Sir Myshkin

Ditch Confront, you'll get more attention by just punching things. You don't need Tactics from an accuracy stand point, Siphon Power has a +ToHit component in it, and with enough recharge in the build you'll have it up and in effect the majority of the time. You could desire the ability for its added Fear resistance and +Perception, but if you're teaming a lot you're bound to run across at least one player who's probably running it anyway. Carry a couple of Yellows as backup and you'll be fine. You can totally get Hasten in there. Having more than one Power Transfer +Heal proc in your auto-powers isn't actually that great. The way those work in the game is that when you load, those triggers sync up, and when they hit their proc-chance the game will only accept one of the procs to go off, not both. Their proc-probability also ends up you'll see the effect average about 50% on just one, and about 66% with two, so you can get slightly more out of a second one still, but typically not enough to really warrant having the slot tied up for such a mediocre extra gain. This following build is a very quick and dirty hot-swap of KM from my TW/Regen (so not 100%, not micro-tweaked). Gets you into Shadow Meld for the defense boost, being able to SM > MoG > SM for 45/s straight gives Regen a ton of leverage, and allows it to cover its gaps from Instant Healing down time. If you choose to use a Barrier Incarnate you'll also find this thing rather durable, although I personally prefer Rebirth Radial for the double-IH capacity and being able to get longer sustain windows. Treat Dull Pain like an always-active click for the boosted Regeneration value. Liberally use Burst and Repulsing Torrent for their KD, this will help you manage your survival by a tremendous amount. There's a lot of passive regen in this build, and the simple add of 32% S/L defense (and being able to cycle up Shadow Meld) will go a long way in being able to glide through casual content. I also traded in for Fly and Hover since you had that in your build, there are some good macros out in the wild for setting Hover and Fly to shift back and forth based on movement to make using them in combat more sustainable (and less end heavy). If you've done an Apex Task Force and are familiar with the Blue Patches and how they aggressively wipe out players... this build can prop open a lawn chair and sip a cold drink in them.

