Grindingsucks

I'm no build guru, but I do love StJ/SR scrappers, so I'll try to give some useful advice here, with the caveat that I tend to prioritize theme before performance, and that there are FAR MORE QUALIFIED people than myself. Maybe someone will read this and give their own advice (hopefully correcting any bad advice I inadvertently give you). Firstly, I don't get too hung up on hit points when I'm running SR characters. The idea of SR is that you hardly ever get hit, so you don't need quite so many hit points as other builds. My own SR scrapper has a bit over 1500 hps and does fine. You have around 1750 hp, so you should also be fine. I imagine you do struggle with endurance management (I have this problem too, and will probably do some respecing to improve it). I noticed you have two-slotted preventative medicine and numinas convalescence, and that you 4-slotted performance shifter. I would advise that you just keep the procs from those three sets and replace the other five slots with more healing/endurance modification procs/globals that boost your endurance, as possible, then fill out the rest with whatever (will probably be absorb or regen/healing). With regard to getting hit, I do think you need to try to get to soft cap on your positional defenses. You seem to be hovering around the low to mid 30's, and you really need to hit 45. A lot of people over tune into the 50's, to address defense debuffing. This is wise, when you anticipate fighting enemies stronger than yourself. SR characters are one powerset where I DO worry about getting incarnate powers (typically, I don't bother, unless it fits my theme), because SR are all about not getting hit, as opposed to soaking up the damage, and so having at least one or two level shifts from your incarnate powers is extremely helpful for survivability if you do a lot of high level content and/or run at +4 notoriety. Beyond that, I would just take a look at some of the sets you have slotted and try to replace some of the ones that are more resist focused with ones that are more defense focused. Hopefully, that will give you some place to start and some of our local build wizards will see this and give you more focused advice. Good luck!

I use it to set up another assassin strike on tough foes. I imagine players that are more build efficient than myself, don't need it for that purpose, but I enjoy it. YMMV, of course.

Mine are all over the place, depending on concept. Small characters are a considerable advantage to play with regard to both maneuvering and visibility, on maps with cramped/tight areas like caves, tunnels, and so forth.

I'm so sorry for your loss. She was clearly an amazing person who brought a great deal of joy and inspiration to everyone that knew her.

Valid questions. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I just tweak the notoriety until I hit the sweet spot that feels challenging, but not futile, to me. That can vary wildly depending on the mission and the AT of the character I'm running, and even the particular build of any AT. CoH is an extremely challenging game to balance play around, because the profusion of powers and the many way those powers can be combined, plus the variables introduced by hundreds of different possible enhancement set combinations on top of that... well. You can see the difficulty here- particularly when compounded by trying to balance content for a team of 8 or more players, all with (most likely) very different characters. This is why I think it's generally best to concentrate on fixing bugs and balancing content that already exists in the game, before attempting to add new powers/AT's/Enhancements, etc. Each new thing adds an additional variable, which makes trying to balance the overall content more difficult.

It's hard for me to envision someone else in the role. I think the best solution would be to simply move on. Perhaps make a reference to the new republic calling her up for some other important assignment, or whatever.

Anyways... to the point of the OP's post, I still recommend seeking out a newly forming SG for super-hero action oriented RP. Otherwise, you can hang out by Miss Liberty in Atlas Park, and/or advertise roleplay radio/newspaper missions in LFG channel. For flirting or boinking, any one of numerous bars/clubs (Pocket D or player bases) is fine, sure.

Agreed. Although that tech knight mace is goofy looking, any way you slice it.

75% resist hardcap, I assume? Interesting concept.

Here is my "not" Peacebringer/Warshade Kheldian:

@decomposey It is biased, no doubt, as I am speaking from my own particular point of view. However, it was not my intention to be either elitist or unfair, so if I offended you, I apologize. Also, to be perfectly clear on the topic, for those of you that enjoy ERP, I'm not bagging on it. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I don't think any kind of RP is inherently superior to any other. It's just not my thing, personally. My own experience in pocket D has been than most people go there for ERP. If you aren't expecting that, it can be rather jarring and discombobulating. I simply assume most people are looking for the non-erotic sort of RP and was giving the OP a heads-up about what I felt they are likely to encounter there. If your experience in Pocket D is different from mine, that's perfectly valid, and your opinion is every bit as relevant as my own.

Haste, because you can slot your enhancements with LotG and recharge sets to make it autofire perma. Personally, I rarely pick either Haste or Clarion as powers, though.

The auction house is very buggy and frustrating to use. This is why I simply list everything I sell for 1 inf, about 95% of the time. It's the least troublesome and time-intensive means of interacting with the system.

I like to have combat teleport macro'd to teleport to the enemy. Have two other macros set up; one that can telport you straight up and one that can teleport you straight back. In group combat, let the melee guys draw aggro. Fire your snipe, then a couple other rnged attacks from a distance (Pew! Pew! Pew!). Then activate combat teleport macro to TP to your targeted enemy. Hit them with a chain of three strong melee attacks (Blap! Blap! Blap!). Hit one of your macros to CT either up or away (depending on the map geometry. Up for open maps, back for narrow confined ones). Rinse and Repeat until the enemy group is neutralized. This should keep you relatively safe about 90% of the time. I have a Dark/EM Blaster with low to mediocre resist and defense and he does very well using this method, even in high level group content.

