[Mids link for Rad Melee Fire Aura Brute that can farm?]

 

[Is healer role too weak?]

• Pain/ 'can' solo, but it's going to be very painful as your first character on a SO only build.   I don't recommend it.  You have plenty to learn without picking one of the hardest paths possible.  There are people that do it that way on purpose for the challenge.  I've done it that way, once.  I don't recommend it.
• Team - Once you have your first 50, you can make 3m/hr pretty easily, and 3m is enough to SO another build.  At this point SO builds can start raining from the trees.  ...   Eventually you'll want IO builds, so see marketing or farming below.
• Sell your orange salvage .... at 500k a pop it shouldn't take long to have enough to fully SO a build and/or have seed money for marketing to eventually afford IO builds.  The above guide should help with that.   Numerous other guides exist detailing level 1 to 50 from scratch, if you can find them, it's very doable with enough knowledge and experience.
• Read the marketing guide (see link above) ... this is the best way to make money with a brand new level 1 .... kill stuff till you get your first orange salvage drop, sell it for seed money, market your way to billions ...   (This was the easiest to find guide, many many more exist if you hunt long enough)
• For a first character, there are definitely better choices.
  • If you want defender: FF, Traps, EAfn ... these can play like defender versions of sentinels.
  • Sentinel ... you can play these on straight up SO only builds.  They are not the best AT for veterans, but they really do fill the niche fairly well for beginner players.
  • Huntsman ... The original Sentinel, and also a defender all rolled into one.   (VEAT Soldier, these used to be locked until you had at least 1 level 50 villain.  I have no idea if they are or are not still locked)
  • Brute or Scrapper ... Either really, I prefer the scrapper.  But if you go brute, you could just go (Kat or Staff)/Fire Aura Brute and build for both general play and farming. 
    • /FA are the primary farmers.  Search "Farm Fresh Builds" if you want to look into farming.  Any */FA is fine, but I like Kat/FA or Staff/FA as the first/beginner build.  For SO Only 100% beginner build I'd probably say Staff/FA  ... defintely not for veterans, many vets may even laugh at a Staff SO only build, but they are running 1-billion influence builds and while you'll make half what they do you also only invested 3m vs their 1 billion.  Once you have money to burn, then you can decide how to spend it, and if you'd rather a 1-billion influence defender or a 1-billion influence farmer.  I ran a Staff/FA SO Only on live just to prove how viable it  was despite what anyone else said.

 

 

[Who Is Your “First To Go”?]

I have (the same) two keys bound to two targeting macros (primary and secondary) on every character and edit them interactively on the fly as needed.

[Are Defenders the equivalent of support Tanks?]

By all means, I'll take extra damage and a higher damage cap and a higher target cap on my defender.  *evil maniacal laughter*

 

 

tldr: However ..., with the exception of Kin, if you built your defender for offense the way you build your corruptor for offense, the damage difference at 50 will be minimal.  Meanwhile the defender will be much easier and more flexible to build, as well as easier to armor.  It's almost always easier to push defender to armor vs offense.  While it's almost always easier to push corruptor to offense vs armor, and frequently the corruptor mirrors fail my armor benchmarks and push the corruptor into only one build.  Meanwhile the defender may have two or even three builds that vary from full armor, to offense, to full proc offense.  (NOT that builds need to have nearly as much armor as I put on them)

 

In large part it's self-fulfilling prophecy.

• It's complicated, and varies depending on level and build. 
• Most people don't even try to armor their defender.
• Nor do they try to build those defenders offensively.
• But they do build their corruptors offensively
• And frequently even add in some survivability to those corruptors, but not the defenders.

Disclaimer:

It does vary, widely, based on level and build.

The following does NOT include proc builds, those are relatively new to i27, and I build armored builds, not 700+ dps proc builds.  You probably shouldn't get too comfy with that 700+ dps proc build either, as procs are vastly imbalanced depending on exactly which sets you pick.

Assuming 41+4x8.

 

ASSUMING +41+4x8, given that's pretty much all I do.  This can also in most cases be translated to +4x8 from somewhere in the level 39 to 41 and up range.  Between level 20 and level 40 the corruptor has the advantage and it takes time for the defender to catch up.  How much time depends on the build.

Scourge is almost always over-estimated, usually by double, sometimes more.

Outside of Kin, or other situations where the Corruptor WILL be effecitively perma-damage capped, the damage works out surprisingly even.  /Kin and similar, If both are always capped, the cap itself wins, so it's corruptor by a 4:3 ratio.  The caps trump all else.  Hence /Kin is always best unless it's just an armor issue that's causing you to stumble.  Even then, I'd still recommend /Kin at least most of the time.

Over the years I've built many mirrors, and the results are very similar in each case.  That's not to say they will always be similar in every build and every combination, just that I have not yet stumbled upon anything other than Kin where the difference is large enough to matter.