To point out some basic principles with the Power Pools: Melee Sets like Scrappers and Stalkers that have strong offensive potential and critical performance to consider will often never find the pool powers a worth-while addition because they have no--or little--critical value comparatively to what can be gained in their primary set. Defenders, Controllers, and Masterminds are at the bottom of the damage modifier list for personal attacks and there are several abilities in the pool selections that have the same DPA (damage per animation) as primary abilities, and a few others that are actually better than many (Toxic Dart). Between scale effect on individual attacks, and the modifier for an AT, many of the high-damage sets like Stalkers/Scrappers/Blaster get much more bang-for-end in their primary sets and why the pool powers don't work out as well for them. The only pool set that actually has some comparable/swappable performance more unilaterally is the Fighting Pool, and only if all of the attacks are taken because they amplify each other when you "own" them. Pool abilities have always been meant to be supplementary fillers, attacks to help fill gaps in the level process or give some dynamic style differences. Air Superiority used to be a very popular choice earlier in CoH history because it was a decent damage ability that caused face-planting KD on the target. It was a good soft control ability and gave a lot of squishes some reliable protection in an attack. Nowadays you can't find a single build out there that takes it. Just keep this in mind that they're not always things to build around (or, sometimes you can and make that the challenge of it all). There are a handful of unique and fun tools in the pools like Unleash Potential, Adrenal Booster, Unrelenting, but they take a lot of build space to get to and those trees don't always work well for all AT's due to power balancing working in different ways. Something specific to Weaken Resolve (as it got brought up above), this is an ability that--with procs added--ends up becoming a typically-higher DPA than about 75% of most Defender attacks. It is also an ability that, generally speaking, one doesn't want to recharge fast, but just right around 13/s so you know exactly when to reapply it (the debuff lasts 15/s), and is a great place to dump the Achilles' -Res proc as it'll have a strong chance of firing if there's no rech enhancement added to Weaken. Two slots for Acc/End adjustment, three for damage procs, and one for Achilles' and that power is a micro-bomb that can hit for a potential 210 damage and inflict 31% (or more pending AT) -Res on a target. Is that worth giving up something else? Maybe, maybe not. About Radiation Melee: You're still early in your career at 24, but you have most of the core abilities that are going to make Radiation Melee dance, but there is something notable about the choices that I myself didn't full expect until I really tested it and saw how differently the set performed by one simple attack choice. Contaminated Strike versus Radioactive Smash, CS is a quick bursty attack and has a DPA very similar to RS, RS is a slower attack (1.056/s v. 1.716/s) and only marginally gives a better DPA. When building out attack chains I ended up leaning on CS because it was a better filler and allowed me to cycle into Radiation Siphon and Devastating Blow faster with some good global recharge choices. What I didn't consider was the fact that Radioactive Smash has a better chance to inflict the Contaminated effect (by nearly double what CS can). Using RS and getting that Contamination spread was a wildfire of difference in how enemies melted around me. Radioactive Smash, Radioactive Siphon, and Irradiated Ground are your Bread and Butter of Radiation Melee (in my opinion). They are going to be the abilities that stack and spread that bonus AoE effect around. Smash > Siphon > Smash > Devastating Blow is the setup chain for Contaminate, Spread > Heal/Set > Spread/Set > Set. When running through spawns a good thing to keep in mind running this cycle is that you'll eventually be splicing Atom Smasher in as well to help setup, and Irradiated Ground is effectively acting as a primer for you too. Proton Sweep is your worst friend in the entire set, but it is essentially your "only" AoE until 32. It will help setup Contaminate, but it won't spread it. I personally found it more worth my time to stay focused on cycling CS/RS/RS with Irradiated Ground running than to try and get things to line up for Sweep, and eventually dumped it by 50, but I did keep it to level up with because "better than nothing" at that point. Given you mentioned a desire for Super Speed, if you want more clearing power for the set then I'd suggest dipping into Experimentation and grab Toxic Dart and a runner-line, and Corrosive Vial with a few procs tossed into it. Beta Decay will be a good surplus of recharge to help get that power up often enough at those levels, and you can dump it later on around 35-40 once you have slots to keep Atom Smasher charged. Looking purely at only being 24, this is a path I'd look at to leveling with:

I totally just jumped in and took them all on equally. I figured, at least give them a chance, right?

Fun story about this comment and the idea of internal monologue, I made a character that portrays this idea in the game as both a joke on the idea, and... in generally it's kind of fun to RP it out (made a bunch of macros to it and everything). Scientist/Chemist type character who's slowly loosing his mind (dementia/alzheimers kind of thing crossed with schizophrenia) and in the attempt to counteract it experiments on himself. As all comic stories like this go, ends up with unnatural abilities revolving around electricity pumping between his cells and giving him super speed. What he doesn't realize is that his body in conjunction with his warped mind, in an attempt to stabilize itself and not burst apart, is constantly multiplying itself; think Flash's speed clones that are like functional independent selves, but this guy isn't reverting through time, but rather moving so stupidly fast that his own after image is real-time. He creates one image/clone for each of his dominant personalities and they move about together like a personal squadron (portrayed in the game as Demons/Electrical Affinity MM, haha, own personal demons... jokes abound). I quite literally go around talking to myself.

Sometimes even something that seems like it'd be blatantly obvious, is obviously missed. Not necessarily defending "bright red costume" but it's not impossible for someone to completely overlook a given detail (or, as I'd sooner put it: people are dumb and easily fooled).

Dun, Dun, DUNNN! Hope your wallet's heavy: nVidia 3090 The 3080 has tested incredibly well in 4k across a pretty wide spectrum of games; there's a few specific handfuls that have circumstantial settings that sit below an average of 60 FPS. The 3090 is going to cake walk the gaming industry.

