MTeague

Well, yes, but Invulnerability is one of those sets where Boxing, Tough, Weave is entirely skippable, freeing up power selections for something else. Leadership toggles or some of the new pools like Force of Will or Experimentation immediately leap to mind... so maybe you can toss a PAIR of those .... Invuln plus Unleash Potential plus Adrenal Booster could be Quite Nice. Admittedly, it's not flashy. But Old Reliable gets the job done mighty well. And honestly, I'm not a fan of some of the newer tanking sets, however much in the minority i may be there.

For me at least? Style Points. I choose my AT, Primary, Secondary, and pool powers guided by one thing and one thing only. Character Concept and Style. Effectiveness can go take a flying leap when I choose powersets, or even make power selections within a set. I choose what fits the character. Now, when SLOTTING, then I unleash the powergamer habits I picked up from WoW and other games. When assign which slots go to which powers, and deciding how to make my character the best they can be within the concept, oh i am definitely eyeballing performance and max effectiveness. The result has always been quite workable.

I agree, agree, and agree This is @Galaxy Brain we're talking about here. Have you seen some of his posts? I'm constantly floored by his enyclopedic data analysis and number crunching, and I find myself agreeing with him on a LARGE number of threads. Now I disagree with his conclusions on this particular topic. I think Invuln is fine as is. But I would never presume to tell the man he doesn't understand the set. It would not shock me in the slightest if he has logged many hours on a 50 invuln and does quite well with the set.

I am ... a casual powergamer lol. I've been playing CoH since June 1st, 2019. In that not-quite-a-year I have managed to ding exactly TWO characters to lvl 50. No more. I have 34 characters grand total. I do not have a farmer. I team probably 30-40% of the time., I solo the rest. I'm still easily able to deck out all my characters with Attuned IO's across the board, except on the 50's where I ahve some purple sets slotted. It's incredibly easy to pile up 100 mil influence on a character by doing some story arcs, getting merits, buying converters, playing converter roulette and selling valuable rares. And it's not hard to get the "Seed Money" to do it by auctioning a few orange salvage. Now, I recognize some folks may not enjoy playing the market / doing converter roulette. I understand some folks may even want to do a "live off the land" thing as a personal challenge. Others may long for "oldschool" CoH with SO's only. Okay. It takes all kinds. But it's not hard to pile up the influence to get IO's. Some may not want to do it. But I don't accept that it's beyond anyone's capacity to do it.

I kinda get where you're coming from, because I also LOATHE the feeling of being completely carried. It's why I generally avoid teaming in any 45+ content from the moment I ding 45 until the moment I slot in some T4 incarnate powers. I know if I join a Maria arc team, or Peregrine Radio team, or a MSR, etc it will be half-full of T4 incarnated 50's feeling like overpowered gods and destroying everything. And okay, that's fun for them, I get that, all power to them, go wild guys. And, full disclosure, I also enjoy it when I am one of the T4 incarnated 50's. Because then I'm not being carried. I'd be at approximately the same power level and contributing again. So I'll level up in First Ward, or Night Ward, or I'll join a Citadel, or I'll do a Flashback Extravaganza and get all of the Ouroborous Challenge Badges, and as I do that, amass up enough up to hit 46, 47, etc. Or I'll solo some of the 45+ content. However, I have nothing against becoming an overpowered god of a character myself, so that 45-50 is a temporary home stretch for me. By contrast.... if you don't want to deck out a build using IO's for max effectiveness AND you don't want to feel carried by anyone else AND you don't want to solo then the deck is very much stacked against you here. Your best bet would be to try to get like-minded people to be global friends and form a premade team with that as a goal. Same way some people do "Tanker Tuesday", maybe you could try to organize an "SO Wednesday". Just be aware that's going to be a really hard sell to a lot of players. On the other hand, you only really NEED like 5-7 other players who would also enjoy "SO Wednesday". Then it doesn't matter what the rest of the world is doing. If you can find just one teams worth, you can roll at any difficulty level you want, supporting and coordinating each other the way it was before Inventions even existed. I do not think you'll have much success just trying to wing it via LFG Chat from scratch on a random night. It will take time and it will take effort to sift hrough the existing players to find those who want to do the same kind of thing you do. But if most of the playerbase doesn't share your desire for the oldschool play, well... that's life. They have to be able to do what they think is fun too.

I actually really like this idea.

I always liked KoA as a villain group. I wish I could have some for lore pets. Not Knives of Vengeance, not Talons, Knives of ARTEMIS. I select any mission I can get where they appear. That said, I'm not exactly holding out much hope that they'll be used much more. It'd be nice, but I think it's easier to do more with many ohter villain groups.

