Erratic1

Yep, or at least, that is how I handle it.

So much Bio bashing on the forums. 😢 There are only two powers which are difficult to thematically work with--Ablative Armor and Parasitic Leech. No other power in the set puts any more limitations on theme/background than say Dark, Fire, or Ice armors do. This is my Fire/Bio Sentinel, Mind Blaze. The theme at work is that the flames he creates are the end result of mental psychoplasmic projections. The aura around is body below is not from Bio Armor but the Bio Plasma (Body - Combat) aura representing the excess generation of psychoplasma during flame creation.

I am not happy with this but best I could do quickly (I have to start cooking for Christmas dinner soon and still haven't gotten dressed). What I was shooting for was the manifestation of life force manifesting more fully the further up the body you look. So the greens grow brighter near the top. I can see you use Bioluminescence and Fire and Ice. I went with more Fire and Ice saving Bioluminescence for the face. That way, while not captured in the picture (tempted to post an animated gif but as I noted, short on time), the greenish body parts pulse. It more plant and earth and less animal than the original...not quite sure its the right balance.

This is NOT one of my characters. I was going through my screenshots looking for a particular image and came across a screen capture I made of someone else's awesome outfit and thought I would clear out the junk in the image so I could share the wonderful job someone did. Enjoy!

Energy Aura is indeed fantastic but if for one reason or another the timing of when it gets various abilities is a concern, Electric Armor is its resistance based mirror which gets a lot of the same features. It too offers healing, endurance recovery, and a recharge boost (with the difference being its recharge value is fixed--you won't get as high as Energy Aura can get but you will never drop to near nothing against a single target either). And if an aggro aura is important to you, it has one.

Came late to tanking and have created six tankers so far. Other than two failed attempts--my first (Fire/DB I think) and third (Ice/EM IIRC)--I have enjoyed each of them (DA/Fire, Ice/Stone, Rad/Psi, SR/TW, and Elec/Fire [still levelling at level 39]). SR/TW started as a jokey self-challenge. I had heard bag things about SR tanking and decided to push things by grabbing an offense set that was slow to start building aggro. Thinking about how to address the weaknesses really fired the imagination and I look forward now that he's 50 to continuing to work on enabling him to handle bigger and badder.

Pair Gravity with Energy Assault and hold or knock things away as needed.

You take that back! 😀 Its all about how you justify the look. In the case of my Fire/Bio Sentinel Mind Blaze, his fire powers are of psychoplasmic origin--emergent flame as a result of projections from the psychic plane. Yeah, yeah. . .it is probably time to update the costume. I'm thinking something with a heavily white base.

As has been noted upthread, respecs exist in the game and it can be helpful when levelling to keep that in mind. I started online play back when MU*s were a thing and so came up in settings where rebuilding your character was not a thing. So I tend to horde my respecs. Even so I have come around to intentionally spending them at certain points. Early on I want enough attacks to not be standing there with mobs in my face waiting on powers to recycle. I may not keep the T1 or T2 power from a particular set in the end, but early on I generally take both for the reason given. By the time SOs come available there are enough power choices that I usually plan my first respec then. Not all T9s are great to have but generally reading up on the powerset will let you know that well in advance so you can decide to skip it or if necessary use it as a mule for IOs.

biostem, I think that costume is about as perfect as can be had excluding minor tweaks for individual subjective tastes. As for the antenna, single comm or double comm would work depending on how retro a look you are shooting for. Personally I favor going without antenna. In the realm of utter subjectivity, I would go for a deeper brown on the gloves, belt, and boots to shoot for a slightly retro feel ala 30/40s Rocketeer wearing leather even if the boots clearly aren't leather. I also tweaked the colors on the chest and wings for a slightly more modern feel. Work is determined that I actually do work, so I did not have time to properly clean up where one of those annoying buttons overlapped an ankle, but the above should get the general idea across. Edit: Got a bit of time to clean up that ankle. 🙂 Free-Flier 1a.costume

Tried to stick close to the original while adding a few elements to subtly jazz things up. As you can tell, I am a fan of glowing chest stars. Inferno Nova.costume

