Zect

Interesting post. I don't see this as drama, necessarily; a lot of hobbyist projects (even some commercial games) communicate much more frequently with their users, so someone unfamiliar with the cadence of content release here would naturally wonder what is up. As has been explained upthread, HC's style is to release content in large, substantial and well-tested patches to emulate a commercial MMO's release schedule (at a slower cadence). The HC team seems to prefer the demeanor of a commercial development studio, and they keep their cards very close to their chests. Thunderspy and Rebirth play a lot more fast and loose with changes, and are closer to other hobbyist/open source projects in that regard. Each approach has its own advantage, and I don't think one is necessarily "better". I think it's great that all the servers have their own style, and their own strengths (HC has a very professional network/database side, while other servers' strength lies in costume pieces and other creative things, etc.). And it's normal in these kinds of fan communities for people to be irritated especially when they're repeatedly asked "hey, why aren't you doing this thing the way those other people are?", but remember, competition and comparison between servers is healthy and benefits all. The best way forward for coh is a variety of different servers, each appealing to a different kind of player, attempting to present the best possible gameplay experience. In game as in life, diversity is strength.

The @Hyperstrike build is absolutely terrible; it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of rad armor, a poor grasp of the invention system, and ignorance of build design principles (slot-efficiency, breakpoints, trading-off excess capacity in one area to gain in another, etc.). It only looks impressive in mids because the author has toggled on meltdown, which is active a grand total of 22.8% of the time (it is wholly dependent on meltdown to cap SL res). The author has also set gamma boost to 0% HP in order to artificially inflate the regen provided by the power. This is highly accurate, as such a terrible build will soon be at 0% HP. Your build inherits a lot of the same mistakes: Low rech and hasten taken late - it should be taken around the time particle shield is taken, to increase its availability Low slow resistance - critical on a resist set with minimal defense Excess end that is not used for anything - it should be traded out for defensive or offensive power since rad armor has good drain resist neg resist hole - negative damage is prevalent in endgame (nictus, cot, BP, etc.) I'll discuss briefly how to cap resists on a brute, since that is the biggest issue for you. For resists, we don't need to get all the way to the cap (90%), and we can actually build for "only" 87-88%, because the reactive defenses unique gives more res as we take damage, which we expect to do as a minimal-def set. Broadly, there are two approaches you can take to this: cycle multiple defensives, e.g. meltdown > melee core hybrid > rune of protection on a 4 min gapless cycle. In this case we should aim to hit a breakpoint defined by the weakest click, in this case melee core hybrid, at ~17% res to all with one in range. Therefore, with this example we would not build for more than 70% res to all, because any excess is wasted. build for resistance bonuses, in which case we want to get all the way to 87-88% on as many damtypes as possible. The 2nd approach, which is what you are going for, very hard with set bonuses alone. One way to help achieve it is to use bonuses that are essentially permanent, such as the 2 min buff from barrier core. That is worth 5% res and def to all that is permanent, lowering the cap to 82-83%. (Note: this does cost you the ability to use barrier reactively to help the team, for example in response to a burst of damage.) Here is an example of the barrier core approach. (Note: 100% slow resist.) Assigning the remaining slots is left as an exercise for the reader; I do not provide complete builds on principle, as I consider it unsporting. It would deprive you of the pleasure and opportunity to learn build design skills. Both you and hyperstrike make certain mistakes which prevent you achieving the required numbers: First, you both took cardiac core. You should really question if you need this much endurance on an armor set that has more recovery than WP has and gets further end from the ATIO and radiation therapy. You can instead take resilient core, which boosts res more than either cardiac alpha does, effectively trading endredux for res. Resilient core paragon's res enhancement is 65% stronger than cardiac (33% vs 20%) and worth something around 9% res to most damtypes on a brute. Second, you should prioritize slot-efficient sets which provide high resistance per slot and/or provide rech alongside res (more on this in a bit). For example, you have 3x avalanche and 3x armageddon in atom smasher (12% FC res). However, 6x armageddon would provide 6% FC and 6% tox/psi res - the same amount, different types - but also add a huge amount of recharge and acc. On those few occasions where you picked slot-efficient choices, you choose to prioritize the less important damtype (FC), you should prioritize EN res. It is more acceptable to have a cold hole than an EN hole because, as discussed above, EN damage is common in endgame while cold is rare. There are also a lot of ways to cap cold res in a pinch, like winter temp powers, and in HM where these don't work a lot of support sets provide cold res. You are in fact so enthusiastic about FC res, that you have 2 sets of 6% FC res over the rule of 5. You should reduce the FC res and invest more in EN res because FC res is comparatively easier to get. Examples of good sources of EN res are: 2x hypersonic - goes in flight powers. 2x cloud senses - goes in soul mastery epic attacks. 3x Unbreakable guard - note that one set of these should include the 7.5% HP unique. I do not see it in your build. It is usually worth it to slot unbreakable guards over other res sets, because EN res is just that precious. 3x Force feedback - can be muled in kick. Some sets, e.g. SS (KO blow) can fit it in a primary attack. 3x Adjusted targeting - you are already using this; good work. 4x shield wall - since you need the shieldwall res unique anyway, the real cost is only 3 slots. 6x bombardments - low resistance per added slot, but comes with SL res, rech and a damage proc. Requires an epic aoe. The biggest error in both your builds is the abysmal rech and the lack of slow resist. Rad armor is a set with two click sustains; hence, sacrificing rech for defenses does not necessarily produce higher survivability (and both your builds completely fail to even achieve higher res anyway). Most of my rad brutes have between 150-175% rech on top of capped resists. I loaded up the first rad armor brute build I had on this device and my particle shielding recharges in 34.7s; yours does in 48.45s. That means my build pumps out 40% more particle shields than yours does, on top of superior resistances and attacks. Furthermore, the regeneration from particle shielding lasts only 30s (mids shows the duration for recovery instead, which is longer at 60s). Why are you willing to spend an epic on a lackluster +20% regen but not make the nearly +195% regen power as close to permanent as possible? You're paying pounds to pinch pennies. On top of all this, mediocre slow resist means losing all of this critical sustain power when under heavy damage. Back to your choice of epic: I don't like to advise people to change epics or pools because it's usually a playstyle thing; but you really need to ask yourself if you need the recovery from physical perfection on an armor set with this much end, and the acc from focused acc on a set with -def out the wazoo. Either trading out for lotg mules or an epic blast/aoe would enable new options to gain rech and slot-efficient res. Rad armor's strengths are strong resistances, high debuff resists against the 2 most dangerous debuffs (slow and drain), powerful click defensives and sustains, and a unique wide area aoe tool in ground zero. Building upon these strengths with slot-efficient resistance set bonuses and high recharge is the key to delivering superior defensive and offensive capacity.