The best example, and also a surprising one, in that the +/- were opposite of what I was expecting, was Fire/Nature and Nature/Fire.  Both built to (almost) self-damage cap and heavily armored.  The defender DID damage cap, while the corruptor missed the cap, but hit effectively equivalent damage levels.  Percentages are based vs my Fire/Atomic Armored Blaster.

 

Fire/Nature rated 100% st, 67% aoe

Nature/Fire rated 103% st, 63% aoe

 

The only other example I still have handy is Time/Fire, and this isn't going to be as useful as I'd like as it's been too long ago.

Time/Fire (offense) rated 96% st, 83% aoe

Time/Fire (standard) rated ... data lost ... But it was almost identical to the corruptor.

Fire/Time (standard) rated 76% st, 59% aoe ... The offensive variant on the corruptor frame, failed my armor standards.  So while this isn't helpful for dps comparison, it is a demonstration of the flexibility and ease of building of defender vs corruptor.

 

[Angel Hornet - EnM/EnA - 801 ASF Scrapper]

-KB is just a happy accident.  I may have even swapped the BotZ for Range/End in the live build.

[Angel Hornet - EnM/EnA - 801 ASF Scrapper]

I'm sure I've posted this elsewhere, but I can't find it.  So here is Angel Hornet's 801 ASF build.

 

Angel Hornet - EnM/EnA - 801 ASF Scrapper

• 1c - this is the build I actually ran at the time. - EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 1c - [i25].mxd
• 2J - this, or one very like it, is the current respec with a bit more psionic protection for better overall performance. - EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J - [i25].mxd

[AE 801 Kat/Ena Brute Builds]

These are my current two brute builds.  I have several other variations, but these are the two I've settled on the most.

The primary difference is that EF allows for AoE Pseudo-Taunt vs DN allows for a durability of 10 vs 7.

These are both standard Linea Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic/KitchenSink builds.

...

 

Kat Ena Brute - 801 G+ - T9 3L - GLM DN Tactics - [i27].mxd Kat Ena Brute - 801 D+ - T9 3L - EF Tactics - [i27].mxd

[Armored TA/]

Opinions, Ideas, Debates are always welcome.

 

I realized it's been a while since TA was revamped and I've still not really given it a good reworking ...

• These are based on my standard Beta Armored Template.  They are heavily biased to armor.
• Absolutely no warranty.  I haven't built nor played any of these yet.  I generally rebuild as I go, these are only first pass builds.
• I have no idea if any of these will even work at all. 
• I'm mostly debating /Water or /Electric.  /Water for the heal and utility.  However I'm very concerned with recovery, which was why I was also strongly considering the new revamped /Elec.  TA/Elec would also kill two birds with one stone, in that I've not tried the revamped /Elec yet either.
• Vengeance or Glue Arrow is another debate.
• Power order is yet another debate.
• Rune earlier for early status protection pre-emp is also a debate, but I'm pretty sure I won't.  I'm fairly happy with the current power ordering overall, just not entirely.

...

TA Water Defender - Beta 1a - [i27].mxd TA Elec Defender - Beta 1a - [i27].mxd TA DP Defender - Beta 1a - [i27].mxd

[Whats the best way to slot Time Manipulation??]

2 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Could you add in what some of the names mean

 

I have over 100 time builds on a handful or more of characters on various servers, I can't remember them all, but I'll do my best ...

Spoiler

• Plant Time Fire - Retriever MSLENFC 1 - [i26].mxd  - Current offensive controller.  Retriever was just a project name.
• Time DP - Kiski - FoN MRA 1a - [i26].mxd - Two variations on 'Force of Nature' Builds, one for MRA the other for SLE.
• Time DP - Kiski - FoN SLE 1a+ - [i26].mxd - This is the current build for this one. Likely chose this one because of 801 being SLE biased, and stacking with SLE buffs and temps.
• Time DP - Kiski - Psi-Tank 1b - [i26].mxd - Psionic Tank for things like the Mr G  arc.  The only arc in the game that I fear.
• Time DP - Kiski - SLE ResTank 1b - [i26].mxd - This is probably the charged armor res-capping build.  Less defense but resistances don't really need the T9s unless you really want to use them.
• Time DP - Kiski - Sorcery 4i-b - [i25].mxd - This is the old Sorcery Build from years back But is likely still on an alternate build slot somewhere.
• Time DP - Kiski - STF SLE Malfactor 2 - [i26].mxd - This is an older version of the STF builds, and is likely on an alt build slot.
• Time DP - Quarterback 2d - [i26].mxd - Offensive Build, but not a proc build.  This was designed pre-proc builds.
• Time Fire - Kiski - STF SLE Malfactor 3a+ - [i26].mxd - The current version of the STF Tank build, designed specifically to tank +4x8 Lord Recluse on the STF toe to toe the hard way.  She succeeds at this with no-deaths about 2/3s of the time, and dies once-ish the other third.  There's only so much you can do about a lucky triple-hit of 2500+ damage each.
• Time Fire - Quarterback 2d - [i26].mxd - Offensive Build, but not a proc build.  This was designed pre-proc builds.

