Nemu

If you change you mind and want a different perspective. Try Rad/SS There are certain builds that will change your perception of the game. This is one of them.

You know what it does do? help you survive. AoE knockdown (with the kd IO) gives you breathing room when incoming damage starts to get a little overwhelming, this will be relevant when you face mobs with heavy debuffs I looked at your build, lots of room for improvement You skipped two pretty good mitigation tools, both stun and thus can stack to give you some breathing room. Handclap can also by rotated with footstomp for chain knockdowns as another layer of mitigation. I don't know why you would opt for 2 picks in the concealment pool when cloak of darkness is superior in every way. You also have no protection from immobilize, I guess that's why you got combat teleport. But really, combat jumping is the easiest way to address the immob hole. These slots in boxing and kick are better invested in cross punch, slot cross punch for damage, not stun. This is not a game that rewards you for investing in insignificant secondary effects of a power designed to do damage first and foremost. Dark regeneration needs recharge, and a theft of essence +end proc Health and physical perfection are overslotted. Passive regeneration isn't going to help you too much. Dark armor is not a set that has a high regen base in the first place. Instead of slotting boxing and kick and using those for 28 levels you can push knockout blow up to level 20. Being a resist tanker I'm surprised you didn't at least take tough to help raise your S/L resists. I could probably write 2 posts worth of comments about various things I see in your build but instead of doing that I'm going to post a very budget friendly mostly basic SO build to give you an idea of planning a build with progression, endurance management, survival and synergy in mind, turn slot levels on to see how I place slots during the leveling process, let's not worry about sets right now, I can write another 2 posts about how to use them. DA SS basic leveling build - Tanker (Dark Armor - Super Strength).mbd During the first 20 levels you want to focus on slotting attacks and working on endurance management to support dark regeneration which is your key survival power. If you had to spend inf on one IO it would be the theft of essence proc in dark regen. Early level melee all struggle with survival because they are slots starved, so focus on attacks first which helps you kill stuff because you don't get xp for just staying alive. Dark armor doesn't get kb protection so I took acrobatics, you could get -kb IOs if you have the funds for them. I also slotted a karma -kb in combat jumping as an example. If you do have the funds for -kb IOs you can drop acrobatics, move kick and tough up and take cross punch at level 26 for a more complete offensive arsenal before level 30. Hand clap has low acc so it has more acc slotting, that combined with oppressive gloom start to form a good foundation for your proactive survival toolkit. Once you have that and are not strictly relying on dark regen to stay alive, then you can start taking the taunt auras. By level 30 you will have a decent offensive toolkit and the means to actually do a little tanking. Compare that to your build - taunt aura and taunt before level 20 with no means to actually stay alive. Super strength is weak at lower levels due to scarcity of attacks but you can get free temp powers to cover that gap while you are leveling. It's not ideal, but it beats sinking slots into bad powers like boxing/kick.

If only everyone cared about that for every build... Also I don't disagree with you, but having played this game for so long, I've long passed the absolute min/max performance phase of my COH life. Now I just min/max within the goals I set for the build ^_^ If damage was one of my goals I surely would not have build it like this.

And interruptible. But this build is so sick it can even take crappy powers and still be sick.

3 pages of recommendations by scrubs for scrubs. This is what you really need Real Tanks Don't Need No Toggles - Tanker (Super Reflexes - Martial Arts).mbd

Willpower can sustain whirlwind a smidge better than SR or Shield, and we ALL know spinning is winning.

Don't slot membranes or any HOs in any power if that's the case. Freeze ray is criminally underslotted. If there were ever powers that deserve a lot of damage procs it would be freeze ray and bitter freeze ray because they can take so many. Your endurance management is also going to be iffy, hotfeet drains a lot of end and you don't have any redux in your epic shield/leadership toggles. This is compounded by the fact that you are trying to proc out some of your bread and butter powers at the expense of accuracy (which we will get to) and endurance redux on those powers. Are you planning to turn on those leadership toggles or are they just mules for uniques? I don't see any benefit to unleash potential for this build, it's not perma and the defense you get isn't going to help you in any meaningful way. You are better off going sorcery for rune of protection for some guaranteed mez protection and resist increase. On accuracy look at this: less than 80% chance to hit +3s without outside buffs. Build up and Aim aren't up all the time and tactics is a level 47 pick, the decimation proc in bitter freeze ray also comes in late and has a poor proc rate. And bitter ice blast is one of your bread and butter attacks. What makes proc builds work is that set bonuses help cover Recharge/Accuracy and to a much lesser extent endurance recovery to offset you not slotting those in powers you want to fully proc out. If you are gun-ho about fully proccing out stuff like BFR, BIB, and I would also recommend FR then you need to adjust the build accordingly, or take a hit and dedicate 1 slot for Acc/Dam and fill the remaining slots with procs. I'd slot ice storm with 5 piece posi blast or 5 piece ice mistral to cut back on budget and also improve recharge/acc set bonuses. Procs are a mixed bag in rains like that I strongly believe you need better combat mobility if this is the type of playstyle you want to adapt to. Just because you took hot feet and the PBAOEs from fire doesn't mean you NEED to stand still in the middle of the pack getting hit with all the collateral mob AoEs. Sometimes you need to GTFO and you have no means to do that quickly when shit hits the fan. Combat jumping offers complete protection to immob and superior mobility and for builds like this it would be a very early pick to ensure I don't have to suffer through needing a break free every time something immobilizes me. Getting that early also means you can stuff a kismet unique in it to elevate your to hit and thus acc against stuff. Below is a quick rework of the build that offers a build progression conducive to your chosen playstyle. Blaster (Ice Blast - Fire Manipulation).mbd Here is some light reading on Ice/tactical Arrow where I highlight synergies for proc builds and how to build one on a budget

