Sir Myshkin

Had a classic and memorable Scrapperlock moment last night doing an ITF. Someone pulled down Rommy and Requiem and I instantly engaged the first AV I saw (Requiem). I sort of acknowledged that there was another player on him for a brief moment but then Req started running and I chased him down without any thought. Eventually the screen shifted and I saw someone fly over and then fly away and then Req died and I went to look for Rommy and realized the rest of the team had been engaging him cause the mission completed right in that moment. I hadn’t intended on basically soloing one of them, but what can you do? 😅 I gotta say I really miss those moments.

Croatoa happens to be my favorite zone in the game. I love the use of that lore and how it was woven in to CoH's history. The zone isn't necessarily "magic/fantasy" but it does tend to give that theme-style home for characters of that nature. I don't know that I'd want to see a core game fleshed out to that purpose using all of City's attributes, but I do think some kind of more adaptive power-selection style game might be interesting, at least, but it might start to become more like Elder Scrolls Online at that point, which is somewhat a wasted effort. This thread did bring up an interesting thought for me, however, and is the primary reason I ended up replying: What if we had a "random start" point in the game. You don't select anything anything, not class, not hero or villain, not a single power or costume piece! Just one simple thing: Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme. You are thrown into the game to a random location with a specific contact in that random zone based on your "difficulty" setting (0-10, 11-25, 26-38, 39-50). Your character will be rolled a random class, a random primary, and a random secondary. Your initial contact will be styled like the Praetorian arcs where you have to choose a path, one that leads to becoming either a Hero/Vigilante, or a Rogue/Villain. Your first outfit will be a basic getup (t-shirt and jeans kinda thing) and each contact will have a relatively unique story to follow based on rediscovery of who you are, discovery of your new abilities, preparing for a confrontation, running from a conflict, or the classic 'throwing in the towel' redefining arc. After the arc is completed the character will be granted a name-change token so they can take on their super-name (as a character toon), or be left with the randomly selected name based off a pool that chooses a corresponding male/female first name and a random last name from another pool that serves as their real identity. The 'throw in the towel' arc would be locked to the Extreme setting, and if you choose a path that ultimately leaves you deciding to give up your super-powered life, a permanent auto-power will be granted onto the character that locks them out of their abilities, and cannot be removed. Only temp/prestige powers will be accessible, and they will be granted a badge (to be able to set as a title like any other badge) that says "Surrendered the Life". They will effectively be an RP-only toon at that point. For me personally I think this would be a fun new twist to playing the game that (beyond the creation of new story content) shouldn't be outside the realm of the game's ability and draw a new line for the whole "what alt to roll next" idea while keeping it fresh, and delivering new content.

If the global recharge is present in a build to get the core recharge of a power down to optimal cycling time, then slotting a full set into an ability just for set-sake is actually detrimental to build performance, which is the key factor I was outlining. In Lockpick's case, there's 190% global active with considerably perma-Hasten which naturally drops a power like Greater Psi Blade to its optimal 4.5/s recharge. It is actually possible to have so much recharge present that an ability cannot be reduced any further. By utilizing the remainder of those slots for procs creates both a better probability for the ability to proc, and creates more free damage. With Musculature core and even just one purple damage IO +5'd, the attack will hit ED on damage enhancement. By using those first two slots to manage accordingly, it's pretty easy to get your Acc/Dam/End needs in two slots and fill the rest with procs. You don't need 5-6 slots to hit cap damage enhancement. You already have a ridiculous amount of recharge in the build, and I found a place to bump that up to 190% still, Agility for the Rech component isn't changing hardly anything at all for you (we're talking 1-2/s in larger cooldowns, and .0#/s in lower cooldowns). The Endurance component over-caps Stamina... and that's about it, and the defense aspect is all over-capping areas where you're already covered. Energize should be easily fixing your endurance issue if you keep it actively perma versus only using it when you want healed. It's 50% endurance cost reduction is a huge way for you to stay globally end positive. You also have Energy Drain which, in a mob of 3-4, is going to fill your endurance bar every 20/s. It's about using the tools you have at your disposal on a regularly basis. You shouldn't be experiencing any endurance issues with Energy Armor. If you still wanted the extra push, do the Radial version which gives you end modification too. Utilizing Musculature lets you simplify your slotting and over-cap your damage across all of your attacks since it lets you extend beyond ED, so even with the few powers that could/would have full sets in them (Hecatomb, as an example), it'll still give extra push because of the ED shift. Also, that FF+Rech proc if you have it in Mass Levitate there's a strong chance to have that proc fire off at least every few spawns. If you can get that proc to fire just once in 60/s, you'll dump Energize below 30/s and have it perma down from the ~2/s it had a gap in the build I posted. If you spam ML and get that proc to go off several times, you'll be able to shrink the recharge on Shadow Meld to ~22/s which is kind of a huge plus.