Regen scales up wonderfully with IO set bonuses. Stack enough of them, and you become just as "layered" as other defensive sets, with a couple of very nice "oh shit" buttons. Now, that said, there are limits. I don't think you can get close to capping any resistances. And any Defense you do stack, you do so without ANY Defense Debuff Resistance. For this reason, I think you get a lot more bang-for-the-buck slotting for +Res on /Regen than slotting for +Def. I mean, having some +Def doesn't suck I wouldn't AVOID it.... I just think in the case of Regen, you're probably better off to try to bring some common damage resistances up to the 40% - 50% resist range. and I definiltey agree it benefits the most from team buffs. That said, I'm willing to get behind the OP's suggestion because the OP wasn't asking for the kitchen sink. Wasn't asking for an Absorb toggle, wasn't asking for even IH to become a toggle. Was just asking for some meaningful amounts of Regen Debuff Resistance. I think you can make a decent case for that, same way that /SR got sky-high defense debuff resistance because Defense is really /SR main THING.... I think meaningful amounts of Regen Debuff Resistance belong added to /Regen. And i ALSO think any AV's or Bosses that use regen should get exactly the same amount of Regen Debuff Resistance.

If you roll up a Tanker, knowing there's a Psi hole, I'd consider it just basic sense plan around decking them out with lots of sets to build up Psi Resist. It's really not that hard to get it up to a 40-50% range. Is that "This way to cheap street"? No. But if I'm a tanker my first job is "Don't Fall Down". I would go into it planning to spend what I needed to to make that happen. It just wouldn't be my first character by any stretch.

Not entirely true. There is a Hellion boss in the Bonefire story arc who is named "Battalion". I would love to see him used as a wink and a nod to it, while they (as you say) take the long road to reallllly design battalion / coming storm content properly. (Even if "properly" might mean, 2025 or never) Maybe a "Sally" style badge for "Defeat Battaliion!" 🙂

Please refer to your character as an Empath. The "Healer" cause excessive sadness in both Pandas AND Koalas. Don't make them sad.

This I agree with 100%. For my Invul/SS Tanker, I'm unlikely to take Unstoppable, because it won't do anything extra for me that I'm likely to need. But I may want Unleash Potential from the Force Of Will tree, for that extra OOMPH of Regen and particularly Recovery.

Nothing wrong with asking. But I don't think Invuln needs any help. I've got a lvl 30 tanker running around with 38.5% psi resist that's only going to get stronger as he gets more slots. He only ever dies in extremely prolonged fights where I mismanage his endurance bar, and that's a ME problem, not a powerset problem. And it still takes him an awful long time to run out of END. (rage/hasten is so tempting... but you pay for it as you hemmorage end...)

I'm happy with my Ninja/Cold. The Cold Shields realllly help keep the ninjas alive better. He's only lvl 26, but cold shields, plus pet-aura-IO's, plus Manuvers, plus Arctic Air = quite a lot of defense on the ninjas. I do have to follow them straight into combat to make sure they retain all the extra defense. But I think the Genin are like 30% defense and the Jounin are like 35% defense. They don't get hit much. And that defense will go higher as I get more slots in the shields (right now they have only 2 slots each? weak, but he's still levelling) Also, I usually have Snow Storm going, both to slow down Runners so my ninjas don't run off and aggro other groups while trying to finish off a runner, and to help reduce incoming damage that much further by making enemy attacks take longer to recharge. I do not use any of the MM personal attacks. No snap shot, no aimed shot, no fistful of arrows. I use a six-slotted-proc'd-out Infrigidate for most of my personal damage, and a few casts of Arcane Bolt here or there. Usually my Cold powers, plus Sorcery, is enough to keep me feeling active in a fight.

