nihilii

If you want to have a go at AVs with your current SS/WP Brute, and are not against a couple specific picks, running the Ageless Destiny with a Gloom -> Haymaker -> KO Blow -> Gloom -> Haymaker -> Foot Stomp attack chain should let you take out at least level 50 AVs without too much trouble. The temp Recovery Serum and/or a Cardiac Alpha slot can make up for Ageless Destiny if you don't have that unlocked yet. There's many further optimizations you could make if you want to take out level 54 AVs. Efficient slotting including procs, general build optimisation... Just letting you it is possible with your character, if you're in love with it! GMs, especially level 50 GMs, are pretty hard for most meleers no matter what. Most Brutes or Scrappers will need to use Lore pets, or have the patience of a saint. Like everyone says, all Scrappers can destroy AVs. For maximum destruction, top tier Scrapper builds for AV/GM soloing (and arguably, in general) tend to use the /bio secondary, with /shield as a worthy alternate. EM/ and Rad/ are efficient AV hunting primaries thanks to their high damage potential, good self-healing options and relatively less resisted damage type.

I haven't logged in in 2022. I agree with the posters pointing the finger at farming on steroids (causing a retention problem). When you overoptimize, there is a point where atmosphere goes away, where rituals disappear. Gone is the sentiment of playing a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game rather than an arbitrary mesh of numbers and functions. It's normal to defend your current high as a junkie. I know I do, my playstyle for 2021 was mostly to AFKfarm new builds from start to finish, then have fun with them for a couple dozen hours. But, even if it feels good in the moment, there are externalities that eventually can't be ignored. (This is not a "oh I was a fool like you all but now I've realised my mistakes" post, when I log back in again I will play in the same way as before. It is *rational* in the current state of the game to farm, simply because oldschool grinding on your own is not going to change the overall playerbase behavior. The problems are systemic and need systemic changes.) I still think the weekly TF was one of the best changes ever introduced to this game. Driving focused activity, bringing players together. Extending that behavior to more areas of the game could do so much. i.e., an automatically rebalancing system that would increase rewards for lesser fought factions or the arcs/TFs least done each week... could drive both diversity and community. A game that is mostly figured out like CoH needs dynamic elements to stave off just running the optimal path, IMHO.

To this day, I still think the proc hate is misguided. Procs generally have diminishing returns. The more procs you slot, the less set bonuses. If your proc build does 10% more damage, it's generally at a 20-50% efficiency cost in other areas. The only reason this can seem broken is because 1) damage is so overwhelmingly useful, and 2) there's many external tools to patch up those efficiency costs. Making a proc build is generally more interesting than a traditional build. It takes some thinking to meet standard goals, and sacrifices have to be made. Proc builds tend to be weaker defensively, and that ought to be another plus in a game where people frequently complain difficulty isn't high enough. It's important here to remember A LOT of the things you take for granted on a build filled with set bonuses, isn't a given the heavier you rely on procs. Powers may not recharge as fast as you expect for the attack chain you want to run. 95% tohit against +4? Harder to get to without all those +15% accuracy set bonuses and with attacks that have much lower native slotting for accuracy. Permahasten? You're going to have to work a little harder for that too, with less recharge set bonuses. Endurance? Attacks will have less endurance reduction as well. "I'll just pick Focused Accuracy and Conserve Power"? There's an opportunity cost to that too, say goodbye to Shadow Meld, Moonbeam, Gloom, Ball Lightning. In fact, "opportunity cost" should be the first word in these discussions. All too often, proc naysayers treat procs as free damage, as if there was a special setting called Proc Build you could unlock, where you would be given extra free slots for procs exclusively. It's strange to me many voices against procs don't run proc builds. If you believe proc builds get the most bang for their buck, you should run proc builds exclusively. This is a far different scenario from (i.e.) tw/bio being overpowered (a couple years back), or fire farms being the optimal progression path; because maybe we want more diversity than playing just one character combo or one mission. But proc builds or standard builds get to experience the whole gamut of content and of power combinations. So there's really no reason not to play one, if one believes they're OP. Do you also vow never to use Hasten because Hasten is too strong? Probably not. Anyway. It wouldn't take much nerfing to turn procs weak enough going for a traditional build would always be the superior option. At which point there's basically no option. Traditional builds are well figured out at this point in the game, so it's not too big of a deal to adapt. But it would basically kill the Mids metagame, for a purpose I still struggle to see. We'd end up with top end characters slightly weaker offensively and a fair bit stronger defensively - making for an even more turtle up endgame, outside of gamebreaking special rules (unresistable damage and the like). I can sympathize with "I don't like procs because they work in arcane counterintuitive ways." I'd rather the next step not be "let's nerf them into the ground so they're useless and I don't have to figure things out", but rather "let's explain the system better and perhaps tweak it to be more intuitive, so it keeps the same mechanical depth but also becomes more inclusive".

