ZemX

True. On the surface it seems contradictory the badge called "deathless" is obtained by "dying" a lot, but of course nobody actually dies in this game. Not the players anyway.

The complaint here is a generalization, to be sure, but it doesn't come from nowhere. I've seen plenty of people start threads asking for "what to play?" opinions about powers, powersets, and ATs, and then they get some variation of the "You have 1000 slots. Use them!" response. Which to me just reads as a polite "fuck you" since it's specifically taking the time to write a whole post that DOESN'T answer the OP's question and at the same time kind of chides them even for asking instead of just playing and seeing for themselves. It's not like anybody is unaware that they can play the game and judge for themselves, so pointing this out (and ONLY pointing that out) is probably more of a dick move than the person doing it realizes. As long as you're not doing that, you're not being unhelpful. To be clear, not saying there's anything wrong with reminding people of the freedom they have with the 1000 slots and all as long as your reply contains more than just that. And for the most part, the folks replying to this thread have given more complete answers than just "try it yourself, bucko!" But it IS a thing that happens sometimes, so I can also see how someone might develop a frustration over this type of responder.

I doubt it. The one you're talking about is, surprisingly, a much bigger control freak. And that doesn't mesh well with PuGs. If you're gonna sign up to PuG, you need to be chill when shit goes sideways... because it inevitably will. They can't seem to deal with people not following them and doing exactly as they want in a mission. And while I do believe in the "your team, your rules" rule, the flipside of that is people can choose NOT to team with a petty dictator. By contrast, the few teams of Diantane's I've joined have been pretty typical for PuGs. Or I've just gotten lucky. I dunno. But I don't have them on global ignore like the other one.

Good luck with that. The accepted etiquette is only that team members finish a TF or mission that they start. Not that they have to coordinate with other randos when they leave. And while it's nice to give advanced notice "this is probably my last mission" and such, it's also not that common in my experience. This is the PUG life.

Okay, here's a variation on my Rad/Katana Tanker. Load this up in Mid's Reborn and see what you think. Tanker (Rad-BS) - Teleporter.mbd

Weird fact: The defense buff on Parry (and the Katana version, Divine Avalanche) doesn't stack on Tankers like it does for the other melee ATs. It just refreshes. Coupled with being the weakest attack in the whole set but still sitting at level 16 to pick up... ugh. It's not even great on defense Tankers because they tend to do fine on Defense all by themselves and you can get much better attacks even in ordinary power pools. Anyway @Kaibert, I have a Rad/Kat Tanker build somewhere. I can look around for it when I'm home later, if I think about it. Katana and Broadsword are similar enough it might still work. Broadsword is just slower/harder-hitting. But all the attacks are basically the same otherwise. It's a tanking build. You might find other examples around this forum that are built more offensively, with more damage procs, and the like. On all my Rad tankers, I take Energy Mastery for the epic power pool so I can pick up Focused Accuracy. Without defense, getting hit by many debuffs is a concern. Getting hit by -toHit debuffs and/or Slow debuffs can be a real problem. Hence I also look at a few places to two-slot Winter IOs for the slow resistance bonus. That together with Rad's built-in slow resistance can set you up to basically ignore slows. That will help keep you alive since some of your survival depends on refreshing the absorb shield and hitting the heal when things get serious.

