Zect

New placate is so good as a dps tool. I think Frosticus doesn't make it sound good enough, because they trickle out the gospel over the course of half a dozen posts instead of putting it all in one. Here it is: Autohit Guaranteed crit Shorter animation No internal lockout Just think of it as a 2nd BU that bypasses the damage cap on whatever attack you want to use. I particularly enjoy it on many "classic" primaries (the ones that lose aoe) because when you have fewer aoes the way to make up for it is to make every single one crit.

You have the general idea correct, but there are some issues with your design technique. Your build looks like it time travelled from late 2012 (heavy SL def). That doesn't work so well anymore after they fixed the cheese where SL def dodges all the energy blasts that have a little smashing damage in them. More generally, you want to avoid getting def/res from set bonuses as much as possible, because these bonuses and especially res bonuses tend to come from attack sets, and thus directly compete with damage procs and other desired set bonuses such as acc/rech. That means exploring means to get def/res from places outside of IO sets. For a scrapper on a res armor that wants high survivability (and I preface this by saying I intensely dislike telling people to change epics/pools because I understand this is often a concept/playstyle thing), it is nearly impossible to beat shadow meld from soul epic. Shadow meld is not permable, but that's fine because you are a scrapper. It lasts 15s and is up often enough to absorb every alpha. What you want to do is when you are running forward you use particle shield, shadowmeld, build up then you engage and use rad therapy, ground zero, etc etc, and murder the everliving shit out of everything in sight within 15s, then all you have to tank is the 1-2 survivors of nuclear warfare. With permahasten levels of rech, you can afford to use rad therapy both at the start of an engagement as an attack, and at the end to heal up after you have taken some damage. Secondly, you took agility alpha and melee radial embodiment. Don't do that. Agility counts as rech in the PPM formula and reduces proc rate. Melee hybrid is not perma. If you really want def that comes specifically from incarnate powers, take barrier. Core epiphany is perma 5% def and 5% res to all. 5% def is usually a 5 or 6-slot bonus, 6% res is usually 3 or 6 slots, so we're gaining literally dozens of slots worth of set bonuses, and these are just the most slot-efficient options, that come from unique sets like purples and ATIOs. And that's just the weak part of barrier, the last 60s. The first 60s is very strong and acts as a second alpha absorber and ghetto DDR. Of course, barrier competes with ageless which is also a strong choice for procbombers, so pick your poison. Thirdly, generally don't take meltdown unless you know what you are doing. Scrappers don't have a high enough resist cap to really get value out of it. Fourth, think about some slow resist. Def sets don't worry about this as much since they double-dip by having def also dodge debuffs. Res sets need to worry about it more. I threw together a quick example of what I am talking about: I hate providing build downloads or imports; I'm here to instruct, not do your building for you, so finish it yourself. The locations of the attack sets are whatever. Move them around as you like. I want you to look at the resists. We're at 67% ish on most major damtypes. This leaves open some options for you to cap: you can use barrier (5%) and the remaining 2-3% is made up by reactive defenses since you will take damage and not always be at full HP. You can also use a defense amp, AKA the 8 hour inspiration, which is 7.5% res to all and caps you outright. You can eat a small orange - hopefully you can utilize the very powerful resource stream that is insps dropping for you. No insps no temps is suboptimal, inefficient, and designed for epeen-stroking and forumite egotism over practical "real world" play; it's more efficient to build to reduce insp usage below a certain threshold. For hardmode, just enjoy your teammates' buffs. Some players prefer 75% SLE and neg undercapped, in which case you will replace 4x shield walls with 5x lotg. Some players prefer to cap the SL res at least - I'm sure you can find a way to do it yourself, for example slotting 2x celerity in sprint and prestige sprints - yes it does go in prestige sprints. However in general, do not cripple your build for 1-2% resists. Going from 85% to 90% resist on a tanker is a big deal, going from 70% to 75% really isn't. Just kill faster. I also want to point out the theft of essence proc in rad therapy. This can proc >1 time per power usage, and when used in a crowd completely refills your endurance bar. I don't use this in my own builds, because I am obsessed with optimizing for single enemy fights, but you should consider it; enjoy before it gets nerfed. (If there actually is a patch live right this moment on brainstorm or cryptic with nerfed theft of essence, I would like to clarify that I have not read any patch notes; I'm just very prescient. Don't ban me.) You can also switch up the pool power layout a bit. This build, as shown, does not necessarily need tactics because rad therapy has 3.0x tohit and ground zero will always be used together with BU (they have the same base rech). Tactics is more necessary when your procbombed attacks have normal acc and are not always used during a BU window. So in this case, you can consider dropping leadership. Or, if you do stick with tactics, which is not a bad option either, then try to get more value out of it by replacing the purple sets with even more procs and using ageless to make up for the lost rech and to fuel the attacks. Have I mentioned how endurance intensive procbombed attacks are? So you can conceive a sprectrum of defense to offense, where on the defense side you have the builds with barrier and normally slotted attacks, and on the offense side the tactics/ageless/more heavily procced builds. Oh, and think about hover/fly/evasive instead of jumping; it's +1 lotg.

