roleki

As someone whose bases are largely just empty rooms full of storage bins and transporters, it is absolutely stunning to me what you and your gang were able to do with the same base editor I use. It really is amazing work and well worth rolling a little fella on Everlasting just to go through the House. I've been back a couple times just to LOOK at it, and to "people-watch" as other folks stumble in and find their way into Hell.

Absolutely insane. Job well done, whomever is responsible!

I may be in the minority, but I felt TA was very playable before the buff, but only as a Controller/Corruptor secondary. The buffs definitely made it a more viable Defender primary (IMHO). That said, I think the recharge on Glue Arrow and OSA are right on target for what they do. As for EMP Arrow... eh, I'm not going to as far as to say they missed the mark on this, but with that duration and recharge, it's best suited for encounters where your whole group is going to be in one area for a LOOOOONG time, and there's just not a lot of that these days. I've kept it on all my TAs just because I like having ALL the arrows, but I also end up with Clarion on all of those dudes, so it ends up gathering quite a bit of dust.

Devouring Earth. Who wouldn't want to spend all day at the beach?

Ha! My first character was also an En/En; I don't recall if Hellion golf was the FIRST thing I did with it, but, I do know I spent an inordinate amount of time street hunting in AP because it was so damn hilarious to launch a dude then blast them in midair. In any event, I owe the HC team a debt of gratitude for not only bringing CoH/CoX back in a stable, professional-feeling way, but coming up with kickass things, such as (among many other things) Electrical Affinity and the Artillery invention set. EA is the perfect support set for the way the game is played today, and Artillery has increased by leaps and bounds the survivability of the typically-squishy ranged characters I like to play the most.

Not going to lie, I can't even imagine going through the last ~18 months without CoH. "Psychiatrists hate this ONE WEIRD TRICK!" (Clicks Power Thrust, fires Hellion across AP)

I love my MA/WP scrapper, it's the most unassuming badass... looks like crap in Mids, has only like 7 clickable powers, but somehow survives everything and manages to look good doing it.

If I'm being perfectly honest, I wouldn't say no to a Batmanuelmobile.

That might be a thing, who knows. I don't think I've ever been on a PuG less than 4/8, and they just mow through everything regardless. It's why I'd rather solo my Brutes and Dominators, because rando teams just steamroll and that just makes it harder for those bar-builders to... build bars.

True enough; I should clarify that when I said 'nerds' I was thinking more along the lines of Possessed Scientists in lab coats that CAN fly, hanging out with winged demons that CANNOT fly.

Just because I spend inordinate amounts of time in Mids fretting over where I'm going to get that last 1.235% of S/L resist doesn't mean I think everyone should. If someone asks for slotting advice or a build and it's something I've done before, I am more than happy to send mine along, with the caveat that this is what works for ME. If it's helpful, great, if it's not what they are looking for, well, maybe it'll be what someone else is looking for down the road. It doesn't make me any poorer for sharing it, and except for the most gifted mental gymnasts, doesn't make anyone poorer for my having shared it. I know that I am grateful that there are people around here that DO post builds and answer questions on slotting; it's that willingness to share that encourages reciprocity and turns a forum of strangers into a community. If it weren't for people sharing their advice and what their experience has been with this or that, this space would just be a bulletin board where people nail up their navel-gazing screeds or sloppy wet shitposts detailing how someone else's X is ruining THEIR Y and the devs need to do something about it.

Out on the street, going door-to-door with a group, I'd take a Scrapper over a Brute, because in theory you'll have team buffs out the wazoo that mask over the inferior survival stats and amp up your damage output. Out on a pylon or some other single target benchmark, I'd go with a Scrapper over a Brute, because for linear damage, a Scrapper will *usually* chunk out more DPS than a similarly-equipped Brute, due in no small part that the Brute ATOs are absolutely shitty, while the Scrapper ATOs are among the best in the game. But if I'm farming, I'll take a /fire Brute over any combo of anything slotted however you want it. Ten seconds into a farm, a Brute runs at 200% damage before any inspirations come into the equation and it just builds from there. With the higher resist caps, Brutes rarely have to fire off any survival powers in a farm, meaning every (or, close to every) click is damage output. Insofar as farming goes, you could say pretty much the same thing about a Tank these days, with their AoEs and damage modifiers being what they are now, and in fact a Tank WILL hang with a Brute (and in some cases, out-perform a Brute) if the map is short enough, but longer/bigger farm maps, the Brute always pulls away because of Fury. All that said, if you want to join PuGs, TFs, farm, do pylons and all that with just one character, a Scrapper or a Tank will likely suit you better because their performance isn't tied so heavily to a mechanic that only reaches its potential when there is an endless supply of nerds nearby. A Brute at 40% Fury might as well be a Sentinel.

On the flip side... when I first came back, I dove straight into a TW/Bio scrapper having never done either on Live. Now all the other sets seem ULTRAFAST! and MAINTENANCE FREE!

