nihilii

I wouldn't bother resetting the Lady Winter mission. You can get it infinitely from the old man. If your goal is to farm candy canes, +0/x8 (or even -1/x8) might work better. Drop rate doesn't change with mob level. Around the area, you might see blue geysers. These propel you upwards (far above what you'd get with super jump), this is how you're supposed to move around. The whole place is a ski slope, so there's a lot of verticality.

This is no glitch, and you're right: there was a change. I don't recall when either.

It's also helpful to deal with the Can't Find Price History bug. You've got the bid in your market UI, you can click on "Find" right away and force a refresh.

There is really no need to buff brutes further. 😉 If you didn't intend this as a buff, consider the following: being at the resistance cap is the exception, not the rule.

I use all 3 recommended IOs (chance to hide in AS, chance to BU somewhere, gaussian BU in BU) and I haven't seen that big of an effect from them. That is to say... Stalkers are perfectly viable as Scrappers now, even before these IOs. You come in and you whack stuff, and when you see 3 stacks of Assassin's Focus you use AS for an extra big hitter. Done. There's nothing wrong with sneaking around and waiting for AS if that strikes your fancy. It's just not necessary in this day and age (and probably detrimental to performance, in a min/max perspective).

The absorb increases proportionally to your endurance and inversely proportionally to your hit points. So you get, say, a ~200 absorb at 100% life and 10% end, while you'd get a ~800 absorb at 10% life and 100% end. But overall, I'd say it's always worth using before an alpha given that it'll be back within ~20 seconds.

For me, the idea of playing a game I find boring is bonkers. "Bad memories"? In leisure time? Why not switch to a different hobby? People are different in what they enjoy and in how they enjoy things. Grind to you, good pacing to me. Leveling up felt like an achievement. Moving through danger zones without travel powers required some involvement. It all takes part in setting an atmosphere, and MMO "mythology" builds off these things. Like the popularity of Frostfire and Atta, the thrill of finally reaching a new zone, especially the fabled Peregrine Island. Soloing an AV meant something to the point people doubted claims of doing so. I like the theme park orientation of modern CoH just fine. I liked I23. I like the Homecoming changes pushing it further. It's a different experience. It might be an experience with more widespread appeal. In fact, it's overwhelmingly likely it is. Afterall, WoW built its 10 millions playerbase off embracing the theme park route before anyone else even thought of it. But it's not an objectively superior experience from a qualitative point of view, because certain aspects of the "grindy" experience are missing. Especially community-wide positive externalities, arguably the meat-and-potatoes of a massively multiplayer game.

Easy gain for more damage, if you don't mind doing without the 6% psi/toxic resistance bonus: remove the Damage Hecatomb from Crushing Uppercut, and add the Unbreakable Constraint chance for smashing damage in the slot. Because of Crushing Uppercut's long base recharge, it's almost guaranteed to proc purple damage procs on use. So by changing this one slot, you get an extra 105 damage most of the time.

Kickass costume, @Midnight Blue Mage!

Shield Tanker with slotted Grant Cover and Maneuvers gives an impressive +20% def to all in a 15' radius as soon as level 22. Not too shabby for support on melee. Throw in Stone Melee for constant knockdowns and you're set. At the Incarnate level, getting Rebirth +regen compliments your own defenses well and adds a sizeable heal for your teammates.

Especially as you can convert inf to merits, which makes for actual price caps.

I'd argue low risk is the reward. It certainly is for me. There's room in design space for less base involvement. Then you, as the player, choose what you stack on that. "More damage and less defense" would fight against that design space, and put Sentinels in greater competition with Blasters - who should always do more damage anyway, if both ATs are designed properly. I don't agree with the often repeated assumption Sentinels should be more popular by virtue of being new and shiny, implying their current popularity numbers are disappointing. A large size of the playerbase is repeat customers. Many players set out to remake their main. Inertia also makes people gravitate towards tried-and-true combos. See: undying popularity of "healers", */fire brutes for farming over ice/fire blasters... I feel the "new" factor of Sentinels is likely counterbalanced by all these above points, and the Sentinel popularity numbers don't spell any decisive story. Ultimately... This is the culprit. I like what CP does in general, but when you design stuff, there can be a tendency to design for the sake of design. Here we're in a situation where: 1) there is no proof Sentinels are underperforming, neither in perception nor objectively 2) because no metric has been set to define that underperformance, we're throwing suggestions blind It's entirely possible a) Sentinels are fine as is b) Sentinels have slight problems, and a minimal increase in damage would fix their problems c) Sentinels have some problems, and a rework is needed (to what extent? the range is wide) Unsexy as it may be, beyond making the inherent more intuitive (like @Zepp's suggestion of combining offensive and defensive mode in one, and letting any blast activate it), I'd rather we look at individual powersets to bring them up to par. There seems to be little reason AR should have Slug as its T3 with T2-level damage, when every other powerset sees their "stun" type blast changed into a proper T3. Smoothing animations so no standard blast takes more than 1.66s (1.848s) to animate would be nice as well. OK, that one opens a whole can of worms with PvP, but something has to give if sets like Psi, Energy, Elec, are to deal decent damage in PvE. Either the animations need to go faster or the damage needs to be bumped up. It's asinine the damage equations are based on animation time in PvP and based on recharge in PvE, but that's another topic. Then maybe we could look at the epics, as currently /psi outperforms everything if you want to deal damage. I guess procs and especially Dominate might be targeted for a nerf eventually, so this might not be that big of a problem - and if such a nerf happens, then it would make sense for overall Sentinel damage to be bumped. That being said, it would leave us with fairly unattractive epics.

