JediDave

Might of the Tanker and Superior Might of the Tanker(SMoT). Usually just referring to the proc that gives ~7 resists to all at a bit higher than normal proc rate.

I do try to get a 6 slot on these for the recharge and range defense. If I build for defense on either Doms or Trollers, it's usually just ranged and I stay out of melee. Granted, the other ATO set for each AT is usually ignored, but one in each is AT decent. If I'm not going for ranged defense, I still usually 5 slot for recharge and use the troller proc in a power that has limited proc options, typically aoe cc that has no damage and can't use the TAoE or PbAoE set procs, or something that has a minute+ recharge time so the +recharge aspect isn't hurting

Nothing too crazy to follow up on here. Once we hit the 30s and had access to all our primary/secondary powers, things got drastically easier. Perma AM and perma hasten means all my hard cc is up whenever it's needed. Smoke cannister opening with a tri cannon go-to command to start combat works great and gives plenty of time to drop anchors. 2 nukes clears out 90% of the group, leaving the remaining enemies to get stuck in 3 choking clouds and whatever cc I drop. We did Manticore as our first TF, expecting the level lock to be an issue, and it was barely noticeable (we used to struggle through the +4 groups, level mid mish, and wipe the floor with +3 and lower groups). +5 groups are slower, but as long as we notice the extra level, it's not any more dangerous. Just needs us to be a bit more rigid on sticking to the standard plan. The 2 AVs at the end of Manticore were a bit of an issue, mainly because Countess kept running and I picked one of the few control sets without any immob. We ended up just having me put one AV to sleep and treat them like a solo AV fight. Once AVs get to half health and scourge kicks in, they just melt, even at +4 with only the 2 "real" damage dealers. The tri cannon having 90% resistance to everything still dies a decent chunk of time, and can't seem to keep aggro on AVs super well, but it does it's job as our pocket tank well enough to get the job done. Haven't been able to get all 3 of us on at the same time much, so we actually started Manticore when it was the weekly and didn't finish it until the following week. Did all the Provost Marchand missions in a night and got a handful of levels. We are at 45 as of now, and trying to plan out incarnates. I think they're both going musculature radial for damage and boosted debuffs and boosted AM recovery. I'm likely going intuition for the debuffs and hold. We're going to have 1 each of clarion, barrier, ageless, with barrier being the non perma one so we can drop mutate and use that as a revive. Likely the fire blast corruptor will take it because he also has rise of the phoenix for a full team bounce back if needed. The plan is to get on Thursday night this week and ding 50, then start DA missions at +5. Might just hit an ouro arc for the last few levels. DA arcs will be repeating the finale missions once per character (not hitting auto complete at the end) so we get 3 times the salvage drops for the relevant arcs. I think Max is the only one that doesn't work for. I'm excited to see how Incarnate arc enemy groups feel when they are "actually" +4 to us after accounting for level shifts.

I never thought about that, that's a good loophole, especially since most ATOs are already good value at orange. I don't frequently have room for 5 separate purple sets, but I'll for sure remember this trick on doms. Another thing I like is on brute/scrappers getting the 3pc bonus twice for 10% smash/lethal defense on a set that's lacking it. I know, I know, low DDR and all that, but on WP and Bio particularly, the 10% from those and 5% from a winter set gives a solid 15% s/l defense on sets that are specifically lacking that typal defense. Even if it gets debuffed later, it reduces the alpha considerably. My old TW/Bio and StJ/WP benefitted a lot from that split. MM ATO split 3 ways gives 30% recharge, which I think is kind of common knowledge at this point. Defender and Corruptor splits give 20% recharge for slotting 3 and 3. The one I'm constantly torn on is the Tanker 6 slot resistance bonus, because you get resistance, but then the proc chance goes down considerably with that much recharge aspect, which is then dropping your resistances. And as stated above, I think stalker and scrapper are the two biggest proc boosts to overall build performance. Scrappers take some more strategy/planning to maximize, but even winging it gives a big boost. Meanwhile the stalker one ALMOST makes me want to try kinetic melee for constant BU refreshes from the proc, and the guaranteed T9 refresh from the other proc. Almost.

