Linea

Not really. For standard content a 350 dps tank is very doable, but that tank in 4-Star hardmode wills squish like a grape. Outside of T9s, the below conceptualizes what you're asking. My scrapper cheats, pushes near the max dps for an armored scrapper build, but uses T9s to get away with it. As a main-tank on 4-Star you will *NOT* have the luxury of using T9s, you have to be hardened 24/7 no gaps. The T9s can skew things, but also at a cost. When I solo the 2-Star, I frequently have to wait 15s or so, before engaging the next group. Teamed I inevitably die because someone dove it too soon, people start dropping like flies, and my T9s have 10 or 15 more seconds to recharge, and take 10 seconds to execute and pull up full armor. That's 25 seconds total, and if I'm solo, that's 25seconds between each pull. Meanwhile Leroy has charged in and gotten the whole dang team wiped, I'm pulling up my armors, need 1.5 seconds to finish animating ..... *SPLAT*. This happens so often it's just not even funny anymore. "Guys, give me just a second to finish here. Then I'll show you where to land on the <TEAM WIPE>" "Uh, too late. I was gonna say 'where to land on the beach and pull and separate so they don't insta-wipe us.'" Squish Semi-Immortal 700 DPS ................ 400 DPS ................ 100 DPS Scrapper ################### Brute ################## Tank ##################

Mids is much much better these days on dps numbers, but I would still never trust it completely.

Or even make it like the server transfer tokens, 5 per week. I rarely convert more than 5 when building a new character. However, this could still be exploited by having multiple accounts.

Just go the good old classic Kin/Fire with Vengeance. Anytime you're venged your a blasting goddess. You don't have to be immortal and live forever, you only have to live longer than the first guy to die. 😜

If these are your goals, you will almost certainly want dual builds. Start your testing with the ASF, it's by far twice as easy to solo compared to the the ITF. Soloing anything above 1-star, you'll need something in the 400 dps range. You won't find that on many tanks, and building for that much dps may be counter productive to staying alive in 2-star and higher content.

Assuming 4-Star and Assuming you're doing it the hardest way possible, with the weakest team possible, perma -1000 -regen becomes the priority. (163+50) / .48 / .45 / .66 ~= 1494 raw dps. This is probably pretty close to the actual break even number based on my solo runs and testing, and using Hornet's damage types. This equals out to Three or Four Hornets with one +Accuracy Buffer for a team of 4 or 5, Alternate damage types to Hornet would help tremendously. One Rad can (usually) perma -regen via stacking, cold has half that capability. I haven't double checked that the Rad is as effective vs Rommy, but it's still at least twice as effective at -regen as the Cold. Cold has more and different debuffs, that are brutal, but at 163 regen with massive resists, you either need alternate damage types or you really need to floor that regen somehow. THEN by all means, let the Cold, or even better a Cold/Sonic, destroy what stats are left to completely obliterate. At that point he'd drop like a rock. A team of Lineas could completely ignore the regen issue, but I'm assuming approaching the issue from the weakest possible player position. Effectively assuming a team of 8 SO only Tier 4 Incarnates that are generating a composite 800 dps or less, that's halved, then cut in half again by resists, then cut again by the mechanics of the fight. You're left with less than 115 sustained dps vs 163 regen. At that point you're surging damage with pets till pets die or expire, or you need that -regen to kill him in any reasonable amount of time. At that point if I can only have one thing, it's going to be perma -regen.

Assuming 4-Star Hardmode, and NOT Speed Running. Illusion/Rad are golden for the Hardmode ITF. Illusion to counter the <redacted>, and /Rad to help counter AV/GM regen. For defender, I'd Say Rad/Sonic with Tactics, and Kismet. Add Vengeance if you can, people drop like flies in Hardmode. You may or may not need to add (Nerve or Vigor) for 4-Star Hardmode, depending on actual end build.