[Shields and where to focus?]

I'll attach my 801 and Psionic SD/Rad builds.  These are NOT offensive builds.  

 

SD RadM Tank - Prototype 801 - Build i4 - [i26].mxd

SD RadM Tank - PsiTank Beta r4 - [i25].mxd

[So when people say they solo at +4/×8...]

On 2/11/2022 at 10:43 PM, plainguy said:

Question I tried 801.2 and my powers were delayed by minutes.. Was that -recharge buff from the mobs or a bug ?

 That was most likely one of the Cold Domination debuffs.  A /Cold will rip you to pieces.  On live anytime I wanted to totally screw an AV or someone in global yelled for help with an AV, I'd pull out the SO Only built Cold/Ice Defender.  Even on pure SOs it'd completely gut AVs.

 

 

On 2/14/2022 at 6:16 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

The Awakened in Mr. G's arc redside. Freakin nasty bastiches.

Yes, those.  The only arc in the game that I fear.

 

 

3 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Non game created content, 801 series on AE is the best place to kick the tires on a build. Those are specifically built with the screw you factor.

*chuckles* I love you too.  *throws you a left over box of valentine candy hearts*

[EMP Arrow hold]

Are you looking at the old EMP Arrow on the out of date CoD?

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=defender_buff.trick_arrow.emp_arrow

 

I've looked, I can't tell either.  I'm pretty sure it's a pulsing field with a chance to hit, but if it does hit, it does damage to all, and hold to all, with extra +1s for electronics.   Poke @UberGuy or one of the powers devs to maybe get a better explanation.

[Whats the best way to slot Time Manipulation??]

I recommend slotting a build, not a powerset, nor a power.

For offensive builds, I'd recommend Bopper's or Dahkness'.

I build more durable builds, but be aware the offense is half what you'd get with either of the above.

You can also use multiple build slots, and put an offensive build in one slot, and a tank build in the other.

 

Time.zip

[Accuracy vs toHit. I have questions.]

I always set Mids -> Options -> Config -> Exemp -> BasetoHit -> 48 ... that takes care of 95% of the problem, and simulates 50+1 vs 54.

You can adjust that number for additional issues as well, like armor or to-hit debuffs.  That should take care of 99.9% of issues.

 

Rarely, very rarely, I'll edit a custom version of mids so I can dynamically apply various buffs and debuffs to simulate different situations.

[Suggestions for a Staff/Dark S/L farming build?]

Wet Noodle Melee / Fire Armor Brute will be twice as efficient at farming vs Staff/Dark.  I ran an SO only Staff / Fire on live, just because you can.  You can complete self-boot-strap with Staff or Kat / Fire.  I used Kat/Fire to self-boot this time around when HC opened.

 

That said here is a translation of an old Kat/Dark of mine into Staff/Dark.  It should be able to Fire Farm or SL Farm.  One guarded spin will seal up M/L.  Sealing up M works well enough depending on which farm map you run.  Kinetic Dampeners will also seal up SL defense and E resists while you're at it making guarded spin obsolete outside of pseudo-DDR uses.  If you use Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic/WeddingBand/KitchenSink as well as dampeners, then resist to all but Toxic will be capped more or less all the time.  Or at least all the time that it matters.  Resist capped with the best melee heal in the game 8-)

 

This was not intended as a farming build, but instead as a general all purpose durability build.  You can also easily manipulate the build for more M or SL defense, but since defense gets stripped without DDR, I prefer to cap resists first.  (out side of farms, you're plenty safe in most farms.)

 

Staff Dark Brute - Black Cat - Mu 3d - [i25].mxd

[Mission AE issues? Help please]

If you use dropbox, microsoft drive, or any similar programs on  your coh AE Mission, CVG, Critter, or Costume directories ... disable them before editing AE.  They can cause micro file locks that break the CoH Client.

Do not Dual-Box while editing AE arcs, as the two copies can cause conflicts.

Do not edit any AE files with any external programs while editing an AE arc .... UNLESS YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.   There are a very very very few times you will actually want to do this on purpose.

 

[Support characters in CoX Homecoming?]

On 2/8/2022 at 3:55 PM, Mashugana said:

Are support characters like controllers and defenders impactful on teams?

Yes, Buffs, Debuffs, and Controls can completely shift team dynamics.  However, generally I do not advise building 'pure support', and instead encourage you to invest in your offense as well.   If you can contribute in multiple ways, that's usually better and more versatile than being just a one-trick-pony.

