nihilii

Ohh. Haha, I feel so very foolish. I guess I was looking for any excuse to expand on my Elude love of late...

This is the most important answer in this topic IMHO. And the divergence of opinions largely boils down to whether you believe a 10% tax on every trade amounts to a big number or a negligible number in the end. If you assume every item is traded once and only once, I can see how 10% might seem inconsequential. But there is more fluidity to the system than that. Dedicated marketers buy only to relist. And this isn't a sales tax / VAT situation where you deduce previous VAT paid, you pay a full extra 10% each step of the way. Then, as DSorrow pointed out the tax has side benefits in terms of price discovery, limiting manipulation. Like macskull says, "institutional" caps on asset value also stabilize prices. All in all we have a nice little sandbox with enough volatility to play, enough liquidity nobody is priced out, and very very little inflation if at all. Removing the 10% fee likely wouldn't devastate the markets but I doubt it would have any positive effect. Some IOs are already floating around their "system" caps so you wouldn't see change there, and instead the flows of extra influence should move towards more common IOs. So you might pay 5M rather than 3M for a Preventive Medicine for example. Because marketers are much more affected by the fees than standard players, it's possible any extra influence in the pockets of the average player wouldn't make up for the increase in these IOs.

Yes - although I could be mistaken on the specifics, the takeaway is that a proc there is twice as effective as in a standard damage aura, and that result is easy to witness. Irradiated Ground has all sorts of weird quirks to it. For example, you keep dropping patches even if you're phased. Say a Longbow Ballista locks you in a Detention Field, Irradiated Ground will keep damaging them as you stand there in complete safety for 30 seconds. This should also work with Hibernate.

Does Elude count? I get performance benefits out of it, but the consensus would be that they suck. I'm getting good mileage out of the +recovery. Slotted for endmod, it lets me skip Ageless in favor of another Destiny choice (most often Barrier, to handle crashes). Topping your defense way beyond 45% also has its uses when you primarily play Incarnate content. Even the crash I (generally) enjoy. Managing it becomes a minigame in itself. I just wish the warning was more obvious. Come to think of it, as awesome as CoH is, there are so many little bits that could be improved with a better UI.

Honestly, I am not sure I have died from an Elude crash yet. The crash is a deterministic event that can be planned for. It's harder to foresee lucky hit streaks and spikes of damage. I find most of my SR deaths happen when I'm at 30-50% HP right after a couple hits, unwilling to disengage for mitigation, and whatever big guy I'm facing lands another punch and send me to the grave. This happens on an Elude build or a normal build, but given that a Sentinel SR build that keeps the same damage output is at barely 45% defense and midtier DDR, it happens a lot more often on the latter in situations like i.e. buffed Goliath War Walkers in the Tin Mage finale. The Elude build has more flexibility there too, because I can stack Barrier on Elude for resistance as well (as I don't have to run Ageless to sustain the same procced out attack chain). It is all ++ for me personally. Still wouldn't recommend the approach in general, but I can't agree with the idea Elude "relies on you getting defeated". It's not Revive! Looking ahead, I'm even considering taking Elude on my SR/SS *Tanker*. - taking care of end management through Elude would let me really milk that 90% res cap through Barrier. As is (standardish ~64% defense build), I cannot solo Apex pylons without inspirations. Even a single buffed Goliath War Walker eventually kills me. - Rage crashes would be easier to handle. I crammed as much defense as possible without damage sacrifices to be at ~44% during a Rage crash, but I run Incarnate content most of the time so in the end I'm 15% short more often than not.

Irradiated Ground is a strange power. As I understand it, it's a pseudopet rather than an aura. That might be the reason it doesn't take ATOs. On the bright side, it ticks twice as much as a regular aura. This makes it really, really good with damage procs and -res procs. I don't miss the ability to slot it with ATOs, because I stuff 4 damage procs and the 2 -res procs in there and call it a day. Slotted that way, Irradiated Ground can take down level 54 bosses by itself.

Definitely one of those underrated small pleasures to be had in CoH. I find satisfaction in exploiting "forced downtime" in various ways, be it simple things like popping Shadow Meld or other long but non-rooting clicks on the way to a mob, activating MoG during a jump towards the mob so the momentum lands me in the middle, jumping OUT of a mob and blasting Inferno so the momentum lands me out of sight and retaliation, and so on. Fun times, if not always strictly efficient.

Oh yeah... rep. Never even thought of that one, because the rest of the game always has a standard number of AVs regardless of your rep. But I think I ran all my arcs on x8. Perhaps that is the common ground?

I wonder if it changes based on the choices we may have made in Praetoria or earlier story arcs. I only ran in on level 50 characters that were powerleveled, several times, and got all 6 AVs on all of them.

Yep, this is one of my favorite "new" mission. It's even 6 AVs, rather than 4. Praetorian commander dude, MM scientist, Aurora, Marauder, Riptide and Pendragon. Almost like having your very own Lord Recluse Strike Force finale.

