nihilii

For real. There is nothing sweeter than landing that killing blow right as you crash. My own fav /nin (meleer) is also EM/nin, you laid out why exactly. The balance is interesting between /EA and /nin in that /EA gives you more straight power and of the same kind, so it can feel like a "waste" to go /nin - but then, /nin affords a level of convenience that is simply unparalleled and translates into real performance. I never thought about Clarion Radial, that's a cool tip! I assume the main idea here is it boosts Retsu's running speed and defense for the whole duration?

I like going for new approaches and revisiting old patterns, as you mentioned. Another thing that has kept my interest is multiboxing. If we have N possible combinations normally, it stands to reason multibox is M of N (or L of M of N, if you run three characters at once). There is a lot to manage and many interesting new dynamics emerge. For example, animation times that feel unbearably long on a single character aren't so bad when you're juggling several guys at once. For a niche within the niche, my favorite multibox guilty pleasure is... I don't know what the word is for it, but think of those 2D fighting games. Think of the game modes they sometimes have when you have 2 or 3 characters in your team, and face 2 or 3 characters from the other team, and you play 1 on 1, either team replacing their character with the next one when they die. So, when I multibox, I sometimes bite more than I can chew and my roster wipes. What I then do is resurrect 1 character with Return to Battle, toggle up, try to fight the crowd that just punked me. Then if that character dies, I move on to the second alt. Then the third alt. It's objectively a terribly inefficient way to do things yet it has become my favorite "easter egg game mode". You get a variety of styles as you move from one character to the next. I suppose there is nothing that stops me from doing that *normally*, save that if all characters are upright and toggled up, might as well have them fight all at once for maximum efficiency... Starting from the floor gives me an excuse to do this weird gimmick.

I don't get the option to do either, it gives me a blank window on "Share Build". In general the newer versions of Mids seem to have some problems on non-US computers (looking at github issues).

3.6.5 is broken on my machine and won't even load. Oh well. 😪

My Mids 3.5.5 is a bit buggy and crashes when I try to forum export or update, but your build is very close to mine! (love the Gloom slotting, almost 1:1 with mine) Tomorrow, I'll give 3.6.5 a go on a separate install so it doesn't brick my (otherwise) working Mids and export it. Along with another humongous wall of text about slotting choices and tradeoffs considered, maybe...

Pros on Scrappers: - Scrappers are awesome and deal fantastic damage - EM structure works well with Scrapper ATOs. You stick the crit ATO in Total Focus, this gives you near guaranteed chance to go off - which, if you follow up with ET, means you turned ET into a heal instead of selfdamage - TF will sometimes crit and give you 2 fast ET in a row Pros on Brutes: - idk. It's still EM so it's going to be good Pros on Tankers: - Whirling Hands with Tanker extra radius and target cap does solid AoE damage - Tanker survivability helps you handle ET's -hp

In my understanding, Veteran Powers like Blackwand, Nemesis Staff, Sands of Mu... ignore +dam (and -dam, so they're great during Rage crash), but temp powers like Envenomed Dagger, Gabriel's Hammer, or the consumables you get here and there, benefit in full from +dam. I *could* be offbase, especially in my numbers, which are theorycraft. This seems right anecdotally, eyeballing it, but I have never tested it precisely to be sure this checks out.