Rad Armor is about resistance, absorb, heal, and recharge in roughly that order. It also has a ton of endurance recovery and some regen, so it really needs nothing added to Health and Stamina. I leave both at the default one slot. In Health I put a Panacea:+End/+HP proc. In Stamina, just a Perf Shifter:+End proc. Another Perf Shifter:+end proc goes in Gamma Boost, also with just the one slot. I generally start slotting attuned sets at around level 30 when you start getting more slots on level ups. Kick/Tough from Fighting Pool is nice for added Smash/Lethal res. Parry, and defense in general, is not great on a Rad. Too much stuff debuffs defense and Rad has no defense debuff resistance, so it blows away in the wind in pretty much the only situation where you actually could use more defense. I'd drop Parry and maybe Meltdown at this level to free up a couple power picks for Kick and Tough. You will be noticeably less squishy against a lot of things with closer to hard cap S/L resistance. If you can free up the slots to six-slot Slice and Whirling Sword, those are good places for the Tanker ATO sets. Might of the Tanker, in particular, for the stacking resistance(all) proc. But both ATO sets at six will give you 6% S/L res each. As for res sets in your armor toggles. A couple sets of Unbreakable Guard are good. Impervium Armor is not bad either. A few one-slot wonder IOs you can put in Combat Jumping when you have the slots: - Shield Wall: TP prot/RES(all) - 5% to all resistance is nice - LotG: Recharge. - Reactive Defense: Scaling Res - Adds 3% res(all) and then a slight bit more as your health drops. But the 3% default is nice all by itself. - Kismet:+toHit For Radiation Therapy, prioritize a Theft of Essence:+End proc. This turns the power into an endurance heal as well as a health heal. Great when facing draining enemies. It's all about stacking up the resistance to reach to or close to that magic 90%. Close is often good enough when you have Might of the Tanker because that adds 6-12% by itself.

Oh, and one thing you might or might not have heard, which you won't find in patch notes is that CoH Homecoming now has official license from NCSoft to run these servers. That was at the beginning of this year and it drove a LOT of traffic this way for a little while. I think it's mostly quieted back down to pre-announcement traffic levels by this point.

Just go here and scroll down to the bottom where you'll find links to patch notes with dates next to them. Easy to see where you left off. Somewhere in Issue 27. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issues

Staff also works well on Stalker since it addresses a big problem with the set on other ATs: Lack of decent ST damage but still leaves you a couple AoEs for dealing with groups. Pairs well with Ninjitsu for the +melee defense attack. Though I guess that'd be more of a Robin/Nightwing homage then...

I think it worked out well to leave the choice of secondary open. Gives us a little variety on the team. I think an all Ice Armor team would be interesting. That would be a LOT of slow debuff when we're together. Maybe next time I'll set a calendar reminder or something.

She is. You're lookin' at a typo, I guess.

The problem I have with it is that I once heard it called "NASCAR Melee" and now I can never un-hear it. Vrooooooomm...roommmm.... zoooooom. *CRASH*

It really depends what you plan to do. Tanking, the team role, doesn't need you to be at the top of a pylon rankings chart. Soloing, it makes a big difference obviously. And damage seems to be wanted for everyone on a Hard Mode. Other than that.... I'd say pick whatever strikes your fancy. I took a Rad/Staff to 50 and got nothing but praise on random teams for my tanking. Worth remembering that no matter what you pick, *any* Stalker, even one with a staff, will still eat your lunch on ST damage. On a team, the difference between the best and worst ST damage tanker matters a whole lot less when you have real damage dealers in the mix. It makes *a* difference, to be sure, but nothing like the dramatic difference you see in pylon times for the tanker. And another thing to remember is that picking the "top tier" secondary is only step one. If you really want to chase that top time, you'd need also probably mix in patron and pool attacks like Gloom and Cross-punch that may not match your concept, that's a concern for you. And also probably go to town on damage procs, skipping out on set bonuses that would have boosted your survival capability.

I'm afraid they are all very.. axey looking. You might get away with calling the Rularuu one a "scepter" though: Still, they are all held one handed and all animations are swings. No stabby, stabby like Staff's Serpent Strike or Innocuous Strikes. Not going to convincingly look like a spear/staff. I have used the Naginata on a Staff Ninja Stalker and it looks great. You also have a trident and some glowy-tipped Carnival of Light/Shadows options. I think you'll be hard pressed to find anything in Axe that fits as well as those.

