Linea

That depends. If you want full offense none of my builds are those builds. I build with an emphasis on armor and solo play with usually just barely enough offense to solo a +4x8 ITF once fully Tier 4 Incarnated. These particular builds are concept builds. Still heavily armored, but concept none the less. Which means I might at times do something completely silly with them, just because. The Crab was meant to herd teams. Grab some stun grenades to use with the Immob for a psuedo hold. Lock down wide areas, debuff and blast them, while herding and buffing the ducklings behind you. Offense is neither good nor bad, but the versatility and durability are pretty good, and it has moderate defense buffs, and double tactics for good to-hit buffs for team-mates running SOs vs deep purple. The Fort is armored and meant to hunt psionics. Also, the Fort builds were better before various proc adjustments. Once upon a time, the procs were effectively 95% guaranteed to lockdown entire spawns. You'd rotate through them for a huge amount of control. Still good, but I'd have to test them extensively and rebuild them for i28.

I have so many builds for each ... I'm currently running two MOMA huntsman builds to herd little ducklings. Crab - MOMAS 1f+ - Incarnate - [i28].mbd - Mostly just run this one, mostly running KW missions. Crab - MOMAS 1b - Leadership - [i28].mbd - Sometimes alt to this one for malfactoring Crab - MOMAS 1d - Medic -[i28].mbd - Not currently running this one. And two Mind Hunter builds for Forts Fortunata - Mind Hunter 1c+ - [i28].mbd - Ranged Control (Needs rebuilding for i28) Fortunata - Mind Hunter Melee 2a+ - [i28].mbd - Melee, more damage, minimal Control (Needs rebuilding for i28) And I have dozens more ... VEATS are so versatile.

😠*Glares* I use MPL too. Everyone always looks at ME funny when I do it. My standard personal ratings go avg(Pylon %, MPL %, MPL %). I want to be able to kill hard targets, but I also want to weight generalized murder spree.

I run an armored Water/Atomic myself. Water Atomic - Ciaraine 2c+ - [i28].mbd I also did Fire/Atomic, more dps, less durable.

I tested it today with Ciaraine. It is a Challenge, but not insurmountable. A team is definitely preferred. But I feel like that is the case for KW regardless of build. Even Hornet can get herself killed by Blackwing.

I do Water/Atomic fully armored, but that is the opposite of a full dps build. There are a frightening number of tanks that are more squishy than this build. I've soloed +4x8 801.2, +4x8 ITF, +4x8 Apex, ... etc. ST dps is low, AoE is average, and the Utility is nice. Fire/Atomic was more DPS, but I missed the utility and added survivability from Water/Atomic. Fire/Atomic was nice though. Walk into a big room, walk around aggroing everything, pop up in the air just out of reach, wait for the pile, then incinerate everything into atoms. Fun Stuff. There's definitely some appeal there. How I build it as I level varies, I just do that by feel once I have a plan and a goal. Often I'll have one completely different set of IOs for leveling, swapping them in and out as I level while the build itself stays the same, no respec needed. Sometimes I'll have two builds, one for Leveling/Malefactoring, and one for Endgame. Even more rarely will I have three builds, Leveling, Malefactor, and Endgame. Builds evolve over time. I don't start +4x8, that also evolves. Often things like hasten, travel powers, tactics, will start in the 30s range. I can live without until then on most, but not all builds. But I also loved playing a travel-power-less Huntsman on live before you had all the temp travel powers that are available now. I think this is probably the closest to the current build, and you'll have to adjust for leveling and taste, because yes, hasten, travel, and T9 are the last things added to the build. Water Atomic - Ciaraine 2c+ - [i28].mbd

I have a Water/Ena sentinel that solos 801.6. It's a conversion of Angel Hornet crossed with Ciaraine. The dps is meh, but the armor is solid. Psionics are a tricky weakspot, but she manages. I also did an AR/Nin that's rock solid in standard content and psionics. But I really just don't like AR. If I could put the Crab Gun instead of the AR on the front end I'd love it.

An SR Tank "can" rate up to 13 (801.D)* However, almost no one will ever build one that way, and even if you DO build one that way, it will be the hardest tank to drive, ever. I insta-failed the first 12-13 tests, and only succeeded on the 14th try at level 13. So Theoretically it "could" be the most durable tank, but is more likely to rate average to above average. Capped DDR with tank resist cap can be very powerful. On a scrapper, the same is effectively true, but it's even harder to build and even harder to drive to that level, even easier to insta-fail, and is more likely to rate average to below average. I don't think the scrapper version will ever rate 7, even Hornet struggles with 7. I suspect 2 "could" be easy, 5 difficult, and 6 on a scrapper you can call yourself a god call it good. * Solo Survive 801.D, It takes over an hour just to clear the door solo, so "survive" not beat, and I stopped the timer after 15 min. At that level escaping with your life is a win.