I embarked on this quest a couple years ago. At that moment, T9-based playstyle started to appeal to me a lot. I'm not talking about any T9, of course. More like the heavy crashing ones. Unstoppable, Elude, Power Surge... Well, the +def ones are a lot better than the +res ones, simply because defense is a superior mechanic in general *and* those T9s tend to come with softer crashes, nuking only your end, *and* stacking more +def is almost always useful in CoH, and only becomes moreso as updates have been progressing towards Hard Mode and similar optional difficulty increases. This particular bit is always interesting to ponder. So much have been made of the softcap in game culture, that it is seen as the be-all end-all point to shoot for. If the opposition overwhelms you regardless, it must be that you didn't stack enough resistance and healing on top; and if you've done all you could do on that front, then your defeat is simply an act of God, a force of nature, and there is nothing to do in regards to your build. The more I've been playing Elude builds, the more I realised how profoundly misguided the above approach is. There is so much stuff with tohitbuffs out there. You've got your incarnate enemies starting at +14% tohit, of course, and your Hard Mode foes. But beyond these base stats, many mobs out there got some fashion of tohit buffing. This goes all the way down to unassuming enemies like security guards, who are fond of activating Tactics for their brethren. Well, 45% doesn't quite floor defense anymore then, and a mere +5% tohit chance on the other side significantly changes your ability to dodge. That's the easy scenario; sometimes your opposition has Build Up or the like. Then there are defense debuffs, everywhere in the game. SR specifically gets to ignore most of that, but maybe you don't want to play SR specifically - outside of Sentinels, it gives you no endurance and no healing which makes for other constraints on your build. That is to say, on anything that isn't SR, "overkill" defense acts as successful defense buffing. Not to mention some defense debuffs cannot be resisted... The list of benefits go on beyond defense. Elude powers give you ample recovery. This lets characters run procbombed high DPS attack chains without having to rely on Ageless for sustainability. Not only that, exemplar rules today mean the Elude power you pick at lvl 30 is available by level 25. This makes alts playable at a high performance level on a much wider range than Ageless builds. Stepping away from the Ageless path also gives room to grab Barrier, which makes for excellent T9 crash management, and somewhat fills the gap between Elude cycles. An endgame build will typically have Elude on a <5 minutes recharge. That's 3 minutes of Elude and 2 minutes of Barrier. Granted, I say "somewhat" because past the first 30 seconds, Barrier is giving you nowhere near the same benefit. I'm not shy about plugging the gap with inspirations and getting flexible with it. In fact, I'd say the aspect of these builds I like most is flexibility. Sometimes the opposition is *truly* overwhelming and I will use Elude AND Barrier together for absolutely absurd levels of defenses and resistances. In general, I like the idea of spike survivability moreso than even performance. It's rare you face the exact same level of challenge on a flat curve from start to finish. Even the simplest of encounters starts hard as you take the hits of 2 bosses + lieuts + minions, then becomes easier as you clear these mobs out. Being able to pop a combo of Elude+Barrier for a rough total of 4 to 5 minutes is a good window to clear most archvillains 1 on 1, or to take on the 3 layered open lab room where mob groups overlap each other, or to do... whatever it is you want to do, really, with that level of survivability. So, my favorite ATs these days are Scrappers, Tankers and Sentinels. I like power and these are the overpowered ATs (for solo play). OK, that opinion is likely controversial for the third choice. Let's sidestep the debate and focus on our meleers exclusively. Endgame Scrappers deal so much damage with their reliable ATO-fueled crits. While Tankers can be built to be bricks with ease (partly thanks to excellent ATOs too), and enjoy ridiculous AoE radius and target caps, which is not only convenient but translates into very real damage. The modern state of these 2 ATs is too good I have shunned Brutes entirely. They are, in my mind, straight up inferior. You can pinpoint certain areas where a Brute will be better than either a Scrapper or a Tanker, but when every aspect of a character is considered, the overall balance is not kind. Note that I am a solo player, or at least I am mostly only interested in soloing, given that I find teams so overkill the nitty gritty of individual performance ceases to matter; so that colors my perception. But anyway, Brutes s00cks. Which makes it all the more ironic my Holy Grail, after years of rerolls... is a Brute. There is a simple and rational explanation here. If Brutes are bad, then why play a Brute? The only reason can be because of options not present elsewhere. What's a strong powerset missing from Scrappers? Super Strength. What's a strong powerset missing from Tankers? Energy Aura. Not only either of these choices are strong in their own right. They're particularly strong given my desired playstyle. *Then* they take on a further layer of synergy together. Consider this: Energy Aura is the gold standard of Elude builds, tied with Ninjitsu. You get a +def T9. You also get an endurance recovery power in Energy Drain, which if you can time well will actually trigger as you crash and leave your toggles up (in all honesty, I screw this up more often than not, and