Shred Monkey

Referring to my spreadsheet... I think Buckshot and Beanbag both at 0.9 seconds? I can't confirm as I've never used these in game.

Let's just say every persistant power needs an option to just turn off all effects. And every power (including attacks) should have way to turn on/off it's "dark effects." Speaking of which, the Costume Auras are really lacking in "Dark Effects" that match the power sets. Oh, and please start with BIO Offensive aura. I hate that thing. I tried really hard to create a costume and concept to match it and nothing has met my satisfaction.

There's absolutely a lot of crossover in roles of all 4 melee sets. I don't disagree with that premise at all. But I don't think Tanks were ever intended to kings of any type of damage. And I don't agree that Brutes have supplanted Scrappers in damage of either AoE or ST. Brutes have health and higher resist caps than scrappers so they can survive more than scrappers. Scrappers do more damage due to crits and a higher base damage. Since survival is a binary thing, you either live or die, and scrappers aren't dying, I would say the opposite... why play brutes now? I'd actually apply logic this further and make the argument that there's no reason to play anything but a blaster... and truth be told, I haven't found the answer to that question yet.

I once played Master of Orion 2 largest map hardest difficulty from beginning to end in 1 setting. Took about 27 hours. It wasn't planned... I was just waiting for stores to open... ended up going to the store the next day instead.

I'm going to vote for Cold/Cold corruptors. Good Damage, Great stacking controls, Great debuffs, and Great ally buffs.

I'm not sure you've gotten an accurate or clear answer to the OP. Yes, you can absolutely solo GMs and AVs on a blaster. Temp powers are not needed. -Regen helps a ton on GMs, but for AVs you just build to out damage their regen. AV's resist -regen so much that blaster -regen powers are nearly pointless to use on them. I've built 4 blasters to 50 on homecoming and they all solo AVs just fine. 2 of them can solo GMs. I doubt there's a blaster combo that cannot be built to solo AVs but obviously, some sets do it easier than others.

You could play with self imposed "handicaps." But I have an alternate suggestion. Play gold side.

Well... I gotta tell someone, right? Completed MsLTF on my Beam/Devices hover blaster. First 4 missions were no issues... just used about half a tray of purple inspirations to get by Aeon. But up until the last mission I didn't use any P2W buffs, or Lore pets. For the 4 AVs, I pulled GW and killed her in the air so BS and Mako couldn't follow (they can't fly). It took a lot of tries to get GW down. Sometimes Siccero followed and sometimes not. The successful try he followed, so splitting wasn't terribly important. I had the 3 P2W buffs on. I think that got me through GWs big DoT. Once GW went down the other 3 went down much easier. The towers were a stopper for me... had to sleep on it and come back. I could survive Recluse by hoverblasting and keeping my defense up with purples. I also used a lot of geometry stuff to get him hopping around and attacking less. But the problem was I couldn't get the repairmen killed fast enough. I tried using trip mines, and that actually worked for 2-3 spawns of repairmen.. but eventually they triggered them and then I couldn't keep up again. I tried Caltrops thinking I could keep those up 100% indefinatly, but they didn't do enough damage. I don't have them slotted, so maybe with them fully slotted they'd do the trick as I could have 2 sets out 100% of the time and they'd be doing more damage. I couldn't respec during a TF to try it, so I went to plan D. I ended up beating the towers by using my lore pet. Basically I did damage to LR to build up agro, and held him away from the tower while my Banished Pantheon Lore attacled the tower and repairmen. The BP pet has a lot of AoE, so it killed repairmen as well, though it couldn't solo the tower completely. I still had to target and shoot repairmen and hit the tower between spawns. The added help from the pet finished the tower, but I didn't succeed every time. But eventually we got all the towers down one at a time (went though 7-8 tries). I did the blue tower first so I didn't purples inspirations after that to stay alive. Lord Recluse was pretty rough. Again, I had the P2W buffs in me, which helped push me over the DPS line and keep me alive though some of his attacks. When the channelgun hit me (which debuffs endurance regen by a ton) I had to stop attacking until the buff wore off. When he started spawning minions I dropped my lore pet again to help clean those up. Took several very long tries, but finally got him down. I also killed the flier about 10 times just to keep him out of the way. And I had the time waiting around for the lore pets to come off cool down. This was by far the hardest challenge I've completed in this game.

