Seroster01

I had another question, though this one may be a bit broader in scope: which Interface do you pick? Obviously we want one of the ones with a dmg proc, and of the ones with such a proc the 2 that seem most useful are Degenerative & Reactive. From what I've read, Degenerative seems to be considered the most powerful effect in terms of general kill speed, or at least the most powerful vs EB+ enemies. OFC because of that it seems to be the most common option & thus the HP debuff part of it frequently goes to waste. From what I've read, Toxic damage is also the most resisted damage type, so it might lose some points for that. Degenerative giving -res seems like it could be pretty powerful just because of how impactful res debuffs are, but I haven't heard much praise for that one so I'm not sure how useful it is. Anyway, I'd love to hear any input from you on this choice (or anyone else who wants to contribute obviously).

I'll second the dislike of FF these days. It's a set that was very useful in a time before IOs & Incarnate powers. Nowadays everyone & their dog has IOd their way to 30% defense or more, & it's easier to get status resistance than it used to be. It's an OK set, but I'd rather bring the 3 sets Spirit Fox brought up, because they'll give decent def bonuses and ALSO have effects that will increase your group's DPS. Can't contribute anything useful for discussing Nature, as it wasn't in the game when I quit playing (is it a Homecoming thing?) & I haven't really looked at it here. For your Mids question at the end there, if you hold shift & L-click it'll remove the slot you clicked on. Something to keep in mind when you start deleting slots is that you can use the "Slots" menu to have their levels auto-sorted. If you end up with slots you can't place where you want them, go up to said Slots menu & somewhere in there is an option to "Auto-arrange all slots" (I want to say it's under a sub-menu at the bottom of that dropdown, but I'm not in front of it). Anyway, if you click that option it causes whatever slots you have left to become the highest level slots you have available, which usually results in being able to put them in anything sub-50 (occasionally sub-49, if you use all your lvl 50 slots on your lvl 49 power).

As a preface, my TM experience comes completely from my Thugs/Time MM. With that being said, my personal experience is Time Crawl's biggest impact comes from adding the shorter Mag 1 hold to Time Stop's normal Mag 3. End result is that it's much easier & faster to perma-hold bosses. Depending on what mob group you're fighting this could be a big deal, or almost no deal. I'll throw in that Defender support numbers may make TC's bonus to Delayed Response more valuable. For MMs, the -res debuff (which is th important part) goes from 20->27-ish if the target it hits is Delayed. That's not bad, but not particularly great either. I don't know the exact numbers for Defenders but IIRC, Defender support #s are substantially larger than MMs, so both the base # & the increase might be larger for a defender. Given that -res seems to be one of the more useful Debuffs, having what could be a significantly larger # on that could be worth it vs beefier targets.

KWell, I've heard several people say that set just bonuses don't affect pets... but I've heard a few people say they do. For whatever it's worth, +dam bonuses from IO sets don't seem to be reflected in a pet's combat info screen. What I will say: slotting proc IOs into certain pet powers can significantly increase pet damage, but this is very power-specific. The only way pets will have access to said procs is if some of their powers have a debuff attached, and then the proc only affects the powers that cause that debuff. Because of this combination of things, there's only a few pets, from specific sets, that will make good use of this. I know Ninjas get solid use from the defense debuff & accurate defense debuff procs, but I can't recall if it's both their T1 & T2 pets, or just one of those. Thugs are pretty lucky on this front, because Enforcers can take the same defense debuff procs & it affects all but one of their powers, AND the bruiser can take the KB smashing proc which will affect all of his. Demons don't have super great options for procs because their pets are structured such that the T1 & T2 pets are a mix of different demons, who then have different abilities & as such the procs you can slot in them tend to only affect a single demon, & then might not affect all of that one's powers. The one good one Demons can do is putting a slow damage proc in the T3 pet, as the Prince or w/e has slows in every power AFAIK. Undead are a mixed bag as I understand it, as I think T2s can slot the -def procs but not all their powers are affected, but the Lich can take -to-hit procs & that'll affect all of his stuff. After that I can't really recall the other sets. There's a thread kicking around about procs, but I don't have time to look it up now...

What about Lore pets?

Thanks for the response. Do you think Hybrid Assault is worth it, given how frequently pets have to be re-summoned? Or should I just stick to Support Hybrid? I could certainly use the end discount.