I do not use Mid's. I eyeball my builds and wing my builds. So I can't post this in the format most forumites probably use. But... here's my character: I do not consider this an "authoritative build" I do consider it a baseline for discussion, given that no one else posted anything in a couple days. His fourth pool (not captured in the screenshot) is Teleport. I just like Teleport as a travel power. I wish it were as a fast animating as Jaunt, but it was his travel power in LIVE, back when he was my very first character, so it's his travel power now, whether or not there are "Better" choices out there. This is not an fully optimized build, this has some funsies/flavor choices in there. Levitate, Terrify, Psionic Toranado [yes, deliberate] are my bread and butter powers to do damage. (and of, course, Confuses...) Mesmerize and Dominate are inevitable parts of a rotation, but I slot those for CONTROL, not for Damage dealing. Also, if I'm exempted to 35+, I'll have a ton of stacks of Fulcrum Shift rolling, so I can boost my damage that way. I probably should ditch Repel in favor of Siphon Power. I know Repel isn't super popular. But I've loved Repel ever since I used it to freight-train a group to safety in Perez Park back in the Elder Days. TK I know is situational at best, but it was nice when I was levelling. Autohit extra mag hold, even if hard on your endurance, is handy to get a boss locked down now-dammit-now. I couldn't quite bring myself to fully drop the power in my last respec. I use Lockdown's in both single target and AE hold. The chance for +2 mag is hard to say no to for either power, and the six slot bonus is +3.75% ranged defense... not exactly hard to take. Could I adjust this for Even More +Recharge? Sure. But between Hasten and getting a few stacks of Siphon Speed, I've already got a LOT of +Recharge, so I haven't yet gone wild adding more LotG 7.5% recharges, and I haven't taken any powers specficially to mule more. Heck, you can see my Hover doesn't even have one. So, you may want to adjust a few things from what I've done. I like Stealth. Your milage may vary. But lets me very easily thin a herd with non-aggroing Confuses if I bit off more than I probably should chew when soloing. I should probably toss some enhancement boosters in fulcrum shift, then remove one Acc slot from there, and reassign that slot somewhere else. For Alpha, I use Nerve, because +Hold and +Confuse, and a giant heaping scoop of extra +Acc isnt' hard to take. For Mind/Kin, I never ever EVER want to miss with any of my attacks no matter what. Not a siphon speed, not a transfusion, not a hold, not anything. For Lore, I use Polar Lights. Small, unobtrusive. Still good AE. For Judgement, I use Mighty. I love the animation on it, and a PBAE smash is nice since I'm always hopping into the middle of a mob to max Fulcrum Shift stacks for myself and the rest of the melee characters on the team.

I would like it if they could take the time to be that precision guided. But I would not expect them to be able to take that kind of time.

This is really, really simple. HC Devs own these servers. We are all of us here as their guests. If they don't want Corona to be used, I'm free to consider that ridiculous. It changes nothing of course. Their house, their rules. That easy. edit: @Haijinxbeat me to it an hour or so ago.

I'm with you on Judgements. 100% agree. But At least in my case, it's seeing other players and saying "ooo, he has shiny toys, I want one of those....". Teaming or lack thereof has nothing to do with the WANTING to alt. If anything teaming increases the alts because I see more powersets with more shiny toys. It's the lack of MMO Endgame Progression Grinding (and this is a GOOD THING, I do not want that grind!!) that enables me to be alt-errific.

I understand where you're coming from. I'm not sure I arrive at the same conclusion, but I can see the argument. Really, it was the "poor form" phraseology that struck me more than anything else. I was more like "Dude this is their home and we are all of us their guests, how can it possibly be poor form for them to speak their mind?"

I must have missed the etiquette manual that you're reading from. I certainly would take no offense, and not consider it to be anything but HELPFUL for a dev to say "Codewise, that's a nightmare, I wouldn't get your hopes up, at least not at this time." or to say "Something like that is probably possible... do not take this as a promise it will get done... but in priniciple, if something like this worked its way to the top of the queue, it could happen.". Hell, I wouldn't even mind if the devs said "you know what? We could totally do that. It would take two seconds. But we're opposed to the idea, so it won't happen. Ever." I mean, I might be disappointed, but at least there would be Word From On High, and that would be that. I also would not be offended if the devs chose NOT to post anything... if they prefer just lurk and skim posts, hey cool. But "poor form"? Sorry. I can't get behind that.

So, say you decided to make a FF Corruptor. Never mind that people say FF's are useless later on. Say you wanted to build it anyway Just ta show 'em! And it sank into the swamp. So you built another one. That sank into the swamp, too. no wait, wrong skit. Real question: If you were full-bore decided to make a FF Corruptor and the AT and secondary were locked in, what would you go with for a primary blasting tree, and why? Probably will be a Technology origined character, so I have no thematic objections to a weapon-based blast set. I'm planning to steer clear of Water Blast however. It's a GOOD set, don't get me wrong, but I already have a Water/Sonic Resonance Corruptor, so Water/FF would a bit toooo close in style for my taste.

I'm definitely adding "FF Corruptor" to my "Contrarian Builds List", to be a counterpoint to the Empath/Psychic Villain I created this past weekend. (oh yea, REDSIDE Empathy.... was fun coming up with a character concept and backstory for that one....)