prefer to let my T9 crash and eat a blue then drain, rather than mess up ED then be left with low recovery for too long). Finally, you get a strong heal which also does +regen. You even get a fair bit of resistances on top. EA has all required bases covered. Overload also boosts your maxHP. This aspect is often overlooked, yet the increase is significant. The boost starts at +600 HP. When you consider a standard Brute build hits about 2k HP once accolades and IOs are slotted, and the Brute HP cap of 3k2, the pieces fit neatly together. Enhancing Overload for health can bring you to the HP cap, a significant increase over the baseline. Scrappers have a much lower HP cap so would not get as much out of enhancing that aspect. A win for Brutes! That first win is quickly followed by a second one. Given that I plan for Barrier anyway, this is one area where the higher resistance cap of Brutes matters. On a "normal" build, an EA Scrapper vs an EA Brute will look like ~1800hp vs ~2000hp, same resistances. Hardly a difference. On this kind of build where we look for temporary power spikes, the Scrapper will be at ~2400hp and 75% res vs ~3200hp and 90% res for the Brute. Not so similar anymore. It gets better when we move to Super Strength. SS is an excellent powerset in its own right. Rage is so good it will never ever come to Scrappers in its current form. The damage is universally praised, but I think the tohit gets too little attention. Getting to operate with permanent +60% tohit (once doublestacked) removes ANY accuracy requirements for your build. You can, quite conceivably, slot 0 accuracy in your attacks and still hit 95% effective tohitchance against +4s, *before the alpha level shift* (if barely). So much more room for procs. Better yet, any accuracy you do get goes towards making your character chew through +def enemies or their own tohit debuffs. CoT ghosts, beware. Right, but the downside of Rage is the crash. And doublestacked Rage means twice as much crashing, once per minute. Who wants to deal with -20% defense, a debuff you can't resist, on a defense build? Elude to the rescue. When you're sporting 118% rather than 45%, it suddenly becomes a lot more palatable. Crashes are just a time to use Energy Drain, Energize, reposition, eventually throw a few attacks with procs or those veteran powers with fixed damage. Overwhelming defense on a Rage build is honestly a gamechanger. I sometimes see opinions the crash hurts less on a resistance build, because they don't have defense to start with. However, even no defense doesn't mean enemies have 95% chance to hit you. The Rage crash still improves their chances (unless you were already under a flurry of defense debuffs). Anyway, that is to say I've played many things with Rage, and when it comes down to handling crashes I found nothing comfier than this SS/EA. I'm not the most perceptive player either, and I sometimes will go through a couple attacks before noticing I'm actually dealing no damage. Which is a strong tell! On just about any other alt, the Rage crash would bring in so much incoming damage I would feel the pain, whereas here I can fail to notice anything is happening until I see my damage sucks. Many other details have come together to make the build click for me. Attack chain -> running a smooth Gloom/Haymaker/KO/Gloom/Haymaker/FS takes no dexterity, no effort. I can turn my brain off and deal decent DPS with AoE baked in. While I know swapping Foot Stomp for Cross Punch would do wonders, using FS (and proccing it out) gives me much greater AoE output as a passive secondary effect of my ST chain - also opens up slots and a power pick for a fully procced Dark Obliteration. This packs a punch. There's a certain freedom to being a Brute specifically, even moreso a SS Brute, in that you know Musculature fails to be worth it. +45% damage enhancement, when you're running +160 from 2xRage, +160 from Fury, and some level of damage slotting? It just doesn't register as much as for a character who's sitting on just +95 from damage enhancements and the occasional Build Up. Without the burden of Musculature, we're free to explore all other options. Cardiac and Vigor are always great choices to help reign in endurance consumption of procced out builds. For my build Vigor is particularly helpful to crank up +maxHP in Overload, and +regen and healing in Energize. Also great to have more "superfluous" accuracy, lets me punch through enemies trying to tease *their* version of Elude - not on my watch, pal. Hardly exclusive to SS+EA specifically, would work with just about any SS Brute, but I think of temp powers more and more too. SS Brutes get an excellent deal here: Fury boosts the damage of these temps, ditto with 2xRage, and 2xRage also provides the tohit we need to use these temps without missing. Envenomed Dagger is praised for its -regen. It's also a 160 base damage attack that animates in 1.2s and recharges in 6s. That's KO blow level! So, yeah: throw in the aforementioned self damage boosts, you're looking at >600 DPA and you can carry 300 of the things. Gabriel's Hammer is no slouch either. At 207 base damage, this is a ~870 hit when all is said and done. Its slower animation makes it roughly comparable in DPA to normal attacks, and the absence of endurance slotting + KB effect less desirable, but it can serve as a good filler in some unusual situations. As a solo player, Hand Grenade and Plasmatic Taser can also carry your AoE damage when exemplared before Foot Stomp is available. So, yeah. That's about it for my rant. Thanks for reading my blog. Been having a lot of fun with this one character, and it seems amusing as a notorious poo-pooer of Brutes I've been forced to admit my Brute is my favorite alt ever. 🥰