Brutes are in a very good place midway between tanks and scrappers. This make them very versatile. You can build them in the middle, you can build them toward damage, or you can build them toward tanking. Use all three builds slots, General Gameplay, Full Procced Offense, and Full 801 Tank build. Personally I'd build that as three different characters, but if YOU want to build all three on only one frame, then the Brute using all three build slots is a really good pick.

Confuse Followed closely by KD Popcorn, and Fear. Confuse and Popcorn have been mitigated, so now I can't wait to see what 'Team Fear' does. ... and see how that's all handled going forward and how those Powersets are rebalanced so they aren't unfairly penalized otherwise. I like the tiered approach to the confuse protection. 1-star runs are no holds barred all the training wheels on. 4-star is hell on earth. 😈 I was on Cryptic on the old build. I need to test more on Brainstorm when I get a chance. Just keep an eye on it, and with other's feedback on it. With luck I'll try to run another one tonight on Brainstorm. If you don't pop a tank like a grape at least once per run, it's too easy. 😜 But at the same time you don't want to pop the tanks every spawn either. 3 to 5 seconds should be good, 3 second attack animation, 2 seconds to jump or teleport away. A last second range check to make sure you're still in-range to account for teleport timing if there isn't already? I'd even say a friendly team-teleport or phase bubble or cage bubble might be fair game to break the possession. Not sure how much of this is already accounted for, much testing to be done. *Shrug*

There are three major imbalances in CoH mobs: Confuse, KD (popcorn), and Fear. This may not be the best way to address the issue, but it's the one they have the tech to implement. Otherwise, a single control oriented Dom could mitigate well over 85%, likely 95%, of the damage of every spawn except the AVs. It's unfortunate that those control sets are so heavily balanced around that one power. That design imbalance will need to be looked at later as well. The only other option I see atm, would be higher Resistances instead of Protections. Or a mixture of Resistances and lower magnitude Protections It's much like the Goldbrickers, though I do wish it was better telegraphed. I jumped back every time I killed a dark aura target, and they still got me half a dozen times. If you kill one that doesn't get you, I think there's a short duration protection buff. I need to do more testing on these, as I never completely figured them out.

4-Star Master of ITF ... I dare ya! 😜 This is a good reason to have more than one tank-like character per team. What do you do when your main tank gets taken out?!? I think there are some visual queues as well? I can't swear to the mechanic, I just did it first, analyze it later. If it's a Boss/EB with the black aura, I bounce back after the kill shot and wait a couple of seconds before diving back in. Of course this is much harder to execute on a team. I think I would prefer them to be named "Infused Elite Praefectus" or somesuch, so they are easy to watch out for. Of course they might already be and I just missed it in the giant furballs of the fights we were in.

Preach It! You can't say praise Phatom Army enough. They saved us countless deaths, particularly vs the Hostless. Those things are pure death.

No, but it shouldn't really change much. I don't plan on ever repeating any of these 16+ hour solo runs. Never, Ever. I just do it As a measure of how difficult they are by how far I can get solo. That they can in fact be run successfully. If I can solo a 2-Star then in theory (almost) any random team of 8 (preferably Tier 4) Incarnates of dubious build should be able to do it as well.

