Bastille Boy

Will you be soloing a lot with this toon, or will you be playing mainly on teams? Some defender powersets are a lot more solo-friendly than others. My favorite defender (largely for concept reasons) is Pain/Sonic. This is not a top-tier combination by any means, but Pain is not a "clicky" set, so I can focus on attacking. The debuffs from Sonic are valuable on a team. Soloing with this toon is possible but masochistic. My Time/Water and Nature/Water both solo well and contribute well on teams. Water is a great powerset for defenders if you're OK with not soloing AVs (due to the focus on AoE over single target damage). I'd recommend Time/X if you want a tanky defender. I used to be a big fan of Rad/Sonic, but I find Radiation Emission too slow-moving. I would take the Rad/Sonic over the Pain/Sonic for a really tough mission, but for a fast-moving team, the Pain/Sonic feels better. General principles: If you're playing a defender solo, you want a primary that has PBAoE buffs and heals. You probably want a secondary other than Sonic. If you're playing a defender mainly on teams, Sonic Blast is top tier (though by no means the only good choice). If you're playing a primary that wants to be in or close to melee range (e.g. Electrical Affinity), you probably want a blast set that doesn't rely heavily on cones.

My Willpower / Super Strength tanker is one of my favorite toons. The build I'm using handles 98% of content easily and does respectable damage. When it fails, though, it fails quickly. I think the combination of low defense debuff resistance, Rage crash, and my own lack of skill are the culprits. In my experience, Invulnerability, Shield, and Super Reflexes are all more durable. I haven't played the resist-based sets enough to have an informed opinion.

I haven't seen anyone complain about roleplaying on Everlasting. And "Always IC" toons are a thing. I'm a regular in Hami raids, and I go to MSRs occasionally. There's a tradition of OOC banter in both events, though lately (since streaming became legal, I think) the Hami raid leaders have been asking people to keep league chat focused on the raid. It might be slightly awkward to have IC chat when a lot of other people are having OOC conversation. But I've never seen anyone object to someone speaking in character.

My Shield Defense/Energy Melee tanker is the only character I have that can solo the very difficult AE 801.2 mission at max difficulty. I took Hybrid Melee Core but did not include Rune of Protection or One with the Shield in the build. (I can't solo AE 801.3. That probably requires a Hybrid-Rune-OwtS rotation.) If you are looking for extreme durability and solid damage, Shield tankers are a great choice.

Late to the party, but here are some suggestions: Willpower is simple to play and feels great on early-mid levels. It doesn't do as well as other powersets in the endgame on max diffiiculty. Invulnerability is almost as simple as Willpower. In the endgame, it's arguably the toughest armor in the game. Shield Defense is a bit trickier to drive than WP or Invuln. You have to remember to keep clicking Active Defense to avoid getting mezzed. But it is very tough, and the damage boost from Against All Odds is helpful, especially when solo. For your secondary, there are no bad choices. Pick what you like thematically. My personal favorite is War Mace, because of the weapon customization options and the good mix of single target and AoE. Super Strength is good for damage (because of Rage) but introduces moments of vulnerability (because of Rage crash).

I only do roleplaying while on missions, so the game imposes a limit on godmodding. If we're steamrolling things, we're usually steamrolling things together. I've been accused of making my characters implausibly weak for a superhero game, which I suppose is the opposite of godmodding. My second-best tanker is an escaped convict whose main powers are ducking and whacking enemies with a garden shovel. Not very super! I'm currently playing a brute who fights with a broom, which is even less super than a shovel. (It's a remarkably sturdy broom.)

Corruptors and Defenders are going to feel weak while soloing the early levels. They become more powerful as you level up. The defining power for Time Manipulation comes at level 18 for defenders and level 28 for corruptors. It also matters what primary you take. Fire has the best damage but no secondary effects. Sonic has the worst damage but powerful secondary effects (-resistance debuffs) which enhance teammates' damage. A Bio/Spines tanker is not a bad choice for exploring the early game solo. If you want to go a little faster while taking some risks, give a scrapper or a brute a try. Enjoy your 1000 character slots!

