Zect

If you want a fire scrapper that's good, take the bopper build above, shave resists down to 70% (the amount of slot-efficiency it costs to go from 70% to 75% resists on scraps is pretty heavy), rely on barrier for the last 5%, and take a better epic with actually good attacks - say one of the meta standbys, like soul. This will produce more dps and more survivability due to things like barrier and shadowmeld's defense bonuses synergizing effectively with your resists as alpha absorbers.

I personally think that shit teams are only fun if you're playing a babysitting powerset (emp, therm, pain, etc.). If you're playing something like firestorm or a kin it quickly devolves into you soloing with 7 hangers-on, which while potentially enjoyable, probably isn't what you are looking for in the shit team experience. With that said, the classic corr experience will forever be ice/cold. It even has the corr exclusive powerset from cov launch: cold. The premier debuff powerset, paired with an endless storm of scourge crits - all offense, all the way.

Brutes are intended to be an intermediate between tanker survivability and scrapper dps. For the most part, they do fulfill that role well; and it's a remarkably optimal tradeoff, given that in coh, the jack of all trades, master of none, is nearly always better than a master of one (except for certain specialist applications). While scrapper's higher base damage scalar benefits more from shield's AAO, shield brutes are stronger defensively with 90% resist cap and superior base and max HP. And depending on the content you're doing, you may find either ratio of damage : defense more optimal, but it's hard to categorically say a shield brute is weaker than a shield scrapper. The big anomaly right now is actually brutes vs tanks. Currently, optimally built tanks will both out-tank and out-scrap brutes on identical powersets. The reason is that 1) tankers build for damage (through procs) much more effectively than brutes build for defense, 2) tankers also build for defense much more effectively than brutes build for defense, 3) tankers have a powerful offensive inherent in gauntlet, and 4) tanker's higher base survivability synergistically boosts their offensive power. Tankers need an offensive nerf, but the problem is likely not going to be completely fixed until the aprocalypse - which I await with glee.

Stalkers are actually pretty good on 4* TF. ST dps is much more important on 4* and you are nearly guaranteed a tank with an aggro aura to keep things in place. Control, however, I do agree - hold specific mechanics need to be increased in number and prominence to encourage a diverse team comp.

/dark is fine, none of these changes are necessary. The sustain power being a mez has its own pros and cons (costs dpa but doesn't suppress when mezzed, mules 4x cloud senses).

Aeon is amazing, and startlingly high-quality for a player made TF (compare the relatively plain Market Crash, for example). There is just one problem with it: it is too long unless speedrun at 50. I don't know why anyone still thinks a TF/SF has the right to be 7 missions long - was this even tested with lv35 toons? It would be fine if it were split into 2 separate TF's. FYI a casual lobby in 2023 is 30-40 minutes tops, and anything hour+ lies solidly in the realm of hardcore challenge content. And players shouldn't need to speedrun to get content within that time range. Nah, it's 100% a failure of the player, not the team. Failure to join or make a team with an objective suitable for one's own skill level and playstyle (even then, I would advise considerable flexibility in being willing to go faster or slower than you are personally used to, since people vary in their expectations) Failure to develop necessary situational awareness to accomplish simple tasks, like reading mission objectives, following another player around, or avoiding mobs. I can understand being annoyed at speedruns if the speedrunning method relies on OOB nonsense or obscure non-intuitive mechanics, Kahn being one of the more egregious examples. Anything else? That's on you. Failure to acknowledge responsibility for one's own success or failure The problem is that players in this game are unaccustomed to failure, and human beings in general are unaccustomed to responsibility, leading to various misconceptions. I have nothing for or against speedrunning, ideologically speaking; kill or skip what you please, the choice is yours. But if you can't speed, please don't start finger pointing in frustration and finding excuses such as your builds being concept-oriented. That's pathetic.

The question has already been answered so I’m just here to add this: This kind of toon is of very little value in hard mode. Dps is very important especially in the higher echelons of hardmodes and an emp/sonic/soul blows anything your healbot can do out of the water. It’s why hold specific mechanics (eg. Green mitos) need to be given more prominence if HC ever wants trollers and to a lesser extent doms to be worth bringing over fenders and blasters. I always thought holding the hostless/brickernauts should pause the countdown.

I agree with the reasons behind the suggestion (things dying too fast) but really, there is no reason to give soloists a free pass. In fact, it only makes sense to me that if you do want to mow down hordes of enemies that you join a team to do so. The player dps ceiling needs to be severely lowered especially at endgame. That’s all there is to it.

Disable the level shift from alpha too and we have a deal. The level shift is honestly a bigger deal than the rest of the powers. +1 CR in this game is huuuuge.

