eknudson

No red-side strike forces get a mention? They're all relatively short and none have the unnecessary hunts or zone travel, but what's the worst there? I'd probably vote for Silver Mantis. Just because unless the team is unusually coordinated getting a foothold on that ship of Duray's can be a huge PITA. I haven't done the SF's as often, though, fewer red-side characters and I think I've only gotten a team of enough high-level villains to do Barracuda once.

What I can see so far in an SR tanker confirms what I expected, FYI. SR is really good early. It's one of the best sets I've tried for making a survivable tank pre IO sets and even SOs. At level 12, with nothing more than a couple of level 15 def IOs in focused fighting and one in Dodge I was running over 30% melee defense. Probably the toughest tank I've played at that level. I'm curious to see how it does on a Positron TF. I can definitely see the concern that at level 50+ it may not be as easily enhanceable as some-- my dark tank for example has 45% defense to all but psionic and 90% resistance to all but energy and toxic-- but at low to medium levels SR is as strong as any I think. And being able to basically laugh at def debuffs and get defense to the incarnate soft cap looks promising.

Interesting that you brought up SR/Stone because I recently started a new tank and I debated long between SR/Stone and SR/Ice as two possibly underrated and underplayed combos (both are at the very bottom of the "flavor of the month" list). My logic was that SR doesn't get hit often, but the RNG says sometimes it will happen and you'll want a self-heal. Which neither set has, but both have an awesome knockdown power allowing a little breathing space to run Aid Self (ice patch and fault). In looking for "that will never work", one of your two top candidates was a finalist for my "that could work together surprisingly well"! I did eventually decide on SR/Ice, mostly because I liked the look of it's AoE potential.

Another thought-- pick the top 5 or 10 hardest or most annoying missions on each side. Missions like "prevent fir bolg from escaping", "save the peaceful oranbegans", "rescue captives from the nemesis army" and have a badge for successfully completing all of them.

You get a bow and a lot of arrows-- has anybody tried redoing this one in Oro after using up all the arrows? Some missions give you an echo version of the power (wedding ring?) and if that worked here you could refill your bow periodically if you used it up.

I have a Dark/TA blaster-- she's my main blaster. And unfortunately I'm not a huge amount of help on power selection because I took nearly everything! On the blast side, I found umbral torrent to be pretty useless without the sudden acceleration kb to kd IO. Then it became just fantastic. I often lead with it. Everything's knocked down, and then follow with tentacles and maybe even blackstar, as things get up they probably won't be able to hit me. You can skip a single target blast. You do not need all of DB, gloom, moonbeam, abyssal gaze, and life drain. My blaster is only level 41 and doesn't have a huge amount of recharge at this point so I skipped gloom. Some will tell you it's the best single target attack in dark blast, but the damage per animation is not that much better than DB and I just find the DoT annoying. In TA, it's all good. And many power picks barely need slotting to be good so you have loads of slots to put in dark blast. Much of TA is better for solo/small group play than large teams, though. On large teams slows aren't that great, flash arrow is only occasionally helpful, and there's often another character focusing on control. Net arrow isn't terrible for a pick you have to have. Stacking immobs with TT can save you at times. Glue arrow also keeps things away, and takes a couple nice damage procs. Two holds is really good against hard-hitting bosses-- especially ones that you can't easily slow or immobilize (think warwolves). A group hold is surprisingly handy and slotted with 3 damage procs ESD arrow hits pretty darn hard. You're kind of a blastroller more than a straight damage character. That's where your strength lies, IMO, so lean into it. Edit per the above-- flash arrow is I'm pretty sure autohit in PvE, so it really needs no additional slots to be very good. But yes, lead with it for ~6% -ToHit and then all your other powers doing around 5% -ToHit and if you have any defense whatsoever it quickly stacks up to make you very hard to hit.

Frostfire. Many skip him now doing DFB repeatedly and outlevel him but that mission was such a "rite of passage" that beating him should give a badge, I think.

I can't say that performance is awesome with that card but it should certainly be far better than that-- if you haven't, take a look at this reference on graphics settings https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Players'_Guide_to_the_Cities/User_Interface/Options_Window#Graphics_Options and set many of your advanced graphics options accordingly like texture quality and max particle count. For some reason for me, certain cave missions are frustrating (mostly on teams) and Atlas Park is slow but everything else runs pretty well.

I was looking at that-- I had a nin stalker on live but nothing on homecoming. Never tried kinetic melee but it looks like one of the complaints is that it gets all its good attacks early. Which isn't really a negative if part of the point is to be good before level 20. Anything in kin or nin to skip or delay?

I already have a SJ/EA scrapper, unfortunately, and I try not to duplicate too much. I hear good things about staff for stalkers, though.

I've only run one character through gold side, and I don't currently have any stalkers so I may need a new alt. Would rather use a primary I haven't tried like kinetic, savage, staff, or dual blades and a secondary that's pretty strong early and which doesn't have any massive holes to energy or psychic since those are relatively common damage types in Praetoria. Mostly solo through 20 since teams are rare gold side. Any suggestions?

Looks good to me-- small comment, if you're going to take dark embrace you may be overslotting your shields, at least if you're chasing the 3% s/l resistance bonus with the 4th slot of titanium coating. You're over your resistance cap. Should be very survivable. Defense is high enough that almost anything hit once by a dark blast power will nearly have its tohit floored, and after two hits it all will.

