Neiska

Hey Forums, With the SoA tweaks, I have blew the dust off mine and started fiddling with it, and this is what I came up with and has worked wonderfully for me. Highlights - -Much better ST Damage, via Longfang, Arcane Power, and Shatter Armor. Especially with Arcane Power Procs, it isn't actually a half-bad ST power. Even the Buildup Proc in Channelgun can help. -A bit better END management - with no Weave toggle, the END use doesn't feel so crippling. - 41% Melee DEF, 48% Ranged DEF, 33% AOE DEF - Significant Resists - Smashing, Leathal, Fire, Cold, and Toxic are all 70% or higher. Energy, Negative and even Psionic is 57% or higher. Considering you are a flyer, this makes you "very" durable! On some Teams I was the most durable one which is kind of funny. - With Rune of Protection, all your resists will be capped at 85% as a Mini-Barrier when needed. - Pets - Pets are "near" Perma as a baseline. But with either a FF proc, or Ageless Radial up, they are perma. Baseline = No FF proc/Ageless - Spiderlings - 187s/200s, Call Reinforcements - 266s/200s, Summon Blaster - 257s/240s Pet Defense - 0% (Base), + 10% (Pet Auras), + 17.42% (Tactical Training Maneuvers) + 6% (Maneuvers) + 12% (Support Core) = 45.42% DEF for pets (During Support Core) Downsides - - Sadly no Frag grenade. This was removed due to number of slots available. I choose Suppression because it's my favorite crabby power, even though Frag Grenade is arguably better. But if so inclined you can freely swap these. - While your pets are durable, you will still loose them. But with a stronger ST presence, you aren't as reliant on them either. -While END is "better" it still isn't entirely free to spam all abilities, at least not without Ageless. - If so inclined, someone can drop RoP and take Mental Training, to have perma-pets. I however wanted another defensive power to use with Serum, to have another Panic Button. Q. Why Mace Pool and not Leviathan? A. Well, honestly I wasn't impressed with the new Spirit Shark. I just had better results with Shatter Armor, plus the Arachnobot fits the theme better. That and as a HoverCrab, I wanted an Immobilize, and you have to be near the ground to use the one from Leviathan. But you could freely swap this with Leviathan or even Soul pools and end up with nearly the same values. Incarnate Choices - Alpha - Agility Core. This is to improve Endurance Modification, Recharge Rate, and Defense Buffs. All things we focus on. Judgement - Many people like Ion, but for my Crabber I actually like Void Radial Final, because it still hits hard, but also gives a 50% Damage Debuff to enemies for 30 seconds, as another way to help your pets with low resistances. Interface - With my Crabber, I like Degenerative Radial Flawless. Because its Toxic damage which is boosted by Venom Grenade, but also does a -hitpoint debuff. So with that -40% Toxic resist, this ends being great on Crabbers because we are kind of "Double dipping" the Chip. Lore - Dealers Choice here. I have yet to find any lore pet that makes a huge impact, at least for the pets. Banished or Longbow for more ST damage though, but I wish the defensive pets were better. Destiny - I choose Ageless Radial Epiphany, for the +End, Recharge, and Debuff Resistance. Since +DEF is our big strength, its worth protecting it. Hybrid - Support Core - The double-effectiveness "does" work on the Crabber-pets, giving them +12% DEF, and other nice buffs. They do very well while it is up, but when it wears off is when your pets start to get beat up. As always comments and imput are welcome. Screenies are included, both with and without RoP on. Without RoP or any incarnates active - With RoP Active - Hope people enjoy! PS - Someone pointed out an Error in MIDS. I am unsure "how" it happened, but I actually somehow was able to select 5 Power Pools, and you can't actually do that ingame. No idea how that even happened, but it has been corrected. I had to drop Haste and added Weave as another mule for LoTG Global. So the pets are not perma baseline, but with a FF proc they are. Apologies for the inconvenience, I am not even sure how that happened, or that it was even possible to do. But this is the corrected build and correct Snips. DarkTech Hovercrab - Updated (fixed).mbd

One thing I found that help my ranged ATs is flying/hover. Most things (especially at low level) don't have a full ranged attack chain, so even just hovering out of reach drastically reduces the number of attacks they get against you. Not all enemies mind you, but many.