Outside of Stone Tankers, I don't think I've taken a travel power since the game came back on. But I will always take CJ! I also use Fly a lot, that is, temp power flight. Incidentally, the update that let you keep CJ on at all times, stacking its air control with Ninja Run, made it even less important to have real travel powers for me.

I was trying to go by your numbers: 170s / 46s is 3.7, so at equivalent recharge 90s / 3.7 is 24.5s for the Sentinel version.

If you assume 370% rech the Sent will recharge in 24s rather than 30s. IMHO either way you split it the difference is sensible, close to 2x. The power is up for every alpha and syncs with your Charge Up perfectly (which also increases end drain, these days). TBH, I'm not dying on the Sent > Fender hill as I don't have strong experience with the defender, I am mostly trying to rationalize Frosticus' reply knowing it works well on Sentinels.

Elec Blast gives you Thunderous Blast on a 90s base recharge with the same drain ability as the blaster version, so you zero out 10 targets with your nuke opener every ~30s. Then you've got Short Circuit, Ball Lightning, Voltaic Sentinel, the usual goodness. It's relatively easy to sap stuff as an Elec/* Sentinel as an accidental secondary effect of dealing damage. If you build for it and stack a drain secondary on top, you can go far with the idea.

It's subtle, sure, but I actually like the dodge animations we currently have.

As someone who gave it a go then gave up due to the complexity involved, my honest thoughts are: this is fine, ish. This gives kheldians a path to get close (but not even reach parity) with the top end builds of other ATs. Basically, 1000% of the effort for 80-90% of the performance *in ideal conditions*. In less than ideal conditions, if you slip up or if the enemy complexity forces different reactions out of you, this can make for cascading failure. Even managing Momentum on old Titan Weapons is child's play in comparison. I'm admirative of players with the drive to push kheldians so far.

TBH from your posting history I would argue you have a disability. I will say that because I share that same disability. It took me years to ween myself off, and I'm still pretty bad at it. Look at your reply objectively, as if it were written by another person. That person brings up something completely unrelated to the whole topic. It brings nothing to the discussion. It's just being negative for the sake of being negative. Most of the reply is fluff, and conveys no information. We could strip it down to "this takes the cake. What we have here is a reasonable suggestion with clear benefits for all players regardless of playstyle, with well-illustrated examples and some thought given to what implementation would look like.", and we'd significantly increase the signal-to-noise ratio. It's possible to pretend the negativity creates the necessary contrast for the praise to be that much more meaningful and therefore adds information, but we all know it is just that - a pretence. An image of bluntness is almost always a coping strategy, rationalisation for being a poor communicator. Especially in intelligent people, which you obviously are. "it's just the way I am, deal with it" - the ultimate excuse to refuse growth, for a mind to slow down to a stand still. We put so much effort into telling lies to ourselves, which is irrational, as that same effort could be expanded into simply being a better speaker. Quite often the answer boils down to subtraction. Take all the unwarranted nastiness out of the post, it emerges stronger for it. There's probably a way to strip this very post to 1/3 of the size and convey the same message much more efficiently, too.

