Doomguide2005

"A power in these sets" Are you thinking a new power replacing one in the set or a rework/additional function of an existing power or still brainstorming this?

I would choose slightly less recharge with capped S/L. As long as most of your foes have to hit past your defense, yes you should need your IH, DP and Recon noticeably less often.

It doesn't sound like an endurance issue but anything being run that has an endurance use/crash when it ends (like Hasten) that might happen at a bad moment. Or a toggle that covers mez perhaps not running for a server tic while it "renews" and some mez hitting randomly on just that server tic causing a detoggling?

Interesting thought, but as a player of many an Empath not sure it would really cut down on my actual reaction time as much as it might allow me to avoid getting fatally stuck in a blast animation or time to move around an obstacle to get to a position to use my healing on my allie(s) ... HA, HO, HA etc. or reversed HO, HA, HO etc.. I could typically spam those heals very quickly when needed (minimum total recharge 250%+ without external buffs or Incarnates). How would the proposed mechanic handle actual DoT attacks?

Perhaps (with emphasis) it was true, but the game has evolved and changed enormously since the manual was written. Neither IOs, sets or Incarnates existed when the manual was written. Much of it is also flavorfully written and blappers certainly existed in the early issues. My first blaster went to 50 on SO's and spent plenty of her time in both melee (energy) and range (fire blast). As she closed with a mob she used her ranged blasts, then finished the bosses and lts with her melee secondary. All while vulnerable to mez.

IKR

Yep I often leave to first spot open to keep some extra room to avoid doing that and as I level that becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible to do. So yes certainly can get behind that option.

I remember loving the first Winter event and the Red River freezing over. It made getting to those deep Hollows missions so much less deadly zooming along the frozen, mob free, ice.

Ouch! Although I think the real take away is more along the lines of unless you know the foes abilities assume it can kill you. In this case most likely right through a gaping hole of minimal psi resist/defense that seems woven into the fabric of nearly every older melee set.

Are you talking about the position of the tray on the window? Or the icons within the tray because the second already exists.

Truth, in my case it was a Lowbie claws/SR scrapper about i4 looking at a bunch of Pumucites. I switched auto run to '[' after that.

Careful placing procs in powers which don't cause aggro (i.e. don't notify the foe.) Such as Smoke. You may end up "notifying the mob". Similar to the OPs don't place the self destruct button next to 'panic' buttons. Careful where you remap your keybinds. I rebound 'r' for autorun to 'p' and did the predictable when in chat I suggested 'pulling a foe'. PS: The proc in question in Smoke wasn't a damage proc either, but it still caused aggro.

You may be right but that's not the impression I'm getting from his last two posts.

I remember being a sidekicked level 6 on a team running deep in the Hollows. Mission ended and the team broke up. Took a ridiculous length of time for me to Hover out to the AP gate, but using the death express just seemed wrong to me. But probably not as long as hovering all the way out to get my first look at the Storm Palace up close. Or how long it took to get good at using the jump geysers in the Shards 🤪

@arcanavilleposted "Arcana's Guide to Defense v1.4 - Updated for i7" in June 2006 which is the first time I heard about it. PS: missed it first time rereading the Attack Mechanics article but it does say how AoE's are handled by Streakbreaker.

Yes, looking back the OP was hoping to do something with Sword and Regen. Going to need to get a lot of defense from some where, sets, buffs, inspires or the long interrupt and cast times will make successful employment of Medicine pool powers problematic on a good day. Is it possible, sure. If you can get capped defenses on a blaster you can do it for basically any AT and sets.

Hmmm, I've done a lot of both Brute and Scrapper and for running around pre 50, pre Incarnate, well unfortunately I'd say it really doesn't matter (from the POV of choosing one AT over the other). Your power sets probably matter more. Haven't tried it since Live but I'd like to try DM/FA again. Self heal, changes to SM, end recovery tools. Mine was a scrapper for what that's worth. The real difference especially for a hobbyist farmer sugar daddy probably aren't that great until tricked out and incarnated post 50.

🙁 Issues like this really make my inflicted hiatus from the game sting. Computer died and neither CoH or Mids' run on a smart phone 😜. I've run a bazillion Emps of all sorts to 50 never noted any difference in xp gain per mob while solo ... and would love to test it out and see what's going on but ...

I'd be looking at Fire/Nature myself. It's been a while since I've done Fire Control and I'm still looking for my first Nature (of any AT). But I love my controllers and would ... will probably try all those pairings

What @jubakumbi said is along the lines of what I was thinking but couldn't look ingame to see if my recollections about controlling movement by mouse were correct.

Not sure if I was the first to specifically say Earth/Storm or not but yes slower going until later when /Storm gets rolling. That and my forced hiatus I've not delved into how well Earth can be turned into "proc monster". Plant would be potent nearly out of the starter blocks precisely because of Seeds which helps both with safety as well as clear speed until Storm really gets rolling.

No, but I might look at resetting my key binding and/or mouse controls and see if that makes the issue go away.

Not sure which melee AT is the best question. Quite a difference between a pure Resist and pure Defense set for using Medicine Pool mid-combat, for instance. Unless one wants to assume the Resist set is also at the defense caps. And purely from the above post by @CrudeVileTerror I'd strongly be looking at a VEAT as well as, for example, an SR Tanker.

Not sure ... combat logs provide any evidence?

Yay! for Earth Control, Quicksand (available at level 6) in particular shines at low, low levels. Autohit -20% defense debuff and slow patch you can drop from around a corner or behind cover. (75% - (-20%)) = 95% And that applies for everyone targetting those in the patch not just the controller.