Harder. I really don't know how much harder. My original intent was to design a mission, or two, that would test each potential mechanic and/or potential hole in armors. I never really intended to do more than the two missions that were what is 801.2 now. But people asked for more. 801.0 would be roughly equivalent in layout, and overall mission mechanics, and short small maps like radios. I'd guess somewhere between 1x and 2x length, but I really didn't measure it that way so I'm not sure. Harder Mobs, it has 801 mobs instead of standard mobs. I'd guess they are probably similar to Blackwing, or Blackwing are similar to them. But I don't know. I tested the early Blackwing prototypes when they were still buggy and overpowered. Harder, Even with just 801.2, I stopped counting after slaughtering a few thousand tanks.

Wall to Wall overlapping FF bubbles. Please, for the love of $Deity Test (in test mode if needed) your AEs +4x8 to see how they spawn for a team. When I was reviewing AE arcs, the majority of them had not been tested x8. "Oh, I never tested it x8" I heard that so many times.

🍿🍺 I'm glad you're enjoying the missions. I've been chuckling almost non-stop for the last 2 hours. Voltak and Lumi both frequently brought empaths to these. If Either of them joined the team I'd automatically set it 1 tier higher. 😉 "801.0 I hope this isn't too easy peasy" - 801.0 is the easiest. It's intended for a very small team or solo "801.5-C ..." - You overlooked the team-size multipliers in the list. That effects lots of things within the tier itself, including mission length and difficulty. - 801.5 is intended as a full team test, as compared to the small team/solo test above. Each tier is roughly double the difficulty of the previous tier and you went from the bottom of tier 1 to the top of tier 2. I'd guess that means this mission is about 3-4x harder than the one you started with, as well as about twice as long. "801.6-Static ..." - Static tagged missions are "Very Short, Static, less comprehensive, lightweight tests" designed so you can quickly and easily test and compare tiers "Without the Randomness". "801.7-Tech-R" - I hope you brought your grown up pants. - This is just barely over the balance point where game mechanics start breaking. - Give me the smallest amount of team buffs and the mechanics balance back out. However, this is why I made the 6s and inserted them into the list. The 6s are just under the mechanics balance point. It was fun and interesting to really find how all the various mechanics work and when and where and how they break. - I ran a lot of 6's and 7's depending on the balance point of the team. "It's hard to figure out a time limit" - Teams vary too much, You'll never get one answer here. I've had teams complete Difficulty 15 in less than 30 minutes, and teams fail difficulty 2 after 2 hours. "We've Got this." "Wasn't too bad." "Oh !@#$ ... Oh ^%!@#, ... OH! @#$ %!@# &%@#!" "Got Smoked. Bro!" "They broke the Unbreakable Tank ... " "It's getting to the point that I have to start buffing the tanks ..." "We're dying like crazy ..." "Come to the PO AE and have BAG of Wakies ..." "Holy !@#$ this is !@#$%$# Insane ..." "What the !@#$ was that! Holy %@#% ..." "Does that Count? ... That was Brutal! ... The Doom of the Squad ..." - *Evil Chuckle* 🤣

That's Angel Hornet. She's designed for soloing hard-mode, and has only half the dps of a full offense build, with all the rest of the resources going into layer-able armor in sine waves.

Someone needs to name one "Carpnado". Then again, someone probably already has.

tldr: no one answer, what ever worked, likely several different ones at different times. The original copy of this character probably has well over most of the incarnates unlocked. I also use the test shards extensively to test different incarnates and builds. As a default rule: Hybrid: Melee Core T4, Assault Core T4, Assault Radial T4, and the Teleport one. Primarily Melee Core for a defensive posture, this is my default. Assault Core for pure offense. Assualt Radial for hybrid defense/offense (breaking your offense chains hurts you if you're using core). And the teleport for team utility. Lore: anything but seers. but I even use those sometimes if it's one of the very rare cases where the psi damage is helpful. Usually I pick something thematic. If you want something more performance oriented, the ravager, carnies, ... well behaved are usually bots even though they are lower performance they mind well, ... I like carnies a fair bit, love the buffer, ... there's a thread somewhere ... Destiny: Ageless Radial +DDR T4, Barrier Radial T4 (everyone else dies), Barrier Core T4(only if I have too because pugs refuse to play with me) Judgement: Void Radial T4 -DMG: Pseudo-Resist T9 for 30 seconds. It's a gap filler and awesome for hard alphas that you might not otherwise survive. This one really makes a difference on the def/res capped tank that wants to bypass the caps when facing difficulty 13 targets. Interface: Degen Radial T4 or Reactive Radial T4 Alpha: Any, it depends. Probably Agility Core T4 and Musculature Radial T4 as the two most common.