A couple of things I routinely use: Make use of emotes to catch your character in mid-action During costume editing you can activate your powers, so that's a good way to catch your character using a power if you don't mind a non-in game background. For in game power usage, be ready to grab the screenshot. Had a fantastic image from original release (two computers ago) of my character doing a Thunderous Blast where the Fifth Column seemed to be shrinking away from her that I caught. Probably tried capturing it a half dozen times before I got the perfect shot. Jumping and falling can get you nice poses. In the case of falling you may want to do it from high up to avoid xp debt. Full screenshots are the resolution of your monitor and you may be interested in a smaller section. Crop to what you want to show using an image editor. Often there is enough detail left. An example of capturing a shot using a power while in the costume editor: This one is a slight cheat as I removed most of the buttons near the character's feet. The Rotate (left and right) and Brighten buttons were easy--just clip a section of the image from the same height and overlay over the buttons to get rid of them. Load and Zoom buttons took a bit more effort, which I can go into if you're inclined to do minor surgery for a clutter free screenshot. The Darken button would have only been a bit more involved and was left in to indicate what was removed (and because I'm lazy and thinking about dinner).

I know this was stated a month ago, but I have just come back to the game, happened to be reading the thread, and this caught my eye and reminded me of a test I had performed on the matter: Found a building, leapt off it, checked the resistance I had once I hit. 465.2 / 1372.5 = 0.33894 or 33.894% 33.894 + 26 = 59.894 ~ 60% Did something change or is the gain non-linear? Original thread: Bring the mocking and derision: I made a SR/TW Tanker - Tanker - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)

I have been away from CoH for the last year. Why? Because I think I burned myself out with the sheer number of characters I created and leveled up when Homecoming opened. So once you've come back and gotten familiar with the game, what is next? COSTUME UPDATE! This is my Savage Melee/Energy Aura scrapper's updated costume. I'd show his original but its so 80s it hurts.

The group was in its 30s. I remember it being a race between the tank and the GC to see who could pull.

The response to my hinting that it was a problem was saying, "You just have to enter the zone." Why a low hp character without status protection would want to is beyond me and should have been seen as an obvious non-starter.

I was on a pickup Penolope Yin TF and roundly thanked for my use of DS when the team, already overwhelmed, faced the door onslaught. It's a tool to be used, though it can certainly be used poorly. Of course I was once on a pickup where the nitwit with DS used it on every pull. As I was on a ranged character I bit my tongue and quit asap.

Even on click ones you should just set it auto and slot for enough recharge that it is always up. I have not clicked on my Rad/Shield brute since he was too low to have it perma.

Mez protection is a toggle for both Invulnerability and Willpower. Perhaps you were thinking of Shield?

It is my third Tanker now that CoH is back and it works wonderfully.

Ice/Time will definitely slow things but it's kinda overkill. Moreover you are hostage to group playing as Jack Frost is a miserable pet. While I plan to complete my Ice/Time controller someday, once I have enough spare influence to sink into her, she currently languishes at 45th level. Great buffs though. For slowing things down, I have had a lot more fun with my Ice/Time corruptor. For control I have been much happier with Electric/ Cold.

Had one on live, but did not remake. Was a definite blast though.

There is one on Torchbearer. I am not in it, but if you catch Ultimate Power Girl online, she can invite you. Tell her Mind Blaze sent you.

Every attack makes things bleed. So that is damage that is being done, but not immediately. It should count for something but since you have no way to know the bleed on a target will kill it you are most likely going to expend more endurance for immediate damage. That becomes less wasteful however the more health you have to claw your way through since only the final hit stands to have its bleed portion do nothing.

If the issue is one faction or a single member of a faction, I am not sure I can see that as a set issue. Plenty of sets and powerset combos have issues with a given faction or faction unit. What is Dark Melee or War Mace going to do when -Acc makes it start whiffing? Why is the problem Savage Melee and not the armor setvit was paired with? In a radio mission group this past weekend the options were CoT, BP, and Tsoo. Its telling that everyone groaned. Some factions are broadly annoying. As for outgoing damage...I do wonder if SM scores smaller hits because it is intended to be attacking faster. If at full Frenzy stacks you are attacking 20% more often then to keep pace with other sets in theory you should be dealing 83% of the damage per hit. I see something similar on my Katana scrapper where the attacks come quickly but for smaller amounts than say my Radiation Melee scrapper, whose attacks come slowly but land like boulders. If that is the case (a) we should be looking more towards the number of damage numbers thrown up than their magnitude though (b) the benefit of faster attacks is diminished.