America's Angel

Yeah I like the new hardmode settings. Has made PvE fun for me again.

My bad, it does stack: That's absurdly broken, lol. 5x Ageless and the team is immune to debuffs! Throw in a PBU+Clarion FF Defender and a Sonic Defender and nothing's dying. Destiny powers really do many Regen Brutes the best tanks for teaming on Hardmode.

Ageless's DDR doesn't stack, though?

I'm talking about solo tanking the Relentless (hardest difficulty) Aeon Strike Force. Have you tried it on your Invuln? I've been trying to solo the first room on my Invuln and not had much luck. If you've not tried it yet, you should! Good chance to see how durable a tank build really is in high end play.

Unfortunately that's not true. The lack of MoG to handle alpha strikes/debuffs, the lack of Barrier to handle alpha strikes, and the lack of Recon/Instant Healing really puts Invuln behind Regen when it comes to tanking 4* relentless. You also can't cycle Demonic due to its 10min recharge not playing well with having fewer things to cycle on an Invuln. I wish I was wrong - the inv/ma is my main! But in all the playtests I've run on Beta, Regen pulls out ahead. Gonna have a play later and see if cycling Unleashed Potential/Melee Hybrid/Aid Self might save my Invuln from the scrapheap. Wish me luck!

Regen on relentless is hard to play. It's about predicting when certain attacks are coming and using MoG to counter them or react to them (in the case of debuffs) and then cycling stuff when MoG is down to stay alive. (Things like Hybrid Melee, Destiny, the -dam Void, Recon, Dull Pain, Instant Healing, Demonic, Geas, Unrelenting, Rune.) Also helps to have a primary that can spam FF procs. And yeah I've been testing out my Inv/MA on Relentless with various destiny powers alongside hybrid. Ageless was by far the most survivable. Barrier and Rebirth didn't cut it. DDR is no joke at the top end. Oh I'm just looking at 4* hard mode Relentless stuff right now. Trying to figure out a supatank that can survive without team buffs for maximum /e flex purposes when team wipes happen. Leaning towards SR at the moment.

My Inv/MA: (So with the tanker ATOx3, which it always is, this is at 90% res to all.) Here's what happens when I try and solo tank relentless without Ageless... And then end drain. And then death. (Side-note: Invuln's lack of confuse protection is also a huge pain.)

Demons/Thermal Mastermind Thugs/Thermal Mastermind Thermal/Ice Defender Thermal/Elec Defender Poison/Ice Defender For Melee options: A scrapper with Kat, Claws, Energy Melee, or Dark Melee paired with Regen or Rad Armour.

Ah nice. I'm rocking Nerve on my SR for similar reasons. (Plus the extra ACC. Helps vs relentless mobs and their insane defense.) How much def is your shield sitting on? I try to aim for 75% to all so a single cold/FF shield takes it to the relentless cap of 96%, I'd keep Ageless it on the Invuln tbh. 50% DDR is pretty low for a set which relies on defense. (This is pretty much why I've given up on my Invuln.)

Where you getting the extra 8.2% DDR? Best I could do on shield was 81.8%: Battle Agility = 17.3% Active Defense = 21.625% Active Defense = 21.625% Ageless 120 = 21.25% But yeah, I could see Shield being popular on Relentless for Grant Cover + Maneuvers stacking. Those plus a cold or FF running maneuvers is like ~51%/~67% extra defense!

Will be interesting to see how Shield's lower DDR vs SR fares in hardmode content that does a lot of -def. One thing I love about relentless is that formerly useless powers are now super useful. My SR/MA uses both Elude and Unleashed Potential!

For regular content, any tank shouldn't die. So they're all pretty much equal. In terms of pure mitigation Dark/Dark trumps all. For 4* relentless/hard mode? I'd go with a regen brute, or a sr/shield tank.

While I don't like the suggestion in the OP at all, our devs are volunteers who work on this game in their spare time. They can work on whatever they want. None of it is "wasted time" because we're not their customers and they don't answer to us. Being a dev for this game is literally their hobby.

Yes. None of your suggestions provide 1.5% energy res for 2slotting. Sure, make all IOs level 20-50. Would improve build diversity.

Eh?

Level 53 Nuc acc/dam = 38.3% boost Level 50+++++ Mako acc/dam = 33.1% boost Level 40+++++ Touch of Death acc/dam = 30.2% boost

Yup.

^

It's a good place to put the Achilles proc if you don't already have somewhere. I use it on my EM Scrapper.

Great suggestion. IIRC there was talk last year of having a few "presets" that players could pick from for readymade builds. But I don't think it progressed beyond just talk. Tying them into signature characters like Recluse or Ms. Liberty would be fantastic. And having extra ones unlockable via PvP matches played? That would be fun. You could even have a progression tree of easier classes unlocking before the harder ones. Newbies would like it because they could be competitive with hardcore PvPers. And for every 20 newbies, you might get one player who goes "Hmm, I wonder if I remade this in mids and changed XYZ that it might perform better..." and boom you have another PvPer.

The first time I zoned into Boomtown in closed beta back in 2003. The buildings were all sideways! It was ruined! It was just like those 2D fallout games I loved to play! I still have a soft spot for it. It was where I parked my character when the servers went down; Flying through the air, looking down on the broken buildings I'd once looked up at in awe.

This already happens. A lot of the player-run events have house rules that make them more balanced/fair. The official 8v8 league, Taco Tuesday Kickball events, the Fightclub community, and also the Platypus sg's smallscale stuff. These sub-communities are the majority of PvP in this game. There is PvP stuff being worked on super slowly. Open PvP in bases, PvP in AE, and some sort of "Capture the Flag" style thing. But I'm not up to speed on how far along it is. I just want PvP in bases so I can make a fightclub dojo.

Personally, I'd quite like some sort of opt-in open challenge system that would allow players to fight each other in zones, rather than having to load into an arena. Would be neat for both PvP and RP. Of course you'd need a setting that allowed players to auto opt-out of invites, though. (And possibly set the default to off to avoid people being harassed.) You'd also have to disable it in certain non-combat zones such as Pocket D and Ouroboros. Then again, I've seen broadcast in Recluse's Victory. I wouldn't wish that on Atlas Park. So maybe not.

PvE is really easy, involves no dying, and people with bad builds can feel like gods. PvP is really hard, involves lots of dying, and people with bad builds are forced to realize their builds are bad. People who prefer the former aren't going to enjoy the latter. Add in the competitive element (something I can't imagine people are typically drawn to MMORPGs for) and you can see why the CoH PvP population is around 3-5% of the playerbase. I like PvP. I spend nearly all my gametime doing it. But I get why it's not for the majority of players. (That said, I wish more hardcore melee PvE players would get into 1v1 pvp melee fights. It's essentially pylon testing on steroids.)

PROBLEM: The accolade Demonic/Eye of the Magus (and the PvP version, Indestructible) only provides typed defense, not positional: This means the accolade unfairly benefits typed armor sets (Energy Aura, Ice, Stone, etc) over positional ones (SR, Ninjitsu, Shield, etc) SOLUTION: Add 50% Melee/Ranged/AoE defense to the accolade.