ZemX

Don't have access to Mids at the moment, so I can't see the totals, but eyeballing it.... it looks like it probably wants more slow resistance. Debuffs are a big problem for resist-based armors. You can try to build defense, but it will be stripped from you when you most need it, so I usually don't bother. Recharge time resist (a.k.a. Slow Resist) is vital for Rad Armor since it enables your heal and absorb shield to be available more often. Speaking of which, you might want more recharge in Particle Shielding. It's a big deal in terms of Rad's survival. And if you can sprinkle more pairs of winter IOs in the build, the two-slot bonus is 10%/15% (for superior) slow resist. 100% slow resist is easily possible and then you can avoid one more RadA-killer, the unresistable Tar Patch res debuff. Just skate on out of it like you're wearing non-stick boots. And never worry about cold-slinging enemies flooring your recharge, preventing your heal and particle shield from being available. Ground Zero can be an excellent proc bomb. You've six-slotted Shield Breaker instead, presumably for the defense bonus. Seems a bad deal to me, again because defense can't be relied on with Rad Armor. When not in the presence of heavy defense debuffing enemies, your resist, absorb, and heal are more than enough to keep you in the fight. When you are facing defense debuffs, your defense will be zeroed and into the red quickly. It might take an extra couple seconds if you built up some defense with IOs like this... but it will happen. Rad Therapy is not a bad place for MoT, but it's an even better place for the Theft of Essense +end proc, if you can forgo the six-slot bonus of MoT. Not saying Rad Armor has many endurance issues, but mostly for when you face endurance draining enemies, it's a godsend to just punch that heal and fill BOTH bars while standing in a crowd. Yeah, you have Dark Consumption, but Rad Therapy with Theft of Essence and a few damage procs and having one third of the base recharge time? You might consider even dropping Dark Consumption. It's only benefit at that point would be as another AoE damage power and there, the very long recharge limits its value, in my opinion. YMMV. Lastly, getting back to debuff resistance, strongly consider taking Energy Mastery for Focused Accuracy. You'll lose Gloom, but you didn't have it very strongly slotted anyway. Meanwhile Focused Accuracy, which you can run only when you need it, provides massive toHit debuff resistance that will help out immensely when you are the focus of a gang of toHit debuffers like CoT ghosts. Soul Drain can help but you don't have it slotted for recharge so it's not going to be available very often. And I find +tohit doesn't really counter toHit debuffs when you're being hit by ALL the debuffs. A defense based Tank with soft-cap defense and DDR to protect it can get away with that. Rad Armor can't, in my experience. The stacking toHit debuffs are difficult to equal with +toHit of your own.

Eh... they just appear. The Rikti Invasion sends in ships dropping bombs you have to defuse. Then they start beaming down troops. And then you get an accolade power if you do well enough. Now, if the Nemesis invasion event had included mole machines? Whole different ballgame. Have the event grant you a Fake Nem summon temp power as reward. Boom!

Eh.. If you're a defense-based Stalker, you can't sleep on taking out those Quartz the instant they show up, Cairns or no Cairns. Your defense is effectively zero while they are out there, so it's definitely a kill-them-before-they-kill-you situation. I'd say that's more interesting than most enemy groups. Or maybe "annoying" is more appropriate. Fighting these guys just ends up being a frustrating game of whack-a-mole.

I can only comment on melee. Ice Melee is particularly good on Stalkers due to the fact they get the mediocre Greater Ice Sword replaced by the always awesome Assassin's Strike and unlike other sets proliferated to Stalkers, doesn't lose any of the set's AoE powers. As for the armor, defense is always the better choice on a Stalker than Resistance, so the combo should be pretty good overall there. On a Tanker, you're stuck with Greater Ice Sword but get larger AoEs. Frozen Aura gets bigger (15ft radius, same as Foot Stomp) and Frost gets wider (135 degrees instead of 90 and can hit 16 targets). Leveling up, Ice Patch is nice to supplement early defenses and then decide to keep it or drop it later. It's still useful to help protect teammates, but not that needed otherwise for the tanker themselves once built.

Yeah, he does that, unfortunately. I have been in some failed Adm. Sutter TFs before because the lead was 40+ and wanted to run +4x8. Then you get some 20s on the team sidekicked up and facing +5/+6 AVs and they can barely scratch them. Even just the massive load of Sky Raiders to defeat in some of these missions, along with War Walkers, can take a VERY long time on a weak team. It can be done with the right team of course, but I wouldn't recommend rolling the dice with a PuG for this above +2 unless everyone is at least 40+.