I've having REAL trouble seeing how you can view that statement as true. MoG lets you soak all kinds of incoming damage for it's admittedly short duration. Attacks already chained will basically bounce of you. You can keep attacking, and KEEP MoG's protection for the duration of the power. A PBAE placate is basically a glorified "You're Asleep but only to me". If you damage them, they can attack you immediately after, and will, if you don't one-shot them. A PBAE placeate would most likely either be used as a Phase Shift "get me the hell out of here!" when you bit off more than you can chew, but too bad for you if there's alreayd incoming firepower, it's GOING to hit you anyway, or, you could use a PBAE placate to pacify a squads of minions around a boss while you knife that boss down. I'm seeing MoG as leaps-and-bounds-more-valuable than iether of those two options.

If a blaster or non-defense-set character could only reach 35% defenses at max IO trick-out-ness.... I think in very short order people would pair up with someone who brought defensive buffs to the table. But I do not think this would be a good thing. Hear me out. Would people seek out Empaths, FF Bubblers, and Cold Bubblers, more? Perhaps. I also think they'd start bitching at casual players and begrudging people who didn't take Manuevers, or who didn't take Barrier, etc. Right now, because people can be entirely self sufficent, many people don't give a dam what someone else does with their build, what they add for fun or flavor. I think that would start to go away if we made it impossible to hit softcap on your own. I think people would start looking at other players like "Why didn't you make a team-optimized decision that benefits me?" I think you'd see a lot of pissing contests on who "Deserves" a Fortitude buff if an empath can't hit the whole team with it. I think people would start looking at casual players as "Dead Weight" and judging them by their set bonus list. I think this would change the nature of player-to-player interactions. And NOT for the better. For this reason, I oppose this. FF Bubblers are plenty useful. Lots of people who softcap defenses do not have Defense Debuff Resistance. A bubbler or a squad of widows, or what have you, can spike their defense up high enough that it's hard for Defense Cascade Failure to even start. Will people PERCEIVE the FF Bubbler as being useful? Probably not. If there's a string where we do not get hit AT ALL, we tend to attribute that to their own awesomeness, not to the person who is consistently and faithfully supplying us with buffs. But I would rather the bubblers remain unsung heroes, than have people start to demand that other players optimize their build for "max team performance", and get snippy when someone has a "I just wanted to try this out" build.

My picks: Mind/Kin Controller. He was my main in LIVE, still among my favorites to play. Extremely capable soloist. When flashbacked to low levels his damage output isn't so great, but if I have access to Fulcrum Shift, that's another story. Mass Hyp, Fulcrum Shift for 10 stacks, backpedal, Terrify or Mass Confuse and begin his single target rotation. Quite able to bring lockdown or buffs for whatever the team needs. Initially I chose the powerset combination because it seemed closest to an EverQuest Enchanter (of what existed in issue 0) and have enjoyed him ever since. Spines / Regeneration Stalker. My main "Rogue" villain. Runs around with ~ 50% smashing/lethal resist on top of his regen, and 20% defenses for melee/ranged. Insanely durable. I have no hesitation soaking alpha strikes on him if the team has no tank, and he just destroys. RP wise he is the Unkillable Man. Plant / Psionic Dominator. Has become my main villain. Did I mention I love Confuse? Well, yea. Plant. is Permadom'd and is just a force of incredible destruction, team or solo. Very durable with Drain Psyche, and has enough recharge to keep two Spirit Trees rolling. Psi Shockwaves, and perma'd Carrion Creepers all day long. Assault Rifle / Martial Combat Blaster. Yea yea, I know. No Aim. No Build Up. I'm Doing It Wrong. I hear that. It's still the most fun blaster I've ever played. Between Burst of Speed and Speed of Sound / Jaunt, she can bamph around the battlefield to unleash kicks or bamph around for snipes and cones and general blasting. I really really love the Run-and-Gun-and-Boot-to-the-Head feel of this character. Beast Mastery / Empathy Mastermind. Was originally created to be a silly character, just to name the Beast Mastery pet cutesy pet names, like Daisy, Buddy, Lily, Fluffy, Mittens, and Mr Snuggles, and then to top it off, I took Boxing AND Kick AND Crosspunch. And... holy crap, it works. Tankerminding, spreads teh damage out to all my pets, easily healed with healing aura, and we charge right for Great Justice all of us meleeing away. Use of the fighting pool turned her from being a completely passive actor to something much more fun, and the 40% Knockdown chance on Kick equates to pretty good damage mitigation. It's not hard to keep the buffs going whether soloing or on teams (maybe playing a Mind/Kin for so long trained me to handle a bazillion click powers...), and I'm very happy with this character.