Doomguide2005

indeed!, hence why I lead with Irradiate, nice debuff that tics to interrupt annoying mob powers while synergizing with her Tactics and Fortitude to help ensure everyone is hitting their targets including me when Atomic Blast goes off dropping a potent defdebuff and mag 3 Hold in addition to damage. Point is select your priority whether its debuffing like mad or damage. But either way if you don't chose to push damage well you aren't going to get it even at defender levels. Which is good enough to chew up mobs on a Emp/Fire running point on 800 series missions even if not Blaster level.

Indeed if your best blast is only 3 tics of 30 damage you clearly are not building, even on SOs, for damage in your blasts. Not everyone wants a highly offensive Empath (or Pain), but as @MonteCarla points out Cosmic Burst unenhanced for damage does 77 (rounded). Fully enhanced on SOs should be about twice that. Everything after that is more damage (Assault and several Pain powers can self boost it further). My Emp/Rad is around is around 300 with PBU and recharges in about 2.5 seconds. But she is built for higher defenses and offense while remaining perfectly capable of keeping a team buffed and green using IOs (any lack of damage output or buffs to the team is pilot error not the fault of any power) but has very little outside of PBU to self boost the damage further discounting Inspires. And that does not count the mez and debuffs accompanying her blasts. Point being if you don't slot for damage regardless of SOs vs IOs vs sets vs Incarnate Abilities it's not really the blasts themselves not doing enough damage. You won't be doing blaster level damage but those values should be notably better than 3 * 30 damage, Edit: And she will leap into endgame mobs with little hesitation commonly letting loose with Irradiate followed by Atomic Blast if for some reason there's much standing at that point after the team also lets loose (yes that means she's often breaking the alpha return) she'll start in with Cosmic Burst and Air Superiority on a boss who's rapidly stunned and doing flips while I mix in the buffs to teammates while continuing to blast. She tends to do this more with her Dark Mastery build rather than PBU but Oppressive Gloom plus Stun Grenades and Cosmic Burst tend to leave entire mobs out of commission.

Be sure something odd isn't turned on ... like Rest. Edit: To be clear I don't know it's Rest but Rest does have some extreme debuffs if a foes catches you in Rest. Edit 2: anytime i get some value that is way off from expected checking to be sure something isn't on (or off) is my first step. Force Feedback, for example, when things get calculated i see throw folks often. They think "wow, I have really good recharge"

Oops. We're in total agreement i was looking at the blue energy resist when I wrote that

Or the reverse. Over 75% ... 75.15%

Not sure if I'd use the word signature but they do tend to be my go to characters GRETA-001 >> Claws/SR scrapper about 200 vet levels and definitely my main Reyna Morningdew >> Empathy/Rad. My go to Empath. Seismic Susurrus >> Earth/Storm controller for those times i want controlled chaos

They did tweek threat and aggro recently if I'm not mistaken so the HCWiki article is not only old but probably slightly out of date but likely still of value. That said the aggro cap is (was?) 17 or 1 greater than, outside of Incarnate abilities, the largest damage AoEs. Your threat list can be greater and is constantly recalculating so as foes are defeated new ones will aggro onto you from your threat list. Your tauntless rusher will likely aggro the latest mobs as they will now likely be highest on his list. Meanwhile the bosses that would otherwise continue to follow him now look at their threat list and now the that debuffing support character who's still attacking find themselves zooming up the list ... and the MI or DRM turns their attention on the attacking support. And disaster is set up.