Frozen Aura is indeed Foot Stomp sized on Tankers. Several secondary sets for Tankers can claim this thanks to the +50% radius buff in Gauntlet. Foot Stomp itself is excluded, so it remains 15ft radius while normally 10ft PBAoEs like Frozen Aura, Atom Smasher, Eye of the Storm, etc... become 15ft radius on Tankers. Frost, as a cone, gets its arc widened by 50%. So it's 10ft range base but 135 degree arc (up from 90 degrees). Frost takes range enhancement though so it's easily possible to have a 15ft deep, 135 degree cone that hits 16 targets. But that usually requires quick repositioning in combat to make the most of as enemies tend to gather around the Tanker. Where Ice Melee excels on Stalkers is in replacing the mediocre big ST, Greater Ice Sword, with Assassin Strike. Ice Patch is also more use to a Stalker both as defensive and to help prevent runaways. Still good on the tanker while leveling up and as a tool for helping protect teammates later on.

Even if it's as bad as this picture... isn't this a picture of what the whole server (or at least a large grouping of players) would see, collectively? Does the CoH RNG really show this kind of pattern to a single player? Ever? I always figured streakbreaker was more about public relations and human perception than actual mathematical necessity. Even a TRNG could give us a streak of misses we wouldn't want to accept.

Yeah, I've been struggling with it as well. One issue it has on Tankers is that Foot Stomp isn't as unique. Thanks to Gauntlet's radius buff (and the fact Foot Stomp is excluded from it), several other sets get a 15ft radius PBAoE as well AND have better overall AoE. But I figure I'll finish it off some day. Rad/SS seems a good choice since it adds two proc bombs that aren't affected by the rage crash. Not to mention it needs to be built to survive being defense debuffed anyway since that happens all the time to RadA.

And again last night a couple times. Excel was north of 800 logged in. Dropped in the middle of a +4 fight with an Aspect of Rularuu (or something) at the end of WWD pt5 just as we had him down to 10% or so health too. Team came back as two teams on the same map, which was very strange. But still was able to finish. Another mapserv on a PI AV team a little later that dropped most of the team. I blame Statesman.

What I don't think of it as is an inalienable right... on a team. I get where people are coming from when they say they have a right to play this game their way. What they don't seem to get is MY point that that only extends up to the point where your playstyle is affecting MY play. i.e. TEAMS. When you join a team, you are asking (some here seem to be demanding) that they accept you no matter how you play. And I just don't see where they get that from. If it's YOUR team that you formed and are leading? Great. But nobody else is obligated to deal with your every playstyle quirk. If you are playing a buffless Defender, then you're asking the team to carry you. No two ways about it. And they just don't have to if they don't want to. Fine if they are cool with it. But also fine if they aren't. You can solo or find a more casual team.

This shouldn't be a problem if it's a Brute or Tanker doing it. Some Scrappers also have taunt auras (not to be confused with damage auras). Herding with taunt effects is relatively safe and a stray AoE from the team shouldn't disrupt that. Where it can go wrong is when the herder returns to the existing battle with their herd. If they leap right into the middle of the ongoing battle, their taunt aura might collect some aggro and cause others in their incoming herd to be bumped off their aggro list (thanks to recent innovations in threat list re-evaluation by the Homecoming staff). So it's best to herd close to the existing fight, but not necessarily to drag it over the fight entirely. And it's good to keep running through or tossing out taunts to your herd to keep them interested in you. But if done correctly, it can definitely speed things up, especially if done with a Tanker that wouldn't otherwise add as much to the stationary fight's offense as most other ATs. The big aggro magnet that control types have is the T2 AoE immob. Even when my Tanker is aggroing everything they touch, it's sometimes difficult to grab aggro faster than a controller with a 30ft AoE immob on an 8-second timer can. And then it's even harder to keep everything aggroed when spread out over that large an area instead of huddled into the radioactive warmth of my aggro fields. I either hustle my ass around aggroing each clump of immobilized enemies in turn or.. I don't. Depends how I'm feeling about Controllers that day. 🤬

Unsolicited advice is not bad. Repeated unsolicited advice can be. If someone doesn't know and is unsecure about asking, you might actually help them. If they don't want to hear it, they can say so and that's where you drop it. You tried. Nagging them would say more about your own ego and sense of superiority than their need for help. But the idea you can't even say the first word is absurd. It's a team. Teams should talk. Example: A new low level player, playing a controller, is repeatedly dying on a team because they are spamming the AOE immob. They don't necessarily know everything there is to know about aggro mechanics yet and might just believe they are on a bad team that can't protect them when the truth is they should wait a second or two for someone else sturdier to establish aggro control or drop some debuffs on the enemy (at least until they build themselves up later in levels). Telling them to wait a few seconds is good advice. If their response is an angry "You can't tell me how to play!" then that's that. They'll probably keep dying and then quit or they'll realize you were right and learn to hold their fire for a bit. But it's worth a shot.

The only thing that's really disposable in that build is Fly, if you're willing to use temp travel. Just replace that with Taunt. Needs no slotting either. If you can't live without a Travel power you could experiment with not having Conserve Power. Might not miss it too much. Taunt isn't essential, but it sure makes controlling aggro that much easier, and the -range debuff is super nice for convincing things to close into AoE range.

