Shred Monkey

I would argue that control powers don't really translate very well to non-turned base games. If you don't overlap your controls to perma-lockdown a combatant from the fight, the enemy just hits you the instant they recover, usually with their biggest attack. Given that NPC attacks have cooldowns and they have large gaps in their attack chains, it's not uncommon that a knockdown that took an enemy out of the fight for 3 seconds did almost nothing at all since the enemy just got up and immediately used all the attacks that came off cooldown while it was down. If the enemy is missing 75%+ of the time, the odds that any incoming damage was mitigated by a knockdown is even more unlikely. And if you do have a setup to perma-lockdown enemies from a fight,.. well that's just as broken in the other direction, although most games accept this as being OK to make up for the lack of mitigation when you do not perma-lockdown an opponent. CoH has implemented many patches and attempts to fine-tune the way controls function with varying degrees of success. But I still feel that despite the fact that controls are a staples part of the superhero genre and P&P RPGs, they really fail to be a significant part of this game outside of a few highly specialized examples.

Fun Fact. The malta are actually fighting the Warwalks in the first Tin Mage mission. "Easier" is to make a quick lap around the map so that the fights initiate and let them beat on each other. It's not uncommon to kill the first 2 warwalks and the 2 on the right, then find the 2 in the middle nearly dead already from fighting Malta. Also, I'm not sure there are any sappers. If there are, I've never noticed them.

I don't think I've ever seen a Tin-pex that cleared the sewer before. I wouldn't be opposed to it of the leader advertised as a clear all, but I think it's normal assume objectives only for Tin-pex.

To me, soloing an AV means +0 no temps. However, my personal standard is +4 AVs with whatever inspirations I have in my tray.

I think they just need to remove the HP caps and give regen about 2-3x more max hp... the way regen works in this game, giving more max hp effectively increases the hp/s from all regen boosting powers. Plus is gives a buffer against spike damage that regen needs. Also adding max hp keeps regen unique in it's mechanic instead of just making them another resist or defense set. I would also consider adding scaling resists similar to /SR.

I'm always surprised by the people who take dying seriously in this game. The worst part of the penalty is having to muddle through without hasten until it comes off cooldown.

I tend to gravitate toward a certain set of min/max parameters... usually focused on pure damage with a minimum level of survivability. During live, I really didn't play much that last 12-18 months, so I missed a lot of the late changes. The quick-snipe and quick-assassin's strike, plus the blaster sustain powers really brought stalkers and blasters up to or above scrapper performance levels. Those changes, plus winter set IOs really impacted the balance of the things I generally focus on. It pushed me out of scrappers and into stalkers and blasters. note: I never did TW/Bio, even on homecoming. When I see something that is both broken and popular, I take it as a personal challenge to outperform it using other sets instead of as an easy button I exploit myself.

Huh...I thought he misspelled something and gave on trying to figure it out. From now on, I'll picture Bopper as a motorcycle cop. My MBA writing for business class taught something similar to BLUF. In business communication you should assume the reader is going to stop reading at some point in your email/communication. So you start with the main point, then work your way down to the least important detail. Also use an 8th grade vocabulary. Using fancy words will decrease the reader's understanding not increase it. The goal is to give your reader information, not oracular hauteur. Mis-communication might lead people to believe wear your breeches outside your jackboots.

Just seconding this post. This is my exact strategy... including the extra edits. Also, just to complete the discussion, I boost generic IOs to +5 and I combine my hami-Os to 53.

I just settled on using it once... my (stalker) rotation is Bone Smasher>Total Focus>Bone Smasher>Assassin's Strke>Energy Transfer>repeat.... Flow is great... The hide proc is in assassin's strike so I get the crit on ET for fairly reliable heal. I looked at ET>TF>ET>snipe>AS> repeat... the amount of recharge I needed in ET meant slotting for procs. Ideally the hide proc would got in ET so it triggers a crit TF and gives double focus, but it doesn't proc as much as desired since ET is slotted for recharge. That left me with about the same DPS (maybe a little better) and a much more awkward flow. The deal breaker was that my first chain allows me to use use the body epic pool for more endurance recovery. This lets me leave use rebirth destiny instead of Ageless, and leave infiltration and sprint toggled most of the time. But yes, to the OP, Energy Melee is now great. Before it was visually fantastic, but math showed it to be under-performing damage with no functional upside.

I have an energy/energy stalker... but it wasn't my plan. I was making an energy/ stalker after the changes and after building 4-5 different options in Mid's, settled on /energy aura. The fact that they match was never my intention. In fact, I don't think it even occurred to me that it was a matched set until someone asked me my toon was once in game.

