Sir Myshkin

Honestly most of the T1 Incarnate slots aren't anything super impressive, and really only until you hit T3 that you'll start feeling/seeing the difference they can make. In my opinion, when it comes to the Hybrid Assault specifically, that one isn't really a "Wow" moment until you get to the T4 (either side of the tree) because of how much stronger the value add becomes. I've seen even just T3 to T4 shave a quarter to half a minute off a Pylon time.

I built a character to this purpose as well, several actually, Ice/Storm Corr, a Storm/Nrg Defender, and an Ice/Atomic Blaster, even TA/A Defender that can drop Oil Slick and RoA frequently, a Fire/* Controller who could drop three Bonfires across the entire bowl consistently plus fireball and Imps. I have never seen a better run than 2,000 V Merits, and that required having a team with more AoE favored builds as the earn-rate is both team-collective and self-inflicted points. I can't even fathom there being one capable of generating 3,000 on its own in one raid. Obviously between two raids, sure, back to back in an hour that'd be doable, but not in one single MSR.

Easiest merits I've ever earned in the game came from using a high-yield AoE character during Mother Ship Raids in the RWZ after level 35 with Vanguard membership. The V-Merits are easily converted into standard Merits, and an aggressive AoE build can easily hit 1,200-1,800 V-Merits during one Raid. Conversion is 30-1, so 40-60 Merits for 35-40 minutes of work, maybe an hour if there's any wait time to get started. Speed running TF's is another way to earn hundreds of Merits per day, per character. The Imperious TF as an example can be run in 12-18 minutes depending on team make up set at -1 con. Similarly the Ms.LTF have also be executed in a similar time frame, and the two together and going to drop a significant chunk of Merits, and a HO. If you are villain side, the LRSF is also an option (or, for Vig/Rog, both). All three will net around a hundred Merits if I vaguely recall. The Penelope Yin TF can also be done very quickly just in general at 15-20 minutes for its ~20 merits. I did nightly Tin Mage/Apex TF combos for several weeks, both can be run within 30-35 minutes total (usually about 14-17 minutes a piece), and built I pile of several hundred just from those. I don't remember what they earn exactly, I think combined it's like 40-60 Merits? Gotta be 50+Alpha to do those however. If you're looking for Empyrean Merits, Heather Townshend arc in Dark Astoria can be repeated through Oro and gives a few per completion, and the "arc" can be done within ~10 minutes.

I absolutely hate gated/locked content when it comes to a game like this where the replay capacity is tied more to making additional characters than it is focused play on one character. When this game was still live, and went F2P, I continued paying the monthly not just in support of the game, but because not paying locked and restricted me from things. Didn't even matter what I couldn't have, it was just the pure notion that there was something I wouldn't have access to as a F2P. I pay an extra $6.00 a month on my Hulu subscription just to turn off ads because they infuriate me for the time it wastes. When capes and auras were locked behind a mission arc I only ever opened it up on my first two characters, after that I decided I just didn't care enough about either "feature" to complete the missions on anyone else. Same went for access into Cimerora, I unlocked it on a handful of characters I felt it relevant enough to do the content on, and didn't bother on any others because the Midnighter arc is tedious to keep repeating 20+ times (pre Night Ward). And Katie Hannon? I love Croatoa, it's personally my favorite zone, but I only ever unlocked that arc once. Ever. I didn't even manage to unlock it here, the character I started it on never finished the series of arcs required, hit 50 in other content, and since got shelved in favor of the next project. I don't even remember which character I started it on anymore. If the game had more staying power for individual characters (more content to cover per character) that incentivized staying with 1-5 characters over dozens, then semi-locked content could be a bit more reasonable. Guild Wars 2 was a lot more along those lines, stick with one character and build up gear and stats progressively, work through their Race/Class story arcs, and it was possible to spend an absurd amount of time on one character without running out of new things. Even with power selection and gear making it possible to mix up any given build, GW2 had very little reason to ever alt beyond a couple of characters, and if one did they paid the penalty of having to redo a considerable amount of stuff they'd already completed once before. I only ever rolled three characters before life got in the way and I... just never went back to it, and I had to intentionally path out what parts of the story I'd complete with each character across the content to ensure I didn't end up repeating anything because the game didn't have (at the time) nearly the same level of content that CoH did/does. Having said all that, this is a 16 year old game that's spent half that time shut down. Yes it's great to have it back and see new things, but gate keeping content isn't going to provide longevity and interest, there's already a massive back log of missions and such to play through, and any new content we get should (in my opinion) have a reasonable path to access it without abnormal requirements. Taking the more recent new story arcs as an example, they are simple to access based on natural game play (as it should be). If someone came by and told me I couldn't play the new story arc unless I had the Task Force Commander badge, I'd most certainly walk away and never bother. tl;dr Gated content Bad. If a game needs to have gated/locked content then it needs to have a significant enough value to be repeatable (multi alts), or have the reason it's withheld be relevant to a vast amount of content that plays to/within a story (limited alts). If the content is something basic like a Cape, there's just no value there and should have an alternative means to access on an account after an initial unlock. I don't have an issue with [New Account: Character 1] having unlocks, but after that when/if a locked point/task is earned it should open to the entire account and not just that character. And yes, I'd even take this so far as to apply it to certain badges as well like Exploration, Historical, Oro-Specific, Auction, or Invention; essentially ones that don't track kill counts or trial/TF completion status.

