Shred Monkey

If you're planning to run radio missions with the toon you're on, it picks the detective that's inside and hardest to reach.

On my main blaster, I actually really like the playstyle of always staying in position to line up my cone for greatest effectiveness. I also am simultaneously side stepping and staying out of melee. It's like a dance. Overtime you find yourself moving the enemies as much as they're moving you. It's both entrancing and effective. That said, on my toons that use a PBAoE or melee attacks, it's annoying to constantly hop out of the spawn to line up the cone, and the cone quickly becomes the least favored attack.

I put the Gaussian's proc in aim. This makes both of them do big +dam instead of just one of them. Also, on a team it wouldn't be unusual for guassian's in build-up to be wasted because it puts you at the damage cap.

This is my experience. I always run PuGs. I don't remember ever having a bad PuG. Granted I generally bring a really, really, strong blaster to a PuG myself, so I might be a major contributor to the success of the PuGs, but still. Unless a person is the type that thinks 30 minutes for a Tin Mage/Apex is slow because a good team can do it in 20-24, then I could see how PuGs are a problem for them. Personally, I find ultra-fast speed runs annoying and uninteresting. I'd much rather clear a map of difficult enemies then run through it. I build my toons to fight, not run away... so ultra fast speed runs through equal level enemies feel like I'm not doing enough to have fun.

If I join a task force without knowing if it's speed or kill all/most and what level it's being run at, then I consider it my fault for joining without knowing. If I happen to care what's being run (usually not in my case) then I ask before joining.

A power that makes them intangible... oh.. wait.. Actually a power that would be really nasty on an AV would aim or build-up to give them a big burst of consecutive hits. Similarly, I don't know of any AV's that do defense debuff... (Malaise maybe?)... which is nasty to anyone who can't resist it.... (oh.. Clamor, too)

I've had to use merits instead of influence to buy recipes/enhancements that weren't currently being sold on the AH. It's not often, but it happens.

You can run 10 alignment tip missions to get morality missions. Morality missions give 40 reward merits. If you're going for speed you can set your difficulty to +0x1 and stealth to the objectives. This is nowhere as fast as running team TFs for reward merits, but it can be done solo which is what you're looking for. Also, unlike story arc missions, you don't have to worry about out-leveling a contact. And unlike Ouroboros missions you can go do something else without losing progress. Also, you get an option to stay your same alignment instead of changing alignment, so don't worry about affecting your alignment if that's a concern.

In normal MMOs, if you're getting hit by 1000 hp attacks, 90% resists can theoretically keep you alive long enough for heals to help. Defense, on the other hand keeps you alive until that one hit gets through and BAM your dead. However, CoH is different from normal MMO's in that we don't have healers... so with resists you just run out of HP. Personally, I just go with defense and wakies and just throw in resists when it's convenient. And if I'm really trying to be unkillable, I'll layer on top of all that a bunch of soft controls... knockdowns, staying at range, geometry tricks and slows to abuse bad pathing AI... fun stuff.

I'd love to do this... not sure if the time works for me, but I'll see.

Make a new toon. Turn of XP in your 20s and do around the full tip/alignment cycle until you've seen them all... then do it again in the 30s.

I noticed this when initially investigating savage.... I also noted that on a brute, fury does increase bleed damage. Based on that I started looking heavily into making a savage melee brute. Then after calculating attack chains, I never made one due to the lack of overall damage output with no other significant bonus to exploit. Not sure what it needs, but it needs something. Thematically, maybe bleed stacks should add resists or something?

This may be the best opening to a forum post topic I've ever read.

I'd just like an alternate animation option for combat teleport that doesn't do an animation, thus keeping your existing body position and weapons drawn. It could be a 'blink' animation that flashes a light/dark mini "poof" of smoke or light in your current and future location... but I don't like standing straight up and sticking out my arms and chest.

I apologize if this was already mentioned but I didn't see it in my breif scroll through. This keybind makes all the difference in the world: /bind <whatever key you prefer> powexec_location target Combat Teleport

These powers are like sleep powers. They're neat in concept, but you have to go out of your way to make them work. Most useful when fighting solo or duo.

Are you fighting 54s solo? If so, I wouldn't drop the 2nd HamiO. You can Monitor last hit chance to quickly see actually hit chance in game. High accuracy is pretty key to being able to solo quickly and efficiently against many end game enemy groups. But if you're picky with your enemy groups to pick ones who don't do any -tohit debuffs or +defense buffs, or if you fight against something lower than 54s, then you can get away with less.

