Zect

Don't worry, because I toggled it on to judge your build; in my post, I even quoted the correct amount of rech you have with hasten (113.8%). Replacing all the rech IO's in your build with +5's, your hasten recharges in 145s (vs 129s with my modifications above). Your rage recharges in 89s (vs 66.55s with my modifications above). You actually have what I might call 1.5-rage instead of double-rage. It will actually be even less than that in practice, since hasten is not close to perma, so for a substantial amount of time you're going to have less rech than mids inidcates. So a +5, level 50 endrdx saves about 2.6 end per use of the power. I think it's fair to say that is not a significant difference. As for toe, you are using rad therapy in a crowd, are you? Getting the proc to roll on lots of targets each time is how you abuse it. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm talking down to you and telling you things you already know, but there are a lot of misconceptions in your post so I'm trying to be very thorough. As I stated, small amounts of defense aren't significant, at least not in the situations where your res and absorbs are not sufficient (which I should clarify are already uncommon to begin with). This presents an opportunity to scrounge up some slots by removing things like your GA+3 def. This is why I stated 0% def to all in build goals. Of course, feel free to keep them if you prefer, but I can tell you that any effect is more psychological than material. A placebo bonus, if you will. Have you actually been knocked back without it? Rad armor is among the (majority of) armor sets that have 10000% KU, KB res in its toggles in addition to -KB. This resistance further reduces incoming KB magnitude before applying -KB. In general you should not be knocked back by resistible knockback at all. If things are knocking you back, that means they either have an irresistible KB or you detoggled your -kb. I am traveling and without any of the machines I usually play from, so I'm unable to run tests; but if anyone has contradicting info, please do post it. I haven't killed a lot of revamped council, so I'm interested in the results. The purple sets in my example add +45% global acc (54% with the 5x adjusted targeting) that fully ignores ED. That's your nerve core paragon right there, without taking up the alpha slot. Resilient on its own is a good choice as I demonstrate, however, what I'm also trying to get across is the synergy of 1) resilient replacing res set bonuses which allows us to 2) slot purples and invest heavily in recharge, which then 3) gives us higher tohit and more procs in addition to resists, thus resulting in 4) greater defensive and offensive power. There is a panacea in health, though you can't see it in the image. PT is optional on sets with strong self-sustain like rad. It is better on sets that have a lot of mit but are poor on sustain, like invuln and shield. Nevertheless, I do know many people like them which is why I have graciously included unspent slots for you to place them if you desire. I think of everything. Comparing the benefits of melt armor and char to fireball is irrelevant, since usually these are taken along with fireball, so it's not an either-or situation. It seems what you're saying is that you're satisfied with the bonuses offered by char and melt armor, and do not want to invest in fireball. To me, that's fine; while there are optimal epic power choices, pools and epics are often a matter of playfeel so you have to pick what you like. Nevertheless, you are underestimating the value of fireball. The typical fireball slotting, 2x frozen blast 3x damage procs, is a 16 target, 22.5 foot radius (yes it benefits from gauntlet, a little testing with evenly spaced enemies such as cimerorans on the wall will reveal this), ~250 damage aoe while also muling a 15% slow resist bonus. You can compensate if you proc out your rad therapy though which still gives you 3 aoe nukes. As for "This is a tank, not brute or blaster", I've noticed that inexperienced players - especially tank players - tend to slant defensively in terms of build design, not knowing what they can handle. However, it can be worth to ask "Is it possible to build a tank that is also a brute or blaster?" because not only do offense and defense work in synergy the techniques and play skills learned can be very helpful in optimizing for defense as well, as I have demonstrated in my last post. It's also the best for you! Look, I wouldn't bother offering it if I didn't think it was materially better than what you're currently doing. Frankly, it's better if we can all cut the "oh, everything's an opinion" bullshit. Some things are a matter of playstyle, others are up to personal judgment, but there's plenty in build design that is objective, too - like 113.8% global rech being nowhere near a wash with 158.8%.