I like characters that can solo and that "flow well". My favorite ATs are Tankers and Crabbers. I just started a new Crabber from level one, but I am leveling almost entirely through Ouros missions. Just hit level 25 last night. It's been fun, even if I had to use every p2w power available to me. But the higher I am getting the better it's getting.

I would say it also depends on if you have the Brute/Tanker/Scrapper version, the Sentinel Version, or the Stalker version. I have never tried the Sentinel or Stalker version of Bio Armor.

I can't really speak for axe as I never had one, but you shouldn't skip any powers in Bio because each power you have enhances the others, even if only passively. That's one of the downsides of Bio is you are pretty much locked into taking all of them. For Axe, I think it may depend on your attack chain. If you have excess attack powers you don't find yourself using often in your attack you can likely drop them. But also keep in mind, what powers are skippable and which are not may also depend on your Primary and Recharge levels too.

Very strongly tempted to try an Illusion/Dark/Soul Controller myself, focusing on recharge, pets, and debuffs. Will be very nice to have immortal pets for a change.

Deaf player here, and I never had any great difficulty. The friends closest to me know of my condition and make accommodations when necessary, but that's rare. The only time its posed a problem is trying to find the glowy to click, but that's hardly a deal breaker for me. Other games are far worse. At least this game has chat bubbles and the like for the dialogue scenes and so on. I don't claim to speak for all deaf players mind you, only sharing my personal experience. It's never posed a significant problem, and other games are far worse, such as mechanics-heavy fights which are kind of few in CoH, compared to other games where I might have to really research a boss mechanics before engaging. Here? Most fights are tank and spank, debuff, -regen if you can, and avoid the purples. Even Hardmodes are not terribly complicated, but of course YMMV.

Couldn't resist.

Honestly? I like what some people have made much more than official trademarked characters. One that always stuck with me, I'm remembering from a while ago, so details are fuzzy, but the character was named "Scotch Drinking Samauri." But the character wasn't the person at all, but the sword. The story goes is that the sword was a Greater Sky Demon from the 3rd heaven or something (reminded me of Monkey King style of story) and was upset at all the evil going on in the world. But it was forbidden from interfering in mankind "directly." So, instead it took the form of a sword, so that he still might help heroes, having different "wielders" from time to time. The current wielder of the sword, wasn't even Japanese at all, but was something else. (Can't recall precisely.) The current wielder was more or less some homeless guy - flip flops, cargo shorts, wife beater, Hawaiian shirt, and was willing to do what the sword asked of him, so long as he got Scotch in the process. The only reason why he called himself a Samauri, was because the sword was a Katana. So the TLDR is that his character was a Sky Demon in the form of a sword, wielded by different people. The current one was some scotch drinking homeless guy. I just thought it was just a funny and original story. And the character was pretty funny to interact with. And yes, the player did play both the sky demon, and the homeless guy.

The build was made before the change to Robot MMs, so it had minimal personal attacks. The change was a bit of a hot issue here on the forums, and I would rather not go digging up old arguments. All I will say was I loved the MM change, but strongly disliked the Robot one. In every circumstance I have tried - AoE, ST, GMs/AVs etc, my robot setup is noticeably worse than before, despite others claims of better damage. So I do feel having less -regen does hurt, but that really depends on the activity. If you are solo then yes, it matters. If you are AV/GM hunting with others, it wont matter as much.

It's the "Sin's Hovercrab" in this post. -

A new horrible image haunts my nightmares after reading this.