Just quoting this section to point out that in addition to the ATOs and crit tricks, Stalkers also get assassin's strike. Quick strike is the highest damage-per-animation-time attack in the whole game. With the balance change to TW, there's no scrapper attack chain that isn't improved by moving it to a stalker and replacing the worst DPA attack with AS. You can usually boost your DPS even further by optimizing use of Assassin's Focus and the ATO procs. Admittedly, some sets get more from these tricks than others, but they all do better than their scrapper counterparts.

I'm pretty sure if you ask him Silos will tell you he's been watching you for a long time, or you've been watching yourself or some weird time travel scenario logic that amounts to "it's time for you to break/unbreak the timeline." Which implies that up until now, you weren't ready.

I feel like scrappers are the "baseline" by which I compare everything else to. For example... Stalkers have more ST damage then scrappers but in exchange give up hitpoints and AoE damage. Tankers have lower damage overall then scrappers buy have more survivability and better taunting ability. Blasters have more AoE damage potential then scrappers with larger ranges and Areas of effect, and their ST damage is about the same (varies by set), but they have less survivability from powers and instead have survivability from being at a ranged position. I could go on, but my point is that logic basically implies assume scrappers are OK as is and shouldn't be adjusted. However, with all that said... even though on live I played almost exclusively scrappers, now I don't play them at all. Instead I tend to play blasters, stalkers, or my one tank.

Welcome home. It's ok to shed a tear when you log back in for the first time. I sure did.

Honestly, any two well built toons of any combination can do it. Probably the trickiest part will be the auto-damage of the final fight. I think that can be defeated by just alternating rebirth destiny clicks, which any toon can have. But there's tons of other ways to get over that hurdle. If I were min-maxing an optimal pair, I'd probably start with a high damage meat shield plus a high damage support toon both built to compliment each other's survivability. For example, a resistance based brute with a defense based corruptor.

First of all fantastic guide. It gave me everything I needed in a clear, concise format. And the bind file method is quite powerful. However, isn't this a bit of overkill? I just set up a bind to convert tier 1s mapped to 1, tier 2s to 2, and tier 3s to 3. Since those are in my primary attack chain, they get quite a bit of use, and it seems to be enough. I considered binding duplicates in 4,5, and 6... but after running a few missions, it seems that just the single bind for each tier is keeping up with the drops just fine.

It'd be great if everyone included the difficulty and "speed" vs "kill most" when they advertised their TF. But I think it's also up to the people joining to make sure they know what they're joining if there's an option that they are 100% opposed to trying.

Honestly... I miss very little. For 8 years I was looking for a game "like CoH." I think I finally found what I was looking for.

If you can solo Manticore, you'll be fine.

Hover lets you stay flying without burning endurance, so you keep it on and turn off flight during combat to save endurance while still staying in the air. Combat jumping costs less, endurance then hover. However, Combat jumping requires you to take another power pool. Hover does not. You can't take from more than 4 pools. So depending what else you want (ex: hasten, fighting pool and stealth), Combat Jumping may not be an option.

Lode Monkey, my Fire/EM Blaster (blapper). The animations are fast and furious. The raw damage, ST is huge, but the AoE is phenomenal. I enjoy the costume and it works really well with beast run (a monkey in futuristic combat armor dropping into melee and going bat-crazy with punches and blasts). But I think the real reason he's my favorite is tough explain when playing him. It's when I'm playing something else, I (almost) always find myself saying at the end of a mission/TF thinking, "gee, that was great, but I really should have brought Lode."

I'm in the super-dine camp. I see no reason to pronounce every syllable ...especially if it's a Wednesday.

/Energy and /Elect are the classic secondary blapper sets. /MA, /Katana, and /Rad are new, fun options. Primary doesn't matter so much because you probably only take 2 ST powers from it, and one of those is usually the quick-snipe. Fire/ gets a lot of attention because Blaze is just straight up the best attack in the game. And Fireball is pretty great as well. Cold/ is neat with the holds available... it makes a really great pairing with /elec. DP/ has some great AoE options and a lot of style points. Water/MA is a oddly powerful choice. The two sets compliment each other really well with knocks and slows from both sets. Add in the self-heal and absorb and you find yourself with a lot of soft survivability powers that are still viable against +3s and +4s to layer above the normal soft-cap defenses. The damage output is disappointing compared to others, but still a really fun toon, IMHO.

I've no doubt that if they made billboards available to player content submissions, With the type of players we have, there would be enough submissions to give us new billboards every week indefinitely.