Well I decided to ask a 2nd question here, since its kinda related to this subject (if I can't find an answer & nobody responds I'll just make another...) How do the Interface Incarnate Abilities interact with pets? If Interface works like IO procs as we've been discussing & they have normal effects & the % chance to proc, it seems like MMs would be uniquely suited to get a very large return on investment. MMs whole schtick with their pets amounts to "Death by 1,000 cuts", with 6 henchman each throwing out a constant stream of low-damage attacks. If each of those attacks has a 75% chance to trigger a damage DoT at the normal strength, that seems like it could add a significant amount of damage to an MMs normal output. Which is why I feel skeptical that it works that way...

I'll chime in with a bit more of a positive response for Sentinels. I'd agree that for the most part Sentinels are essentially weaker versions of range-focused VEATs. BUT, the version of Bio Armor that Sentinels get is my favorite armor set in the game. When Offensive Adaptation is on along with your other toggles you get a permanent damage boost thats around 15-20% I think, & +7.5% to-hit, AND, in what seems like some kind of bug or oversight, you ALSO get a bonus amount of toxic damage that seems to be some % of the attack's base damage. As you get into the 25+ range you'll also get Athletic Regulation, which somehow gives you such strong movement boosts that Ninja Run will put you at the run speed cap without even needing to switch on Sprint, and near as I can tell it looks very possible to get plain ole Hover to the flight speed cap (though that's a pretty pointless waste of build resources TBH). Theres also apower towards the end of the set thats supposed to give a universal range bonus while Offensive Adaptation is on, but it seems bugged such that it gives you the ability's bonus from Defensive Adaption instead. Now, It's certainly got some holes in survivability, given that you can't realistically get your def softcapped without popping Lucks & the set's resitances are mediocre (mind you i dont mean poor, just not great). BUT if it's played correctly it's still very sturdy. It's got a very good absorb shield power that also gives a significant chunk of regeneration, & a clicky power that restores both HP & End. After re-rolling 5-6 times to try different versions of a /bio Sentinel I ended up settling on Water/Bio, and let me tell you he is a beast. Usually kills the minions & LTs in a pack with his alpha strike, as his opening of Aim+gausians>Geyser>Steam Spray does around 800 damage on the low end. Since Sents get a 1:30 recharge time on all their T9 abilities, and given end-game levels of recharge in the build he can do Aim+Geyser around every 25 seconds. His ST performance is about like his damage resistance, mediocre but not bad. The only real downside I'd ascribe to the character is that he ends up soloing a bit slowly simpl5 because it's hard to hit a large amount of enemies with Steam Spray when all the mobs pile up in melee range. If you're looking just looking for a fun character to try, /Bio Sentinel has some interesting stuff going for it.

Leviathan mastery has been mentioned in passing, but I'll bring up something that no one else seems to have mentioned at this point: Arctic Breath is a very strong AoE debuff to be sitting in the early parts of a PPP. Does decent damage & Gives a -20% res to all damage on the mobs it hits, along with a defense debuff (which is kinda just a tack-on bonus these days, as -def effects typically aren't very impactful in the modern game...). People have brought up that Bile Spray does Toxic damage & how that interacts positively with Venom Grenade, but I just don't know that it's worth taking even then. Crabs don't really need more AoE, and unlike Arctic Breath it doesn't do anything other than damage (at least that I can remember...). Something I'll throw out there tonight & maybe look into it myself tomorrow: I've personally never done the math to check, but its theoretically possible that Venom Grenade's debuff makes Bile Spray's DPE & DPA become better than the alternatives. Taken with the "opportunity costs" standpoint of also gaining access to Arctic Breath, it might make the PPP worth taking. At the same time, Toxic Resistance is the most prevalent type of resistance for mobs to have, so that probably cancels out this bonus if you're considering overall pros & cons. More importantly, I feel like if VG mathematically made BSpray worth using then folks would already be talking about it, & I've yet to see anyone say that. As such I doubt that's the case, but I'm curious now that I've thought about it...

