Zect

February 26

You can try blowing up teammates with the crystals (they stun, to help you kill your team) and then blowing up the dead teammates with fallout. PvPvE baby!

February 26

Ideal rotation is hack disembowel hack headsplitter, requiring +304% rech in hack (replace a hack or disembowel with epic snipe when available). Low rech builds, especially you with no haste and no rech boost from your armor, can mix in parries e.g. hack disembowel parry hack headsplitter, or even hack disembowel hack (small gap) headsplitter depending on rech and procs.

Most BS builds fit double -res procs in the single target rotation (achilles in hack or disembowel, gladiator's fury in headsplitter).

Your problems with endurance drain are because you have shit energy def. Energy def is really hard to get on melee toons. Slot EN def and start dodging them elec attacks.

Try 3x eradications in your aoes (boost to +5, it's a level 30 set so it has weak enhancement values), 3-4x reactive armor in your res toggles
No steadfast +3% def to all - also gives res enhancement
Combat jumping 3 slotted and heightened senses 1 slotted. Classic case of throwing away pounds to chase pennies
6x makos. Usually slotting positional def (melee, ranged, aoe) def on a typed defense (fire, cold, energy, etc) toon like your WP is a mistake. Positional def bonuses only give half the value in typed def, see. But 1 set of 6x mako's in a ST attack is not bad because EN def is so rare it sometimes is worth it even at half value, and you get SL res and a damage proc to boot.
5-6x winter's bite or 3x thunderstrike muled in an epic blast, 5x manticore's in an epic snipe, 4x basilisk's in an epic hold are also potential options depending on what epic you're willing to go with. Most builds don't need to go that far though.

Panacea can go in health, perf shifter/ptransfer can go in stamina respectively to save a slot each

Hack and parry are attacks. Slot them like attacks. All the strongest set bonuses come from attack IO sets, so it is rarely worth it to slot them as anything else. You can take 1 slot in parry to use as an lotg mule though.

3x impervium armor for psi def is useless, you will never accumulate enough psi def to be worth it. Aegis, reactive armor and unbreakable guards are the way to go.

Kismet is permanently on if you put it in a toggle instead of in parry

Good epics, assuming you have no strong ties to energy:

Soul - moonbeam (snipe) and shadowmeld (+def all, short recharge).
Mu - zapp (snipe) and ball lightning. Notably the only pick that lets you get both a snipe and an epic taoe for those who dislike melee cones.
Psi - psi lance (snipe) and harmonic mind (regen, recov, endrdx).
Ice - frozen spear (snipe)

Snipes are overpowered, and one of many reasons scrappers are so high on ST damage compared to blasters. When you are in combat, snipes do less damage but are uninterruptible, becoming just another epic blast, albeit an extremely powerful one. Snipes gain bonus damage based on your +tohit buff so they gain damage from your kismet and tactics.

February 26

Against pure damage, and in the absence of external buffs, it is generally better to have 1 kind of mit (either def or res) capped rather than to have both halfway capped. The reason is mitigation in this game shows increasing, not diminishing, returns - against all principles of game balance and common sense. Going from 0% to 10% def is barely any difference. Go from 35% to 45% and you can afk in mobs.

Brutes are not good at building for resists, so focus on def unless you are a res set or you are within easy reach of the res hardcap. Invuln for example will always hardcap SL res.

I can tell you have energy drain toggled to the max and invincibility at 1, so you can't compare these builds anyway.

February 24

Tick 'show enhancement relative levels' (and below it is also your 'show damage per activation').

They are always taken into account in ED calculations and in damage, res etc. numbers, even if the +5 signs do not show.

This back and forth makes me realize how so much of build design skills are taken for granted by veteran builders. Basics such as animation time and DPA, the PPM system and what affects procrate, how to calculate recharge time under the effect of varying recharge buffs, are probably already a lot to grasp for the average player. Then you get all the quirks of mids' and its interface, like what it does and does not calculate accurately. What does and does not stack from the same caster, and whether it stacks from a pseudopet. Weird and unexpected interactions (if I slot panacea chance for +HP/end in nature's lifegiving spores and put the patch under a teammate, who gets the proc?). Things like the heatloss-burnout interaction, 4* infiltration aggro radius, etc. Not even I know everything at the bottom of the iceberg.