The good: 100% slow res No deceptive shit like claiming capped resists with meltdown at 19% uptime toggled on The bad: Low rech (113.8%) Resists (strongly recommended to close the neg hole; nictus, BP are major endgame enemy groups) Some puzzling slotting - endrdx in rad therapy? Aegis when you haven't maxed out on impervium armor procs?? Botz??? I want to hear the reasoning behind the last one. Half-hearted defense slotting - I see what you're going for with the diamagnetic and -tohit from beta decay, but from experience the amounts you can muster are unlikely to matter against truly dangerous critters, where res and absorbs alone do not cut it. Def is good if you can get it from a parry set (eg storm kick), barrier, purple insps, or ally buffs, because these offer huge amounts of def for relatively few build resources. It's less hot if you need to contort your build to get it. Wrong alpha - nerve doesn't boost any of the stats you want (rech) or can get easily (res) so it provides bad value I really dislike telling people to pick different epic powers since it is often a matter of playfeel/concept, but taking fire mastery and then skipping fireball is like building a mansion then deciding not to buy a roof to go with it. Build goals and breakpoints for building a rad/ss: 90% SLENF res with 1 stack of ATO1 proc. It's 1 stack because if res is your primary mit layer you do not want to sit there spamming jab to try and keep up 2 stacks. 0% def - putting it here to make it clear. You will just let mobs hit you 100% of the time. Trust me, it's fine. If you really feel unsafe, take barrier. Or eat insps. Or use knockdowns, or just kill more stuff. Double-stacked rage (~65s cooldown on rage; this lets it come off cooldown just as each crash is ending) 85%-100% slow res As much damage as possible End, lots and lots of it. Double-rage SS gobbles blue like nothing. Key concepts: Recommended alpha: resilient core paragon. Resilient has good value on res tankers because they have high res values to begin with. This will nearly singlehandedly meet your resistance needs enabling you to avoid devoting set bonuses to res. Building for resistance with set bonuses is extremely slot-inefficient because res set bonuses are tiny (the tradeoff being that res is far more reliable mitigation than def). This also buffs the tohit from rage. Double-stacked rage gives nearly +60% tohit. This is huge considering that base tohit vs +4 foes is only 48%. This massive tohit crushes enemy def bonuses and powers through enemy tohit debuffs. It saves a slot from not needing kismet +tohit. It takes care of all your acc slotting needs. 3-5 lotg mules for rech are recommended. You only have 2, which makes your rech very low. Again, I hate to tell people to change their pool picks but if you can stand being stealthed it's worth changing your travel power to infiltration, which takes an lotg. This is how you might put the above advice into practice while keeping all your current power choices except trading SJ for infil. Rage recharges in 66.55s, haste in 126s, 95% slow res. Finally, you have summoned me in particular for advice. While this is flattering, you should not view me as some kind of authority on rad/SS, or builds in general. I strongly encourage you to seek out contrasting views and builds, to challenge the received wisdom, to look, compare, and try to outdo me. The pleasure and fruits of success will be all yours. (That said, good rad/SS builds all look fairly similar (differing mainly in their pool power layout, how hard they proc and where they mule the rech bonuses).)

Scrapper; passive anti-CC and good dps even without gear. Brutes are also good solo AT's but some people (certainly not me, but some other people) may expect you to 'tank' as in take point. Nobody ever wants anything from a scrap, so it's the perfect unga-bunga class. Primary: any. The melee powersets are highly homogenized and coh toons do not have complex rotations like most other MMO's. 2ndary: willpower; passive mana regen, passive defenses, no clicks to manage. Absolutely not important; some people haven't learned how to build competently after playing for close to 20 years, and they do just fine. You can respec very easily; you'll get a respec (type /respec) every 10 levels, more are sold on the cheap, and there is no limit to how many times you can do it. Sentinel; ranged, but with the anti-CC and defenses of melee classes. Blaster; the other classes typically recommended are very handholdy, as in they insulate you from most of the challenges that exist in the game. Blasters have little anti-CC and defenses, so they quickly learn to identify and deal with threats, to conserve resources and build situational awareness. A brute will carry you, a blaster will teach you how to play. This AT is for the new player who does not fear knowledge and growth.