Saw your post over in the Defender thread, given the content I figured I'd come back to this thread to respond. You can actually do quite a bit with Procs in your build, or any build for that matter, if you build for them, and not inclusively of them. You mentioned in the other thread how you were going after Agility, but as Bopper pointed out it actually hurts you to take that Alpha, and you honestly have absolutely no need for it in your build. I looked at the overall stats you started with (it's all pretty solid ground work), but there are definitely some areas that could be improved. I tweaked the build a bit, moved some slots around and also adjusted some expectations of abilities based on my experiences with the powers. You have some really big opportunity with Greater Psi Blade and Mass Levitate, and your ST chain rotation is solid without fanning extra Rech enhancement into attacks when it's not necessary. I left Hecatomb plugged into Psi Blade since that power has a low probability for procs anyway (so floor it and shoved a high-yield one in there), and the AT set in AS is find (almost necessary), but GPB and TB I tweaked to balance enhancement choice and pack some more procs in. GPB needs just 4.5/s to recharge in in order to have a gapless chain (PB > TB > AS > GPB). You have Overload in the build, but with Energy Drain and Shadow Meld, not really seeing what use you'd have for it; you didn't even try and use it as a mule? I'd honestly take that power out and swap for Combat Jumping for better maneuverability while running SS. I don't see any situation you'd warrant needing Overload otherwise. I'll post the build below, but I added a bunch more S/L resistance, balanced out the defense and slot use, and gave you some more global recharge. I also swapped Agility for Musculature (Could go Core or Radial, either one. Radial would bump Energy Drain a little). I was going to add another Rech IO to Concentration, but with two FF+Rech procs in the build, and the pretty decent chance for Mass Levitate to proc that BU recharge in a full spawn, the 3/s it would've gained didn't seem worth the investment.

I gotta put another vote in for Fire/FF. Wasn't my first toon, but it was definitely one of first. I remember being in the Hollows and seeing a FF Defender hanging out near the Igneous spawns, 'giant' bubble swarming around and I was like "Man, I need a graphic power like that, it's so cool!" Talked to a few folks, got pushed towards Controllers as it was "more challenging" an rolled Fire because the Imps sounded like the most fun choice. Slowly the character evolved into my most played toon of all time, logging several thousand hours between RP and base building and general teaming. The game also took a lot longer to hit 50 back then too (pre i9). I actually struggled with the idea of re-rolling that character here on HC before coming to terms with the idea that, at the very least, I wanted it there in memoriam, if nothing else. Now he lives inside the base builder (whenever I get back around to THAT project... started building a Cathedral. Silly idea, takes so long). As far as toons I actually played freely since back on HC, probably Dark/Sonic. It's just such a beautiful visual combo.

Looks like you might've actually hit 12, you snagged one last Lattice near the end there it looked like, but definitely three Fungoids (3), a Quarry (1), some other Lattice's (4 total), and quite a few of the rocky ones whose name I can't recall that starts with an 'S' (4). Looks like you held up pretty well there for a bit, seemed like grabbing that last Lattice is what did you in, really.

Where are you at so far? The highest I think I recall seeing anyone at in-game has been ~116ish vet levels... I'm probably off on that, but yeah.