You farm, or you play the market. Ideally, market (marketeering is more scaleable than farming, but returns are delayed and it requires more knowledge; though contrary to what some people think, outside of insane speculative plays it is impossible to lose money by marketeering). There are guides out there, consult them. Merits, paps and all combat activities are not a remotely comparable source of income and never have been. the official merit reward rate is 20 merits/hr as detailed in SCoRE’s patch notes. Nobody, not even the dev who wrote that, is satisfied with that pittance. Even the very best merit rewards are gated by reward lockouts, and demand more attention, setup and effort than afk farming. It’s one of the few serious gripes I have about HC. The combat is so offensively unrewarding, it almost actively detracts from the fun. You can assemble a team from the small minority of highly geared players to do a speed 4* ITF twice for 400 merits and 40 paps. I can spend half the time clicking on the MB and make 1 billion inf. Checkmate. - Signed, a trillionaire

Hasten is not mandatory, fighting isn't either (even though there are more builds that benefit from them than not). There's a difference between meta and mandatory. Also I'll gladly inform you that your builds are useless trash, but that's because I want you to accept the fact that there is room for us to greatly increase your power levels which is impossible if people already think they are the expert.

This makes a lot of sense. Humans are eusocial, so it's possible that like cockroaches, they perceive populated places as more attractive and empty places as unattractive. Disclaimer: I am not an evolutionary psychologist.

Invoke panic and unrelenting are excellent and make the presence pool worth it, but I do think that for the purposes of aggro management the pool seems strangely lackluster. There's no taunt aura, and the aoe taunt is weirdly weak and still checks tohit (not checking tohit is half the value of a taunt in the first place). Part of this is the stance that Cryptic, Paragon (and perhaps Homecoming, I don't know) have, which is that pool powers have to be weaker than primary and 2ndary powers. I always disagreed with this because the result is that certain types of powers and certain types of uses for powers become much better than others. Buffs such as hasten and weave are popular, because stacking every bit of rech and def is valuable; but attacks and taunts are much less valuable, because they must be able to function on their own. You don't need to make pool powers comparable to similar powers on the highest power scalar AT's (i.e. tough should not be as strong as tanker SL resist toggles), but making them worthwhile enough to be taken on their own, especially non-buff non-heal powers, may increase build diversity. Power creep is a serious and ongoing problem for homecoming, and I'm generally opposed to buffs and supportive of nerfs. But in this particular case, a change to the aggro management powers of the presence pool seems justified. However, no buffs to invoke panic and unrelenting are necessary (including reduction of prerequisites).

There are a lot of ways to get past the mitos, even without control AT's. Hold procs (unslot enhancements and slot the procs in), temp powers, even the origin attack power that has a hold effect (go to pocket D and exchange at the P2W vendor), etc. I think no temp powers should be provided; not only is it wholly unnecessary, it would be good for the community so that ingenuity and foresight are rewarded a little, as opposed to laziness and entitlement. For the OP, well done.

D-sync decelerations (slow/rech/endrdx) say hi, and ice mistral is actually decent. I'm not categorically opposed to new slow sets, but this game doesn't need more -res procs or damage procs, at least not until the PPM system as a whole is balanced. There is too much damage and -res flying around already, and the slow category already has 2 damage procs.

In bringing up the fort example (and cold shields, and ample examples of def without -def resist), I'm illustrating that defense is still generally valuable even without -def resist. You have a very SR scrapperesque perspective, where the defense cascade needs to be prevented at all cost, or it's worthless. That might be true if def is all you're relying on, but this is a resist tank with strong sustain we're talking about. Defense on resist sets can be considered ablative armor that regenerates with each engagement. It delays being defense floored and absorbs debuffs and alpha strikes. It's worth recalling that mobs base tohit is 50%, not 95%. When playing resist sets against mobs with -def, there is a really noticeable difference in incoming damage before and after you get defense floored. A cushion of defense, especially when close to the softcap, may delay that significantly. Your argument is that defense comes at the expense of slow resist and rech. I'm trying to tell you: that isn't true. (And you don't forfeit capped resists, either.) You keep talking about defense being "stripped away" when you're not on a team. I'm trying to tell you: it's served its purpose. I present a powerful build strategy that caters to MA's unique strengths as a parry set, without excessive investment in defense, while still maintaining a respectable offensive capacity. If you don't feel a need for high survivability (I think my softcapped rad/MA would be on the extreme defensive end of tanker builds I'm willing to play) because you aren't playing the content where it's valuable, fair enough, but going on weird tangents about self-sufficiency that are unrelated to the subject is simply odd.