I think that's the issue. The current meta is just "do the most damage" and WP isn't great at that. If you're looking at the armor set for the purpose of providing survivability, WP is completely fine. If you're looking at it to maximize your damage, you should look somewhere else.

Did an emp/sonic duo with a friend on live and recreated it on HC. Fort+double stacked 3 leadership toggles+Adrenaline is crazy. With hasten and weave thrown in, we needed basically no set bonuses to get capped defense to everything and perma adrenaline boost, then the sonic blasts debuffed enemies to hell. I think we may have needed a doctored wounds or a single LotG to get hasten/AB perma, and maybe the 3% defense pieces, but the rest of it was cheap IOs for simplicity and we still crushed it. Dark Mastery was the icing on top with mag 4 stun toggled up and soul drain. I think we respec'd out of the RAs after AB was perma, and maybe tossed them back in at 47/49 for teams. Mostly just did things with the 2 of us.

I will say, inexhaustible is fine getting just a +end proc and calling it a day. It definitely can benefit from more slotting, but if your build is tight on slots, this one is perfectly fine as a one slot wonder.

Absolutely not. Off the top of my head, inexhaustible and ablative carapace are the only powers that don't get an offensive bonus, and both are great. Bio is kind of a "take everything" set regardless of build goals or play styles.

While I don't think it's as big of an issue as OP seems to think it is, it seems like the MM changes coming up will likely help. T1 and T2 henchmen being even level with the MM at all times will add some sturdiness.

I have a BR/Dev blaster based on Rick Sanchez that will use it when soloing, but that's about it. Just toss trip mine on auto, grab a quick snack, come back, and tp the whole group into a mine field and clean up whatever is left (usually just bosses). It's gimmicky, but if I'm gonna make a Rick character, I gotta teleport people. Outside of that, I think I took the WS version on that character, but I haven't played my warshade in about 2 years so I can't be certain.

I'd think with slower clear times, it will depend on if you're doing active farming or if you're afk farming, and if afk, how often do you check back in to reset. If you go afkk for 10 minutes, but it's cleared in 5, that clear time going up to 9:59 makes no difference. A lot of other variables to be sure, but I think this one might be overlooked.

I think they are referring to a def/rech enhancement being wasted rech aspect on a toggle, not the 5% and 7.5% recharge set bonuses. They are (from my interpretation) not thinking about things like Fade, Farsight, Fortitude, etc that all need recharge and defense, and the OP is more focusing on armor sets having defense toggles. Unless they just think the set bonuses apply only to the power they're in, which would be odd with the HP/regen bonuses on LotG

Share the one you made so people can see what you're already leaning towards and to get an idea of what you want out of the build. Or at the very least, give a bit of info on what pool powers or epics you think you'll want. You'll get a lot more results when people have a starting point to work from.

I'd suggest /energy, because big punch

Got a few levels Saturday, then had a longer session Sunday and went from 21 to 32. We are cruising. A good chunk of time from levels 12-26 was spent shooting smoke cannister into a mob, then trying to snipe the closest target to pull onto an ice patch, debuffing it and dropping it, then rinse and repeat, with a bit more "run in and shoot stuff" mentality when we "ride the high" of getting all 3 of us leveling up with big insps, which lasts a group or two. I had always solo'd KR arcs or done it with these two players at base or maybe +1x5 at most. We were all shocked to see Chernobog was an AV and not an elite boss, but we were at level 20 by that point and had all just gotten lingering radiation, which helped tremendously with debuffing his regen. It also helped that we had leveled twice in mish and he was only +2 to us. Level 26 was a game changer. Still smoke cannister opening, but now we send in a tri gun drone first, anchor the debuffs, lanch some tear gas, and double nuke. Then running in with 3 Choking clouds is great. We now "run to safety" by swarming the biggest threat until it's choking and in the lockdown electric bubble. Level 33 will see perma hasten and AM, with just a few rech set bonuses, mostly LotG. Arachnos gave us the most trouble so far, but that was last attempted pre 26, and I think now we would deal with them much easier. The leveling slowed down a bit, and we did the first Croatoa arc from 25-32. +5 groups are a bit slower, but still don't feel dangerous at this point. I think we're past the hard part and should be cruising now. I think we'll try our first tf soon, either moonfire or wait a few levels for ITF. *I just looked up the rotation and saw Manticore is the weekly, and right at our level, that may be the winner.*

