InvaderStych

Yup. Cimeroran Day Job Badge power is +res(All) by a small amount. 5% sounds high, but could be right. Get that one and Chronologist from parking in Oro and that unlocks Time Lord (Day Job Accolade), which is where the recharge bonus and resist referenced above would come from. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Day_Job_Badges D.U.S.T. Ranger is another oft overlooked badge that grants some useful (if minor) buffs. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/D.U.S.T._Ranger_Badge I forget the rules on these; as temp powers they might shut off with certain challenge settings.

A few years after; Bring The Noise was 1987. Highly under-rated soundtrack though. Well, not my favorite Therapy? track, to be honest, but iirc their involvement was sort of last minute and fraught; I forget the exact story. One of these days I'll make it across the Atlantic while T? is still doing shows. .... aaaannnyway ... ... there is another handful of early/mid 90s crappy movies that made interesting use of contemporary music resulting in better soundtracks than movies ... ... now if I can just remember the titles ... 🤣

Pro Stalker Tactics right there, gang. I know I chatter on and on to the point of incoherence about Combat Teleport, but for a Stalker (and Scrapper), the ability to select a team-mate and instantly port to their location makes playing "Save The Squishy" tremendously easy. Bonus points for keeping a targeted bind for both CT and Teleport which extends the range at which this can be accomplished. You don't even need LoS, just a path that is within range. See that Kin's health bar dropping? *BAMF* and erase whatever is causing the problem. Tele-pulling is also a thing. Got a scrum going in the bottom of one of those office-pit rooms? Port to a mezzanine, drop an AoE, port back to the pit and the mobs will follow to their doom. Bonus points if the team has patches/pseudo-pets going down there.

That makes sense with the marginally higher base modifier. CoD tends to be better at estimating this sort of thing than Mids. I got curious, and Crushing Uppercut at Combo level 3 is listed as 248.6 base for a Scrapper on Cod. Greater Psi Blade +Insight adds up to just about the same 248 and change, maybe 249. I rounded, lol. So they're about the same in this hypothetical. And yes, when you drop 4 digits on something it is highly satisfying 😉 Even it comes in the form of a Hit, Bonus Dmg (Combo/Insight/Whatever), a couple procs, and a critical. 🤣

@Gulbasaur - Great Post. Interesting that Crushing Uppercut was the winner. I would have thought Greater Psi Blade.

Truckloads of damage while drawing less attention to themselves than a scrapper or blaster would. First (technically second, but paragraph 1 is one word, so you get the idea) Paragraph: Nope. If you are fast (see link above) you can get there just ahead of the scrum and strike from Hidden, but Hide (as others mentioned) and Slow AS aren't really necessary. You sorta act like a Scrapper, but you should be far more focused on hard targets. Stalkers have lower Threat than Scrappers, and on a team the trash mobs will largely ignore you save for when you drop AoEs - even that might not get their attention depending on the team. The high value of gaming Crits with Stalkers is in focusing on either the big-bad or highest-annoyance: insta-jib Surgeons and Sappers before they cause trouble, just before the aggro sponges arrive. Because they get a 50% Crit chance from Hidden. Including when Hidden by the Proc. Unfamiliar with /Dark, but armors with a damage aura have that swapped out for Hide when porting to a Stalker, so largely no, no problematic auras. Any other auras, as mentioned above, will suppress notification/effects when hidden. One Exception: Both sides of Melee Hybrid will notify mobs and break Hidden. This is in spite of the fact that only the Radial (+def) side Taunts. Core (+res) does not Taunt, but notifies.

I would love options for "All Fists" or "All Blades;" however, the blades are Psi/Lethal and the fists are Psi/Smashing. The game doesn't support changing damage type based on graphic effect. Lose the Smashing and PM becomes even less effective against Bots; lose the lethal and the same is true for things like Zombies and DE plant-life, etc. Not familiar enough with the animations listed in the OP to say if those are the alternates I would want, but I fully support alternates.

I want to say err to the left, but depending on the power that's not always the most minimal effect. Sometimes there are shifts where a power uses a variant palette for some reason. I pretty much only use the "Bright" palette as the "Dark" ones tend to just have blackened clouds with a tint on my low gfx settings. 🤣 Far left are the darkest colors with less saturation, there's an off-center column of the "deepest" colors, then they get progressively brighter working rightward along the row, then eventually lose saturation again to the far right. I'd have to look but iirc the column on the furthest right breaks that pattern? Depending on the aura sometimes left is better and sometimes right in order to fade it out. Takes a bit of experimentation. The top grays are good for slight effects, but white is blinding for example. Yeah, I can't even with /Bio either. I've seen some awesome applications of the full overlays though, but never came up with one. Minimal effects on that set are ok, but iirc on a couple powers the boogers still appear, if only briefly.

fwiw: Going with the de-saturated end of a given color row in the bright palette usually results in auras that are fairly unobtrusive.