I'm glad that the damage resistance levels are going to be looked at eventually--I've really felt the widespread and often high levels of lethal resistance leveling my thermal/AR defender. Needing 6 shots to take out an even-con minion.... Did a 7-toon Synapse last week when it was the WST with my defender, an AR blaster, and a katana scrapper. None of us 3 were really doing a lot of damage, and the tank and controller weren't designed to do lots of damage at level 20... that was a very long TF. I wouldn't even mind so many things resisting lethal if they just didn't resist it so MUCH. A lot of in-game enemies that do lethal damage do huge burst damage (e.g. Warrior bosses) but our s/l damage doesn't does if anything less some (trade-off for a usually useless -def debuff?) and so often that damage is reduced heavily by resistance.

I would try re-installing elsewhere. Check the install guide where it says to avoid installing in program files--

What directory did you install CoH into? Check power options / advanced settings / intel graphics settings and make sure it's set to "maximum performance".

Just FYI, I'm running CoH on a Dell laptop with an HD520 video card. I sometimes have problems on certain maps (mostly caves) worse on certain players (my cold MM is the worst) but overall it's completely playable and on office maps for example there's no lag at all. Fine 90% of the time. Atlas Park for some reason is a bit laggy and I avoid it. Go into the Intel graphics control panel and make sure the power tab says graphics gets maximum performance. On the 3D panel, set everything to application defaults but turn off "conservative morphological anti-aliasing"

Have you checked the downloadable builds from the PVP section? Good number of choices, but looks like for what you want you're picking mostly between psi, dark, and ice primary, plant or tactical arrow secondary. Psi/Plant is apparently considered the go-to PVP build.

My rad melee tank went full procs in irradiated ground and that's pretty darn amazing just there. But I wouldn't gimp your build to get procs in everywhere.

It's great just after you've clicked on your destiny incarnate and you have ten seconds when you are essentially indestructible to all enemies, but I hate to plan on that level of def/res. You get 10 seconds of insane survivability, 20 more seconds of good survivability, 30 more seconds of a small boost to res/def, and a last 60 seconds of a tiny amount of resistance. Your defense other than during the first 10-30 seconds of barrier core is very low. 5% to all resists and defense for the full 120 seconds +2.5% resists and defense for first 60 seconds +25% resists and defense for first 30 seconds +57.75% resists and defense for first 10 seconds

That seems like underslotting of Thermal Shield-- it's your best team buff and you're only increasing the resistance of that shield by 16%? Can Melt Armor do the regular damage resistance debuff and ALSO the achilles heel resistance debuff? Haven't tried it, curious.

Nothing just obviously skippable in thermal. Some pass on thaw because they're busy enough. Some on the rez, power of the phoenix because you can mostly duplicate it with day jobs. Dark Pit (low accuracy mag 2 stun?) and torrent (tiny damage knockback?) are commonly skipped in dark blast. Life Drain is optional with the thermal primary if you can chain your other single target attacks well enough.

Not sure that's the general opinion. IMO, you get cutting beam as an AoE fairly early but it's kinda not good. Roughly the same damage and arc as buckshot but the cast time is twice as long for that damage and longer recharge. But that's your basic AoE attack until level 35. Very good single target damage and lots of interesting debuffs.

Running Dark/TA and you'll have to decide on your planned style. If you want good ranged AoE damage, your first major purchase is likely to be the sudden acceleration kb to kd IO. Without it Umbral Torrent is virtually unusable on teams and then you don't do a whole lot of AoE. With it, you can be a tank's new friend-- first knocking down everything around them and debuffing enemy ToHit with both torrent and tentacles. But if you are going to be mostly at range, a whole lot of your secondary is a bit wasted. I slotted Life Drain as primarily an attack with just a little bit of healing. Most say Gloom is your best T1 attack but i'm not sure it's quite that clear-cut. They have similar damage per animation, dark blast does more dam/sec, and gloom's DoT can be annoying. IMO. Related thread:

I have a mid-level thermal/AR and one thing I've noticed--not a synergy, but maybe worth considering. You're handing out nice buffs to your team and have solid debuffs but little of that does a whole lot for you. So on teams I have to be a little more careful about what kind of aggro I'm pulling. Going all Flamethrower/Full Auto/Buckshot on a spawn that isn't tightly tied to a tank can be a bit fatal. So consider a set that's a little more single target focused than AoE focused, maybe thermal/beam or thermal/ice.

I would seriously consider slotting Fearsome Stare for -ToHit as much as for fear-- that thing is a massive ToHit debuff. The fear is pretty good out of the box but the -ToHit is -18.7% for 20 seconds. That's the same -ToHit as darkest night, and easier to use (no worry about your target getting killled off). Between Fearsome Stare and Darkest Night alone you can completely floor the other side's ToHit. That's huge. (Fearsome Stare can be a good opener on team's where nobody else wants to take the alpha-- one stare and there isn't much coming back at you often, and what there is probably misses!) Tenebrous Tentacles is a damage power. Slot as such though as corruptor you may get more bang out of procs in this one. The fast snipe changes have made Moonbeam possible in your attack chain. You may or may not need Life Drain, it's a mediocre attack / small self heal not GREAT at either and you probably don't need the self heal. Pet Gaze is a subpar hold but handy to have against annoying things like Sorcerers and Sappers even if not slotted heavily.