Linea

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.

a) Anything but Seers. b) I'm fond of Carnies c) It's an old post, but try:

You want to be Tier 4 incarnate. T4 is the twice performance level of T3, and that's probably double the performance vs no incarnates. I'm going to guess the auto-hit nictus is your current problem. That's frequently the one you want to kill first. If you face tank, and spike rommy, that's usually the one that dies first. It's usually easier to kill rommy than the nicti, but not always. Rommy can and will run. I have taken advantage of rommy running to purposefully kill the nictus instead. I have Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic on almost all my characters, specifically for things like this where I need to spike something or else. Toss some large oranges or maybe duals on top, use lore, ... which one is the 99 billion dollar question. Longbow, Cimmies, Carnies, Rularuu, even Bots (which are poor dps but very well behaved so you can position them and protect them). I really can't tell you which one will work best for you, and each one you'll approach a little differently. You may also want some red candy or daggers. My usual plan is to pull up the clicky armors, pets, then engage the furball with the intent to spike rommy (while entertaining all the guests) in less than 5 minutes (3 minutes if you're using radials). At that point the dreaded auto-hit should in theory be dead. From there it tends to be a cake walk. The main point here is that you only have to survive that 3 to 5 minutes, and during that burst you literally throw every thing at him including the kitchen sink. No Holds Barred. I can be brutally efficient for 3 to 5 minutes, but eventually the entire house of illusory cards will come falling down. But as a scrapper, and not a tank, you rarely have to pull the rabbit out of the hat for longer than that. This is probably the armored build I used: Kat Bio Scrapper - Alpha 3 ITF - [i25].mxd Here are offensive oriented builds by others: These being pylon builds, I can't say if they are even playable outside of pylon runs, but you can use them for ideas on additional offense. Kat Bio Mu - Ston 600dps Pylon Build 1 - [i27].txt Kat Bio Scrapper - SomeGuy Pylon 600 DPS - [i27].mxd

Soloing a +4x8 ITF with Kat/WP IS doable, if that's what you really want to do. But it definitely is NOT optimal. I've soloed a +4x8 ITF with effectively everything imaginable including specifically Kat/Regen, Kat/WP, and Kat/Bio. Someone, not me, even soloed a +4x8 ITF with a Kat/Regen, no temps, no inspirations, etc. (and a petless mm of all gwawd waffle things) Of the heal-tank armors, I generally rate them as: Bio > WP > Regen. And even the Kat/Bio has to be careful to limit aggro and watch defense numbers obsessively. Kat/Bio is probably my number one favorite most fun scrapper. (EnM/EnA is my most powerful most durable scrapper. Favorite, Fun, Powerful, and Durable are all 4 completely different things.) Running into a room and jumping into the middle of 5 or 6 groups will kill you. Even one group can kill you. Proactively Anticipate instead of Reacting, Ease in, use DA, Monitor Defense, use Inspirations as needed, Use Ageless +DDR, Kite, Active Mitigations, Soft Controls, .... Shadowmeld, Hybrid, Void Judgement -damage, Rune, Kinetic Dampeners, Wedding Band, Lore Pets, Stun Grenades, KB Grenades, .... there are probably dozens if not hundreds of things you can do, other than charging in and hoping Regen/HPS will save you, because it won't. Standard Cimmie Test for Armors: Take one of the cimmie repeatables, find a spot with two groups, 4 bosses, collect them all up, make sure the 4 bosses are aggroed and then stay at aggro cap. Killing is not allowed, if you're an active mitigation build just swap targets around so you don't kill any and let the surgeons heal them (there are some active mitigation builds that will still kill everything, so this may not work for every build). The point is to stand there and learn how to take everything they can dish out for 10 minutes. That means learning how to monitor for and mitigate the -defense debuffs, and those 4 bosses are the primary source of those debuffs. A cascade failure will usually start with one of the bosses landing a hit, then cascade to death in often less than a few seconds. Part of what you can learn is literally "listening". There's a sound when that bad one hits, and a pattern to the sounds when you start failing. There's also a sound in hard-mode when the hostless are going to spawn, even if you miss all the other warnings, if you HEAR that hostless sound, it means GTFO. Once you can pass this test, soloing the ITF is just doing the same thing on a larger more comprehensive scale. Recommended Armors( for 75% resist cap ATs): Defense-Cap Based DDR Capable Armors. I generally do not recommend resist armors for 75% resist cap ATs. The heal armors are going to have similar issues to the resist armors, but they are also so much fun. But Still, I would not recommend Regen. WP is 50/50 and is probably the lowest rated armor I'd recommend. I simply love BIO even if the defense armors typically fair better. Bio is just so much fun. So I do recommend WP and Bio, but most players will get more mileage out of the defense armors.

No, I mean builds not built by me at all. I so rarely build fully offensive builds that when I want something more offensive I look at others builds as well. The Alpha build was an everyday build instead of an 801 build. Waterspout is for AoE which Stalkers typically lack. ... Back when I tested the stalker builds (I did StJ/Ena with each APP) they all fell out about even on ST damage, or so close that given stalker variance, that it was impossible to meaningfully measure short of running 20+ runs each. If I have to run 20 runs each and average it in order to measure the difference then it's really just a direct choice of AoE vs Defense vs Flavor vs Utility. For an everyday build, take the Waterspout for the AoE. But even that build is heavily armored, and most stalkers will use a fraction of that armor and instead put resources to more offense.