Try opening it with "File -> Open" instead of Double-Click. Here's a resaved .mbd version. Note there have been a lot of game changes in the 2 years since the build was last updated. EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - Angel Hornet 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J Psi+ - [i25].mbd

That's it in a nutshell. If you want the overall strongest armor against anything that will ever get thrown at you ever. That doesn't mean the resulting armor will be strongest in every situation, it absolutely will not. On the other hand, learning your weaknesses, knowing them well, and knowing how to mitigate them, is extremely useful. If you can solo 801.2, then you can handle almost anything the regular game throws at you. If you can solo survive 801.5, then you are probably safe to main-tank 4-Star or solo 1-star. If you want to solo 2-star or 3-star, then you may need to be able to survive 801.6 or 801.7. The devs will NEVER go beyond 801.7 difficulty, and it's probably more fair to say official dev content will top out at a max of 801.6. 801.7 is just past the breaking point in game math terms. 801.6 is just under the breaking point in game math. The devs will not push past that point, instead you should expect other mechanics like the targeting circles, and mini-games, and things like that. The game math, base baked in from the past century, literally starts breaking at that point between 801.6 and 801.7. That said, the math could be un-broken, by creating an RDR stat and distributing that to armors in the same way DDR is distributed. However, that would also be a MAJOR and GAME BREAKING change to all the squishies and armors that are so used to effectively getting RDR for free. So don't expect that to ever happen. It probably should have happened 20 years ago, but that cat is well out of the bag and isn't going back in.

You can use the Aether costumes to hide the crab legs, but you do have to be happy with the limited resulting costumes. This lets you have a larger pool of powers to build from and still not have to deal with the fugly legs.

I took a multi-billion influence build into a +4x8 ITF for comparison testing. It's the hardest to drive. It requires the most strategy and tactics. It requires the most attention to detail. ... etc and so on. But it CAN be done. It's been done multiple times by multiple builds and characters. HOWEVER, willpower can do it with 2/3 the effort and 2/3 the investment, and Bio can do it with 1/3 the effort and 1/3 the investment. (Approximately) As an additional note, it's my opinion that regen should at least be 95% immune to regen debuffs, ... and probably partially immune to recharge debuffs but that part is less thematic and more mechanic.s

How much: It depends ... SR and SD can effectively cap DDR with Ageless +DDR, yes SR does this much more easily, while SD works harder but brings other options along as well. EnA and Inv while not technically cappped can still achieve equitable results under extreme pressure, but through different mechanisms. This all boils down to "there are reasons" I picked SD as the frame of my top of the line tank, while picking EnA as the top of the line Scrapper, and Inv as the Lazy Tank.

My solo blaster is a heavily armored Water/Atomic.

physical hardware access is problematic, and I'd rather not buy another machine when I have plenty of resources available virtually.

Yes, it's using what's called GPU Para-virtualization in Hyper-V VMs on Windows 11. This is NOT the same as GPU Pass-thru. My guess would be even the newest CoH client is no where near close to compatible. But it shouldn't hurt to ask.

Banner display, window starts, window remains black. I'm sure it was never intended to be even remotely compatible, but if it's possible I'd like to get it running this way.