My experience on tankers is that all three of these armor sets are good, but that Invulnerability and Shield do better than Willpower at soloing the most difficult missions. The lack of defense debuff resistance in Willpower is a limitation. If you want Mace + Shield, I'd go with tanker or scrapper, since brutes don't benefit as much as the other two ATs from the +dam in Shield.

Welcome back to the game! Tankers are still the toughest archetype. With the tanker changes on Homecoming, they also do good AoE damage. They're fun to solo if you're okay with going a bit slower than other ATs. You'll probably want to choose the difficulty setting that has archvillains appear as elite bosses while solo. Some players have expectations of tankers that they wouldn't have of brutes or scrappers. In team play, tankers are expected to be the first to jump into a group of enemies (to take the "alpha strike") and to stay with the main group of players. If you think you may want to wander off by yourself while playing on a team, or if your reaction time is slow (like mine!) you may prefer playing a brute or a scrapper. The choice of armor is probably more important than the choice of attack set for melee toons. Anything can work, and there are many good options, but here are some suggestions. For tankers: Of the defense-based or layered armor sets, Invulnerability is probably the toughest set with a self-heal. It is beginner-friendly, but it will also do well in advanced content. If you are taking a secondary with a self-heal (like Dark Melee or Radiation Melee), Shield Defense is also worth considering. It doesn't have a self-heal, but it is very tough and will boost your damage. Of the resistance-based sets, Radiation Armor has self-heals and is widely considered top-tier. I would steer clear of Stone Armor for quality of life reasons. I would also steer clear of Dark Armor for your first toon on Homecoming. It is very good but requires investment. For brutes: Energy Aura is available for brutes but not for tankers. It has a self-heal and is excellent all-around. Invulnerability and Radiation Armor are also very good choices. Fiery Aura is the standard pick for fire farmers. For scrappers: Not all scrapper armors have taunt auras. Taunt auras make it easier to fight large groups and AVs, since they keep enemies from running away. Invulnerability, Radiation, Bio, and Shield have strong taunt auras. Energy Aura and Willpower have weak taunt auras. The other armor sets have no taunt auras. Bio is popular because of the damage boost it provides. I've never played it for aesthetic reasons. Energy Aura, Invulnerability, and Shield (paired with a self-healing primary) are all great choices. If you want to play Radiation Armor, I'd recommend rolling a tanker or a brute, since scrappers have a lower resistance cap. If you wanted to play a ranged toon, think about a Time/[X] defender or an [X]/Time corruptor. Farsight makes it easy to get softcapped defenses.

Thanks, @Linea. This is really helpful (both the builds and the tips about how to play them). It looks as if those builds rely heavily on a Meltdown / Rune / Hybrid rotation. A Rad armor brute won't be easy to drive, but I think it's worth a try. I'm going to play in Mids and see if I can come up with something similar that includes Ground Zero (which is key for concept reasons). I might try Staff in place of Katana.

That's a good suggestion. I wonder whether math of the fury mechanic and Soul Drain makes Dark Melee stronger on a tanker or on a scrapper. I know that @Linea has run 801.2 at max difficulty on three scrappers and a brute. The brute was Kat/Rad, which makes me wonder if other +def primaries (Broadsword, Martial Arts, Staff) with /Rad would work. Linea's advice here suggests that tankers can use Radiation Armor in the 801.X series without team buffs up to 801.5. I suspect that this requires some combination of Rune, Demonic Aura, and Wedding Band, and that these powers would be even more necessary on a brute. For 801.6 and above, Radiation Armor needs team buffs. Shield does better, as you suggest.

