TheMultiVitamin

Yea I feel ya, I've been playing on and off since around 2020 but recently in the last month or so I've been obsessed with playing (dedicating at least 4-6 hours a day) into this game, but not understanding some aspects of it was getting to me so I figure the best place to ask is the forums. I'm definitely more of a casual player as you said mostly in that I care more about theme and aesthetic, though I admittedly do like seeing Number Go Up:tm: tbh. All the powers just look cool and feel useful/important too so taking them all just always defaults to the logical choice for me mentally, especially given the whole "building for theme/concept rather then optimal use" thing. Also yea I've been looking at JJDrakken's builds (thanks for the share) and they do look neat though I'm still struggling a bit to understand them but I imagine that'll become easier as I become more familiar with stuff myself. I'm glad the enhancements thread was able to help you as much as it was able to help me! Ah that makes so much since! I've been doing a lot of Solo content because I wanted to actually read and experience all the Contacts and their story arcs, so much so that I forget sometimes that this is an MMO and a social team game as much as it is a normal one. So having Defense as the final pick makes a lot of sense considering that others will normally be buffing you instead of it, though with me being Solo currently it's more up on the priority list then others for survivability for the moment. And yea I figured it'd be harder to give a guideline for slotting because of the sheer amount of AT + Powerset + Ancillary/Epic/Patrons combo's that exist (even more so when they add new Powersets all the time like they have been, which is awesome), but I thought I'd ask just in case! I've been using MIDS mostly just to see how the current slotted powers stack up and to avoid the red numbers. Thanks a ton, this really helps! I love so many of the powers of this game and how builds work but it can be difficult to parse and you've definitely made it easier with all this information! I'll have to start considering what I want my chain's to be and go from there, but at least now I understand why and how people do what they do for their builds power wise much better, thank you!

So after asking questions and trawling the forums like a gremlin salivating for shinies I've come to realize my understanding of builds in terms of powers and the like are pretty skewed. Generally I'll take all of the powers in my primary and secondary, along with a few from my travel and ancillary/epic/patron and that's it. But seeing others posts and builds have made me realize that while there's not really a wrong way to do your build there's certainly a taxing and inefficient way. Like I see some builds where they only have 3-5 attacks specified in an attack chain and then the rest are just supplementary, which just didn't click with me mentally and the way I do it (which admittedly can be annoying because, since I take all the powers in my primary and secondary, I'm stretching my fingers or manually clicking powers more often then not cause I just have so many attacks and buffs I need to use repeatedly.) So what are some good basic guidelines for builds, especially in terms of deciding what powers to take from your primary, secondary and ancillary if you're not just taking all of them like I have been? Given my enhancements questions thread has been a wealth of immensely helpful info, what general guidelines, if any, for deciding what gets slots and how you decide what to slot it with? Any information, guidelines, guide links, etc for me to understand this better would be appreciated! It's still throwing me for a loop a bit that, from what I've seen at least, you generally don't want to take every power from your primary and secondary!

Ah, I was aware of Incarnates (and I'm excited to get to that content when I do) I just wasn't aware that they were called T1, T2, T3 and T4. The aspect of farming to reach the maximum for T4 is something I'm dreading and I'm aware of Vet Levels and how they work as well so I don't mind them either. It's interesting that you default to +0x8 for stuff, I just stick with the default and the only time I remember touching notoriety was when I was powerleveling that first character that's sitting at 40 I mentioned previously. I'm using MIDS currently to just see the actual stats of my current build, rather then planning out what I want build wise (at least until I have internalized and become more familiar with Enhancements and the like). Oh gotcha, it's interesting that each Archetype has 2 IO sets specific to them (with a superior version of each) but I forget that they exist sometimes, I should pay more attention to them. I saw them on the AH but they're much more expensive then normal IO sets so I don't know when I'll get around to acquiring them (whether through crafting and attuning them myself or buying them off of the AH).

