twozerofoxtrot

Another vote for Brute. Nothing more to add than what was already put forward, except maybe that it's easier to level a stone/stone Brute on a budget than it is a scrapper because you're not as tied to your ATO enhancements to unlock your full damage potential.

Hot take but it's not FF that's the problem, it's BR. Your TTK is suffering because you're using a slow, single-target focused set at low and mid levels. Go Fire/FF, Water/FF, or Elec/FF and report back.

Not just Singularity, but Wormhole and the Trip Mine all have substantial knockback that needs to be turned into knockdown for this to work. Definitely add KB > KD to Wormhole, and if budget allows 5-slot Absolute Amazement as well (skip the proc) to get a ton of stun + really good recharge bonus (as @Carnifax correctly mentions, it is important. Definitely add KB > KD to Singularity. This will not impact its area control. Will not. Due to Singularity's reversed repel that draws enemies towards the center, mobs are constantly being hoovered away from you and often locked up by Singy's holds or just thrown on their butts. Grav is my favorite control set. I have it on quite a few combos (including this exact one!) and Singularity always requires at a minimum KB > KD to work well. Otherwise it is a total goat rope. Finally, add specifically Overwhelming Force's KB > KD to Trip Mine. If you only slot one enhancement into this power, it should be this. Personally, I disagree with Carnifax's suggestion to pick up Poison Ray and proc it. Generally speaking it's not bad advice, but unless you're trying to explicitly make -Res debuff your gimmick on this character, then it's not really worth the power or slot investment. And as you've hinted at in your first post, you're feeling tight on slots and powers. Acid Mortar can constantly stack debuffs in a wide area while you do other things. And you will be busy with a Grav/Traps. Also I personally value putting procs in Gravity Distortion over other powers. You can get a lot of consistent single target damage this way, have a lot of damage procs from the Hold sets to choose from, and a lot of them are going to be working for you at lower levels. Can you get big booms out of a proc'd poison trap? Yes. Can you do it every 3 seconds? Probably not. Finally I think the single best pool power for Gravity is Teleport Target. Similar but different logic than Carnifax put forth for Fold Space and Traps; you absolutely want to be able to control exactly where your Singularity is. I always make a macro (or bind) that goes like this: /macro ToMe "$$powexeclocation me teleport target$$Petselectname Singularity" Press this macro once to select your Singy, then again to teleport it right on top of you. The design of the macro can be adjusted to teleport it a certain distance in front of you, above, behind, or even if your Singy has a different name than the default.

Not sure about Esc but Enter key can be bound to this function. It might also activate your dialog box, though. I have this bound to Y key myself. It would probably work with /bind enter "dialog_yes$$startchat"

Kudos to you for being brave enough to put yourself out there again and look for RP buddies after having a bad experience. Unfortunately these forums aren't really a great place for doing that. Not that people here are malicious or anything, it's just sort of not a common occurrence. You might have better luck via Discord or in-game participating in character at various social RP bases (ie clubs, parties, etc). Even if you're shy setting something up in-game, you're more likely to be visible to the kind of writing buddies you're interested in playing with than here.

Until someone posts a build that meets your requirements (I would but my builds are all expensive) I'll offer some general tips to help along your leveling journey. 1) Respecs are plentiful, so don't fear making mistakes or even completely changing your build at different levels. A free respec is granted every 10 levels, they are very inexpensive to purchase as a recipe and craft from the AH, and finally there is certain content that will offer respecs as a reward. 2) Make liberal use of the 5 unique damage enhancements from the START Vendor, listed under the "Prestige enhancement" category. They're totally free, and do not trigger enhancement diversity penalties between each other. If you're sort something good or intentional to put in a damage power, put these in and slot over them at your leisure. You can always go back and get more free! 3) Right now is the mapserver event, or "MS" in chat parlance. This large group open world content will very quickly generate exp and wealth for your character. Something to consider on your first toon, which will serve as the platform for your future game economy. If you elect to try this content, quickly move to the zone people are advertising it in and get in the league, but be warned. It can get a little wacky.

I just use em up. Free candy. Can't sell them so zero opportunity cost to just consuming if you want to make space.

Don't use them, then? Seems like a weird take to deny others fun just because you don't want it for yourself. Personally I don't see the issue:

Better base building tools (has been mentioned but worth repeating) Optic Blast alt customization for Beam rifle (literally all the animations already exist for this, it's just a time/effort thing) Freakshow Customization parts (it's been out there for a years, HC is the official license holder, time to use it) Super Strength for Blasters (my meme dream)

A lot of the folks who haunt the ELTFs channel know the drill, and I think getting a 90 minute time is fairly doable with zerging if everyone is locked in. It certainly helps if there is a character with teleport or a maxed flyspeed and Incan on the team.

