.

100% leaving AT behind, and focusing Strictly on Powersets, can we come up with something? sure. Storm Summoning: is chaotic ragdolly goodness. It offers a solid mix of debuffs, Knockbacks,, and damage output. When soloing, Hurricane almost entirely prevents death because it savages enemy to-hit so severely. is that a complete description? NO. O2 boost deserves mention as a low level protector against some status protection and against Energy Drain. No discussion of Storm is really complete without pros/cons of KB-to-KD and FF +Rchg procs. Steamy Mist deserves mention as a source of stealth / team stealth, Defense, and a slotting option for several very nice unique IO's. Kinetics: is the Team SuperSerum. At least at high levels. Fulcrum Shift spikes the damage output of the entire team in glorious ways, and Speed Boost, between the movement speed and the giant +Recharge and +Recovery, is always good to have around. is that a complete description? NO. No discussion of Kinetics is complete without discussion of how it tends to lure you into melee. Fulcrum, Siphon Speed, Siphon Power, Transfusion, Transference... all want you in melee. As much as many players hate KB, Repel is worthy of mention as a tool to potenitally play goalie with, running around sending enemies flying away from your squishies. Increase Density should always be mentioned as a source of Clear Mind, and equally, should be mentioned that while all friendlies nearby get the +Energy/Smashing resists, only hte DIRECT TARGET gets the Clear Mind effect. Where I'm going with this? At some point any such guide is either going to be incomplete by nature, OR, is going to have to start with a TLDR: Just Read The Damn Powers, and a link to the wiki.

I know Focus is a flat out better power. But I just don't like the idea of projecting out waves of force from claws. I skip both Focus and Shockwave (yes, yes, I'm Doing It Wrong(tm)....) and rely on Spin and Eviscerate for AE damage. Evisc also tends to join my single target attack chain because of enhanced crit chance.

I dunno. The title just doesn't work for me per se. It's not like games have "honor" that requires humans to "defend" it. It's a game we love, sure. we boggle in disbelief at the quoted opinion, sure. but I see "defending the honor" all too often wrapped up with "them's fightin' words" kind of outlooks. If someone is really raining scorn down on CoH, best thing is keep the Big Lebowski in mind. "Yea, well, that's just like, your opinion, man".

First, I decide HOW to live through incoming Psi attacks. Option #1: rely on positional defenses (ranged,melee,AoE). - some attacks have no position at all, but MOST things that lack positional tags are CC effects, not damage. - there are a FEW damaging Psi attacks that have no position at all but those are Extremely Rare. Option #2: If character is a Typed Defense character, you can *try* to build up Psi Defense - This is a lot harder than it sounds.. Very few set bonuses include dedicated Psi Defense at all. - https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Set_Bonus_Comparison_Tables - This probably isn't practical outside of Willpower or something that starts with a big chunk of Psi Defense. Psionic Defense Bonus Slots Set Name Levels CollapseSet Type 1.875% 3 Impervium Armor 15-40 Resist Damage 1.875% 6 Miracle 20-40 Healing 1.875% 6 Rope A Dope 20-50 Stuns 3.125% 6 Scirocco's Dervish 20-50 PBAoE Damage 3.75% 6 Devastation 30-50 Ranged Damage 5% 6 Apocalypse 50 Ranged Damage 5% 6 Soulbound Allegiance 50 Pet Damage Option #3: Stack lots of Psi Resistance - vastly more options to stack it - but typically does require an "all in" approach - five copies of Imperivium Armor +Psi Resist, the Aegis unique, 4 piece Gladiator's Armor, etc. - you may decide building up too much of it from set bonuses is simply not worth the hassle / opportunity cost of what you could have slotted instead. That said, for things like Leagues / iTrials / etc, you're generally not on your own. And if a few Support characters have your back, you may be getting healed up as fast as teh damage is coming in, or get some good buffs to save your hide / strong debuffs to make the Psi Attackers weaker/miss more, or your Friendly Neighborhood Controllers can lock them down while you paste them.