There will always be some value to mezzing troublesome mobs, but blasters can also be successful without them. the game talks up the possibility of making it a ranged aoe stun by comboing it with powerboost/boost range, but what it doesn't tell you is that doing so severely reduces the duration of the mag 3 portion of the stun.

Imo, elec/ stalker is very underrated. It is one of the stalkers with really good aoe, and stalkers neatly make up for elec melee's traditional weakness of relatively low ST damage. You think shield/elec tankers are gods, you should try it on a stalker.

For an attack chain comprised of pure sonic attacks? No. I believe the optimal chain would then be scream > shout > screech bottlenecked by an easy ~203% rech in screech - essentially, the 3 highest-dpa attacks. (You can compare the dpa of attacks conveniently on your own. In mids, windows > power graphs > select damage /anim from the middle dropdown list.) You seem intent on using the procced-out dominate as an attack, which complicates the picture. However, after thinking about it, I cannot imagine any setup where dropping shout results in a dps gain. Your best attack chain within reach may be scream > shout > screech > dominate requiring 182% rech in dominate (basically, 182% global rech if not using agility or any rech enhancements in dominate). Please feel free to prove me wrong, however. Yes. Agility is a dps loss if you derive your dps from proc-bombing, so the tradeoff is one of defense vs offense. Normally, for a rad/sonic the dps loss will be small because /sonic is not a heavily proccable set anyway (compared to, say, DP), but your build with proc-bombed dominate is an outlier. You can certainly cut back on defense - I usually run with a modest 32.5% to all on my rads. If you are going this route I recommend dropping world of confusion entirely. You should be able to muster enough defense without the coercive persuasion, and world of confusion has a very small radius compared to your hold aura (8ft vs 15ft).

