Erratic1

I never much cared for Blasters on Live and it was only on Homecoming I finally found a Blaster I could get out of the low 30s with and take to 50 (BR/MC fwiw). Having finally succeeded in taking a blaster to 50 I decided to try another one, this time Sonic/Trick Arrow despite the charts saying how miserably it compared to other blast sets. It helped to think of him as my support oriented blaster. I got him to 50 then put him aside as there were just too many, "...well the damage is not great but it's okay because..." moments that frankly just were not true. I came into CoH during beta playing Defenders, had a Defender as my first character to max level, and played Sonic on live and again here on Homecoming as a Defender. I appreciate the debuffing it does for Defenders but...the secondary effects of secondary powers should not be so central to a Defender. Yes, secondary debuff effects have always been better for Defenders than for other ATs but the primary powersets are "primary" for a reason. You put Enervating Field down or drop Tar Patch for an ongoing, big -Res effect. It is hard for me to see saying, "I cannot squeeze out ultimate value on a team due to the secondary effects of my secondary powerset" as a good reason for the set to be miserably behind the curve for when it is being used as a primary set for three other ATs. Perhaps the AT should never have been ported to Blasters (I get grief when I object to the notion that every powerset should be available to every AT) but that ship has sailed (bring on the Super Strength scrappers and Energy Aura tankers and let the good times roll). A blast set which trails all others at dealing damage should be improved in that function. This change does that.

Electrical Affinity is a perfectly good support/healing set but it also tends to be a bit needly timewise since for your chains to leap you want to build static charges--so either you need to keep using EA powers or you need to drop Faraday Cage which will build them for you but that means needing to drop it whenever your group moves. I would suggest looking towards a primary set whose impact will lessen your need to have to toss out healing. Seismic is a good choice because it comes with two area knockdowns (well, one is technically a knock-up but foes end up on their butts is the important part) with timers short enough you can cycle them and keep a group on its collective butts. Or knock the group down, spread some healing. I was sold on Seismic back when it was on the test server when my mid-20s level character took out an entire group in Talos without any of them hitting me one due to the knockdown.

Yeah, I used to be the same with repeating sets. At a certain point, if you keep making characters though, you have to repeat. 😛

Some depends on what you are qualifying as "end game". One need not incarnate to play level 50 missions.

Dark is a resistance set. Bio is a hybrid set where you will rely on S/L/T/P resistance and F/C/E/N/T/P defense backed by absorption and regeneration. Clicking is pretty minimal given two of its three click powers are reactive and not on particularly short cooldowns (you don't heal unless you're damaged and you do not throw up an absorption shield unless your life is low). The one remaining click power is a pro-active thing best used when jumping into large crowds. If you have decided on Spines, then all well and good. But Claws does come with ranged attacks and Follow Up (which you should be familiar with from the land of spiders).

Can you tell my latest character's background involves being a cop?

Water/Kin is a lot of fun. And you might give Seismic a try.

Its not like Blasters, Corruptors, or Defenders (solo with their AT passive) solo horribly. And depending on Controller....

If you have never played Claws, give it a go. Its fun. Somehow I never tried it live and have enjoyed it without reservation here on Homecoming. I have to say I have been thinking about Claws/EnA. Stackable +To-Hit/+Dam from Follow-Up with +Recharge based on the number of nearby foes from Entropic Aura. OTOH, been wanting to try out Rad/EA because +Recharge helps with cycling its powers (and I would be taking Cross Punch anyway since Proton Sweep is a wet sack of dog poop waiting to drop on your pants and shoes, Devastating Blow is painfully long in animating, and Cross Punch also helps with +Recharge) and you get the Endurance support Rad Melee so desperately craves.

Sorry to disappoint, but I was not the snake. I do agree on the tanking though.

No, Brutes are not obsolete. They are on the whole sturdier than Scrappers/Stalkers and generally deal more damage than Tankers. Yes, there are exceptions to that on either side and depending on circumstance, but there are places where Brutes do better in the overlap realm too. As to being needed, no AT is. I did Tanker Tuesday last night where there were only Tankers teamed together. I have done all ranged groups, even all Blaster groups and it turns out no individual AT is necessary for a group to do well. So do not worry about your Brute's contribution, the Brute is contributing in a way that only Brutes can.

From the Synapse run on Torchbearer

Well, I mean come on...you insulted their mother. 😁

I do not see why anyone ever got in a ring to let Mike Tyson throw punches at them and yet people did that. But most people I know would run quickly from someone with a flamethrower. And given a choice between the two, I'll take getting in the ring with Mike Tyson in his prime any day over running at someone with a flamethrower.

Its live!

He started as a test of concept character. Only last night, after getting him to 50, changed his build's filename in Mids from Project 11 C to his actual name. Presenting my latest Tanker (Rad/Claws):

Tankers get increased area sizes now, which while it will not help take down a single target any faster does a decent job on groups. I was quite happily abusing that and Tanker survivability last night while pushing my latest Tanker to 50 having set the number of foes appearing in missions up.

Pretty sure the Def crash is going to be there. I never notice on my Brute, but he is SS/Bio not SS/Shield and so a goodly chunk of incoming damage is going to hit his unaffected S/L Resistance just like normal.

I am pretty sure for most (not necessarily all) opponents there are brute builds which can do that.

Most importantly, advertise the type of TF you are running. Nothing wrong with saying, "+X, kill all". People will join for just about anything sane (i.e. not +4 Synapse).

I accidentally forgot when doing a DFB on my latest tank (who was in his 40s at that point, but somehow I had never gotten the badges from DFB on him) to set the level down and we did DFB at +2. Nobody seemed to notice and deaths were no more plentiful than usual. More intentionally, the last Posi 1 I recruited people for was at +1.

It should be noted that DoTs get nothing from crits but do from Fury. While that is not going to remotely close the damage potential between Brutes and Scrappers/Stalkers it is a perk for the Brute. Edit: See aethereal's correction below

Why? That seems both appropriate (nobody wants to be set on fire) and useful. If you don't want them running, use an immobilize.

What qualifies as durable enough?

Per Wikipedia: Bean bags are fired from shotguns and per US federal law and state definitions (Paragon City is in Rhode Island), shotguns are assault rifles. Flamethrowing...can't really say its fits. So there is room for replacing Flame Thrower and Ignite. But were those powers to go, I would still favor something other than "what every other set gets" ala Aim.