Well our altitus came out and we made this new trio before getting the existing one to 50 (at 43). Ended up with 2 corruptors, storm and fire, and one controller, arsenal(me) all with rad. Had to pop some insps at the start of missions, ran into a +5 group right at the door a few times, but level up inspirations carried us through the Habashy arc and we ran over to KR for Shauna's skulls arc. We ended the night at 15, close to 16. First arc was a few "arrest X hellions" missions, so the +4x8 didn't really hit until about level 3, and I think one LT leveled us to 4 inside the mish. The strat for most of the night was rad infect at max range and running back to break line of sight, dropping liquid nitrogen on their path, and then hitting them with sleep grenade. From there, I tried getting bosses slept or held as much as possible, while corruptors were killing off LTs and minions. With higher level enemies at that point in the game, everything is a threat, so we went with the approach of thinning them out as much as possible first, while I kept bosses (mostly) neutralized. START vendor enhancements and staggered AM had sleep nades ready to use 2 times per mob, which helped a ton as we were losing health and needed some safety. Our biggest blunders were accidentally nemesis staff-ing anchors out of range, so we just removed that from the trays around level 7 or 8. Smoke Cannister and Direct Strike are helping pull with relative safety, still into a patch of ice, but we only had one mission at a level with those available. Not the next mission, but I believe the one after that will be our first EB fight, which I am a little worried about, but realistically we will probably be running into that fight with level up insps active. The hardest mish so far was a Shauna Stockwell mission where the warehouse we enter was empty until a glowie at the end of the map spawns in all the enemies and an ambush comes at us. I set up the ice patch a bit early and it wore off shortly after the group got to us, and we wiped. They will immediately rush the door when you re-enter that one, and it caused some issues. Things we think will help once we get past the "we just need to level up mid mish to survive" level range: 2 snipes with gaussians on aim to pull/kill targets at a safe range with arsenal location controls stopping unwanted extra pulls. 2 nukes with the same BU setup. 3 Choking Clouds with a lockdown in each. Things we want to avoid but likely have to embrace: Abusing fallout/veng in exchange for debt

*big gremlin

Part of me wants to pitch a guns and radiation theme. Mercs, Arsenal, AR all with rad secondary. We like themed powers and that would be easy to do. KB>KD on buckshot and M30 for corruptor is soft cc and aoe we'll need. M30 on MM and serum will add more KD and make our meat shields a lot tankier. Arse is just good and the drone as a makeshift tank is something we'll need at times for sure.

Purple patch is why I wanted 3 of us. Ideally fallout won't get an opportunity to be used, but there aren't any builds made yet that we want to run with so it's a possibility. I've used rad toggles mid jump around line of sight blockers to pull before, and I assume we'll be doing quite a bit of that on this run. Coordinating 3 of them shouldn't be too difficult

The blossoming early part is why we were thinking rad. 3 rad infections from the start is what made me think this is doable. I was thinking a corruptor to leverage scourge, a mm for some meat shields, and a controller to hopefully lock down bosses. I was leaning ice on the corruptor to get a bit more hold stacking going so bosses would be more consistently neutralized. Maybe pyro on a controller so we have a column opener to give us a few seconds to set up, and possibly mercs so our meat shields can get serum going. Elec is an option, since being +4 means the damage may be outpaced by the end drain on at least bosses. Early AoE is something I hadn't thought about, but now that I am thinking about it, it's probably going to be pretty important, especially if we only have one corruptor. Elec also has a hold to help lock down bosses, so it fills the role I was looking at ice for. It's all still just an idea, we are still playing other alts right now, so the AT spread is up in the air. IF we end up with no controller, dark blast is likely going to be in there for some immob, as runners will kill this team if they're anchors. Where's your sense of adventure? Discord helps coordinate better than a random pug, and with what we've done in the past, I think this is doable. I think all those combos would be fine if we had 1 or 2 other consistent players, but from level 1, groups with 2 bosses are going to kill us. 3 RI is -75% tohit on corruptor/controller numbers, and -68% with a single mm swapped in, unenhanced. And at level 1 vs +4s, that's the debuff numbers I'm looking for.