February 24

4 hours ago, Story Archer said:

How do I get Mids to show/reflect the enhancement boosts like that?

Options > config > effects & maths

Chance of damage: select 'average'

View > tick 'show damage per activation'

February 24

Fightingless, 100% slow res, near permahasten, alpha only, 1 stack hardcap: 1.mbd

Unbreakable guard is in static shield.

If you need to unslot the adj targetings, e.g. because your 2ndary has feint instead of BU or you want gaussian's in the 6th slot, there are a couple ways to make up the missing res. You can replace some unbreakable guards with 4x titanium coatings for the SL res and split up ATIO2 into two sets of 3x for the EN res, for example. You can do the prestige sprint trick (all 4 prestige sprints plus normal sprint accept 2x celerity for 2.25 SL res).

February 24

On 2/22/2025 at 3:59 AM, Story Archer said:

[Majestrix II].mbd 44.45 kB · 6 downloads

The first thing that strikes me is why you are not using the ATIO1 proc to cap your resistances. You have procs turned off in punch, though that could be due to not wanting FF proc to show in mids. Might of the tanker proc is worth 6.7% res to all, which is a significant amount.

(Note: one of the recent builds of mids does not apply the might of the tanker +res proc even if you turn it on, but it will work fine in game.)

Secondly, while procs are generally good, some of your attacks might gain from slotting partial or full sets. For example, this is your KO blow.

You could instead try this. Triple hec triple proc is a classic that many fenders/corrs/blasters will be familiar with.

hecatomb proc, D, D/E

This gives slightly more damage, and also grants 6% FC res, which will allow you to cut the winter's gift pieces. While slotting a damage proc usually beats slotting a damage enhancement, high damage attacks lose less from slotting enhancements over procs, and may even gain overall. It is always worth testing enhancements vs procs on high damage attacks to see what is a gain.

Aoes are another example where the advantage of procs is much lessened, because procrate often gets shit on by area factor.

This is how you slotted your foot stomp. (Last slot reserved for FF proc)

Let's compare this with a set IO slotting (last slot ditto):

all but D/R

At first, it seems like a clear win for the procs, gaining 55.6, or +20.9% damage. However, note the lower recharge time on the 2nd footstomp. The 2nd slotting allows +30% more footstomps over the same period of time.

Spoiler

power activations per second = 1/(recharge duration + animation time)

1st slotting: 0.085005 foot stomps/second

2nd slotting: 0.11057 foot stomps/second

(0.11057/0.085005) * 100% = 130% as many footstomps per second

Consider that the 2nd slotting means more knockdowns from foot stomp (= mitigation), more FF procs, less end cost, higher acc, and +15% acc, +10% rech and +6% of that FC res you seem to be slotting for, and the advantage of the procs is less clear-cut.

On 2/22/2025 at 3:59 AM, Story Archer said:

On that topic, is Gamma Boost something I could drop at higher levels, once I have Harmonic Mind in place?

No. Gamma boost gives end drain resistance, 86.5% of it. Always check your powers for important resists and other effects.

On 2/22/2025 at 3:59 AM, Story Archer said:

I took the Pyronic over Ionic Judgement because I like the quicker casting time - but I'm happy to hear alternative suggestions.

Apart from pyronic and ionic the only really notable one is void radial. 30s of -50% damage. Note however that it's not as strong vs AV's as it looks on paper, because of how damage debuffs interact with resistance and how AV's usually have high res to their own damtype.

On 2/22/2025 at 3:59 AM, Story Archer said:

Am I overdoing it on the FF procs?

Probably. FF procs have the best value when put in fast recharging aoes. A high chance to get a 5s proc every 9s when you foot stomp is pretty good. Change it to a 22s psinado, and it starts getting less hot. Napkin math suggests the one in punch has its procrate floored, so that's not going to be very good. It also depends on what you want the rech for. Results are more consistent with long-recharge powers than fast-recharging ones, like filler attacks.

I am running out of time, but think about dropping your +3 def uniques and unslot some slots from weave, if you're truly all-in on res as you say. I wouldn't be comfortable with 65% slow res. And maybe optimize a little more for rech. If you can get to around 150-160% rech that will bring your rage close to double-rage territory, 65s recharge time. (5% from completing your adj targeting, 7.5% lotg, 10% 5x armageddon, 10% ageless radial, 110% existing global rech = 142.5%, and you have FF procs to help it along.)

