Zect

The biggest factor is where you decide to put your ATIOs. For example, @Uun puts defender's bastion in dreadful wail. But maybe you want the heal proc more frequently on a primary with no heal. So for such sets, 6x defender's bastion in howl is also an option. Often vigilant assault is split up into 2 sets of 3x, to get the 10% rech bonus twice. It can go either in an aoe or an ST attack. For example, my hardmode fenders usually run 3x vigilant assault (AD, ADE, proc), apoc proc, gladiator's javelin proc, and 1 more variable slot in screech. This frequently procs the aoe absorb proc in AV fights. In an aoe you can use 3x vigilant assault (DR, either ADR or DER, quad) + 3x aoe damage procs. The reason it tends not to be used 6x for the aoe def is that frozen blast exists (7.5% aoe def for 6x).

I am a strong proponent of resilient alpha for elec on the 90% res cap AT's. Combined with the high base resists, it makes capping so much more convenient, and you can proc a lot more and worry about getting res set bonuses less.

Your build has 72/59/65 M/R/aoe def. My question is, what are you fighting that requires this much def? Even my 4* utterly indestructible hardmode shield tank has "only" ~54% def to all. (It's 54% because either barrier or a defense amp will permanently incarnate-cap if necessary.) The infinitum build has 64/57/60 which is also neither here nor there, though at least it tries to trade out excess melee def by slotting deflection for res instead. A related issue is the uneven def you have. If you're fighting against hypothetical stuff that requires 72% def your ranged will be undercapped, and if you're fighting against stuff that requires only 59% your melee is overcapped. So you either are not softcapped or have wasted stats. Pick a more even breakpoint to reduce wasted stats. Don't do this - this is a downgrade in dps and survivability. Shadow punch has less damage per animation second (42) than Siphon life (49, and siphon life is also pure neg damage while shadow punch is a mix of neg and smashing). Where to put your MOTT proc depends on your intended attack chain and what other procs you want in your attacks. My suggestion is MOTT in smite and either hecatomb or gauntleted fist in MG, dropping the blistering colds. This way you can do MG smite SL smite repeat. Alternately, MOTT in MG which enables reliable (90% chance) proccing despite not being able to triple-stack. If you are going to take both cardiac and phys perfection and drop 1 power, it should be dark consumption. DC's long base rech, small radius and poor performance against a single target mean it's the weakest of the end management powers and mostly redundant when you are taking incarnate end management tools. Endmod sets also have weak set bonuses. When I loaded this build up I feared the worst. I was prepared to see AOO set to 10, an FF proc in kick toggled on and so on. To my pleasant surprise none of this nonsense is present. Now, this may be just because it's a modification of a build that already had no bullshit in it from the start, but perhaps you've also taken at least some of my criticisms to heart. While your idea of boosting SL res and evening out resistances has merit, the execution is questionable. The KD proc in shield charge will cause scatter. Soul drain now has only ~50% uptime. (also, while not an error, I need to note that gaussian's proc only lasts 5.25s and soul drain's animation is already 2.508s. You'll get the most value by using shield charge immediately.) You're losing more survivability and dps than you need for the amount of res you're gaining. I think the culprit is your reliance on winter sets and 6x gauntleted fist for melee def that you don't need, which in turn requires lots of 4x shieldwall to get the EN res you want. It's not that bad because owts itself gives +recovery which makes it unlikely that the crash will detoggle you (unless you were relying on it to manage blue in the first case, e.g. vs end draining enemies). It only becomes an issue with shield/SS because you can have a situation where rage crashes, then haste crashes, then owts crashes too which detoggles you, so good situational awareness is needed. However, I'm guessing that this is also one reason why he uses Cardiac + phys perfection + ageless. Under usual circumstances, this is wasted stats - it's a lot more end than the build can effectively convert into either dps or defenses. But if you're worried you won't be able to manage the crash, then just massively overdosing on blue is a possible solution. mischievous rune - Tanker (Shield Defense - Dark Melee).mbd My suggested modifications. This build is less than 5% rech off permahasten if you take either ageless T4 and can use it on cooldown. I want to draw your attention to the celerities in the prestige sprint. Yes, I have it tried it ingame. Yes, this actually works. Yes, you can take all 4 prestige sprints and do this with all of them if you wanted to for some reason. Note that this is still far more res than necessary for a general-purpose tank: I have plenty of shields that run around with just the def and 50~60% res and 0% psi res (most psi enemies do low damage) and they slaughter +4x8 just fine.

