Zect

The biggest con would be that further buffing teleport powers adds to power creep in the game, which is already one of the most serious issues the game faces. Teleport only recently received a buff by having TP friend and foe consolidated into one power, and an excellent new power added - fold space. It is currently very balanced. That said, your suggestion also contains two ill-informed assumptions that are worth taking a further look at: The low popularity of teleport powers is a problem that must be solved. On the contrary, it is beneficial for the game to offer situational powers, or powers that appeal to a minority of players with different playstyles. This increases the diversity of gameplay and hence, the fun and replay value of the game. Making teleport as popular as the other pools would inevitably entail some degree of homogenization, which is a loss for all involved. Combat teleport being a separate power from teleport is the main cause of this low popularity. The main reason why teleport is disfavored in the current meta is the lack of a +def power to help softcap and mule lotg's. That's why the default pool setup is speed, fighting, and any 2 of leaping/flight/leadership. Adding +def to any of Teleport's powers would in turn run into the two issues I have already mentioned, i.e. power creep and homogenization. All told, a terrible suggestion.

I love how in the middle of a post allegedly about being kind, you drop this hilariously hypocritical and self-serving double standard. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If it's OK for one person to be PL'ed, then it's also OK for every other person to be PL'ed. Anything else is discrimination, favoritism or elitism, depending on who's involved and how it's done.

Often, people conflate kindness with niceness or pleasantness. And while there may be overlap in the venn diagrams of these circles, they are far from identical. Personally, I have nothing against kindness, niceness, nor pleasantness. However, I do think people should communicate their needs more clearly. Don't ask people to be kind if you really just want them to be nice or pleasant (which is often a smaller ask anyway).

Personally, I'm delighted that winter packs are not discounted this year. The tears on the faces of people who were given no less than 3 years to profit off this event with no limitations whatsoever have been hilarious - truly, a wonderful Christmas gift from Homecoming. In fact, the only better change would've been if the devs had announced that winter packs are permanently discounted to 15 million... on Jan 1, 2021. Not only would new players benefit going forward, the speculators' dreams of making bank would evaporate! A missed opportunity, Homecoming team.

The first half of this statement is correct. However, note that this has not stopped characters with no ddr, like unarmored AT's, from building for defense, and with good reason. The defense absorbs alpha strikes, after which everything is dead, mezzed, or debuffed into the floor. It serves as a buffer that delays being defense floored. (if you have played a pure res set with no def, you'll know how much more a swarm of cims hurt after the first few seconds, once they have put your def into the negatives and have 95% chance to hit you.) It helps support toons softcap you - you need over 100% def to softcap vs HM nictus romulus, since he has tactics. So the second half of your statement is a hilarious misconception. It is like saying that a decoy flare on an aircraft is useless because it only kills one enemy missile. It did its job, my man. It (and the mobs) can R.I.P. I do think, though, that you should not pawn firstborns just to softcap. It is not worth it when a more well-rounded build with even resistances and high recharge performs better, defensively and offensively. Hence the entire point of my post - as elaborated above.

My recommendation is 1) to leave "slack" in the build that can be easily made up for through means other than set bonuses; 2) pursue high global rech, well-slotted aoe attacks, and powerful damage procs in addition to mitigations for both superior defensive and offensive power; and 3) build for a more balanced res spread (notably, minimizing or eliminating the energy hole - not easy, since EN is the hardest res type to build for, but possible. The choice of 2ndary is not especially significant, and nothing here is specific to SS. As I said, the same build design principles can broadly be applied regardless of melee powerset. I'm using dark/SS/soul as an example because it is the build I have on this device. And to turn your "lock the build to barrier" comment on its head, after I've clearly discussed two options from which you pick one, it's worth considering what other destiny you might take in its place, destinies being predominantly defensive anyway and barrier being an extremely strong one (imo, overpowered) in the current meta. I can get out my dark/dark, whenever I find it. But that won't convince you of anything if you don't want to be convinced. I encourage you to develop an open and flexible mind, and rather than being defensive and nitpicking, try to see the general principle being illustrated here, even if the specifics in the example differ slightly from the subject at hand. That principle being, when you chase 1 particular set bonus to an extreme, you typically lose some slot-efficiency for various reasons, such as running out of powers that can slot the most optimal sets of the types you want. Your build has about 6% more melee def and 6.5% more FC res. Mine has 12% more EN res and 45% more rech. (Oh, and darkest night.) Sometimes, you can actually get more out of a build overall, if you are willing to not rely entirely on set bonuses to cap def/res and divert those resources to pick up low-hanging recharge bonus fruit. I present the idea of deliberately undercapping slightly, and then utilizing the option of using either the amp or barrier core, whichever better suits your preferences. In fact, you may find that often, neither are needed because, as you may have noticed, they are only needed to cap E/F/C. (I do commend you for having non-negligible aoe output and a hecatomb, though. You clearly understand that damage has value on tankers.)