I've leveled 3 Crabbys, and found they are best built two general ways - 1. Recharge focused - this is for the crabbermind setup. Boats meduim resistances and good defense with perma-pets. Often runs both sets of team toggles. Fantastic for teams but kind of slow to solo with. The downsides is it can be fairly END intense, and the pets don't last on higher difficulties, even if you focus on making them as tough as possible. 2. Durability focused - Crabbys can actually get up to 85% resists, and its fairly easy to cap their defenses. Which means you can make a very durable hover-crabber with lots of AOE and debuffs. You don't "have" to use pets, but it helps. If you go pet-less you have more power picks and many slots to use tough. The downside for a supertough crab is it lacks single target, but often enough I was more durable than the tanker or brute on the team. What I found worked best for me, was to have 1 build of each, and swap between them depending on the activity I was doing. If I was teaming, I would go crabbermind. If I was doing solo on harder difficulty, I went Tanky Crab. Other people may have other styles they like of course, but this is just what worked fantastically for me.

IMO, Time, Electric, Dark, FF, and Traps are all great choices. Time - Easy to softcap DEF, heal and recharge buffs, pretty good debuffs. Electric - Fantastic durability for you and pets, pretty much infinite END, status immunity Dark - King of the debuffs. Robot/Dark is kind of a hidden gem as you don't see many of them, but they are fantastic together. FF - DEF and status in spades. Traps - Robo/Trap still a top contender for soloing, even today. I have had the best results with Time, Elec, and Dark personally.

Crabbers Omega Maneuver getting updated? Never thought I'd see the day.

With that build I have not, it got sidetracked about the mid 30s or so and I moved onto other stuff. It remains a side-thing that will likely never get done. 😆

Holy necrothread batman

Gravity control might be fun to role play too, and call it poltergeist activity.

Not all heroes wear capes!

A few thoughts. 1. Being "happy" doesn't inherently make you a better person. Some very bad people have also been very happy people. 2. How does liking "snorecraft" or any video game in particular, automatically make someone a "better" person? 3. Similar to 2, how does disliking any particular video game, make someone inherently a "bad" person? 4. Far from an expert, but if you get feelings of extreme euphoria from a video game, as in more than actual real things in your life, you might want to look into that as it could be signs of other things going on. 5. I half suspect this is clickbait. But if it isn't, I worry for humanity. Well, moreso than 10 minutes ago.

Personally, I care more about the map type. I strongly dislike sewers and caves, the ceiling is too low, and there are far too many S turns. When it gets multi-layered its just so much hassle to navigate.

Not to downplay your stance, but when playing a large mmo with many different people from all walks of life, you are almost mathematically guaranteed to run into a few people whose playstyle differ from yours or who are "bad" players. Am I excusing it? Not at all. And I am not saying they shouldn't try to fix things either. But this does kind of fall into "them's the breaks." If someone could figure out something that was fair to everyone that didn't unfairly punish others in some way, well they could probably be a systems admin professionally. Unfortunately, most of the fixes are either/or. And if they flip the switch to "off" that unfairly hits everyone, and sort of falls into "this is why we can't have nice things" territory. I mean, what realistic options are there? I confess, I don't have the programming skills to make a guess. It's unfortunate, but that's kind of the nature of the beast. Sometimes we need to overlook the small things. Of all the things on my wish list, fixing this precise thing would be somewhere around #1062. But that's just my take on it.

Personally, I'm on the fence on this one. I wouldn't call it stealing, because stealing implies ownership. Leeching would be more appropriate, IMO. And I have nothing against people being on autopilot, I do it myself... when I am playing by myself. I do consider it a bit rude to do so when other people are involved. But on the other hand, it's a public space, not a private one. Which means no one owns it, and anyone can play as they like. There is a difference between being on a private team running missions, and going afk to leech, than park in a public area and going afk to leech. Just because you are in a league or team, doesn't make it "your" area any more than the person leeching can claim ownership. My advice? 1. Use tools already available. Remove leechers from your team/league. If it bothers you that much, you can ban/ignore them, or go do something else. Or possibly wait and see if the leecher gets their due comeuppance. If their minions die. 2. Honestly, I think my free time is far too precious to me and life is far too short for me to fret about what others may or may not be doing in a video game. I have found if I focus on myself, and not what others may or may not be doing, things usually work themselves out, and I don't end up stressing over things I have zero control over in the first place. But that's just me.

Silmagoria, a name I made up and use in different games. Love how her costume turned out too.