This build prioritizes +regen and +heal. You should prioritize rech instead because it not only increases the availability of your powerful defensive clicks (ultimately resulting in more healing, absorb and regen than actually building for +regen), it adds offensive power as well. +Heal set bonuses also do not apply to absorbs (unlike enhancements, which specifically state healing and absorb). Even if we accept your build goals as they stand, you also choose a lot of inefficient sets (pounding slugfest) and allocate slots inefficiently. For example, instead of the 5th unbreakable guard in evolving armor, you could've added a 6th hecatomb instead which gives more psi/tox res. It's not like you're doing anything with the 6th slot there. Instead of 6x might of the tanker and 5x gauntleted fist, it should be the reverse because this gains 6% FC res. The eradication proc can go in a power that's better for proccing - damage auras are shit for those. This build needs a lot of work.

That build doesn't even work on a brute; it relies on meltdown with poor uptime to cap resists. It's basically a mids-warrioring build (toggle on your T9 and the FF proc in kick to give a misleading impression of build performance). I analyzed the numerous design mistakes of this particular build in a separate post here, and explained how to more efficiently achieve the goals that the above build fails at. Scrapper rads are inherently different from brutes because scrappers only have 75% resist cap. Conversely, they get shadowmeld which brutes do not. So you have to adopt a more proactive and aggressive playstyle, relying on shadowmeld to absorb the alpha, high dps output to kill most of the spawn before it wears off, and judicious use of defensive clicks to bolster survivability where necessary. You can't really copy/paste a brute or tank build 1:1.

What you have posted right here is a great example of how being wrong is very often good news. Excellent point and I stand corrected.

To make CS perma for any build you need +300% rech enhancement from all sources. 95% ED-capped enhancement (assumed) 70% hasten 50% chronoshift itself (I assume the user knows chronoshift itself gives rech) 85% other global rech = 300% My intent is to convey an impression of how difficult it is for a build designer to achieve perma-chronoshift by stating the amount of rech that needs to come from set bonuses or incarnate build capacity. Though, looking at my original quote: That is ambiguous because it is not explicitly stated what is and is not being included. So, ignore that and refer to the calculation above.

Both time and FF are high-defense (softcap all without fighting), moderate -res support sets. Time offers heals, offensive buffs of rech, tohit and dmg on top of the complete standard debuff suite of -def -res -regen -tohit -dmg -rech. FF offers mez prot, complete debuff resist, -special on enemies, repel and knockdown. While they both offer strong utility, time is more offensive and FF more defensive. Time is best played at close to medium range because of its strong debuff aura and the fact that all but one of its powers are pbaoe. FF is comfy at any range unless you want to use the repel aura. Time requires a medium to high amount of rech. Basically every IO'ed time out there will want to get ~85% global rech plus hasten for perma-chronoshift. FF can be played with very little rech since its -res powers do not have long base recharges. In practice this means FF has much more room to explore unconventional hasteless and low-rech builds. It is one of very few powersets of any kind that do not derive a significant benefit from global rech. FF does slightly more -res against a single target, but time does more aoe -res.

1) Check what is toggled on. Parry, barrier, or elude may be toggled on by mistake. 2) There are niche circumstances in which significantly more than the softcap or i-cap are beneficial. Fighting eyeballs, for example. Whether it is worth it depends on how that defense was achieved. (The more I play the more I feel that if you want more survivability on SR that is tohit agnostic, build for res.) 3) It may just be a stunt; sometimes people build for X in mids just to show they can, with no assurance that X actually provides a worthwhile return on investment. It's easy to get insane amounts of any one stat if you are willing to devote the entire build to it.

This build is pretty decent. It has all the essentials, a procced-out blind, a good amount of rech and all key powers taken. It even takes temporal selection - how thoughtful! There are some efficiencies to be found, some things are a matter of opinion (I think energy font is trash unless you have another stun to stack with it) and I would personally slot chrono shift for heal (it's a massive heal, the endurance part only lasts 30s) but at a glance nothing jumps out to me as questionable. There aren't a whole lot of different ways to build time, but it's nice to see something that's competently constructed. Here are some things for you to consider. Firstly, think about group invis over supe invis. There aren't a whole lot of situations in pve where supe makes a noticeable difference - I think you can still sneak into the bunker in keyes with it, and it does give very slightly more unsupressed def, otherwise I struggle to recall any examples. Taking group invis over supe invis saves a lot of end over its duration and being able to stealth teammates has a variety of uses. Secondly, try the purple build up proc in PA, if you can spare a slot. Yes, it works on them. You can't buff PA, but the PA's can buff themselves. Thirdly, consider a procbombed energy torrent. Try something like, 4 damage procs, ragnarok D and D/E (boosted +5). Illusion troller aoe is never going to be very good, but a 300 damage aoe attack is always nice to have. You can make up the lost rech with another set of basilisks in distortion field, and the def allows you to pull a slot of botz which lets you get your beloved energy font proc back in it, too; I would even argue you don't need botzs as the whole point of being ill/ is not to have to get hit. Finally, while time doesn't have the HPS of the heavyweight healing sets like kin, dark, elecaff etc, its heal does provide slow resistance. Power boost also boosts heal. You can power boost + temporal healing or even power boost + chronoshift for a significant burst of healing, a technique emps will be familiar with.

