nihilii

I'm a CP fan to the point I'm surprised to see the FA love. CP is up about half of the time, and amounts to near infinite endurance while it's up - in that a build that doesn't drain itself dry within seconds normally, will be net positive while CP is running. This can very well fix some end woes by itself, or offer extra leeway in the build. Even as one slot wonder and on SOs, the downtime will be around 4 minutes provided you have Hasten. This is great to patch a Recovery Serum gap. Of course, maybe one does not want to use P2W temps even for temporary leveling woes, for whatever reason. The common suggestion is to slot more endurance reduction in attacks. Either way, I think between FA and CP, FA is an odd pick if the concern is struggle for endurance. Unless there's accuracy problems otherwise, it seems a given to me for a leveling build CP will improve endurance and FA will worsen it - the degree of either is debatable, but the direction generally is not. Grab CP at 35, play with it for a while, respec later if it doesn't work for you. Final thought: if you plan to take a ranged attack regardless of EPP, Laser Beam Eyes is kind of ass. Epic snipes are much better. Additionally Willpower would benefit greatly from Shadow Meld enhancing its defenses. I feel the best build route here would be to fix endurance issues with more aggressive endurance slotting in attacks (1 ACC / 3 DAM / 2 END is good baseline SO slotting), and go for Soul Mastery to grab Moonbeam and Shadow Meld.

Mate, you're completely unhinged. Yomo was explaining to you there's more to the game than plain damage numbers. Bizarre rants replete with vulgarity and whataboutism about buffs to underpowered sets have no relation with that point. Calm down.

Well done! The part I find most tricky about the Honoree is when he activates Dull Pain on top of cycling his Unstoppable. Which I think is tied to ranged condition / not being consistently aggroed or damaged. Weirdly enough, I enjoy the Hamidon part. It's always a rush to rework a couple IOs or even a quick alt build on the spot, to manage just enough hold magnitude to get through the greens. Actually I find Weakened Hamidon is no slouch either. Even with EoEs, his abilities shutting down regen and healing puts you on a timer. For me it's often a mad race where I don't always come up on top (can always spam reds of course, that's the last resort when all else fails).

Dark Melee gives you Siphon Life which is a reliable heal as a side bonus of a normal attack. SR lacks a heal. I think this is the vector most consider in SR/DM recommendations, rather than the tohitdebuff secondary effect.

Obviously your later suggestion being a straight and sizeable buff is hard to disagree with! But I doubt devs would want to give us 2x stronger Ice Patch for free + throw in another good ST attack on top.

COMBAT JUMPING - turn into a ninja bouncing up and down - your leaps slice the sky, you get air control and can move in any direction - pressing that space bar starts feeling good and kinetic - happy mood makes your blasts deal more damage - generally look cool, well-liked by every teammate, men and women both envy you and desire you HOVER - somewhat hobble in the air, awkward and sad - very very slow even in these days where it's not so slow - by the time you align yourself properly for a narrow cone, half of the enemies are dead - always feels like you're late even when you're not - teammates look at you with pity, tank starts paternalizing you gently Choose wisely, my friend.

Thoughts: scrappers are crazy good with their ATOs and the native structural advantages of high base mod (= get more from buffs, from Follow Up and Blinding Feint, from Alpha Musculature, from Hybrid, from Gaussian BU, and so on). If you operate from the baseline of scrapper=brute, a rational intuition, the whole idea of partial crits sounds like a bad deal for scrappers. If you accept scrappers>brutes as baseline, "partial crits" are an attempt to smooth over the most bursty powersets where fully fledged crits would be too blatantly overpowered.