If I understand what you said correctly & you have no set bonuses right now, that's probably gonna be why you're squishy. Def-based sets are obviously a lot stronger when you can get soft capped. Perhaps I'm underestimating Fort base #s, but when I was building my Widow I don't think I could soft cap without some of the set bonuses or uniques. Getting either or both of the 2 3% def bonus uniques could shoot your survivability up quite a bit if you aren't already capped. The following may be an info dump that you already know, but if not: If you buy the attuned version of IOs of the market the enhancement values will scale up as you level (up to the set's maximum level) but the set & unique bonuses will function down to their minimum level (technically the minimum level of the set -3). Due to the quirks of the market on Homecoming, Attuned IOs cost exactly the same as un-atunned ones, and as such buying attuned IOs off of the market usually costs less than the cost of crafting an IO + the value of a Catalyst (really, most attuned IOs cost less than a Catalyst by itself). Combine these 2 aspects & there's no real reason not to slot attuned IO sets basically as soon as you can slot them. Of course one of the +def uniques costs ~7M & the other 10M+, so it depends if you have those funds obviously. Anyway, IOs feel like the answer to most of your troubles. +recovery & +def bonuses are some of the most prevalent bonuses & should help a lot. Something else I noticed in passing while scrolling past your posted build is that Indomitable Will is taken pretty late. I'd take that as soon as it's available since it's got good mez resistance & it's an easy place to stick one or both of those 3% def IOs. If you can afford to give it 2 slots, slotting Steadfast protection's res/def unique & res/end IO will get you 3% defense to all & a 1.5% bonus to recovery.

Since this kicked back up I'll chime back in. I ended up making a bane & getting it to 50 & relatively IOd out. I kept Venom Nade in the build & it's actually a significant deal because it gives double it's -res (so -40%) to Toxic, which boosts the ATO global toxic proc, AND all Bane mace attacks do a moderate amount of Toxic damage as a DoT afterthe initial hit. Poison ray does purely toxic damage & thus ends up pretty strong when it hits a mob with the debuff the (& that combines well with the PVP toxic proc). The redraw doesn't usually feel significant enough to notice, because of a few oddities. The most relevant of them is that for some reason using Crowd Control with the gun out seems to basically bypass the redraw. It could be that I'm just not noticing it, but it consistently feels quicker to use CC with the gun out than a few of the other attacks. One that seems like it takes way too long is going from gun>Poisonous Ray. Another that feels really long is going gun>Black Scorpion mace powers. Otherwise I barely notice it, and I think the character would be significantly weaker in multiple ways without it. He's an exceptional boss killer, given that the way I have him set up he gives a -60% res to everything but toxic (-80% to toxic) on individual targets. Throw that stuff in with solid damage himself & bosses don't last long. Helps quite a bit with EB/AV/GM targets too, though it's not as noticeable with them. All-in-all he feels like one of the stronger characters I've made. Not as good at AOE as a similar crab build would be, but he's not bad at AOE & someone else on a team having good AOE is much more likely to happen than another character with similar ST performance. Overall I like him really well. Very good character.

Ah, I remembered the 2nd bit I was thinking about; if I have no damaging attacks coming from my actual character (which I don't), isn't the +dam useless? Last time I tried to look into it I read that +dam set bonuses (really any set bonuses) don't affect pets. Even if I did have some damaging attacks, MM base damage is so low that it doesn't seem like there'd be much point to boosting +dam with set bonuses?

Hrm, I certainly did not know to skip the first upgrade. Removing those attacks doesn't create gaps in their attack chain? And/or the additional proc chances don't make up for the attack's weaker power? In a slightly different vein, Bruiser isn't a better spot for the BU proc? Seems to do a significant amount of DPS & I assumed the Enforcers conning lower would make the Bruiser a better spot for it. I think I had other questions from this thread, but I gotta take care of my Nephew so I'll have to come back to it..

In a different vein, do you know the answer to my question about the Control Core Hybrid? Seems like it could be pretty strong if it had a chance to proc from every pet attack. Especially from Gang War...

I'm not in front of my PC right now (though I'm not sure it would matter if I was), but is there any particular reason you used Sovereign Right for the acc/dam?