Both are defense-based sets backed up by minor resists and offensive capacity. Shield is positional with no weakness, EA is typed with a slight neg and significant psi weakness. This is a mild annoyance because EN def is the rarest def on armored AT's - there are few slot-efficient sources easily available to them. Shield has a far less noticeable problem vs psi since most (but not all, and I haven't gone back and checked since they did the typed defense overhaul) psi attacks have a vector. EA is a bit rougher in the 40-50 contact/radio range where there are a lot of arachnos (tarantula queens) and carnies, which incidentally also resist psi melee heavily. Shield has better DDR, slightly better resists plus +maxHP, debuffs dmg of enemies in melee, a modern (recharge immune with mild crash) T9, and complete mez prot. EA has drain and slow resist, a click heal that also gives regen, debuffs rech of enemies in melee, a classic (crashing) T9, and lacks fear/confuse prot. Hence, shield natively provides only strong mitigation, EA has a mixture of slightly weaker mitigation with some sustain and a broader debuff resist spectrum. I generally find that EA has the smoother leveling experience regardless of AT - while shield is very strong when fully kitted out, you will generally struggle to run all its toggles plus fighting in the midgame, conversely EA shrugs off the worst of a lot of groups such as penny yin freakshow. Shield and EA both gain offensive stats in melee with enemies: +dmg for shield and +rech for EA. +rech increases availability of both offensive and defensive clicks, but varying rech is harder to build around - for example you can't necessarily rely on it to make a specific attack chain work. Shield gets a very powerful teleport attack (that accepts pbaoe sets) while EA gets endredux and endurance restoration that makes the pre-set IO life a lot easier. Shield and EA both offer some utility - shield buffs ally +def (it's a lot stronger than maneuvers but in a smaller area) while EA has stealth. Ultimately both are very good. Shield will provide an experience closer to your WP where you toggle up and go, with the caveat that it has worse endurance management. I really prefer EA on stalkers over brutes, especially since the +rech power on stalkers is a flat +20%. There's a reason it is the #1 stalker set.

To be eligible for a 4* you need to be able to work as a team. I find CoH players as a whole are very bad at this, because the game is so easy it doesn't ask for cooperation, and historically both the most lucrative activities and epeen-stroking activities have been solo stuff - marketing, AE farming, and things like no insps no temps soloing of TF's/AV's (which are even designated team content). So it breeds inflated egos with the whole "I don't need you, you're not the master of me, I won't let anyone tell me what to do, I can't take any criticism" attitude. If you can generally follow orders, and as long as your build plays to its expected strengths and isn't something completely stupid like a cold corr skipping the shields, you will be welcome regardless of AT. There isn't a long line of people waiting to do 4* (the rewards are lackluster and not comparable to farming unless you speed it at least somewhat) so most pugs will just be happy to fill the group.

Before I explain the build I want to reiterate the importance of recognizing whether you should slot typed or positional defense. Typed defense is typically a lot more slot-efficient. For example, 3x eradications offers 3.13% typed EN def. Usually, 3.13 to 3.75% positional def is a 5-6 piece bonus (see for example 6x numina's or 6x performance shifter). The downside of typed is that typed defense less often comes bundled with rech. But you (OP) do not seem to be pursuing a high rech build, so that's alright. There are some cases where specific sets may serve for both typed and positional defense. For example, if you have 3x unbreakable guard for the EN res, an additional 1 slot for ~1.5% ish SL def is still a pretty good deal. That's still more Defense Per Added Slot (DPAS) than kincombat. However, in general avoid things such as mako and tod on a typed defense armor unless you really know what you are doing. Next, you mention the excess amount of SL res, and it's good that you have noticed this and are trying to react to it. Endgame invulns typically slot resist physical and do not toggle on tough, using it only as a gladiator's armor mule because they still cap SL res without it. This effectively allows them to use their high SL res to run 1 less armor toggle than other tankers, a gain of ~0.2% EPS. Which is almost 12% recovery, which is almost the amount that phys perfection gives you (12.5%). This concept of under-investing in a stat you have excess of (SL res) in order to effect a gain (recovery) elsewhere is known as trading-out. * * * Next, we need to talk build goals. Since I do not know your incarnate strategy, playstyle nor target content, that makes it impossible to make effective recommendations. Instead, what I will present is a basic platform that nevertheless offers robust survivability, which you can upgrade with your choice of power pools, epic pool, and incarnate powers. I will also discuss some ways in which my proposed build deviates from more optimal slotting techniques, so that you can upgrade later in your career when you can afford more stuff. My proposed build goals are: 40% def to all but psitox with 1 enemy in range perma 70% res to all but psitox 1 with 1 stack of might of the tanker ATIO proc "Why not 45% def?" you ask. "And where's the perma-dull pain?" These are not hard to achieve, but without knowing how (or even if) resources such as incarnates and power pools are to be spent we cannot state the best means of achieving them. 40% def still blocks 90% of incoming dps and will be softcapped at 4 enemies in melee, which will serve OP well until they can arrive at a decision. The remaining power choices and slots are yours to spend. This has no incarnates, no epic, and no IO's more expensive than 10 million apiece. The overwhelming majority are <5 M, notable exceptions being the shield walls (7-10 M), lotgs (6), gladiator's armor +3 def (8-10), and tanker ATIO's - might of the tanker and gauntleted fist - depending on market conditions. You will put in bids at 8.1 million for the tanker ATIOs. After you reach level 50, enhancement catalysts will start to drop as loot for you, up to 1 per toon per day. These let you turn the ATIOs into their superior versions. In the enhancement window in-game, click on the enhancement. The catalyst, if you have any, appears in the top left of the screen. Click on it and the ATIO is upgraded. I want to draw your attention to several features and potential upgrades: This build uses cross punch. Even though it is not a combo builder, it allows us to fit eradications which is important because Stj's 2nd aoe attack, unusually, takes taoe instead of pbaoe sets. Because of the passive synergy bonus from boxing, it actually does good damage as a single target attack and is worth taking in its own right. My assessment is that a 3rd filler attack may serve you well because you are a low rech build and crushing uppercut has an unusually long rech. It can be dropped if you later find you do not use it (in that case my suggestion for making up the EN def is to mule some thunderstrikes in an epic blast). Crushing Uppercut, unusually for a strong melee attack, accepts hold sets. Therefore, it can potentially fit a 2nd absorb proc from superior entomb, the winter set. Absorb procs such as these are extremely powerful on a tanker that has both strong def and res but low sustain, such as invuln. If you are able to get more rech you may consider swapping the locations of might of the tanker and gauntleted fist, and putting an entomb proc in the 6th slot of crushing uppercut. Normally, high-end invuln builds split up their gauntleted fist set into two sets of 3x, getting the 6% EN res bonus twice. (The remaining slots are often filled with damage procs, or left empty if the attack does not need further enhancement.) In your case I have assembled it as a single set of 6x because without winter sets you have much less access to FC res and therefore benefit from the 6th piece bonus. Splitting it up again is an option if you want to upgrade resistances in future. This build is softcapped at 4 enemies in melee. The most immediate upgrade will be to be softcapped with just 1 in melee range, and to achieve perma-dull pain which requires +200% rech enhancement in dull pain. There are a few options to achieve this; for example, barrier core epiphany in the destiny slot is perma-5% def and res to all, and also lets your protect teammates. Agility core and a defense pool power (such as hover or maneuvers) will also achieve this. If you add ageless on top of that it will make dull pain almost permanent as long as you always remember to press them both together on a 2 minute cycle. Note that I have not included haste above, though you may take it if you like. My assessment is that if you take haste it should be with a specific goal in mind - making a certain power permanent or enabling a specific attack chain. This in turn usually requires that hasten itself be permanent, otherwise its downtime is longer than mids displays, and that downtime in turn lengthens the rech of the other power. As a low-rech build that is nowhere near permahasten, you will likely gain more slot-efficiency from taking +def powers instead. I encourage you to further explore the invention system yourself and and experiment with different incarnate powers and builds based on your play experience. Tanker (Invulnerability - Street Justice).mbd