I feel like I'm pointing out the blindingly obvious here, but many people assume winning costume contests is about having a good costume, when it's not. It's about appealing to the judging panel's taste. If you care about winning, as opposed to having a good costume, then find out the judges' taste. Look at past contests they've judged, and try to discern a style or common thread amongst the winners. I seem to recall an SG on Everlasting that used to hold weekly costume contests and posted the results here. Most of the winners were classic full-body tights costumes, especially muscled tights on women. That should be an easy win for anyone who cares to do their research. On the other hand, if you care more about the validation of having someone else say your favorite costume is good, costume contests don't seem like the place to go. The chance of losing is much greater than that of winning, unless you specifically entered a contest whose judges share your sense of taste - see above. Random compliments from passersby would seem to deserve more weight than cc's in this regard - after all, when someone holds a costume contest, they are obligated to pick a winner even if nothing on display tickles their fancy (I suspect this is the reason behind some of the very unconventional winners - at least it was when I ran them). On the other hand, nobody is obligated to strike up a convo with a stranger.

I don't like any of the builds that have been posted in this thread. To me they all suffer from a number of common flaws: Low energy res: Energy damage is common. It is more important to cap energy than it is to cap F/C/toxic/psi res (unless specializing for specific groups, eg. fire farming). Low (<130% global) recharge: One of them does not even take hasten until the late 40's. Low recharge means lower dps and less frequent uses of key buffs. No perma-souldrain means poor offensive power, yoyoing tohit chance and dark regen missing when you need it most. Poor aoe: A lot only have shadow maul as the only strongly-enhanced, low-cooldown aoe. Many do not have an APP aoe. Here's an example of what is achievable with dark armor. This specific build is actually dark/SS/soul with cardiac alpha but the general building principles should apply to any 2ndary. These are stats with 1 stack of might of the tanker +res proc. The key concept is to leave defense 5% undercapped and res between 6.5-7.5% undercapped rather than push all the way to the cap due to diminishing returns on slot-efficiency the more you try to chase after a specific bonus. This missing def is made up with either a defense amp (which you should have in the thousands from opening super packs) or the weakest level of barrier core, both of which provide +5% res and def to all. The missing res is made up from the reactive defense scaling res (since as a res set we expect not to be at full HP all the time) plus a defense amp or barrier core. With either one of these active we have melee softcap, ranged/aoe 35%, all res hardcapped except toxic. The resulting build flexibility allows investment into APP attacks, aoe powers and global recharge, resulting in vastly superior defensive and offensive power with higher res and def, faster recharging heals and more quickly dying enemies. I'm feeding trash through a woodchipper of footstomp and dark oblit powered by doublestacked rage while nerfing the survivors with darkest night's synergistic -dmg -tohit. Why aren't you doing the same with perma-souldrain?

All good builds can active farm something. Softcapped defenses and resists work as well in AE as they do outside of it, and you don't need optimized builds to massacre farm mobs which are specifically designed to have zero difficulty. It's only AFK farming that needs optimizing, because you need to design something that works when you're not paying attention to it. The most interesting active farmer I played was definitely a fire/storm corr. Triple lightning storms shredding everything in sight will never get old.