I monitor defense obsessively. If you're not using the combat attribute monitor, you should be. monitoring defense and mitigating ddr is one vital step. the second vital step is to cap your resists as much as possible. The Auto-Hit never misses, and 2 or 3 of those and you're dead. But you can't let Rommy Run, him running halves your applied dps. Similarly you can run, a little, but that also can halve your applied dps, and also then allows your taunt to fail and can get your lore targeted. So you really want to mostly engage, only bouncing in/out for a second when absolutely necessary. maxing resists combined with your regen, healing, and absorbs should be enough to survive those 5 minutes. Ageless radial +DDR will likely give you 30 seconds or so of not having to worry ... but it drops off fast after that. When you hear a 'tink' land, either immediately back off, or at the least check your combat monitor. Always keep at least 1 DA ... if you go 3 DA deep that alone can keep you upright at times, but not always. you just have to get a feel for it. Inspirations. They drop like candy solo. 45+12 (small purple) and you're mostly good for the next minute or so, depending on ageless and luck. again, it's not absolute, so you just have to get a feel for it. It's a mixture of art and science. Full offense Titan/Bio .... if Rommy is the only issue ... I'd design in inspirations with kinetic dampener, base buffs, wedding band, lore .... you only have to live 5 minutes ... so lets see ... I'm not in game so I'm guessing here ... I'm assuming no base values, all offense, no defense, no resist. 5 columns, 1 minute each. 2 large dual Ref/Res, 2 large Res .... again I'm not in-game, so I'm guessing, but that should probably do it. You'll have to do larges with no base, so you'll have to put in bids well ahead of time and build them up slowly. Clear everything, and I mean everything, even the upper walls. Kill anything at all that he might run to and produce adds. Pull up Lore, eat your 1st column, and go full offense. Then repeat every minute for 5 minutes .... you'll run dry just as the lore de-spawn ... with luck you've killed at least one rommy or nictus. There are also team inspirations that can buff your pets as well. But that gets even more difficult logistically. As you get a better feel for it, you'll be able to adjust your builds and playstyles to match each character and your own preferences, and you may eventually find you need much less help from inspirations and other powers. You can also approach it from the other direction and solo it +0x8 first, then slowly increase the difficulty as you learn how to overcome each hurdle. Combat Monitor on the Top Right

Standard Content, I spend most of my time in offensive mode, but I do also swap to defensive sometimes. Hardmode Content and 801s I spend most of my time in defensive. Spike: kill him and kill him fast. You don't have to maintain this level of offense or defense forever, just long enough, barely. If you can kill him in 5 minutes, even if you have to wait 15m before you can do it again, you've still won. It's just a matter of time. (In the 3-star ITF Rommy #4 died about 2-3 seconds before my Lore expired, on the 13'th attempt with Angel (NOT the /bio, no way will my /Bio pull this off)) ... I primarily evaluate performance on a 'long term sustained basis', usually 10 minutes of full throttle combat. This is really good practice for things like endurance management. It works well enough most of the time for generalized offense and defense as well. .... However ... you really need to evaluate some things in more discrete terms and time intervals. Blaster Aim+Buildup+Gaussian's is one example of something that can only be evaluated in more discrete terms. Ex: the Armored Fire/Rad Blaster spins up full armor, walks into the first big ITF room, walks or hovers slowly around aggroing everything, then finally walks to the middle, hovers up just out of reach, then unloads a massive 10 second spike of damage that is completely off the standard damage charts .... very little is left standing, what little that is left, is running, limping, or crawling away. I might not be doing that again soon, as some of the powers are longer recharge, but it's a very effective opening. In more detailed terms, you have to look at the waves or wave-forms of both offense and defense. I say waves because if you graph it, it's not a solid horizontal line. Instead there will be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, Alphas and Omegas. You want the peak of your defense wave to face the peak of the incoming damage wave. One example of this could be easing into a group, hitting DA, then Following that up with ShadowMeld, then DA. You'll have a 10 second spike in defenses during the time the incoming damage spikes the highest from the alpha. In addition by easing in, instead of diving right into the middle, you've also distributed that peak out over a larger area (time period), hopefully allowing your peak in defenses to better mitigate the opposing offensive peak. You do the same for offense, only in that case, you want to pit your peak offense against the opposing valley of minimal defense. I take this idea of leverage for lack of a better word, to extremes, with the result being other players feel like I'm invincible. I'm absolutely NOT invincible, I'm just really good at leveraging my advantages (peaks of the wave) against the opposing disadvantages (valley of the wave). If I so much as blink at the wrong instant, I die (or fail offensively), and even if I don't die immediately, the disruption to my timing and rhythm of applying my wave forms against the opposing wave forms eventually causes a loss of synchronization, which means the bastards hit me with a mountain of damage while I'm in the very hell-pit valley of minimal non-existent defenses, and I fall over dead in one server tick. This is why when I'm solo, I may pause for 5-15 seconds here and there, I'm primarily re-syncing my armors, although sometimes It's re-syncing offense as well. On a team that synchronization is constantly disrupted as players will not so much as pause 5 seconds, and instead charge in, get themselves killed, aggro the whole room, than then steam rolls right over top of me and the rest of the time while my armor clicks are still spining up and locked mid-animation. If they'd only waited 3.5 seconds, they'd still be dead, but I'd at least have been able to intercept and hold off the steamroller. "You blink you die" build and playstyle.