Hrm, I'll have to read up on the -res bit, cause I 100% thought -res debuffs affected total damage taken. I know +damage works the way you describe, but at least according to Target Examiner -res effects lower their actual resistance, which should have the effect of increasing all damage taken of the applicable type(s). As far as procs go I think you've misunderstood the mechanics on how they work. They're called Procs Per Minute now because they changed how they function from a flat percentile chance to occur into a system that is still functionally a percentile chance, but said chance is adjusted up or down based on certain aspects of the power it's slotted in. It's mostly based on recharge #s, but cast time also plays a role. As such, there's no technical cap on procs you can have other than the limit of times a character can fire a given power in a minute. If you drop a random proc into any given power & there's no +recharge involved it can be expected to fire the given amount of PPM (if the power can actually be used that # of times in a minute of course.) But it's still technically a % chance, and so it can occur more or less often based on good/bad RNG. If a character is built to utilize them properly, it's very possible for the IOs to reliably proc more in a given minute than the base PPM (which is 3.5 for almost all the damage procs). Typically this is done by avoiding recharge from enhancements (including the alpha slot) in the power itself & then pushing global recharge from powers, IOs, etc. For an example, if a proc has a PPM of 1 & is slotted into a power w/ a base 30s recharge it would have apprx. 50% chance to trigger each time you cast it, and of course would average out to 1 per minute. BUT if you didn't have any recharge enhancements in it & had enough global recharge that said power's actual recharge was 15s (100% global recharge), the power would still have the same ~50% chance to fire. Given that you can now use the power 4 times per minute, you've functionally doubled your expected # of procs in a given minute. For MM, pet procs can actually have a very large effect, because slotting a proc into a pet power will basically behave as if you'd put that proc into every eligible power that pet can use. As Enforcers have several powers that do -def, putting procs from -def sets will give each of those powers an independent chance to proc & each power will have its own "PPM count", for lack of a better term. So now you've got 2 Enforcers & each has multiple powers that can cause the procs to occur. A bit of peculiarity for pets is that because pets (at least MM pets) are functionally immune to +recharge effects, each power should be expected to proc a # of times equal to the base PPM & this can't really be changed. But 3.5 PPM across 3-4 powers for each Enforcer is relatively significant. For reference, the general info on PPM is taken from this guide: And the interaction of Procs w/ MM Pets is from here: Perhaps these were outdated by a patch since I first read them, but I certainly didn't see anything in the patch notes that effect. Anyway, thanks for responding!

Ah, as a secondary question, does anyone know if the top-level Hybrid Control Core will proc from pets? As a /time MM I can perma-hold bosses pretty easily. If they then have a 75% chance for a Psi proc from every pet hit, it seems like that could add up REALLY fast. Obviously won't work great against things w/ the Triangles of Doom, but in normal conditions it seems like it could have a lot of potential.

The following post devolved into a wall of text, as my posts frequently do, so the TL;DR summary is the following: which 2 of the following 4 IOs would you put in the last 2 slots of Enforcers? LOTG +rech Lady Gray/Shield Breacker damage procs Achilles -res If you want more details & my personal thoughts on the pros & cons of each option (some of which might be based on an incorrect understanding of things I've read), then by all means read on. After spending a fair amount of time examining my options, I've got my Thugs mostly slotted how I want them. They're all ED-capped on damage, with varying amounts of ACC/END based on which pet it is & are a mix of Frankensloting & low-count set bonuses. I've got Enforcers set up such that they have their basics covered with 4 slots of set IOs. That leaves me with 2 slots to put procs in, and my essential question is what are the best options for those 2 slots? As I see it there's 4 options for those 2 slots that would likely be better options than just capping their enhanceable combat stats: a LOTG +rech, the Shield Breaker Lethal proc, the Lady Gray NE proc, and the Achilles -res. LOTG is probably the least interesting option for me, simply because my current build (being /time) already has a pretty large amount of +rech. Adding the 7.5% doesn't really accomplish anything significant, but the +def component obviously boosts their Maneuvers' values a smidge. Combined with a relatively minor gain from the +rech, the net effect seems like it MIGHT be useful (at least in theory). AFAIK, Shield Breaker & Lady Gray are basically identical in the numerical sense, though obviously LG has the better damage type. After a bit more reading on procs (specifically I couldn't remember if they were affected by minimum level requirements), I'll probably slot at least the LG proc given its better damage type. But would the other proc be a better choice than these other 2 options? That leaves the Achilles -res proc, which I think COULD be the most impactful overall, but when I was reading about Scrapper builds a few characters ago I'm pretty sure it was said that the Achilles proc had some type of an internal CD. I'm again hazy here, but I think it was something along the lines of it would only proc on one target at a time in AOE powers & additionally had something like a 9.5s lockout before the character could proc it again (though I'm not clear on of that meant it wouldn't proc at all or just that it wouldn't proc on a 2nd target) . I haven't seen this discussed anywhere else, or of any other PPM IOs having similar lockout (specifically, I don't see anything in the PPM guide about such a system being in place), so IDK if it's accurate. I might be misunderstanding this, but it seems like the largest benefit of procs in pets is that each proc can effect multiple pet powers, giving a comparatively large # of procs over a given amount of time. Taken together, if I understand the pet+procs dynamic & it does have some type of inner CD to that effect, it seems like this would somewhat hamper its usefulness in Enforcers. Though i suppose taken another way, having so many powers that can proc it might mean it has almost permanently uptime because of the PPM mechanics... AAAAAnyway, I figured the MM forums may have a better grasp on this subject than I did, so I'm looking forward to what y'all have to say!

