Zect

They were available on live after coh went f2p in Sep 2011 from the Paragon Market cash shop, both directly and as a possible drop from super packs (which also came from the Paragon Market). I don’t recall offhand if they were available from the start, though. If you’ve ever wondered why ATIO’s, boosters, etc. are so powerful, now you know. It’s just like how the alpha slot and its +1 level shift, quite possibly the most damaging change to the game made in the Paragon Studios era, came with the launch of the GR expansion. And how tinpex which hilariously broke Paragon Studio’s own stated merit reward formula in turn required an alpha slot unlocked (this requirement has since been removed).

And that also causes freeze ray's DPA to be much higher, making it the better attack in general. However, I have seen some hardmode builds that take both FR and BFR, because there is tactical value in being able to freeze certain bosses and EB's in hardmode (smelters etc).

Superpacks are a net gain in the long term (and give a lot of useful stuff that can’t be gotten anywhere else) but I don’t recommend them for people who have only enough inf to buy a handful. If you buy only 3, there is a small but not negligible chance that 1 or 2 of them will fail to give any ATIO at all. I think the minimum I would suggest people buy is a 10-stack.

Fire control has been fine since even before KD2KB existed, so it doesn’t need any changes.

Ok, so you wait until the very end of your post to explain the problem you’re trying to solve. (I really wish people would do this at the start instead: effective problem solving begins with an accurate identification of the problem.) And I can tell you that your convoluted solution will not work on the kind of person who still thinks soloing on a team is impressive in 2024. They will just run off to some objective, pop it then solo the ambush. If you want to kill speeding tfs and aren’t concerned about collateral damage - as forumites tend to be - there is a much simpler way to achieve that. Just make every mission defeat all. Every one, in addition to the existing objectives. I have nothing for or against speeding, btw, as far as I’m concerned you kill what you please.

Much of this advice is, surprisingly, good. I also think 3 attacks is the sweet spot: 2 ST and 1 aoe (you can drop one later when you inevitably respec for the higher-level ones). And they don’t actually need to be 6-slotted if you can’t, because we have SO’s from level 1. I also agree with not slotting your defenses heavily in the beginning, because you can get a surprising boost just by slotting the def/res uniques. The early game was never designed for any of this and it really shows. If you pause to pick up 8 hours of amps for pocket change you breeze right into the mid-20’s. Leveling 1-27 is more fun for me than the mid-30’s slog: leveling is fast and it feels like everything you do, and I mean everything, gives good xp.

We need such a faction now. I propose Absolute Zero, an ecoterrorist group dedicated to ending global warming by causing a new ice age that will push the human habitation range back to where it was when Neanderthals last walked the earth, and smack overpowered rad armor toons right in their resist hole. Muhahahha. Bwahahahahahahahaha!

I think looking for highbrow literature in the superhero genre is barking up the wrong tree. The camp, the cliches, the melodrama (my absolute favorite being when in Who Will Die? Sister psyche in her mindscape worries about Manticore being unfaithful because of who he stands next to all day - “have you seen how SWAN dresses?!”), the pop culture - they’re part of the DNA. Superheroes are a mass market genre, and I argue, one that appeals to the less privileged in society with its fantasies of justice served and enforcing one’s moral code on others the way elites get to do. That’s not the right audience to sic high culture on: they won’t connect with it. Don’t look for Michelin stars in a McDonald’s. This is not a knock on superheroes or McDonald’s. Look, I agree with you that the Cap au Diable music is excellent and the writing in this game is often ridiculous, but what you wrote — and I’m just going to say it — this sounds pretentious in the way only angsty 14 year olds can be. Anyway, if you want an alternate reality to act in, why not take up writing yourself? Your only limit is the margin of the page.