I'll be slotting my blasts. Ex. All three builds fully armored non-proc builds from years ago before procs were a thing. Fire/Atomic Blaster: 325 ST dps; 100x AoE Nature/Fire Mirror Defender: 335 ST dps; 63x AoE Fire/Nature Mirror Corruptor: 325 ST dps; 67x AoE

Crab Heavy Armor Build, not intended for DPS. I did an Instanced Raid Pylon, which are not the same as regular pylons, but should be: ~= ((38346.4/(I2*3600*24))+127.8)/0.65 where I2 is "00:00:00" day format in excel. ~12:18 ~= 277. This was good enough for me. I consider anything over 250 good, and it was 248 at T3. Still not completely T4, but close enough to test at the time. Crab - MOMAS 1b - Leadership - [i28].mbd

Steal whatever ideas you can from Hornet's build. She is a beast designed for soloing hardmode. That means you can modify her heavily to back away from that extreme, and put all those resources where ever you want them to better fit your concept, probably into more offense and your ancillary of choice. EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - Angel Hornet 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J Psi+ - [i25].mxd

While I rarely recommend resist armors on 75% resist cap ATs, I do and have run resist cap builds on the 75% resist cap ATs. The crucial problem is that while solo, you will take 2.5x damage even on the best build. Compound that with the lower HP of those came ATs, and you have an exponential problem. On top of that you'll typically have Zero DDR, although Ageless can help with that. It absolutely IS doable, and it can be fun, but from an optimization stand point, it gets tricky unless they offer something else meaningful to the specific build you are going for. OR it's a purely team oriented build. In the context of a team with buffs, resist builds can really shine.

(off topic) Additional info on 801 armor testing: (off topic) This is an old summary quote, not updated, pulled from my archives. It's still mostly true, but not entirely accurate.

I would be impressed if he's doing 750 dps except for the short duration when the accolades are up. I would estimate it closer to 350. There is also the issue of (optimizing procs means lower recharge), which works against (more recharge means more efficient dps chains). He tends to ignore resistances because meta teams run barrier chaining. He also gave up self healing in pretty much all forms. AoC is backup to and rotates with the Nuke Stun. Yes, contagious works better in single target, but it also works surprisingly well here, much mores so that I would have expected. But I was also mostly just going for the set bonus. I looked into Fate Sealed. It only "guarantees effects" on a couple of powers. It's real bonus would be the free global enhancement, but so far I'm not finding that I have any motivation to swap it in. I never even noticed that when I swapped them in. I've swapped them back.

Just checked in-game. It currently has 3 Membranes and a Defense/Recharge in it.

I don't see his actual build anywhere, although he has some videos of using it. I don't remember them, and didn't rewatch them. The build might be in the videos. I'd be fairly certain his build would be a melee fort, you have significantly higher damage in melee than a ranged fort. As it turns out, he did go Ranged Fort, Probably for better proc potential? He probably has lower defenses in exchange for more offense, procs, and recharge. He'd likely have less resistances as well, and go with passive resists instead, and then put any of those resources into offense, procs, and recharge as well. Regardless, there are lots of alternatives, and almost any of those will have more offense.

If you want crazy Offense, crank up recharge to the max, and get all the pets perma. Try to get 40ish Ranged defense and 28 to 33 AoE defense with Hover. Then Hover-Tank and send in the pets. A full offense build like that can push 1000dps. It's entirely not my style, but it IS effective. I'm not overly worried about the psionics. MRA will block half of it, and minimal resists can deal with the rest. I HATE THE CRAB LEGS! A large part of this build is getting rid of the crab legs via Costume: Syndicate Agent, Costume: PPD Hardsuit, and Costume: Arachnos Arbitor. Animating Crab attacks without legs is equally wonky. DPS (base) Gun 61,92,24; 32,38 vs Crab 64, 81,20; 32, 38. Assuming a certain minimum recharge, this works out very close to even. I've soloed a +4x8 ITF with very similar builds, these just emphasize the double leadership a bit more, and have been updated for i27. The Third Build is 59/59/59 with Agility Core. This is by design, as the Incarnate Cap is 59. Yes that's 55 without Agility and outside of Incarnate Content. Chances are 44 and down I'll swap to the mother hen build with more recharge. I'm not currently planning on building the Medic build. I did build all three in the past, but I'm most likely skipping the middle build this time around. I did also mention Ageless in the discussion as an option over Rebirth. I'm sure I'll actually use both. Which one is better when will vary by content. The endurance is OK. I wouldn't call it good. This build definitely needs both Endurance Accolades, then it will be good, but not great. Carry Recovery Serums. Yes I took both resist uniques out of the incarnate build. Putting one back in asks the question "how?" Both KB and Heal Unique changes below. This would give resists a big boost, while also doubling the negatives, IF you consider those outcomes negative. If you are not me, I'd probably say Choose this option and take your +8 resist All and Run with it. Recharge. But I'm already pushing the minimum boundaries on functional recharge. I feel like this is a definite no. KB1. This would work, but require wiggling a few things around to bring KB2 in earlier. Probably swap Tactics1 and Mystic Flight positions, but that goes against the MOMAS principle. However, this is probably the best alternative. Heal Unique. I consider this the second best alternative. But I really really like that maintenance tick. I "Feel" It helps keep me moving at a good pace without pause. It might not be helping near as much as it feels like it does. It probably isn't helping as much as it feels like it does. But so far it's a Subjective Win, and the devs are probably laughing at me for choosing it and wanting more of them! I don't understand the 0% Accuracy Comment? All the attacks have accuracy slotted and all of them are 112+% chance to hit +3s (50+1 vs 54). If you mean global accuracy bonuses, I don't see that as a problem. Arctic Breath is a great addition, but it's not going to happen in this build, there just is not room. I also like Shatter Armor as a similar alternative, if you don't like the shark animations. I do NOT like the shark animations, purely subjective. When you choose to take the Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic path you are trading (always on resists) for (peaks and valleys resist on demand). And if you include Hybrid in that, you're also trading away Damage on Demand. I would like to have the resist uniques such that I'd be RDR capping at peak, but that is also what inspirations are for. A standard medium Def/Res will be close enough to RDR cap. The greater concern is both (Resists and RDR) during Hybrid instead of Rune/Demonic. But that's also just part of the price of admission to this particular style.

