MonteCarla

Cross Punch is awesome. It does more base damage than most melee cones, and that's before getting boosted by 15% for taking Boxing or Kick on the way, or double that if you take both. I've found it really handy on a number of melee characters to boost their AoE damage, most recently on an Inv/SS Tanker.

Yep. Ice, Earth and Electric Control are all very low damage. All have the two single target powers (Hold and Immobilise) doing basic damage, and an AoE immobilise doing very light damage. You can add damage procs - like Cold Snap takes 3 of them. You can take Arcane Bolt or other power pools attacks, or wait for your Pet and Epic Pool damage powers. I've played Ice Control once with the express intention of making a low damage Controller who'd need a team to get anything done. And I feel that's just how it should be - some powersets should lend themselves to team-centric builds.

Martial Assault on Dominators is the ultimate "dancefloor emote" powerset, as you can do Spinning Kick and Dragons Tail without a target.

I'm playing it for the first time (Psi/KM Tank), and it's nice for a change and feels a bit less powerful than it could, like 80% of what Energy Melee feels like. Looks and sounds great, and it's good enough to be enjoyable. I think some bad design decisions were made though: 1) Many melee sets have three starter attacks with recharge of 4, 8 and 10 seconds. Kinetic Melee gets 3, 5 and 7 seconds, with damage scaled accordingly. Once you're in your 30s the recharge on these doesn't matter - you're rarely waiting around for them to come backm but using othert powers and getting limited by animation time. So you're left with three starter attacks that do less damage for similar animation time. 2) Siphon Power as a replacement to Build Up isn't great. It takes 3-4 stacks to accumulate the same damage bonus as Build Up, so you fire off Siphon Power, then the first three attacks to build up stacks, then Concentrated Strike as the big payoff. And its got a longer recharge, just to be annoying. 3) Concentrated Strike has a long animation that hits late. Animation time has often plagued CoH as not being factored into the power balancing. And this compounds here with the weaker starter attacks to make the whole set underwhelming. I'm going to try it on a Stalker next. Having Build Up and an extra big hitter should make it a lot better.

I wrote a guide on Force Fields here. If you're looking for a kind of flying tank mage experience, I'd go with the following plan: Take most of the Energy Blast powers except Power Push, which is low damage, and Repulsion Bolt is better. Slot the 4 single targets with Thunderstrike set when you get to level 27. Its cheap-ish and provides +3.75% Ranged defence per set. Take Hover and Fly. Don't bother with Arcane Bolt or anything - that's better for low damage characters like Controllers. Work on building up ranged defence. To begin with your main survival tool is knockback, but as you hit your 20s you can start building up Defence to have decent passive survival. 1 Power Blast, <- 6 slot for Thunderstrike eventually 1 Personal Force Field <-- for emergencies 2 Power Bolt <- 6 slot for Thunderstrike eventually 4 Energy Torrent 6 Power Burst <- 6 slot for Thunderstrike eventually 8 Sniper Shot <- 6 slot for Thunderstrike eventually 10 Hover <- Single def 12 Fly 14 Repulsion Bolt <- does -Res debuff, so you do more damage to target after, and guaranteed KB 16 Deflection Shield OR Kick OR Aid Self 18 Insulation Shield OR Tough <- takes 2 unique IOs that add +6% defence to all together. OR Aid Other 20 Dispersion Bubble <- slot 1 end redux, 3 def 22 Explosive Blast 24 Weave if you took fighting? Manouvers? 26 Nova 28 Force Bomb <- does -Res so you do more damage, and knocks enemies over Your defence will be 12% from slotted Dispersion, 3% from Hover and +15% Ranged Def from the four Thunderstrike sets in your blasts. so 30% Ranged Defence. Enemy chance to Hit is 50%-Defence, so you're now only getting hit 20% of the time! Eat a small purple luck and you're scraping the 45% Defence cap against Ranged attacks. Level 16 and 18 - If you intend to NEVER team up, skip the Deflection and Insulation Shield. If you do team without these, expect some big disappointment from teammates though. Or for purely solo, start digging into the Fighting pool to get some extra Def via the Steadfast Protection and Gladiators Armor unique enhancements. (These will cost about 4 million and 8 million, so only do this if you can afford that) Or take Aid Other to get Aid Self, which works nicely with Personal Force Field. Slotting priorities are your attacks and Dispersion Bubble Hope that helps! 🙂