As a card-carrying member of the Old Timer Minmax Mafia, and someone who enjoys procbombing builds in general, I will be extremely pleased if the PPM system is ever given a proper balance pass - along with many other broken aspects of the game, such as the interaction between power boost and certain +def powers. I wouldn't give up hope just yet, either; mere months ago, we saw the fixing of the infamous Burn procrate exploit, as well as a complete overhaul of defense typing, which overturned fundamental assumptions many IO builds depend on when softcapping. Minmaxers welcome these changes because they lead to greater build diversity, new build/slotting possibilities, and ultimately, even more replay value for the game. That said, like it or not, proccability is a major metric of a set's power ceiling. You may not enjoy utilizing the system, but it still needs to be mentioned in any discussion of a set's potential.

I think that before you embark on an analysis like this, you should first define what the purpose or purposes of a T9 is. Is it a recovery tool? Is it a wipe preventer? Is it meant to plug defensive weaknesses of the set? etc. Without first defining the purpose or purposes of a T9, asking for buffs is merely like a kid asking for candy - he will never say "enough" even though more is objectively bad for him. Personally, I think T9's should not be something that IO builds benefit from (including set muling possibilities, which should be removed where appropriate; muling is a powerful function that saves precious slots and/or offers access to sets not normally available; it should not be casually dismissed). IO builds are strong enough already, and further benefit to them simply worsens the pervasive power creep problem in the game. I think most old-style T9's from the Cryptic studios era, e.g. Unstoppable - should be designed to serve as a temporary power booster so that SO builds can, for a limited period, enjoy the same defenses as full-fledged IO/incarnate builds. This makes them attractive and very useful, without contributing to power creep. To this end they should: Ignore recharge enhancement (newer ones already do, but it should be applied to the ones that don't and their base recharge rebalanced around it) Be less than 60s duration, so that they cannot be cycled gaplessly with melee hybrid incarnate powers; Provide the same amount of defensive stats roughly available with an IO build Not provide different or unique benefits that an IO build would take advantage of So an example Tanker Unstoppable should be something like: ignores recharge enhancement, 300s recharge, 60s duration, +59% res to all including psi (which will bring an SO tanker to 90% res to all, with psi at ~82%). A good IO tanker isn't going to take this because IO builds on tankers already cap all resists. But it could still be useful for someone who is on SO's. One thing I think that can be safely removed from old T9's are the crashes. That is the part which you have correctly identified as belonging to an older era of CoX where design assumptions were different, namely, frequent resting between combat. I think they can be safely removed without worsening power creep; IO builds are still not going to take them, crash or no crash.

In order to sap effectively in CoX, you need to be able to wipe out enemies' blue bar ASAP, ideally much faster than you or the party can drain their red bar, otherwise you may as well just kill them; and keep their recovery severely debuffed, to delay their next end tick for as long as possible. Galvanic sentinel provides #2, but not #1; it is really there for solo fenders/corrs to bounce buffs and heals back on to themselves. In fact, nothing in elec affinity really provides #1; for this reason it is not a good sapping set, despite having elec in the name. Good sapping sets are sets such as kin (transference) or elec blast (short circuit, thunderous blast), backed up by things like power boost, charge up or clarion radial to massively boost end drain amounts to overcome high AV resistances. Right now, the only good sapping power in this so-called "sapping" build is power sink, which means your sapping power will be weak until fairly late, and venturing into melee to use it seems at odds with the focus on ranged defense. This build also has lackluster damage potential, due to a lack of damage procs and poor slot-efficiency. It is defensively very strong, but as far as doing things to affect the enemies goes, you'll have to lower your expectations.

Nobody knows, not even the person who coded it.

It's more of a selling point than ever. In the current meta where softcap is trivial and defense buffs ample, res/-res is very strong. If that is not a selling point, it's because of the overuse of -res/+res in support sets and the resultant homogenization of play experience - case in point, the recent addition of -res to FF, turning a balanced set into a significantly overpowered one. Neither pain nor therm give the caster mez protection, and while they do have a strong ST buff, they don't have an additional -res debuff that sonic has. However, your complaint about liquefy has merit. Not that the power is weak, but a 5 min base recharge is far too long, literally on the order of some armor set T9's. That kind of recharge is reserved for situational or last-resort powers that do not have a major influence on a powerset's core feel and contributes to the bland feel of sonic res. Liquefy should first be weakened by losing two or more of its effects; you really don't need a KD patch to also be an aoe hold and literally 3 different debuffs. Then, the recharge can be lowered to make the power more usable. I believe it should not be more than 145s base at most, same as most blast set nukes, or just barely within every-spawn uptime range for a permahasten build.