I'm so disappointed. You people promised us that this was the end of the world. Prices will go go crazy high. You won't be able to get recipes anymore. The supply will dry up, etc. The game will be broken forever. DOOM!!!!!!!! Well here we are, about 4 weeks in. Other than the fact that my level 50s are gaining levels again, I can't say I'd even notice there was a change. It reminds of Y2K. The clock struck midnight and we're all left standing around saying, "where's Jesus?"

If the tank monitors tohit he can see if LR is at the floor of his hit chance. (not sure in this case the exact number for LR in this TF but I think it is going to be something like 11.8 or 12.5... if it's higher than that, the tank should pop more purple inspirations) I usually have chat tab where i monitor only tohit rolls. I don't always use it, but in high end AV fights I'll pull it up. It shows both outgoing and incoming attacks but with a little practice you get used to spotting the incoming attack rolls quickly to see if the defenses are working at maximum. He's probably going to need 2 small purples if not 3 on at a time if the tohit bonus tower is still up. Definitely kill the repairman as fast as possible. The towers don't regen on their own, so there's no benefit to DPSing them so hard you can't pause to hit a repairman. Also, be careful what advice you follow and ignore the criticism. I don't see any bad advice in this thread, but I expect see some. This TF gets run by high end toons a lot, and there a ton of shortcuts that work if the team is fully loaded. My best advice is you stick to what you're doing, use more inspirations, and enjoy the ride.

how long does the defense buff last?

Every toon needs to pop purples in difficult fights on the way to 50. Most toons have to pop purples after level 50, too. 90% of the time when you hit a wall of difficulty in this game, the solution is purple insperations. Popping purples at level 25 versus an AV is certainly not a sign of weakness for a set.

You're missing about 6% defense... that sounds like steadfast protection IO and a Gladiator's armor IO. Maybe your old mid's build had those 2 IOs slotted in a resist power? Manuevers seems under slotted (it gives a blaster 4.71 when fully slotted). Perhap's that's the last 1/2 percent? Just guessing... but seems reasonable.

Hit them harder! I guess you could try the taunt power from the presence pool... also, I remember seeing a taunt proc in one of the hybrid attacks... I have never used it, so I can't say if it even functions. My first suggestion is actually probably the best answer.

Below I'm using the power analyzer temp power to monitor the regen rate of a level 48 Seige who has level 48 Spore Cloud applied to him. Spore cloud says it applies -112% regen to a target. If we assume Base regen of .33%/sec is the 100% regen rate, then -112% would equal -.38% per second. That fits pretty closely to what is displayed. My question is is how is .33%/sec being reduced to .27%/sec? Is there a minimum regen rate? Or is there a debuff resist being applied to it? In either case, I really expected this -regen power to give more than a 16 hp/second boost on an even level AV. (note, I know numbers will change at level 50, but should be relatively the same)

Also, you can "breakdown" your incarnate components into threads to buy even more Super Inspirations to auction for inf.

Yes. ...and maybe no... with math: If the incoming damage is hitting you for 100 hp per second with 36% defense. The change to 40% defense will now be 71.42 hp per second. Or a perceived improvement of 30% less incoming damage. Going to 45% (soft cap) will get you to 35.7 hp per second of incoming damage or a 65% perceived improvement over the current defense level. When does this not matter? When I'm leveling up, I usually do planned builds at level 22, and 32. Usually around level 32 I'm in that 30-35% defense range, and it's plenty good enough for that level. I'll have to use inspirations sometimes, but for running regular missions it's fine. If I'm not dying there's no reason to sacrifice for more defense. However, at level 50, I personally always push for 45% defense. Looking at my above numbers, the perceived difference between 40 and 45 is 50% less incoming damage. That last 5% cuts the incoming damage in half.

There are 4 types of attacks. Melee, Ranged, Targeted AoE, and PBAoE. I started to write some general rules to define these, but every time I tried I realized there are exceptions to what I was writing. It is best to check each attack before buliding a set just to be sure.

Yeah... this is about how I use it, too. I ignore people who are obviously trolling "real life" and not playing a game. For everything else I use my internal ignore flag where I just don't read what some people say.

The Heather Townsand DA arc that people use to farm incarnate drops is also good for reward merits/minute. You can choose an emp merit as the reward and you get an emp merit for completing, so thats 2 emp merits that can be turned into 10 x 2 = 20 reward merits. The arc takes around 10-15 minutes once you learn the possible locations for the objectives in missions 2 and 3.