Title basically says it all. In the current version of the Hero designer the ST Mace attacks look insanely strong. Not at my PC right now so I can't remember the names, but the builder says the highest damage ST attack is an average of 700+ damage per activation without buildup or such, and the 2nd highest is 500+. Some of this is procs, but these numbers seem significantly higher than the same attacks on my similarly IOd WM Scrapper & don't seem to match up with the base #s I see in-game. Could easily be either user error or a calculation going wrong somewhere, since the current version of the designer... I guess I'd describe it as "seems like it could use a fair amount of polish". Because of that I'm curious how strong they are in actual usage. In a tangentially related question, does the redraw involved in casting Venom Nade cause issues? I can't imagine leaving it out of the rotation would be an improvement, but it seems like it'd be a real PITA to have double redraw come around every 8-10 seconds.

I'd rather have any toon with AM & Enervating Field on my team than any blaster or Dom. AM is a great buff & EF will significantly increase the kill speed of any group, because with how all the combat numbers work -res is one of the strongest Debuff effects kicking around & it isn't as widely available as most others. Fallout gets a bad rap bc it requires a teammate death, but it's actually pretty powerful if someone dies in a convenient location/situation. I'd agree that Radiation Infection has seen a significant loss of impactfulness because of IOs, but I'd still say Rad is one of the stronger support sets when taken as a whole. The one support set I will say has probably become redundant is Force Fields, as +def is one of the easiest things to boost with IOs & I can't recall it having any Offensive buffs to pair with it. Certainly not useless, but other powersets can boost defense AND increase the group's damage output.