Okay, I couldn't resist giving up 30:00 minutes of my life to doing this. Bio/SS/Soul Tank (Beta) Includes laughing through Rage crash. Musculature Alpha, and Ageless Core (so no defensive support), and Hybrid that's in the tray is Assault Core, so pure offense. 13 DE Monsters total, weren't anymore left on the Island, and one... phased out? Can't explain that. Killed one just because I could (takes like eight minutes though). With the Swarms floating around, I was aggro capped--there were like three or four of them, pretty sure, hard to tell in that mess. To validate how many DE total there were/are, I pulled them out into the water at the end (so 12 remaining). Build isn't specifically designed to hard cap anything going in, either. With Offensive on it falls short on S/L resists from cap, and is only at 43% F/C/E/N defense. I flip back and forth between them to see the effective differences. With Defensive turned on, I'm confident I could walk away with just the toggles on and never die. When I take down the Lattice around 19:40-28:00, the only reason I activate DNA Siphon is for the -150% Regen debuff.

Not so much a lack of value, but a lack of need. Many of the builds get very tight on space when trying to maximize all avenues, especially when a lot of the initial test builds were trying to cram as many things in (for testing) as possible. Powers that didn't have a necessity or test purpose were pretty often left out, and Time's Juncture happened to be one that wasn't serving a purpose (in most cases). There is at least one Time build that actually could've benefited from it (any of them not leveraging Power Boost/Power Build Up), but any of the builds that included PB/PBU, they don't have a fundamental need for the power in standard content. When PB/PBU is activated right before Farsight, Farsight's defense bonus spikes considerably and stays that way through its duration. In most situations this put the Defender at (or above) 45%; in most cases considerably above. Your question did have me going back to double check that main post and I realized there were a couple of builds missing so I added them in, one specifically for Time/Dark/Power that is the most functionally updated from the testing. And, yeah, it doesn't have Juncture either. The one area where that ability does have an impact is Incarnate content since that -ToHit component can help offset defense limitations and make the build safer there, but it comes at the cost of something else that may be more important to keep depending on the circumstances. In the Time/Dark/Power build I put in Force of Nature as a consideration for high-end content and getting hit with debuffs, that build will crumble in a heartbeat without its defense and Force of Nature gives it a chance to save itself in those situations. Bopper had been building for generalist all-around utility, and having that ability added to that ideal, especially as an approach for Incarnate stuff, so it was a trade off for them. Any proc dropped in a toggle is only going to have a chance to trigger once every 10/s, so that's about as useful as you're going to get. I'm not 100% certain of its duration, and I believe it is a 2PPM value, so it's kind of low odds in Hurricane, but Hurricane is also effecting things as an AoE, so if you were surrounded there's a chance you'd probably see 1/10 get hit with it. For an AV/ST exclusively, I'd say it's realistically not going to go off often enough. Nice if it did, but not something to rely on. If it were being dropped into something you could fire off more often, or have a higher probability for success, then it might matter more.

The only way you're going to get a "50 Mill" build is to rely entirely on just basic IO's in the build and only slot in set IO's if you get the recipe dropped on you, but even in that circumstance you'd be facing a lot of crafting costs either way. If you're in need of some funds, there are a lot of things you can do to easily build up some influence. Find a Mothership Raid in the RWZ and collect up 1,000 (minimum) V-Merits and cash those in for regular Merits, than cash those in for Converters or Boosters and sell those on the AH, you should net 20-30 million Inf in a quick hurry for only a simple 30-40 minute investment of your time. An average IO build costs around 250-350 million inf (buying outright), and an effective "top" tier build can tap out around 650m depending on how crazy you try and get for Purple/PvP and Winter sets.

Still fun to play, procs make it crazy. Never had a heal. I have one rolled and kitted at 50 already with a bit of progress into Incarnates and I have several times over surprised people on teams with what Trick Arrow can do.