Dark Astoria was one of the least used zones in the game pre-revamp. Much like the Dev plan was for things like Faultline, Boomtown, Dark Astoria was given a face lift to bring folks back into it (and also Story). One of the most common themes for why folks avoided the zone was, in fact, the fog, and also the fact that it tied into a level range that already has a lot of other busy work going on. DA was a very easy zone to miss/outlevel with very little effort involved.

What are you ultimately looking to achieve by including the Medicine pool, is it just for Aid Other? If this is the case, then the AT doesn't really matter. If you're looking at use for yourself as well, I can tell you up front that you'll be doing yourself far more harm than good (especially on a Regen) taking an ability that has a low comparative value and can root you in an unpleasant way. In fairness to your description, it sounds like you're looking for something along the lines of Poison, but there's no weapon involved there. You could do a Poison + Archery combo on a Defender or Corruptor to have that "applicator" approach, or honestly do a Trick Arrow once the Beta changes move to live. Taking the sword aspect out of the concept, Peacebringers are the CoH equivalent of a Paladin character. Mix of Offense and Defense with both self heal and ally heal capabilities. In that particular case, they also have fangs and claws and things.

Haven't logged into the game in month, occupied with other things, and saw something pretty amusing that made me think of this thread by happenstance: If you really want a piece of the market, am I right? And no, not a bug, it looks to be a costly mistake of one-too-many zeroes. 😄 Curious how many processed before they noticed. Stack of ten would be 200 million gone in a heartbeat, click that one too many times and a billion is gone in a flash!

Invincibility follows the same principle that Tactics does, its proc possibilities are fueled by active bodies in the field of effect. If all you had surrounding you were three enemies then your probability would still be pretty low. You'd need to saturate Invincibility to get the proc to go off with any sense of reliability (and still you're probably talking an average of 2 or 3 hits a minute). The Energy Melee of old, and the Energy Melee on Beta are two different beasts that just share a common shell. Total Focus was skipped before because its animation was far too long, caused DPS inconsistencies, and wasn't nearly as good a value as just spamming Energy Punch around Energy Transfer. The changes on Beta have done considerable amounts to try and improve the performance of the set by speeding up TF and ET as a combo 1-2 hit and spreading some additional utility into powers like Barrage, and giving it another form of AoE in Power Crash. I would definitely review the changes on Beta and test one out for yourself over there so you can get a feel for the changes because they're going to alter how you build/play compared to how EM is on live currently.

Schrodinger's Thread.