I think 1) your alpha choice is terrible, 2) many of your IO set choices are awful, and 3) your amount of global rech is too low. To be fair, I also think you have chosen build goals that are somewhat difficult for a budget build - slot-efficient aoe def does not come cheap, see e.g. 6x frozen blasts for a cool 120 million. 1) You choose spiritual radial, which enhances healing (?), recharge, slow (??), and stun (???) duration. Note that slow in enhancements refers to -movespeed, not -recharge, which in any event should not need enhancing given the sleets and ice storms you are stacking on enemies. So in fact, apart from the rech (which you do need), the only thing this alpha is boosting is the +regen from health and the HP from hoarfrost. A much better alpha would be agility (partial core revamp, if you intend to stop at the rare tier) which buffs recharge, endmod and defense. These apply to a broad swathe of your powers - your stamina and heat loss, your defense auras and shields, and all of your powers that need rech. For example, the endmod part of agility not only increases the recovery gained by your heat loss, but could replace the performance shifter: endmod in your stamina, saving a slot; and the defense part could save many slots currently dedicated to shields, maneuvers, and arctic fog. 2) Your IO set choice is puzzling at times, and I'm not certain how much of this is due to budget and how much is unfamiliarity with the options available. Here's an example for defense. In maneuvers you put 5x serendipity for 1.25 AOE defense. Discounting the free base slot, this is 0.3125 Defense Per Added Slot - a complete joke. Put this back in the trash where it belongs. Compare that to the following positional defense per added slot: 2x botz: 1.250 6x defender's bastion: 1.000, +10% rech 6x ice mistral's torment: 0.750, +6.25% rech 6x thunderstrike: 0.750 3x thunderstrike: 0.625 6x red fortune: 0.500, +5% rech 5x serendipity: 0.316 We want to choose sets with a reasonable DPAS (>0.7), and/or which offer an accompanying rech or other desired bonus as well. Obviously, the set bonus is not the only important factor, but it is a useful guide. Here's an example of how your build can be improved by more efficient choices. Ice bolt: 6x ice mistral's torment. No, I'm not kidding - it has damage enhancement. Maneuvers: 6x red fortune Heat loss: 6x preemptive optimization Dominate: Endoplasm: acc/mez Drop ice blast. Take ice shield as the level 2 power and combat jumping at level 4. Your attack chain is ice bolt > freeze ray > (0.062s gap) > ice bolt > bitter ice blast. This costs the same number of slots, but gains 15% rech, about 2.5% aoe def, and a damage proc in ice bolt, in addition to other minor bonuses. This would further allow us to either cut a slot of botz in super jump and save a slot (if keeping the original defense amount of 41.3%), or push further to 45%. You also save a power choice. 3) try to get to 150-156% global rech if possible, which is permahasten with a T4 agility core alpha. Your low amount of global rech means more common IO's dedicated to popping up the rech of things like benumb and sleet and heat loss. More common IO's means less set bonuses. See the chain reaction? Mids assumes your hasten is active for the full duration and when it is not permanent, the displayed recharge time is shorter than it really is. Your hasten will actually recharge in 136s (explanation - warning, math), or with a 16s downtime, which then has a knock-on effect on your uptime of sleet and heat loss. You can drop a slot of acc from infrigidate and benumb, by the way; they are overcapped for +3's, and you have -def and aim to help out. This is much less playstyle-agnostic, but for a tanky fender, and I'm only saying this because you specifically say your fender is tanky: you should contemplate the fighting pool. Right now, a lot of your slot-efficiency is tied up chasing SL res and aoe def bonuses. You don't have any room to slot an unbreakable guard +7.5% hp for example, because you need the SL res from lotg and aegis. This then reduces you to slotting 3x lotg for HP. See what I mean? You already have a free power choice from the optimization above. You don't need vengeance when you're turning the team into SR scrappers. You can arguably drop dominate (but I understand the appeal of boss holding) and choose one of the villain epics with a resist toggle as the 1st power pick. That's 3 powers to take tough/weave and effortlessly get the def and SL res you seem to value so much.

Shockwave is good (soft control and FF proc), but do not skip howl to take it. Howl is one of only 2 aoe powers you have that applies -res (the nuke being the other) and invaluable for stacking with your enervating field. Anyone recommending skipping howl must supply a very good answer for what you gain in place of it that is worth not stacking an extra -20% res on an entire group of mobs in the alpha. Your AM is just barely permanent with 2x 53 D-sync conduits (endmod/rech), if you are looking to save a slot. Alternately, 6x preemptive optimization is an alternative way to gain ranged def at a net cost of only 3 added slots. If you drop the explosive strikes in kick and scrounge up 1 more slot this will fully softcap you to ranged, and even give a bit more recharge. Here is an experiment you can try. The next time you play solo, use an enhancement unslotter and unslot the +5 perfshifter: endmod you have in stamina to test if your blue bar holds up under pressure. This will tell you if that slot can be reassigned elsewhere. If it does, try unslotting the miracle: +recovery as well. Perma-AM gives significant endurance and introduces the possibility of slashing +recovery slotting and +recovery uniques in health/stamina (perma-heatloss coldfenders may consider the same optimization). Your t3 blast is screech; better DPA and it stuns. Yes, it does real damage now. Replace Karma -kb with Steadfast -kb in mind over body for a small recovery bonus. * * * You seem to be aiming for a multi-vector defense strategy, which is very demanding. Have you given thought to an alpha slot, or is this exclusively a pre-incarnate build? The slot-efficiency from an alpha slot can significantly help achieve this build goal. Here is an example of how agility core alpha enables a perma-hasten, perma-AM 40% def to all rad/sonic. Assigning the remaining slots and power choices is left as an exercise for the reader. Powers are to illustrate the use of sets only; swapping them out for your preferred powers is encouraged. A defense amp, 2 min barrier core, or a single other defender running maneuvers will softcap (45%) you to everything. Putting on radiation infection on this build will i-cap (yes, i-cap) you against +4 incarnate critters, for example.

Res is overall more durable than def on a 90% resist cap AT, even though on paper it mitigates less than a def softcap. It is less susceptible to debuff, does not care whether enemies are incarnate or not, and doesn't melt in the face of most of the really high-damage stuff (multi-venged nemesis, HM EB critters, etc.) - you know, the things you actually want armored AT survivability for. However, FA brutes cannot hardcap SLENFC resists without trying, unlike tankers, if you are trying to build for rech and slow res at the same time. As an example, there is only about 40% slot-efficient EN res (the toughest resistance to build for) for brutes in the IO system, for example; added to 35% from native toggles, that still only brings you to 75%, well short of the brute resist cap. And there is no point to building for resists on a brute if you are not utilizing the higher brute resist cap. You may need the resist alphas (resilience or cardiac) or 2min barrier core to cap; cycling other res defensives such as melee core; or living with either a cold and/or psi hole, possibly both. A high recharge, high slow resist FA brute requires careful attention to build design.