Havoc punch is still knockback, the threshold on even con mobs is mag .64 for knockdowns and havoc is at .75. What you have is perfectly fine, power selection wise it's definitely a toss up between more AoE or a procced ST hold. Breath and fireball is a potent 1-2 punch and I had iterations of my blaster with those powers. I also never relied on Shocking grasp for the hold. It's the -recovery that I valued more in addition to the prospect of procsplosion when multiple procs trigger. Some mobs are immune to knockdown and cycling these -recovery powers is another way to keep them pacified.

Reason you are getting no replies is probably because the data chunk errors in mids during import. You can drag and attach the mids saved build file.

What a crock of shit Everyone knows a staff/regen brute with whirlwind is best at everything. In fact anything with whirlwind trumps the bestness of any of those shitty combos you listed, but staff/regain with whirlwind is the absolute BEST! SPINNING IS WINNING!

2 additional slots in health is not going to save them from dying a lot. 39hp/sec regen at HP cap with 3 slots in health - 2 level 50 heal IOs and Numina unique No slots in health, I REALLY, REALLY REALLY REALLY don't think an additional 4 hp/sec is the ultimate key to keeping blasters alive.

Cookie cutter you say? I don't think you or your friend is ready for this

Doh I was on my phone and looking at the screenshot for mids and missed that the top row of powers got cut off in your screenshot. That makes sense. I will continue to espouse invoke panic where it makes sense in a build though!

Have you tried invoke panic? Highly recommend it.

You only have 2 picks from your primary until level 32. And along that journey picked up and invested fully into 2 pools. I’m all for people having fun with their builds. But if you come seeking advice, this build is not very balanced. You are essentially playing a weak wannabe sentinel for 31 levels, no matter how effective you think your build is. Any build can be made “tough,” but that is not the measure of the value that all builds bring to the team.

A lot of those youtube vids on mids reborn that I watched simply cover how to use the tool but don't go into the nuances of making actual builds and theorycrafting. Here's a thread that highlights principles on making a cohesive build: But builds are about 25-50% of your success. I see plenty of people copy builds (and don't question how those builds fit their preferences/playstyle) but don't play them to their full potential. Any scrub can copy a tried and true fire farm build and brag about how tough they are in fire farms. If you really want to be badass, the other component of success comes from understanding game mechanics and playstyle - like you can turn knockback into a pseudo knockdown by jumping up, line of sight, mob fear ai, etc... Also, if you want to learn all the nuances of the game, play a blaster. You'll learn real quick that you have to deal with mez/debuffs/squishieness and basically all the things that you take for granted on other ATs. If you can be successful as a blaster that isn't afraid to dance in melee, you can pretty much play anything else except masterminds and kheldians.

Don't make it weird. Hey don't you still owe me like 10 billion inf for all my super awesome build ideas?

Perfect! You can Erotic Role Play your build choices and make your teammates super uncomfortable, or super excited, since everlasting is the Role Play server... "putting ice shields on you would make it harder for me to disrobe you, and I want me some of that pixel meat. mmmm...." Am I doing this right?

Powersink requires you to be in melee range, you probably don't want that given your stated playstyle. You don't need to pick up the shields if you don't plan to do hardmode content and even if you did want to do hardmode you'll probably want a different spec of the build altogether. Like I said, if you play on Excelsior a great majority of your team experience will be those where you contributions don't really matter all that much aside from damage. A densely populated server like that will always have 1-2 uber IOed players on a team carrying the rest. I suppose with concept build like that where you consciously make build choices like that you might as well play into the player population "meta" and set up shop on a server that has the greatest chance of not giving you any flak for your choices.

