nihilii

This is not a problem, more a curiosity. For years, whenever I launch 2 or more CoH clients at once... I get a little buzzing noise on my laptop. I play a lot of games, use plenty of hardware-stressing software in general. Only in CoH does this sound pop up; only on the login screen specifically; and only with two clients or more. Has anyone else experienced the same thing? I'm not worried about it, but I wonder if my laptop is being haunted by the ghost of Statesman.

I'm definitely a lazy toon person. Sentinel and Tanker. The latter with PBAoEs and as many ranged attacks as possible. Give me maximum survivability, and minimum conditionals.

To an extent, I do these splits! My preferred way is generally: first bar gets ST then AoE (this generally fills 1 to 6). Controls/supports go in the function trays. I don't trayswap much so I haven't set up the F keys to alt_tray.

Hello, are you me? I'm actually surprised to hear someone else uses this exact layout!

OK... But... You quoted my entire post for your reply, in which I explicitely argue +25% global range buff would not be excessive. Only to not address anything I've said. And instead, point out a bunch of existing options to increase range. "There's other stuff giving you +range therefore we cannot have this amount of +range" is not an argument if you can't make the case for this exact amount of +range being a problem to start with! The rational starting point should be: - what are existing options, their advantages and inconvenients - what would be an appropriate value for a full slot to be devoted to that purpose - is there any practical issue in increasing the amount of +range available to characters - if so, can we pinpoint numbers at which this breaks down

This makes me ponder an Ice/Fire/Weapon scrapper running Ice Patch, Burn and Caltrops, just for kicks.

Do you mean to say you disagree with my point "range seems more of a convenience thing than anything, any exploit of the mechanic is far from practical in reward:time"? Do you have a practical example in mind? I've experimented at length with a range build a couple years back, and there's interesting properties (more often than not exploiting fly + range + grounded/grouding enemies in general to not take damage); but all of these usecases were ultimately novelty, the efficiency loss fighting from far away is just too drastic.

I almost never build for psi resist. There's just so much to chase and so very few slots! It's just not worth the attention. Especially as psi resist doesn't come as an useful externality to other attributes. i.e., you can snatch 6% E/N as a side effect of slotting 3 Gauntleted Fist for the great enhancement values, that's useful. But six-slotting a resistance power with Impervium Armor to get +10.5% PSI, when typically resistance powers do fine with 2 +5 IOs? Mehh.

Great idea! Intuitively, even +25% range wouldn't strike me as OP. Sents get 2 +10% as part of a bonus on their ATOs with much more goodies. Cardiac gives +20% range on top of endurance and resistance. Here, we'd be allocating a full slot to the purpose. I think a sizeable boost like +20% or +25% would be warranted. There's of course the question "would stacking Cardiac AND this unique IO allow for some brokenness", but honestly... Range seems more of a convenience thing than anything, any exploit of the mechanic is far from practical in reward:time. Who even consciously remembers psy attacks start at 100ft base range, for example, or factor this into choosing the powerset over other options?

That is the reasoning. Ally buffs have higher values than personal buffs, be it in pure strength or in access (fast recharge, etc.).

It's brutal. I know many people handle this fine, but for some reason it breaks my brain and I can sometimes sit for a couple seconds before I find my rhythm again. I'd happily settle for the Momentum-specific powers doing half of their damage if used outside of Momentum, or whatever.