I try to have 3 levelling characters and maybe one Incarnate on the go at a time. Recently I'm up to 7 levellers, one of whom I haven't played for at least two weeks. Two are re-rolls of existing characters with tweaked power sets, just because I enjoyed being those characters. One's at 47, waiting for the right Task Force to come along and finish off at 50. Sometimes a character gets dropped on the way to 50 due to being squeezed out by others I'm more into. Sometimes I pick them up again, even a year later and get them to 50. eg Mary Alpha, MA/Dark brute, a parallel earth clockwork character, was abandoned at 39 for nearly a year. A thread in the tanker forum about Dark Armor made me pick her up again, and I had fun. And I've now got her to 50 and made two "sister dolls" of hers as new characters, and stuck them all in a SG together. I can think of two others in the high 30's/low 40s I might revive, maybe once I've cleared some of these levellers out.

Wow! I'm impressed. How are you doing that, Biff? Shield Wall is +5% to everything, Reactive Defences is +3% to everything at full health and 7% from Might of the Tanker puts you up to... 46% or so. Add in 5% if you're using SG base buffs? And the rest is like +30% to each pair of types (F/C, E/N, Tox/Psi) from set bonuses?

Yep. For F/C/E/N/Toxic/Psi you get 10% Resistance from the passives eg Resist Energies, Resist Elements, and 10% Resist from Unyielding. That's 20%, slot it, multiply by 1.58 and you get 31.6% Confirmed on both cod.uberguy.net and my current SS/Inv Tanker that I'm levelling up. Invulnerability's always been "max your S/L resists, small resists vs everything else, and you can max all your typed defences when you're in a pack via Invincibility." The only real change over time is that they've closed the Psi hole it used to have a little bit. It works because a lot of the heavy hits in the game are Smashing or Lethal.

Yeah. As a set-slotter, I usually have over 1 SO's worth of +global accuracy, and around 3 SO's worth of +Global Recharge. It more than makes up for what I lose in the powers themselves.

I doubt you could get anywhere near 90% to anything except Smashing/Lethal with Invulnerability. I did a big numerical breakdown on Resist sets here - Inv tankers get 31.6% Resist to Fire/Cold/Energy/Neg/Psi/Toxic just by slotting their powers, so its a pretty steep hill to climb to 90% from there.

Pre-IO's, not counting Hami-O's, we had six slots to use for Damage, Acc, End, Recharge etc, with any more than 3 of one kind getting hit hard by ED. It was fairly common to slot 1 Acc, 1 End, 1 Rech and 3 Damage. I don't know, but doubt many people slotted 3 Acc or 3 Rech in their attacks. IO sets typically do better than this. A double like Acc/Dam gives you 2/3 the value for both stats, totalling 1.33 SO's worth. A triple like Acc/Dam/End gives you 1/2 the value of an SO for each stat, totalling 1.5 SO's worth. Sets are usually designed so you get maxed (but not hugely wasted) damage and decent values for Acc, End and Rech. e.g Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact - the most vanilla of sets give you: 3 * 2/3 + 3 * 1/2 = 3.5 SOs worth of Damage 2/3 + 2*1/2 = 1.66 SOs worth of Acc, End and Rech. The damage is a bit over ED, but you can max that if you only slot 5 pieces. These numbers creep up as you approach 50, to more like 4 Damage, and 2 of everything else. I think that's the basic logic behind what you're seeing? You do get the odd set that doesn't max out damage easily (Mako's Bite, Artillery). Maybe it would be nice to have more of them?

I'm going to give this a look, and throw them a few $$. Getting something like this off the ground is a massive effort. I love CoH, but other superhero games are cool too.

I love this idea, and kudos for your thoroughness in presenting all this! I made a "support Stalker" when I got back into CoH earlier this year. Una Knight - MA/SR armed with Teleport, Teleport Target, Aid Other and the Resuscitator temp power, and the wonderful Summon Teammates temp power from saving Talos Island Bank. I don't want to rag on Stalkers I've Task Forced with who run to the end of mission boss and then just stand there, or maybe try to scrap it out solo, but I wanted to be the opposite of that. 🙂 I could stealth scout and then bring the team in to me, as well as do the lesser "Fort and port" of 'porting to a teammate a few rooms away for a quick spot heal or KB/stun assist, and port fallen allies to safety and revive and heal them. It was a fun experiment. I aced Manticore with all the scouting and porting. Looks like you've taken it to a whole other level here. I must give this a try some time!