It's me; I'm the culprit behind your financial woes. I recently listed to sell a bunch at 80k each. Most buyers see 100k in the sale history and just input a bid to buy for 100k. The AH awards the bid to the lowest sell price. If you list to sell at 90k, and I list at 80k, I win because my price is lower. But I don't get 80k, I get 100k (before taxes), which is what the buyer agreed to pay. If the buyer accidentally held down 0 too long, and input 100 million instead, I would get 100 million pre-tax. So, my suggestion is you list at 70k instead. But what I, the trillionaire marketeer for whom 750 million is chump change, am not telling you, is that I have a bunch (i.e. several thousand) of bids up for 71k. When you list to sell at 70k, the AH first looks to see if anyone has a buy order up for at least 70k. If there is not, then your item sits in consignment, and the AH waits until someone is willing to buy for at least that much - see the logic above. But since I have a buy order out for 71k, your item is immediately sold to me (unless someone's offering more, of course, and I'm happy to wait them out). The result is you get 71k pre-tax, I get unslotters, then I list at 80k and sell to people bidding 100k. I win. You lose. How about a nice little game of chess instead?

The clockwork are armed with plasma blasts, and you know what plasma means in coh. -Regen! (They also have a fair amount of -def as previously mentioned.)

You can get similar resistances and defenses while saving a few slots if you split up your ATIO2. This reduces reliance on 4x shield wall for EN res, which is really inefficient if you need to slot multiple sets, and also allows fitting 2x -res procs in the attack chain and double-stacking your AD which helps with DDR (though you won't need that if you cycle your res cd's properly because at that point you're a res tank). Preventive med proc should go in spirit ward and miracle in health because prevmed works even if the power is not used (it's more like a global in that sense than a normal proc). 68-72% res is actually the right breakpoint for non-res sets, because melee core will bring you to 89% and chip damage will cap you. However, quite a lot in your build is still overkill. For example, if you are taking parry (and I know you use it as a filler because your rech is far off from being able to do hack disembowel hack headsplitter), why build for melee def? Just use parry. Owts/rune/melee core already fit a nice 5 min cycle. Do you really need barrier? In fact, this is the setup I use on my 4* shield tank and I take advantage of this to carry incan for the team instead since I don't need any destiny. etc. In the end, being able to afk sounds impressive, until you realize it means wasted stats, i.e. you're building defenses against things that don't exist. You can afford to tone it down slightly and invest in other things, while being just as (or even more) indestructible. I know because I am.

Terrible builds are everywhere. I once saw a build that tried to mids-warrior by padding Regen%. Gamma boost gives more regen the lower your HP is, so this build set HP to 0%. But the answer is no. However, brute rads will not easily cap resists without a resistance alpha (i.e. resilient). Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, April Fool's is over. But actually, no. I'm trying to make a point. How do you know what anyone says here is true? For that matter, how do you know anything in this post is trustworthy? A lot of people in this world are misinformed, and that includes the ones who fancy themselves experts. But the answer is no, and you should verify that in-game. You should still pursue a high particle shield uptime because it is a powerful sustain that does not require tohit checks and is effective even when not surrounded by hordes of critters, compensating for rad therapy's shortcomings. Define best. But, it is a 1.2x acc power. If you can train yourself to hit BU every time you use it and/or have a good amount of global acc or other tohit bonuses, you probably do not need acc. If you cannot, or are fighting high-def enemies (hello Roman legions), you may need acc. No, because debuffs are heavily penalized by the purple patch and AV debuff resist. BU, tactics, accuracy set bonuses (heca/geddon/rag are all 15% a set), focused acc, slotting acc in your attacks. Meltdown is not an OS button in most builds. It tends to be more used for the damage buff. Most rads will build for high res without meltdown, because you generally do not want big swings in the effectiveness of your primary mit layer for ease of play (but if you want to go ahead and make a viable build that relies on meltdown to cap res then more power to you). Unless you know what you're doing, take one of the interfaces with a damage proc. Rad therapy should have a touch of essence proc in it. It will completely refill your blue bar when used in a crowd of trash, at least until Homecoming team gets around to nerfing it (hurry up devs!) You can go ageless, but it is a significant amount of wasted stats on a rad because rad usually does not need the endurance, so the debuff res is all you get from it. The other strong choice is barrier which is both the actual OS button and 5% res to all for 2 min on a 2min cd. 5% res to all is not a small amount. Most IO sets typically only offer 1.25%-1.5% res of 1 type per slot added (i.e. not counting the base slot of the power). The build is bad - however in your defense you are inexperienced and you admit issues with it. The bonuses you pursue do not synergize with rad's strengths nor cover its weaknesses and are pursued in a haphazard and slot-inefficient manner. A good rad build needs three things. It needs 1) res, 2) rech and 3) slow res. Res is necessary to reduce incoming damage to levels your sustain can cope with. Rech is necessary to increase both the uptime of your sustain powers and your dps. Slow resistance (-rech res) is necessary to maintain rech and both offensive and defensive power. Because you are not a defense build, you will eat a lot more debuffs (slows) and those slows will both prevent you from healing and also from killing the slowing enemies. There is very little counterplay to -rech, and because it tends to come bundled with -movespeed you cannot easily disengage. It's not like e.g. -tohit where you just eat a yellow or hit BU, or -res where you just eat an orange or click barrier. The exact amount is debatable but competently made builds will usually have between 85%-100% (ageless radial can be considered perma 10% -rech resistance). Your build pursues a mixture of typed and positional defense (hence wasting slots). Rad has no native debuff resist, ageless is not sufficient to cover this hole on its own, so you'll quickly lose this defense. You are likely to achieve greater survivability and damage by focusing on the 3 priorities I mentioned above.