Bio = Regen + Willpower + extra damage On Elec, Power Surge is kinda poo because Elec Armor gets close to the resistance cap (75%) as is. Crash is massive and arguably not worth it. Other than that, Elec Armor is a nice powerset with great +regen as a Sentinel. Energy Armor is The Best. Indeed, it was always built similar to Elec Armor - however it's plain better because 1) it's defense-based, and defense rules all in CoH 2) over the years, it got several buffs to its resistances 3) the Sentinel version gets hefty +maxHP on top. Unlike Elec, the T9 (Overload) here is useful as the utility of defense never truly falls off. Many enemies in incarnate content require 59% def rather than 45% as a baseline, then there's more tohitbuffs on top, Hard mode TFs... Getting the T9 is never a requirement, but it is certainly an option. There's no downside to Icy Bastion... except you have to play Ice. Many find the set kinda ho-hum as a whole. You get a bit of S/L/E/N defense, great maxHP, capped slow resists, and... you're more or less on your own for everything else. That makes a big defensive hole to F/C/T/P, and hardly any resistances whatsoever (outside of Icy Bastion). This would be fine in a world where slow resist wasn't widely available in IO sets. Then, Ice would have an unique edge. As is? It can feel a bit lacking, like you're trading something for nothing. Still, it can work fine and at least you'd be fairly unique if you lean that way. Invincible for Invulnerability is different from Invincibility, you get the +def and +tohit bonus all the time. It's a simple defensive toggle. Ninjitsu is an all-in package with +DEF to all, some resistances, a click heal, a click end, full click mez protection and an Elude-like T9. Click mez protection is better these days because you can activate it after you're mezzed. This set is not the best at anything but it's great at everything. Radiation is actually fairly popular. It has good resistances, a great slow resistance base, and tremendous regen and recovery. You can also proc the tier8 AoE to turn it into a second mininuke. A well-rounded set missing only defenses. Regeneration... To be honest, my own experience has met your concerns. One can work with it, but it seems much work than other powersets. I think this set badly needs the Moment of Glory animation sped up so it can be used more reactively, if nothing else. Stone has some OK minimal FX now if you want to see less of the armors. Note however some of them will keep making some extremely annoying noises (to me). Would recommend you hop on Test Server to make a lvl 50 /stone instantly and grab the armors to see if that'd be a bother to you, should you go that route. SR on Sentinels is simple, you pick Master Brawler. This gives you passive mez protection *and* an absorb (= heal) power on top. Combined with Enduring, the Sentinel version fixes every flaw regular SR has. You get less AoE defense until lvl 28, but Evasion has its base values boosted to make up for the lack of Lucky. You're correct on Willpower, Up to the Challenge is a passive +regen. Personally I think WP is one of the weaker sets. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that everyone else gets cooler stuff.

Love the idea of random teammates, very cool!

There's a difference between Unstoppable and Elude: Elude also applies -10000% recovery for 20 seconds. So with Unstoppable, if you crash with a full bar and get a lucky tick of end right after, your toggles can stay on (happens often). With Elude, your toggles will keep draining against your floored recovery and eventually crash.

Going to echo the sentiment many builds can work. I'm partial to EM/ scrappers with a defense secondary, /nin or /EA ideally but /SR and /Shield are also good. Reasoning: - EM gets you an extremely powerful and end efficient attack chain early on, on SOs even. Energy Transfer costs 0 end, deals the best damage per activation in the game in quick form and still decent DPA in slow mode, recharges fast. It's a godsend for lowbies. This ensures AVs won't be a grind. - defense is the most powerful survivability mechanic in CoH. I would argue doubly so on SOs: pop lucks and you're set. Starting with a defense secondary minimises the number of lucks you need to chug to be softcapped. - /nin and /EA get a heal which is nice in general and also helps to deal with the -hp of ET.

Yesterday, I hopped on a Psi/Elec Sent I didn't touch for years. The recent buffs are truly bringing the pain. Sure, Psi/ will never top the DPA charts - but laying out 700-800 damage hits regularly feels Good, also strangely unique in the ranged blast realm where animations tend to be shorter.

There's no hope for me: I've outgrown the knowledge one outgrows Sentinels.

It crashes your recovery for 10 seconds, this has led me to detoggle a shameful amount of times!