It's bad. It turns out old people are even more entitled than young people, fuck them! Fuck them all! That's why I hang out with Pandas.

Build for theme and what's fun for you, recognize limitations of the game engine and be somewhat flexible in your goals, then find synergies to support those goals. I frown on always looking at conventional forum metrics to evaluate powers. Sentiments like "power that do no damage are not useful (i.e handclap) or this thing has a long cast time so it sucks (i.e Thunderstrike) and every build needs to have numina/miracles in health" have become so ingrained in peoples minds that they don't take the time to evaluate synergy those powers bring to the build. The game is forgiving enough to allow builds to go in other directions. Not everything needs to be evaluated around clear speed/pylon times/dpa/nerdy fucking math shit, in a vacuum, without any consideration for how powers interact with other powers in your toolkit. Having said that one of the biggest problems I see with player builds on the newbie "I don't know what I'm doing" spectrum is lack of focus, most often as a result of not clearly defined build goals. Once you define your goals, you can identify synergies THEN use nerdy fucking math shit to help you optimize your build to reach those goals.

No my misguided friend, you do not NEED either leadership or fighting for survival. IO set bonuses do wonders for your build. I looked over your build and share many sentiments that @Projector wrote out. Whether you take the shields or not though is not the biggest area of my concern. I would imagine you are not going to run this build for hard mode content nor would people interested in that content accept you on their teams once they scan your power picks, so that point is moot. For normal content most people won't care because chances are you are going to either be carried by some IOed out player or you will be doing the carrying (you will not be doing the latter). What I'm concerned about the most is how anemic your damage output would be. I can even accept this notion that you are squishy and you don't want to use inferno because that puts you in melee range. If you fit in fire breath like you stated, you can still put out respectable AoE damage. But skipping out on blaze and blazing bolt? Those are the hardest hitting 2 Ranged attacks in your toolkit. I can see a world where you drop the shields from your current build, pick up infrigidate, and fire breath, drop either leadership or fighting and pick up blaze and blazing bolt, if you wanted to you can even pick up shocking bolt. And if you dropped both leadership and fighting you can even pick up hover. Maybe you don't believe me, but seeing is believing. Here's your build reworked to have softcap range defense WITHOUT fighting or leadership. I even left you a free powerpick at 49. You Don't Need Fighting Or Leadership For Survival - Corruptor (Fire Blast - Cold Domination).mbd If you want to learn how to make builds, I can teach you. I'm all for building for theme and fun, but you can still optimize while following your themes.

Is this part of your concept or is this just you following generic forum advice that every build needs leadership and fighting?

Don't worry about it buddy friend pal guy, you didn't come across that way and I didn't take it that way. I've played this game long enough to be comfortable following my own build paths. I'm also not trying to force you to onboard my suggestions either, simply pointing at a path lesser traveled as an option 😃 For what it's worth this is my current build. Writhe in horror as you slowly or fastly realize I didn't even take the fighting pool or ROP... Fortune Weaver i27 p6 - Arachnos Widow (Fortunata Training - Fortunata Teamwork).mbd

A lot of times I appreciate the math work pioneered by people like you that elevate my understanding of the game. Other times I find it disheartening to see players strictly look at numbers when determining efficacy and more importantly, synergy that powers offer a build. Arctic Breath is an opener when I approach mobs, procced it has higher raw damage than the other options available to me, Build up is not available every spawn even at ridiculous recharge levels, but AB is. I can use it consistently to open every engagement, stick the native and proc -res and in some cases the KD and follow through with my other AoEs. The high initial damage means I can equalize the numbers game faster and be less susceptible to rapid cascading failures. Depending on mob con AB alone can one shot some fodder and if there's one thing I learned from playing blasters, it's that mob fear ai is a wonderful survival tool when you are at a disadvantage. Are these the same type of "conventional forum wisdom" evaluation criteria (Animation time, damage, blah blah) you took to handclap when you omitted it from your original RAD/SS build? And what happened when you actually tried out the power after I recommended it? To be clear I'm not saying you should take AB, but I just really want to challenge these conventional forum wisdom that's so deeply seeded in many players' minds. Regarding the comment about cones and how it can't hit more than 1-2 foes. Here's me standing within opening range of mobs about 47ft away from the iron strongman And here's me hitting more than 2 foes with it You can use math and numbers to tell me that AB is inferior, but there's something to be said about the gut feel of something and fun factor. AB is fun first and foremost to me, and my gut feel is that it's the best power suited to what I want to do and the holes I seek to address.