roleki

So far in my experience the best slotting for Gale has been the Sudden Acceleration KB:KD enh, the FF+Rech proc, and the Acc/KB from either. I also make room for a FF+Rech and KB:KD in Tornado, and try to wedge a third FF+Rech in somewhere. 3x FF+Rech is pretty much perma +100% recharge in combat, provided you use those powers in combat, of course.

You can see some of what it is actively doing by monitoring the PetCombat log, but not everything will appear there. CoD has the detailed list of what each of Fluffy's powers actually does; long story short, it spams a high-mag ST Hold, a high-mag AoE Immob, an AoE heal, and almost everything it does has a -ToHit component and some -Damage. Slot it with the Cloud Senses proc and just deploy it at all times, it is a REALLY good pet.

Two+ years later, I still get a little chill off that first percussion hit at the login screen. The sound of Energy Blast The sound of Howling Twilight The sight of an EB suddenly lifting off the ground as Singularity floats in from behind my shoulder An OSA bursting into flames Energy Stored! I could literally go on for hours.

I don't always pick the same Lore Pets, but I DO always go Radial because the best buff in the game is an undefeatable friend who effectively increases my aggro cap 🙂 I am particularly fond of Seers Radial (constant Fortitude buff) and Warworks Radial (a little debuff out of the beatstick, some decent buffs out of the Shield Drone), but Knives Radial is pretty strong as well; when they're ON the buffs are comparatively massive but the timing is uneven. I only ever went with theme once, on my Demons/EA MM, and it was a disappointment because the Demon lore pets don't look like they come from the same circle of hell as the MM demons.

Yes, because nothing could be less like clicking a contact, acquiring a mission, finishing that mission, and going back to that contact to get the next mission than AE.

Personally, I never take a self-rez power on account I can just keep an inspiration in my tray (or in my mailbox) and save that slot in the build for something that will help prevent my being killed in the first place. Dark Mastery is probably my favorite EPP in the game. The combo of Oppressive Gloom and Soul Drain on a melee-centric character is almost OP.

Grav/Storm is just flat out fun to run. No self heal, and kind of meh until you hit 26, but man, does it make up for it. But really, the time you spend 0-26 is a blink compared to the time you spend 26-50, which is when Grav/Storm really picks up steam. Grav/Time is decent, steady stuff with a nice mix of buffs/debuffs from the secondary. Grav/Kin is capable of chunking out some serious ST damage; Wormhole a couple of mobs together, Fulcrum Shift, start whaling.

Considering +Def is pretty much all FF does, it's kind of ridiculous that it DOESN'T do DDR, but something something cottages.

What's your global?

The weird thing is, the more I do to earn inf, the less I need inf. In fact, if I'm kitting out a new 50, when the process is over I usually have more inf than I started with. The only thing I buy off the market are Converters, Hero\Villain Packs, and lately, Kismets. The only thing I dump on the market are orange recipes, white salvage, and catalyzed ATOs. How Why anyone makes it in this game with only a single account is a mystery to me.

Obviously, you think this is some kind of game. Oh wai

ARE YOU CALLING FOR A FOURTH CATEGORY?

Plant/Thorns is also a ridiculous buzzsaw

We are ALL students, in our own way.

Iron Belle? Oh, she's got to be an Emp/Water Defender who goes around distributing essential vitamins and minerals to people.

How about keep the damage where it's at, and ADD crits? Or, some kind of "reverse Scourge" where the more health something has, the more damage a Sentinel does? Or something, I don't know. They gave Controllers Containment when that AT was flagging, and now you're as apt to find a Controller as you would a Scrapper or a Blaster. Me, I'm "happy" with my Sentinels because I treat them like Defenders that traded support powers for armor, instead of lamenting that they are underperforming Blasters or ranged Scrappers. That said, I acknowledge that a team/league would benefit far more from having an actual DPS AT or an actual Support AT in my spot.

Used to be, you'd hit one and you'd need a spotter across the zone to tell you where it landed. You could legitimately fire one so high in the air and so far it would get stuck in the War Wall between zones. But they dialed down the KB somewhere along the line, and now you can barely get one to fly more than 200'. I get WHY they did it, but I wish they'd have a server event or something where everybody in Echo: AP got a 10000% KB enhancement just from being there. You know, for old times' sake.