Finally, this is a personal thing but I like to slot rad therapy 5x panaceas instead. The meta is procs, but really, how many nukes do you need with GZ, footstomp and an epic aoe. I find the heal useful when soloing against stuff like vanguard or going full rambo on the ITF mission 1 stairs ambush.

February 24

This discussion gives me fond memories of the dawn of the IO era, when people were just figuring out how to softcap and get permahasten. Back then, the state of the art was dropping DA from your kat rotation to increase dps (procs were vastly weaker in that era so dps optimization was mostly DPA optimization), and SR was moderately meta because you could aid self uninterrupted with it to solo an AV for e-cock points. Good times, good times.

February 24

On 2/18/2025 at 1:10 PM, Shadowstormprime said:

- For the Shield/DM, is there a particular Alpha you would lean towards?

You will commonly see cardiac, musc and agility on shield tankers. If you are new to shield, I recommend cardiac. Shield is one of only 3 tanker armors that offer no support for the blue bar, and it has 4 toggles to the usual 3. Cardiac will solve most end problems and helps cut back on resistance slotting: cardiac core paragon is worth approximately 5% SL res and 2.5% ENFC res. The more of the following are true for you, the more cardiac is favored: you are not getting eps from your epic (no phys perfection or harmonic mind), not taking ageless of either flavor, are procbombing heavily and/or are taking renowned blue bar guzzlers like leadership.

Musc (usually radial, since the endmod part can be used to wring more eps out of stamina and epic recovery powers) is not a bad choice either, though even on a shield, you may still be able to get better dps overall by trading cardiac's res for procs. I do not recommend agility, since the recharge counts as enhancement recharge (unlike rech that comes from set bonuses and buffs); it tanks your procrates and that hampers your ability to claw back dps.

On 2/18/2025 at 1:10 PM, Shadowstormprime said:

For Dark/Elec, I was thinking either Cardiac or Vigor (to lean into the healing) for the Alpha. Which would you prefer?

It's unlikely that you need to take vigor for the healing boost. Dark regen is already among the strongest heals in the game. To illustrate, unslotted against a single target:

Dark regen: 30% of base hp, 30s rech
Healing flames: 25% of base hp, 40s rech

Dark regen is about 60% more hps than healing flames when both heals are used on cooldown. Not that vigor is bad, but my gut feeling is you are better off getting something else from the alpha, since you will already overheal a lot with dark regen.

On 2/19/2025 at 1:56 AM, Warboss said:

Any chance you can share a build or base build guidelines?

For shield, the most common way to get 45% def, 90% res is by chaining defensive clickies: melee core hybrid > rune > owts > rune on a 6 min cycle. The weakest power in this chain is melee core, worth 17% res to all with 1 target in melee. By putting ATIO1 +res proc in the filler attack, we can also maintain 2 stacks essentially permanently which adds another +13.4%. This lowers our resistance hardcap from 90% to a mere 59.6%. Then, we can afford to go another 1-2% lower: 1) the reactive defenses unique gives increased res when we take chip damage, and 2) melee core scales with foes in range, while rune and owts are stronger than it.

In short, we should see res of between 57.6 to 59.6% from set bonuses alone.

Here's an example of how to achieve these stats:

Note deflection is slotted for res, instead of def. For tankers, it's usually better to get SL res from deflection and rely on set bonuses from unbreakable guard for melee def.
Also note ATIO2 split into 2 sets of 3x, for the EN res. EN is the rarest res from set bonuses, and this is the most slot-efficient EN res in the entire IO system. While the bonuses from a set of 6x aren't bad, it's always worth considering if you would be better off splitting it up like this.
Steadfast 3% should go in owts, to buff the non-SL res to be of the same strength as your other res clickies.
Note that you don't need high FC res for non-farm content, so you could also trim that.
You should adjust the build further depending on which alpha and destiny you take.

There are three catches to this type of build.

1) This is extremely costly in terms of power choices. 4 powers spent on owts/rune means no substantial investment in epics.
2) The rech is terrible, because without epic attacks we have fewer options for rech. This is annoying when we are trying to get perma-souldrain and permahaste. Even ageless only lowers the requirement for permahasten to 158.8% global rech (incl hasten itself). It's up to you to decide how you will close the rech gap with incarnate powers, set bonuses and external resources like base empowerment buffs - the base rech buff is +20% rech.
3) Just in case you've never used it before, owts has a -60% end crash. It is unlikely that it will detoggle you since owts itself gives bonus recovery, but you should beware since it can crash at the same time as hasten.