What do you mean by "guide to making money is T4 a build"? Also damn that sounds great, I forget that Day Jobs are also a thing a lot, really gotta keep that in mind, especially while I'm levelling. I just sell converters because honestly I don't know how to use 'em, though that's probably on account of my being really tired every time I've tried lol. None of my characters are 50 atm, I have a single level 40 and the rest are scattered, and the level 40 is that way because I powerleveled them instead of playing normal content (thus why I'm playing this character the way I am). I have a habit of making new characters almost every other day but not playing them, so I regularly do purges if I haven't touched them and they're not at least level 5. My last purge was a few months ago or so, deleted around 120 characters I think, can't remember. Currently only have 6 non-purged characters atm.

In my casing I don't transfer Inf., enhancements, salvage, etc between characters. I know it's not efficient but I prefer to use the stuff given or earned for that character specifically for said character only. As a result my characters aren't flush with Inf., salvage or anything else. I also don't like to farm either because I've done that for years in Warframe and I'd rather not do that here cause it makes me not want to play anymore. Instead I mainly just sell whatever orange salvage I get and turn reward merits into converters for Inf. as I slowly get enough for IO sets and the like.

Yea i've only been buying them attuned rather then unattuned and a catalyst. I put the recharge in Spinning Strike because I don't use it often but when I do want to, it takes longer then I care for to be able to use it again. I'm planning to slot my main combo (with spinning strike being part of it) to have more accuracy across the board as a result, but the build is meant to be more thematic then optimal, thus the focus more on recharge and endurance. I know it's not going to be optimal but I'm fine with that. I actually was wondering when IO's start being better then SO's, so it's good to know it's at the 30 level mark, thanks!

Nice, I was looking at them initially cause of what Biostem said as well, but you definitely really laid it out, thanks! And yea, I'll definitely be looking at them for the next speedster I make. I'm doing StJ/SR currently and building them thematically enhancements wise rather then optimally, so focusing on recharge speed and endurance, which has been a lot of fun.

Interesting, this character is a StJ/SR Brute so I took the the powers I did as I level because of the Combo Mechanic (alongside my whole "generally taking all the powers from the 2 starting sets" thing) and all of SR's powers so far are just toggles or ones that are always on, especially given this is a solo playthrough character making them important for all the different enemies and powers they encounter regularly.

I started using MIDS thanks to this thread to see the what and how on my powers getting effected by enhancements and the total benefits I'm getting from set bonuses, it's been really helpful so far. I'll look up JJDraken builds and the like to see how theirs work, thanks for the tip!

Yea I got all these off of the AH, though a person injected me a quite a bit of Inf. to get started when I streamed CoH a couple days ago which is how I have all this currently. I have a few guides up in general for IO sets and the like which have been interesting reads even though I don't fully understand just yet.

Ah, gotcha, I took Lucky as my level 26 and was gonna take Crushing Uppercut on my next level because I wanted the sustainability as this character is only going solo for the whole level 50 ride and was struggling survival wise a bit (at least till I slotted the sets I have now). The ones in Stamina and Health have been a huge help. What other powers would you suggest? Because normally when I play I typically take all powers in both my starting powersets and a couple in my movement set, with maybe one of the origin sets like experimentation or sorcery. I build my characters thematically rather then mechanically because I don't really care to do super high level content like advanced difficulty stuff or anything. So I typically only take ancillary pools and slot enhancements that make sense for what I'm trying to do for the character's theme. For example this characters entire theme is "Pure Speedster" so I've been focusing more on Recharge and Endurance to really spam the attacks a lot to reflect "super speed" which has been immense fun so far.

Woah that's wild, I was unaware that even existed, thanks for the info! I hadn't even thought of other powers needing to do the same like speed boost and siphon speed, that's another good point. And yea I use the super speed powers like flurry but they still seemed relatively slow overall animation wise, but I'll just have to get used to it!

What's CU? Also I slotted brawl right at the start because it was part of my rotation when I only had 2 damaging powers, needing something to fill the gap. Pressing the upgrade button upgrades all enhancements, so it's just been leveling up with the rest.

