joyispunkrolex

I really appreciate Staff Melee as an AoE damage set. I'm surprised at how few people are using it given the high demand for farming an PLing. I didn't play any AoE heavy melee prior to the shutdown, mostly because I didn't care for Spines or Claws, but the combination of the cool animations and versatile concept really got me once I saw the set in use. I made one right away and never looked back.

I have one toon that I ran up to 50 in ~8 days and a few more in the 20 - 30 range. My 50 doesn't match my preferred mode of play (I like support characters, not melee), so I haven't really looked in to the post-50 scene. I guess I need to pay more attention to the global channels to see what end-game people are doing because all the Incarnate stuff is a lot of fun.

I'd love to run a Hami raid. My active hours are approximately the same as the parent poster's, though I can run later if need be. I'd most likely be bringing a 50 Staff/Bio Brute.

OMG Arc! And GEL!

That's not been my experience at all. Even with about 60 million infamy worth of IOs on my /Bio right now, my purely frankenslotted SS/WP could comfortably handle stuff that will wipe the floor with my Staff/Bio. I'll admit I'm fine against absolute hordes of +0s and +1s (unless they're Carnies), but everything seems to collapse the minute I see +2 bosses. /Bio's mitigation just isn't as comprehensive as /WP's and is far more reliant on the +Heal/Absorb/Regen powers that don't help a lot against big single attacks. I think it's also missing some debuff resistances compared to /WP or /Inv, though I obviously don't have access to older characters to check that. My plan going forward is to find as many ways to improve Defense on my /Bio as I can find. Heals just aren't cutting it no matter how much I enhance for it.

I had a 50 SS/WP Brute in the way and right now I have a 40something Staff/Bio brute on Excelsior. WP has an edge in terms of survivability. It's a top-tier set, along with /Inv, /SR and /Stone. I feel like /Bio is a notch down, because it's mitigation is mostly just extra healing. It very much plays like Fire Armor, where you still take a lot of hits and you're relying at least some degree on your damage aura and your click powers to make up the difference. Switching modes does help to some degree, but I find myself primarily using Defensive mode; Staff melee wipes out everything but bosses so quickly that the other modes don't do much to help. Most of my slotting and IO purchases have been geared toward helping get better at survival, but getting 10% better healing isn't terribly meaningful compared to getting, say, 3% better defense from a set bonus. I feel like there's more potential to improve WP. I have about 22% global recharge on my /Bio already and yes, that does help for the click powers, but even with that, there's nothing stopping a 5th Column Oberst from hitting three times and sending me to the hospital. I'm not saying not to roll /Bio. It's fantastic if your team is there to buff you. I just don't think it's overpowered.

Over the weekend, I took a Staff/Bio Brute to 41. I took all powers from both sets and I'm reasonably well appointed with IOs. I got a couple lucky drops that put some decent set bonuses on the table. Staff fighting is an absolute beast for large groups of minions and LTs. Animation times largely aren't a problem because you have a full PBAOE attack chain if you want it. Holding aggro is not a problem and frequent reelection of targets means nothing but bosses lives very long. You're basically a blender. Bosses are rough. You do very steady damage over time, but there's no huge high alpha hit. Skysplitter would be a level 28 power in most melee sets. This is a problem most urgently felt if the boss you're fighting is strong to your armor type. It just has a chance of knockdown for mitigation. It's not much compared to most melee sets. I'd call end costs reasonable with IOs. I basically only worry if I'm fighting Freaks or Carnies (the melee radius end drain is horrible). Recharge is a bit long but easily corrected by taking most of the set. Staff has modes but to be honest I leave the offensive mode on all the time. The damage resistance debuff is the most powerful option nearly all the time and I'm too busy to micromanage. Taunt and the short ranged attack are situational picks. I hardly ever use the single target ranged power, though it has very reliable knockdown and does decent damage. I just forget I have it, mostly because I haven't prioritized its slotting. The first power in the set is not great, but it's a good filler or you have a break in your attack chain. And it does build perfection, so I think it's still a good pick, but I've hardly bothered to slot it at all. My brute is very comfortable at +1x6 or 8, but I did most of my leveling at 0x6, because absurd numbers of minions play to her strengths and give the fastest rewards. Bio armor has a lot of versatility. It has modes too, though I mainly stay defensive. Bio reminds me of the intersection of Regen and Fire armor. Most of its survival comes from bonus hit points and increased healing, though it does have some typed defense and DR. It has a taunt and damage aura, but it still feels squishy. Even with good recharge on the clicky powers, it's prone to have cascading defense breakdown if something defensive misses. Like fire and elec, I think it's pretty squishy for a brute, even being very defensive slotting . I start most fights with my heal aoe and extra hit points and use purple and orange pills liberally to make things easy. For Staff/Fire, you are going to want massive t taunt bonuses an or an immobilizer power; you need stuff to stay in burn. You're also going to need healing flames more. That being said, you'll be a king of Ape, so if you want to farm something, you're beautifully equipped for it.

I was a CoH beta tester and played and paid until the servers shut down. It's the only MMO I played as a live product, though I also beta tested Dungeons and Dragons Online, Everquest and Champions Online.

I just noticed that the individual servers don't have a sub-forum. Am I wrong in thinking that's a glaring omission for our forums?

Staff seems to me to be a minion-destroyer. Hop into a horde and let their piddling attacks max out your fury bar. I watched a Staff/Fire while I was on my SoA today and boy was it a winning combination. The long animations balance well against the AoEs and plus it looks REALLY cool in-game.

I also have a character stuck as currently logging off. For the last five hours.

Liberty was my home server. My main SG was the Legion.

It's hard to be THAT bad in CoX but I got invited to a group that was apparently doing Erotic Role Play in SG chat, only one person was using local instead. These people were role playing so they weren't breaking character even in team chat, so I was sending tells asking them what was going on. We were on one of the Shadow Shard TFs and I didn't want to quit so I just had to deal with their weirdness in chat for half a day. Thankfully they left me out of it, but it was still squicky to read half of somebody's sex chats. Maybe like four hours in to the TF, somebody finally got the one guy to stop chatting in local and after that the only things they said where I could read them were stuff like "Pull" and "Portal." I might've left the whole scene but I'd been waiting like 2 weeks to find people to do that TF as it was. Probably everyone has the story of getting on a team in some high level zone, getting there and being kicked, but the only time that was REALLY a hassle was when they left you in the middle of PP when they did it.