I have two eccentric criteria for a good character: Ability to complete AE 801.2 solo at high difficulty settings. This requires extreme durability without sacrificing DPS (both single target and AOE). A squishy with no protection other than soft-capped defenses will faceplant almost instantly. Thus far, the only character I have that can finish the mission at max diff is my Shield/EM tanker. Ability to get along well with other people outside combat settings. If a character's superpowers would make them a terrible roommate, I consider the character sub-par. I've been avoiding playing brutes because they seem to fail so badly by criterion (2). Brutes are inherently difficult to live with, on account of their anger management issues. Then I noticed that Radiation Armor has an AOE heal. Maybe living with a /Rad brute would be tolerable, if problematic. Sure, they have conflicts, but they have a way of patching things up. I am wondering what primaries would be a good fit for a /Rad brute, keeping in mind criterion 1. DPS is always helpful, but powers that improve durability could matter more (e.g. tohit debuffs, self-heals, endurance bosts). I don't know whether +def buffs will matter on a resistance armor set that has no DDR. High accuracy / tohit is useful against the Rangers. The fury mechanic introduces some subtleties. I get the impression that sets with +dam powers (other than Build Up) do better on other ATs, because the +dam isn't felt as much on brutes. Does that outweigh the -tohit from Dark Melee? I also get the sense that fast animations are desirable to keep up the fury meter. Do slow animations outweigh the debuffs, self-healing, and high damage in Radiation Melee? Any thoughts or suggestions?

For what it's worth, my best tanker is Shield Defense / Energy Melee. This is the only toon I have that can solo the difficult AE mission 801.2 at max difficulty. Of the options you listed in your first post, I'd go with Street Justice. It's not top tier for tankers, but it's a solid set. I find Electrical Melee frustrating on tankers, due to the low single-target damage. It is best on Stalkers. (Street Justice is also best on stalkers, but it's fine on other melee ATs.) Dark Melee is also worth considering. It provides a self-heal, which Shield Defense lacks.

Welcome back to the game! I have a bunch of melee characters at level 50, but only one brute. I've avoided playing brutes for arbitrary, eccentric reasons (TL;DR: Brutes make terrible roommates.) So take this advice with a grain of salt. Secondaries / armor sets: Energy Aura is a powerful armor set that is not available for tankers but is available for brutes. It has a good mix of layered defenses: easily softcapped typed defenses, solid defense debuff resistance, some damage resistance, a self-heal, a +endurance power, and (on brutes and scrappers) stealth. It lacks a damage aura or a +dam power. If I wanted to play a non-farmer brute, this would be my top pick. Shield Defense is arguably the best tanker armor set. It is very tough, and the +dam power is helpful. The big limitation is the lack of a self-heal. My best tanker is SD/EM. Invulnerability is a great set. It is beginner-friendly, and it will also age well, especially if toughness in hard content is one of your goals. It lacks a damage aura or a +dam power. Super Reflexes makes it cheap to get softcapped defenses. It is tough in the endgame, though the scaling resistance mechanic may leave you feeling on edge. There is no self-heal, damage aura, or +dam power. I think this set is strongest on ATs with relatively higher HP. (My SR/Mace tanker is much better than my Mace/SR scrapper.) Willpower is beginner-friendly. In the late game, the lack of defense debuff resistance can be a problem. It's not a bad set, if it fits your character concept, but if you want layered defenses and don't have a specific concept in mind, I'd take Invuln or EA instead. There are four resistance-based armors with damage auras: Rad, Elec, Dark, and Fiery. My personal preference is for armor sets that include defense, but resistance-based armors can still work well on brutes and tanks. I would steer you away from Dark for your first character on Homecoming. It's potentially very powerful but requires investment and careful building. I have not played Bio, Ice, or Stone, so I won't comment on those. Primaries: There are many good choices. Here are a few worth considering. War Mace has a good mix of AoE and single target damage, and it plays well at all levels. Energy Melee is arguably the best melee single target set at high levels. It's not as much fun in the lower levels. Street Justice may not be top tier for brutes, but it is solid. It has fast animations and plays well at all levels. Dark Melee is a bit weak on AoE but great on single target. It has a self-heal and a useful secondary effect. Pools: Most players take the Fighting pool (Boxing or Kick, Tough, and Weave) and Speed (for Haste). Many builds include Combat Jumping, Hover, or Maneuvers to increase defense.