You're in luck! My favorite coh activity is explaining to forumites in excruciating detail why their builds are terrible, their slot-efficiency awful, their design goals schizophrenic, their understanding of how to play their powersets utterly lacking, and how I will now proceed to rearrange all their IO's to save two slots. Brace yourself! In all seriousness: this build is actually not garbage. You have a large amount of recharge and have prioritized damage. The changes I can suggest to you are chiefly minor optimizations, rather than fixes to fatal build design mistakes or fundamental misconceptions in how to utilize the sets or AT. The biggest question facing you is whether you intend to build for some defense (likely ranged, as you have a resist epic toggle). It is possible to be successful with low/no defense, but your slotting implies you have tried to build for some, so I will present suggestions on how to increase ranged defense. It should be easy to hit at least 32.5% ranged def (more will require more significant changes to slotting, including losing damage procs). Both these procs are quite weak; Decimation is only 1 PPM and lasts a mere 5.25 seconds. Entropic chaos only heals for 5% of base HP, about ~60 HP on blasters. For reference, you already heal 25 hps just idling on the sidewalk. If you intend to pursue ranged defense, scrounging a slot from elsewhere and making this 6x Thunderstrikes would add 2.5 ranged def (upping thunderstrike's ranged Defense Per Added Slot to more reasonable levels). These two powers have small base values. Hence, it is not usually wise to spend a lot of slots enhancing them because this gives only minor returns (especially since defense is Schedule B, i.e. less enhancement value per slot). Case in point, if I stripped out everything but the lotg's and the resist uniques from these powers you would save 3 slots but lose only 1% def to all. Those 3 slots could be invested elsewhere for a bigger defense set bonus. Instead of pursuing the 1.87% HP bonus from the 3rd piece, removing a slot to invest in unbreakable guard: +7.5% HP (resistance sets), while changing this to 1x +5 common rech IO and a Gaussian's proc, would give the same proc, higher recharge, and about 4 times more HP bonus. Alternately, 6x gaussians if you can scrounge up the slots is possible too - the DPAS is poor, but it does not require losing damage procs in your attacks. Speaking of boosting, you really should boost your IO's. Boosters are only 1.2 million ish on the AH. To input boosted IO's in mids, right-click on the slot, select the desired IO, tap "+" on the numpad to boost and place as normal. Note that the annihilation -res proc, like achilles heel, does not stack with itself (proccing again just refreshes the duration). One proc, slotted in an alpha strike power, with high procrate, is decent. Multiple procs run into diminishing returns extremely fast. Since you already have one in Glue Arrow with a high procrate, you can consider removing the proc here and the one in OSA, and saving slots. This would then open up options such as 6x defiant barrage (10% rech, 2.5% ranged def and status protection proc, you do lose a damage proc though) or 6x artillery (a little over 4% ranged def). Remove the numina's proc from health and place it here. Change the common healing IO to numina's convalesence: heal and boost to +5. This gives more regen due to the set bonus. When using procs that can go in multiple powers, try to see if you can place them together with other members of their set for a small bonus, especially since many sets have a member that is common-IO equivalent. You have a performance shifter proc but no panacea proc. If you have only 1 slot to spend on a sustain proc then it should be the panacea proc, because it gives more end over time and heals as well. The health from the proc can even wake you up from sleep. Evasive maneuvers does not give def in combat (unlike some powers such as stealth and supe invis, that continue to give a smaller amount in combat). It is a worthy lotg mule, however. Fire is one of the blast sets that has a snipe to use in its ST rotation (generally a chain of flares > blaze > flares > blazingbolt at your rech). Snipes when used in combat gain bonus damage depending on how much bonus tohit you have, up to a cap of 22%. Therefore, fire/ blasters should consider leadership, for tactics. Lightly-slotted tactics and a kismet unique give ~20% tohit. You could potentially drop evasive maneuvers and 1 other power to replace it with maneuvers/tactics, which would also give you more def. You have 2 knockdown patches and an aoe stun, and all of them are essentially usable every spawn. You should ask yourself whether you really need all 3 controls and how often you will actually use all of them. If you are willing to drop one, I would probably drop this - the stun duration is very short. The aegis unique does little for you. You went from 14% to 19% psi resist on a blaster with 1299 HP. This means your EHP against psi increased by 93 hp. The unbreakable guard unique I mentioned to you earlier gives 90 HP... except it works against all damage. Rather than attempting to build for small amounts of resistances, some ranged defense (e.g. 6x gladiator's armor for 2.5 ranged def - low DPAS but allows ranged def from a set category that usually does not have it) would actually protect you better from psi attacks overall as many psi attacks are ranged vector, including many rikti, illusionist, and tarantula attacks. If you like, this is a good place to mule the preventive medicine proc and save a slot. Despite being called a "proc" the preventive medicine proc is more like a global. It works (on you) even when slotted in ally-only powers such as heal other and even when they are not used. With the slots you save you can consider muling sets for ranged defense, such as 6x stupefy in boxing or 3x explosive strike in kick, or reinvest in other build goals.

Honestly, either is fine. The one in your post is the traditional keyboard numpad keypad. The one in mine is the telephone keypad (and the one found on most MMO mice).