I recently discovered that the p2w (START) vendor in Fort Trident can also be used similarly to the pocket D vendor (though I'm unsure if there's any advantage to having both options) I also have started using both the Plasmatic Taser and Stun Grenades both of which can help deal with the waves Doc Vahz summons. In addition to the Shivan option mentioned above (in Bloody Bay) the p2w vendor also offers summons options including the police radio back up which my Empath utilized when tackling Doc Vahz and is a relatively cheap option for a new or leveling lowbie. And I would also second the recommendation to use sg base empowerment buffs

It varies quite a bit but AT, sets and level all play into it. I have one "outlier", my main a Claws/SR scrapper, who runs basically across the spectrum depending on goal and mood. About the only thing she won't do is turn it down so much threads and shards can't drop. Probably hits +3/×8 mostly for content with a level shift effectively dropping that to +2/×8. I'll tear through tip missions at +1/×1, then turn around crank it to max and try an 800.1 series, incarnate mission arcs or most recently a crack at the new 1☆ Lady Gray solo. Managed to take down the CWK in the first mission though I'm fairly certain Penny met a rapid demise while I was busy with the AV and waves of clockwork. Generally her upper end is dealing with AVs ... I generally find it too tedious solo so I generally avoid fighting them unless teamed which is why I dropped the TF at that point. Had my share of silly scrapper tricks solo vs AVs on Live no real desire to do it more. I was more curious about ☆ Rikti mob abilities than actually soloing the whole thing ... fascinating 'nuff said

All critter damage resistances act as resistance to resistance debuffs vs that damage type. So no afaik any critter can, depending on their damage resistances, resist any resistance debuffs acting against that damage resistance type not just AVs and GMs. That's why in, for example, Hard Mode it's beneficial for any AT to hit 100% damage resistance. That way even a Scrapper or other AT can resist all of a incoming debuff meaning no matter how large the attackers resistance debuff their resistance to that damage will be capped at 75% not 75 minus the incoming debuff as they can in fact resist 100 % of the resistance debuff. Only unresistable resistance debuffs would apply.

Ranges from barely a clue till 40+ to right out the door I have a strong idea both of which reflect right back to how familiar I am with the power sets and AT. Earth/** controller I've got a solid idea out the door. Ditto for SR or Empathy. Darkness Control/Electrical Affinity though I'd a lot less sure till 50+ as I have yet to play either. Mids is almost always for a "final" respec in late game, sometime after 35+ most likely unless I'm experimenting with a otherwise familiar pairing.

Yes though not sure how many are back regularly. I know I see Jane online regularly. The sg started up on Indomitable. Most of mine are on Everlasting.

Hey bAss welcome back. Silhouette from the Lethal Ladies

Have to get the builds on my computer to get a good look. Leveling one right now, they're about 30th as recall

Short answer: No I wouldn't bother Long answer: On Live my main was Claws/SR and my badge hunter. The choice ended up far more useful for healing an ally (and working towards the badges). Eventually it morphed into set mules for +max health and regen bonuses. On HC I didn't bother as I took Rebirth and that is a much larger heal ... and more often than not I use it to heal others such as after Shadow Cyst goes boom or when things are trying to go sideways for the team with lots of colorful teammates showing. While leveling maybe more useful than inspires, maybe. In the end game not so much. More important to hit those defense caps, get DDR to 95+ and talking from mitigation pov to get +max health and regen on the build. Rarely do any Scrappers or Brutes I team with exceed the health or regen numbers on the current version of my main. I am likely sacrificing some dps but outside of Hardmode her durability is top notch and only dies when I'm being stupid.

I would be doing something similar. Depending on how strongly you needed or wanted the set bonuses from Hecatomb you could likely red line the damage in 3 slots then use Golgi or a similar 3 slots of a heal set to essentially max both damage, heal and recharge iirc (it's been a while since Live when I ran this pairing as a Brute on Live)