I never called for balance around procs, only pointed out that it can make the set feel a lot punchier than it seems, and helps supplant the lack of AoE by amplifying the utility it currently possesses. Across the board if I took out the consideration for proc damage in the builds I had tested, the scaled performance would've still been (mostly) the same as I kept a relatively simple and consistent formula of maxing damage in each attack in combination with Musculature Alpha (within 2-3 slots) which meant that even without the proc additions, each tested set would've still tiered in relatively the same way. Honestly the bigger aspect of benefits came out of AoE's, making a bigger impact on creating damage with abilities that lacked (or were subpar) in that department, and enhancing standard attacks. From a Single Target performance scale, with or without procs, Energy Melee is still up there, but it gets convoluted with the addition of Total Focus (in my opinion) because TF's long animation and propensity to cause considerable negative impact on performance with a miss. When you have multiple high-animation-time attacks, and one that causes self-harm to boot, with a lack of AoE... the set has plenty of stigma to itself, irregardless of whether it honestly does well enough either way. If we see a change to these two factors it'll be an incredible breath of fresh air for the set. I'd have to heavily question the pretense of use with Energy Transfer at that point. Unless I had assurance I was the only one hitting a minion, and it was at full health, I'd never use Energy Transfer on one, ever. Lieutenant at 20% or less health? Maybe, maybe not. Boss and up all day long as a sliver in their pool could easily be a couple of hundred points. This is less about the animation time, but the general factor of wasting a heavy-hitting attack on a target. I both accept, and understand what you're bringing to the discussion table with this concern, but most of it is quickly mitigated by player awareness above all. I've spent a lengthy enough amount of time testing Energy Melee, and even made expressed attempts at trying to get myself killed off Energy Transfers self-damage and found it to be more of an issue to intentionally find that casual (over explicit force) situation I might go "oops" than it naturally occurring in the wild. I'm not saying I like it, but I tend to find it more a nuisance than anything else. Either way, the voice is heard, this is after all an open mic night on Energy Melee.

Yeah but not many of us can say we have 666 Vet levels accrued on one character either.

I tend not to go aggressively over board on character creation and target combinations with sets I haven't played at all. With that in mind, I've mostly excluded a lot of what I already played on Retail. About the only thing I've repeated is Dark Armor (I just really like that armor set), and re-rolling my Fire/FF for posterity's sake. My process is roll it, level it to 50, slot it, get at least its Incarnates unlocked and that's when I consider them "good to go." I know I can rollback on any of them at a moment's notice and they'll be good out of the gate, and any future play will be incentive to continue working on further advancement of their iToys (stealing that from above). With that being my typical process, I'd consider myself perpetually 100%. I don't really bounce around between projects.

It was one I did run through testing with, yes. It was also one of the harder hitting sets in the end too, took down a Pylon in 2:25 which ST performance is supposed to be its specialty in the first place. Didn't get to SS's performance level, but it was still above the majority. The boil down point was just getting 2-3 procs in all of the attacks to add that marginal average gain, and then fire off Energy Transfer as much as possible (Total Focus was entirely a joke to even consider). Adding in some procs and the Overwhelming KD Unique to Whirling Hands definitely helped AoE a bit, but that is the biggest draw back there. I know a lot of folks feel like it's a terrible set, but it really isn't that bad. Not saying it doesn't need and deserve some tweaks/love, but it isn't exactly limping along like some would make others believe.