"across all content" is incidentally perhaps the best argument for Invul/Staff. At lvl 10 (exemplared so functional lvl 15), with Guarded Spin, Temp Invul / RPD / Unyielding, and Dull Pain? You're looking pretty tough for the opposition. Shield/DM is no slouch either even in those teens, but Invul/Staff will already be an impenetrable wall against S/L.

I absolutely love the fact CoH has enough gameplay range OP can hold this opinion (regarding the power of AoE sleeps). And I firmly believe it is a legit opinion. I've had a great deal of fun abusing AoE sleeps on a couple of my solo characters, it truly is an underrated mechanic at times given it's functionally a mez that's ~4-10x more potent than other mez classes if you're a disciplined single target hitter.

I'll second the Shield/DM suggestion for many of the same reasons, although I don't think epic AOEs get the Tanker radius buff (hardly a concern either way). Shield/DM is an absolute powerhouse of survivability if you build for it. Especially if you stack Barrier on all the other goodies, something /DM is uniquely positioned to do thanks to getting heals and endurance management in the secondary. Darkest Night + Barrier + Grant Cover + Maneuvers is an absurd amount of mitigation to grant your teammates as a Tanker. Inv/Staff is a great pick in any case, if that's what you wanted to go with.

I too feel Stalker is where the set shines. AS bumps up your otherwise sad ST damage, Eye of the Storm is a solid 10ft PBAoE, you get real BU and the best form is baked in (which makes for a tanky Stalker). Then Tanker as a solid #2 as well, given that Tankers are so playable these days and you can find great value in stacking +DEF and +RES on Tanker armors. The Stalker version is honestly so superior to the standard version.

Tangentially, I don't know if it's just me (I see the Confused eyes from DreadShinobi...), but your formatting took me aback. I suppose it can make sense to rate tier1 lowest and increment from there; but in a tier list my brain expects to see the best first and the worst latest, so combined altogether, it seemed like you were saying Assault Rifle and Archery were top of the class, at first!

I like Onlyasandwich's list. Although subjectively, I would rank Sonic as S-tier, *above* Fire Blast and Ice Blast. It has great ST damage, great AoE damage, great soft control baked in those attacks, great -RES debuffing also baked in those attacks. It's basically on par with a good blast set before you consider the -RES debuffs. Then the -RES debuffs push your numbers further up. Siren's Song is slept on since the buffing. Hits like a truck, and an AoE sleep on command as secondary effect to a straight damage power gives you fantastic optionality. If you get in trouble while soloing, at any moment you can turn all your enemies save for bosses into statues. Could even go psi epic should you want boss-level AoE sleep, Dominate is a great power to grab anyway. Screech is much of the same, turning former mez power into damage power while retaining mez ability is fantastic. Your non-boss direct target will typically be stunned. Once again, you can find synergy through epics with Dark Mastery (Oppressive Gloom) and permastun bosses in melee range as a passive effect of your normal attack chain. nuSonic is a fantastic all-rounder. Flaws, if anything, are cones requiring you to position yourself, and no standout power. Rather, you want to have and to use all 8 (thank god we get to skip tier1 secondaries now). Which also eats a lot of animation time. In that regard very active primaries would likely get more mileage out of Fire or Ice.

I'd love to see a 135° Fire Breath, with an appropriate animation for it (character moving head to the left then the right). I wonder if enemies have any such animation and if it could be repurposed?

This made my day! Nice one 😂

I max healing, endurance and recharge, then grab whatever accuracy I can get in the remainder. I mostly ignore set bonuses (the split usually ends up 3 pieces of a heal set and 3 pieces of an endurance set).

Another vote for BF -> AV. The recharge requirements are extremely lax so you get to run this while leveling, and the extra damage is essentially free so you are more endurance efficient than average. You can graduate to something better post 50 if you want, which will involve a mix of Blinding Feint, Ablating Strike, Sweeping Strike, and maybe epic attacks.