Arctic Air is autohit, so you really only need to address Endurance and effects. Seconding @Corythia's suggestion to top it off with an End/Slow/Rech, as that extra bump in -Speed seems to make a huge difference in the effectiveness of AA. @Diantane, if you ever find it in you to give Ice/Storm another chance, try it with Hurricane as a situational toggle instead of a key component of the build... Ice/Storm is one of my favorite controllers because it leverages an abundance of soft controls like Fear, Slow, Knockdown and Confusion to the point where anything short of an EB is a trivial obstacle. I *have* Hurricane, but I rarely pop it because whatever nerds I've seized upon are too busy bugging tf out to fire back at me.

Thanks for this! How do you like the Analyze Weakness proc? I didn't like the 2.5PPM text, but, it COULD be nice.

So this weekend I rolled an EM/Rad scrapper, and while I can usually suss out a thumbnail sketch of how a build would skew just by looking at Mids/CoD, I have to admit I can't make heads or tails of Rad Armor. I have a pretty 'set' slotting for EM on a Scrapper, so I know I've about 28 free slots to throw in the secondary (on top of the free slot each power gets). Anyone have any suggestions based on the questions below? Gamma Boost - do you slot that for EndMod or Healing? It seems like it does most of its work in EndMod, but, can it save the day if I lean green instead? Radiation Therapy - does it REALLY need Accurate Healing enhancements, or does Beta Decay kind of make up the difference? Speaking of... Beta Decay - It has a fairly low Endurance cost, so EndRedx doesn't look critical. The -ToHit is really too small to invest in enhancing (if I went 6-wide with an Accurate ToHit Debuff, it ends up at a -8 ToHit) but it also doesn't feel like loading up on DefDebuff is the right way to go, either. especially if Ground Zero is doing -Def as well... Any ideas? Ground Zero - This seems like it would be a good nuke, if slotted that way, but it takes a million other enhancement types... what's a good slotting on that?

Sure, there are plenty of bread makers, but I'm talking more about the people who purchase all the pre-baked marble rye and relist it for more than marble rye would have sold for had they just left their fucking hands off of it.

There's never a shortage of threads complaining about high costs, perhaps you could read one.

To be perfectly honest, I used to slavishly dump everything I farmed to the market for minimal inf, figuring I'll just come back and buy whatever I actually need when the time comes. In late 2019, that approach ceased to be viable for reasons, so I've pretty much hoarded my drops for the last two years, with the exception of the random Call of the Sandman recipe or whatever. A funny thing happened along the way... since I stopped dumping stuff on the market, I've found I don't need the market (ergo, inf) to complete a build; I assume the vast majority of farmers still carry their full haul to the AH then just pay whatever the days crazy prices are for stuff they need, which keeps the beast chugging along fine without me.

It's hilarious to me that there are numerous people in these forums who proudly identify themselves as market manipulators, and yet folks continue to lay the blame for the high cost of everything at the feet of the farmers... whose only involvement in this scheme is the delivery of more product for the marketeers to fiddle with. "If we only cut off the supply, everything will be cheaper!"

Also, getting Vanguard Merits, so you can buy helmets or whatever.

Fair enough, I suppose I'll have to find some way of proving that Resistance and Defense IOs are typically 2x to 5x the cost of shit IOs. It seems an impossible task, but I'm sure I put my mind to it, I can find some way of correlating demand for something to its general employment by a given population.

No, no, Poison is pretty awesome once you've got it all together... it's basically a primary amplifier; if your primary was kind of weak, Poison props it up a bit. If your primary is ridiculous as-is, it's ridiculous cubed with Poison. It's one of my favorite Controller secondaries, turns everything into a truck.

Seeing as it is fairly rare to run into a character that just dies all the time in the absence of constant support, it's not a stretch to suggest that a large percentage of players build with survivability as a priority. Is it most players? Maybe, maybe not? Maybe it's down to individual shards... about 75% of the time I hang out on Indom, the other 25% on Excelsior. Anecdotally, it seems the people that still hang out on Indom are salty dogs with scads of alts that are full-on BUILT; that could be because it's the "PvP" server, or it could be because with a lower population, there's less chance that you'll luck into a support character what can patch up the holes in your build? Maybe Indom is just where the Viltrumites hang out, leaving the other shards free to live like The Gibbles? In any case, it's actually pretty easy to see in-game who built for what... if you've been around a while, the team window is just so much shorthand for the underlying builds that you can practically predict what a person has slotted before you right-click them and check for certain. If you've got two blasters, one of which their green bar keeps slapping left, it's a safe bet that if you check their info - if there are any bonuses listed at all - the first line is going to be some variation of 5x Regen bonuses, 5x Recharge bonuses, 5x Large Improved Movement Speed bonuses, and so forth. If there aren't many stacked bonuses, then they're either rocking IOs or they've sold out on procs. Meanwhile, if the second blaster's bars haven't moved at all, they're either AFK, or the first line of their set bonuses will probably read something like 5x Large Increased Ranged/Energy/Negative Energy Def Bonus, 5x Small Increased Energy/Negative Energy/Ranged Def bonus and you can bet that somewhere in there they have Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor. Again, that's just been what I've observed while running around out there.

I'm a big fan of Speed of Sound; 99% of the time it makes no thematic sense whatsoever, but dang if it isn't convenient to run here and there but still be able to pop 200' in any direction on a moment's notice.