I often sell superior winter-O's on the AH (these generally come from respecs of old builds) and mail the inf around. Inf is easily convertible to whatever I want. Enhancements are considerably less so. Obviously, if inf is a concern your calculus will differ, but for the wealthy it's the difference between going shopping with a Mastercard, as opposed to having to dig up one of my 498 treasure stashes of pirate gold.

Of course not! That's all me. Jests aside, there is no way to deny it is a major component of the problem. The ability to add ED-busting, AT scalar-busting, damage cap-busting dps in significant amounts has significant balance implications, which deserve to be closely examined and acted on. The PPM system is actually not fundamentally broken wrt damage procs (which is what it was designed in mind for). It needs a balance pass, which it has never been subject to, and aspects like set bonus rech not being factored in the PPM formula deserve looking at. But ultimately, the idea of being able to trade set bonuses for damage is a beneficial one, one that has increased build diversity greatly. The problematic cases are the non-damage procs, things like toe +end or gaussians's or tanker ATIO1, which in certain cases can be finagled to produce impact far beyond what a single slot should ever be able to offer. We're talking things like completely refilling the blue bar with a click, or installing build up with something like 33% uptime with a slot. All non-damage procs need to be re-coded to have their own independent rules for firing. Prevmed is an example of a proc that is built this way and as a result, is both valuable and balanced. There is no need to invoke the fear of the dark ages, when supersition and savagery ruled the world, and heathens ran rampant among the ruins of Rome. Done properly, balance changes ultimately increase both fun and build diversity. People cried doom when bugged burn was fixed, saying it would make FA cease to be viable, yet today FA is more versatile than it ever was, and still does ridiculous amounts of dps while tanking the hardest content in the game successfully. Similarly, the typed defense overhaul (which I admit I never thought any dev team would have the political will to pull off) led to a revolution in typed defense builds as mitigation overnight became a far more subtle and enjoyable problem to solve than sticking kincombats in every hole. Personally, I eagerly anticipate a revamped PPM system which will force me to redo all my builds; I know HC team won't disappoint.

I have a different perspective on the whole aprocalypse thing. I generally think that you should not let fear of nerfs impact your ability to enjoy powers in the here and now. On the contrary, as it is far better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, one should enjoy them while they last. I ruthlessly abuse procs in many of my builds. If procs are nerfed, then not only did I enjoy the finite time they were available, but I also did my part in pushing for beneficial balance changes by raising the profile of proc balance - the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that. if procs are not nerfed, then I continue to enjoy grossly overpowered builds that achieve power levels the game was never designed for. Whoever loses, I win.

Procs are immune to the rule that they stop working when exemplared below (IO level - 3). You can get a mako proc or tod proc to fire when exemped down to level 1, as a quick jaunt to your local AE farm will demonstrate. What may have gotten mixed up here is that procs do stop working, if you exemplar low enough that the power they are slotted in is no longer available. But this is simply a consequence of the fact that procs require the power they are slotted in to activate for they themselves to fire. No power, no proc.

This intrigued me so I went and looked up this person's suggestions. Among them are: CoH being free is bad and Homecoming should charge for it In general OP seems in favor of p2w mechanics, which puzzled me until I realized they are from Russia; they're probably scarred by Soviet-era Communism. Lowering the value of your height slider in character creation should give stealth radius, raising it should give +maxHP Intriguing idea. I propose that on female toons (and only females) increasing the bust slider should increase your number of enhancement slots because you can install more enhancements. In the interest of gender equality we can take this opportunity to install a bulge slider for men. Mastermind upgrades should be autopowers Excellent comedy, I had a great laugh! Try fifty-plus. Tab-target MMO players are older than the general gaming population, and CoH is like, old old (predating WoW by 7 months).