You shouldn't build for melee defense unless you are making some kind of exotic build. Invuln is a typed defense set, so you should prioritize typed defense (smashing, lethal, energy etc.) unless you really know what you are doing. Invuln with 1 target in melee, weave, and either CJ or hover is already at 33% def to all. It's not too hard to softcap from there. Even non-superior blistering colds are over 20 million apiece. If you want to take them at all, catalyze them and make them superior (catalysts are <1M each). Otherwise, don't take them in the first place and slot kinetic combats instead. I don't have time to do a comprehensive build teardown at present, and I don't know how much of this build is your work. However, in the past whenever I have seen builds labelled infinitum, they are generally terrible so I would suggest seeking out a more reputable source (the best builds are often not passed around on the forums and generally only distributed privately in discords). What will help people help you is to give a comprehensive account of your build goals. For example, what is your incarnate strategy (some people don't want their defense to come from the alpha slot for example), are you open to changing pools/epic powers, what content you want to do with this, etc. Even something like "I haven't decided what incarnates I want to use and would like to keep my options as open as possible" is helpful to a knowledgable builder.

The portion of hide that does not suppress and always remains active is only equivalent to CJ, so it is usually not heavily slotted. It can carry the def uniques that require the power to be active to work, such as kismet and reactive defenses. These deactivate if you lose access to the power they are in when exemping so it can help to have them in an early power, and hide is available at level 1. Almost every EA stalker will have 16% def to all since slotted Weave is about 6%, slotted CJ or hover 2-3%, hide 2%, both uniques 6% = 16% minimum. Energy drain gives +def all too, but the amount is very small - 1% to 7% depending on slotting and # of enemies hit, I wouldn't count on it giving more than 4% even if you take and slot it heavily which I generally do not recommend. You can take CJ or hover, whichever you did not earlier (2-3%). You can take maneuvers (close to 4% when ED capped). If you took CJ, hover, maneuvers weave you lose access to hasten which excludes you from the top DPS builds. Barrier core epiphany is perma-5% def to all. A defense amp (the 8 hour inspiration as I like to call it) is 5% def to all. These are the boosts I generally consider practical. If we take and unrealistically assume max values for all the above that is +41% def to all. 6x apoc in moonbeam will cap you to psi. A defense alpha may put you closer to the cap. Both melee and support hybrid provide +def all, but they are not permanent. At this point we are taking severe hits to dps by not taking an offensive alpha and offensive hybrid. In practice, all this would be a huge waste since you would be significantly overcapped to other damage, wasting the power of your other defense toggles. A more realistic figure is possibly the low to mid-30's and most high-end stalker builds will only be in the low 20's to high teens. On the more practical side of solutions, Shadowmeld from soul epic does provide +def all, and it comes with access to moonbeam which is never a weak option. It is not permanent but it is up often enough to function as an alpha absorber. This works just long enough for you to apply the real stalker solution to a defense hole, shank the enemies before they shoot you.