I hardly ever slot Perf Shifter these days. It's generally Power Transfer, either a single proc or the full set for bonuses + end management. Or maybe it's 3 slots of Synapse's Shock, if I need the slow res. I think the new sets introduced by the HC team were a success in that regard. Inertia is STRONG, especially in video games. We have great venues for endurance management, many of them more efficient than perf shifter. It's arguably the optimal metagame right now is to fill your attacks with damage procs; which in turn generates the need for that greater end management. Yet you can bet most players run full invention sets, and have Miracle/Numina/Perf Shifter in their builds. But that majority may not be quite as big as it was last year, and last year's wasn't as big as it was 2 years ago. I'm not disagreeing with you or anything. Just reflecting on the length of time it can take for changes to seep through the collective subconscious on a large scale, and ergo manifest.

Are you sure on that one? I assumed it wouldn't. Ageless with its +800% recovery in the initial phase doesn't work, and according to Mids Geas also does +800%. Monitoring in Combat Attributes, the recovery debuff from Elude seems to be -10000% or some similarly asinine value designed to prevent ANY sort of recovery. Which makes +end clicks or procs very useful here. But I love Geas and Magus as a general rule. It's interesting how we default to getting the passive +HP/+end accolades, while few of us go for Geas and Magus (and I am just as guilty of that as anyone) even though they're so useful to patch up spikes in intensity. Indeed, even moreso here with a build relying on T9.

Admittedly I play Elec on Sentinels where it has obvious advantages, but I could not agree more. I feel end drain pays a heavy tax in perception, in that the tick of end the enemy finally gets and attacks is easy to notice, while the time during which the enemy was out of end and under -recovery may require active attention. One could argue this is similar to -recharge effects. But -recharge often comes with movement slows, and because you clearly see the slow running of enemies, it is easier to convince yourself -recharge is working. In that light, it would be nice if enemies at 0 end had a distinct visual effect way more obvious than an empty blue bar, to let players know this is happening. I'm willing to bet this would quell much of the complaints against the supposed inefficiency of endurance drain.

This is one combo that might perform much better on a Scrapper, offensively. I'm getting that out of the way since you said you just made the character. The brute is a valid choice too, and if you prefer the extra toughness and the ease of Fury for leveling, that works. Thunder Kick generally isn't used. Might help for leveling, but the damage is low and other attacks come up soon enough. In any case, your bread and butter attack is Storm Kick. On a Brute it boosts your defense, and it does great damage for its animation time. Crippling Axe Kick is your second best move. It does pretty high damage, and lets you slot the Achilles' Heel proc for -RES in the long run. Crane Kick and Cobra Strike are the same. Generally, you get one of the two. One knockbacks, the other stuns. For obvious reasons people tend to prefer Cobra Strike for the stun. But if you prefer to make an all-kick character, Crane Kick can work. Dragon's Tail is your AoE. It's alright. On one hand it has the unfortunate old standards of 8 feet radius (lowest) and medium damage. On the other hand it has a fast animation that's also pretty cool looking, and it can knockdown. It is your one AoE, and as an /inv brute you won't have a damage aura, so you probably want this one. Eagle's Claw has a fun animation, but it isn't really worth it compared to your other attacks on a Brute. Barely hits harder than Crippling Axe Kick. It gives you a slight +DAM but that doesn't make up for the animation time, unfortunately. A clear skip if you're looking for performance. It's not a TERRIBLE power by any means, so you can get it if you want. Manage your expectations. As for /invul, take everything except Unstoppable. (I'd take Unstoppable too myself, it's fun to be truly impervious to elements/energy situationally, but most people would disagree with that choice as the crash is ROUGH.) Stack Tough/Weave and some IOs on your Invulnerability powers, and you will likely find yourself hitting the 90% hard cap for S/L resistance. Coupled with Dull Pain bumping your HP to the 3K range and defense from Invincibility and Tough Hide, it makes for a very tough character against the most common damage type.

I don't know if moving from regen/healing is truly necessary. If you start from CrudeVileTerror's suggestion, you're essentially adding an extra HP pool that comes in play only when needed. Beyond that, even without drastic power reworks, you could tweak numbers to the point the healing might be worth it. What if Reconstruction healed twice as much (essentially a full HP bar once slotted) and recharged twice as fast as the current cooldown? What if IH outright capped regen? What if all animations were shortened to ~0.5s for near instant casts (would help MoG especially)? What if Quick Recovery gave twice its buff, so Regen is truly the passive blue bar king and can focus on everything else? I understand the point you're making. Regen is by nature alive with little effort or dead very fast. That dynamic can't be solved through Regen/Healing, but I also think we should embrace it as Regen's thing rather than as a problem to be solved. The true problem to be solved is Regen's overall performance. Buffing Regen to the point it would be as good as other powersets in tough conditions would likely make it overpowered in easier times. But, there is room to move the needle in between "overpowered" and "the current state of things". Personally, I think it would be OK if Regen is somewhat easier to play than the average set in most content, and slightly harder to play in tough content. Regen mitigation being heavily tied to clicks implies time spent in animation times and not attacking, which should also be reflected in the metrics.