Okay, so I was muddling about with the file trying to see if I could get something working and at the moment it is super fighting against me. I will fully admit I am by no means an Excel wizard, but digging through some tutorials to check what I was attempting, still didn't work. HLOOKUP and VLOOKUP would've been fast ways to call data sets, couldn't get Excel to stop arguing with me about linking context from other sheets. Pivot Tables I feel could possibly work, but I'd have to spend more time looking at how to call data repeatedly for it, at least the info would be consistent and in the same place... it sort of makes the most sense but I was hoping for something less complicated. I'm pretty sure I have something toggled somewhere because I also can't get it to display cell formulas after they're input which is driving me nuts (plus I haven't done anything in Excel in forever, and realistically it was OpenOffice before). tl;dr Wanted to see if an idea I had to give a cleaner centralized display page would work, but I essentially lack the Excel Magic to make it happen at the moment. I'm going to try and see if I can sneak a peak at file we use at work that magics together 365 days of data tables through 15 categories and get an idea of whether I could dupe that.

I am slowly developing this picture in my mind of you Bill, as a YouTube Host who does a TV-like "Reality" show called "Say Yes! To Kill All TF's!" Your series will have one episode for every trial and task force in the game and document your struggles of gathering players on this adventurous cause.

I personally don't think it looks bad, but... a thought about what that addition becomes to the page: What if there were an extra tab to the spreadsheet, maybe a primary initial page that has a handful of drop downs that select AT, power set (primary, secondary) and calls data from the associated AT tabs and fills it onto the first tab automatically. Have that primary tab do all the math, have the columns for damage adjustment (base, dpa, etc) along with stuff like scaling for Res based on AT mod. You could simplify the math impact into one page, and leave the core of everything else as the raw values. Having a primary page like this would also give you the ability to layer in enhancement rows to input Acc/End/Rech/Dam/etc in each power (and maybe even global adds) and have it reflect just for that page using the called up data. Ultimately would depend on how much time you've invested in the current path and whether doing something like the above may help save time collectively over adding columns to everything else and data checking each page's math.

Maybe I’ll finally get that Rage nerf I’ve been looking towards.

You know, if there were an enhancement set database like this, you’re only a UI away from an Excel based Mid’s 😉

You know what just came to mind that I think would be kind of interesting? An added effect to the defiance amplifiers in Blaster secondary attacks that grants status protection points for the duration of the defiance stack. Since the T1 can be used while mezzed, would give the Blaster a chance to "break free" of the mez effect by swinging a couple of times and breaking the initial mez.

Come on then, it's been three hours, what's in the ovens lass? I need to know! The most interesting thing to hit this thread in pages, and you're leaving us all hanging.

I'd be inclined to blame the load time on OpenOffice, I have 4.1.2 installed on my machine still and the load time for the file was nearly a full minute, but I notice longer load times for pretty much any heavy-data grid-formatted Excel file; even one that is only a few tabs but has a significant amount of numeric values and calcs occurring still takes ~10-15/s and it's not that complicated. I have an unformatted copy of the powers data pull (sans hard stat numerics) and it's 29,053 rows and six columns, and even just being half of the total data and pure text it still takes several seconds to load it (~5-6). Speaking specifically of the Apache version of OpenOffice, it's still running 32 bit standard and, best I can quickly tell is the program is hanging on loading the data set efficiently as it hangs in the Windows conversion process for a bit before it eventually loads. I opened the file in Excel and it loads instantly. For as long as I was a user of OpenOffice (even before the development split), it just really can't match Excel for raw power, function, and load/execute speed. Checking it myself I'd lean pretty heavily that the load issue is simply just the data volume crushing OpenOffice. Side thought on the Spreadsheet: With the bar locked at the top, it'd be kind of nice/convenient to have a drop down that filtered out or selected just Primary, or Secondary, or Pools (etc) from one click to make sorting by group a bit more efficient than guessing in the current boxes. Very nice work Bopper.