Haha, no such thing. Kerrigan: Tell me about your work. Abathur: Look at flesh, see only potential. Strands, sequences, twisting, separating, joining. See how it could be better. Eat flesh, splinter bone. Inside me, can touch it. Weave it. Spin it. Make it great. Kerrigan: But not perfect? Abathur: Never perfect. Perfection goal that changes. Never stops moving. Can chase, cannot catch. There's also a world of possibility if you want to look beyond optimizing meta builds and start considering unconventional or very specialized build goals.

I'm pleasantly surprised; this is actually a very reasonable suggestion. A lot of the sets you discuss are from the earliest implementation of the IO system (predating even the addition of purples), back when the developers may not have figured out what players are likely to pursue and were possibly somewhat conservative in chosing what set bonuses to offer (which is the smart thing to do; release underpowered, buff later). Either increasing their level ceiling or revamping the set bonuses, or both, seem plausible solutions. Personally, I wouldn't prefer extending their levels all the way to 50; I think we have an excess of high-level enhancements (purples, pvpIOs and the various flavors of hami-Os) and it would be nice to see more mid-level sets that present a choice of attractive set bonuses at the cost of lower enhancement value. Trade-offs = good. Eradication, cloud senses and basilisks are all good examples of such a concept well done. So if their ceiling is to be heightened I would say that 30 seems a good place to stop in addition to buffing their set bonuses. However, careful attention needs to be paid to enhancing build diversity and refreshing the stale meta. The set bonuses should not provide significant amounts of: Def Res Rech Acc And other such bonuses that current mainstream builds pursue, or that support meta playstyles (such as KB2KD). I think this is an exciting opportunity to implement something completely new instead. For example, uncommon set bonuses like +range and +mez duration, but in huge amounts that make them really significant to non-meta builds. Or a set "bonus" at 2x that is actually a malus such as -10% rech, but compensated by a different, extremely powerful (stronger even than purple) or unique bonus at 3x, forcing a trade-off. Again, trade-offs = good. We may even consider never-before-seen bonuses. Whatever those may be, I leave it to game designers to figure out.

Yes. When used in an aoe, they can only fire once per power activation (regardless of number of targets hit). But when slotted in multiple autopowers, each power rolls to fire the proc independently (this used not to be the case for power transfer, but it was changed at some point), and they can all fire simultaneously for a cloud of green numbers above your head. Oddly satisfying. Are they effective? PShifter is a well-characterized proc so I will not discuss that. Power transfer is a 3 PPM proc and heals 5% of your base HP. This means that when slotted in an autopower it will fire once every 20s on average, or 15% base HP per minute on average. Player regeneration is 5% of max hp every 12s, or 25% max HP per minute (fun fact, +regen buffs do not increase the tick size, they work by increasing the frequency). So if you had a single Ptransfer proc slotted, and only tanker base HP with no buffs, you would be getting 15% + 25% = 40% of your max HP per minute. This is equivalent to +60% regeneration (!), making it stronger than Panacea and any of the regeneration uniques by far. You are WP so you will always have more than base HP, making regeneration's disadvantage less severe, since regen does scale with max HP but the PTransfer proc does not. However, even at the tanker hardcap of 3534 HP the PTransfer proc is still stronger than any of the regen uniques (equivalent to about +31.8% regen). But is it effective effective? Well, I think phys perfection is not a strong pick for a WP anyway - it's not as though you lack passive healing (maybe if it makes the difference between being eps stable and not). However epics tend to be a playstyle or concept related choice and I do understand the appeal of being surrounded by many floating numbers. So my answer is that it is not super optimal, but it's not like it will ruin your retirement, so carry on.

Stuffing tanker attacks full of procs isn't rocket science - just mouseover the various sets in mids, and see which have chance for ___ damage. But making a functional and effective procbombing build also requires knowing how to source acc, endrdx, rech (especially rech) and other needed stats without enhancements in the actual attacks themselves. Further, procbombing builds gobble blue at a rate that's hard to believe until you've played one yourself. Heavy procbombers are one of very few builds capable of spending all the end from ageless core epiphany. This build (not by me; I do not hand out builds as a matter of principle) demonstrates some key concepts of procbombing on tanks. See the first section, "proc rocks", about a granite stone/SS specifically. I draw your attention to: The use of SS to provide needed tohit; this allows taking musculature (adding even more dps) instead of an accuracy alpha. Without Rage, procbombers often need an alpha that provides acc, such as nerve or vigor, or some other non-enhancement source of acc such as focused acc. This is why SS is in a class of its own when it comes to offensive power. The use of FF procs and set-muling to provide rech and slow resist; see eg. how the frankenslotted winter sets provide both enhancement value and slow res. See also the location of the tanker ATIO sets. They are put in the one power that is not good for procbombing (damage aura). It is normal that even on a procbombing set you have one or two powers slotted "normally" as the bonuses are too strong to pass up. The use of ageless core to provide recovery. This is necessary if you are not playing an armor set with very strong endo management tools such as rad, elec etc or taking an endo management alpha such as Vigor. The mixture of frankenslotting and procs in various attacks, in order to provide optimal damage and enhancement value. This is one of few valid use cases for slotting 3x purple sets because a +5 purple dam/end still outdamages a non-purple damage proc on many attacks, and slotting proc + dam + dam/end gives valuable resists and enhancement value (endrdx!). The use of epic blasts and aoes to provide additional offensive firepower. Procbombing builds typically have low rech in the procced main attacks. This means more attacks must be fielded in order to spend all animation time. If you have to sit there waiting for stuff to recharge, that cuts into your dps gains. I don't agree with all the choices made but overall, it is a very competently designed build. The key concept being illustrated is understanding that granite provides a huge amount of mitigation which thus allows us to under-invest in mits and invest in dps instead. (Non-granite tankers can do the same thing, just to a lesser extreme.) This build invests almost nothing in defense except a few highly efficient pieces such as the res/def uniques and still has 90% res to all and 45% def to all except psi. Makes you wonder what those turtle-tank builders are doing when they throw away all dps to invest in turtling yet fail to achieve the same numbers, eh?