Recently I have begun experimenting with builds that replace melee/rune/owts with barrier destiny (can be considered permanent 5% def and res to all; and why not, after all you're giving the team grant cover too) and a defense amp (+7.5% res, +5% def to all). This route requires about 62.1 to 64.1% res to all plus 2 ATIO1 +res procs to hardcap res. Something like this would be almost resistance hardcapped and defense i-capped with a defense amp, for example.

February 24

On 2/19/2025 at 9:02 AM, Andreah said:

Flippers can't just set any price they want.

Duh. Fortunately, that is not necessary to skim money off the market. All that's needed is for there to be a gap between the highest buy order and lowest sell order (and for that gap to exceed market fees).

On 2/20/2025 at 6:58 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I see a complete sea-change from Live with respect to the value of flippers, and in this case I'll define it rigidly as someone who buys all available supply at a given price and relists it, presumably at a higher price.

On Live, things were rigidly defined, and not fungible. If you wanted to set a monopoly on level 10 Panacea E/R enhancements, that was pretty easy to do, even with the limited number of market slots and character slots.

Nowadays, if you want to buy out an entire category and relist at a higher price, good luck, because the replacement cost of that inventory is astoundingly low.

You're using a different definition of 'flipper' than I would argue is traditional, but otherwise agreed. The HC market is extremely resistant to attempts to throttle supply. Fungible items are a big part of it, but also things like the presence of converters and the loot structure in general. I have a lot more market firepower on HC than I ever did on live, but it's not worth it to bother trying to artificially engineer shortages on items. Low-effort profiteering like making money off the bid-ask spread, 'painting' the last 5 or even just buying to craft/convert is simply far easier and more effective.

February 18

I've installed 44% aoe def on your build while maintaining other stats as a case study of how to simultaneously build R/aoe def on a fender. This also gives you a more usable emp (-regen!) and an unbreakable guard unique. The main loss is the damage procs in the aoes.

I want to highlight a few things. One, it's usually better to take musc radial over core on a fender. The small loss of damage is negligible on an AT with such a low damage scalar (screech loses only 4 damage for example) and the endmod enhancement can be used to drop a slot from stamina. If not taking musc radial, the other common option is intuition radial which buffs debuffs and damage.

Two, your gaussian's proc is currently in amplify. This is perfectly fine, but you may also consider putting it in tactics - this also gives you a more usable tactics. Gaussian's rolls once for every target affected by tactics, even including pets, and the proc chance is pretty ridiculous on a team. This is considering you state you are building for a team.

Finally, I actually encourage you to trim back on defense a little and build for 40% R/aoe (or only R) def. In the current meta, def is very abundant and nearly all teams will have someone else running maneuvers or other defense buffs, which will softcap you. This will free up a huge amount of build capacity (going from 40 -> 45 def is about twice as hard as 35 -> 40) and will allow you to fit more utility powers and damage procs in your build. Tweaking the build to achieve this is left as an exercise for the reader.

My own rad/sonic is designed to have 40% R/aoe and run a defense amp for the last 5%. This also gives 7.5% res to all and mez protection, enabling me to carry other destinies than clarion. I also prefer to skip the 2nd filler aoe and take spirit drain instead, and I prefer to use a fly/hover toggle macro and take vengeance over evasive as the last lotg mule - vengeance is wipe prevention which I consider valuable.

Defender (Radiation Emission - Sonic Attack) Edit2.mbd

February 18

Not personally. However, the marketing forum during the days of Live sometimes had a snobbish and frequently antagonistic attitude, which you can still see for yourself if you look at archives of the forums. During live, marketeers also added far less value to the market: there was no practical converter roulette, no level arbitrage (I buy a level 10 recipe and craft it for pennies, you buy it as a level 50 enhancement, and we cheat the crafting station out of 500k in crafting fees) and nonfungible items meant certain items were perpetually in shortage. Luck charms anyone? All this led to more frustration with the market and marketeers, quite a bit of it deserved, so I'm not surprised if some people from that era still carry a lot of resentment for marketeers.