SOLO 2-Star Hardmode ITF (Cryptic 220711) Angel Hornet EnM/EnA 801 Hardmode Scrapper Tldr: This is Hard-Mode Content. If you don't take it seriously, it WILL kill you. With the recent changes it's a little bit easier than when I ran it, and on sum balance a little bit harder to solo than the ASF. I also recently soloed 3-Star Rommy in test-mode by overloading inspirations, but given you would have to run the entire TF that way, taking 40+ hours, I'm going to say 3-star is effectively not solo-able. *** DO NOT LEROY JENKINS *** Pull only one, or at most two, groups at a time. Do not teleport into a room with 6+ spawns and start tossing around judgements. You’ve been warned. THESE ARE EFFECTIVELY PRAETORIAN INCARNATES WITH TACTICS. Even on 2-Star you can be facing 65 defense cap enemies, and if you pull more than one group that can skyrocket to over a 115+ defense cap. (Note: The maximum stacking may be tuned down a little.) ACCURACY MULTIPLIERS: Depending on the difficulty you pick you can be facing an average of a 1.9 accuracy multiplier vs 4-Star, just call it 2x for simplicity. That means if the soft-cap is 75, and you only have 60 defense, they mobs will have a (75 + 5 - 60) * 2 = 40% chance to hit you. 4-Star GMs will have a BASE soft cap of 95, and most have tactics as well, for something in the 110 or 115 defense range. If you have 70 defense all and strut up to a 4-Star Rommy, he's gonna bash you in the head with a 95% chance to hit. If you're running standard 45 soft-cap, heaven help you, even a 4-Star minion is going to have 50% chance to hit you, for 10x incoming damage, which is closer to 12x incoming damage spread across the entire spawn with the various rank multipliers. Beware the EBs, Avs, and GMs with Tactics. Tactics can Stack! There were times I had to push Full Armor++. That means Stacked Overload, Rune, Triple-Stacked Energy Drain, ShadowMeld, Dampeners. Which is 166+ defense with 75+ resists, my standard 115+ defense with 75+ resists wasn’t enough if those tactics stacked up. Letting resists slip any at all while facing any thing other than a single ‘generic’ hardmode spawn was instant death. Anything that was ‘Dangerous’ before on normal mode, is DEADLY now on Hardmode. More mobs have ranged attacks, and some mobs have additional damage types, and even minor amounts of un-resistible damage. This is no joke, You should be prepared to take at least some damage, if not significant damage as compared to a normal-mode run. Try to field a Balanced Full Tier 4 Incarnated Team with 1 or 2 tanks and at least 1 Controller/Dominator. USE YOUR INCARNATES. Even better if you coordinate incarnates. BUFF YOUR WHOLE TEAM. Buff Defense, Resist, Absorb, and HP/S. These guys are 98% deadly to Defense Cap Only Armor or Resist Cap Only Armor on 75% resist cap ATs. Even your Tank or Brute may need supplemental Defense, Resist and/or HP/S Buffs. I very strongly suggest you have a combat teleport bind, phase shift, or something similar. No Holds Barred Bring all your toys, ALL YOUR TOYS! TAUNT – You Really Really want Taunt and/or Immobilize. Some mobs will specifically target and take out your support if you do not Taunt and/or Control them first. Envenomed Daggers, and/or Rad, Traps, Etc. - These AVs and GMs are no joke. If you are Solo: Amps and Dampeners Temp/Accolade Immobilizes Full T4 Lore, as well as Full T4 on all your Incarnates. Hero Alignment Ranged Damage Signature Summons. Hero Aligned is Positron, hands down the best one you can get. Backup Radio Shivans (for the first/hardest Rommy) Warburg Nukes (for the first/hardest Rommy) Vanguard HVAS (for the first/hardest Rommy) And any and all other pets you can scrounge up Mission 1 1 Hour. Nothing of particular note other than what is already noted above. I cleared both rooms, the intersection, and platform. I think I accidentally got the ambush too. Mission 2 1.5 Hours. Anything that was ‘Dangerous’ before on normal mode, is DEADLY now on Hardmode. I ran half of it as clear. Then half as crystals at 5-10%, then popping them all at once. Mission 3 9 hours. Clear as much of the areas you need to work in as possible, or you’ll regret it later. Mission 4 9 hours. Clear as much of the areas you need to work in as possible, or you’ll regret it later. *** OH GOD ***. It’s probably just easiest to bow down, submit, and join your new Cimeroran Overlords. Additional Spoilers, Information, and Changes Tanks NO TANK is going to be able to solo a 4-Star ITF without at least very minimal support. Proc Built Tanks ...