I could be wrong, but I don't think you can use slow snipe in ANY combat instance, unless you haven't been attacking or attacked. So Venomous Gas shouldn't change a thing in the respect of being able to slow snipe mid-fight, as you cannot slow snipe mid-fight unless you've been slacking. It's also worth noting fast snipe is always superior to slow snipe... Even at 0% tohit. The extra damage you get from slow snipe does not make up for the longer animation time. But perhaps I'm being pedantic. For me, Venomous Gas is an awesome debuff, always worth it and comes with no downside.

The Scrapper's Strike ATO gives you a slightly better chance to crit. Instead of 10% chance to crit against a lieutenant you get 14% (16% with the superior version). The damage is the same, but you crit 160% as often. The Critical Strikes ATO dramatically improves your chance to crit for a short window (3.5 seconds? so roughly, you can fit two attacks). It's not quite 100%, but combined with the Scrapper's Strike ATO, it gets close. Scrapper's Strike is a nice fit for a damage aura. The bonus is passive and permanent. Critical Strikes works best in a power with as slow a recharge as you have. The PPM system is a bit involved, but the short rule of thumb goes: the longer the recharge, the higher chance to proc. Personally, I like sticking the Critical Strikes proc in my biggest hitter. With no other recharge slotted in the power, the chance to proc is often close to 90%. Then the next two attacks are almost guaranteed to crit, which is like having THREE big hitters. Some people prefer putting it in a lesser attack, so they get to have a near guaranteed crit on their big hitter. The chance for the proc to go off is lower as a result, but it can be argued the lower recharge power will also be used more often. I think this is less optimal, but of course I am opinionated! Bottomline: put Scrapper's Strike anywhere you want. Experiment with Critical Strikes to see what you like best (enhancement unslotters are your friends).

Do you mean when people advertise it in LFG? Just in case: for GMs, you can add the hero/villain event channels to your chat tab. It will give you a located warning whenever a Monster spawns.

If there is one build appropriate for the task, this is it. You can expect 600+ DPS in the long run. To beat a level 50 AV in a reasonable amount of time, you need ~100 DPS. Roughly double that for a level 54 AV. In other words, EM/bio scrappers are far above that threshold. They can melt a lvl 54 AV with no special resistances in less than two minutes, and tackling Giant Monsters without -regen powers is doable too. Here's my own build for reference: It's overall excellent for level 54 AV hunting even under no insps/temps conditions. Shadow Meld and /bio clicks take care of survivability just fine, replacing EP and BS in the attack chain. Using ET only once per cycle and after the Critical Strikes also adds some healing to the chain. Endurance efficiency is great with Ageless, and 100% slow resistance ensures the attack chain works in all conditions.

Stalkers are a pretty good fit for Staff. They trade the forms as a power pick for Build Up, and retain Form of the Body as a passive. Which is the better form as you can read from this topic. So it's a clear win/win. Assassin's Strike also does a great job patching the somewhat lacking single target damage of Staff.

Yours is a rational intuition I'm inclined to share relatively to other powersets (less of a buff), but I'm not sure it works out that way in practice. Double Rage is truly insane on a Tanker with no Fury / higher damage mod, and Tanker survivability has an easier time handling crashes. Going from 15 feet to 22.5 feet would be awesome but probably isn't as meaningful as 10 to 15 as well, quite often 15 feet PBAoEs hit most targets in a standard mob group as is (and you still benefit from hitting 16 rather than 10). Basically, SS may have gotten less of a buff from Tanker changes, but that might be because it started so overtuned for Tankers in the first place.

In answer to the specific question in the OP of "do I need permadom to solo +0/x1/no bosses", the answer is a resounding NO. You will be fine, no matter how you build. Some options make it "finer" than others, but nothing is required. You do not need Permadom. You do not need Hasten. There will be the occasional elite boss fight that will be a significant difficulty bump. IMHO, for a casual approach even that is more easily handled by stacking defense with cheap sets (Thunderstrike etc.), staying at range, using Confusion, saving Domination to start the fight.... I just don't understand some of the answers in this thread. I think people are getting sidetracked by our usual minmax standards of "solo +4/x8", or perhaps something less extreme but still significantly more difficult than +0/x1/no bosses. In many +0/x1 missions, you can get by with your unslotted level 1 powers... at level 50!

WOW! Possibly the most impressive solo achievement ever done. (I know people have soloed incarnate trials, and I respect the accomplishment; but the nature of Lore + mailed insps + several accounts just to start puts a barrier of entry to the whole process that makes it more "luck-based" in my mind, in that for each attempt time must be spent in gathering resources and hoping for a good roll of the dice.) Whereas a no insp/lore/amp MoKhan is sheer deterministic victory. Fantastic job.

Invulnerability Stalkers are sturdy enough they can feel like Tankers. It's a honest mistake.

Musculature, Degen Interface, Assault Hybrid, Ageless, Banished Pantheon and Vorpal Judgement are IMHO the gold standard for any DPS-oriented character. Adjustements can be made, of course.