In All-Star Superman #1, Grant Morrison told the origin story of Superman in a mere 8 words: Doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope, kindly couple. (With my trademark arrogance, I would improve upon his work for a non-comic-reading audience by modifying it as: Doomed planet, desperate parents, last hope, new home.) Even this pales in comparison to the story so formidable, it is both its own title and punchline - "For sale: baby shoes, never worn", at a devastating 6 words and attributed to Ernest Hemingway, though the evidence is weak and the true author likely unknown. It takes a skilled writer to do so much with so little, which is why your attempt falls flat. And while I don't have any moral opposition to expanding the length of the bio field, part of me appreciates that it is relatively short. A little incentive to learn the art, so to speak.

I want the 3x4 hotbar layout to actually match a keypad grid instead of whatever the current layout is supposed to be. Current: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Desired: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

I predict endurance issues with your build due to the large number of underslotted toggles and procced attacks you are running. You are already burning 2.3 eps idling on the sidewalk, and yet you want to run things like repulsion aura and hasten. Dropping a round of repulsion bomb, howl, shockwave and dreadful wail will set you back over 50 end. One thing you can consider is to move def's bastion into howl, and put 6x thunderstrikes in shout. This turns howl into a reliable pbaoe heal when you use it on groups, for only ~0.3% ranged def less (still softcapped to ranged). This is playstyle dependent, and you may prefer the heal in the ST blast for AV fights. You do not need the 3x freebird in flight. At least, pulling a slot and spending it on an unbreakable guard +7.5% maxhp unique will gives 5 times as much HP as the set bonus you are chasing. Consider this slotting instead: Mind over body: Steadfast +3% def, 3x GA (+3% def, end/res, res) Tough: 3x unbreakable guard (+7.5% HP, end/res, res) This spends the same amount of slots and literally gives more of everything including resists, endredux, recovery and HP for only 1 less point of kb resist. Your mistake lay in not only choosing inefficient IO sets, but also in placing the set with higher enhancement values (titanium coating) in the power with lower base values (toughness) thus reducing its effectiveness, then resorting to set bonuses to try and make up the difference - in other words, paying pounds to pinch pennies. Mule the uniques in the weaker power and enhance the power with higher base value. For further potential optimization, drop the GA: res, boost the GA: end/res to +5 (as a PVPIO it does not reduce enhancement value when exemplared), and get your -kb from a single botz -kb in flight. This still keeps SL res capped. Dominate is not a bad attack, though note that an attack chain not comprised entirely of /sonic blasts slightly lowers the amount of -res you stack on a single target. If you are willing to experiment with different epics, soul offers power boost that works with your shields, while dark epic build can potentially softcap all 3 positions (due to access to pbaoe's and hence obliterations) and enjoy perma-souldrain. Epics are not a permanent choice, and you can have multiple builds with different epics, so you may consider experimenting at your leisure. If you do get that far, nerve alpha is not a bad choice for +def and +acc. That would allow you to drop some of the accuracy or def IO's from your procced/frankenslotted powers and reinvest them elsewhere.

The go-to is ice. That's not to say that other epics are necessarily bad, but if 1) you can get away with it, 2) need nothing specific from the other epics, and 3) concept is amenable, it's hard to recommend anything but ice. Ice being SL def is not a problem, and page 4 typed defense changes are not a problem for competent builders. Optimized builds can get 40-45% to all non-psi without compromising rech. It does suck against things like high difficulty carnies because it is mathematically impossible to muster any significant amount of psi def from IO sets. Psi was better in the days when softcapping wasn't as easy. 2 lotg mules, mindlink being essentially a 2nd weave, and a home for coercive persuasion (potentially another +5 ranged) were nothing to scoff at in the age before agility core alpha. These days, there is enough def and rech floating around that the appeal is significantly weakened. Still not bad for newbie doms because it makes building very easy. Dark I think is underrated. Even with only 50% uptime, soul drain on top of one of the assault sets that can 3x stack the +dmg proc (say, /dark - midnight grasp) is giggle-inducingly hilarious. Ever wanted to be your personal kin? Note, however, you are unlikely to get a well-saturated soul drain just because of how doms play. I think fire is okay if all your aoe's suck, and primal is okay if your assault set gives you trouble building a good ST chain. The one I'm really intrigued to hear about is mace. Ice has nearly the same toolkit but equivalent or better (SL def shield, -res, aoe and T9 defensive).

