MonteCarla

Pick a primary that has some built-in self-defence. I'd highly recommend Energy Blast because of the knockback that's baked into it all attacks. You get this for free, no extra animation time or endurance cost or anything, as you blast. Otherwise, pick a primary with a hold at least so you can use a bit of active defence against troublesome enemies. You only need to survive the current fight - your sustain power at level 20 will typically fix you up between groups as you solo. Building for Ranged Defence: - Thunderstrike set is cheap and wonderful for single target attacks. - Artillery is a cheap and good set for Ranged AOE attacks. - The Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor uniques are worth getting. You can take Fighting and slot them in Tough, or wait until your Epic Armor. /Sonic Manipulation, /Ninja Training and /Plant Manipulation have sustains at level 20 that can take Resistance IOs. /Time could slot these at 30 in Time Lord. - All six Gaussian's in Build Up or Aim - Blaster's Wrath is a good expensive set for a big +Ranged Def bonus Mez Protection - Defiant Barrage: Chance for Status Protection in one of your Tier 1 or 2 attacks - Inner Will in Martial Combat can be used like a Break Free - The P2W Defence bonus adds +5% Defence and Mag 4 Mez Protection. If you can afford this, use it!

I remember this from my first villain ever, a Mind/Psi Dominator. Confusing a Longbow boss never worked, because they'd still turn Tactics on and neutralise it. It was very frustrating and I had to find other ways around them. See the thread about Vulnerabilities in Powers and Archetypes today - this was a great example of a naturally occurring one.

I remember when I first played Champions Online, superstrength there felt an order of magnitude better than in CoH. 1) You could pick up objects like cars and throw them. 2) You did hefty knockback with many attacks, say a charged Roomsweeper, and it was OK to do so. We can't do 1) in CoH because the engine doesn't support it, so impact decals and effects are probably the best we can do there. 2) is iffy, because knockback is unpopular in CoH. This is because the gameplay meta here revolves around herding up tens of enemies and using AoEs on them, so any scatter is bad. Champions saw you generally fighting smaller groups, and also had lunge attacks in most melee sets to make closing the distance less of an issue. I think SS just needs the first three attacks (Jab, Punch, Haymaker) getting a bit of love. Instead of 2,4 and 8s recharges, make them 4, 8 and 10s and give them better animations and SFX. Less stubby little jabs and more gorilla swipe. Haymaker should do actual Knockback similar to Martial Art's Crane Kick. That would go a long way to making the set feel more super-strong.

I don't know if a system based purely on damage types would work in an RPG like CoH, because players would just min/max. e.g every Fire Tank could afford to take a weakness to Fire to bump up their other resistances, and still sit above the cap. Or, take a vulnerability to a damage type that you rarely face, eg Cold or Toxic, and ignore enemy groups that use that type.

I decided to check it out recently, and found that there's no visual option to NOT pop spines out of your entire body. That turned me off enough to not play it, and I may not be alone there?

Electric Armor on Brutes is the best set to build for Resistance. I wrote up a big guide on building Resistances for Brutes way back. You can easily hit the 90% to Smashing, Lethal (needs Tough and Brute ATIOs) and Energy (just happens) and can also reach it for Fire/Cold and Psionic if you go for it. I found this to be a lot of fun and ended up with a supremely tough character who's defences would never get bypassed by debuffs, unlike Defence based characters. You won't need Recovery bonuses thanks to Energize and Power Sink - getting their Recharge up via set bonuses is a better bet than trying to enhance Recovery itself.

I've played Sonic Resonance to 50 twice on Defenders. Here's my 2c: You've picked the right powers to skip. It's one of the worst support sets for solo-ing, as it gives you +18% Resistance and Mez Protection from Sonic Dispersion, Sonic Siphon and Liquefy. So hopefully you're planning a team build here. It's not a great set overall, and I think this got overlooked early on in I5 because Sonic Blast was so good. Both have been balanced a bit by the HC team though, so we're in a better place. Sonic Siphon - 1 slot wonder with Acc is fine. Clarity - 1 slot with End redux or recharge? Disruption Field - 1 slot for end redux (maybe 2?) Liquefy - slot for -To Hit and Recharge. Cloud Senses is the premium set here because it gives you +Recharge and +Ranged Def Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven and Sonic Dispersion - Put the Steadfast Protection and Glad. Armor uniques in here for +6% Defence And choosing from here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Sets_for_improving_Resist_Damage - Unbreakable Guard gives you +Melee Def at 4 slots - Aegis gives you +Area Def at 3 and 5 slots - Impervious Skin gives you +5% Recharge at 5 slots. The low slot demand on your secondary means you can spare the slots for your blasts. - Corrupter uniques are worth slotting. You could split Scourging Blast across 2 powers to get the +Recharge bonus twice. - Single target blasts: Thunderstrike gives +Ranged Def for 6 slots, Annihilation gives +Recharge for 5 slots - Cone Attacks: Artillery gives +Ranged Def for 6 slots, Positrons Blast gives +Recharge for 5 slots, and increases the range of the cone - Nuke can take Obliteration for +Recharge and +Melee Def for 6 slots - Shriek can take Stupefy, but it's got good damage now, so its better slotted as a damaging attack - Siren's Song can take Call of the Sandman unique for a fairly reliable self-heal as a gimmick, maybe on top of the Posi set. Sonic Attack doesn't take any special damage procs beyond the Knockback ones in Shockwave.