Don't forget the "Six Second Rule" either. A Scrapper staple that so many people don't remember, or are new and have no idea. "When a Scrapper is invited onto a team, after entrance into the first mission the Team Lead has six seconds to declare a definitive expectation or guidance/gameplan--if not already previously declared beforehand--for the team, or explicitly for the Scrapper. If no ground rules are given, than the Scrapper is permitted to engage with any enemy there within at peril of their own demise. The team is not required, nor expected to offer any form of assistance, and should the Scrapper fall, it is on them. If any member of the team follows the Scrapper into combat upon enactment of the Six Second Rule, and any (or all) team member(s) fall, the Scrapper is not held liable for their defeat. It is furthermore the responsibility of the Scrapper to ensure that their actions do not result in backlash that impacts the team should the team choose not to follow the Scrapper into combat, and that if the Scrapper's actions result in any team member's death when they choose to refrain supporting the Scrapper, than it is at the Team Leader's discretion to remove the Scrapper from the team for inflicting undue harm."

What ever you want! That particular combination, so long as you're actively using Lift and Wormhole, will have Perma Chrono-Shift, which in turn fuels the rest of the build sufficiently enough. You could add Ageless if you wanted for more endurance management/recharge, but it's not entirely needed. You could take Clarion and have the full package of mez protection and defense, or grab Rebirth if you wanted another mega-heal. The Interface is also entirely up to you, Degenerative or Reactive are usually the go-to's for things like AV's and such but if you're team-focused than I'd steer into something else. Hybrid... again go nuts, pick up one that adds more mez protection options maybe? The choices are really up to you! The Intuition Alpha is purely there to support a myriad of options along with (primarily) the damage component to boost your attacks to their capacity.

I'll refer you back to this update on page 2. There's a SD/* build in there that you can core out and use as a blank to apply Mace to. Even with the build you posted, you mostly have what you need, but you don't want to use Agility as it'll negatively impact the probability return on Procs in your attacks. If you really want to rely on the Alpha to boost your defenses further, than I'd say use Nerve, and get the Accuracy kick instead. You shouldn't need to rely on any of your attacks for set bonuses with a Shield build, but you will have a surplus of one or two since Mace has a pretty solid chain with just a few attacks, so you can use one or two of them to mule out for a few global +Rech bonuses (Hecatomb, Armageddon, the AT-O, as examples) and get yourself a bit further into 120-130%. Edit: Also, when you post a build, highly encourage the use of the "spoiler" function (the little "eye" icon in the edit options for a reply/post and it'll drop the spoiler field in).

The irony of this fact has not escaped me, and it is a rather interesting dilemma.

A bit off topic on this issue specifically, but given that i24 Beta (at sunset) contained the recalibrated the formula for Procs so that they'd be more consistent, what exactly do you infer by "would be ridiculously rare and have very low flat chances to trigger"? It would seem to me, based off the notes found in the code itself, and how the formula was reworked, and original Dev comments on the topic, that the proc-rework was intended to better balance the process as a generic coverage sentiment. To me, the proc rates themselves do not seem over powered, so I am leaping to extend that this is more a point of interest on the damage procs themselves maybe, given that you pointed specifically to "ignore AT modifiers"? I acknowledge that there are some unique scenarios where certain procs (*cough*gaussians*cough*) can be leveraged to near consistent application due to the recharge values of the powers it qualifies for, but in circumstances like the melee pool of damage procs it takes a specific building method to leverage those to a "high" return. When comparing one AT to the next, as-so-far-tested, no one AT in a heavily proc-built focus has significantly overshadowed another AT built in the same manner. There has only ever been one build, for one specific powerset that procs have created an indifference that revealed a glaring imbalance in the set itself (Super Strength), in my experiences with... I don't even know how many sets I've tested at this point. Based on what I've tested (in the realm of intentionally attempting to bend/break the proc utility), it takes a very specific, and very extreme methodology and focus to become truly proc-positive that the majority of the player base are unlikely to adopt, as such it has me curious what specifically will be "looked at" and if there is something more targeted I could be looking for to be aware of that you have in mind.

Downtime? What’s that? I have too many TPS reports to file. But seriously, “downtime” for me is actually getting to play the game. I’m usually spending my “dedicated” time to running builds together, theory crafting, and testing builds.

Yes, that proc has no impact on the FF+Rech, it is only reliant on the power itself having a knock component in general, not what kind.