@Shemulator To add to what Snarky has said about stuns I'll add that the now START (former p2w) vendor offers relatively cheap Stun Grenades which I've found quite useful for upping survival for support characters and are available from the get go. And they'll stack with things like Dark Pit or Thunder Clap much earlier than waiting for Oppressive Gloom. And of course would also open up your choice of Mastery/Epic pool. If you plan on Hover or Fly I've found Air Superiority an excellent choice for melee. The knock is a given if the target isn't protected. I can often keep a boss permanently knocked while I whittle their health down. Hasten I'd consider a near 100% choice on an Empath. Empathy's powers thrive on recharge. Likewise I'm a big believer in support characters and using Leadership. I would say Dark Blast is very much a heavily range oriented set. Only the Nuke is PBAoE and only three of Empathy's powers are PBAoE (and like all of Empathy effect only your allies). Those 3 being Healing Aura, Recovery Aura and RegenAura. And Resurrect while technically a ranged power is only 15ft. I would personally be looking for Gloom, Moonbeam, Tenebrous Tentacles, Nightfall, Torrent and Black Star. Dark Pit is a stronger choice for solo work (or combined with a steady diet of Stun Grenades) or any time you see teammates laying down stuns. Life Drain should be totally skippable for what hope are obvious reasons. Empathy - I would consider all but two powers as basically must haves on your typical build. The other two, Resurrect and Absorb Pain I'd consider player preference and choice. Resurrect is bland Rez. It's just as easy to use a temp power or pass a wakie and ready Clear Mind plus your other buffs than use Resurrect. As to Absorb Pain there's considerable debate surrounding its use. It's a very large heal and can be used at range to get a teammate back to health which combined with Heal Other gives you two very strong heals. So where's the debate coming from? The downside of AP is it hits the Empath with ~125 special damage, a 100% heal resistance debuff and 100% regen debuff for 20 seconds (all unresistable). If you have aggro from some source(s) you're definitely risking death as your ability to heal or be healed is basically non-existent for 20 seconds. Either be ready to break LoS or hope whoever is holding aggro keeps it (unless that's you 😳). Unfortunately the Mids of my Defender build from Live of Empathy/Dark Blast did not survive the post Sunset to the HC Sunrise and I haven't yet remade the build from Live.

I hadn't even mentally correlated in my old brain this sort of appearance. I'd heard of GMs showing on several occasions in this manner. Notably at the end of CoV beta in Mercy where our characters got to dogpiled several members of the Freedom Phalanx. And as I understand it after a certain moment when Howling Twilight and a Hami Bloom brought an invisibly watching Admin out to exclaim "you did what?!!"

The time on Live that I personally saw a GM enter a mission was after we filed a ticket because we couldn't complete a defeat all in a TF mission (mob stuck in terrain). They appeared as a Police Drone. We all buffed up and they moved the mob out ... and it got obliterated.

Two words I'm told i should say or ask about "Emergent properties"

Chat GPT and similar AI are as awful at it as they currently are. It's only going to improve. Just think about how long they've existed and what the original outputs looked like. There's material out there now that the vast majority of folks won't even notice is AI generated when they look at it and many of them couldn't pick out the 'fake' even if told one was AI generated. You kind of missed the point though it wouldn't surprise me if that was deliberate. I think you had the post highlighting all the bits of unimaginative writing up thread. Well those various phrases are unimaginative crud commonly known as tropes and virtually all human writing is full of them which is why there's a word for it. Sure Chat GPT writes like a poorly plagiarizing high schooler at the moment. But that's just in the current state, it was only a short bit of time ago when it would have barely passed muster as a poorly plagiarizing kindergartner. And I've no idea how skilled at writing prompts FFFF is either.

This I haven't read the entirety of the thread yet but I had a friend on Live with his first character that spent so much time wandering around Outbreak that he had the badge for defeating Infected prior to entering AP. He had no clue to return to Coyote and how to get to AP until after he used his phone a friend option. He was new both to MMO's in general and CoH specifically.

If you want a quick idea if perma is even possible take the recharge divide by 5. If that value is less than its duration then it's possible. A good idea is a whole other question. Example, Empathy's Auras 500 second recharge, divide by 5 is 100 seconds. The duration of the Aura is 90 sec. Therefore even at the recharge cap (500%) you'll be 10 seconds shy.

"Gimme NAO! or I start yowling at least an hour earlier in the morning"