I had a fire/fire dom a while back that dealt comfortably above 400 DPS with minimal practice. I think the results were closer to high 500 range with more refinement, but I don't have those numbers on hand. I seem to recall I settled on Blaze -> Blazing Bolt -> Char -> Fire Blast -> Blaze -> Char -> Fire Blast -> [x] as an attack chain, where "x" would be Sleet/Hasten/Ageless/Bonfire/Imps/Hoarfrost. It always felt very powerful. Your choices look sound to me. Proccing out Char including the dom ATO, getting Sleet, all good stuff.

You wrote a whole page to avoid reading the last paragraph of my post. 😕 You're packing about half a dozen strawmen in just two sentences. 1) There's reasons to play games besides freedom of choice. 2) There can be plenty of freedom of choice besides combos or lack thereof. 3) The average person enjoys some level of structure, and the freedom CoH offers is likely too much on the scale for most (see: insistence over the years on replicating tank/healer/dps patterns) 4) Money is not a proxy for value 5) There's no "doing it right" or "doing it wrong", an ideal game market should offer different games for different tastes. - The two of you sound personally offended by my post, whereas I'm only voicing the reason people who dislike combos dislike combos. This was one of the stated purposes of this thread! When you don't understand where other people are coming from, there's two paths: either you try to see their point of view, or you plug your ears as hard as you can. I think earpluggers assume even trying to understand "the other side" implies an endorsement of their position - and a betrayal of their own. But that's misguided. You can understand someone without agreeing with them. And if you were trying to fix a practical problem for a population ("how do we make combos likeable to people who don't like combos"), you have to start from understanding their position so you can rework the solution in a way that addresses the needs of that population.

For what it's worth, the lag is largely a consequence of the number of players. If you do a 8-man MSR, it's just as smooth as the rest of the game.

"Why do people dislike combos?" Combos take away choice in a game that is largely defined by freedom of choice. Whether choice of pace, choice of powers... Combos restrict freedom. It's that simple. No need to overthink it! "But in practice your choices are dictated by [this] or [that] regardless" misses the point. Combos are a big glaring neon sign there is a Right Way to play. Whereas with powersets without combos, you're free to believe the beautiful chaos of emergent gameplay led you to where you are. Regardless if it's true or not, regardless if we're all puppets dancing to the invisible incentives of math.

I think the Fire/Ice Tanker is a great choice. Burn and Blazing Aura will let you kill things with little effort, no need to even target. Ice Patch with the Tanker radius buff is great mitigation. And you get all of these core powers by level 20. It's an excellent leveling build for a lax yet useful character.

I've started solo farming at level 1 many times without enhancements. Insp spamming, and knowing what you can take on with insp spamming, goes a long way. A spines scrapper is good for the task, because you get Spine Burst at level 2. With 100 mill and by lvl 50, you could probably get away without insps as a spines/ice. This is a great combo on a budget, because EA in crowds will take care of your end needs, and Icy Bastion is an excellent panic button. Fill up your powers with cheap sets, get Steadfast Protection + Tough/Weave + Maneuvers, you'll likely hit 45% S/L def. Also get the Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall uniques, even on a budget they're well worth the price tag as you want to cram as much S/L res as you can get. As incarnate levels unlock, I'd go with Barrier as a Destiny choice, for even more resistance.

I think it's easy to underslot for end when on SOs, which causes problems. With 2 end reduction per click, things go a lot smoother. I'm not ashamed to use amplifiers and recovery serums and insps personally. But it's not a necessity, more me wanting to go go go at reckless speed from the moment I step inside a mission to the very end.

I love themed task forces! I've run all-scrappers, all-blasters, all-dominators, all-tankers... Pretty much every AT. If I'm running a task force, 99% of the time it's a themed task force. Granted, that might be because I'm the only one on the team.

re: this specific part, I think it would be fair to say Tank DPS is closer to 30% less than Scrappers than 10% less. But also relevantly, Tanker damage is enough to solo all but the hardest full team challenges. Optimized Tankers can take on level 54 archvillains.

