nihilii

If survival is the issue, the solution might depend on your build. You could load up on appropriate insps for your character (purples if not softcapped, oranges if softcapped), get amplifiers, craft a support Lore.

You can't go wrong with a scrapper. Thanks to their ATOs, they'll always do more damage than an equivalent brute. Now, for the specific power combos you've picked... The damage gap may not be as big as it is in some other cases. Neither Savage (IIRC) nor Fire has strong self damage buffing, so the Brute version loses less damage than with something like, say, Dual Blades or Dark Melee. Elec Armor and Rad Armor are also resistance-based, and can reach 90% resistance to S/L/E. Those are the three most common damage types, and it means being more than twice as sturdy as the equivalent scrapper (!). That's just from the resistance, then you add other boons like greater base HP. The Brute version of Elec Armor will also have a Taunt aura (the Scrapper version doesn't). Personally, I'd lean towards the Brute versions because I'm happy to trade 10-20% of my damage for ~3x the survivability + greater aggro control. But it's very easy to make the case damage matters more than anything in CoH, and the scrappers, built properly, will still be able to handle anything reasonable you throw at them - as well as many unreasonable things. There's no wrong option.

True that. CS becomes the natural spot for slotting the proc, then the window lets you fit Smashing Blow, Body Blow and Focused Burst (in that order because FB is slower) all hitting almost as hard as CS. Less bursty big numbers on a T9, but strong reliable damage.

You can have several Power Siphons at once. It gives you more ToHit, but the damage per stack stays as if you had only one Power Siphon. Cool thing to do with KM: Gaussian proc in Power Siphon. With a base recharge of 120s, you're near guaranteed to get the Build Up effect on use. Gives you the best of both worlds, activating PS again while the previous PS is still active feels worthwhile. 🙂 On the flip side, an unfortunate side effect of CS not critting means no juicy insta recharge from the Critical Strikes proc. Given that KM is apparently in the lower tiers of performance, that could have been a nice boon.

I'm down with toggle defensive/offensive, gauntlet in defensive mode, combining defensive and offensive, and anti-scourge. All really cool ideas!

I'm 99.99% sure the answer is no, from past memory of getting a harder time on the first try and having to slow down for other badges.

Homecoming has had numerous adjustements to make things massively easier to get. All enhancements can be bought for merits, and influence can be traded for merits, which makes effective price caps on everything. Converters let you turn every bad enhancement into a good one. Recipes and enhancements are sold and bought irrelevant of level on the AH, so you can sell a level 21 IO and someone else gets it as a level 50. Overall I'd say the game is between 5x and 10x easier than it was on Live. There's one effort you have to make: the initial investment of understanding the system. This game never explained systems well, I think that's a legitimate complaint. Forum guides can be helpful.

Strictly from a performance standpoint, I find it hard to pick /fire on a scrapper over /bio. On /fire scrappers things run everywhere, and between Blazing Aura and Burn that's a lot of potential damage wasted. /bio has a strong Taunt aura, so everything stays glued to you. As mentioned, the /bio tools give you (slightly) more damage than the /fire tools. That's in the ideal scenario where things don't run from you. In practice, /bio widens the gap even further in any situation where you don't have a teammate to hold the aggro for you - and teammates will never hold the aggro as efficiently for your optimal damage rotation as you would. There's nothing WRONG with /fire, mind you. BU+FE is indeed a sight to behold. But /bio is just crazy good. In fact, I could rewrite the first sentence of my post as "strictly from a performance standpoint, I find it hard to pick ANYTHING on a scrapper over /bio". I'd definitely give WM/bio a shot. Maybe don't strip your previous toon so you can have a fair comparison and decide which one you like most.

Dominatrix does weak damage, but has passive 50% resistance to everything.

I feel there's so many ways to skin that cat. Your approach sounds fine to me, even though it's completely different from mine. In order: 1) Make sure I have all the great uniques: Reactive Defense, Shield Wall, Glad Armor, Steadfast, Kismet, Preventive Medicine, Unbreakable Guard, Gaussian, Winter's Gift 2) Put as many LotG +rech powers (up to 5) as I have defense powers 2b) Slot ATO procs where needed, if ATOs are particularly good (think Scrapper Critical Strikes) 3) Shoot for great individual efficiency for my core attacks, generally using 5 pieces of a purple set to get, in order: a) 95%+ damage slotting b) enough accuracy to hit +4s once levelshifted c) as many damage procs as possible, purple first then regular d) as LITTLE recharge as I can get away with while still running my attack chain in order to maximise proc chance e) as much endurance reduction I can manage 3b) Slot ATO sets where they'd replace lackluster bonuses, i.e. targeted AoE or non-purple sets 4) Add a second slot to Resistance, Defense and Healing powers; using X + X/End or X + X/Rech as baseline slotting 5) Use whatever is left for misc powers and extra slots to Res, Def and Heals 6) If there's still more slots to use, add +1 slot to Brawl/Boxing or other unused attacks to grab more slow resistance through Winter sets If I can get a particularly juicy set bonus by adding a slot here and removing a slot there, I'll do that. I'll also put +4 slots to Boxing if I really need an extra +10% rech to run a specific attack chain. As a rule I don't aim for particular set bonuses, although that can change for specific build goals.