Core can be explained on Scrappers and Stalkers on Criticals, they favor +Dam by a significant amount more than Brutes/Tankers in that regard. The Radial procs only scale off a base portion of damage in an attack. I did a ton of raw testing both Core and Radial both before and after Tanker buffs which gave me a pretty decent insight, and revealed some general rules drawn in the sand. Radial highly favors sets with low modifiers and get poor scaling on +Dam buffs. For all that an additional 75% might grant, sometimes just double the starting value via proc turned better results. Tankers used to sit right in that zone of “meh” and the lean was more Radial originally, but shifted Core post buff because they now get marginally more benefit from it. As Bopper’s tool can demonstrate however, there can be a bit of a mixed bag still on some sets based on initial base values and animation times. Some attacks have low modifiers and fast animations whereas others have higher modifiers and long animations. Titan Weapons is an interesting case of such where a few attacks have strong mods and get applied faster than normal with Momentum. Super Strength is another example where the attacks have relatively low base points but get aggressively boosted and see much more opportunities out of Core rather than Radial by a decent amount, however this leads into a unique case point about choosing between Core and Radial in general: If you’re capable of hitting ~300% damage buff (or more) with a high uptime, then going Radial may often be the better choice. After 300% on Melee/Blasters there’s diminished returns for most attacks outside of a few high mod cases. Most sets can’t achieve this solo so it won’t be a ton of cases, but if you’re teaming a lot in scenarios where +Dam is being brought en masse to the table then Radial is going to have wider value, especially so if there’s a Kin around damage-capping the team. I am personally a strong proponent of Hybrid Assault Core, but unless you’re intention is to primarily solo my common suggestion these days is to probably go with Radial since there will never be a case where you don’t get benefit from it.

I like my ITF’s buffed, players debuffed, no Inspirations, no Temps, no deaths, with a side of “I might even turn off enhancements too, you loon.” Also, there’s no way a Warp-Speed ITF generates more XP/min than even a remotely kill-most ITF one factor of Speeds typically being -1 difficulty, avoiding nearly all mobs in the crystal caves, only Zerg rushing the generals in M3, and only killing the minimum required in M4.

I totally agree.

The Dev looked down at Scrappers He was lookin’ for a nerf to deal He was on a deadline at beta patch time He was willing to ruin a build When he came across this young Scrapper chewin through a map without a sweat And the Dev jumped into the map and said “Generic326, let me tell you what.” “I bet you didn’t know it, but I’m a Regen player too. And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you. Now you run a pretty good farm boy, but give the Dev his due I’ll bet a buff against your skills because I see a nerf in you.” The Scrapper said, “I may have a great build, and get myself banned for it But screw your nerf, I’ll stick with this, cause Regen is the best there ever was.” Generic326 you fool, you’ve doomed us all for sure Cause Hell’s broke loose on Beta and the Dev holds all the buffs And if you win you’ll get the nerf bat made of gold But if you loose we might just get some love. Now the Dev he opened up his farm map and he said “Ill get this farm on the road And fire flew from his fingertips as he started his first chain And he pulled in each new spawn with his Fire Breath’s evil hiss And his Greater Fire Sword joined in and it sounded something like this When the Dev has finished Generic326 said “We’ll you’re pretty good ol’ son But sit down at that door right there and let me show you how it’s done.” Follow Up and Focus, run mobs run! Regen’s in the house of the Shockwave fun Spin in the middle shredding up spawns Instant Healing on tap, don’t need a heal The Dev he bowed his head because he knew that he’d been beat And he laid that golden nerf bat on the ground at Generic’s feet Generic326 said, “Dev come on back if you ever want to try again Cause I told you once—no matter the nerf—Regen is the best there’s ever been.”

No, they do not, and is just one more reason to skip them. Neither Seekers, Trip Mines, nor Time Bomb are able to utilize damage procs due to their design, and are all generally poor abilities (or far too situational) in the first place.

Reactive and Degenerative will produce similar results solo, but Degen is technically the slightly better choice against big targets. You are correct that there are a lot of players who do go for Degen, and also Reactive because they are the best choices. If you have a concern about maximizing your team contribution than I’d suggest grabbing a random different one with a good DoT. Of which, the DoTs for Interfaces were fixed if I recall correctly several months ago and should be working correctly. As for Lore, Longbow are often chosen because the biggun’ has -Regen I top of just being a strong choice. Banished Pantheon are another popular go-to because they’re heavy hitters and reasonably stout. Cimerorians, Clocks (the Praetorian robot versions) are also good for damage but not as resilient. The Storm Lores are solid for AoE. Past that it’s really conceptually up to you, those are just the common choices because so many of the others are kind of “meh.”