You don't even say what these insinuations are and why they upset you, so I'll have to do it for you. You misinterpret my statement as saying that the proper way to play a defender is to procbomb. You likely don't procbomb (or don't do so extensively) and like most forumites you tend to be defensive when you perceive that your skill or the effectiveness of your builds/methods are called into question. You then make a passive-aggressive statement to express your displeasure and hopefully attract validation from others, while avoiding any concrete statements that could be disputed, to avoid a debate. On to the subject: there are plenty of ways fenders can be effective without procbombing depending on build goals, target content and powersets (some sets are just not highly proccable but are valuable for other reasons, eg /sonic). Then you can also make an informed choice not to procbomb based on concept, personal reasons or playfeel even if it's not meta or optimal. Nobody should have an issue with that, as long as you don't go around claiming that it is. I am skeptical of people who harp too much on the "proper" way to play something anyway, and I think it is usually an appeal to authority used to mask their inability to defend their argument for why their playstyle is more optimal. Things like tankers saying the proper way to play one is to turtle, thus over-focusing on survivability to mask their poor gameplay and inefficient build design. Any tanker is easily made nigh indestructible, why do they have to devote the entire build to get to that point? But in this case, the OP is complaining about personal damage. Not the debuff/2ndary effects of the blasts, but the amount of dps they deal. So if one feels that is lacking, then answer is to boost dps with procs (or I guess just play fire). In this context a proper procbombing build is just one that heavily exploits the mechanic to achieve high personal dps. Kin/DP. Join the dark side. @Diantane

This is pretty competently built considering the sheer oddballness of the build concept. You can shore up EN res slightly by changing your cloak of fear slotting to 3x unspeakable terror for 3 EN res. Your death shroud is arguably overslotted. While any source of animation time free dps is welcome, damage auras are usually not a huge source of dps for endgame builds, and their value is in the taunt and the ability to slot ATIO/pbaoe sets. If you lose the 2 avalanches, the damage goes from like 21 to 17 per pulse which is 2 dps. You can then slot 2x blistering cold twice in brawl and boxing, for a net gain of 15% slow res. Though maybe you really like the KD proc in an aura. You can consider slotting tough as follows: Steadfast +3 def, gladiator's armor x3 (R, R/E, +3 def) and boost the gladiators armors +5 (as PVPIOs they don't lose enhancement value or set bonuses when examplared, like purples). This loses only 1 KB resist, leaving you still with 11, and better SL res. This in turn might allow trimming some SL res from elsewhere. A lot of the issues you face are due to poor set diversity. Usually, melees can get 30% acc easily just from a hecatomb and armageddon, but you don't have room for an armageddon unless you drop the procs in burst, for example. You also don't have good access to ranged and taoe sets (though in your case this is by informed choice). My suggestion is to choose 1-2 attacks (maybe 1 ST and 1 aoe) to procbomb and devote the remainder mainly to set bonuses. But again, it may be that a lot of issues can't be improved without significantly changing your build concept - something I really respect.

This is the opposite of what you need to do, because no leveling content does enough damage to warrant the use of AP. AP is for when the AV has enough dps to kill the tank in seconds and you need to withstand that for minutes in a row. Go play a 4* aeon preferably with a scrap or brute tanking, or some of the higher level 801 stuff.

Okay, now that you've refined your question a little, I can provide the correct answer, which is a dom with confuse. Specifically, ill/ mind/ or dark/ (note dom's PA has no taunt, you need the confuse), ideally with a 2ndary that has some sustain in it (/psi being the classic with its -regen as well, anything with a selfheal will do fine though). Now my days of doing anything for forum clout or epeen are long over, but this thread (not by me) has some nice video examples at the bottom. And if you follow the thread of crumbs I'm sure there is a build or three as well.

false memories are a fascinating phenomenon. Even people who are highly educated can fall victim to them. Neil Degrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, claimed in a 2008 talk that in order “to distinguish we from they” — meaning to divide Judeo-Christian Americans from fundamentalist Muslims — George Bush uttered the words “Our God is the God who named the stars.” However, “…In his post-9/11 speech, Mr. Bush actually said, “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends,” and he said nothing about the stars. Mr. Bush had indeed once said something like what Dr. Tyson remembered; in 2003 Mr. Bush said, in tribute to the astronauts lost in the Columbia space shuttle explosion, that “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.” (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/why-our-memory-fails-us.html) So what happened is that, in Tyson’s mind, the two memories got blended together to create a new statement that was never uttered. Oh, and predictably, when he was asked for the source of the quote he got defensive. Human failings are universal. Then throw in how ideas and memes can spread like a virus, and it’s really not surprising that masses of people can sometimes remember something entirely wrong.

