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Has the way procs work been changed on homecoming since the start of this thread? just curious if this info is up-to-date.

Sure! I meant that every reddit/forum post I've found discussing Kinetic Melee as a choice for tankers/scrappers/brutes said that it is not very good DPA, and is only good on stalkers. Personally, when I played KM scrapper up to the 40s or so, I found it performed quite a bit worse than my claws scrapper, who had less IO support. I think it was the PBAoE attack on KM not properly benefitting from the scrapper critical strikes passive, or something.

Oh, ok! Maybe it is in a better place than I thought!

Hi! It seems to be a long-standing, well known fact that THE coolest melee powerset, Kinetic Melee, is underpowered. With such a wonderful and active balancing team on HC, I'm curious as to why KM has been left underpowered for so long. Anyone have any insights/opinions? What changes would you like to see? (P.S.I haven't played my KM scrapper in about a year, so perhaps I missed a balance update that addressed this-- if so, HURRAY!)

Ki push into laser eyes is just about the coolest thing you can do in this game. Bonus points if you mi push off a building.

Benefits are minor, especially on a ranged class: escaping an immobilize, retreating to cover slightly faster than normal, etc. I just think it is hilarious and cool.

Ok it is absolutely time to make a combat-teleporting /martial blaster. Six mini teleports!!! If anyone needs me I'll be in the character creator for the next three hours choosing a primary set and messing around with asymmetrical shoulder pieces 😄

Controllers change the gamemode from +4/x8 to helpless punching bag mode. At high levels, controllers have enough holds, knockdowns, stuns, and confuses available to stop anything short of an AV in their tracks within seconds. This goes doubly so for dominators. The piece de resistance, however, are the controller's support abilities. Between the buffs, debuffs, and minions they bring to the table, each controller that is in the party makes the group safer and faster. Now, are speedruns for things like ITF done with a full controller team? No, as far as I know they are done by highly organized teams of 7 blasters and one corruptor. HOWEVER!!! If you are like me and play with pick up groups, especially levelling, your controller will be of more value to the group than your pure dps. The mid-level all-dps party can wipe out a +1 or even +2 mission/taskforce without a sweat, but you need a few support characters to push the difficulty any higher. Two competent controllers and 6 dps treat +4 like +2. In other words, more exp!!1! Controllers sleep easy at night knowing every party they are on will be steamroll-grade. Also, Ultimo, you seem to think that controller support powers are terribly weak as they are secondary powersets. It's simply not true. Even with their lower modifiers, they are absolutely worth it. My advice: if you are worried about effectiveness, especially at lower levels, craft your controllers with a sense of purpose. Want low level effectiveness? Pick powersets that have powerful, early AoEs, like seeds of confusion from plant control and time's juncture from temporal manipulation, or the brutal single-target damage (and tiny but frequent aoe knockdwon) of gravity's propel paired with the safety-ensuring shields from ice and forcefield or the damage amplifier that is kinetics. Be the reason your teammates feel super. TL,DR: When I play as dps, I have to hope my team can survive. When I play controller, I know my team will survive.

/devices has trip mines, which can be stacked over four minutes to do big damage to an AV you pull over to them; however, the cast time is long and the recharge is kinda slow until you get a whole lot of increased recharge speed buffs. Trip mine is a neat gimmick and can be fun soloing, if you are in a "super tactical" mood. Other aspects of /devices fit that mindset very well also: If memory serves, you can toss smoke grenades at a group of enemies over and over from stealth without them noticing. The -tohit debuff stacks and lasts for a minute, so when you do start blasting you are much safer. Finally, caltrops will make enemies run around not attacking, thereby reducing the damage you take. All used together, you can stealthily bombard a x8 group until they can't see their noses, then throw down some caltrops and blast all the lieutenants and minions. Finally, if the booses/elite bosses/AVs are too difficult to take on when the rest are cleared out, you can retreat to safety and lay down a dozen trip mines. I can't comment on /trick arrow, as I've never played an archery-themed character!

Electric armor/radiation melee! Three reasons why: 1. A damage aura from each! 2. A heal from each! 3. Aoe damage from contamination as well! currently at lvl 49, and the hardest part of the build is finding and clicking the contaminated enemies when I am standing in a mob of enemies and a sea of damage numbers! It's a ton of fun, and the only reason I don't have it into incarnate levels is I go into a spiral of theorycraft and altitis whenever I think about the toxic resist hole electric armor has. (Does anyone else get "achilles heel anxiety" when playing armor-based archetypes?)