On 2/13/2025 at 3:34 AM, Andreah said:

marketeering doesn't cause inflation. not even "flipping".

Flipping undeniably causes prices of flipped items to be higher than they otherwise would be. When you buy something for X and sell it for X+Y to pocket the difference Y, the amount Y does not appear out of thin air: it's paid by someone who could've paid only X instead. This is not mutually exclusive with the observation that inflation in HC does not exist. While prices have generally remained stable or fell slightly, maybe they would fall more if flipping did not exist. Hence, lack of inflation does not change the fact that flipping skims money off the market, because many other factors also influence trends in price. Flippers do help the market function by constantly having buy orders out and stock ready to sell, however.

17 hours ago, Ghost said:

Only 20mill per hour?

Sounds like he needs advice on farming.

They may be doing a very unoptimized setup, farming with other players in a 8 person team coupled with badly played/built hitters or too many leeches. The reality is that the average farmer is pretty bad at what they are doing. In fact, I would go so far as to say the average person is generally terrible at their choice of activity whatever that might be: most people are fearful of knowledge and growth, content to do the bare minimum and unwilling to change. This can be immensely empowering, if you realize that it is very possible to excel when the average person is so bad. It will change your life to realize that with effort and drive, you can reliably place yourself in the top 5% of the human species in any field or endeavor. Luck and privilege are necessary to get into the 1%, but you can make yourself the nat 20 that nature rolled.

February 18

On 2/14/2025 at 6:56 AM, BigKahuna337 said:

DDR being the only weakness (easily overcome with Ageless Radial)

Ageless radial T4 gives:

42.5% -def res for 30s
21.25 -def res for 60s
21.25 -def res for 120s

On a 120s cycle, and the 3 buffs stack.

This means that you will have 85% DDR 1/4 of the time, 42.5% 1/4 of the time and 21.25% the remaining 1/2 of the time (which is WP levels of awful).

Thinking that ageless radial will save your hide vs -def debuffs is a classic mistake. The good news is that most -def attacks are SL and Bio is designed to meet SL damage with resists, not defense (WP being the other set with similarly hybrid mitigation). Combined with tankers being grossly overpowered, most people who make this mistake don't get to deal with the consequences. A better counter to -def is to anticipate or recognize when non-SL -def attacks are incoming, and counter them appropriately with insps or non-def mitigation clicks, while outputting high dps to kill the critters in question.

February 17

Lotg on its own is powerful, but where it gets ridiculous is 1) it being in a defense set, and 2) also buffing defense itself (it has the same amount of def enhancement as a D/E or D/R piece).

This means that e.g. on a fender, CJ or hover with an lotg +rech in it is +2.9% def to all and +7.5% rech. Now consider that +3.1% def and +7.5% rech are typically 4-6 piece bonuses, count how many slots worth of set bonuses one is getting from a single power with no slot investment. This level of slot-efficiency is unprecedented outside of unique pieces.

The question is then why, given the obvious balance implications, lotg was designed this way. Since there is a wide variety of pool powers that give +def, realistically any toon can get 5x lotgs; defense sets are the one class that every AT has easy access to. This avoids the much more serious balance problem of some powersets/AT's being able to cap out on lotgs while others cannot.

Being able to get 5x lotgs in turn is important because the IO system was intended to allow for permahasten, responding to player uproar over ED. If you look at dev communication from that era, being able to get 5 lotg's and permahasten was widely promoted.

This does not mean that the developers, both Paragon and later HC, are entirely unaware of the imbalancing effects of high rech. Since the start of the Incarnate era they have gotten better at simply not allowing powers to be permanent, either through denying recharge enhancement (rune) or properly tuning the base rech (parasitic aura). New and revamped sets are also generally designed to have fewer skippable powers, which may be an attempt at re-introducing build tension and making the choice to mule lotgs less straightforward. However,
I would like to see more efforts to counter the softcap meta through autohit attacks and debuffs, critters with varying tohit, short-duration tohit buffs, etc.

February 17

I'm back. So my question to OP is, why not all 3?

You can rename toons freely, so level all 3 and transfer your preferred alias to the one you end up liking most. If you're only concerned about endgame performance, you can instantly level to 50 and gear for free on the test server. Leveling will highlight quirks of each combo, like elec armor only getting -KB while on the ground - you can get knocked back if you jump and are hit by a kb attack mid-jump.