I mean, there's shades off gray going on here, too. Diablo III, sure they add some minor stuff each season, but the game is basically Done. Nothing reallllly fundamental is likely to change now. Or Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, from Steam? It's essentially stagnant. Original Subnautica? Not likely to change much (though Subnautica:Below Zero, is still early release....) But like a brand new Bethesda game? Yea, no matter how badly I wanted to play Fallout 4 back when it first came out in 2015? I wait until May 2016 to buy it. Because like eveyrthing Bethesda releases, it was going to have a ton of game-breaking bugs / borked quests requiring console command fixes, and have lots of small bugs that they would NEVER willingly address. Only the Unofficial Patches made by the modding communities make Bethesda games worth playing. So it that's where @Outrider_01 is coming from on "don't waste money on unfinished games", I can see that. Sure, maybe it's more of a blanket statement, lacking in some nuance for exactly where he draws the line and says "This kind of stuff is okay, that kind of crap is just unfinished.". But I can get disgust with some gaming studios who consider the end-user to be their Alpha testers. At least for me, it boils down to: does it really feel like they're not even trying? CoH of course, passed that test with flying colors. NCSoft is still in the "Never Forgive" bucket, but that's for pulling the plug on it, not for their QC practices.

Etymology Man: https://xkcd.com/1010/ Yes, I dream of powersets like "Pedantic Assault, Pedantic Control, Pedantic Armor" being added to the game.

Two Words: Drain Psyche Although, I get /Psi is far from (and should not be) a universal choice for secondary. It really did help the levelling push, though. My Dom's probably do get sugar-daddied / spend time marketeering more than any other AT I play though. They're very powerful and until they can establish control over the battlefield, very fragile. So I try to rock the set bonuses and the unique IO's ASAP on Doms. Panacea, Power Transfer, Perf Shifter, Miracle, Steadfast/Glad Arm, ReactiveDef/Shield Wall, ATO's, Winter-O's, etc.

a) missing sucks b) set bonus / ranged defense was my main reason

That explains the difference in my experience then. I usually don't go completely nuts with Procs. My stormy has LS six-slotted with the full Thunderstrike set. I mean, intellectually, I know proc's are very powerful. I know I'm probably making some sub-optimal choices. But I can only ever Frankenproc like 1-2 powers per character. And even then I still hear the wailing of broken set bonuses haunting my dreams.

I took Thunderclap on my Storm/Sonic, largely because the animation and sound is just awesome lol. It does have lessened accuracy. I think only 0.8 default acc. But I tend to have lots of +acc from set bonuses, and a decent amount from the IO's slotted in the power itself. It tags things pretty reliably for me. Really though, on the Storm/Sonic, I can pair it with Screech to stun a boss for a decent long time. Usually not a major issue, Hurricane means they Whiff For Days anyway. Thunderclap is also sometimes handy to lock down a squad of minions. Some minions are more serious than others. /eye Sapper

Huh. I just assumed they'd have Crusader/Warden/Responsibility/Loyalist as options for AE as well. They don't? That's a shame.

Hm. Well my Stormy is a Defender, so maybe Vigilance covers me more than I'm thinking... but for the most part I've had very few End issues in battle while levelling my Stormy. Now, there were stretches, low-20's, where if I was soloing, I basically had to take a knee and Rest after damn near every fight, because it's that point of your career where you have all kinds of powers but not NEARLY enough slots to go around. Even if you're using Attuned Sets, you may still not have enough End Redux to just keep going 100% nonstop. But I never ran out mid-battle. Teaming, it's just a strategic decision of what toggles NOT to run. If I'm teaming and running Manuevers and Steam Mist and Tactics and flopping mobs on their buts with Freezing Rain and dropping resistances with Howl / Scream / etc, then do I really *need* to be running Snow Storm? Probably not. Hurricane I almost never run on teams. It can be used for good, if you're careful to skim the edge of a pack and not sitting on the tank. But I've dealt with enough "eewwww it has repel! turn it off turn it off!!!!" that I don't bother anymore. Soloing though, Hurricane is your FRIEND, full stop. Never had a problem targetting Tornado, or Freezing Rain or Lightning Storm. I have keybinds for each and it's tap-click, tap-click, tap-click. O2 boost I barely use as a heal until I start getting to late 30's or early 40's, when I can afford to give it a couple extra slots. But I always use O2 boost to free people from Stuns, etc, and always to try to cover melee if we're fighting mobs that do lots of Endurance Drain. (Malta / Carnies / SuperStunners, etc)