I personally love the idea of new incarnate abilities. They just have to be added in a way that promotes trade-offs and decision-making, for example by making the new abilities exclusive with current ones. Say, you can own both Genesis and Interface, but toggling on the former suppresses the latter. Or, you can own both Vitae and Destiny, but casting the former deletes the Destiny buff.

A while back HC standardized the conventions for powers rooting, and one of the changes was that self-buffs should not root and (except the ones that require tohit checks, like souldrain, because then they are attacks and attacks should root). They still animation lock you, but you can move while the power is animating. (Attacks both animation lock and prevent movement.) I have no opinion on this matter and my feelings on Paragon’s decision to root in the first place are mixed. That said, some other games are far worse. You should see ffxiv.

I’ve fantasized for a long time about training a generative AI to create mids builds, say by feeding it mids data chunks. The problem is the huge amount of training data needed. Maybe if I had access to Homecoming’s databases and could scrape a million builds… And the quality of these stochastic parrots’ output depends on the quality of the training data. So you’d also need a way to ensure the builds scraped are of a certain minimum quality.

So, I really like that you've 1) outlined your build goals clearly, and 2) admitted you have no clue what you're doing. That already puts you ahead of most coh players, so good job. However, you don't seem to include an alpha in your build, and knowing the alpha is an important part of build strategy. I'm going to include suggestions that include proposed incarnate layouts. Damage means you want at least some procs, which in turn means you need to avoid agility alpha and avoid getting def/res from set bonuses (because def/res set bonuses tend to come from attack sets, and directly compete with procs and rech). So we need to get our res from either the alpha or destiny, and rech from either set bonuses or ageless. Invuln has no native rech bonus, and it's pretty bad at slotting for rech and has bad set diversity, so we're most likely going to need to go the ageless + cardiac/resilience route. This is easy; invuln with just commons is already very tough. Anyway, I googled the hyperstrike framework you talk about, and it looks like this: This is just a couple of IO sets slotted with no consideration for how they're supposed to work with the rest of the build. In addition, already I can spot some issues. His SL res is over 90% which suggests he should trim slotting from the SL res powers to avoid wasted stats. You can argue he's going past 100% to be immune to -res, but remember that this has no slots from attack sets, and doesn't include the tanker ATIO +res proc (Yes, this is the brute forum. he used a tanker so I'm talking tankers). So it's overslotted anyway. Reactive armor is a weak set with only 1.5% res and 2.5% def for 4x (and the res is wasted, as mentioned above). It was more widely used on Live where SL def was both more valuable and rarer, but we have more efficient options now. You usually want to put the steadfast global together with the set of unbreakable guard that contains the +7.5% HP proc, to make up for the weaker enhancement value there, so one of his toggles is underslotted and his resist physical is overslotted. more generally, the number of slots you devote to your resist powers depends on whether you're taking a resist alpha. You shouldn't overslot them. He doesn't boost the IO's. Maybe he doesn't know how to in the mids interface. And of course you have the classic FF proc toggled on in kick: this build will never get close to having 200% global rech. This isn't a framework. It's a mistake. The key to slotting Invuln on any AT is to avoid relying too heavily on set bonuses to give you def/res. You want your def to come from pool powers (which give +def all and mule lotg's which = rech), and your res to come from incarnates because res set bonuses are extremely costly in terms of slots. We want to take 3 +def pool powers (weave plus any 2 of CJ, maneuvers and hover) which does limit our ability to take unconventional pools, e.g. fold space/rune. This doesn't mean we won't slot any sets that give def/res set bonuses - certain categories such as resist IO's and def IO's don't have easy options for more attractive bonuses and demand some investment anyway. It just means we'll avoid devoting slots in attacks to them, unless it's a good deal or incidental to some other thing we want, like a damage proc. Here's an invuln framework for you that I quickly threw together. This is designed to be run with resilience alpha and ageless destiny (usually radial so you can cap -def resist). This has 90% SL res, 50% FCEN res, 35% def to all. It's slightly less on paper since in battle you will take damage and the reactive defenses unique will give more res bringing you to the levels I mentioned. It will run GC > SD > GC > GD or GC > SD > Gloom > GD, has 2 -res procs in its ST rotation, and has perma-dullpain. The empty slots in SD can be filled with damage procs or customized as needed (generally builds can afford 1-2 procced out attacks like this). This is not supposed to be a final build. You're supposed to tune it yourself. The brute ATIO2 regen/end proc is not included since it is actually fairly weak and ageless should solve your end problems. This build is about 22% global rech away from permahasten with ageless T4 (with an ageless T4 and the standard slotting of 2x +5 common IOs, you need 158.3% global rech including hasten itself to achieve permahasten assuming you can always press them together on cooldown). 5 FF procs will do it, which is about the limit of what I think is reasonable for FF in SD. [EDIT: it's not. Build for more rech with the slots left.] You can add more rech to reduce this. If you can add just 1 purple set, you need only 3. Let's say you want more def. You can add a winter's bite in an epic blast and fill up the other half of brute's fury. But this sacrifices 2 damage procs in gloom and 2 more in SD. You're now at 40% def with 1 in range, which is 1 teammate's maneuvers or a defense amp from being softcapped with 1 foe in range. Getting to 45% requires more build sacrifices, barrier destiny (which then requires you to make up the recovery and rech) and/or an agility turtle build. Let's say I'm more interested in dps. I can pick an epic taoe like dark oblit and proc it, too. This only requires 3 FF procs for permahasten due to the rech from the apocs. Let's say I'm fighting psi enemies and I want more psi res. By completing the 3 purple sets and replacing a piece of Aegis with the Aegis unique I can get to about 50% psi res. Since the slot layout is the same, I could carry the needed enhancements in my tray and do this on the fly with unslotters - even in the middle of combat - without a respec or dual builds. The cost is less dps. You can respec into a different epic. Say, energy epic with 4 end procs and 4 +HP procs. Is it effective, I have no clue, but I like looking at green numbers floating on my head. Try it yourself - you be the judge. I encourage you to experiment with the invention system and try out different epics and different sources of rech and end. Try, say, psi epic with harmonized mind and a different destiny than ageless, etc. Brute (Katana - Invulnerability).mbd