I'm going to say what I always say in these types of threads. You ready? Here it is: Define "best". With that said, here's a possible analysis based on what seems to be your unspoken assumption that time is good for your purposes. There are a few reasons why time is usually considered strong as a 2ndary. 1) Its DPS support power is of the self-buff type (+rech) which makes it easy to build around and exploit, compared to enemy debuffs (weakened by purple patch) or damage auras (requires close range). 2) Its strong melee attack, future pain, does decent DPA (97, above average) while offering access to an unusual damtype for diversification purposes. It also has a fairly standard power layout (always valuable for a set like AR that is very biased in favor of taoes in terms of power type), 1 more power that can fit resistance uniques, access to hold sets for set-muling purposes, and a pretty stupid amount of slow res. All told, a munchkin's wet dream. Please nerf it. Rad and plant both have access to holds and a fairly standard power layout. However, rad's DPS support is also of the self-buff type, while plant's is a debuff (-regen). In fact, rad has 2 powers that give +rech - you get 20% from metabolic and then another varying amount from beta decay (only when foes in range). And while rad does have some melee and pbaoe attacks, they're pretty shit - I don't always take them myself if the primary has enough aoes of its own. Skipping them is actually not that bad for AR, which is a top 3 set or close to it. So if you don't intend to melee a lot because you'd rather stay at range and use your cones, and prefer sets that offer DPS support through self-buffs, rad seems to be the set that better fits your objectives after time.

Reading this post reminds me of the fact that I have received some PM's asking me "what's the best/most meta X" (usually couched in "what would you play if..." language). I've started refraining from replying to them because I think it's unhelpful to do so. I want to help people learn to think for themselves, not do their thinking for them or foist my preferences and biases on them. If I answer, how do they know I'm telling the truth? (It's a PM, so it's not like someone else will come and contradict me.) How do they know my knowledge is accurate or up to date? One even, I kid you not, calls me a "genius". I am extremely uncomfortable with this fawning tone. There's a reason I post from a throwaway account and abstain from avatars and signatures and all that stuff forumites use to build a brand around themselves. I am happiest if you consider me an anonymous nobody. I reject all assumed authority and want you to evaluate anything I write solely on its own merits - as you should do with anything on the forums regardless of the poster's "reputation" or clout. But perhaps this thread can be helpful to such posters. If I receive any inquiries on what's the most meta blaster, I'll be sure to redirect them here.