What's bugged on HL and how does it get affected by TA?

Hello forumites, Some quick relevant background info, me and 2 friends got coh back in '05/'06 and played until shut down, then immediately got on HC servers in 2019 and have been playing relatively consistently since. We tend to make trios of characters to level up together, and usually stop at 50 but occasionally going well into incarnates and end game content. We each have other characters we build on our own and level, which is where a lot of my end game experience comes from, but our trios are usually played exclusively when all 3 of us can get online at the same time and stick within a bar of experience away from each other. We've done all MM, all arachnos for super leadership, the classic (de)buff/dps/tank, and a few where we just show up with 3 characters and make it work. Currently wrapping up a run with EA/Elec tank (me), dark/rad stalker, and pyro/sonic controller. With the approach of i28p3, particularly the part about difficulty being amped up to +7 on incarnate content and MM set bonus love, we were talking about a new group of characters to make. The update made us think about how SKs in DA missions could be fighting against +8 enemies, and the potential of rare groups of +9 enemies with how difficulty spawning works (not sure if the +7 will cap at 57 or have the occasional 58s). This snowballed into the idea of a trio that can successfully (definitions of that may vary) run at +4x8 right from the get go at level 1. Our idea was that if we all make characters who can grab radiation infection at level 1, that would be the easiest route. Obviously early game we would kill a single boss and likely level up, what we call the Frostfire effect. This means until the mid 20s, we'd likely be starting at +4 and by the end of the mission be likely fighting +2s at most. What I'm asking here is, does the community think this is a realistic idea going all in at +4x8 immediately, and if so, does anyone think another combination would do better? AT and set suggestions are welcome, as right now we just have "pick radiation" planned out. No idea if we'll lean into one AT or a variety, as my one friend really wants to see MM tweaks, and I think scourge will shine on this concept, but I also feel like some consistent hard CC will help. We tend to not grab temp powers from START vendor outside of double xp. Enhancement funds usually come from alts, though one friend slots things...later than the other 2 would like. TL;DR, what trio of characters would you make with irl friends (ideally with radiation emission) to take on +4x8 from 1-50?

My favorite troller to solo with currently is my Arse/Poison. Launch some confuse gas, send in the drone, run in after it, launch some more gas while VG debuffs them, set up a quick poison gas trap, shot more proccy gas, and then gas them out. It's a rainbow of vapor that melts groups and I have basically no damage coming at me due to everything throwing up or hitting their allies. The only issue I have is soloing AVs, which I could turn off, but I slog through it with safety due to sleep still neutralizing AVs and the drone taunting it for the times they wake up. It's not hard to solo AVs, just slower than I'd like. I have rune of protection and psi mastery for mezz protection but I don't even think they're necessary with how little I get attacked. I also have solo'd things at 50 with plant/dark, fire/rad, and mind/storm at +X/x8. Some of them can handle +4, some I haven't "finished" their builds and keep them at +2 or 3 while soloing.

It sounds like they are talking specifically about sustained DPS, and seeing a very distinct difference between that and burst damage. Burst damage for stalkers, sustained DPS for the scrappers and brutes by their logic. Or at least that's how I would read it

Psi is an odd one to bring up. The concept for OP was best ST damage. Psi has no damage buffing abilities. As an armor set I think it's great, but it isn't going to help the ST damage any. Stone and Bio are the best options there. I'll let someone with more number crunching skills say which of the two would be better, but my guess would be stone.