I think that because you build defensively, on AT's with stronger defensive caps, you (naturally) die less often and that insulates you from the inefficiencies of your builds. Humans have a natural bias to believe in a positive self-image, so in the absence of obvious failure (like dying) that bias easily gets perpetuated. Even builds with no IO's can be functional in this game, so even poorly made builds can claim to have no issues. You talk about how people have played your builds with no issues. The truth is, people won't tell you to your face that your build is terrible; they're non-confrontational. Doubly true if you're a well-known forumite - they will be scared of disagreeing with you publicly. Furthermore, most people - I'm just gonna say it - most people don't know any better and can't judge a bad build from good, and can't see past the ends of their noses in game. So the fact that they think your builds are good means very little. Me, I never listen to praise of my builds. That just feeds the ego. I only listen to negatives because negatives at least show potential areas for improvement. It doesn't mean I have to agree with the criticism (usually I don't because I'm right and I'll prove it) but there have been cases where it turns out I was wrong and that's always a great day, because then I can learn something new and enjoy improved builds. My point re: invincible is that tanking few high dps critters is usually the most challenging situation and it needs to be considered seriously. There's no point optimizing for the horde of weak trash you already easily survive. But I think your comment on being surrounded by 10 or more "90% of the time" is revealing. Because you build for survivability, you kill trash a lot more slowly and take longer to whittle down a spawn. You say your builds don't miss out on damage, but you've never tried to build for all-out offense, you naturally wouldn't know what good damage looks like. Leaving aside the invincibility issue, how about things like toggling on FF in handclap, or ageless when you know full well ageless loses over half its power after 10s? How about the build just below the one you posted with better stats and a lot less slots spent? I'm not trying to rub things in. I think you sound defensive because it's difficult for anyone to confront the idea that their builds probably aren't as good as they tried to portray. But if you're willing to set that aside, you are the one who stands to benefit. None of this is a personal attack. My point is that everything you've said indicates you are the victim of some very natural human biases that are standing in the way of you improving, biases which everyone is vulnerable to. I'm not interested in one-upping you. Like I said, I don't listen to praise or agreement. I'm trying to jolt you out of your fog of complacency. And if you're going to stand there and tell me that hyperstrike builds are fine when the man relies on meltdown with like 23% uptime to cap resistances on a brute, all I can say is lmao.