Money in this game comes from playing the auction house and farming. If you neither marketeer, nor farm, you will be at an economic disadvantage versus other players. Merit-giving activities are significantly less profitable and inherently less scaleable than marketeering and farming, and are further gated by reward lockouts, though people try to downplay the difference for various reasons, such as wanting to discourage new players from powerleveling.

The question has been answered, more or less, so I'm just here to say I snicker every time I think about the PPM system and the rationale for it. It was supposed to be Intuitive; you should be able to look at a proc and tell roughly how often it will fire. Balanced; a proc should give roughly the same number of Procs Per Minute regardless of what power it is slotted in. Did Paragon Studios achieve their goals? I'll let you, dear reader, be the judge of... bwahahahaha! Sorry, can't stop laughing.

Nah, this isn't true. You can build a rad/MA tanker that has perma 90% res to all except cold perma ~45% def to all except psi perma 95% slow res permahasten And doesn't get there by doing stupid things like skipping DT or whatever. The real cost is you will lose a significant number of damage procs. Considering how much dps tanks potentially do, this is actually a significant downside. Frankly, I respect that argument a lot more than all the weird stuff you say about being self-sufficient and so on.

Your build is trash and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play your powersets, the invention system, and the - just kidding. There are inefficiencies, but this is nowhere as bad as some examples I've seen. What you've got right: Recharge focus - you need rech for perma-heatloss, perma-benumb, permahaste and 2x sleet. (A couple seconds less on most of these is acceptable, but not significant gaps.) Agility alpha - not a bad choice for cold. The tradeoff is less return from procbombing your powers. No excessive recovery slotting - coldfenders get a lot of end through heatloss, and should try to exploit this by devoting fewer slots to recovery. What you didn't: Neglecting enhancement value - you slotted power transfer in heatloss which has low rech enhancement (this IO set is designed for attacks that also drain end, like elec melee/blast powers, so a lot of its enhancement value is in +dmg). A set that ed-caps rech like preemptive optimization would allow you to spend fewer slots building for global rech, at only a slight cost in recharge set bonuses. Your FF proc should go in a power with higher availability than hail of bullets, such as rain or empty clips. It really shines in things like footstomp which you spam on cooldown in crowds. Your hail of bullets is available every 30s or so. That means you get 5s of 100% rech every 30s. If you put it in a large aoe that recharges every 10s, that could be 5s of 100% rech every 10s - a significant improvement. The lower proc chance is compensated by using it on large mobs. I'm also going to disagree with a lot of what uun said above, but specifically in the context of hard mode and only because you say you are interested in hardmode. I would agree outside of hardmode. You should consider kismet despite having tactics, because you are playing a blast set without aim and you want to avoid benumb missing. Hardmode AV's have large amounts of def, and they resist debuffs. Respect them. You should bring barrier if you wish to do 4* hardmode. 1) Cold shields are not enough if you are the only def buffer. 2) Barrier also provides res. 3) Many leaders who run pug hardmode will ask for it. Some will not bring you if you don't have it. However, this is not a big issue since you can change your destiny at will. You could easily carry barrier for hardmode, and clarion for babymode. Finally, if you wish to do 4* hard mode, consider building for more defense. It is common that you are the only def buffer on the team, and since you can't shield yourself, that also makes you the most vulnerable member. This will also help your mez situation outside of hardmode - you need mez protection less if you're dodging the mezzes, see. Obviously, a more optimized team comp makes these non-issues, but if you are running pug hardmode, then it pays to have a little insurance. Even if you are leading, there is no guarantee you can find people with the ideal support powersets. This should give you some ideas if you wish to pursue more def while still maintaining comparable heatloss, benumb, and hasten uptime. The remaining slots are yours to spend. I want to point out one hardmode-specific optimization which I am now trialing personally. Note that tough is not slotted. The reason for this is that the current hardmode meta is built around barrier stacking. Ideally, there will be 7 barriers going at once (8 if the leader cares enough to unslot their incan for tough fights, rarely 5-6 if you have people who can't use it on cooldown or who didn't bring one). Since each barrier is 5% def and 5% res to all at the weakest, we can expect an average of 35% res to all at all times including your own barrier. This suggests that resistances significantly in excess of 40% are wasted. Therefore, this build trims back some SL res to regain slot-efficiency, and builds for between 35% to 40% res to all except psi. You still have the option to turn on tough and get 71% or so SL res without external buffs. Creed McGraw (v2) - Defender (Cold Domination - Dual Pistols).mbd

People who build and play tanks as pure aggro magnets and brag about how they are completely indestructible tend to suck at tanking. The reason is that offense and defense work in synergy, not in opposition. Take for example a situation where you're fighting 1 mob and some idiot blaster aggros a 2nd mob, or an ambush spawns. A turtle-tank will be unable to deal with the situation because the number of mobs is now significantly over the aggro cap leading to collapse of the backline. Conversely, a tank with both high damage and defenses will be able to help quickly kill all minions and lts in the incoming spawn reducing enemy numbers to or below the aggro cap, regaining control of the situation; while using efficient build design principles to achieve similar defensive power to the turtle-tank.