Most of the above builds are low-rech builds, which kill more slowly and heal less frequently. Here is an example of how to gain permahasten with a spiritual core alpha build. (Note that in combat we will gain another ~2-3% res to all from the reactive defenses proc as we expect to take and heal damage; this caps SLENF with C at about 88%. You can properly cap if you wish, but be wary of wasting large amounts of slots for the sakes of nice round numbers in mids.) Assigning the remaining 13 slots and 2 powers is left as an exercise for the reader. The epic aoe can be any aoe you like. FS/GFS are 5-slotted to give the option of an achiles' proc in either. An alternative is to go resilient core instead, worth ~9% SLEN res - nothing to scoff at considering how precious EN res is - or cardiac core, and trading in some of the res bonuses above for rech bonuses. This can potentially produce higher offense and defense on certain power layouts, however in my experience spiritual is generally superior. An option is to take barrier core for your destiny, and barrier is exceedingly powerful on a res/heal tanker such as fire/, in addition to being an incredibly strong destiny in actually challenging content such as hard mode (some builds eg. /SS can benefit more from ageless, however). Barrier core provides essentially perma-5% res and def to all which further eases build requirements and allows investment in rech or dps. If you are serious about building for defense on your fire/, then barrier core becomes the most optimal choice because 5% def to all that doesn't cost slots is simply too powerful. So this shows the kinds of build goals that are within reach of a res-capped, permahasten, 90-100% slow res build, which I consider the fundamentals of fiery aura. You can get to ~67% psi res fairly trivially: add 4x imparmor and 1x aegis unique to the above build. Barrier brings you to 72%, double-stacked ATIO proc brings you to ~79%, and that is the max you will get without heavy slot investment. You can get to ~45% melee def with some effort: change the 3x unbreakable guards to 4x, add both +3% def uniques, slot 5x avalanche and 5x gauntleted fist, and take barrier. I do not recommend pursuing i-capping, or for that matter even softcapping on a resist set. You sacrifice a lot - it's orders of magnitude harder to get from 45% to 59% than it is to get from 30% to 45%. 90% res and your heals are sufficient against anything that is not an itrial AV, hardmode AV, Lord recluse with his red tower up, the eb general spawn in ITF on +4/x8 (takes too long to kill for nearly all tankers due to their T9), or instances of irresitible damage. However, def that comes from the 2ndary (eg. a parry set or /MA) with minimal slot investment can be valuable.

For this specific combo, I recommend scrappers even though regen performs better on brutes (the performance ceiling, at least as regards survivability, is definitely much higher on brutes). Scrappers have access to shadow meld from soul epic, while brutes do not. Shadow meld has high uptime and low rech for such a strong defensive clicky: 90s base, 15s duration; easily within every-spawn availability. It really does neuter alpha strikes. Brutes do not have shadow meld, so their build requirements are stricter right out of the gate. They can utilize their higher resist cap and take rune of protection instead, however rune costs 3 power picks to shadow meld's 2, which complicates a set such as TW that wants a lot of its powers. Since rune has a long downtime, brutes need to cycle multiple long-recharge defensive clickies including incarnate powers, which means their power ceiling is attained very late and they are more vulnerable to mistakes. Building for resist is also much harder than building for def, especially if you need a ton of rech on the side.

Only the debuff part of OSA is autohit. The ignited burn patch damaging attack is not, and can miss; this is all clearly listed in cod (which you link to at the top of your own guide) and visible in the combat log (under the power name "fire"). The lockdown proc is only 8s duration. Against +4's, that becomes ~4s. It is alright when used in the alpha strike as you describe so you can get a 2nd power off, but underwhelming in many cases. Personally, I find the recommendations for slotting and sets disappointing. I think they reflect how you either do not know how to build for high rech and def simultaneously, or fail to see the value in high rech, as evidenced by your own builds and how you latch on to pacing of the turtle for ranged def but neglect ice mistal's song's rech and a damage proc. A proper discussion of slotting recommendations needs to include Analysis of build goals and mitigation strategy (what rech to shoot for? what def and res to shoot for? what are the relative benefits of each strategy?); What enhancement values the power needs to emphasize; Comparison of sets based on their enhancement values, set bonuses, slot-efficiency, and procs in light of the above Take your lackluster recommendation for ice arrow: You don't explain what either of these options do, when they are valuable and what they are supposed to accomplish. Here's an example: 6x Lockdown has low ranged Defense Per Added Slot at only 0.75 DPAS and is rarely a first-choice set for a ranged softcap build. However when pursuing a R/aoe dual softcap or all-vector softcap its DPAS raises to significantly better levels. 2x Basilisk's gaze has much higher DPAS of 1.25, with an option to get a rech bonus at 4x which may allow trimming rech bonuses elsewhere to reinvest in def. The catch is that as a level 30 set it has poor enhancement value which makes it weak in long base rech powers. It may need frankenslotting to prop up the rech enhancement which lowers its slot-efficiency. 6x damage procs makes ice arrow a strong ST blast does good damage, but it needs to replace a weaker attack and/or fill up the attack chain to get the most value from it. It is good, for example, on controllers who have few options to get a strong ST blast early on if their primary does not provide it, or for AR's who do not want to fiddle with using Ignite as a T3 blast. Similarly, you cannot just recommend any -tohit or accurate -tohit set in flash arrow (though I will give you credit for doing the bare minimum - mentioning the cloud senses proc disabling its ability to not aggro mobs): 5x Siphon insight, for example, has low DPAS but is one of few sets that give SL def on non-melee non-taunt powers. That could be valuable for an SL, SLR or rainbow defense build because instead of spending slots muling KC in brawl they are gaining useful enhancement value at the same time. 4x cloud senses has slot-efficient rech and some EN res. 6.25% rech is normally a 5/6-piece bonus. However it is a lv 30 set - see basilisk's gaze above. 4x DWD has less rech but is a level 50 set and provides a lot more -tohit enhancement. The three sets are actually very carefully balanced against each other and each is good in a different situation, yet all this nuance is lost when you blithely say "yeah, put a full set of tohitdebuff or accurate tohit debuff in it". Your discussions of tactics, alternate uses of powers, and playstyle read like a corporate powerpoint presentation constructed by copy-pasting soundbites from cod. What the fuck does "regeneration debuff, two stacks" on EMP arrow even mean? "It provides strong -regen for 15s and a weaker -regen that lasts an additional 30s, which mids' does not show" would at least sound comprehensible. Draw comparisons to other powers, for players that might have played them. Identify nonstandard or unexpected proc and power interactions. Describe how powers might influence the outcome of particular encounters or strategies. "Glue arrow can replace hoverblasting in a pinch if you want a different travel power." "Flash arrow neuters a spawn's tohit the way that fearsome stare or radiation infection might." "EMP arrow is also a location-based sonic dispersion. It can be used defensively as well as offensively." Sure, some of these can be inferred for people already familiar with the game but there is no harm in being comprehensive rather than assuming most readers will know what you mean. ESP is not a powerset normal people have.