A lot of people will say shield/DM (I see it is the most popular option in your poll) because historically this is the most meta-friendly and optimal combo. If all you want is to be meta and optimal, which is what many people really want when they ask these types of questions, look no further. Shield is among the tanker armors that can get 45% def to all, 90% res to all (although this will be extremely tight if you intend to also take psi epic - you'll be starved for powers). Tanker shields have a number of unique advantages compared to its peer armors and shields of other AT's, such as being able to get ~87% -def resistance just by stacking the mez protection power; they do not need ageless radial destiny to get high -def resistance. It also sacrifices less dps for having so much mitigation. It's no surprise that when you add lifesteal to this you produce the most or 2nd most meatshieldy tank.

However, I contend that you really do not need so much survivability for this easy-ass game. Styling on critters by making the objectively most overpowered toon is fun and all, but if you are looking to spend most of your time on 1 toon you might want to make sure the playfeel is right.

On 2/15/2025 at 2:27 AM, Shadowstormprime said:

You also get 2 heals and 2 endurance recovers (if you choose to get all of them).

Energize is not really a click heal in the vein of dark regen or healing flames, and does not give as much hps. Each use heals about 1.5 healing flames' worth (counting both the direct heal and the value of the regen), but it has a recharge 3 times as long. The main benefit is actually the massive endrdx bonus (stronger even than a cardiac core paragon and fully ED-busting). This, combined with elec armor's built-in rech bonus, makes elec armor one of the best procbombing sets.

You also do not need dark consumption for end management if you have access to power sink. Power sink is on a completely different level - it recharges 3 times as fast and with energize will kill any endurance problems.

On 2/15/2025 at 2:27 AM, Shadowstormprime said:

End shouldn’t be an issue, so could go Musculature.

Usually, tankers get more dps by taking a defensive alpha and slotting damage procs in their attacks, compared to slotting for res/def then taking a damage alpha. Elec armor has higher base res values than other resistance armor sets. An elec build with resilient core paragon can cap resistances without tough. Combined with the built-in rech and end management solutions this provides considerable build flexibility, frees you to invest heavily in epic and pool powers and to procbomb like a maniac.

On 2/15/2025 at 2:27 AM, Shadowstormprime said:

Endurance could be an issue with the combo though, so might have to lean on Cardiac or Vigor Alpha late game.

While cardiac will obviously help (and is one of the better alpha choices for dark/), don't forget the biggest solution to the dark regen end cost problem (and one that appears a lot earlier) which is the theft of essence: chance for +end proc. It rolls for each target hit by the power, so slotting it in dark regen and being careful to use it in big herds can actually get you more blue than you started out with.

On 2/16/2025 at 2:39 AM, Spaghetti Betty said:

You would get better mileage out of an epic AoE! The best ones (Dark Obliteration, Fire Ball) have the same radius, are ranged, and still have max proc chances while recharging three times as quickly!

Good news: they have better radius. Dark consumption is only 8ft radius. Dark oblit is 22.5ft. You can see this visually when tanks and brutes use the same epic aoe on targets that are uniformly spaced, like training dummies in the Vanguard base or cimerorans on the wall. (However, IIRC real numbers will not show it, probably because on live there were never any effects that increased radius.)

The reason for this is that a pbaoe's radius is actually its range attribute while a taoe's radius is its radius attribute. Melee pbaoes are all flagged to ignore range enhancement, which is why you cannot make them bigger by +range set bonuses. However, what gauntlet does is give +50% radius (and arc strength) and this does work on epic aoes.

On 2/16/2025 at 1:29 PM, Warshades said:

The bigger issue for any melee char that is attempting to end sap enemies is keeping them from recovering endurance. Enemies need very little endurance to activate attacks so even if you sap all endurance, if you don't apply and keep -rec debuffs then they will still launch attacks (though may be delayed by a second for them to get a tic of end recovery). Elec/elec can definitely keep a single target sapped since a lot of the /elec melee attacks apply -rec, but they aren't as good doing so against mobs. Even Mu patron AoEs only provide a chance to apply -rec to enemies.

This is correct. Even powersink itself is only 30% chance for -recovery. I soloed +4/x8 ITF's with a few elec/*/mu combos; spamming powersink, elec fences and ball lightning did not stop bosses completely from attacking although it did seem to reduce incoming damage somewhat. It is not comparable to fender/corr sapping using +special boosted effects and 100% chance for -recovery powers, and is only a minor perk.