A little confused what you mean here. Are you soloing or are you just "going solo" into the group of enemies before the rest of the team? If the latter, then grabbing and keeping aggro on a team is best done with lots of big AoEs. Rad/Staff has that. A lot of it. Both in primary and secondary. Staff's AoEs are faster/lighter so they are available often. On the ground, the PBAoE Eye of the Storm looks like break-dancing. In the air it looks less ridiculous and more spinny. Either way it's up often and hits around you in a 15ft radius, so that's nice. But yeah, it's not the best offensive set. You might indeed want to look at Rad/Axe instead. Since its rework, Axe is a beast. It has the unique Axe Cyclone that sucks enemies towards you before delivering a crunching blow. This can be hilarious if you're flying above them (though a bit more scattering). Pendulum, which used to be a cone, is now a targeted AoE at melee range, so it kind of still feels like a cone, but a super wide cone since what's really happening is it's hitting everything in a 10.5ft radius around your chosen target. In other words, you can almost treat it like another PBAoE that's just offset from you by a few feet. No positioning necessary. That said, the whole set feels slower and more deliberate than Staff so keep in mind whether that fits your desired aesthetic here or not. It swings slower and hits harder. Overall, much better damage. It pairs absurdly well with Rad Armor because every attack in Battle Axe can slot FF:Rech if you really want to juice your recharge. And you really want to to that with Rad Armor because the faster your absorb shield and self heal refreshes, the more immortal you are. And Rad Armor has the endurance to fuel all that speed. Just completely ignore defense. Laugh at seeing -50% defense in the combat monitor against defense debuffing enemies because they STILL can't hurt you through that much resist, absorb, and healing.

Yeah... then I don't get it. Any FREEM should surpass mag 12 protection. And you have no knockback resistance in FA right? Rad Armor has the usual 10,000% resistance which means pretty much anything not tagged unresistable will have no effect. And it's why nothing except GMs/AVs with unresistable KB ever knocked me down before even with just mag 10 protection. And I've looked and so far haven't seen a council power with unresistable knockack. Even this new critical knockback is not tagged unresistable. Unless they did something new that CoD isn't able to parse. Beats me. But mostly... not a huge annoyance. Get to go for the occasional ride is all. Then I get up and they get a frosty boot stomp for their trouble! 🥶

Yeah, it's mostly not a big deal since it doesn't hurt and they can't juggle with it (has built in 10s protection from being FREEMd again)... but it is pretty confusing. War Wolves have a 50% chance of +3 KB with Hurl and a 5% chance of +13 KB with the same. It seems both are independent meaning you can be hit by 0, 3, 13, or 16 mag KB. You sure you don't have mag 13 protection? FA has mag 1 protect in Temperature Protection auto so if you have 3 KB IOs, you have 13. That would explain things. I have 10 protect in Rad, so I get knocked if the 5% chance happens. With 13, you'd only get knocked when both 5% and 50% chances align... i.e. half the time I do. But I haven't looked at all the other Council who have Freem.

Boomerangs aren't dumber than archery or street fighting. It's hardly just shield defense that is silly from a practical standpoint. This is a game where you can dodge a mental attack because you've got super.... reflexes? But I get it. This is one of the reasons I've never made a "natural" origin human hero. Because this is a game, game balance dictates that some normal human with street fighting can go toe-to-toe with a super strength super hero because... they've trained a lot? Yeah, okay. If I'm going to punch someone or slice at them with a sword, I'm not a normal human and that's not a normal steel sword either. I have standards.

Okay, not the best choice of words. Obviously, having gotten characters to 50, I know you can't six-slot every power and inherent. I meant the 50's build is complete. All the slots that were the plan for that build are assigned and filled with with either boosted or attuned IOs. That's miles apart from the natural 20 who has all of 20 slots to assign, probably no accolades yet, and usually not using IOs with set bonuses yet outside of a few one-slot-wonder procs.

You didn't actually run the task force at level 8 though, did you? Should have been exemplared to 15. edit: Nevermind... some reason I thought Rule of Three was a signature task force.