Export the full build (rather than just the datachunk) and I will take a look; I post intermittently from multiple devices some of which do not have the latest mids installed.

DP in competent hands is extremely powerful. It is one of the most proccable blast sets, with every power capable of slotting 5 or 6 non-unique damage procs (exception: Pistols takes 4 - for some reason it doesn't slot slow sets). Something like a DP/kin that caps damage on top of the procs and stacks massive -dmg from chem ammo and power siphon on enemies is a monster. If you do not design a procbombing build for it, then the dps is only average. Its "weakness" is really due to the current meta. It's a set without Aim, with a low base damage (but faster recharge) nuke, in a metagame that is largely about massive burst aoe damage. On blasters especially, if you do not pair it with a 2ndary that has a build up clone, you can't wipe screenfuls of mobs the way other blasters can, and that may lead to a misconception that the set is weak. The answer to this is to shake up the whole unfun mass-aoe meta.

The implication here seems to be that legacy sets are weak, while newer and/or paid sets are strong, but this could hardly be further from the truth. Fire blast is a legacy set. Invuln is a legacy set. Radiation emission is a legacy set. Dark miasma is a legacy set. Super strength is a legacy set. Storm summoning is a legacy set. Fire control is a legacy set. Dark armor, which you yourself claim has an edge over elec, is a legacy set for scrappers - so I guess the argument that a set needs buffs because it is a legacy set only gets cited when it works in favor of your argument, and swept under the rug when it does not. (These are all literally Issue 0 powersets.) All of the above have been pretty consistently strong throughout the IO era of CoH, too. Legacy != weak. In fact, very often, legacy = strong. No modern powerset would be designed with things such as perma-doublestacked Rage. Conversely, newer and/or paid sets are not necessarily good. Kinetic melee would be the big example; it underperforms by every metric that can be found and is quite possibly the only set of any category in the game that can justify asking for a buff. A somewhat older example is Dual Pistols (GR preorder exclusive set, later released for all players but added back to Paragon Market in i21). This set had low dps and torturously long animations for many issues. Repeated animation time buffs and finally the i24 PPM system rocketed it to becoming one of the strongest, especially on low damage scalar AT's. Yes, provided that number is 0. If elec receives defensive buffs (absorb or slow res), then its offense or other aspects of defense must be nerfed to maintain balance and avoid power creep. Any significant amount of absorb on a resist-hardcapped toon is massively powerful and would cause elec in its current state to become significantly overpowered. Elec has an edge in offensive power and build flexibility with its combination of damage aura, rech, infinite endurance + drain immunity, and higher base resists; these advantages have to be paid for somehow with weaknesses in other areas. Rad's procced-out powers come at the cost of build flexibility. Dark's soft controls and heals provide more variable performance depending on enemy debuff resists, mez protection and how well you roll on your tohit checks. The three sets are very well-balanced vs each other, once you take a holistic view of their strengths and weaknesses. Given your fixation on Energize's heal (which is not a quickly recharging click sustain a la integration or healing flames in any event, but rather a combo of endurance management power that also patches up chip damage), I think what we are seeing here is not a valid balance complaint, but merely a personal playstyle preference for armor sets with fast-recharging heals/absorbs. P.S. I love how you think dark's stealth allows one to "ignore" alphas but hardcapped resistance somehow does not. One wonders what, precisely, absorbs an alpha on the planet you live on.