You're right. And yet, at the same time... I played korean MMOs (on english servers) before CoH, late 90s early 00s. Full-on PvP, extremely competitive. Racism and homophobic slurs were ubiquitous. Then I moved straight to CoH. Where I don't think I've seen a single instance of either in years of play. Even in PvP zones. It used to be there were pockets of ugly behavior in the most toxic communities, sure. Basically individuals using the most heinous stuff they can think of, either in frustration or to upset their enemies. With a select few nutjobs who genuinely believed these things and used the platform to air it out. But now, there's a genuine racist counterculture. It used to be a casual cooperative game like CoH wouldn't attract this sort of behavior. The interconnectedness of everything makes us vulnerable too. Ironically, I wish we could "segregate" again... The cool people who play CoH, of all colors and creds, away from the rest of the Internet. The way it used to be, mostly. I miss communities being distinctive islands. Although, it's worth praising just how much this community here has retained its identity.

I'd love to see RES debuffs on Stalker Placate. -10% for 10s, what have you. Something that's big enough to bump up the power as an alternative, but not so much that it changes the meta radically. Although, when you think about it... AS and Placate *are* supposed to be the cornerstone Stalker powers. It would be cool to have Super Placates the same way fast AS upped the game. At the same time, Stalkers are in a good spot right now, so it's also hard to argue straight up they need more power.

Any thread is ontopic if we try hard enough. What would be the best build to make this vision come true?

Tankers get +50% radius on all AoEs under 15ft. So Tanker Spin is 12ft, which is very nice. This won't show up in Mids or in power info, but it's there, immediately obvious ingame. Fire/Claws is one of these characters I'd always play on a Tanker rather than a Brute. Well, to be fair I tend to always pick Tanker over Brute, averaging ratios the balance is overall stacked towards the Tanker since the buffs. But, this is especially true for Fire/Claws, for the following reasons: - going from 8ft and 10 targets to 12ft and 16 targets turns an excellent PBAoE into a shredder of crowds. - Claws' damage is built around Follow Up. Tankers get a bigger absolute buff from Follow Up due to their higher base damage, and a *much* bigger relative buff due to their AT not being built around Fury. - Fire Armor's somewhat flimsy defenses at Brute/Scrapper levels become respectable with Tanker values. Capping S/L res effortlessly is in itself a tremendous survivability boost.

Yeah, damage is king in enough of the game it feels ok to have a get-out-of-jail card for the price of one power pick. You can almost replicate the effect by just running away in a flash and breaking line of sight.

On my current EM/INV, I do TF -> ET -> PC -> AS -> MB, Hide proc in TF. I wanted something simple with no conditionals. Hide on TF gets my ET to heal me once every two cycles, which evens out the self-damage. Helpful for invul. Power Crash adds AoE damage without me having to think about it, and is still OKish damage for ST (given Arma proc and Fury -res), plus a guaranteed Focus stack. Probably not that great of a chain for pure DPS.

IMHO, all scrapper builds can solo +4/x8, as defined by >90% of standard enemy factions, no AVs, no temp powers, and the use of inspirations as they drop. If you remove inspirations, I think all scrapper builds can still solo +4/x8, provided we define "solo" as "completing the task at hand", allowing recovery time between groups and the occasional pulling of tough targets from particular factions that are the achilles' heel to your particular build. Obviously some builds will have an easier time at it than others. I'd rank WM/SD as higher than average, good value proposition there. I think the easiest route to get to comfy +4/x8 soloing here would be: - make sure your build maximises the resistances and +maxHP Shield offers too. Layered defenses are key - grab the Cardiac Alpha to keep your endurance consumption in check - get Shadow Meld from the Soul epic. This might seem like overkill, but many factions these days bypass the mere softcap. Shadow Meld gives you a buffer to eat alphas from +tohit foes - add the Rebirth Destiny, +regen tree, to patch up your lack of healing - take the Melee Hybrid, +res tree. Gives you more regen and bumps up your resistances further. Every point of resistance is more valuable than the one before up until the cap - in battle, make aggressive use of Crowd Control to milk the 100% knockdown This is the baseline approach I'd take for a WM/SD soloing +4/x8 without inspirations. These aren't hard requirements, you could tweak things if you see this is actually *too much* survivability. The use of inspirations would significantly expand your options.