February 17

On 2/15/2025 at 3:05 AM, StriderIV said:

All this being said, I've picked the brains of many of the amazing builders I already mentioned, as well as some more of these geniuses who might be able to give some insights.

I will respond to you shortly, but first off, never call me a genius or any other such flattering term. I also recommend you do the same for other forumites. It contributes to inflated egos, and that is not healthy for anyone. Speak respectfully but normally, as equals.

February 17

On 1/18/2025 at 11:48 AM, Uncle Shags said:

Maybe this is a known issue and I'd just not heard of it before? Is this a thing? How do you deal with it? Breakfrees? Clarion? Avoiding mezzers?

Dps, controls, debuffs, defense (barrier or insps), breakfrees, T9's that add bonus mez prot, knowledge. Know which critters mez and neutralize them first.

Carnies are no different. The critters that mez are the dark ring mistress, illusionist Lts (but not the illusionist decoys summoned by the Master Illusionist, which only use spectral wounds) and Dark servant. Some strongmen have handclap, but this stun does not stack with the holds the above units have. And only one of them has intangible.

Failing that, if you screw up and get mezzed just sit there and tank it. It's funny to see a horde of eyeballs failing to kill a detoggled tank. These are not really high dps enemy groups and by the time they can stack mezzes on you, you'll have killed a good number of them.

Finally, if you are solo there is now much less point to herding above the aggro cap ever since HC changed the way aggro works. Critters above the cap still use ranged attacks on you, so you are just taking more damage for no reason. Fight smart.

On 2/4/2025 at 7:17 PM, Sovera said:

Despite building S/L defense being poopooed by some because 'defense debuff will strip those defenses immediately' (which is correct) there are a heap ton of factions with problematic debuffs that do NOT defense debuff, and whose attacks have S/L components which makes the defense able to deflect them.

SL def has not worked this way for years. Critter attacks will only ever have 1 positional flag and 1 typed flag regardless of how many damtypes they deal. See for example this IDF Lt's total focus. You are likely seeing the effect of melee def instead and mistaking it for SL typed def cheesing. It's easier for tanks to get melee def than SL def due to the sets they have access to and builds that build for SL will inevitably end up with large amounts of melee def as a side effect.

Like all things, the value of def depends on what you are paying for it. Def is great if you can get it without spending set bonuses or losing dps (insps, parry, barrier, defense amps, pool powers which you need anyway to mule lotgs) and get close to the softcap (which then functions as ghetto DDR). Weave/CJ/maneuvers + barrier core destiny + storm kick + both +3 def uniques = permanent 35% def to all in combat for the expenditure of only 2 slots. Add a defense amp and the -tohit from beta decay (worth ~3% against +4's) and you're at effective 43-44%, or eat an occasional small purple if you aren't loaded. What doesn't work is minuscule amounts of def slotting, say <15%, that hits no breakpoints and is just a waste of slots.

January 29

Can I just say it is incredibly refreshing to see a build with zero, I repeat: zero KB2KD IO's.

January 28

Capped fire def is easy, you just need 2 sets of 3x aegis in your tough/permafrost. 5x glad armor instead does nothing for you, so you can pull slots from there. You can also get an extra slot if you remove the shieldwall unique from CJ and put it in one of your powers that have 4x shieldwall. Slot something like D, DE, DER, unique in weave and boost to +5 to compensate for the missing enhancement value (pvpios can be boosted without losing stats when exemped).

Always try to save slots by putting uniques and procs in places where you are already slotting multiple of the set.

EN res will always be bad on brutes because EN res is the hardest res to build for and brutes suck at building res (more accurately, brutes are fine and tankers are completely overpowered when it comes to building for res and need a solid whack with the nerf bat). There are ways to boost your EN res seeing as you are passing up several common sources of EN res such as 3x adj targeting and 6x bombardment. However, I don't think you need it unless you are aiming for e-peen challenges.

January 27

I am posting to declare that I have named mine Tunado. That is all.

January 27

37 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

I think the order is stored on the computer, not the server.

This is right. Specifically, it is in Homecoming\accounts\accountname\playerslot.txt which you can edit manually. I play from multiple devices often and all my accounts have this file mirrored to the cloud so that I can get the same layout in the character select screen wherever I log in from.