double post

For me, the determining factor comes down to defense helping you avoid all debuffs, while resistance only helps you reduce resistance debuffs. In any kind of practical scenario we consider once we bring minmax into the fold, outside of "someone else on the team is taking most of the hits and I just need to survive splash damage and the odd misaggro", resistance builds can end up getting hit 95% of the time as cascading failure settles in. Or held through mez protection. Or tohitdebuffed to nothingness. Any kind of nastiness - there are ways to handle it, but you do have to handle it, as opposed to the autopilot-until-unlucky defense allows. My "resistance builds" don't leave home without ~20% base defense from Weave/CJ/Maneuvers + uniques, and I frequently bump this up to the softcap with 2 small lucks unless I'm feeling confident. More if I expect massive debuffing. Whereas my defense builds tend to survive on their own merits, minus the occasional spike and splat. But then again - what would happen if I ate 2+ oranges the same way I eat purples on res builds? It's hard to be as disciplined about this, simply because the need is constant and obvious on a res build, whereas it's rare on a def build. You feel like you're "wasting" your insps chomping on sturdies only to watch piddly damage get in. It's often more tempting to convert to reds instead. Another option is to simply have enough maxHP you get to use MORE sturdies reactively at the times you do need them. Another reason SR is criminally underrated on Tankers; but then again almost every Tanker can be incredibly overpowered these days. I wonder how the game would look like if resistance resisted effects the same way defense dodges effects. As in, 75% res would mean a -10% defense debuff would only do -2.5% on you. Probably broken at 90% res. But perhaps it would make sense at 75%. I'm not saying it'd be balanced, but I'm curious.

I like Hard Mode. Soloing 1-2 stars and multiboxing 3-4 stars is a great challenge that requires the best tactics out of me. Each tier change feels noticeably different and requires a different approach. I haven't done one in a team yet, so I'm hardly in a position to comment on powerset balance. But I haven't been able to notice an imbalance that wasn't mirrored in the original game yet. Perhaps it is a question of the extra stress making PuGs close ranks around easy winners. All in all, I think I enjoy 1 star the most, for the extra powers enemies get and little bump in difficulty without changing the game completely. Although I also like 2 stars for the extra carrot of merit rewards when defeating AVs. It would be great to see the concept expanded to other TFs.

I always pick my ST immobilizes for the purpose of DPS. As mentioned, it sets up Containment; just as importantly you will struggle to build a full attack chain without the ST immobilize. Procs are poor in it but at the same time what are you going to do after 95% damage enhancement? Mines still tend to end up with 1-2 damage procs, got to squeeze all the juice we can.

I was still in this awkward Mids state when it comes to sharing: broken export on current install, new version won't install. But! Fortunately your post made me check again, and it looks like 3.6.6.3 works better. At least, well enough to post a build data chunk: The attack chain against a single target is meant to be Gloom Haymaker KO Gloom Haymaker Footstomp. Dark Obliteration + Punch or utilities (Rage, Hasten, Energize) can replace Footstomp every 2 cycles. As for achievements, I'm mostly enjoying "slow" play these days. So, hardly pushing the envelope. The character is peak comfort, she's not alphashifted yet but I still typically play her on +4/x8 against any faction and I hardly use inspirations (whereas my usual builds tend to have a steady diet of pills in the same situation). There is truly a particular dynamic in combining stacked Rage, heavy procs, and overkill defense. All the benefits and almost none of the drawbacks. Well, ok, it's more like we end up having to manage a big crash every 5 minutes rather than every minute.🙂 But it's a tradeoff that works for me! As you would expect this build handles all the stuff a "typical" Elude build does nicely, like Devouring Earth crystal buffs, praetorians and their innate higher base tohit + tohitbuffs, Rularuu eyeballs... With resistances and extra HP, it also takes on much more punishment than my usual Elude builds. A lucky couple of hits can't bring me down here. There's always time to react and adapt. I'm thinking of Malta, for example. I find many of my builds eventually buckle under firewhen facing 2-3 groups at once, whether several Titans bringing out the pain or Malta Gunslinger bosses hitting a little bit too often. Grail Lady? She will wade in that 3-layered lab room on +4, and with some work, she will come out on top. She also took on the Crimson Prototype in a "master of" (no incarnates) multiboxing setup, with great results (as hoped for, but not necessarily expected). Combo of high maxHP to eat those -HP debuffs, Energy Drain to sap back the end it drains, resistances to take a few hits. This AV inflicts so many effects it tends to get my tank characters one way or another, here this felt comparatively smoother. Still in love with the build. I feed my altitis by multiboxing, playing her through arcs with a couple other accounts doorsitting. These poor guys get leveled and replaced as new ideas replace the previous ones, while the Brute stays.