This build has adequate def (except for the phalanx issue which has already been pointed out), but disregarding your FF proc in lightning clap, the rech is really poor since you are hasteless due to concept. Even as a hasteless build, it is still worth getting AD close to 60s recharge to double-stack it, yes it does stack. This significantly increases your DDR from 66% to 88%. Shield tankers are the only shields who can consider not taking ageless radial to buff their DDR. Some points for further improvement: Firstly, thunderstrike does KB, a lot of it. Me, I personally enjoy knocking enemies out of tar patches and sleets, but I am guessing from the sudden accel you have slotted in lightning clap that you do not. In that case, you may want to rearrange your sets so that you can get an overwhelming force unique in there. Secondly, on shield tankers deflection is usually slotted for resistance, not def. The reason is that tankers naturally have an excess of melee def due to the types of sets they have access to (as evidenced by your 58% melee vs 50% R/aoe def). So on most builds, it is a gain to slot deflection for res and then rely on your set bonuses to make up the melee def, resulting in an overall gain of SL res. This in turn could allow you to cut SL res bonuses elsewhere. It also means you can think about dropping a piece of oblit (losing 3.75 melee def) to fit in a desired proc, like the one I mentioned above. In general, when you have significantly imbalanced defenses like this, that is usually a good sign that you can optimize further either by cutting down on the excess defense or raising the lower defenses to match. It's difficult to discuss any tanker without a comprehensive discussion of incarnate strategy, because tankers stand to gain so much from incarnates, so this is where my advice ends. For now, think about what alpha you should slot and how you can use it to cut even more defensive slotting to invest in dps and rech.

Conserve power doesn't work on the rage crash, at least not directly. It does help by reducing your overall eps, but it doesn't reduce the amount the crash deducts (which is flagged to ignore enhancement). Ideally, you want some recovery buff as well. For endgame IO tankers at least, all the issues with rage are somewhat addressable. SS will not do damage directly during the crash, but SS is one of the best procbomber sets and procs do damage just fine even during the crash. We have considerably more means to deal with the end loss such as harmonic mind or survival amps (even before deploying incarnate endo management tools like ageless). And the defense loss is much less significant given tankers' incredibly high base defense and strong ability to stack resistance instead.

Personally, I have always found TW too swishyswooshy and lacking in powpowkblam, so I support your proposition. I suspect that rejiggering animations is unlikely to happen though. I especially like that you brought this up: For anyone who doesn't know, powers in coh neither apply their effects at the start of the animation, nor at the end. There is a field in power data that indicates how far into the animation must pass before the effect is applied, appropriately called Animation Time Before Effect. Powers, especially damage powers, with long ATBE will feel very sluggish and unresponsive compared to powers with short ATBE, even given the same total animation time. I think a lot of Paragon's newer (post-GR) damage sets fall victim to this, as any beam rifle player can attest. To illustrate how bad this issue is on TW: Seismic Smash Cast Arcanatime: 1.716 sec Animation Time Before Effect: 0.833 sec (48.5% of the way through) Rend Armor (slow) Cast Arcanatime: 2.508 sec Animation Time Before Effect: 2.267 sec (90.4% of the way through) All I have to say is lmao.

I write gigantic posts where necessary, and rarely have trouble with people not reading the whole thing. If what you have to say is truly valuable, people will listen - as for the ones that refuse to, it's their loss, so why should you care?

I want Orbital Strike. You can copy the fx from keyes.

True, but being able to efficiently utilize ancillary resources like insps, temps or active incarnate abilities is arguably also one of a build's virtues, unless you specifically design for a threat environment where those don't function (4* or e-peen challenges, basically). I used to be very strict on the "no inspirations" thing, for example, until I had an eureka moment and realized that leaving this constant stream of free stats that rains from the sky is actually suboptimal. It is very likely more optimal to design a build to get the greatest benefit from insps without burning them faster than they drop.

Tanks get around this, because tankers are overpowered: you just build for 65% def to softcap despite the crash and continue raging away. I call it cold fury. Out of the box, an ice tank is softcapped with just the toggles, both +3 uniques, weave, and 1 more def pool power (CJ/hover/maneuvers/stealth). So you just add some set bonuses and energy absorption on top of that (which gives around +10% def to all) and not even rage can un-softcap you.