If you mean soloing for "practical" purposes, as in you want the reward at the end and care somewhat about your time efficiency as opposed to completionism or chasing e-clout, my answer is pre-nerf TW/Bio scrapper. It turns out that when you munch ultimates, feed a gazillion team insps to lore pets, and play the two most overpowered sets in the history of the game, you don't need a team to speedrun MLTF.

4x Tit coating has better RPAS than 3x unbreakable guard (but not 6x, but you only get one of those since the global is unique). The catch is it’s a mix of SL and EN res while unbreakable is pure EN, the rarest res to build for. If you 1) need EN res more, and/or 2) can use the def from 4x unbreakable guard, and/or 3) are overcapped on SL with tit coating, then unbreakable guards are better (this is true more often than not, which is why you see it in builds most of the time). But elec with its great base resists don’t need EN res that badly and may be able to take tit coating, nice on a set that gets no +maxhp. Check your caps. Elec has great end economy out of the box, so it should not need harmonized mind. The key is perma-energize (you can hold it for a bit if you know you’re about to take a chunk of damage, but otherwise just click on cooldown; treat it as a perma buff as opposed to click sustain such as healing flames) which is ~60% of ED-busting endrdx. That’s stronger even than a cardiac T4. But what can I say - it’s your build and epics are often a playfeel/personal/concept choice. I absolutely respect not being optimal in exchange for fluff.

If a stalker swings a Titan weapon and nobody is left alive to hear it, does it still make a sound?

This is a great suggestion. But I want to attack the justification used to disagree with it, which is the whole misguided idea that pool powers need to be weaker than primary/2ndary powers. Firstly, this principle disproportionately disadvantages certain categories like attacks (which need to have good DPA on their own) while not affecting or barely affecting other categories (mostly buffs, which are valuable as long as they stack). CJ and hover are strong picks despite poor base values, because when you're trying to softcap, every bit counts. The same can be said for tough/weave. Secondly, this principle has never been consistently applied. Hasten is equally or more powerful than any +rech buff from any primary or 2ndary so how about we nerf it to a more reasonable 20%? When you look at the stale pool power meta that this basic design principle has resulted in, it is impossible to deny it's been greatly harmful to the game. Just because something is fundamental or has been this way for a long time doesn't mean it's bad or has to go. Paragon Studios, who cooked up this rule in the first place, has a long, long list of questionable basic design principles, chief among them their failure to really understand DPA and really balance around it until the very end (I suspect they just started giving powersets samey animation times instead). You can make provoke weaker than tanker or brute taunts if necessary. But they should be buffed to be strong enough and worthwhile enough to be useful on their own. And the pool really ought to have a taunt aura, even a weaker one, for unarmored AT's that want to hold aggro or armor sets that have none and would like to pick up one. That is one of the basic tools necessary for aggro management. My superior principle of "all pool powers should be useful and viable" might actually result in more off-meta builds that nevertheless do well enough to find their niche.

While I agree that crashing buffs need to be more transparent about when they are about to crash, I think coh has too much "big text spam" as-is in itrials and hard mode. I would like a different system: for the UI to display the exact duration remaining on each buff using the new color coded system for recharging powers.

I did not notice this on a first pass but you dropped TJ. I don't recommend dropping TJ because it's a slow and also -dmg (but some people really do want to play the ranged only troller, so there). It effectively protects you from melee without needing to slot melee def and the area is huuuuge. You can drop evasive since its value to you is merely as a set mule. If I had to chose between assault and tactics, I would choose tactics too if you intend to exploit the gaussian's proc as I mentioned above. I recommend intuition radial. It boosts damage, -tohit, -def, slows, holds, and range (and the range increases the area of your energy torrent). In short - it boosts everything.

Just to be sure, are you using power boost before casting farsight? You ought to be amply softcapped with it on. Defense based builds are brittle and from time to time will take a big hit - that's just life under the rng. The bopper build is effective. It's one of very few builds I've seen made by a big-name forumite that is not terrible. There are efficiencies to be found (I'd personally try to avoid muling purples and find some way to get rech elsewhere, say putting sets in chronoshift and time's juncture), but you shouldn't die that easily through powerboosted farsight and TJ.