Yes, but that's the thing. On Vigilance HEROES argued VILLAINS were overpowered. There was an extremely small group of dedicated PvPers who kept up and played by US tactics; when they rolled into the zones with their fire blasters, spine scrappers and empaths, they decimated any opposition. But many other players, at least the vocal ones, seemed to harbor this illusion every villain was inherently twice as strong as a hero. I played concurrently on Freedom and Vigilance for a time. You could spot the perception shift logging into the same PVP zone the same day on both servers. Which to me was yet another illustration of knowledge asymmetry in action. Even if zones were always the casual side of PVP regardless, there was a stark difference on either side of the pond. Language barrier coupled with low population kept most of us frogs in the prehistoric ages of CoH mechanics understanding for a long long time, especially in PVP where by nature you only rise up to meet up the level of challenge other players offer.

The only instance I can remember of the forum lobbying to reduce the game's difficulty was with the LRSF. People complained it was too hard compared to Hamidon, and the lvl 54 AVs were made lvl 53 eventually. Then Statesman died and Psyche went away (replaced with Penelope), so the hero count was lowered from 8 to 7. Watching this from the European servers, the French one especially in my case, it was rather ironic. For us taking on Hamidon was a rare event compared to the Americans doing it daily. We simply didn't have enough players nor enough coordination to do so. On the other hand, it was much easier to find 7 good teammates and take on the Freedom Phalanx. This even led to situations where envious heroes in PVP zones would argue villains had an inherently unfair advantage, being HOed to the gills while *they* were lucky to have a couple if any. If you thought the complaining about Stalker Hide was bad, picture this on top. The hero paranoia got so bad they would point fingers at low level characters who couldn't even slot HOs. Fun times! Anyway, like Enchantica said much of the perceived lowering of the game difficulty is tied to player knowledge increasing moreso than actual changes. Remember the original game was capped at +2/x8, +2/x1 solo unless you brought doorsitters specifically to increase your difficulty, and the toughest foe you faced was a lone archvillain. There was always dumb overpowered stuff you could do. City of Blasters. City of Dumpsters. City of Statues. Scrapperlock and perma-MoG/Elude/Unstoppable. We had all of these. My I4 fire/em blaster ran with Force of Nature 6-slotted for recharge, gobbled lucks, and went to town on her own without ever waiting for a Tanker. Even defenders were an absolute force to reckon with; while newbies spammed Healing Aura, savvier players embraced debuffs to turn the relatively weak opposition of the time into fluffy kitties. The knowledge gap was real. The asymmetry was immense. If you were playing a Radiation defender, it was common that you could take the alphas opening up with RI, and generally do a better job at it than most PuG tankers. *This* is at the heart of the different dynamics you see today. It's not about IOs or incarnates or any of the tools introduced. It's about game mechanic knowledge being widespread. We can't wipe out people's brains, so the only path to structured play is to crank up the challenge high enough.

I have a soft spot for Symphony. Really brings out some damage while being a fully fledged control set. Illusion is probably objectively best. Dark Affinity for secondary. The controller version is just too good, gets the best of Dark which was already a strong defender set, and stacks heavy buffs on top. Psionic Mastery for epic is my favorite choice. Perma mez protection allows for maximum comfort. Controller epics are in a good spot overall, Psi isn't a clear winner with Primal and Stone offering sizeable boosts in other areas.

Went with the meta choices if not always for meta reasons: - EM, ridiculous ST power + boosted Power Crash + Frosticus' recent tips on making good use of nuPlacate to boost up energy focus charges - EA, excellent all around, and mostly for me has a fantastic Elude-like T9. EA also faces less competition than on other ATs, i.e. stalker /nin is less powerful than scrapper/sentinel /nin Stone Armor is probably #1 if you don't like T9s and can live with the GFX and SFX - Soul, here it's the usual Moonbeam + Shadow Meld combo, and once again it faces less competition as stalker Body Mastery doesn't get Conserve Power