Wow, that is a weird glitch, @Snarky 😂

I don't typically use it in the thick of combat, due to interrupt times. I might experiment with using interrupt IO's to cut down on that and see what sort of difference it makes in utility. What I find it particularly useful for is carefully isolating enemies from large clusters of mobs in solo play. I can run at much higher levels of notoriety by utilizing careful tactics of this sort. I'm uncertain about the OP's suggestion. It would give the power more utility in combat, of course- particularly for the powers mentioned- and I'm sure other interesting combos could be developed using that power, but I would be wary about making it too easy for bosses to be yoinked around the battlefield.

I had one I took all the way to 50. I didn't care for it, but I always attributed that to simply being personally bad at working the clicks on the Bio Armor set. I rebuilt as a Rad/Rad Tank and like that configuration somewhat better. YMMV, of course.

Closed beta cabal? Lol. Okay, then. 🤷‍♂️ What would your suggested approach be, for fixing the perceived problem?

If the mobs are aware of you, it should be instant (or as near to it as one can come). If you haven't drawn aggro yet, it should be slow to fire, but to a lot more damage. I don't know that Assault Rifle snipes are different from any other, but I haven't really taken time to compare. EDIT: Ah, answered by ZorkNemesis, I see. Nevermind, then. Disregard. 😁

Ah. Hm. That, I did not know. I'm not sure what the solution would be, in that case. You probably need to hit discord and pick the collective brains of the tech-heads there.

A valid reply. On the other hand, I do admit that I would be happier if, instead of having a mix of "good" and "really good" powersets, all of the powersets were just "good", as I'm a stickler for game balance. Having said this, I freely acknowledge how difficult it is, in practice, to balance a game with many (and highly varied) powersets.

These questions are very helpful for considering various aspects of the game, so thanks for posting this topic, Troo: Yes, but not necessarily all content. Some content should be sufficiently challenging that careful teamwork is needed to defeat the enemy. Just as everyone should have the ability to enjoy some of the game content solo, everyone should also have the opportunity to enjoy challenging team play. I don't see how both expectations can be fulfilled in the same mission, at the same time, without adding another level of difficulty to the game (probably the best solution) or nerfing AT's or IO sets and Incarnate powers across the board (time intensive and impractical, and also liable to put the player base in an uproar). I don't think the expectation should be that all archetypes should be the equivalent of a team of 8 heroes, four levels higher than themselves. I'll be quite frank here: I don't think ANY hero or villain should be that powerful, unless it's an NPC Archvillain, designed to battle teams. The fact that we can do so is an example of the egregious power creep present in this game (IMO) and part of what makes playing on teams of such heroes, largely an exercise in boredom. I hope so. I think there ought to be. What is the point of gaining incarnate power and veteran levels, if the challenge doesn't increase to test your new abilities? I don't know. I would be curious what the original designers (and the current developers) thought about this. Understanding the goal for how IO's and IO sets were intended to impact the play experience at certain levels and how the game is balanced around this goal is, I feel, very important for achieving an enjoyable level of balance in the game. In my experience, yes. Weaker characters typically die repeatedly, over and over again, or else are tough enough to weather the storm, but otherwise ineffectual and useless, being unable to hit, damage, or lockdown any opponents. This is both boring and frustrating for the weaker character. In a full team of characters able to solo +4/8, you blast through content with little difficulty, except in those cases of certain Taskforces/Trials where cheap gimmicks were employed (e.g. Apex) to address the obvious power creep problem, resulting either boring (in the first case) or unsatisfying (in the second case) team play. Yes, all of the above could be as intended. If so, I find it a particularly strange design philosophy. Such things are subjective, of course, but it doesn't result in a very satisfying end-game or (especially) team play experience for me, personally. Absolutely. I completely agree. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea that either the original designers or current developers envisioned the end goal of players being able to solo +4/8 content, rather than intending that setting to be a means for providing continuing challenge for teams of high level players. Think about it this way: A team of 8 heroes/villains of this level is equivalent to 64 characters that are all 4 levels higher than themselves. That's not NECESSARILY a bad thing in itself, as long as the content provides a reasonable challenge for teams of such characters. In my opinion, the game does not provide a reasonable challenge for such teams, at the present. Now, is THIS by design? Maybe. Maybe not. I would be curious to see how the development team (and of course, the active player base) feels about it.

Yeah, that Hopkins is one nasty hombre. I don't recall how many times it took me to defeat him, but I had to try different strategies and also dial the difficulty level down. Countess Crey clearly employs only the finest bodyguards! 😁 You would have to ask the author, but yes- I feel like the missions were both geared toward powerfully built, exemped down toons, as you theorize. I think this is reasonable, given that the rest of the content in the game Is largely soloable by all archetypes. Those of us interested in more challenging content deserve to be thrown a bone, now and then, do we not? But again, I do think those two arcs ought to have a difficulty warning on them so players understand what they're getting into. In that way, an unnecessary frustration may be avoided.

The new content is extremely challenging. I greatly enjoyed both arcs, as I feel more challenging content is something this game badly needs. YMMV, depending on how hard you like to push yourself in play, of course. Surely, it's not for everyone. Expectations may be the primary problem. As the difficulty for the level departs considerably from the usual standard, it might be helpful to place a warning that the content is much more difficult than the average content in the game. New players, particularly, will probably feel frustrated the first time they attempt these missions. To those who haven't tried the missions yet, understand: Unless you are among the truly elite players of this game, you WILL die at least once (I died between 3 and 5 times during each arc) when playing these solo, even with difficulty set at normal +0/0.

@UberGuy This is incredibly useful. Thanks very much! It's what I used to primarily use Mids for, actually; looking up more detailed and complete explanations of power effects, rather than planning builds. This has been extremely useful for understanding how various powers function in the game!