I have a meta-suggestion: I think it would be good for the devs to make their intentions concerning the proc system clear. There have been rumors about changes to proc mechanics for over a year. Is a major overhaul in the works? Or is the community reading too much into a few stray comments one of the devs has made? I built two "proc monster" characters in 2020. I've avoided investing in more "proc monster" characters since last summer for fear that the nerf bat would soon be swung. I've thus avoided powersets that require procs to solo tolerably, by my standards (e.g. Electric Control). I play all my characters both solo and on teams. I doubt I'm the only player who's anxious about these rumors and making speculative decisions based on them. I'd be grateful if the devs would either confirm these rumors or put them to bed.

For me, and I think for many players, altitis is the endgame. Being able to create new, powerful characters without too much grinding is a big part of what makes CoX appealing. If the route to a level 50, fully-IOed character became more challenging in an interesting way, I might consider that a good thing. But if the devs ever decide to make people "earn" their OP toons through grinding, the game will lose a lot of its appeal for me. I'm all for more challenging endgame content. I understand the concerns about mid-level, cheaply built characters not contributing much on teams that have several level-shifted, fully IOed endgame characters. I don't know what the solution is.

In a random endgame pickup group that is steamrolling things, Empathy is likely to be less useful than many other support sets. The heals aren't needed, nor is the +def component of Fortitude, since most players build most toons for softcapped defenses. The other four healing-focused sets (Pain, Thermal, EA, and Nature) provide a +res buff, which is more widely useful, since most toons do not have hardcapped resistances. That said, there are at least three scenarios when a good emp could be quite useful in the PVE late game, and possibly better than other healing sets: A team with toons that have resistance-based armor sets and haven't capped their defenses A team with another emp (Green Machine strategy) Missions with lots of defense debuffs Of course Kinetics is very good.

Most of my characters have great respect for life and no respect for property. They have varied reasons for having this pair of attitudes. None of the CoX alignments are perfect fits for this outlook. Rogue is the closest fit, followed by Vigilante. In practice, I switch between these two alignments as needed (e.g. to get Accolade powers, access to Ouro missions).

Lots of duos could solo a +0 MoITF. There are many toons that have soloed the MoITF at base difficulty, and quite a few have done it at +4/8. I have soloed a MoITF at base difficulty on two of my tankers (Shield Defense / Energy Melee, Super Reflexes / War Mace). It was not efficient. One relatively safe approach would be to bring a melee toon or an Illusion controller with powersets that are known to be able to solo the MoITF at max difficulty (e.g. a Shield/EM tanker), and combine it with a blaster or with a corruptor that has solid buffs/debuffs (e.g. Cold, Dark, Kinetics, Nature, Time). "Efficiently" is the tricky part. Not being a speedrunner, I don't know how to answer that part of your question.

I just ran my first successful +4/8 solo run of AE 801.2. No defeats and 24 minutes to spare. I used a Shield Defense / Energy Melee tanker. The combination of high defense, DDR, and +dam from Shield with a high single-target damage secondary makes this a powerful combination. The build was based on Infinitum's Captain Starburst. I changed a bunch of things. My build (unlike the original) has a moderate psi hole, which doesn't matter for this series. I did not use Taunt or Teleport during the run. I did use inspirations (as they dropped) and lores (which are still T3, as is the Judgment power). Thanks again to Linea for an interesting challenge!

Empathy will always have a place in the game because the idea of empathy as a superpower is kind of amazing. A character's origin story can be almost any story. Mechanically, it is not a bad set. In the endgame, many people feel it is outclassed by the other healing sets (Thermal, Pain, EA, and Nature). All these sets include a resistance buff. Empathy provides a defense buff rather than a resistance buff, and (unlike Time's Farsight) that buff is single target and cannot affect the caster. Most endgame builds softcap defense, but many do not hardcap resistances. So the resistance buffs are more often useful in pickup groups. There are team compositions in which Empathy is potentially quite useful in the endgame. If the melee toons and sentinels on your team are using resist-based armor, empathy is a more attractive buff set. Multiple emps on the same team can run a "green machine" strategy. Personally, I prefer less "clicky" support sets, and I like to be able to play both solo and on teams with all my toons. Some highly skilled players have done amazing things with solo emps, but Pain and Nature are both easier to solo, and they aren't as "clicky." So those are my top choices for "healing" sets.