Interesting topic. I view the SO/IO debate as being clouded because there are really 2 different issues at play: the performance floor and the performance ceiling (what you can achieve with full optimization, IO's, incarnates etc.) At the performance floor, you want to ensure that every set can muster at least a certain bare minimum level of performance, but I don't recall any statements from Homecoming team on what they believe the floor for this game should be; the ancient Cryptic-era quote about a hero being roughly equivalent to 3 white minions would probably be laughed out of the room at this point. Regardless, I do not think it is necessary that every set perform the same out of the gate. I think it's fine that some sets are easier to pick up and play for less skilled players, and others demand more thoughtful, skill-dependent play. This is a feature, not an imbalance, because it offers different gameplay styles for different players. More generally, regarding the subject, 1. Regen is one of those sets that must receive AT-specific modifications, due to how drastically healing and regeneration scale with maxHP. Right now, the set performs much better on brutes and sentinels (who receive an invisible layer of mitigation from range) than it does on scrappers. Conversely, if brute regen is 1:1 ported to tanks in its current form, it will be a monstrously powerful defensive set. It needs to be tuned for each specific AT that has it. 2. Regen is one of the few sets, of any type, that has a viable argument for needing buffs. However, I think the buffs it needs are rarely the ones people ask for. There are two things in particular I think it needs: Slow resistance. Any set so dependent on click sustain and that is not easily softcappable (and no, mog doesn't count - it's an anti-alpha and anti-burst tool) needs slow res, about 20-25% worth. Fire has it, rad has it - regen must have it. Offensive buffs. When regen heals, it spends animation time defensively rather than offensively and therefore suffers a dps loss. The lazy option would be to slap some rech on quick recovery and call it a day, however I personally think some kind of mini-buildup upon using integration or mog would be especially thematic and reward active play. 3. Regardless of what changes, if any, are ever made to regen, I think there are some that should be off the table no matter what, in order to preserve regen's identity as a set focused on healing, regeneration, and management of click defensives: No addition of always-on defense, damage resistance, -def resistance, or changes that pander to the oppressive softcap meta No full uptime on defensive clicks such as mog and IH, not even with optimal rech builds; the sentinel change to IH in this respect was especially pernicious and should be altered to be more in line with regen's identity. This game has already been heavily homogenized to be only about passive mitigation, perma-buffs, and always-on toggles, sets and autopowers. This game does not need another invuln or WP. This game needs a set focused on active play and intelligent management of multiple defensive resources (clicks), in order to diversify its gameplay. This game needs regen. Of course! Not to use, mind you, but an early GA/Steadfast mule. Obama there is laughing at forumites who grossly underestimate the power of set-muling, while being softcapped on his SR scrapper in the 20's.

I burst out laughing when I saw all the common endredux IO's. That's how you know a man is desperate for juice! I identify 2 problems with your build. First of all, it is very low damage despite all the procs. This means you need many more attacks, especially costly aoe attacks, to defeat the same enemies. You have 1) no dominator ATIO +dmg proc, 2) no apoc purple damage proc, 3) no embrace of fire - absolutely criminal on a /fire dom, 4) no fire imps, and 5) and your attacks are all slotted inefficiently, often with useless trash like devastation hold procs. An example: your 4 damage procs (incl 1 armageddon proc) in Hot Feet barely does the same damage on average as 3 common damage SO's, due to the low proc chance in such a large aoe power. If you replaced your slotting in Hot Feet with 5x armageddon and 1x common endredux IO, you would not only have about the same amount of endredux, but deal more damage, and gain a bunch of recharge and set bonuses that improve the rest of your powers. Secondly, your amount of global recharge is extremely low (38.8% outside of hasten). This means you use domination and consume less often. Domination refills your blue bar and is a critical part of your eps. Without a video of you playing I cannot be certain; however, I also suspect that you may be spamming fire cages. The way that you have slotted fire cages makes it an ineffectual and very costly attack. Look how much it costs, and how much damage it does, then compare it to your fireball (a proper aoe attack, which to your credit you have properly slotted), and you'll see what I mean. Dominators are a control AT first and foremost, because they apply the ultimate hard control: death. You need much better dps optimization, which will allow you to defeat the same enemies for less end.