The devs have left Beta in its current state for ... a month and a half now I think? Kinetic Melee was one of the last for-sure sets I wanted to test because it's the only other one that has a significant +Dam builder like Super Strength does, but it's bugged and hasn't been fixed. In the duration of waiting for any word on that, I've actually been messing around with some other concepts based on the Tank testing that I'll be able to mention in the final write up. I didn't want to have it incomplete which is the core of why I've waited. I also wanted to know for sure what alteration the next patch was supposed to take. Captain Powerhouse said they were rolling back some of the alterations to Rage (nothing that impacts the tests, just the modification to its crash and having a crash-less single-use option). If everything else goes forward, then my final write-up will be concrete, which is another reason for the delay.

You're right on the money, actually. A single 50+5 with Musculature is putting you into the bleed-over range. For most of my practical Tank testing doing Acc/Dam, Acc/Dam/End, with Musculature it tapped me out at 111%, with just Musculature and the 50+5 it's 110%, so anything further is unnecessary, but it is consistent and "guaranteed" versus probability based damage. I didn't catch you say whether you did or didn't compensate the debuff in any way? Any trailing damage bonuses or Assault? Just curious as it would play into the balancing act there and whether there was still room to grow that inherent value. Just cause it was a build I had open, I toggled back and forth on Knockout Blow to see the variances. With Musculature and the 50+5 (no procs) it starts at 259, toggle on the Hybrid static +10% for being equipped and I get 275, toggle on Assault (which'd actually be higher on Beta) I get 292. That still has a global +6% bonus in there too that I can't just toggle off, but it collectively gets me to an even wash to start from. That variance is worth half a proc's worth of damage.

Granite's -Dam Debuff isn't that significant. -30% is pretty easy to mitigate through natural set bonuses and Assault, especially with the modified variant of Assault Tankers have on Beta right now (higher value). You're kind of neutering yourself by not putting some investment into damage enhancement besides just Musculature, especially with the base modifier shift that's on Beta. You're giving up a reasonably decent chunk of damage.

The Regen is TW (what better set to leverage stupid amounts of recharge, right?), the other two toons are, incidentally a relevant Ice/Stone/Soul Proc-Tank, and a Beast/Nature MM (that, at this point, is just to say I did it, as I'm not certain I'm particularly enjoying the journey to 50). The only reason I even side tracked from the Regen was the fact I can't pre-slot pretty much any of its build since it's primarily PVP/Purple/Winter sets and will stand as (just like on pre-sunset) the most expensive build I've ever put together. I did the rough math and it'll set me back about 1.2 Billion Inf, nearly double the standard average of any other build I've designed. Given that fact, I've been a tad lazy about marketing out the influence for it knowing I could just use my existing funds to build the other two right now. 😅 Plus, with all the side testing lately, the idea of sitting down and marketing has been at the far end of bottom for things I want to use my extra time on. Eventually it'll get done, and then I'll be posting a bunch of stupid Scrapper tricks with it.

Dark Blast is a prime candidate for procs, and Psi/Elec can still get away with quite a bit, actually. Nature isn't necessarily a key target for procs, it more prefers stacking a lot of recharge to get its buffs working overtime, which can potentially eat into your build ability on proc focusing. Time on the other hand is a very compatible choice. There are plenty of builds in the primary post you can reference for Dark, Psi, and Time. As for Electric Blast and Nature Affinity, I'll drop two builds I have that currently focus on the other two sets (Elec and Nature) that you should be able to get an idea how to pull them into the appropriate use for you: Electric/Energy Blaster: Beast/Nature MM: I'd highly encourage paying attention to the Incarnate choices on that Blaster build too, they're specific to improving the effects of Electric Blast (Alpha and Interface).

The damage procs will hit on any enemy target in the game, there's no restriction there. In the event you see "Critter" versus "Player" there are some that have different values/impacts in PvP (Player), but "Critter" is classed as any enemy in the game that you could/can target and deal damage to (excluding other player characters).

I don't actually know how many I had been able to collect, I ... think there's five or six in that picture, it's kind of hard to tell. Didn't have a taunt, harder to keep those things engaged without it. That screen is pre-sunset too, so it's been a long while since I attempted that. I know the modified Homecoming build has superior performance. Slowly rebuilding a character with it (the Regen part, at least) alongside two other toons so I'll eventually have it functional again.