Here's my current build! I recently posted my current build to reddit, here it is: Force mastery is great for grav/time! Without incarnates, my grav/time/force has 45% defence to all half the time, and 40% def to all the other half of the time, if I use power boost on cooldown. I also have S/L resist capped 🙂 My grav/time is becoming my main, I love it haha. I've been playing my finished grav/time/force for about a week, and it is my only character that can comfortably do +4/x8 arachnos and Carnie radio missions solo (if a little slowly). I use incarnate powers and proc enhancements to raise damage and protect from CC, while the base build brings control, tactical positioning, defense, and recharge. Here's the build if you/the internet is interested: http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1488&c=725&a=1450&f=HEX&dc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

Just took a look at your build Harakh, I like it a lot! Especially the acrobatics giving so much KB protection, and your lower end drain. At a quick glance, most of your stats are slightly better or equal to mine, though I have 15% more resistance to psy. Added ya 🙂

Oh and P.S. on the end management: idk what I was remembering but end is a pain. Manageable in less difficult fights, but when pushed to the limit or against end-sappers? The build totally shuts down! It's horrendous! If I get around to making another 200mill+ build for this guy, I'm going to have to take a hard look at end management and cc protection. Maybe I'll make a dwarf-centric build?🤔

Okay, I just went in game to verify my boasting. I loaded up a +4/x8 carnie radio mission with bosses, and confidently floated in. I got my luminous <BLEEP!> handed to me on an illusory platter. Never again will I post on a forum without verifying my claims in-game beforehand. I was able to beat the first group, which included two master illusionists, after a truly harrowing 12 minutes and two deaths. Oh, and that immunity to CC? yeah no. 1 hold protection, 3 to most other things, lol! Then, I loaded up an arachnos mission, same settings. Twenty seconds in: WHERE IS MY ENDURANCE??!? After 9 minutes of nuke n' flee on repeat, I was able to beat the first group of arachnos. Then to salvage some small piece of my wounded pride, I pulled up a council mission and slaughtered them >=) I also tried the strongest of my other characters on the same settings against carnies, and found that my grav/storm troller and bots/time mastermind both were waaay better at carnie-killing. The bots/time was exceptionally easy, if a bit slow, and didn't have the focused dps to take down master illusionists. Hypothetically, I' sure someone could create a lean, mean, carnie killing peacebringer build, but mine ain't it... yet. So to amend what I said initially: my PB is hands down my easiest character to do +4/x8 team content on. While my other characters are much more squishy or rely on controlling the situation, my PB can walk through anything with team buffs and dish out helpful quantities of damage. Is he more useful on a team than my ill/rad? For mob clearing sure, but not when it comes to AV killing. I felt so confident claiming his cc immunity and ability to wade through max diff content because when I play him, I always choose a difficulty he feels powerful in, generally +2/x8 or lower for CoS and Arachnos. It's been half a year since I played him solo, so rose-tinted memories got in the way of facts. But that's the great thing about CoH! You can fine tune the difficulty of whatever you do so you can feel super! (I also made a short video, but the file size is too big. Needless to say, I got wrecked in it) Hell yeah! Or just compare how our builds do against various groups, that's be fun! I'm still satisfied with the build! I love having capped resistances 🙂 http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1527&c=688&a=1376&f=HEX&dc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

Visiting grandma, I'll post my build and maybe a video later! Arach and CoS are a little hairy solo on +4/x8. In fact, I've never tried to solo CoS at that difficulty haha, they are SUCH A PAIN. I'll try tonight though haha. The CC immunity (as I remember it, have to double check) is in light form. I don't use dwarf or squid in this build at all. The defense toggles are for more long-term survivability or team buffs. The real strength of a pure lightform build is you know exactly when you will be vulnerable, so you can plan accordingly. One of the biggest strengths is that if you do die, you have a self rez, and you only need to press one power (lightform) to get 80% of your survivability back, and it isn't a toggle that can drop. Self-rez-> light form-> self heal-> aoe knockdown gets right back into the fight, with plenty of breathing room to withdraw or turn on def toggles. Endurance management: off the top of my head, I've got a conserve energy power, a power from the leadership pool that increases recovery based on a defeated foe, and a focus on endurance recovery in the enhancement slotting. Again, specifics to follow late tonight!