You don't want either Cross Punch or Proton Sweep on a Radiation Melee. The FotG proc will work much better in Irradiated Ground. For what it's worth, if you're not doing that already, slotting IG with 6 procs (arma + 3 damage procs + Achilles' Heel + Fury) gives you stellar passive AoE DPS and great -RES uptime. I'm fairly confident the optimal chain is Deva -> Snipe -> Radiation Siphon -> Radioactive Smash, with Critical Strikes in Deva. If you have no/low local recharge on Deva, this is a near guaranteed Critical Strikes proc, which gives you very high crit rate on the Snipe and Siphon. Your chain becomes 3 extreme damage hits and 1 medium damage hit - against a still target, while in more regular gameplay, you'll likely skip Radioactive Smash to move from target to target, or skip both Smash and Siphon to do Deva -> Snipe crit -> Atom Smasher crit.

To quell concerns about my life story, "the team" in this context are my friends. Sometimes I AFK, sometimes they AFK: we don't mind each other doing that- nor are we terribly bothered by wasting a rez on our AFK buds. It would be an appreciated quality of life upgrade, is all. Adding to that, another point to consider. Sometimes we know the other is AFK, and would like to rez them while they're away so they come back to a full health character.

Sometimes, I die and use the chance to go AFK because the team is busy fighting in a tough spot. Then a teammate attempts to rez me, and it fails, because I'm not there to accept it. I can't think of a scenario where I don't want to be rezzed, anyway. Certainly, there's in theory the chance of malicious rezzes to stack up the debt. I could see that being a factor in the original design. Nowadays, I don't think that's too relevant - at least, I think it'd be nice to have the option to autoaccept rezzes.

1) In this situation, Bio Armor is probably your best bet. You could also go with Shield, for a more defensive/passive approach. 2) This is the best thing I've ever read.

Fire/Rad Sentinel and Rad/Bio Scrapper would be my top picks, just as they are my top picks right now. In practice, I would likely keep deleting my one character after a while, to remake it as something else.

I think there is a large difference in practice with email insps specifically. Can't just go to your base in the middle of an iTrial for example, and even in stuff like LRSF/MLTF, doing that will let AVs regenerate. The gamebreaking part of email insps is not the ability of insps themselves to temporarily put you at the cap as much as the email ability to be at the cap *for as long as you need*. The infinite part that's really the rub here is time/permanence, rather than quantity. Email bridges the only remaining balancing factor to inspirations. Much of the game is arguably "broken" from a game balance perspective. But email insps are BROKEN, in all caps. (It doesn't help that it encourages boring prep work for temporary resources, in a game that is defined by pick-up-and-play gameplay. It's like the antipattern of CoH, only shared with shivans and warburg nukes.)

You are at 3250hp passively? I'm asking because the Tanker HP cap was around 3200 for so long I got used to that number in my head. But now it's 3530, and I often make the mistake to think "3000ish" when there's really an extra 500hp to grab. +500 maxHP is more or less like being 15% tougher, which is pretty nice. And then there's the heal on top, as infrequent as it may be. But if you are that close to the cap and if the alternative is RoP, that could be interesting.

This is unfortunately normal behavior for the M3 AVs. They run like hell, if you lack aggro control or immobilizes. Rommie in M4 can run like hell too. I think you have to accept aggroing everything in sight with a melee fort - which might make it best to clean up the surroundings before the big show.

Interesting! The EB thing must be an oversight. They definitely didn't downgrade from AV back in the day, even if you were solo.

I would cry bitter tears, and pout and shout, and build a voodoo doll to your effigy and prick it with a very sharp pencil. Just so you know.

Old LRSF is harder, no doubt. The final 8 were, well, 8, rather than 7. And Statesman is a much tougher foe than Penelope (who is the strongest of the new 7). And the old 8 floor at level 54, whereas the new 7 are level 53 unless you raise the reputation.

I got a new laptop a few months back. 17" screen and 1920x1080 resolution. That's a little hard on my eyes, so I'm scaling things to 110% through Windows. Here's the problem: Mids looks like this. Text is either super small and very hard to read. Or it takes a large part of the tiny windows (which I can't seem to resize). I can't even see full set bonuses anymore. And there's all that empty space to the right. Is something wrong with my configuration?

Side question - how do you get that fight? Is it just a matter of talking to Psy-guy like usual, but on Relentless, or is there more to it (is it possible to get that fight under Relentless)?