I was always more a fan of this costume: Having armored sections and plating just made more sense to me over spandex costumes, but I think this design massively suffered from the artists given DD at the time as many of those runs with this design weren't the best art work (in my opinion). This design was super easy to make look bad, and some drew it where the plating came out of the suit, and others (like above) where it appropriately layered over it. I also get the original designs (yellow/red and all red) also stemmed from the era they were born in, which leant more to ease of reproduction. Eventually later (newer, more modern) renditions of the red DD outfit have seen sectioning, piping, leather work transitions, etc to give it depth which helped. The Netflix adaptation of the suit is what I'd see as the ideal interpretation from a realistic application. Layers, tight-weave fabrics (both organic and metal weaves), and a head piece that doesn't look like gets torn on one punch (and actually, just maybe protects the skull a little). Serializing that kind of look drawn by hand is complicated though, so it's a real give and take.

Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, and Shocking Grasp are the highest DPA powers not only in Electrical Manipulation, but across the top of the list for Blaster secondaries in general. First tier is Energy Punch and Charged Brawl tied, in tier two is Smite, and tier three is Havoc Punch, Shocking Grasp, and Bone Smasher tied. Something not mentioned in earnest about Shocking Grasp is all of the damage procs that power can take. Others talked about adding the stacking hold procs, but you can turn SG into a freight train hitter by devoting 3-4 slots to just damage procs alone. A power that would do 200-250 damage is suddenly given the ability to hit for 400+ and be capable of completely wiping a minion out in one hit; having some of that front-loaded potential will also change the misconception of the power being anemic because it's DoT. Mid's proc calculations aren't exactly 100% accurate, but to set the example imagine a 1.188/s animating attack doing this: That's as much damage as a quick-form (non-proc) Snipe.

Generally speaking a character won’t ever make it into the creation screen until I’ve kicked around a build in Mid’s for a while. Even before that program I would just stare at the powers selection screen until the path became clear in my head. Back on Retail I had maybe a dozen characters roaming across the servers that were started for one reason or another and that reason ceased (a group plan, costume/theme costume, whatever) and I would leave them just for historical log, less abandonment. Here on HC, I reattempted Kheldians (PB/WS) by making twin mirror costumes with contrasting colors, had a look I found very interesting, nailed down their builds, but both teetered out by 25, I just couldn’t get into it. I struggled with them on Retail too and only ever managed to get a PB to 50 for RP reasons, and never greenlit a WS. Right now I feel I’ve abandoned them but I may get them bumped to 50 at some point just to say I have them. I mean, come on, check out these costumes!

To be a bit nit-picky specific, Force Field and Sonic Resonance's toggle Dispersion is Hold, Immobilize, and Disorient protection specifically. Getting nailed with Sleep and Fear were some of the most irritating things with FF and Sonic. The FF Generator for Traps is also the same thing (it's just a portable clone of Dispersion Bubble). Shadow Fall gives Fear Protection, and Steamy Mist gives Confuse Protection. Faraday Cage covers everything but Fear and Confuse. To hit on the original topic though, I find dealing with mez a lot more passable by simply hitting defensive numbers to avoid getting tagged altogether. Most (most) attacks that cause a mez effect are tagged as Ranged, and even wider spectrum include Energy, but of the characters I have that sought Defense, I still generally only focus on S/L (and then potentially) Energy to hit 45%. The only Blaster I've earnestly played does incredibly well on his own, and I use Melee Hybrid at 50 to supplement for straight raw protection to everything when it matters instead of burning out for Clarion.

Technically Tinder is the "first" AV a player can run into during the DFB trial. First is subjective though, from a story line perspective they're not a "real" AV so much as an XP bag that you can face at a very early level. Of that specific list, yes Vhaz is the "first", but the question implies what is the first AV period one can face (and assume it means earliest). Technicality.

Make every zone PvP Capable. Flag all characters initially as PvE only. Give us a toggle to turn PvP on, and allow all alignments to freely roam all zones. Add in an alignment system patch so that all players equally effect everyone unless on the same team, and if a player that is a Hero or Vig continously targets other Hero/Vig, they will be shifted into Rogue/Villain status, and a Villain that teams/supports Vig/Hero continously will slowly be "redeemed" by their actions. Add destructible items throughout all zones.