December 22, 2024

8 hours ago, Cyri said:

On the Panacea proc...It simply did not seem reasonable, to my way of thinking, to include the Panacea proc at the expense of the Regeneration set bonus (which accounts for 4 HP/s). Panacea procs for 65 for my tanks. Proccing roughly x3 each minute (195) and dividing by 60 seconds is only 3.25 health per second. The first Numina set bonus (12% Regeneration), according to MIDs is 4 HP/s for my tanks. At worst it's a wash. At best, it seems better to keep the Numina 12% regeneration set bonus. Now, I know Panacea provides some endurance, however, it is not enough for me to want it in place of the Numina set bonus...but I understand others might. For me, and me alone, this is the build I would want for Invulnerability/SS were I were to make one.

You can get a panacea proc in there while keeping the bonuses you want; drop a piece of perfshifter in stamina (but why do you have the e/r piece instead of e) and put the slot in health to slot a panacea. The lost endmod from stamina should be made up for by the panacea's endurance proc.

There is usually a way in coh to eat your cake and still have it, or get very close. Trying to discover how is always worthwhile, even if your ultimate goal is to build for survivability only, as it reveals synergies and build design techniques that might be undiscovered with a single-minded focus on a narrow build goal.

To demonstrate, and also to give you some food for thought about recharge, getting enough recharge to achieve perma-dullpain (DP) indirectly boosts regen, because regen increases with max hp. (A regen tick is always 5% of whatever your current max hp is, with regen% increasing the tick frequency.) DP itself is also a pretty beefy heal and can contribute a modest amount of hps.

I fired up your build on the previous page and it has 40.15 hps regen without DP on, 51.48 hps regen with it on, with another flat 3.17 hps from the direct heal portion of using dull pain from cooldown. Considering it's active for every 120s out of 236, this gives an average of 49.08 hps from regen and direct heals.

I compared this with my most recent invuln/ss, which makes not even a passing attempt at building for regen. It has 25.72 hps regen, with another 14.47 hps from using dull pain from cooldown - a total of 40.19 hps from regen and direct heals. We have the same number of pshifter and panacea procs (assuming you take my advice above), so those are equal. This means that all the heavy investment in regen nets only a +8.89hps delta over a dps-oriented, double-rage build that is softcapped with 3 in range (instead of 6) and has 90% resist to all except psi/tox. The magic responsible for this? Permahasten, perma-dull pain, and dull pain slotted for heal.

December 20, 2024

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

-Rech is without Hasten.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

EndRx in Rad Therapy is because this is a leveling build and it was a huge end drain. Also, ToE end refill doesn't proc like it used to...so it's great when it fires, but when it doesn't, end is a big issue...as you point out.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

Defense slotting isn't "half hearted", because it isn't hearted, at all. Those are just organic effects of other slotting. No specific defense targeted.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

BotZ because 10 pts of KB protection just doesn't cut it with the new updates...especially the FREEM! from Council.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

Nerve for to-hit. Even with double Rage, hitting is paramount. Having said that, I would seriously reconsider Resilient, instead. I use Meltdown constantly, but might be beneficial to have Resilient, perma.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

Your posted template misses several key pieces, like Power Transfer +HP (x2) and Panacea +HP...they do add up.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

Fireball? Yeah, no. This is a tank, not brute or blaster. Having the absorb unique (from Entomb - in Char)...along with a nice ST hold and an amazing AOE debuff in Melt Armor (also adding the juicy Achilles proc) far outweighs the damage from Fireball...especially in general or all-tank gameplay. Your "mansion" analogy isn't pertinent, with this build philosphy.

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.

11 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

LOL, no-one can out do you, because your opinion is (and should be) the best for you.

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%.

December 18, 2024

12 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

Paging @Zect to critique this one:

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).)

December 16, 2024

8 hours ago, davidcook said:

I mostly enjoy playing solo

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.

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fairly beginner friendly, does not require too much micromanagement

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.

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how important is it to plan a build early on?

Absolutely not important; some people haven't learned how to build competently after playing for close to 20 years, and they do just fine.

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Should I be worried about gimping myself if I just pick what looks fun in the character creator, or is it fairly easy to fix mistakes later down the line?

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.

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Or is there another archetype I should be considering that I may have overlooked?

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.

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