JediDave

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.

I agree with what Psyonico said. I'd emphasize the "if I have extra slots" part, and say that it's totally fine to slot it up with a single slot and use those slots somewhere else. IF you do slot it, I think basilisk is a good choice for a bit of range defense and a lotg worth of recharge. If you have excess slots on the build, I think the lockdown +2 hold is really the only proc I'd bother with. Off the top of my head, idk if the hold is auto hit or needs acc, so the one slot would ideally be recharge, but if you don't have the acc from set bonuses and it ISN'T auto hit, an acc enhancement is fine too.

Troo. I interpreted it as "this is my experience and I represent the average player and you are all talking about fringe, far from average experiences" which, I admit, may have been off the mark. I'm more than willing to leave well enough alone and agree to disagree, but the wall of text responding to me making a comment on incarnates being not an average experience felt very personal attackish and I may have responded to that more than the content of the post. Continuation of "obi wan kenobi shit" still feels a bit personal attackish on a name 12 year old me came up with though. Like if I was mocking your ability to spell due to your name. I love lamp. and da bears.

*double posted because internet speed is bad here*

I disagreed with a single statement that seemed to be disregarding another person's lived experience because it differed from yours. The response I was replying to implied that incarnate builds are ABOVE the average quality of what players experience. I was using SOs to point out that incarnates are also present in BELOW average builds as well and are irrelevant for assessing a set. Obviously every set that gets buffed/nerfed/rebalanced will affect level 10 character differently than a level 50 character of the same power set, but level range is a weird baseline for "average player" considerations. "Average character" you have an argument, but claiming a level range relates to the "average player" is not something I think most people would agree with. Especially since seeds and tree are online so early. If you would like to describe what you consider the "average player" to be, go ahead. We might even agree on that description. If you want to insult me based on a name I decided to keep from 20 years ago, also go ahead, but that seems unproductive. I like my plant controller just as much now as I did pre patch. You seem to not like your plant/ as much. I am arguing against your lived experience no more than you are arguing against Uun's lived experience or Force Redux's lived experience.

I strongly disagree with that. Incarnate build simply means you just keep using the same character. You'll eventually unlock incarnates by just doing missions and leveling up. I can have an incarnate build that is all SO slotting ffs. I believe you are lumping together "incarnate build" with "billion+ inf build"

I have a street justice/wp scrap as well. He's based on Mark Grayson. I am by no means a masterful mids builder, but glancing at your build, I would swap the ATO1 into 3 slots in each of 2 powers to double up on the 5% s/l defense and get yours much closer to the cap. Cross Punch would likely be the power here I'd swap over the other 3pc. I also usually don't like having a full set of ATO2 on one power because all that recharge makes the proc go off at poo poo rates. The part where me not being an expert comes into play is that I can't tell you for sure if that proc is currently in a great power to begin with, and someone else can likely help out there. I also would throw an AH -res proc in there so shin breaker and rib cracker are both debuffing res, that way when you get max combo level and hit the uppercut, they'll be extra debuffed. Everything else is fine and any other changes I would make personally are just personal preference/habit based decisions.

It's gonna vary from power to power. You still want to get set bonuses where you can. I would say post a build you made and then people can give advice on ways to tweak it to better go in the direction you want to go.

That's the gist of it. Avoid slotting recharge (the enhancement value, you can and should still go for some rech set bonuses), and on a sent, still get close to ED capped damage slotting done before slotting procs.

I say psi. Layered armor is good, and you get every single layer. Defense, resistance, regen, +maxHP, absorb, cc, and a self rez that works for a big chunk of time as death insurance if used while still standing. Cone on sents for drain psyche is better than if it were pbaoe too. And while tanks/brutes/scraps/stalkers would ignore building for defense with no ddr, a sent would really only need to shoot for ranged def, not m/r/aoe, so even getting at or near defense cap wouldn't be terribly difficult. I made the controversial decision to drop aura of insanity on my sent since I am only in melee for a second or two when I pop the T9 or my one pbaoe attack, then hop back out. Nothing is wrong with ice or regen, but I feel like each is just worse on sentinels than other ATs. Regen is directly tied to max hp, and sents are tied with stalkers for lowest hp on ATs that have access to it. You can still cycle MoG and RoP and a melee hybrid, but personal preference, I'd vote against going that route. Ice is fine, but imo defense sets on sents are better as positional defense sets, since ranged defense will cover the vast majority of damage, save a bit of psi that ignores positions, and a fireball aimed at a teammate next to you.