I have an alt build on my En/En blaster that went this route. I logged on once and there was a Zombie event in progress right underneath me, so I Nova'd, forgetting that the +KB build was active. For some reason, nobody was happy with Zombie Rain. In any event, as was posted earlier in the thread, you don't REALLY need to use the KB:KD enhancement if you're smart about how the KB works, but I usually just slot them anyway. I've already given up chasing MAX DMG! by rolling an EN in the first place, so, what's another 4 or 5% of enhanced damage/acc/rech lost? That said, I love my Kin/En Defender and my En/KIn Corruptor, they're legitimately just fun-to-run perpetual cannons.

I'm like 500 miles from my machine and builds so I can't post it here, but I have what I think is a pretty decent Spines/Fire/Energy Mastery brute that can do fire and s/l farms without problem, running just over 46% Melee Def and just over 86% S/L resists, nothing boosted. Way I figure, by and large the most damaging incoming attacks will be ST Melee, and if I can minimize the effect of those, I can survive the AoE/Ranged stuff just fine, and that seems to be the case when I get on the maps; I might click Healing Flames once in a full cave map. Way I did that was not monkeying around with an EPP that requires a bunch of slots to be effective, leaving some slots to spread around the build for +Melee Def set bonuses. I use 6x Touch of Death in ST attacks, 6x Obliteration in PBAoE, and 4-slotting Unbreakable Guard in Fire Shield and Tough. One of those got the UGuard +7.5% HP enhancement, but whichever one did also got the Steadfast Protection +Res/+Def unique and the Gladiator's Armor +Def unique. As a side effect, I also had slots to add to Stamina/Health to address endurance issues between Ageless hits, and the Shield Wall/Reactive Defenses +Res(All) uniques. I know it's rather unbrutish to skip more AoE attacks in favor of relentlessly wading forward, but it's what I do.

Not forgetting that at all! On those few occasions I needed PFF, by the time I realized I NEEDED PFF, I'd already taken enough damage that the next couple hits, even at ~60% strength, would be enough to make me a grease spot. Back before the Incarnate system was a thing and even yellow IO sets were only for the affluent, I used to 'farm' the wall in Cimerora with my Fire/FF controller; if even one of the Lieutenants-or-better broke containment, they would break containment for the whole mob and next thing I know, I've got multiple jerks farming ME. Even the minions had 6000 attacks, so I had like a microsecond between hearing the "Hyuh! of Death" and actual death. Point being, if you use PFF as a buff to go places you probably shouldn't instead of using it as an ohshi button, that 40% Res(All) is of more benefit.

'Worthless' is a pretty strong word, but only by a shade. In 180-odd levels of running Fire/FF controllers, I've only ever activated PFF in earnest maybe 10 times. That said, I've done so understanding that even with PFF active, everything still has a 5% chance of clobbering me... so I usually only activate it if escape is possible.

In response to the question in the thread title: "As a LotG mule."

This is why I have just been spraypainting https://forums.homecomingservers.com/installation-guide/ on the sides of train cars and bridges throughout the upper midwest and Canada.

If you click on the menu link in the upper right of CoD, you can set it to not show PvP (or show PvP and hide PvE) totals; I find that makes it a LOT easier to parse out what a power actually does.

What's weird is, I somehow manage to have a good time with CoH despite not staggering through content repeatedly. Like right now, I am in the process of optimizing a Beam Rifle/TA Corruptor. So much -Res! Now usually on a /TA I would sell out for positional defense and take Alpha Cardiac to shore up endurance, but all that -Res baked into the build kind of screams out for higher base damage to really take advantage of the mechanics involved; that means Musculature off the bat, and you have to address the endurance issues through set bonuses. Since +End usually doesn't come with any significant +Def, you pretty much end up running around naked but loaded for bear. Unfortunate side-effect of having so much +Damage and -Res: you sort of one-shot even-con minions, but only if you let them linger around for the DoT to count them down, during which time they are free to shoot at you or whatever. Reminder, you are now naked. You can solve this build-wise by dropping Single Shot in favor of Cutting Beam as a low-cost minion rake, even though you'll miss having that extra ST cooldown when tackling harder targets. Point being, if I were trucking characters through content level-by-level, I am confident that I wouldn't be mucking around with the minutiae of a friggin' Beam/TA Corruptor right now because I'd still be mired in the "hero's journey" of some generic-ass Scrapper two years later. If that's "fun" to someone, more power to them and I promise I'll not look as sideways at THEM as they do ME, but as long as I have the choice to do so, I will continue to PL my characters - damning all the dings along the way - in favor of having a stable full of dozens of oddball final builds that I have pored over incessantly to get "just so" because that's how I have a good time.