I never knew about this, it sounds way cool! Looks like the big hurdle is defeating the Seed of Hamidon for Germinator Terminator. Is that like a whole league event, or could a single team pull it off? https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Between_Realities_Badge

An example: Storm Blast covers Smashing, Cold and Energy Fire Manipulation covers Fire and Lethal Force of Will pool gives you Psychic Experimentation gives you Toxic Soul Mastery for Negative Energy And of course, damage procs can add extra damage types in there if you skip some of these. I'm not sure how you'd put all this together into a coherent build in terms of either game mechanics or concept, but it can be done.

Did the CoT or any of your teammates have +To Hit? That can rip through SR's defence and ignores defence debuff resistance.

I've found the -Recovery to be really important. Short Circuit gives 10 s of -100% Recovery Thunderous Blast gives 20s of -100% Recovery. I think the purple patch reduces the amount of -Recovery rather than the duration, so a team of Short Circuit-ers should have no trouble keeping the enemies floored at over -100% Recovery. It does need re-applying, sure, but its also part of your AoE attack chain, so you'll be using it anyway when its up. I have tried Electric Control twice and it does drain really well too, and provide mass immobilise to stop the drained enemies from just running off. Conductive Aura mostly makes up for the lack of -Recovery, but may allow a sneaky shot in between pulses, which Short Circuit strictly forbids for those 10 seconds.

Hmmm... In an ideal situation, your superteam can run in and drain each group of enemies to zero with one hit, and are then safe to take them down as quickly as possible with actual damage before they scatter. So let's start with Electrical Blast for everyone, with Short Circuit (big -End and -Recovery) slotted for End Mod first, damage second. That does 70% drain, so 35% drain against +4's, so you'd want three people with this powerset to run in and alpha. Slot your other powers for damage first, end drain as extra. Short Circuit has a long animation, so give someone Force Fields to keep you all safe while you do this. A Defender is ideal here as they can soft cap their team mates by themselves. You can now all attack, and take advantage of the Shocked mechanic to get boosted damage. May as well have a Kineticist in there to boost everyone's damage while you're at it. Make them a Corrupter maybe. And then add Blasters or Corrupters with -Res debuffs. Maybe swap Force Fields out for two Time Defenders with Farsight, so everyone gets full damage boosts and rotating -Res debuffs? So 1 x FF/Elec Blast Defender 1 x Elec Blast/Kin Corrupter Elec/whatever Blasters Or 2 x Time/Elec Blast Defenders 1 x Elec Blast/Kin Corrupter Elec/whatever Blasters The End Drain will do less than stacking support sets will, but it'll still be fun to watch the blue bars drop. And maybe add a Elec/Something Controller in there to lay down Electric Fences to stop the enemies running around once they're drained. I think the Repeat Offenders used to have an End Drain team, called "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence"? Or did I just imagine that? 🙂

My first character way way back in Issue 5 was a Fire/Fire Blaster, and I tried to solo her by street-sweeping, and it was horrible. I do remember watching with envy as an Energy/Energy Blaster took on a Council Lt in Steel Canyon and knocked him down the street while obliterating his hit point bar. Shortly after, there was my Elec/Elec Blaster who I did get to 50, mainly by solo street-sweeping, and had a pretty good time doing so. The big difference, of course, is the active defence provided by knockback or Tesla Cage. Fire Blast is rough because it doesn't have any hard mez at all. You've got Positron Cage to help out. Its easier these days of course. Grab Plasmatic Taser from the P2W vendor. This gives everyone a good AoE hard mez for the early levels, as well as an extra AoE with good damage. On a Fire Blaster you could keep using this all through your career. Use IOs, Fighting, Manouvers and Hover to get capped defences to Ranged first, then other positions. I've done this on a few Blasters (including a Fire/Atomic) and it rocks! Or try to get to 32% Defence, so a small purple pill caps you. Lean on your crowd control powers in primary, secondary and epic pools to become a sort of reverse Dominator - mostly damage with enough mez to keep yourself alive.

My most successful End drainers were: Elec/Energy Aura/Elec Sentinel Rad/Elec Defender with attacks slotted primarily for end drain rather than damage as an experiment. Both had something to stop drained enemies running away - Electrified Fences and Choking Cloud - which is a big part of making this work.

I'd go */Energy Dominators with the Energy Mastery Pool - that gives you most of the primary and secondary powers of an En/En blaster with a side of controls. Gravity is probably the best primary with it's fairly unobtrusive pet and "space-y" powers like Wormhole and Dimension Shift. Earth is great if you want to lean into Molecular re-arrangement and transmutation. And En/En Blaster gets Nova and higher damage, and can be built for capped defences if you lean into it with Fighting and Manouvers and so on. I can attest to that feeling very cosmic too.