MA is a parry set, so that makes it worth building for defense. A good rad/MA can have 90% resist all except cold and perma-45% def to all with 1 stack of ATIO proc and storm's kick. People will tell you rad doesn't have -def resist. Defender's fortitude doesn't give -def resist either, but nobody with a brain ever opined this makes the defense buff worthless! The only problem, if you can call it that, is that this level of survivability is far overkill for anything you encounter. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that rad has extremely good endurance recovery. It's the armor set with the most eps (elec gets endrdx instead). A well-built rad tank should try to trade this eps for combat power. Go with an endurance-hungry 2ndary like SS, take some powers that are normally less affordable for tanks such as tactics, take more procbombed attacks, skip ageless in favor of barrier, etc.

Emp is really great, and very strong in small group situations like the one you describe. For hardmode in particular, the long lasting tohit from power boosted fort cannot be underestimated and wrecks the defenses of 4* mobs. Unfortunately, like masterminds, 99.9% of people play it wrong. A good emp can fort 6-7 people (all but the emp themselves). Most emps wander around doing cringetastic nonsense like putting heal aura on auto, and can barely keep one person forted!

The minute I saw infinitum I knew it would be bad, and I was proven right once I scrolled down and saw nonsense like 3x hecatomb 3x tod in ET. What you've actually done is to screw up a perfectly serviceable build which has a defined focus with useless trash, and I'm about explain why. On the left is your build. On the right is the Croax build. When we look at the Croax build (right), we can see that it has a goal in sight and sets out to achieve it. Namely, softcap SL def and hardcap SL res. The other damtypes are not capped because this is a calculated tradeoff. Resist stalkers cannot muster enough def/res to get anywhere near to capping everything without taking major hits to their primary role which is dps. Therefore, mitigation is focused on the most common damtypes. Your build fails to improve upon this concept. In fact, what you've done is trade away a bunch of resists and recharge, and un-softcapped yourself from SL to pursue a mediocre amount of FC def. Furthermore, your build has agility alpha which does little for your defenses (I'm going to assume it's from the infinitum EM/EA build). Stalkers should always try to take musculature if they can, as the Croax build does; my own EM/EA softcaps def to all except psi while also having permahaste and musculature core. It's not hard. To be fair, you do say this: If you are serious about this, you need to softcap fire defense. That means taking epic blasts, such as zapp and ball lightning from mu, and slotting winter sets in them. As you can see from the Croax build, a stalker gets 20% def to all roughly for free. Slotting 6x blistering cold/avalanche/winter's bite/frozen blast and at least 4x assassin's mark is another 25% FC def, bringing us to 45%. There's your fire farming stalker. Do I recommend it? Only as a novelty or challenge build. For general use, go with something less specialized. Moral of the story: just because someone has a bunch of builds, or a lot of experience making them, is no guarantee they are any good. A lot of people simply have never had anyone challenge them, or if they had, just dismissed it to protect their ego. Furthermore, even if the builds are good, you should understand the build goals, assumptions and intended use cases of each build before attempting to adopt elements from them. You tried to mash together a general-purpose fiery aura build with a build for a fundamentally different armor set to produce something for your oddball challenge. I'm morbidly curious how your shoulder devil convinced you this would work.

Fighting is a poor choice on most FF fenders. 1) set IO builds easily softcap without weave. 2) SO builds struggle to afford the endurance cost. Dispersion bubble, maneuvers, either CJ or hover, both 3% uniques, and agility core paragon bring you to about 32.5% def to all. 6x gaussians makes that 35%, so we only need 10% more def. The ATIO sets offer 5% ranged and 5% aoe defense bringing us to 40%. The remaining amount is easily made up, for example 6x t-strikes 2x botzs for another 5% ranged def. If you plan on capping aoe def in addition to ranged, a set of winter's bite can be more valuable (especially since aoe def is generally rarer). 6x t-strikes is 3.75% ranged def. 6x winter's bite is 2.5% ranged and 2.5% aoe def, a total of 5%. The tradeoff is that winter's bite does not have the acc but with the added slot-efficiency this can be made up elsewhere and still result in a net gain. For fenders/corrs the power boost in soul mastery is generally better: Lesser recharge resulting in higher uptime. Soul mastery has more valuable powers such as an epic toggle with exotic resists and soul drain (albeit weaker than the one in dark mastery).