This thread is interesting. I have noticed numerous cases of the CoX playerbase stealthily trying to get others to do their work for them: people attempting to doorsit on TF's, bringing non-50's/non-incarnates/non-IO builds to hardmode TF's, and of course dialing up difficulty without being clear about it. It's almost as if they know what they are doing is wrong, and need to try and hide it. Don't get me wrong: I'm as lazy and entitled as the rest of you. When I ask to sit in a farm, I am explicitly asking to receive something for nothing. The difference is that I am very up-front about my intentions and never hold it against anyone who chooses not to play along. This is good advice. A combo of P2W and SO's really trivializes everything up to around level 25 or so, and if people are going to go the non-PL route, they may as well take advantage of it. Just loading up 8h worth of the 3 amps solves any and all end/acc/mez issues, the stun grenades make short work of everything that is not a ruin mage, the poisoned daggers shred AV's and GM's, etc. Oof. Never, ever, do posi 1 with a team; Homecoming players are generally not intelligent enough to complete the last mission smoothly. Too many people don't know what a jetpack is, nor come equipped with any sense of situational awareness and ability to avoid mobs. And god help you if you wipe on the ambush, because you'll then have to hunt down the one stray ghost that has managed to get itself stuck in map geometry. This TF is best soloed on a toon that is not yet high level enough to spawn ruin mages (I forget their actual spawn range, and paragonwiki doesn't say, but I'm very sure I have never got any at level 10 or below).

If ST damage is what you want, you need to learn to abuse the PPM system! Every ST rad melee attack can take 6 non-unique damage procs (ToD, Mako, Gladiator's strike, Lady Grey, Shield breaker, and perfect zinger). When people whined that a procced-out irradiated ground was all rad melee had going for it, and that standardizing the power's interaction with procs would "nerf" the set, those of us who build and play Tankers competently snickered at the crybabies. We know better.

I love your transparent attempt to spin a self-serving change that would primarily benefit you as "but won't someone think of the newbies?" Newbies are inexperienced, not stupid or illiterate. I know; after all, I was once a newbie too. They are perfectly able to figure out what salvage is needed to craft what recipe - it's written on the recipe itself. There is even a handy link they can click on in the AH to automatically search for the required salvage. They do not need your presumed attempt to help them. It doesn't. See above. Even if it did, that is not a bad thing, either; why do you hate learning, knowledge and curiosity?

Tankers, as a melee AT, are unlikely to be good for this. Melee set aoe's generally have smaller sizes and lower target caps than blast set aoes. A lot of the best tanker aoe attacks are also specifically excluded from the tanker aoe area buff (and rightfully so, for balance reasons). If MM's aren't an option, it's probably going to be something storm. A very high recharge stormie can almost have 3 lightning storms and 2 tornadoes out permanently. You can add something like 3 PA's or 3 fire imps for the chaos feel, but if you want to actually do good damage it will have to be a corr. My personal recommendation is DP/storm, as DP is one of the strongest and most proccable sets out there, with nearly every power able to slot 5 or 6 non-unique damage procs (pistols takes 4). Nothing quite like shooting someone and seeing half a dozen damage numbers pop up.

We'll leave aside the fact that you have failed to explain why, precisely, SR toons being able to easily softcap defenses is a problem to address this particular point. The combo of IO resist bonuses and SR's own scaling resistance can result in some combat monsters that are not only i-capped but close to the resist hardcap as well. SR tankers in particular with tanker scalar defenses can shake off a fearsome amount of damage. The caveat, of course, is that this playstyle is highly skill-dependent and requires competent players to execute.

I'm amused that you assume this is some kind of problem when it's not. Situational powers are fine. They are part of what gives rise to build variance, which increases the replay value of the game by offering different play experiences. Creative players will find a way to make use of situational powers. Those who play in the situations where they are useful will take them. The rest can skip them, and that is alright.

Before making such a suggestion, you need to lay out a comprehensive and objective analysis of why elec needs a buff in the first place. As it is, you've completely neglected to do so. This suggestion fixates on one power in the set, while neglecting the bigger picture that elec is an extremely powerful and effective armor set, featuring: easily-hardcapped resistances - your solution to dealing with alphas. In fact, it has more base SL res than other res sets such as rad, dark or fire. offensive support with a damage aura and +rech buff immunity to draining high slow resistance unlimited endurance and high endrdx When built and played competently, elec is just fine, and balanced against other resist sets such as rad and dark. This needless buff would imbalance it and merely contribute to power creep, one of the most severe issues facing the game today. If you want a res set with an absorb power, rad would be more up your alley. Terrible suggestion!

Forget it; it is futile.