• My favorite Empath on 801 runs is an Emp/Psi.  She blasts when not supporting, and comes in particularly handy with that Psionic Damage bypassing armor vs T9 armored snipers.
• I have a favorite Plant/Time/Fire that's an offensive beast, but also can shutdown entire spawns, and support a team all at the same time.
• and many many more.  You can build most characters multiple ways and fill multiple roles.

 

[THE MARKET IS TAKING ALL OF OUR MONEY PLEASE HELP]

tldr: There is no recourse and you can not get your influence back.

 

3 hours ago, laylahearts89 said:

well i buy a set of max amount for 10 for 14,000,000 Each set

This was your mistake, or a typo on your part, it's not clear which.  You bid on the 'each one' price, not the total for the entire set.  You don't bid 10 * 14m to buy 10, you bid 10 * 1.4m (each one) to buy 10 at 1.4m each.   bidding 10 * 14m translates as 10 * 14m = 140m.  If you did this multiple times because you were anticipating buying 50 or 100 then yes it would more or less empty that character's bank, however that bank is limited to max 2b per character. 

 

I've typo-ed like this myself, and I expect anyone that buys bulk has sooner or later done so as well.  There is no recourse and you can not get your influence back.

[Force Field/Seismic Blast General Support]

Re: DDR

1. Ageless Radial T4 +special.  A pair of these rotated will keep a whole team 63+ish.  Not rotated a pair will still keep a whole team 42ish.  Not paired it varies 22 to 88?  But still well worth it.
2. Vengeance 😜  Clarion*PBU*Vengeance*Bubbles is a thing of beauty.  The timing is rough, and you often have to settle for less.  But when it all comes together!

[Night Tank]

Anything above 801.2 and you don't have to complete it, just survive it while doing your best to kill all you can.   Each tier up is effectively twice as long and twice as difficulty as the one before.   At level 12 or 13 it took me an hour just to clear 1 spawn (solo) and get inside the door.

[Power Build Up and Power Boost Is Bugged]

I've done that.  One of my older versions of Kiski used PBU as a build-up.   These days I prefer Souldrain, the one with the shortest recharge that you can almost perma, and guassian proc it ... *evil grin*

[Force Field/Seismic Blast General Support]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

when optimized specifically for iTrials with Power Boost

 

Lowbie Teams, Itrials, ASF, and 801 too.  Incarnate capping a whole team is nothing to sneeze at.   Before the changes to Clarion * PBU stacking, a single FF could pump out 74 Defense teamwide.   I'm not sure what that number is now, but it's still very very high.   69-ish?   This is including Maneuvers and Dispersion Bubble.  You'd need to test it in-game to make sure to account for the Clarion*PBU changes.

[Power Build Up and Power Boost Is Bugged]

This is a long standing issue, since issue 0, with how +/- resist and +/- damage are coded and linked together internally.  Changing it requires completely rewriting all the internal code, effectively rewriting the entire powers system and who knows how much more of the game internals.  Significant progress has been made in that direction, but we may never get all the way there.

 

If PB/PBU were allowed to buff those bubbles or similar powers, they would also buff or debuff offensive damage of the same type as the resist, becoming an unintended extremely long term damage buff (or debuff) to that damage type.  As an example, a Clarion*PBU*Cold Bubble buffed Ice/Ice/Ice Blaster could have a nearly permanent roughly +75 damage buff, which is roughly equivalent to perma BU.  This was considered undesirable, so they marked the powers as unbuffable.  At the time, it was not possible to mark the one aspect of the power unbuffable.  With all the powers revisions that have been done since i25, it might be possible now, it might not, you'd have to talk to the powers guys.   I expect that is one of their goals.

[Building for S/L Def and Melee?]

Generally you build for one or the other,  SLENFCTP or MRA.  Sometimes you get both by accident.  Sometimes you mix and match.  

 

I generally don't recommend mix and match, but sometimes I do mix and match myself, and as long as you realize you have some really odd holes in your defense, it can be very effective.  A notable hole in one of my M/sLEnFCtP builds is Smashing Ranged .... I'm nearly invulnerable most of the time, till some numb nuts puppy throws a rock at me *SMASH*.  So on that build I watch out for puppys and earth controllers, otherwise I shrug off pretty much everything else.  That map with all puppies all hurling rocks, yeah, that's NOT a map for that build.

[Trapdoor Test Results - the other half of Pylon testing?]

1 hour ago, Gobbledegook said:

The Bio/SS has done a solo 801.5 and soloed ITF.

I've threatened many times to build my Bio/Kat tank.  One of my partners in duo alpha testing 801 was frequently a Bio/Spines.  We each had our weaknesses. I would take the the DDRs for them and they would take out the Shockers for me.  Which was worse for you?   EB Cannons, EB Rads, or something else?