I love Kin and want to make it work so bad but I have to agree it might be at the very bottom of the barrel on a Brute specifically. This is because Kin relies on self damage buffing, and Brutes get the least out of damage buffs. If you have an EM tank you might even find your EM tank outdamaging your Kin Brute. That's how bad Kin is (and how good EM is). "Lowest performing" in CoH still means "perfectly able to solo everything, and capable of contribution in teams", so you shouldn't necessarily let that stop you. But, yeah, performance expectations are something to be aware of. Usually when it comes to epics Soul Mastery is a favorite. It lets you get Gloom which is one of the best attacks available to a Brute. Of course... this bumps against the Kin design as you already have a ranged attack in Focused Burst (so, can't slot Apoc set in both). I differ with the previous advice regarding +5s. I like to +5 almost everything on my builds, secondary aspects like endurance reduction and whatnot are quite often worth enhancing. On the other end, it is sometimes wasteful indeed, and at a glance many of those defense armors you 4-slot with LOTGs could likely be trimmed down to 3 or 2 slots, liberating extra slots for your resistance powers (which seem underslotted). Those Brute ATOs are also begging for a 6th slot, the 6th is +6% S/L res for one and +6% E/N res for the other. If you go 5 slots on these you almost always want to go 6 slots.

^ I would argue those are "ideal" conditions. i.e., your enemy doesn't have any resistances and you spend the whole fight standing still hitting them. I find EM pulls ahead *significantly* in practical conditions. Most tough foes have higher S/L resistances than E. More importantly, EM is perfectly built to maximize burst damage on a second per second basis: - no conditionals like -RES procs/native - no combos - high DPA - high damage per power activation In practical terms, this means EM might do TF -> ET -> BS/snipe -> (move to next target / use misc click), where the "move" move replaces a low DPA option While (for example) Claws might be at FU -> Swipe -> Focus -> Zapp -> (move to next target / use misc click), where the "move" move is eating into your effective FU buff, your -RES procs, and so on I've seen many of my characters do 400 DPS on paper only to watch the 400 paper DPS EM obliterate AVs while the 400 paper DPS Battle Axe (for example, and a favorite of mine for that matter) is comparatively slower. In general, optionality will be underrated in Pylon testing-ish conditions, but real play tends to fare better. I find another set where this is obvious is Radiation Melee. It's lower end in the charts, but in practice energy damage + DB -> (critical strikes procced) Snipe -> (critical strikes procced) RS (or AS for groups) has excellent fluidity. Another benefit lies in Radiation applying its -RES procs through its passive aura rather than active clicks.

Sentinel Electric Blast is the best version of it that exists. - proper fast activation T3 attack, you get Elec Blaze essentially - Tesla Cage gets T4 damage (original version is a hold with micro damage) - Thunderous Blast gets one of the biggest recharge shave in Sentinel nuke normalization, as the original TB takes longer to recharge than most nukes. On top of that, the end drain aspect which is somewhat anecdotal on a 170s base recharge power becomes something you get to use in every fight on 90s base recharge To sum up, Sentinel Elec gets stat boosts everywhere while giving up none of the secondary effects. This ends up pushing it either right next to Fire Blast or slightly above, depending how much you value these secondary effects. I voted Elec, Ninjitsu, Psionic. I think Elec, Bio and Psionic are the objectively best choices. I voted Ninjitsu due to personal love for Elude builds.

If you make an Earth controller and then add the Stone epic, playing with your pet gives you two big balls to throw around.

Agree. I would love to see this expanded to most powersets, really. CoH has always given us incredible freedom in graphics but somewhat lackluster in sounds. Mods can change sounds, but a more accessible solution would be great. Even a graphical user interface for modding sounds, for that matter, could be neat.

With 0% global recharge Domination already amounts to +0.5 EPS for free. That's like unslotted Quick Recovery. (OK, in all likelihood you will not get to use this to the max. On the flipside, a full bar of end on command is a great deal more flexible than passive recovery.)

I've soloed one on a fire/nin, on the first advanced difficulty. I skipped the optional encounters. For the most part there is no hard wall at this tier (no AVs with huge regen/resistance or what have you), you just need patience and discipline with positioning. Ripplesurge is the exception, bit of a DPS check as you need to clear the summons quick and still keep pressure on blue boy - Lore pets and insps were instrumental there for my build.

Killer topic with data-driven analysis. That being said, I hate the suggestion to tune down Boosters to compensate. Essentially, we'd get lower level IOs matching higher levels IOs => more diversity, but a net power change close to +0 We'd lose some Booster efficiency to compensate => net power change, a decrease It's a +x/-y deal where y > x. Do I have to say it? IT'S A COVERT "NERF BOOSTERS" THREAD, PEOPLE!!!11 😭 Do not fall for macskull's tricks, or this game well be gone to the americans.