I don't think Homecoming has departed from the original by much. If anything they've made balance changes and eliminated some of the most egregious forms of fast-easy leveling. IMHO, the decision to let AE giving XP was the point where CoH lost it's "legitimacy" as a MMRPG and became a simulation/sandbox style game. I'm still shocked they didn't know what players would do with customizable missions that give XP. That said... I just don't farm and I still enjoy it.

These numbers are somewhat arbitrary, but this is how I would estimate their relative value: "built for damage" scrapper = 95 damage and 50 survival "built for survival" tank = 50 damage and 90 survival "built for survival" scrapper = 80 damage and 60 survival "built for damage" tank = 75 damage and 85 survival <-- almost as good at damage, much better survivability Therefore, I believe the answer to your question is tank. Scrappers don't close the gap on survival by very much, IMHO and to really get the most survival you're going to give up recharge and procs, which significantly hurts your damage output. However, tankers have such over-the-top survivability that they don't really have to build for it. Thus they can get all the damage tricks without giving up much. I think it also depends on what powersets you choose, but assuming you choose the very best options you can for this endeavor, in my opinion, this will be your result.

I deduce that since you're not playing a blaster, you must be valuing survivability a lot, so therefore the answer is tanker. (but really the answer is Blaster)

Solo at 50 is very different then solo while leveling up. At 50 you have so many extra slots you can build very solid blaster defenses to go in and out of melee against large groups of +4 enemies. But that's not true when you're at level 20. At lower levels you'll have to focus on something specific and then try to control the fights to give you only that type of attack. My recommendation for leveling up is to stay at ranged and focus on ranged defense. There are a few tricks that help you stay at range (or stay out of melee). The easiest is to just fly. There's not a lot of flying enemies in this game, so if you're flying, you're almost always out of melee. You can also just keep moving away from enemies and kite them around. I actually enjoy this more then flying because there's a little bit of skill involved and it's not just button mashing and tab targeting. Additionally if you can mix in some knockdowns/knockbacks slows or other hard or soft controls you can further reduce the incoming damage and keep things out of melee. To get ranged defense, I recommend picking up the 2 +3 defense IOs. You'll probably have to take the fighting pool to slot them in tough. Since you're already there, you might as well grab Weave as well and slot it for more universal defense. I'll also often pick up combat jumping as well for a little more defense and better movement. Then 6-slot Thunderstrike in your single target ranged attacks and Artillery in your ranged AoE attacks. These sets aren't available until level 27 but you won't have enough slots to 6-slot a lot of powers until then anyway. Before that, just keep the difficulty level low enough to manage. You probably want a stun or hold so you can open buy taking 1 enemy out of the fight while you focus on another. Unless there's an enemy that can hold/stun you.. then you'll want to target them with your holds/stuns to open and kill them before they move again.

I've been binging TV shows for 3 years now... over one thousand hours easy when I start to to add it up (400 in Ertugrul Resurrection alone). Andor is either number 1 or number 2 (Arcane is the other) of my favorite series. It's so smart. It's like a masterclass of "How do you say X without saying X." Simple scenes like when Andor returns to Ferrix in Episode 1 and talks to his mom's drone. We learn so much about his current life situation. He lives with his Mother, who is a good mother. He cares about the feelings of a droid, so he's not just a cold killer. He's used to having to stay hidden. He lives on this work planet, but doesn't work for a living so he must be into something shady. He's a thinker and a stratagizer, very used to lying. Tons of character development for Andor, and his mom, and his mom doesn't even appear in the episode. It's brilliant. And I feel like every scene is like this. When I re-watched it with my son, I just felt like pausing every scene so we could talk about how amazing what just happened really was. Not everything I watch has to be this Cerebral. But this show was a real treat after being spoonfed plot lines, jokes, and agenda messages for way too long. I hope some people at Disney and Marvel learn from this. Because this is how good shows are done.

I report when I see this because of the "protect the game" aspect. But I also don't feel bad that someone is going to get generic'd for lack of creativity. I see TV/movie characters or concepts that inspire me to make a costume or character all the time. But I still want to make that character my own by adding my own spin to it. For example, I've often tried to create a nightcrawler like character who fights like the opening scene to X-Men 2. But I just use dark color schemes with teleports and acrobatic looking kicks... the costumes look nothing like nightcrawler and I don't copy the name. I also understand the appeal of trying to build a perfect replica of a costume. But I wouldn't play that costume in game.

To me, teammates are people who occasionally share witty banter while we work though a mission. I never ever think about what powers they're using or not using.

Dark/Dark eh? You are really turning over a new leaf in the new year, aren't you.