Can't imagine a Tanker needing that. Doesn't it have a longish recharge? Foot Stomp is gonna be under 10 seconds in a final build. I would open this pool for the other powers it has. Leap/Takeoff is icing on that cake.

Even better...

I might complain about some PUGs I've been on, but I still love em. I probably wouldn't play this game if it weren't for that random team composition making things interesting. Doesn't mean some content couldn't be improved.

Posi 1 is just badly designed. Not so much because of how hard it is but because of where it sits so early in the game. It's a cruel joke that this is the first real TF most new players would end up running because its enemies are NO joke to a level 8-15 player. Crushing stacked toHit debuffs. Toxic puke. Heat-seeking CoT ambushes that follow you even after you hit the hospital and return. And then a gang of "clones" that gets cloning so wrong it ends up making them more powerful than you are (e.g. my Rad tankers get to face "clones" that somehow have crippling rad debuffs that I don't even get). All of this can be handled by experienced players who know what they are doing. And that's the problem. It's the FIRST Task Force. It should be "training wheels" level of easy. Really, Positron 2 gets it more right in that respect. It's not nearly as challenging. I've learned to ask "We're running this at +0 right? RIGHT?!" before the TF launches.

I think @Werner has probably posted his build for that around here somewhere in the past. Defense and DDR almost to SR levels in the right circumstances but with all of Shield's other goodies tacked on for good measure. It's a beast.

Yeah, and I can't say I see a reason for it. Could be a bug in the database. Staff and TW both have similar powers that are stackable. MA's Storm Kick on Tankers isn't stackable but I'd imagine that's because it's +def(All) which would be pretty insane if it was self-stackable.

Shield is a great option too and fits Natural Origin well.

I don't have one, but it doesn't seem weird to me at all. It would have more healing and endurance recovery than it needs so I definitely wouldn't slot Siphon for heal or Dark Consumption for endurance. Make the latter another proc nuke to cycle in with Rad Therapy and Ground Zero. Dark Melee can stack some -tohit with Beta Decay so you're getting more mitigation on top of all that healing. Should be fun. ETA: Just remembered this other thread actually...

I think it's a mistake. It was implemented as a TAoE but it is clearly meant to be a melee attack. The weapon is feet and fists. Nothing is thrown, shot, or expelled from the attacker. It's not a ranged attack. It specifically excludes range enhancement which means even if you slot a Ranged AoE set with range enhancement, it is wasted. The reason it was implemented as a TAoE when attacks like this are usually cones is probably to do with the Terrorize effect that occurs at combo level 3. It has a radius larger than the power itself (10ft vs. 6ft). Conceptually, I guess, this is supposed to be enemies near the ones you hit being scared/awed by the attack on their friends. Anyway, this seems to be possible via the "Outer Radius" tag on child effects. Don't know if something like that is available for cones.

Ah, didn't check them. They have a lot of psi attacks but again, all of them seem to have positional tags in CoD. Mesmerize is a good example of a psi attack that is non-positional. Council vampires have it, but I don't see it on any Arachnos. I don't see anything in the patch that should have buffed Arachnos against anybody. I'd expect just the aggro change could account for more damage soloing, but at x4 that shouldn't be an issue either as already noted.

They didn't. But do Arachnos have any non-positional psi attacks anyway? Mental Blast, Psionic Lance, Psychic Scream, and Subdue all have positional tags. But I could be missing some. Just browsing various Arachnos Widows and Fortunatas in CoD.

The rules for scaling down SOs as you exemplar can be a little tricky since it's not as simple as just being x% of what the original values are. There are a few exceptions and limitations that apply. I think Mid's can calculate your overall values based on exemplar level. Check the maths settings dialog. That would be easier. There might be a few places you want to add extra SOs if you plan to do a lot of very low level (15-25) exemplaring but anything above that the scaling effect is pretty minimal. Here are the rules: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements An interesting clause in those rules is the minimum bonus rule. SOs of 20% or less won't scale down until you go below level 21. Reason that's interesting is that your level 53 Resistance and Defense SOs are 23%. If you'd left them as level 50 SOs they'd be 20% and immune to scaling down until you went below level 21. Something to play with in Mid's though I never have myself. I wonder if they account for some of these weird rules. I'm with @Psyonico though, you want to rearrange some powers if exemplaring as low as 15 or 20 for the first few TFs/SFs is important to you. Your resists will be scaled down a lot by that point so you might want to see about putting Boxing/Tough below 20. Buy all the prestige attacks from P2W and use them when you're on those low level TFs. Use Athletic/Ninja/Beast run and a temp jetpack for movement. It's not great, but fast travel isn't nearly as important, especially if you're tanking for a TF, as your survival stats.