I should probably add this for clarity: to get the extra bonus you only have to have chosen the appropriate powers in your build, they don’t have to be used (mainly looking at Kick as it’s not that great compared to Boxing or Cross Punch which I would use as previously mentioned). Cross Punch also gives a short duration recharge bonus (10% for ~5/s), I forgot to mention that before and it does really add to the reasons to use it. For Cardiac, I wouldn’t say you have to use it, but without using something like the Tanker ATO proc or Barrier you’ll find it much harder to round out all of your Resistances to reach cap. It’ll become a personal choice to make. I can also add that you won’t be lacking for power at 50. I was more than capable of soloing the ITF set to +4/8 within under a few hours, and all I had supporting my damage was essentially Interface and Judgement, and Assault Hybrid to use on Nictus Romulus. Musculature will give you a push, but it won’t be a ton of difference in this particular situation (Double Rage).

Some points on the Fighting Pool, once you take Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch they collectively get a damage bump, and with that boost Boxing is close to Punch, and Cross Punch is a near swap for Haymaker; in both cases we’re talking within like 10pts of each other. With Cross Punch being a cone and being able to slot a -Res proc it ends up becoming the superior option, and even though it is a cone I wouldn’t treat it any differently than a ST attack and just soak up the occasional bonus damage when you catch it. And I’m on mobile so I can’t open Mids, but looking at the posted info, assuming it’s the build I think it is, that one has Cardiac to pull in the last ~5-6% of Res for several stats that round most of the build to 90% cap. Yes Jab is in there with the ATO set and proc, but I really only slotted it for the set bonuses, Jab is a terribly anemic (worthless) attack and I personally find relying on the proc to be irksome at best to which there was no intention of that being a used ability. Cardiac is also there to shore up endurance use in the build which makes it possible to pass on Ageless and pick up Barrier (for more Defense) or Rebirth for more aggressive Regen/Healing. Once you have double stacked Rage going the damage won’t feel off any longer, and if you weren’t doubling it, you should be. Prior to Rage, and especially prior to Foot Stomp spawn clearing ability does considerably suck, but after that Rad/SS/Soul is a MONSTER.

I think you may have missed an element about the runs folks have been attempting are including buffed enemies which changes the dynamic of the run by a considerable amount.

Yes. Side note about commands, I too tend to keep my bar void of a lot of complicated macros and such, but the two things I personally found the most useful was having just “Defensive” mode and then a macro specifically telling my pets to attack my specific target, and only that target while staying in Defensive mode. A third option would be one that puts the T3 into Aggressive and lets them “loose”. Having the specific-targeting method might be a tad tedious, the ultimate goal is to get a spawn initiated, and then let natural aggro fuel the AI’s functionality in Defensive mode.

There's a decent amount of discussion on Rad/SS in this thread already, as well as a Proc Monster minded variant here (and a Tanker version) that you may find helpful. Several of those builds also do reach 90% Res to many stats (if not "all").

The following is the revised PROC build and is best suited for non-Incarnate based content, but with proper support to boost up defense it can work just fine in any of the iTrials as well (if desired). Truthfully Rend Armor and Crushing Blow are the only two abilities really proc-focused as Follow Through and Arc have to be more heavily slotted to get to their (current) optimal cooldowns. Toss in Maneuvers and grab Barrier and call it day for Incarnate stuff. Assuming constant surroundings you're likely to get similar results, but with less control over the result. Invincibility will function similarly to the way Gaussian's does in Tactics with a slew of team members wrapped around you, once every 10/s, based on body count at the trigger check. Unless you have a timer next to you pinging every 10/s after zone load, you have no idea of knowing when this check will occur which means you have the chance of missing it, or failing to get a strong enough body count to ensure the proc when it checks. If there was no other option for the proc, then sure, go wild. Others have tossed it in there and made sure to constantly be surrounded by 10+ mobs to keep up the probability on check and can get good results, it just depends on play style and how driven/fast you want to keep the character focused. Personally I'd probably keep it in Power Siphon as I would have more control over its effect and I can use the opening dirge of PS with Burst instead of having to ramp a few attacks first before using AoE. Overall it nets a more consistent arc of power for a longer period of time (strong boost, very little dip for 5/s, consistent high for 10/s, then dwindle/decay for 10/s, then repeat). In a Build Up centered build however I'd be more inclined to use Gaussian's in Invincibility because of shorter duration, and an opportunity to have better spikes throughout combat rather than just one massive (potentially over kill) burst that dies quickly. It kind of becomes a mileage varies thing. Per minute, full saturation constantly then Invincibility has the better odds (six chances per minute), but the realism of that is more likely 2-3 opportunities for sure, with maybe a 4th or 5th on good luck timing if the team/you are moving very quickly (or otherwise staying in a semi-saturated state) every 10/s. It definitely increases odds on clearing power (AoE performance) over ST capability, and I say this in regards to the fact that Invulnerability is available to more than just Tankers (where it'd matter). Some sets I'd say "put it in Invincibility" when paired with Invuln: Dark Melee Dual Blades/Claws These two are arguable, having the proc in BF/FU can net higher chances to proc and be less reliant of body count giving better odds for ST, also less disruptive to combos for Dual if Feint doesn't have to get cycled in at the wrong time to "keep it up." Radiation Melee Savage Melee Spines Titan Weapons Super Strength All the other sets are pretty "dealers choice" as I see it, which is totally subjective to the level of control a player wants over the proc.