I LOVE this idea! But at the same time, I feel like people would expect to cheese the badge and would get frustrated at other players coming to play the event as intended.

I wouldn't want you to go through the trouble without knowing if the sentiment is shared by anyone beyond me, but that's a fun thought!

I'm not even math-phobic, but incidentally the sight of the sigma does send me running. All this recharge stuff? I know it already, I know how to calculate the exact amounts of recharge I need, but I'll be damned if I can parse the formulas ITT without staring at them for minutes and working them out on paper. And that's not to criticize Bopper's work at all (great stuff!). Mostly personal reflection, and agreement with your post. I wish I knew what it is about mathematical notation that is so impenetrable to many of us and so obvious to others. It's especially weird when computer code doing the exact same math feels easier to read.

Homecoming used to have the most changes (Sentinel, I25) compared to Live, while other servers started more conservative (plain I24 as on Live). The pro-Homecoming argument used to be "players don't care to be as close to the actual City of Heroes game we played as possible. If you want that, go play on Rebirth" (or whatever the name was). It seems odd to reverse the rationalisation, and suggests, as Sylar says, server choice has more to do with social factors and inertia. Don't get me wrong, I love Homecoming. And I think the reason people stick around here is exactly "they just want to play CoX"... the flavor of CoX being secondary.

I've soloed every TF in the game save for Reichsman on my fire/rad sentinel. Some thoughts here, as well as great insights from other players: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/6721-silly-sentinel-tricks/ For Crimson Prototype, my go-to strategy is to use Lore pets and generously break line of sight when -maxHP starts stacking up, as to let aggro switch between me and my pets. Also helps if you have as much absorb sources as possible, as absorb isn't affected by -maxHP. The force field generators are summoned at 75% hp, 50% hp and 25% hp - one per player, and only once each time. The Prototype is immune to all damage as long as at least one FFG is alive, even if that FFG is all the way to the back of the map. On top of -maxHP, I think the Crimson Prototype has one particular attack that seems (?) to deal unresistable damage, on a very long timer. Yet another possible strategy: you can pull the Crimson Prototype to the PPD cops at the entrance of the map, which is just up the hill. Although it's worth noting the Prototype spawns Raider adds every now and then, and I think those adds are spawned according to targets in range rather than players - so NPCs add to that count too. Definitely something to keep in mind for builds with no defense debuff resistance. Brute force strategy can also work, as the Crimson Prototype is "just" a level 50 AV. On a high damage character, damagecapping yourself with insps might let you defeat it in a minute or two.

I was strictly answering the precise statement (which you reframed now, and that's fair game - we don't want to play semantic games). I'm inclined to agree with many of the other Crab advantages you list. Just a nitpick, PBAoEs and TAoEs hit 10 targets rather than 5 and that's really most of what you're going to use as a Fire Sentinel. Most, if not all; personally, I don't have any cone.

/ninjitsu can get you pretty damn close by level 22, with 2 IOs (Steadfast and Gladiator Armor +3def uniques)

To be mathematically superior at literally everything a Sentinel does before adding pets, you need to do 400+ ST DPS, without pets. I'm not seeing the math working out that way, but I'd welcome being proven wrong.

Ew. Bankers lend money for interest. What a bore. Much more fun to trade and barter. But seriously, you can rest easy: I'm fine with Homecoming as is, and even if I weren't, I'm relatively sure I don't have so much pull with the dev team me expressing a personal taste would cause them to change the entire economy.

Discussing facts you find inconvenient isn't the same as calling these facts problems! Personally, I loved the crazy inflation on Live and I would love an economy unbound by inf<=>merits (and converters) or market salvage seeding, in virtual environments I enjoy markets that are free to the point of being arguably predatory.

I think maybe you read my post to mean "Homecoming farming is worse than Live farming"? I meant to say Homecoming farming contributes more to inflation than Homecoming regular play. Homecoming farming: 2x inf, 1x drops Homecoming regular play: 1x inf, 1x drops

Maybe I'm misreading this, but this seems to imply there are certain classes that are needed for specific pieces of content. Save for the Hamidon (which is a terribly, terribly designed encounter if you ask me), this is not true. Every archetype being optional may or may not be a design goal, but it should be, and I'm glad that's the current reality of the game.

We did experience the consequences of farming on Live. As it generated influence and all IOs except PvP IOs, this led to PvP IOs spiking to 2B (and above, trading outside the market). On Homecoming, farming tends to add inflation more than regular play as the typical farming setup is exemplared for 2x inf rewards, whereas you don't generate 2x the drops.

Drops are spread equally in teams. So if you feel you're getting significantly less drops, pat yourself on the back: that means you're doing such a good job your teammates just aren't as efficient as you, pound for pound. 😉

Oh God. Repressed memories flooding back. Wasting so many empyreans on merits because I didn't know any better and thought I'd keep earning threads and empys every vet level. Then having nothing left to craft incarnate stuff. 🙂 I think I hit vet level 100 before I had T4 everything. Embarrassing.