@Metatheory Good suggestion to watch the team UI. I find running this slash command (found here) helps. It removes auto-powers and toggles from the buff display, so I can see who has which support buffs and whose buffs have expired. /optionset buffsettings 1184529

It is very possible to play Pain Domination solo when you have a fully kitted-out build. I have a Pain/Sonic defender at level 50, and he is quite tanky. But soloing with any of the healing sets is challenging when you're starting out. (If Pain seems challenging to solo, some of the other healing sets, like Empathy and Thermal, are even worse.) Others have said it, but it's good advice: take this character on teams! There are some missions that you theoretically can solo, but you're not meant to solo (on any archetype). Like Take Down Sea Witch from Lorenz Ansaldo (redside). Do you have any respecs available? Think about respeccing this toon to include some powers that will make your character less squishy: Tough and Weave from the Fighting pool (you must first take Boxing or Kick) Maneuvers from the Leadership pool Either Hover from Flight (for the defense boost), or Combat Jumping from Leaping (for the defense boost), or Rune of Protection from Sorcery (for a way to break mezz -- you must take two other powers first) To make room in your build, leave out a couple of the attack powers that you're using the least. Try to have at least two attacks with at least five filled slots: either an IO set, or SOs (1 accuracy, 2 damage, 1 recharge, 1 endurance reduction). Enhance accuracy first. I'd recommend 2-3 slots on Health and 2 slots on Stamina.

That's true for some defender primaries, such as Empathy and Thermal. But other defender primaries, such as Time Manipulation and Nature Affinity, have mostly PBAoE buffs that do affect the player. Funny you should mention that. Nature/water is my next defender project. I think Nature is a neglected set. I've played it to 50 on a corruptor, which I think was a mistake. It's stronger on a defender. The build I have planned has softcapped M/R defense (with Agility) and hardcapped S/L/E resists when Wild Growth is up. I'm sacrificing perma-Overgrowth for durability.

Of the primaries you're considering, the ones I've played to 50 are Time and Rad. If you want to be a tankermage, Time is a good choice. If you want to kill AVs and can deal with being less tanky, Rad is a good choice. Time Manipulation is arguably the best solo set for defenders. It is a good set for team play, though I wouldn't expect to see it in record-setting speed runs. Power Build Up + Farsight gives you (and all teammates in range) roughly a 32% defense boost, which makes it trivial to hit the softcap. This frees you up to put procs in your attacks, to take a resistance-based epic armor (rather than Scorpion Shield), and to take Sorcery instead of Leaping or Flight (no need for CJ or Hover). The rest of the set has a mix of useful buffs and debuffs. Time is less clicky than other sets. It enables you to focus on your secondary. Radiation Emission is a powerful debuff set with one powerful buff in Accelerate Metabolism. It is one of the strongest sets for AV killing. Of the toons I have, my Rad/Sonic would be my first choice to bring to a Katie Hannon TF (if I wasn't going for badges on another toon). It is not my first choice for a team that is steamrolling things. It takes time to apply the three big debuffs (two toggles on an anchor, one AOE). That said, it's not a busy set; once the debuffs are up, you can blast away. One drawback of Radiation is that it doesn't include any defense or resistance boosts. The -tohit is useful, but it's not a substitute for softcapped defenses in the late game. It's possible to softcap both ranged and melee defenses and to take a resistance-based epic armor, but your build will be tight. On the plus side, Radiation is an early-bloomer, and there are four skippable powers. The essential powers are T1-4 and T6, i.e. the AOE heal, the big buff, and the three big debuffs.