For me... Mission intro text. It doesn't have to be a novel, but it has to give my character a reason WHY. And the mission should be flagged accordingly. If the mission is "Oh no, there are helpless kittens trapped on Thorn Tree Isle", then don't leave that mission flagged as "Any Morality". Label it "Hero" and I'm cool with that. If you want to make a Villain mission, then tell me we have a good opportunity to collect the kittens and hand them out to incoming freshmen at Paragon University, where they will rapidly mature into bloodthirsty sabertooths that should devour a third of the freshman class. Always always always answer the "What's my motivation?" for the Morality the mission is meant to be played for. If everything else is flubbed but the mission writer nails this part, I'm content. Labelling. Related to the above point. If you're going for a Blazing-Saddles or Spaceballs style of satire, that's awesome. But label it with a Comedy / Humor tag. If your mission is designed to stress-test an endgame build, every Minion is running Leadership toggles, every Lieutentant is covering them in Force Fields, and every Lieut and Boss is hitting you with some of the most obnoxious debuffs possible, great! But LABEL it in some manner, so the unsuspecting soul at lvl 32 with just SO's doesn't wander into the Blender. Same thing if your mission is full of EB's and AV's. There's lots of tags available, look them over. In-Mission-Dialogue. There are of course, unfortunate bugs where NPC speech doesn't always fire at the correct time. But some well written NPC speech can really make-or-break the feel of a mission, taking it from "oh a room with more mobs in it, okay", to having a room where the Evil Scientist goes on a tear about how NOTHING can possibly stop him now just as you approach. Stuff like that sets the table, and change it from last room of a mission to a "very satisfying thump as they hit the floor". Defeatability. Because you're talking specifically about Solo players. Having a challenging endboss or final task of some kind, is great. Lots of the most memorable missions have them. But consider, "How would you defeat this if you were playing <insert your least favorite power combo here>". Maybe some things just won't be defeatable by everybody. But don't create something where the endboss regens so strongly that you end up with a DPS check and anyone without -Regen debuffs can just cry and go home, unless the mission giver / intro text WARNS them of this. I'm willing to make a side trip to Bloody Bay for a Shivan if I need to. But let me know before I've cleared a giant map and finally found the endboss.

@Yomo Kimyata love it! and can't help but think of Caddyshack.

The Endurance Drain protection on Consume is terribly nice. Verrrry handy against Malta and the like, esp if you have enough recharge. Healing Flames also comes with a +15% toxic resist that STACKS, and it's up pretty often. I've gotten 45% toxic resist constant from just that alone when on a Hydra-filled-map, and Cauterizing Aura is a nice reliable topper-offer. All in all, I quite like Fiery Aura for Sents. Doesn't have Psi resist, but not hard to patch that with IO's. What it does not have.... At all... and you simply have to live with.... is absolutely zero Defense Debuff Resistance. You can stack +Defense bonuses all day long take manuevers and weave, etc. But Cascade Failure *Will* be a threat you have to live with. I chose to stack mostly +Resist bonuses and take some +Def where i could fit it in. For walking around defense, I only have like 20% melee / ranged / AE. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with that. But it puts within striking distance of softcap with some Luck's, and for sure easy if I'm with a Bubbler or Cold, or if enough people on the team are running Manuevers. (Fortitude is always nice to, but I tend to assume someone else will get the Fort's)

Quantums can suck at the LOW levels, particularly if you don't use Nova form, and are too low level to have Dwarf form, don't have any kind of stealth, no way to get the drop on them. Back in the day I rage-deleted .... 8 different peacebringers? Not just rage quit. I mean I deleted the characters, I was that fed up. So yea. I get what you're saying. They can cause a fair amount of high blood pressure. But I've learned a LOT more about the game since the old days, and learned a lot more about how to leverage my character's abilities better. They're not impossible. You can handle Quants the same way you handle other particularly bad nasties on other characters, like say, Veles or Cherno during the Skull arcs. VERY few problems cannot be solved by application of 2 reds and 2 purples. So hoard those as you solo. Spend them as needed. Then press on, continue the rest of the mission unconcerned. As you get more powers you'll have better options to handle them before they handle you. And there's always the "Team with a Controller" option. Or anybody, really.