Fair, but I just hopped in game and asked Synapse to help me win an internet argument. He agreed and promptly exemp'd me to 20. Here's a couple quick snaps: Global 1.3x accuracy bonus. 45% acc in my big hitter here. Is that ED-cap damage? No, of course not. Does this make any real difference at level 20? Not that I've ever been able to tell. Again, maybe this is a much bigger deal on a Blaster. I don't know. I don't play Blasters. But this situation above looks pretty damned good and it's definitely not what I remember from being actually level 20 with this same tank. I haven't posted every stat here but I'll just say Resistances on this mostly-resist-based tank look pretty damned good too. From a purely enhancement scaling perspective, for example, I am losing all of 6% smashing lethal defense in the pic below compared to what it looks like at 50 with ED-capped RES enhancement in the toggles. And this is more than made up for by the set bonuses. No SO-slotted 20 rad tank is looking this good for resistances: I'm not sure why your experience is so different but your statement about being more effective at real 20? Not just no. Hell no. Not for this character anyway. Maybe this looks markedly worse at 15. But it's a clear win for the exemplar at 50 here going down to 20. It's not even close. Maybe per punch this is doing less damage, fractionally, but its getting in more punches, managing endurance better, and is WAY sturdier. Again, it's not even close. Could be you have a different build strategy at 50 and not nearly as many purple set bonuses as I am showing here. That's definitely making a big difference. But this matches what the OP is saying about having 50s roll in and own the place on low level teams. And this is why. The benefits can easily outweigh the "teeth filing" you are talking about.

Yeah, I pointed that out. You can easily max one aspect. Maybe two in one power. But at 20 you've got 12 powers and 20 slots to assign to each beyond the default one. So that's not a lot of fully slotted powers. The 50 has all powers fully slotted at least, which means yes, those strengths all get dialed back to 55% but you have more aspects e.g. acc/dmg/end/recharge in each power than any natural 20 has. AND you do have any purple, PvP, winter, and ATO set bonuses. You have all the procs. Maybe it's different for other ATs, but my experience exemplaring down my 50 tanker to even as far as 20 is that it still feels stronger than any natural 20. I can see it being a bigger deal on a Blaster that was enjoying soft-capped defense at 50 losing all that going down to 20 and having their attacks no longer even enhanced to ED cap on damage. But I would still wonder if all the other benefits outweigh that vs. a natural 20 blaster who is just as fragile but is probably struggling more with endurance or slower recharge on powers than the exemplar.

I think that still works out in favor of the Exemplar. You might have your individual enhancement strengths scaled to 55% or so going 50 down to 20, but you probably have more than double the number of enhancement slots in the powers you have access to. Speaking of which you have access to two more powers than everybody else (your 22 and 24 power picks) as Exemplars get to use powers up to five levels above the team lead. Granted, there will be single aspects where the natural 20 may be beating the Exemplar. e.g. You have an attack with three damage SOs and I have a full set of Mako's Bite or something like that. You've got much better damage enhancement. But I have better everything else probably. And while few sets are active down to a minimum level of 20, there's still purples, winters, ATOs, and PvP sets that are. Those set bonuses don't get scaled down and they are active whether they are in a power you have access to at 20 or not. And the aforementioned number of slots probably also means you generally have more of those sweet one-slot-wonder procs scattered about. Performance shifters and Numinas and Luck of the Gamblers and the like. You probably also have all the accolade stat boosters, which few at 20 would have done yet. The above is not a math proof, but it matches my anecdotal experience exemplaring tankers anyway. Always feel WAY more powerful and sturdy than I did at real 20. I can definitely see why the OP might not want such an overachiever on their team all the time.

Want to hear something more weird? I mostly exemp down from 50 to run on lower levels teams... for the same reason. Level 50 steam-roller teams are boring AF. Good for money. But hardly what I call playing. There isn't really tanking or controlling or debuffing or any other role on an Incarnate 50 team except damage. Not doing normal content anyway. It's just rolling explosions following by corpses. So as one of these fully tricked-out 50s ruining your fun.... absolutely put a max limit on your team if you want to. And I won't bother you. And I'm not offended. You have your fun. I have mine. For what it's worth, I try not to exemp down quite as low as 20 unless it's a TF at that level. 25 is decent. 30 is the sweet spot.