Shred Monkey

Hello, My name is Shred Monkey, and I've used unslotters before to slot my enhancements into the proper sequential order. Procs go to the right and only to the right. I really wish I hadn't opened this thread and learned there are people out there who do otherwise.

Not all GMs are the same and since damage scales to the GM's level, it's actually hard to answer that question. The 2 hardest in terms of required DPS are Lusca's head (The tentacles are about like a medium difficulty AV but the head is much higher) and the Goliath War Walker in Boomtown. Eochai and Babbage are pretty easy. And Kraken is pretty weak. Just to push the discussion forward, I'm going to estimate it would take somewhere above 325 DPS with no -regen to solo Babbage.

So i've never played a tank, so this is a response as a team member. First, keep in mind, we probably don't really *need* you as a tank.... but that's true of the other 7 team members individually as well, so don't worry about it... just know this is a fact. It means, you can't really mess up that badly, and also you shouldn't take your role too seriously, either. The real question is, what can you do to make this mission go faster. And this is very simple. Get to the next spawn first ... and ideally, get there 3-5 seconds before everyone else so the bad guys who move immediately to melee will close in around you. This does 2 things: 1. It brings more badguys into the AoE attacks. But don't get too focused on this. Herding to a corner brings everything into a tight spot, but it wastes more time then it saves except in very rare situations. 2. You lead the team through the map. This is the more important role. You need to be fast.... this probably means leaving the current spawn well before the everything is dead. If you wait too long, someone is going to get impatient and go to the next spawn ahead of you (because, remember, they can) and likely the team will end up splitting. Splitting isn't always bad, but in general it is less efficient against sufficiently difficult opponents.

The New Preatorian's arc has plenty of the new "odd" mechanics. More of this please, thanks!

I'm not going to scroll through the whole thread to see if this was pointed out, but... um.. Let's say you pick 10 minions each with 30 hp. 10x30 = 300 pts of damage. This calculation has nothing to do with what class you are playing, it's just how many hp your enemies have. If you want to get real technical, killing them slowly will allow them to heal some, so your total damage dealt will be increased by doing damage slower.

Here's my lazy admission... on most of my toons I keep a Cimerora mission active so I can use my mission porter power to get there since there is no direct teleport to that zone.

If your goal is to make as much money as possible on the Market, then yeah, I can see this being annoying. But if your goal is to play toon and have money for upgrades when you want to upgrade, then frankly this isn't a big thing. The difference being, "as much money as possible" is WAY more money than you really need. For my last 3 level 50s, I've literally just played my toon with a bit of a focus on earning merits. Then used those merits for either +boosters, or converters that I listed on the Ah for 5inf each to sell right away for whatever the going rate is. This gave me enough inf to buy attuned sets and crafted generic IOs as I went without ever being in a tight money pinch. (note, I always keep a few hundred merits in case there's an IO I need that has 0 for sale.) My point is this. Yeah.. it's annoying and needs fixed, but in the grand scheme, this bug doesn't matter to me... like literally, not at all. I'd rather see them fix it so the quantity slider defaults to max when I dump multiples in the AH so I don't have to move it manually. It would get me in-and-out of the AH faster and back to playing. That would make me happier than fixing the history bug.

At this point it's just me feeding my ego, but I'll post my current progress here in case anyone is interested. After getting Caleb and Scrapyard yesterday, I've now solo'd all the GM's (except Paladin). I've solo'd ITF, Market Crash, Tin Mage and Apex. I solo'd the full DA arc on +4 w/AVs, (the last battle was much easier on a ranged toon than on a melee toon... almost disappointingly so). MsLTF and LRTF will be next on my list. The only thing that I've tried and failed to compete is Siege AV at level 54. I can overcome his regen, but he has a heal that kicks in around 25% health that recharges fast enough that I can't get him down before it triggers again. It's really, close... but I've not beaten him yet. Earlier in this thread I pointed out that I expected the Beam/Time Giant killer thread would be about someone crushing GMs with a Beam/Time blaster. The truth is, the reason I expected that was because I was already convinced it was possible and was in the process of building this toon to prove it.

Why this reference never occurred to me until now I cannot imagine. It's too perfect.

WARNING: Things have changed a lot! Ignore most of what this guide says. Targeting drone gives +dam. Trip mines is uninterruptible and does near-nuke damage (but in a smaller area). Web Grenade now applies a DoT, which helps a lot on those early levels. Field Operative gives the standard regen/recovery for a blaster sustain power, plus it gives defense and stealth, making it one of the best sustain powers in the blaster secondaries. This: ...."A dp/dev blaster has no good options for boosting blast output." ....should actually read, "A DP/Dev blaster has every single attack boosted and is a non-stop AoE beast." I can't tell if this was posted as an snarky attempt to show how much better things are now than on live for /device blasters, or if the OP is serious.

It is correct that the *name* of the bonus is what matters, not the value of the bonus. However, most bonuses have common names. So what is quoted above are the exceptional cases, not the norm.

I still can't shake that feeling ... how is this real that we're playing CoH again?

I think I would do this with some kind of mastermind with fire&forget buffs auto-following a melee toon dragging his buffed minions on aggressive. I have no experience with masterminds... would this work?

The problem here is you're still using shards to build your alpha. I've never made an incarnate component with shards. I use Threads and Emp merits for my Alpha (scroll down and you'll see the alternate recipe options I'm talking about). If you want to argue with me that that's not the best way to do it, please go read the OP of this thread.

I usually do as much as I can without temp powers and lore pets... but if I get stuck, I'll do anything and everything to finish. If I start a TF solo and get to the complete screen, I call it a success.