You can significantly unfluence the reliability of Scrapper crits through their ATOs; strategic placement of the Critical Strikes proc in particular. Onces you have both Superior ATOs (the 6th one in the set) slotted properly, Crits should feel far less rare, and in particular melee sets can become nearly guaranteed. This is a good way of framing the discussion (though Blasters will always objectively do more so long as they are able to attack). Another way of looking at it is what tools particular sets bring to the table. Scrappers can't affect AV regen like a /Mental Blaster can with Drain Psyche. And no Blaster gets a Taunt Aura to stymie runners. These things all have their place in the time to kill calculus.

Yes. On literally every Stalker you'll ever make. Forever. My tank brain knows dead things can't do damage to you anymore. A fable, myth, or someone being contrarian and inserting their subjective opinion and asserting it as fact. More damage is always more damage, and at the very basic fundamental level of this and every other MMO is make your enemy hps drop while yours drops less.

I'm not entirely sure how to read this, but my interpretation is that its the damage average between the minimum and maximum values, times the recharge values (within a range) and divided by area. And the damage done is lethal. If my interpretation is right, the damage you'll do on crits will indeed be a value higher than just the "upfront" amount but because water has so many AoEs the crit damage per target may be lower on average. But I'm not an expert by any means on this game's noodle math, so I submit my theory for cross examination to someone with a better understanding.

Some of my favorite characters, to include my main, have back stories built this way. IMO it's totally legitimate and I wouldn't be surprised if most comic book characters had their stories written after they were drawn. That said, for me the biggest single factor in a bio that influences whether or not I want to interact with a character is correctness; spelling, grammar, and formatting. If the player doesn't take the time to review their own work and assess it for errors when they have the time, it gives me the impression they aren't taking their character seriously, which really lowers the stakes for me. I usually try not to do this, unless their bio specifically has a hook that is listed that makes sense for my character to elicit or employ (eg: their character is 'famous' etc). Other exception would be a note about how the character's design might be limited by the CC's options so I try to call that out relatively early (if that makes sense) as a way to signal "hey, I see and care about this exceptional thing you care about, that my character should very obviously be able to see for themselves." Otherwise? I like to let the player present their character at face value and determine via writing what I should or shouldn't know about them. That's the way it is! People are naturally programmed to one degree or another about flubbing first introductions. My method is to just relax and try to have low stakes. There's a million things that can make your first bump tricky, most of which you exercise no control over. But if something draws you to another character, just try to lead with that if it makes sense. After all, it's your most natural reaction and in the absence of a clear reason for in-character interest, it will lead to more authentically written dialog for your character.

I back up all of my stuff to a Drive account. Including mids builds. You just never know.

Just my take but when we try to 1 for 1 CoH lore to the lore of other established franchises to find equivalence, we diminish CoH's lore as a result. Take it for what it is. Enjoy it. Get creative and make new things. That grows the lore, rather than subordinates it to something someone else wrote.

Is this why you can't type in characters from other languages (ex: Chinese) even if you have the keyboard settings for it? But the game does allow for you to paste those characters into the chat box....

I can't say if I feel it does. There's probably observable metrics that can definitively say if it does or not. I imagine builds are going to be a big factor because the margins will be narrow. For the record I play my own build, not Sovera's. But I'd rather play that Stone/Fiery than any Rad/SS. And I'd definitely pick it over Shield/Fiery, if only because it's much easier to deal with the End Drain. Also if we're talking about the spectrum of play with low level (exemplar) being accounted for, the Stone/Fiery comes online sooner and pulls a lot more weight than Rad/SS (prior to lvl 25).

It's a good thing. Akin to something being "badass." I personally don't think it's that great, but it does heal for a lot even if you're not hitting many enemies. But the massive recharge on Dark Regeneration sort of limits its utility in my eyes. It's not as useful for say surviving high, periodic burst damage from an AV versus having to make it through a particularly nasty group's alpha strike.

I second this. After the reworks this became a stupidly strong combo. Nigh unkillable with top notch AoE and Single Target damage. Better than Rad/SS. The only drawback is having like 27 toggles but you will have the endurance to run them. I see I'm about 6 hours late, but when you get tired of slowly backhanding single target bosses/EBs/AVs down to size, reconsider this combo. It's nuts.

I could get on this bus.

T1/T2 attacks (outside if Control Holds) are always set bonus fodder. Either ATOs or in some cases Very Rares. In the case of VRs, the low End Redux values of the set impact you less cause T1/T2 powers usually have lower activation costs, while the stacked up damage lets you get the most (consistent) bang possible per button press

I've done it on every AT. For me Stalker is prime. Tanker is good enough. The other two are flops.