Matter Manipulation A Defender powerset that gives your entire team including you +70% Resist vs nearly everything, healing, and big offensive buffs. T1: Healing Aura T2: Tar Patch T3: Toroidal Bubble T4: Healing Aura T5: Disruption Field T6: Sonic Dispersion T7: World of Pain T8: Slowed Response T9: Fulcrum Shift

There's a Hero tip mission where you break into an Arachnos base, rescue a Longbow agent and then have to lead her back to the exit while waves of Arachnos come after you. She's an indestructible escort with combat AI. What could go wrong? I remember getting the 17 storey Arachnos map for this once, and she was spawned down the bottom by the glowing green pool. Trying to lead her up the ramps without her jumping off to try and target a flying drone or other enemy was an absolute nightmare. I think I'm still buzzing on the endorphin hit from finally getting her out of there. 😄

Fire Armor does a little bit more damage with its aura than other sets. Ice Armor allows you to get a second "Damage Aura" by slotting the Ice Mistral and Impeded Swiftness damage procs in Chilling Embrace. Dark Armor can take two procs in Cloak of Fear (Glimpse of the Abyss, Perfect Zinger) and one in Oppressive Gloom (Perfect Zinger) I don't know which is numerically better.

I've had this soloing with my Pyro/Rad Controller. I used Kick from the Fighting pool and launched my target down the corridor. I think its an interaction between Blast Off and any other KB?

I'll second DP/Elec Manipulation. I had fun with that!

My first ever character on Homecoming was "Stars and Garters", a sidekick flagsuit character with atomic "firework" powers - represented in game as a Rad/Energy Blast Defender. Have I remade her recently? I'll give you three guesses. 🙂 Yes, she's the same character. No, there isn't any continuity between the time Is spent playing her several years ago, and playing her now. Like no in-character explanation as to why she's level 1 with powers that work a bit differently.

I agree, he's a Sentinel. But - if you were making him a Defender, go Force Field/Energy Blast with the Fighting Pool and Energy Mastery or Electric Mastery. You'll have repulsor rays, be able to softcap your defense to all positions and Smashing/Lethal Resistances, and have a nice big energised punch. And as an out-of-concept bonus you can shield your allies.

Haha, that makes sense now! I thought my Catherine Wheel wasn't doing much! 😄

My top Blast sets: 1. Energy Blast (8 level 50s of various Archetypes) Knockback is a fantastic means of self-protection, and team protection. Yes, it can scatter mobs, and yes, you can mitigate it with KB to KD IOs. If you could drop a "50% chance of Knockdown" special IO into other blast set powers, would you? I think you'd at least consider it. I often put the KB to KD only in my AoEs and have a if I knock it around I have to defeat it approach to single target blasting. You can also knock stragglers into the pack if you're good. The downside is there are no hard mezzes. Energy Blast is great for keeping a PP or Nem robot from activating their god mode, but it wont turn off a Sorceror's Hurricane. 2. Radiation Blast (6 level 50s) Looks almost as cool as Energy Blast, and has three AoEs as well as Aim, a snipe, and a full strength nuke with a hold! The -Def is not awesome, as the only enemies you'll need it for, you have to hit them in the first place. But it does allow you to stuff your attacks with damage procs. (see guide in my signature) 3. Electric Blast (5 level 50s) No cones, so both AoEs can be let off in the middle of a crowd without having to worry about positioning. You can go the sapping route, probably best done if your other powerset helps out. Thunderous Blast is a great sapping power You can be weird and put a Chance to Heal in each attack, which I have done once. It's not optimal. 🙂 4. Fire Blast (5 level 50s) The queen of damage. Provides no mitigation, so best paired with secondaries that do help your survive, eg Time I tend to mark down blast sets which don't have: - Aim (which can take the Gaussian proc for a 90% chance of +130% damage for your nuke) - Snipe (Manticore's set is very nice, plus I like sniping to open a fight.) - Full strength nukes. A high recharge build with Aim + nuke is awesome.

I totally agree that the Holy Trinity isn't. 🙂 I'm not so sure you can pin down a single key power for each powerset though. Its often the synergy between powers that makes the set work. e.g Force Fields is great because Dispersion AND Deflection & Insulation Shield put teammates close to the softcap. Thermal is great because the Resistance Shields AND the heals work together to keep your team alive - healing allies who leak HP more slowly due to Resistance buffs is much easier. AND both sets provide -Res debuffs, which are probably the most important debuffs in the game. And its not like players have to choose only one power. I do believe most sets have a couple of fairly obvious skippables, though. I love Choking Cloud - I didn't realise it was autohit! Way cool! 🙂

I'd love a Duplicates powerset - great idea to use the different costume slots! @MTeague

Yes. It has a small radius, like 8 ft or so, so it basically applies to other melee character fighting right next to you.