I'm trying to think what the "starter" level 50 solo TF should be. Maybe Market Crash? I don't know that final boss very well to know how he affects the ATs I haven't played. ITF is relatively easy until the final battle. LGTF would be even easier than the ITF except for weakened hamidon being a complete stopper for most ATs due to the mechanics of that fight. Many of the pre-50 TFs are actually quite easy to solo, but it might be annoying being without your full powers.

I think it is worth pointing out that back in 2005, our exceptions were different. The big MMO of the previous years before CoH was Everquest. At that time in EQ you would literally take an hour running across the continent to meet up with your friends. You could wait another 30 minutes on a boat if you needed to get to the next continent over. And you needed to meet up with your friends because, with only a few exceptions, you couldn't really solo and make progress. The holy trinity was a real thing, and it was really a holy quartet because you needed a mana/pump class keeping the mana users full of energy. It was also standard to need a crowd control class so your team could focus on 1 enemy at a time. And the best tank in the game (warrior class) had the LEAST amount of agro (taunt) of any class, so everyone had to manage their own agro by joining a fight late or wiping threat, etc. Then along comes CoH where not only is there a train system to take you from zone to zone instantly, but you have travel powers to zip around that zone. Teams not only don't have to try to single-pull enemies, but they actually have powers that are designed to work on large groups of enemies. And tanks have a power called TAUNT so it wasn't too dangerous to use those AoE powers. In many ways, what we now look back on and think of as *a real pain* to play actually felt like it was actually *easy* compared to what many of us had been playing, and the quality of life stuff in CoH was WAY better than the standard back then. And that doesn't even get into the groundbreaking costume creator... and the world has three dimensions! That's right! We can really fly!

Leveling up, touch of fear is great, especially solo. But once you have an endgame attack chain and power, I agree that it is better to just do damage. A lot of control powers are like this. Useful at low levels, but eventually you gain enough toughness to just stand and trade blows... and anything you can't trade blows with is immune to or highly resists controls. Boxing, as other have said, is just to open up tough and weave, which are essential to a lot of builds. I do often use boxing as a set mule but I don't even have it loaded onto my powers bar. The only advantage I see for boxing over kick, in terms of set mules is boxing could use stun sets, which has some useful positional defense options.

Update on my Beam/Devices. I solo'd Lusca this morning. The tenticles were easy... not much harder than an AV. But the head took more DPS/regen then I could produce with my rifle alone. I would gain ground for a few of Lusca's health ticks and then lose it back. So I know it was right at the break-even point. I popped my ravager incarnate pet and moved around the head so I was tanking and the pet was safe behind it and we finished it off.

And in a game where "winning" is pretty much guaranteed, the next best measure of achievement is speed. Even in a kill most TF, I am still going to try to kill most as fast as I can.

Going a different direction then others who answered this question... yeah, AT doesn't matter. Nothing is needed and anything works. BUT... It's nice to have at least one really good AoE damage dealer to clean up spawns. It's nice to have someone with HUGE single target dps to put down Bosses as fast as the Minions and LTs are falling. Also shorten AV fights. It's nice to have someone who can run in and absorb alpha strikes and generally leads the team through the map. Often this role holds agro on AVs as well. It's nice to have someone to stealth/port. It is nice to have someone to heal and rez for those times when things get crazy or you're facing some auto-hit damage or high-tohit enemies. It is nice to have someone who knows the TF really well and can identify what objectives are needed and knows how to short-cut missions and answer questions. It is nice to have a few someones who chat up the team and generally have a good sense of humor or amusing RP personality. If you want to be a good task force runner/team player, try to fill as many of the above roles as you can.

My beam Rifle hover blaster is my new solo artist, but he just hit 50 and hasn't made the rounds yet. He's solo'd a few GMs and a bunch of AVs. Doing Battle Maiden in the Apex TF is probably the hardest thing he's done so far. My favorite fight so far was doing the final DA boss on +4 with my StJ/Bio stalker. It took every bit of healing/absorbing that I had to survive despite soft-capped defenses, and it took a few rounds of lore pets to beat it down all the way. It was extremely satisfying to win a battle that had me right on the edge of failure for a good 10-15 minutes.

By quoting Conan the Barbarian, Billz has expressed my opinion on this better than I could. So +1.

Generally, I use attuned for all normal IO sets. AT sets and Winter sets I turn into Superior. Purple sets already scale down so attuning does nothing.. I boost these to +5 (note, proc's don't let you boost them and they wouldn't change anything if they did, so don't buy boosters for the procs). And generic IOs I boost as well.

I got my Beam/Devices up to 50 over Thanksgiving Break and flushed out his build. No lore pet yet and I haven't used my Hybrid Incarnate power yet, but I'm already soloing GM's and TFs. So far I've done Babbage, Jurassik, and Deathsurge solo. I had Kraken to 50% before some others showed up to help finish. I've also solo'd an ITF and an Apex TF (bring purples for Battle Maiden, she has +tohit). I also solo'd a Winterlord and I've done some DE monsters just to see if I could. While leveling up my final attack chain was available about level 27 when I got into the level 30 IOs, so it was pretty smooth sailing from there. I even solo'd Manticore TF and Numina TF while still in my 30s and I did all the Portal Jockey AV's solo before hitting level 47. I really agonized over the secondary I chose for a long time, but I chose devices just because everything fell together a little better than the other sets. Not having -regen in my secondary hasn't been an issue. And I really like the "always on" bonuses from targeting drone when I'm doing a prolonged fight. In the end, I don't think the secondary is all that important as Beam Rifle alone is enough to push you over the top on a GM's regen.