Doomguide2005

Short Answer: what @Frostbitersaid. Longer Answer: it will vary from build to build and with your difficulty setting. I usual find myself looking for To Hit and outside of powers, inspires, 'other' the Kismet unique is the only way to get a To Hit bonus via sets/set bonus afaik. Pretty much all my builds use it. And the remainder probably run Tactics (and many likely both). Against upscale (read vs +4s) foes To Hit is a much better choice for the effort. You need a LOT of accuracy to strike something starting with a base to hit of 39.

Yes, the Brute damage cap is significantly higher than other ATs. I believe it is currently 650% (iirc). Even with full fury and enhancements well into the red on Mids I doubt you'll be there without further buffs.

A Storm/Sonic is one of the earlier posts I saw about defenders soloing an AV. Harder targets don't go flying as much ... and softer targets just die bouncing around. And IOs make bouncing more, um, vertical and less horizontal in nature without losing the mitigation involved.

Cold is in fact a beastly good debuffer. Their shields would be very helpful to a resistance set like /Fire as well. There are a lot of strong choices to pair with Sonic Blast. Hard to go wrong. You also got a thousand character slots. Make several different pairings and see which 'sticks'.

Yes you were. First steps in a thousand mile journey and all that. Hence the "off into the deep end you go" comment at the end of my post. I've no doubt we're both well acquainted with trip.

Yep, though hopefully as you do so Phanty and PA are grabbing the aggro ... leaving you to debuff the daylights out the foe.

Generally defense is better mitigation than resistance. With resistance you still have to deal with mez since while the damage was reduced any mez coming with it is still there to stun, sleep, hold etc. you. S/L plus Energy are chosen to cap because they're the major portion of the damage type(s) you'll face endgame. That said unless you use Choking Cloud you've no reason to get into melee range, hover plus capped range defense and strong resists could also work as long as you can keep them at range.

Well I think I'd lean towards the Kin vs Sonic. Both the DP/Martial and his alternate TW/Fire will love a Kin. The Brute has a high damage cap, plenty of room for Kinetics buffs. Flip side is the Bots are ranged, it'll be harder to buff both players and bots with the +damage. The Sonic shields will help both the players and in general the debuffs of Sonic work regardless of positioning of bots and players. The DP and Brute, whichever he's running, will both happily take Disruption Field into melee where it'll help everyone. But yes in the end either would work well.

Or Adrenaline Boost (+100% recharge) and Fortitude (+31% damage). Not to mention the other aspects both those powers boost.

What are your friends running?

Begs the question as to what are your two friends playing? Both a Kin and Sonic Resonance can be potent force multipliers. The Kin will put someone near or at the damage cap. A Sonic/Sonic will seriously debuff resistance. Someone at the damage cap can only see bigger orange numbers if the target is getting resistance debuffed. If you primarily play either with your two friends or solo then taking into account what they're playing would be a good idea for synergy.

Yes, that was the author I had buried in my foggy old brain.

Awww, come on Hawtniss Emberdude just does it for me and my Archery/Fire character.

Me memories are a bit old and foggy but ... Not an attorney and I'm definitely not a patent and trademark attorney but ... If I'm not misremembering if you named your character the same as your character on Live you are potentially in copyright violation. NCSoft actually owns (owned) the rights to any and all characters created in City of Heroes per their EULA. If I'm not mistaken at least one famous published author named one of his characters after his literary character and had some legal issues as a result.

No idea why but I can guess 🤔, especially if done on a power by power basis. It may be as simple as a reward and encouragement for teaming. It does involve more effort to put together a team than run solo and it is an MMO. It also takes a tiny bit (sometimes more than a tiny bit) more coordination and effort to make said team reap the full benefits than doing so solo would. And this was even more true in the times before IO sets than since. And overpowered is probably somewhat hyperbolic because as I said earlier in the thread just means things get "overpowered" 1 team member earlier.