This is correct in the current iteration. Global recharge is ignored in PPM rates.

Yup, leaning into Force of Will is a solid idea. One thing: You won't need Body Mastery with /WP. Slotting Performance Shifter +End into both Stamina and Quick Recovery should be more than enough. You could add a single EndMod from that set or from Power Transfer if you needed more recovery. Also, both powers can slot the Power Transfer healing piece, which is helpful if slots are available. If you can fit Soul or Mu into concept then you can run the snipe as your hard-hitter. With Soul you'd have Shadow Meld to cycle between your other panic buttons. Skipping GPB still hurts my brain, but I am reasonably sure your concept has more potential than you might think.

I don't have a screenshot handy, but the build is here in the spoiler tags:

I did consider this combo before I decided on Fire/. Brimstone would be a good add for Staff/ - a bit of fire DoT on top of all the smashing.

I don't remember this particular game, but as former player of Car Wars back in my TTRPG gaming days I am definitely a fan of the genre. There was a game around the same time that CoH/V was new called Auto Assault, I think, which was having a go at making basically a Car Wars/Mad Max competitive MMO thing. I wonder what ever happened to it. I remember it being fun, but plagued with tech and/or balance problems. _________________________________ Edit: Oh! Snap! It was NCSOFT, I guess that explains what happened to it! 🤣 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Assault _______________________________ Anyway, looks like they got the tone right, and Mackie is good at the sort of tongue-in-cheek bravado that makes silly things like these entertaining. Bonus points for the hero shot of the car CD player.

City of Tanks in a nutshell. 🤣

Thanks for putting this together! Also, when was Mercury in tardigrade? The timing might explain some things for me about the past 18 months. 🤣

Yes, you can do it, and don't let me or anyone else stop you if you are enjoying it! 🍻 Unfortunately also yes, as one of the hardest hitting ST attacks available in any scrapper primary: Greater Psi Blade is totally core to the set. The other two blades less so. Dropping MS and PBS (AoE can be had elsewhere) would be one thing, but dropping GPB would be a big loss. I don't use Cross Punch, but unless it can hit for 2-3k (total, result includes two VR dmg procs) when it crits (before relative level mods) then it doesn't come close to GPB. The good news is that this doesn't really matter unless you want it to, so a build with MS, TKB, Conc, Boggle (optional), and ML combined with Fighting Pool is absolutely an option. TKB is the set's best dpa attack, and its highest chance of triggering Insight. IMO: For a Martial Artist with some Psi abilities, I'd probably go Psi/Martial on a Blaster. Martial Combat is an amazing set, all of the kicks are superior to fighting pool attacks, Burst of Speed is endless fun, and Reaction Time is a fantastic sustain that slows opponents in a large radius. Also, Psi Blast got some love in Page 6 which just dropped this week. Haven't tried it, but I think response has been positive. Edit: You could also flip it, if I may ride the coat-tails of @biostem's idea. Use Psi as an explanation for a set like /EA, /SR, etc and take Martial Arts as the Primary.

Yeah, this is what I was the most curious about. Brimstone can be finicky with things that are pets or pseudo-pets. Also abilities that trigger more than one "power" - like Savage Leap being a Teleport and an AoE power separately, for example. Couldn't tell from reading the mechanics and feedback how well it would work.

I mean ... Cowboys think 8 seconds is a good ride, so it's not that far fetched ... 😉

I don't know about him having a specific term for it, but the writing team from Lost openly admitted (after the show's run) that they were specifically writing in random things to exploit the human tendency towards apophenia. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apophenia I was watching the series after-the-fact and after I read that tidbit I stopped. Either design elaborate machinations with meaning or leave them out in favor of a more straight-forward universe. Throw in random stuff with no meaning just to get viewers to make their own meanings from it and I'm most likely1 out. 🤣 1 - There are exceptions to this. Can't think of one off the top of my head, especially in big-budget sci-fi/fantasy world-building. Usually a technique I appreciate more in different sorts of works.

Can I unsee him now? That is the question. 🤣

This is a shame. This means that I've failed in my duties as Grand High Poobah of the Church of the Almighty Combat Teleport! Have I not evangelized enough regarding the greatness that is BAMF!Melee? Hear me out gang; Combat Teleport > Friendly Knockback. Kick 'em wherever you want, I'll be in their face in 0.3s. 🍻