Proposing correct solutions to problems requires an accurate identification and statement of the problem in the first place. Otherwise, you're just changing things for the sake of change at best; and making a bad solution worse at worst. Barely any posts in this thread have attempted to achieve this, with most just tossing out wishful thinking "Christmas lists" of buffs with no supporting rationale or data given. Here's a list of real problems that regen in its current form suffers, instead of vague whines about it being "not strong enough" (how exactly?). 1. Lack of slow resist (and possibly -end/-recovery resist too) Every set without a substantial amount of def (no, mog doesn't count - that's the short duration anti-alpha tool) that is dependent on click heals needs this; otherwise, unlike +def sets whose mitigation double-dips as debuff resistance, slows inflict a double whammy of lost offensive and defensive power. Elec has this; fire has this; rad has this; even bio has this; so regen must have this. 20-30% in QR should do the trick. 2. Lack of offensive (not defensive) buff. Because regen spends animation time healing, it effectively has a built in dps loss and needs an offensive buff to compensate. Once upon a time I suspect quick recovery may have been intended to serve this purpose, but years of power creep has led to other sets getting progressively more powerful endo management tools. I already wrote this in the previous regen whineposting thread, but while the lazy solution would be to slap a rech buff on QR or something, I personally hope for something more unique and less meta-friendly. Maybe a mini-build up upon using reconstruction? 3. Poor availability of clicks relative to encounter frequency Consider the following hypothetical click powers: 30s duration, 90s cooldown 300s duration, 900s cooldown Are they equal? Superficially, they might be, since they have the same uptime ratio (about 33%). However, in practice, the first is actually going to be a great deal stronger than the second. This is because encounters in coh typically last some 30-60 seconds including travel time to the next spawn. With the first power, assuming ED-capped rech, you get to use it nearly every spawn or so. But with the second power, you get to enjoy it for 5 minutes and then there's 10 minutes where you're buck naked. It's extremely feast-or-famine. This is a subtle but serious issue with regen, independent from the uptime ratio of the powers (what % of time they are active). I think it stems from the fact that regen originates from a time when the game was much slower and encounter frequency lower. Paragon, and almost certainly Homecoming team, are aware of this because you can see it in the design of the newer sets. Consider Bio: Ablative carapace: 90s rech DNA siphon: 90s rech Parasitic aura: 45s duration, 270s rech Observe how, even with just SO levels of recharge, you can use ablative (the primary EHP booster) and DNA siphon (the primary sustain heal) nearly every spawn, or alternate them that one is available per spawn, at 45s rech. Parasitic, the more powerful T9, would be available every (edit:) two minutes and change - perhaps saved up for a more difficult encounter where necessary. Now compare regen: Reconstruction: 60s Instant healing: 90s duration, 650s (!!) rech Mog: 15s duration, 240s (!!!) rech This means that IH and mog are available, at SO level, at best once every five and two minutes respectively, resulting in long periods during which the set has less recourse to incoming damage. (I find the poor availability of mog in particular very egregious because it seems clearly designed as an anti-alpha tool.) This also makes regen feel less active and less interesting to play. And the reason their cooldowns are so ridiculously long might, ironically, be because the powers are too strong when active. Mog really doesn't need to give 70% res or whatever it is unenhanced on top i-capped defense. And IH would still be plenty strong at 300% to 500% ish regen. The solution here is to massively weaken both IH and mog, but substantially increase the frequency at which they are available, and possibly also tweak their uptime ratio slightly. My recommendation is that an SO regen should be able to enter every encounter with 2 major clicks (excluding DP), but with these powers significantly weakened from their existing form. 4. What I like to call the "scaling heals problem" If you look at all sets with strong healing, they typically scale with # of enemies hit. Dark regen, RTTC, rad therapy, DNA siphon, parasitic etc. all work this way. And while it has never been stated in a design document or something, I hypothesize the reason is because Paragon (and perhaps Homecoming team - though I haven't seen enough of their work to be certain) consider that the amount of healing necessary to withstand full-team spawns would be overpowered for single-target fights. Otherwise, the amount of DPS a single AV would have to do to threaten a regen would in turn overwhelm other sets without click sustain. So what we need is for some of regen's tools reworked such that they scale with the number of foes engaged. They should be substantially weaker than they currently are against a single enemy, but substantially stronger against x8 spawns. This would effectively allow regen to "scale up" its healing power when encountering large spawns, without fear of it being overpowered for single or small encounters. --- And while you're digesting my incredibly well-reasoned post that fixes every issue with regen without causing power creep, here are three commonly proposed changes that are terrible ideas and should not be implemented: Adding 95% -regen resist - Usually when people suggest -regen resist, they what they really mean is SR-level -regen resist, 95% or better. That shouldn't happen unless you want regen to be as completely dependent on regeneration to the degree that SR is almost wholly dependent upon def (which would be terrible for different reasons). Adding def/res - go play Bio if that's what you want. Or if you can only play half a toon, play invuln. Regen must retain its identity as a set relying on click heals as opposed to passive mitigation, in order to add variety to the oppressive, unfun, stale, yawn inducing and boring mitigation/softcap/hardcap meta. No def/res outside of the small amount you get from resilience, and mog - and I would be delighted if they changed the latter so it gives something other than mits, too. Adding absorb - this is less bad than the others, but if regen gets easy access to large amounts of absorb (think particle shield) then it may need to lose some strength from dull pain. Otherwise, regen's ehp may end up being too high. Note how rad/dark/etc. have no +maxhp at all and bio only has a moderate amount of +maxhp. I think people often underestimate the difficulty of balancing healing (as an umbrella term for regen, absorb, and actual heal damage). Healing is very easily overpowered if you allow it to get out of hand (as old Regen was at some point). It is damtype agnostic, tohit agnostic, and scales incredibly strongly with all the passive mitigation flying around in the IO system right now.

In case you are not doing this already, use heat loss on cooldown. Even on a single target, it is nearly +100% recovery. Good heatloss uptime is critical to a steady flow of endurance. Here are my proposed changes, bearing in mind your build goals. Below I will explain what I have changed and why. This build has exactly 40% ranged def. Your barrier core T4 is essentially perma-5% def and res to all. Hence, you will be softcapped to range (and about 30% to melee/aoe) with it on, and this should suffice for babymode. The cost of these defenses is 15% rech, leaving your hasten about 4s from permanent. Keeping the rech will require significant changes to the build. However, my assessment is that it's okay to have a small gap in hasten (and sleet not perfectly double-stacked), and this build has better heatloss uptime due to better enhancement value in it - power transfer was designed for damaging attacks so a lot of its enhancement value is tied up in damage, not rech. Note that we have swapped teleport for flight and hover. With the free power choice this gives us, I recommend ice storm. You will sell your hecatombs and with the money buy a set of ragnaroks to put in it, effectively moving the set bonus there. You will also sell your apocs formerly in ice bolt because we are now getting another 10% rech bonus from the malice of the corr ATIO, reassembled as a full set in blizzard (you may prefer to swap the locations of the ATIO and ragnarok depending on where you want the damage proc). The sale will give you money to buy all the much cheaper IO's that are in this new build. Notice that your ice shields are now more weakly slotted. The reason is that you are no longer aiming for the HP cap so it is fine to lose the HP bonus from 3x lotg. The missing slot loses only 0.4% def to allies and gives us slots to invest in our own defenses. In the long run, you should consider whether you really need burnout. While it's funny to drop double-blizzards on trash and so on, all the things you can achieve with burnout are rather niche. If you are willing to drop burnout, CJ and super speed (the stealth doesn't stack with fog, the celerity you have in sprint does though), you can instead take kick/tough/weave. This makes you significantly tankier and eases the difficulty of getting defense, potentially allowing diversion of set bonuses back to rech instead, or, for example, dropping bfr as a set mule - these are the significant changes I referred to earlier. icecold2.mbd