Based mostly on my experience with an SR scrapper who had 60% (Quickness+Winter's Gift) 70% is enough. I'd be real slow (😜) to sacrifice the recharge and resistance to gain more. Worse case you find it's still sufficiently irritating and respec things later.

Must have needed to refresh the page, didn't see your edit till after my posted response. I'd probably use something other than Rectified Reticle in BU. Good place for the Gaussian's proc. You've already got +perception in Focused Senses and while grabbing +regen bonuses isn't a bad idea I wouldn't start here. Recall Friend (now Teleport Target) you shouldn't need any (further) kb/kid protection. I'd either swap it out or put a Winter's Gift slow resistance in here. Swift can take a Fly Spd. More later.

DDR=Defense Debuff Resistance. It's part of what makes SR so dang hard to kill. Most other sets when the defense debuffs start flying rapidly find they're defense no longer capped and have to worry about cascading defense failure. SR basically doesn't get debuffed, you'll be dead from getting hit long before you lose any significant amount of your defense. As a result you only really need to get a few percent above the cap 47% maybe 48% for your positions, more is largely wasted unless you're aiming for the Incarnate cap ~59%. Put another way when a 10% debuff hits your defense will drop from 47 to 46.5, someone with no DDR will drop from 47 to 37%. And with each blow they get easier and easier to hit by every one in the mob. I've got to get to work, but I'll be back

😃 well if I get a functional computer maybe I'll get the answer ... on test, not sure I'm ready for the possible masochism it might involve otherwise.

It's difficult for me to go into too much detail (can't use Mids, long time since I've used ElecM). But Practiced Brawler I usually slot with a single endred, global recharge takes care of the rest. Stamina could surrender slots for use elsewhere ... looking for AoE +def in the 6th place, chasing the i-cap? I see lots of +recovery set bonuses and 6 slotting for +defense? What are your goals for the build? Are you looking for the I-cap defensively? What's your end consumption vs recovery? Is your DDR at 95%?

Yeah, early issue solo was painful and early levels more so on a buff centric primary. It has become a significant amount easier on all "squishies" with vet powers, p2w powers, early inherent Fitness and just general knowledge in the player base. My first Empath (also Emp/Dark) languished a bit and eventually made 50 after 2 or 3 of my other Empaths had reached 50.

Not experienced enough with Rad Armor but most of the exotic damage types will also have positional types attached, i.e. ranged, toxic. Not all but most. Mostly at low levels like 12th I'd be most concerned about getting too many in my face at once and that overwhelming me no matter my mitigation. That said SR will have solid melee and ranged defenses by 12 having already accessed both its toggle and auto powers for M/R.

For quite a while my on again off again badge hunter was jealous of a friends Katana/Regen scrapper. He joined a bit after us probably i4 and couldn't figure out how to get out of the tutorial. Running around in their for a couple hours trying to find the exit ... well he defeated a lot of Contaminated and was the only one of us to have Isolater badge for quite a while. He eventually phoned one of us and learned how to escape the tutorial.

Love to know after slotting what your end use becomes.

What Bastille Boy said. On my Empaths I often don't build much if any defense. My focus is first and foremost recharge, then more recharge. My mitigation comes from, in no particular order, team mates, inspires and keeping my Auras, Regeneration Aura especially, on as little downtime as possible combined with epic shields. They're meant to team. My rather outdated (at this point) Emp/Sonic/Elec build from i13 or so was a work in progress to do the Rikti warzone challenge, i.e. solo a mob of lvl 54 Rikti which had at least 3 bosses. She did cap Range defense and basically hover blasted. She could pretty much fight a lvl 54 mob to a draw, mez being the downfall. She could take out a level 53 mob. I'm thinking these days she'd could be built to do it ... and probably without hover. Several IOs, new pools and a crashless Dreadful Wail, yes please. But it would be capping S/L/E and not worrying about melee in all likelihood.