So taking all of y'alls advice alongside some tips given to me by friends in various discord servers. Man this has been a world of difference. It's not exactly efficient obviously, but this character is only level 27, I'll be using unslotters and refining it as I get higher in level. Getting them attuned cost a bit but I didn't want to have to worry about leveling them individually.

Completely understandable, thanks for the information nonetheless! Also understandable, I all too often forget how old CoH is just due to how fun it is, thanks for the information!

One of Laurie Pennington's quests, says "You need you to get to Jannissey Heights right away to save Congressman Hadley.", maybe adjust it to "I/We need you to get to Jannissey Heights right away to save Congressman Hadley."

I was unaware, nor do I know anything of the internals, thus the suggestion and why I thanked people for informing me. Yea I've worked with a few game dev teams myself, though mainly as organization and project management, and from the small amount I understood from asking them questions and the like, typically that kind of thing is a bit easier to implement but it really depends on the code base itself. In this casing evidently now that I've been informed, not possible for CoH which sucks but is understandable.

Damn, was unaware that the engine itself wouldn't allow for it, thanks for the info!

Yea, it's why I included activation time but if it causes balance issues then yea foregoing the activation time part would be to the go to. I wasn't aware that animation time is locked in, thanks for the info, kinda sucks cause I was hoping playing a speedster also meant having my powers/attacks animated faster to reflect that with hasten.

Would it? To my knowledge it's a simplistic thing to implement, activation time not so much (as that basically is just "the power in affect" in the case of powers that do damage). I can see activation time doing so, but speeding up animations absolutely wouldn't. It's done in many games and all it really provides is an aesthetic as all that happens is that the animation speeds up, the DPS, the effects, none of that get's sped up or touched at all, just the animation.

One of the things I was surprised to find, I'd love if there were a few enhancements and IO Sets that increased the duration of buff powers and the like. It'd make builds a bit more diverse and allow our builds to focus on what we want them to focus on. Primary example is the Brute Street Justice power Combat Readiness, it only lasts 10 seconds but I'd love to bump that up to have it last just a bit longer to actually get me combo's out, rather then just hitting a finisher and hoping I manage to get a combo up in time enough to hit a finisher again.

More of a minor thing, but I was disappointed to learn that Hasten from the Speed power pool didn't speed up the animation and activation time of powers while active. I was hoping it would so that the attacks my speedster is doing actually looked like they were using their super speed to do it. Even if it's just the animations speed up and not the activation time, I think it'd fit really well for it even though it's just aesthetic!

Been doing the StJ/SR Brute build suggested for a speedster, I've been liking it honestly as I've been going through Solo content with it, currently at level 23 and the combo system plus buffs from SR makes it just a fun thing to play. Nothing like zooming up an enemy or group, hitting 'em with a 3 combo, smacking with a finisher and then zooming away! I'm using it to experiment and learn a bit more about Enhancements and how they work too which has been awesome.

Oh man, putting the numbers mathed out like that really helped, seeing it laid out and added up wow that just made it click in my brain immediately. I was using MIDS Reborn to try and compare and it just wasn't clicking till I saw your post, thanks a ton! This is some good information thank you! And I now have that link (and the others people have shared with me here) bookmarked and save cause they're so helpful. Right, I forget that IO Sets have that rule of 5 along with the rule of 3. Gotcha, I just slotted Panacea's Chance for HP/End into my Health inherent cause a guide said so and someone on the discords explained to me why that works (apparently Health has some weirdness to it that allows stuff like that to proc? I thought Panacea's Chance for HP/End wouldn't work at all because, well, it's not a healing power like the enhancement says it needs to be, but nope, it works, you just get a bit of health and end every few seconds.)

Minor (and hopefully final) update to my UI! Though it's still so neat to see others' setups and thought processes. @Andreah's blows my mind, the sheer amount of buttons and custom windows stun locks me harder then a group of freakshow 😂