I will respond to the OP in just a moment, but I want to comment on this first: This build is fine and extremely effective. This is a high-dps procbombing build, so the mules are needed to get rech/acc (this also explains the slotting in eg. sleet, because they need the actual attacks to carry procs). Procbombing colds are extremely effective when a smooth run means shanking the AV's fast before lore pets time out. The survivability on this build comes from being HP capped, hence all the 2x malice of the corr for the 3% HP bonus. In 4*, the goal is to survive just one hit after which it is the healer's job to fix you. The def and res will come from barrier and team buffs. 0 def 0 res blasters do fine on 4*, after all. However, in another way you are also correct because - for those who have not done hard mode that may be reading this - it is potentially risky not to have good def/res because pugs will usually not bring another def buffer if they have a cold, then you die because you can't shield yourself. It doesn't matter so long as there are other def buffs going out but it is a substantial amount of comp flexibility being lost. I actually suspect this is why OP asks for a more general-purpose build because in babymode content you can't always assume there will be such buffs going around. So, suggestions around adding def and res may not be out of line with OP's needs after all. 4* is more about intelligent play and teamwork than it is about uber builds, but that does mean being aware of your strengths and limitations, and what teammates are likely to bring to the table.

Coh over the years has become increasingly focused on DPS to the exclusion of everything else. Bringing substantial DPS capacity in addition to draining means that when you are on fast-moving, well-armored teams that don't need draining as mitigation, or when facing foes where draining is not effective (that's most AV's - they nerfed draining AV's in i27p3) you still contribute substantially. Of course, this is just my recommendation. You may not team a lot or you may not want to dps for a variety of reasons including concept. I know some people are still satisfied with their elec trollers who take a minute and a half to kill a spawn of council in 2023 - though I wouldn't consider that high performing.

Your post is so wrapped up in your own little bubble of self-interest it's hilarious, but you do get one thing correct, which is that issues with procs and tankers (since we're on the subject) are multifactorial in nature. Firstly, damage procs need to be work differently from other procs, such as self-buff or possibly even debuff procs. The PPM system as-is is reasonably fair for damage procs with exceptions I will discuss next. However, when you can manipulate the system in order to keep certain self-buffs perma (tanker ATIO) or make them nearly guaranteed (gaussian) that contradicts the design goal of a probability-based event in the first place. I think we should be more open to the fact that different categories of procs can and should have different rulesets, with certain specific powerful procs having their own unique firing conditions - see preventive medicine for an example currently live. Secondly, the interactions of all procs with aoes and especially rech buffs need looking at. All the ways that procbombing builds currently cheat the system and end up with higher procrates than intended should be addressed. This includes using aoes to effectively roll multiple times to fire a buff proc, and sourcing rech from set bonuses and permanent buffs to avoid taking a hit to procrates. Thirdly, there need to be greater trade-offs in the game. I am personally a fervent advocate of the idea that an appropriately geared defender should be able to do the same damage as a scrapper, or even more. This adds valuable build diversity and replayability to the game - if I want a high damage character, you can tell me "just go play a scrapper", but finding ways to build for high damage on other AT's presents a build challenge, and that's the essence of a game. However, to me, there must be a trade-off for your strengths. If the defender wants to deal the same damage as the scrapper in the same safety, that's fine - but it had better have zero support capacity, including zero ability to magnify damage for other players through -res or +dmg. Problematically, this is not the case in coh, because in coh procs are only bonuses and never maluses or even sidegrades. The current situation is imbalanced not so much because tankers can have great damage, but because the tanker can clear as fast as the ostensibly DPS AT's while still keeping most of their tanker scalar HP, armor toggles, debuff resists, sustain and aggro control. This brings me to my final point, which is: Fourthly, the way that def and res operate in this game is dysfunctional. Both def and res scale hyperbolically until the soft/hardcap, where each additional point is more valuable than the last. If you have 0% res, and get +10% res, you live about +11% longer against X incoming dps. But if you already have 80% res, and get +10% res, you live +100%, or twice as long against the same incoming dps. In fact, the reverse should be true and there should be diminishing, not accelerating, returns on investment. This is a little-recognized but very major reason why tankers are stronger than brutes: since they are closer to the caps out of the gate they are exponentially tougher, so they have vastly more build capacity to invest in offense. More broadly, this is what actually makes IO builds immensely stronger than SO's and why there will always be difficulties providing a satisfactory game experience whenever both are playing together. Will these problems be fixed? I think in our lifetime we will see some attempt to address #1 and #2. I am personally very eager to see the Aprocalypse (TM) when it happens. When looking at Homecoming team's past changes, both ones that are considered buffs and nerfs, such as the changes to resistance set bonuses, the typed defense overhaul, etc. I think it's pretty obvious that these changes have rejuvenated the build design scene and been highly beneficial for the metagame. I have great hopes for what Homecoming can achieve on this front, and look forward to a new era of procbombing. I think #3 will always persist because attempts to fix it will be viewed, not just as nerfs, but as very significant changes to the game/powersets/gear and those are not politically acceptable to the broader community, especially one as staid and set in its ways as this one. It should be addressed, but I would be satisfied merely with the issue not getting worse than it already is. We saw attempts to band-aid #4 from both Paragon and Homecoming, the former by giving incarnate mobs bonus tohit, the latter by instituting "hard" mode. Given the changes to typed defense, however, I think it's fair to say "never say never" to some possible overhaul of the way mitigation works in this game far down the line.