I'd like to chime in on the subject on 2 fronts: 1.) I think most of what you're describing wasn't really being replaced by Villain ATs, it was the end result of the IO system. This is primarily bwcause every character can be made at least moderately tanky. To a lesser degree, the potential to have huge amounts of +rech & +recovery that are both passive & permanent also reduced the impact of many Support sets' buffs. 2.) I'm not sure what you're really trying to advocate for here? The ATs that keep getting brought up, Controllers & Defenders, are among the most useful ATs in the game. Support sets are massively powerful in CoH, moreso than any other MMO I've played. This is doubly true for sets that boost effective damage (+dam, -res, +rech, etc). I'd much rather have a Controller than a Dom in the vast majority of situations. Defenders are a bit closer to Corruptors for me, but they still have major advantages in that their support #s are a fair bit higher & they get their powers significantly earlier (that last one doesn't matter much at 50, but I spend a lot of time doing exemplared TFs & I think that's pretty common, so I'd think that matters a significant amount overall) Interestingly, I can remember reading a bit somewhere on the net about how Defs were actually stronger than Corrs in most situations, because the difference in buff/debuff #s was larger than the difference in their basic damage #s. Scourge is a big boost vs targets with large health pools (AVs & such), but most regular mobs die too fast for it to make a significant difference. Something might've changed since then though, as I believe that was well before shutdown. Aaanyway, the only class that I'd say has a legitimate issue with redundancy in the modern game is Tanks, as increasing survivability is one of the easiest things to accomplish via IOs & high survivability is really the only thing a tank has to differentiate themselves. And even with that being the case, I still see & play with many tankers, because being able to take a big pack's alpha to the face without immediately eating dirt is still a very useful skill. With all of that in mind, what exactly are you advocating for? Every class is useful, and any given AT may be more or less desirable than any other depending on your groups' current composition & enemy/content type. To me, this is one of the greatest strengths of CoH. What would be accomplished by creating content that REQUIRED specific group compositions? How would you even accomplish this? If nothing else, Support sets are so strong in this game that any given group can clear any content in the game if some character(s) in the group have the right support powersets. A group of just about any 8 defenders is actually ridiculously strong because of buff/debuff stacking, even without significant IO investment (See: an all Emp Defender team, where proper buff usage results in the whole team having capped defenses, huge regen/recovery buffs, significant damage boosts, & maybe more that I can't remember). You'd have to actually gut the classes you seem to be advocating for in order to accomplish what you're asking. And then what would be the positive result of such a change? The only results I really see from such a request are negatives. There would be less choice in which characters are desirable for groups, amd it would require significantly more time/effort to be exerted in putting a group together since the leader would have to continually find & recruit the proper ATs in order for a group to have a composition that's even CAPABLE of accomplish the group's desired goals. It sounds to me like your basic goal is to increase the game's difficulty, but very little of the games difficulty is wrapped up in what ATs are brought to a group & the ATs with the MOST impact on making group content easier are the ones you seem to think are currently at a disadvantage. There's already plenty of ways to increase the difficulty of your play sessions if you chose to do so. In any event, I'm pretty sure you could functionally accomplish what you're asking by simply removing IOs... but even then I just fundamentally don't understand what you're hoping to accomplish. If you want things to be more difficult, change things like what you're doing & how you play the game. Removing the IO system would certainly make the game more difficult, but honestly it's one of the largest reasons I even play CoH. That seems to be a common sentiment, & as such removing it from a server is likely going to result in a cripplingly small playerbase. More to what's been discussed here, having certain ATs be nigh-mandatory is just going to result in more group-related stresses & has no benefit I can think of that couldn't be accomplished with the current systems.

I'm pretty ambivalent to the setting of CoH, as the reason it was and will likely always be my favorite MMO is the game mechanics + the IO system. I'd play a game with those 2 systems in just about any imaginable setting. Honestly I think I might prefer COH in a (mostly) pure space scifi setting. That being said, I think there would need to be a moderate level of changes to parts of the game to make it fit a fantasy setting, primarily aesthetic changes to power sets in terms of animations & effects. A lot of the powersets can easily be claimed to be "magic" but I can't really think of any that look very much like magic is being cast. Then you've got sets that use very modern looking guns/robots/etc. Course the game is already getting a reskin, I'd imagine they could skin that stuff too in such a situation...

Yes I read that before the post, but I didn't really understand it. In a spot of luck I decided to open the spreadsheets listed in the article (I don't usually open them on my phone cause they're hard to browse on it) and discovered there's actually a PPM calculator google doc. Experimenting with the sheet clarified the maths for me, though it looks like I need to look at the in-game activation time for that step. Most of my confusion was how MRT was calculated, mostly because I couldn't figure out of the slotted +rech in the equation was supposed to be put in decimal form (.95) or percentage form (95). I may still have it wrong, but it seems like the results make more sense in decimal form so I assume that's the proper version. 🤷‍♂️

As the title would imply I'm a bit hazy on how to determine the frequency of Gaussian's BU procs when slotted into Aim (the character I'm trying to implement it on is a Water Sent so it's technically Tidal Forces, but AFAIK that's just semantics?). This is probably oversimplified, but my general understanding of the system is that each proc IO has a default PPM that would result in a functional 90% chance to trigger if the power it's in has no slotted +rech & the IO hasn't procced its allotted # of times in the last 60 seconds. As such, it seems on paper that an unenhanced Aim would have the 90% chance to trigger on every activation due to the 90s base recharge of the power. So with that laid out, the part that has me befuddled is how slotting +rech affects the chance for it to proc & how the whole thing interacts with high levels of global +rech. So the final math equation is this: if I have a power with a 90s recharge time slotted with the BU proc + ED-capped recharge reduction, does that mean I've cut the chance for it to proc on any given activation in half? If you add that part of the equation to an amount of +rech that the Planner says will result in a ~30s CD, how frequently should I expect it to go off when I activate the power? Thanks in advance for any responses.

I mean, those are good ideas but not in any way related to my actual question. All I wanted to know was whether or not getting +damage set bonuses was a waste of time. Sounds like it is.