I'm pretty sure this is an elaborate April's fools post.

In general, expensive enhancements are expensive because they cram a lot of bonuses into few slots, and slots are one of the things that no toon can ever get more of. Therefore, there are broadly 2 types of builds that are expensive. The first (and the majority) are builds that attempt to pursue multiple conflicting build goals. If you want permahasten, that can be had for cheap (without any purple sets and a minimum of lotg's). But if you want permahasten and softcapped defense, that's gonna cost. The second are builds that attempt to push the limits of what is achievable with the IO system. Permahasten (175-180% global rech with default slotting, depending on how willing you are to have it a second or two off perma) is as stated easily achievable. But if you want 200+% global rech, necessary for some builds like perma-PA trollers, true perma double-rage SS, or the highest dps dual blades builds, then that is going to be significantly costlier. It's easy to go from 0% to 170%. Adding another 30-50% on top of that is exponentially more difficult without help from, say, the powerset itself, or incarnate resources e.g. ageless. With this in mind my suggestion is actually kinetics. Kinetics is unique among the buffdebuff sets in that it requires almost no slotting itself and provides ample freedom to pursue any build goals you want. It doesn't need extreme rech itself since FS, the keystone power, has a relatively short base rech at 45s. You can pick any troller primary you like to do with it (even ill/ if you don't mind PA not being perma, which really is only going to matter for soloing tough critters).

Good correction. When I think tripmines I still immediately think of the buffdebuff set, traps, so I don't really see what forum I am in. The good news is OP's mining situation may be better than I made it out to be. Unfortunately, this means I actually need to try one of these newfangled, minelaying doms.

Define worth, but you need to be left alone for a considerable amount of time because a tripmine's base cast time is over 4s, most of which is interruptible, plus fold space has a finite range and you can only teleport +3 Lt's (need an ultimate to teleport +3 bosses). So you're looking at significant setup to blow up probably not all that many weak enemies. If it's speed you care about, it may be faster to just mine the critters' toes, or my preference, proccing poison trap and using that as an attack instead because it's uninterruptible. Honestly, not really a lot. Tripmine only has a base rech of 20s - it's not a super long recharging power. The real issues are likely to be the ones I mention above: the long cast time, interruptibility, and fold space's relatively short range and limited teleport magnitude.

You know, I could see rad infection and enervating being changed so that they can be put on either allies or enemies. There are already some powers that allow targeting of either allies or foes - eg injection from the medicine pool, which has different effects depending on the target. That just sounds funny. Anyway, if teams are clearing so fast that it's becoming a problem, that indicates to me that they are playing at a difficulty level that's too low for them, or (more likely) that the pace of the game has grown too fast and player dps needs to be slashed. And this comes from someone who speedruns 4* ITF in <30 mins.

There isn't even a chatlog or screenshot of the offending sfx, so nobody can really tell who's being unreasonable. If it was the other side's story that got told, no doubt the post would've been about how some jerk in a posi 2 had the temerity to loudly and rudely demand you use/not use your powers, just because they didn't like the look of them despite your right to enjoy power customization, and all the people loudly defending the OP would be fighting for the other side instead. Anyway, here's my take: If I actually find you worth playing with, I really don't mind making some gameplay changes to accomodate you. I'm not going to worry about if it's intentional or not since despite my vast intellectual prowess and sex appeal, ESP is not among my super powers. If I don't find you worth playing with or if no reasonable middle ground can be agreed upon, then we just shrug and part ways: groups are a dime a dozen and nobody is really missing out on anything. And that's what both parties in this case should have done. P.S. in an oranbegan tunnel nobody can see shit, effects or no effects, hover or no hover.