Amazing to think ~15 minutes times used to be good for teams on Live. Even at the beginning of this thread, a mere 6 months ago, 11-12 minutes Apex were posted. Now you're pushing sub 10, solo. Great stuff!

Indeed. On top of that, sharing around the ability to do -RES has virtuous effects in smoothing the gap between power builds and the rest. One of the reasons TW/bio scrappers are brokenly good is because they have access to three sources of -RES amplifying their huge base damage into infinity (Rend Armor, the /bio -RES aura, and slotting an Achilles' Heel), and then all of that -RES boosts team damage too. Highend teams tend to be stuffed with -RES debuffs already. Blasters and corruptors are prized above all for their nonconditional damage and force multiplying. Letting tankers do -RES wouldn't change that dynamic much. At best, it'd let them join the party.

I'd go scrapper. The brute would cap S/L resistance and survive better, beyond that there's not much. /bio fixes the lack of punchvoke on a scrapper, Offensive Mode does slightly more for a scrapper than a brute. Scrappers can also get Shadow Meld which fits /bio playstyle beautifully. If someone wanted primarily to tank and survive I'd tell them to get the brute, but if you're genuinely half and half between the two I'd lean towards the scrapper for all the extra damage you're going to get.

I'm hoping the patch that's been on Test since September ends up on Live. 😋

No problem! I updated the previous post with the long version, let me know if this works for you. Note the Analyze +tohit proc in Ground Zero is actually an Achilles' Heel chance for -res, because Mids won't let you slot Achilles' Heel (but ingame, you can).

I wouldn't worry about "should" or "shouldn't", but it's definitely possible for an IOed out demon/dark MM to solo all the standard TFs without temps.

Good luck on your quest! If anything, it feels pretty cool you get to experience this at the eve of 2020. Talk about delayed gratification. 🙂

I do play those beautiful Sentinel thingies, and I also liked old Defiance (not over new Defiance, though). "Low HP = high damage" is a fun risk/reward mechanic in any game. It would be cool to have a P2W power be just that. It should come with a drawback too (else it'd be a straight buff everyone would run). Say, a toggle giving -5% def and -5% res, and increasing your damage by 1% for every % of missing health.

I have a StJ/Bio and love the character. Hits like a truck in single target. Fast animations on everything. Survivable enough if you're willing to pop Shadow Meld and use insps. StJ has an unique spot in leveraging epic Moonbeam. With the combo system and Crushing Uppercut's 25s base recharge, an attack chain of Crushing Uppercut - Shin Breaker - Rib Cracker - Moonbeam - Shin Breaker - Rib Cracker fits just right. I decided to skip AoE damage entirely, and just use Judgement for that. The damage aura still ends up killing minions fast enough for my liking while I work on bosses. YMMV. For some performance metrics, this character can solo Apex, Tin Mage, +4/x8 against any faction with no insps if need be (just abuse Shadow Meld and take out problematic targets fast). Build below

Also resistance. It has a high damage PBAOE that ignores resistance every ~40 seconds or so. Absorb is the only unscathed mechanic. There's no absorb only character, but a well-built character with strong absorb (rad, bio, SR sentinel) can take on the Crimson Prototype with some jousting.

I feel you've got a strong base here. I think Cardiac is overkill if you're running Ageless. I run Ageless + Musculature on pretty much every character these days, with 1-slotted Stamina, no Numina, no Miracle; and I fit several damage procs in attacks, so my endurance reduction is low too! IMHO: - you don't need to chase too much recharge, with Ageless you'll have at least +10% rech at all time (and more than that the rest of the time). This makes your current build beyond perma Hasten, leaving room for some slot saving. - Moonbeam is an excellent attack for StJ, and should be slotted as such. Crushing Uppercut - Rib Cracker - Shin Breaker - Moonbeam - Rib Cracker - Shin Breaker makes for a beautiful attack chain dishing some SERIOUS damage. - all Aim/BU type powers should get the Gaussian chance for BU proc, to turn them into essentially double Build Up for the first couple attacks. Combat Readiness is no exception. - Shadow Meld is on a very fast timer to start with, and you don't want to spam it with its humongous animation. Stick a LotG +def in it and call it a day. - the Superior Critical Strikes proc works nicely in Crushing Uppercut, making for near guaranteed proc... but that's just one way to skin that cat. You could also put the hold damage proc in CU for even harder hits. Also, CU deserves the Hecatomb proc, it's a near guaranteed +105 damage on every hit 🙂 - I wouldn't reach too hard for resistance beyond 70% on any damage type, because the Reactive Defenses unique will give you those last few % as your health drops. With the above in mind, here's my stab at your build

I like the idea of sentinels applying -res all the time. You can't ever go wrong with -res. When Bruising was introduced, it made tankers useful at a time where it was hard to justify their presence. It's also thematic, if you're thinking of the sentinel as someone who keeps watch on the enemy and prods them for weaknesses the rest of the team can exploit.

Raise from the ashes, thread! No new achievement to post. But... my town has finally entered the 21st century. Mmm, fiber optic. Feels like an Internet superpower. What better way to test new upload speeds than to solo a STF, and record the attempt? Here it is, in all its, uh, 720p glory (maybe I'll change my 15 years old LCD screen, too. One day) Edit: current build for reference (fire/rad/psi) Incarnates - Musculature Core, Ageless Core, Degen Core, Assault Radial Long version, if you can't import the above to Mids