Some points: Tactics on MMs does have a pretty solid fire-off rate with Gaussian, but unless there is intentional focus on attacking the added boost has very little value and is unlikely to support DPS effectively given the random nature of the proc v. combat. Given this, I’d personally say slotting the Gaussian proc on the MM itself is a waste. Any pet that can take the proc and can be slotted towards an ability with an effective trigger chance, then this is acceptable. Enforcers get the same benefit triggers out of Tactics multiplying against all the other summoned pets and are going to be actively cycling in other attacks actively giving them the most benefit for a Thugs MM. To boot there are two of them which is even better. For those talking about “Pylon Times” with their MMs, take those assaults with a grain of salt. Pylons are classed objects and anything attacking them is considered equivalent level meaning pet levels shifts are negated, thus damage scaling isn’t active meaning it’s not exactly a fair scale to compare against an AV for MMS. Towards the original topic, Thugs do make the most obvious practical choice, but the secondary could easily be waived to any number of things. As a consideration of the character being someone who “worked their way up” is there a connected “original” version of the character and do any of those power sets have carry over as a MM secondary, even stretched? Back on retail I had a series of characters that were the same person as they evolved through their encounters. Started out as a weapon smith (BR/Traps Corr), following the Incarnate storylines they got consumed by Mot and became imbued with the lingering darkness that overwhelmed them (became a Dark/Sonic Cont), eventually regained control of their mind and learned to harness the darkness and retooled their weapons to Melee combat (Night Widow/Fort). Eventually the character found a way to purify the darkness and turn the power into world-altering energy (Beast/Nature MM), there’s still machinery involved in each detailed explanation of each form, but it was transitionally the same character, keeping color toning and appearance at each stage. Just about anything can be written to make sense

@Rand118 Didn’t see your post, I’m on mobile right now I’ll try and remember to send it your way. It is posted somewhere in this discussion in a spoiler block, just harder to hunt down on my phone. @SableShrike Procs in toggles will only have a chance to fire off every 10/s and follow a similar algorithm to AoEs meaning you’ve got to be pretty surrounded to see anything go off which makes them poor choices unless you have extra slots to spare, and I wouldn’t do just one as it’s not really worth it unless—again—unless it’s a free floating slot. Spring Attack can definitely serve as a decent proc bomb if a build is lacking AoE. The only downside is the longer cooldown.

I used to moderately RP on Retail with a group and an SG I lead with a storyline and everything, and only casually stayed in character when a PUG was fully on board (no OOC). When coming back here I didn’t know what to expect (and moved to Everlasting when it opened out of pure coincidence before it became the “RP server”). I decided to start an SG which I’d planned on turning into more than just my own collective hub and determined it would be a place for characters who’ve become self aware. Called it the “Cult of the Leaked Code” a home for characters who praise and worship the “source code” that gives them life and see their players as benevolent beings. In a sense I play each character to their design, but their knowledge of being “piloted” means they may occasionally say something out of their control (ooc) which allows me to be lazy, oddly break dimensional barriers, and still have fun with each character without caring about “rules.” 😉 Im basically playing a stable full of Deadpool/BugsBunny who reverse fourth wall break themselves all the time!

If I recall the source correctly there was commentary in Netflix’s Jessica Jones about this. Jones had the ability to “leap tall buildings” yet chose not to because it tended to end badly for specifically the quoted reasons.