It is. Don't take it from me, take it from someone who plays it in actually challenging content: @Linea rates SD tanks above Inv and stone tanks for 801.x.

While it needs very different build and play styles to be successful, I believe with high confidence that regen brutes (but not other AT's) are defensively comparable to many mitigation sets, and even superior in specific situations. While regen has not been directly buffed, the meta has been growing increasingly favorable to regen brutes for many years now: Addition of multiple high-powered defensive clickies Addition of practical means of building for slow resist Addition of practical means of building for damage resistance Increasing prevalence of +def buffs, due to the softcap meta; my def is regularly over 100+ on a hardmode TF. Rather than even more def, I'd rather have healing. The regen brute I am currently optimizing has superior survivability (calculated with the help of Bopper's survivability tool) compared to a reference 45% def to all, 90% res to all invuln Brute, against a +3 incarnate AV. And when something is tougher than invuln, that's when you know it's met the gold standard for durability. I am still evaluating the build through actual play, but perhaps when I'm done, I'll post a guide for people like you. * * * Anyway, I still believe that regen's greatest tragedy was being originally given to scrappers, and not just because of how regeneration and healing scale based off HP. When you think of regen, everyone thinks of Wolverine's regeneration. And when you think of Wolverine's regeneration, everyone thinks about rengenerating absolutely massive amounts of damage. And what AT is best known for absorbing massive amounts of damage? Regen is a tanker set. I demand a port!

You have enemies nearly movespeed floored: blizzard + icestorm + hotfeet = -81.6% movespeed on +4's (cap is -90%). That is likely the more significant contributor to keeping enemies securely in your blizzard.

I routinely encounter situations where I slotted something or built a certain way and: It did not perform up to expectations, or I changed my priorities/a more appealing tradeoff presented itself. This happens regularly, and is part of the normal process of build design and iteration. Truly useless things are very rare; there are a lot of off-meta things in this game but most items have at least some niche use, however small. Even kick and boxing, even intangibilities, even many 1st-generation IO sets. Nevertheless, some make even me wonder. One of the most notorious candidates I dealt with is - brace for it - experimental injection from the experimentation power pool. The power effects are aggressively underwhelming: minor status protection and recovery on a long recharge, but I can deal with that. I did not foresee the real reason the power was unusable: it had a range of... 10 (ten) feet! You try using it on friendlies once fighting breaks out. Even the injection power from medicine has a much more reasonable 40ft range.

It would not. This is because both KB2KD procs in the game reduce their procrate severely when slotted in certain powers, of which bonfire is one. View the list of powers affected in this way here (city of data). Bonfire is also very unresponsive, having a long animation time of 3.3s and a further 2.2s before it takes effect; and while the damage numbers look impressive in mids, note that it is spread out over a very long duration of 45s. * * * As for your build, there are a few issues worth considering: Alpha slot - Try to take musculature instead. Or, if you really want to stick with agility, you should try to maximize the slot-efficiency you gain from it by reducing rech bonuses; right now, you can drop about 15% rech and still be permahasten with an agility core paragon. Lack of aim and gaussian's - aim is strongly recommended on all blasters that can get it. Aim + chronos + gaussian's proc to drop a damage-capped blizzard on enemies is very powerful. Mitigation strategy - I see a lot of typed defense. Have you considered either softcapping S/L/ranged or a rainbow blaster, i.e. softcapped to all damtypes except psi? However, this would require taking either mace or ice epics plus leadership. I include a discussion of how to construct a rainbow blaster below; ignore if you have no interest in changing epics. Other slotting issues I spot: Try to put your 5x apoc in freeze ray instead, and scrounge a slot from somewhere to add an unbreakable constraint purple damage proc to it. It is your highest-DPA attack (BIB is a hair higher when unslotted, but cannot fit double purple procs as easily). Coming from someone who is a fan of -res procs and has double -res procs going in sleet etc: from experience, they generally do not have a big effect on clear times. If you are looking for slots, the annihilation -res in ice storm is the first thing I would drop. You should boost all those rech commons you are using to +5. You have no -KB; I presume this is a mistaken omission. Note that the 6% heal set bonus from Numina's does not help your temporal healing toggle, which despite the name, is absorb. While the enhancement value from enhancements usually boosts both healing and absorb (hence why they are specifically named e.g. Numina's Convalescence: Heal/Absorb), set bonuses and buffs may boost only one or the other. Since you seem to have added the 4th slot only for this bonus, this is an opportunity to save a slot as well. Overall, however, this is a build that successfully avoids most major errors in build design; well done.

This is true. However, tankers are rarely threatened by swarms of weak enemies. Those are quickly debuffed and slaughtered, and we heal more when using dark regen on them. When you need click sustain the most is typically when confronted by a single, very high damage foe, and in that case you cannot benefit from a theft of essence multi-proc. Defensive optimization should consider how to mitigate weakness against the most disadvantageous situation. That said, I freely admit this is one of the less playstyle-agnostic assumptions I make. Single, very high damage foes are not common in regular play, after all. You can argue that it is better to optimize for the much more commonly encountered situation, in which case the proc is indeed valuable. Or, attempt to enjoy the best of both worlds by sourcing enough global acc/tohit that you can afford to drop that common acc for the proc.