Typically one slotted? with a purple+5 then add Temp:Stun Grenades. Works wonders on squishies, not so sure about scrappers.

Added the just barely Incarnate Soft Cap with Agility Core T4 version above.

I'm aware. In practice it works fairly well. Mostly we're just buying time to react as needed. This version was specifically intended as a "Mom" to herd the ducklings in the back-line or mid-line. However, more defense (incarnate cap) and more healing (medicine) are not at all amiss, but that will cost you both recharge and double leadership. Typical Piloting Guidelines: With little to no DDR it's critical that you watch your def/res numbers and know your enemies. When you hit -1/3 health, pop Rune or Hybrid, and Temp Heal (This solves 90% of the problems) If you hit -2/3 health again a second time, pop a Medium Def/Res and Serum Double Check your def/res Numbers. If needed pop a Medium Purple, Orange, Def/Res, or Demonic If you hit -2/3 to -3/4 again a third time, pop Rebirth or Inspirations Triple check your def/res Numbers. If needed pop a Medium Purple, Orange, Def/Res, or Demonic At This Point the dismembered body parts have well and truly hit the dual blades flurry. If things continue to go south, use your emergency heal inspirations, more Def/Res inspirations, phase, run, die, teleport to the hospital, or logout as needed. It's still not durable enough! So What Now? First, Swap Rebirth for Ageless +DDR. It'll make things a bit cramped on the piloting check list, but it can not only help keep you out of the defense hole proactively, it can also be used re-actively to get your out of a hole as needed. Which method works best will vary by target group. In order to keep as much recharge as possible, I'd probably drop Double Leadership in favor of Aid Self / Field Medic. Field Medic having the additional benefit of being a +endurance power. Sacrifice even more recharge for even more defense, getting as close the Incarnate Cap as possible while retaining Field Medic and Perma-Serum. Sacrifice Aid Self/Field Medic to the Incarnate Defense Gods. At this point you'll also be pushing the boundaries on Perma-Serum as well.

The top Tank* armors in my testing have been: 13: SR** 12: SD 11: Stone 10: Inv, SR *On a scrapper these top armors all get crammed into the 6 or 7 range, which is why I list the Tank ratings instead. **SR is extremely hard to drive at difficulty 13, failing 95% of the time, but it's also the only armor that EVER passed difficulty 13. The rest of the time I'd probably rate it a 10. It should be pretty Cozy in the 10 range. Back on Topic What are the worst armors and why? I want to build one. Yes I'm crazy. Sometimes I just like the challenge of making the worst work as well as possible, and figuring out what that means. Point out the Why. Which armors and which points of which armors need attention and why they need that attention. Aka: If scrapper fire had a taunt aura it would suddenly be top tier instead of bottom tier.

The intent is to be able to herd all your little low level ducklings along on high level content. I rather suspect you're going to really need your accolades and recovery serums. Crab - MOMAS 1b - Leadership - [i28].mbd Swapping Double Leadership for Aid Self / Field Medic +Endurance Crab - MOMAS 1d - Medic -[i28].mbd If I get around to an Incarnate Capped Variant, I'll add it here later Crab - MOMAS 1e+ - Incarnate - [i28].mbd Adding version f. I decided to go ahead and swap things around a bit, and add in the resist uniques. It's a question of +15% performance peak, when everything is capped out, vs +20% performance all the rest of the time. I almost always go for Peak, or Peaks and Valleys and exploit that mechanic. It really is a tough choice in this case. Crab - MOMAS 1f+ - Incarnate - [i28].mbd