To expand on that. EAfn is probably the choice. A Clarion+Special*PBU*FF can incarnate cap the entire team, you want that extra defense. Nature does a good job and can be more offensive oriented. EAfn offers better support. Both FF/ and Time/ can be extremely heavily armored. If the support is dead, it's not supporting anyone. But, ANY, defender and even any AT with Leadership, has plenty to offer for Hardmode runs. The assumption for [Insert Stars] Hardmode is that most of the team is built on IOs, built on [Insert Stars] Incarnates, and is running Leadership. You want your 'tank' to be nicely armored behind def/res ddr and rdr, with hp/s support and support in as many other areas as possible. If it's not an actual Tank AT, then you want to push both def and res to well beyond the incarnate caps. 4-star hardmode can push soft-caps of 75 to 95 (and maybe higher I'm not looking at the tables atm). You should assume -100 defense debuff, and -200 resist debuff (probably more on the -resist side). Then you probably need to assume 1-2k sustained dps with 5k dps spikes, and some rare much higher dps spikes. If you don't know how to handle 5k to the face, you probably don't want to run 4-star because sooner or later that 5k is going to land right upside your head. In the end, pretty much any supported tank can do this and not break a sweat. But if you neglect the support, don't be surprised if your tank crumples.

tldr: I can't 'challenge' confuse specialized Doms without completely obliterating Controllers. CoH Mobs in general are very weak to Confuse, KB/KD, and Fear. The Devs are fully aware of this and have many more tools to deal with it than AE does. In 801 only 1 in 16 mobs has any status protection at all, this is a purposeful choice to ensure that 801 is backwards compatible with controllers soloing. 801.6 and above have minimal counter-confuse, but that's likely not enough to effect a well built Confuse specialized Dom.

Yes, but at this point they are ancient and obsolete, pre-sentinel balance pass, don't include any of the i25 to i27 changes, and don't include proc builds, and if you're on a sentinel, you'd really want to consider all of that. And the entire thing ran on 12 year old tech that no longer compiles. That said, sentinels have the least variance of any AT, best primary vs worst primary. I don't think this will have changed. Just guessing I'd say the top end (these days) is pushing 400 dps (~double vs 2014), I had some numbers somewhere from i27 in-game testing, but I don't remember now. Considering scrappers can hit 600+ dps ... that probably puts sentinels in line with proc built offensive tanks, or if they are lucky between proc tanks and proc brutes, but no where close to proc scrappers. Balance was never based on procs, but more on non-incarnated SOs. But I wouldn't quote me on any of this, either, things have changed too much in the last 10 years.

IOed Sentinels can rate up to 6 or 7 on my durability scale, while that IOed blaster will typically struggle with 2. Outside of Hard-Mode, 801, or similar content that level of armor is overkill. A rating of 2 is the standard armor rating for 95% of the games content.

Finally burned out my first wedding band. It took 9 months of running multiple 801s daily, all most all of those 6 and above. An average of less than 10s per mission, to fill in gaps. Maybe less than half that.

All the incarnates are broken if you co-ordinate them. And you generally only need 2 copies of ageless. You don't even need the defender, just overlap 2 or 3 Ageless, 2 or 3 barriers, and 2 or 3 Clarions. Toss in 8x Judgements and just turn on [walk] so there's time to recharge between spawns. Add one /Rad for -regen. Player Co-ordination is really the biggest issue, if you can pull off the co-ordination even 801.F can't dent you. 7 Blasters, 1 Defender. Other Silliness.

We've used it rotating on teams, but I never actually checked the stacking or efficacy in the combat numbers details, just the small combat monitor to see if I needed to cast it yet, or call out for it. If it was low 'somebody hit ageless'. *shrug* Stacking is flagged as per caster, if it has other restrictions you'd have to check with a powers person, or just do a quick check in-game. I'll double check it sometime next week.

SD/ is the only tank where I used all three build slots. If you can only have one tank, that's probably my recommendation, and pair it with a heal in DM or RadM ... etc.

Proc Builds have been exploited and perfected since then. The non-proc high-recharge (heavy armor) version of Angel runs 400 dps, and that's on revamped EnM.

Here is an alpha first pass I did when the set first came out, and a couple of Voltaks Builds as well. EAfn Elec Defender - Alpha 1 - [i26].mxd EAfn Electric Defender - Voltak 3 - [i27].mxd EAfn Electric Defender - Voltak 2 - [i27].mxd