I want to say that incentives are unlikely to cut it: the less-populated servers already dangle possibly the biggest incentive of all, unclaimed names. (And unlike xp, you can't take advantage of this one by doing your leveling on indom and then xferring off to excelsior at 50.) Few incentives can compete with that of a populated server. Then again, I'm certainly not opposed to any additional measures to spread out the playerbase. Fire away!

I am pleased to see the main points have already been covered before I could arrive: slow res theft of essence proc building for def on a defless build [no +3 def uniques] don't take scorch It's good that the forums are about more than toggling on FF procs and setting invuln to 10 targets to compensate for something. Anyway, to the above I will add that you spend 3 slots in Kick for a tiny HP bonus but lack an unbreakable guard +7.5% def which marks you as someone possibly unfamiliar with the new options added since the demise of live. I want to reiterate that slow res is vital for a resistance build. Without it you will walk into some council, get zapped by some vampyri blasts and all your powers will stop recharging, and you die. And I want to emphasize how utterly broken the theft of essence proc is. When used in a crowd it has a chance proc separately on each target hit which can result in refilling most of your blue bar. I don't use it on my toons, because I know it will get fixed, but I'm guessing you might be happy to enjoy it while it lasts. Most of all, and I post this only because you explicitly say you're open to suggestions, why not try a /rad instead if you're not using the def of /dark anyway? You can color rad dark and pretend it's negative energy. Rad has native slow resist, -KB, better debuff resists, better endurance economy, a better resist hole (cold instead of energy) and it really doesn't heal all that much less. With its superior endurance economy you can take resilient alpha instead of the cardiac that a dark might need and drop energy mastery - I suspect the only reason you took energy mastery is for endurance. Rad is Dark v2.0. Fire wants it, invuln wants to be it. Go rad and never look back. Look what might happen to your build if you just clicked on a different 2ndary in mids: P.S. etorrent does KD, not KB on brutes.

Corrs and especially stacked teams of corrs are the undisputed kings of melting hard targets because of scourge. It's very obvious on those 4* hardmode teams where the AV hits 30-40% and suddenly starts to vaporize as the scourge snowball gathers speed. Fenders are better on support-light teams because if you're the only support, those buff/debuff numbers had better be as high as they can get. A special case is the healer because in the minority of content where every AT is not a DPS and you actually want a healer, you want as few as possible i.e. 1 because dps is king in coh. So that 1 healer had better be able to do the job alone and fender numbers help with that. In the end the discussion is very academic. They are both good, they will each excel in different situations which you will almost certainly encounter and the actual correct answer in a game where I can sneeze out half a dozen levels without trying is play one of each and swap if you think you need to. Even for hardmode people won't worry too much if you're a fender or a corr if you're actually worth playing with. Because we all know smart people on the "wrong" AT/powersets/builds >>>>>>>>>>> stupid people on the best AT/powerset/builds.

If you want, SS can also fit an entomb proc in KOB. So with the ATIO2 proc you potentially have 2 absorb procs and 1 heal proc going off in your attack chain, and with harmonized mind you can also have total 3 passive heal procs. It’s an impressive amount of sustain for a set that is such an offensive juggernaut and allows you to turtle up at a moments notice when desired. Just be warned that a procced 2x rage shield/SS is among the highest eps consumption toons in the entire game.

For the best rewards in this game, you often have to multibox, which throws off a lot of the calculations and makes some options less good than they seem. You usually don’t multibox tinpex for example (the above numbers all seem to be for a team of 8 active players). You can’t multibox hami though I recall back when I last did it that was all the rage - maybe that’s why they changed the policy. You usually don’t multibox a 4* aeon and in a pug there is a small chance of it not completing or the team being unable to kill the 8 vanguard heroes. I personally prefer 4* ITF though, it’s shorter, easier, more reliably completed (no optional encounter) and you can speed it in 30 mins if you know what you’re doing. But you can triplebox a Dr Q when it’s the WST. What does me logging in my trio of accounts on a server with 3 red dots add to the game experience or the community? I don’t know, but Homecoming team generously encourages me with this reward structure so I’m glad to play along.

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!