Defense keeps them alive pretty well. BUT, resummoning also isn't a big deal in modern coh. On live servers pre 2012, resummoning would take 90% of your endurance and a 4 minute cool down, but now it's far cheaper on endurance and recharges very quickly

Right, "weak" to lethal isn't really accurate when I can still cap it with 1 stack of the tank ato. I think the layered protection with very strong HP+regen, strong resists, strong absorb, and then a decent chunk of defense makes it pretty solid vs everything. It's only real weakness I've found is low debuff protection, which isn't as impactful when you have multiple layers keeping you alive.

If the theme was a broad "drug" based character, poison would be spot on. I even have a thugs/poison character who thematically is the dealer for a friend's character we duo'd up to 50 with. But I think with mushrooms being specified in the character theme, it kinda has to be nature with the handful of literal mushroom visuals in the powers.

You can get temp powers to replicate rez. You cannot replicate RA. RA will benefit you and henchmen when solo. Rez will not. If you rez too soon, that one teammate is going to complain they didn't get to fire off their vengeance, and they won't let it go for the whole tf, which is going to be a while, because the weekly was in the shadow shard this week, and the quick rez was on the first mish, and you're the only person who bothered to buy ATT or mish TP, and now the whole team is doing those long commutes to the next door, and the whole time you're making that slow commute that teammate is whining about how vengeance is so useful when $h!t hits the fan but you ruined it by rezzing right away, even though the rest of the team was fine throughout that whole process, and the reason the one teammate needed to be rezzed in the first place was because they missed getting RA and their survivability dropped from what they were used to the first half of the mish when you were steamrolling enemies, and you don't wanna come off like an ass so you let the complaining slide and don't mention that it is being blown out of proportion, but then another teammate will chime in saying that it's not a big deal, and then another other teammate will be all like "I get it, I kinda wanted to use fallout too but you were too quick" and then the whole team starts arguing and then on like mish 12 the tension is so high that half the team quits, and now you either cut your losses from the last 2 hours or slog through the rest of this ungodly long tf with just 3 other people, one of which was arguing against the rez in favor of letting people have time to hit veng/fallout and you just have this awkward vibe with that person for another hour and the fun of the game is completely drained out of you every time you think about teaming with that character again for the next month. RA does not have this problem.

I don't think "power creep" is the right term here, since the change to containment damage was unrelated to the change in pet control, and still leaves controllers behind doms in damage. I also would argue your italicized point here implies that instead of using powers to lock down enemies, controllers are not constantly commanding pets, which I don't believe is the case. Or you misinterpreted what I was trying to say. I meant "drop and start blasting" as in if the pet dies, my dominator keeps shooting things, and doesn't care that the pet is down, (like a crabbermind) but if a controller pet dies, I will try to resummon them asap because I need a meat shield and damage source (this was still the case pre patch). The dom pets have always felt like a nice bonus, but controller pets felt like a key part of their strategy before and after the patch. That is what I meant, that a controller feels significantly weaker without a pet, and a dominator feels like a complete character without the pet, and can still keep "blasting." By which I meant blasting, not holding, since one aoe at the start of a group is all the controlling a dom needs to lock them down until they drop. Honestly, the only time I or people I've chatted with in game regularly use the pet commands is when a pet runs off after a low hp enemy that wasn't locked down and risks aggroing another group. Maybe focusing attacks on an AV for some, but by and large, it's 90% the same controller strategy that was there pre patch. I can see a few pets, like singy, being able to benefit more from movement commands, but even then the old tp target strat probably still works better. I think the exception for me, and when I use the pet commands most, is with my arsenal controller to have the gun drone run in before me to grab aggro when solo, and that takes one click per group. Still able to keep tossing holds and debuffs just as much as pre patch.

Keeping in mind that the balance of the game is intended to be focused on basic SO level builds, I believe the pet change was only on controllers because they are much more pet dependent than dominators. Yes, a proc'd out controller can clear all but the bosses in a group pretty quickly without pets, but base level controllers really need the pets in order to do much damage. And solo they have a whole secondary set that is usually very team oriented and can benefit their pets. It made more sense to give them some control over such an important aspect of their AT. Meanwhile, most dominators will do just fine with or without their pets, since they have a whole secondary to deal damage as well as higher base damage on their primary. Really, my controllers with pets use them as a key part of their game plan, but my dominators use the pets more like my crabbermind does, just drop 'em and start blasting.