Here's my theory. There are 2 types of playing: 1. People playing their level 50s = supply of influence is high relative to # of drops generated, demand for drops is low because their toons are already built. 2. People playing new toons = supply of influence is low relative to # of drops generated, demand for drops is high as they level up and build up those toons. New powersets being released => more new toons => increase in demand => price increase temporarily but then it will swing back down after people run out of money and have to go back to their 50s to earn some more. At the same time, there will be less influence generated by the low level toons, and there was another change that reduces the amount of influence generated by players who froze their XP without reducing the recipe drop rate. In theory, the steady state price points should end up lower once the new toon rush slows and things settle.

Reversing the question to get more insight.... When I go to other games, I always compare it with this game. Here's where I end up *NOT* liking about the other games compared to this one. 1. My costumes are not unique. I really enjoyed monster hunter world... but when I optmized my build, my costume looked horrible... PLUS it looked like every other high end player who used my weapon choice because we all basically have the same build. I want to own my own look. In CoH the only way you'll look the same as someone else is if you plan it that way. 2. World is too, small. Here's where Champions online fails miserably. It's like 5 zones. Plus no unique random map missions. The endgame is about 2 hours of content... less if things go well. After that it's repeat the same thing over and over. In CoH you can play for weeks without repeating anything if you choose to. I'm sure there's zones I haven't been to yet since returning (Shadow Shard?).. there's definitely mission arcs I haven't completed. 3. Limited progress for casual player. My experience with WoW comes from the early years of the game. I never made it to max level, I never did endgame content, I never got into a raiding guild because I just couldn't do the time commitments. I needed a game that allowed me to make progress playing 1 hour at a time... sometimes 20 minutes at a time. I can do that in CoH. Not every game has that. 4. Game lacks complexity. There's a load of games where this is the failing compared to CoH. A lot of RPG games you basically run in and attack and collect items. You slot the items if they're better then what you have. And, well that's it. There's no planning for progression and optimization. The progression is all repeated. The only difference between level 5 and level 25 is that the numbers just get bigger on the items and enemies. There's no calculating optimal attack chains. In CoH, it's not unusual for me to spend all my free time for 2-3 days in spreadsheets and build planners before I create a new toon. I generally plan attack chains and builds for level 12, level 22, level 32, and level 50 and a new power I get at level 32 makes my toon play different than it did at level 20. I tweak my costumes probably 2-3 times per day (and undo 80% of those changes). I can spend a whole play session just doing marketing stuff if I want to. I could spend months working on badges on a single toon before you'll hit a hard barrier to further progression. I could go on and on about this, and that's really the point. CoH is HUGELY complex if you want it to be. 5. The playerbase is not open and friendly. This is really where Homecoming shines. We all have this shared love for the game. Sure thee's mild drama once in a while... but generally every team I join is a positive experience. Every conversation I have I leave feeling good. I don't see nearly the amount of greifing and trolling in this game as I see in others. And it's really easy to make new connections. It's easy to find teams at any level. It's easy to join the endgame raids. It's easy to communicate across servers and worlds. Even these forums are alive with fresh comments every few minutes (seriously, that's a big thing.) All that together is something I've never found anywhere else. In MHW I don't think I ever even spoke to another player... if i wanted to, I"m not sure i know how. It's not really a social game at all. In WoW the global chat was famously chlidish and filled with drama. CO has a really small playerbase.. so other than the automatic pairing options in the alert system, it because pretty hard to get teams to do anything. That's probably not everything... but it's all I have time for now.

I agree that I would prefer to allow incarnates powers and not temps. But I wouldn't say envenomed daggers makes it easy. The tentacles are nothing... those shouldn't require -regen. But the head is still hard. In my experience, envenomed daggers are far from instant-win. They actually just get you from "Man... I'm really close, but I'm not quite winning" to "Oh man, I think I'm just barely winning, now... Ohhh... no...Did I buy enough of these things? "

As a prank goes, this is brilliant. Completely harmless and yet annoying beyond understanding. But does anyone really like pranks, really? It's basically bullying, but a little less mean. The problem with this one is that it doesn't end 10 seconds after the "gotcha!" as a prank should. Learning we can dismiss the buff helps a lot.

Generally speaking, Stalkers do good ST damage and not so good AoE damage... if you're like that, then try to focus on bosses. If you can kill the 2 bosses in about the same time the AoE classes drop the minions and LTs, then you're contributing a lot to the team. It helps to have a bind that sets your target (you'll have to learn the boss names and load them in ahead of time). Most of the tips above are good as well.