Americas Angel

Should be doable. Can have more than 3 builds on a ourodev server. Would be a great change IMO.

Big congrats to the team. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and eye laser everything.

They used to award the Bug Hunter badge just for closed beta participation. Might be a good idea to start that up again? Who knows. But as someone who's earned the badge four times, it quickly loses its appeal. The chief appeal of closed beta/QA testing is: See new features before everyone else. See experimental features that don't make it to open beta. The ability to directly influence the development of the game. (Open Beta allows this too, to an extent, but not to the degree Closed Beta does.) Direct access to the Dev team. Unfortunately, this does mean closed beta is full of folks who test nothing and just want to be part of the "in crowd". Which in turn leads to a lot of discord debate/discussion and not a huge amount of ingame testing. So, perhaps you're right, and some form of reward for closed beta testing might help that stage of development regain its focus.

Feel free to post a leveling build with SOs. Happy to give pointers on how to tweak/play that, too.

For a mitigation cycle, try: MoG>Instant Healing>MoG>Melee Hybrid (Res) Can also use Rune of Protection, Barrier, and Demonic. (Either layered on top of the above, or as part of a different mitigation cycle. I.e. if you want to keep MoG as an anti-spike tool.) Recon and DP to counter spikes. Should be able to solo +4/8 just fine. End drainers like Carnies are the only real threat. But you can mitigate them to some extent via base buff and Ageless. (Not ideal, I know. About the only thing I ever agree with in these regen suggestion threads is that the set needs more debuff resists.) If you're having a hard time playing regen, post your build in the thread and I'm sure folks will be able to give pointers.

"Anyone can become a closed beta tester" is no longer true. Folks can join the discord, sure, but access to the closed beta channels / game server for new players is on hold for now. Hopefully that changes for the next update. Would be nice to have more closed beta testers who actually log in and test things.

Use the builds in this thread and you should be fine.

Nicely done, Sai. I was able to get sub 10s by using exploits (multiple sig summons, level up buffs, unslotters, etc). But wasn't sure exploits were allowed or not. Live and learn Surprised my 25s Flea time didn't get beaten. I figured for sure someone would pick up Call To Justice and do it.

As heals in this game are classified as a positive damage type... ...an Empathy Defender with T4 Vigor and Absorb Pain slotted with 6 50+++++ IOs, once confused by a mob, after hitting that mob with Incan, and then hitting Hit Power Boost, and then hitting the mob with Absorb Pain, will deal -4316.6 damage to the enemy. Making it the lowest damaging power you can hit an enemy with. If using heals when confused doesn't count, then the lowest damaging attack would be a Super Strength Brute using Brawl during the rage crash for +1.46 damage. If Brawl doesn't count due to RNG (attacks can only have a 95% chance to hit in this game.) Then the lowest damaging attack would be a Super Strength Brute using Laser Beam Eyes during the Rage crash for +2.5 damage.

It's pretty easy to get on Beta. Just triple box with the QA autokill powers.

Small Red = 25% damage buff Aura of Mot = 9% damage buff Anger Monument = 25% (smashing/lethal) damage buff, 20% (Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Psionic, Toxic) dam buff Total = 34% (smashing/lethal) / 29% (Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Psionic, Toxic) dam buff So, you're looking at somewhere in the range of 4-9% less damage buff if you go a small red over Aura of Mot/Anger Monument. Personally, I'd have no issues with it, as long as the damage buff combat window is open. (To avoid folks swapping the icons for the T1 and T4 damage insps in their game directory, and then just using a +100% damage insp.)

Same build as above. Updated time on Flea Cup. Managed to shave off another 2 seconds. New best time is 25s. I could see going slightly lower if the 38% -res was maintained for the entire run, double gaussians at open, decimation each time, and no misses. Oh, and Call to Justice, obviously. There's a few bugs going on with the icons under the buff bar. (Using tester burnout too soon after a run finishes causes it to freak out a bit. Look at the two Geas having a little flashing party.) One of those bugs is it shows one stack of Boostup always active. This isn't real. As you can see in the video, below, the boostup damage bonus isn't showing up under combat attributes, and is just a visual bug: A flea cup entry with bugs, eh.

1. It's the /viewattributes command. It's why the combat attributes window shows the pylon's resistances instead of mine. It's helpful for me to track which of the -res procs have landed. 2. Enflame is a damage aura that works like Irradiated Ground. You can cast it on an enemy or on an ally. As you can see in the video, I cast it on an ally. The pylon timer starts once the pylon takes damage. So enflame won't do any damage to the pylon until the ally with it on runs up next to the the pylon.

Run Type: RWZ Pylon Division: 1 Archetype: Arachnos Crab Primary Powerset: Arachnos Soldier/Crab Spider Soldier Secondary Powerset: Training and Gadgets/Crab Spider Training Time in seconds: 14s Burst: Burst Hybrid: Assault Doublehit Build is usable for General Purpose: Nope. Temps Used: -Lord Recluse Sig Summon -Red Wisp Pet -P2W Offensive Amplifier -Recharge Base Buff -Aura of Mot -Anger Monument -Secondary Mutation Number of Runs Averaged Together: No idea. Version: 2.0 Build: Attached Notes: Switched to Degen. Picked up Aura of Mot, Anger Monument, and Secondary Mutation. As well as Burnout so I could open with double Build Up/Gaussian. Also clicked hybrid prior to summoning pets. (Had put it in the wrong place during "post respec autopilot" and blanked on it.) At this point it's just RNG deciding if the -res procs all fire and if the BU procs stack. Range was 14s-19s, Also managed to shave 2s off my flea time, too. Video Link (Division 1): 14s @Koopak 14s Crab Video Link (Flea Cup): @Bionic_Flea 27s Crab Trying, but I know a few folks who haven't posted in this thread yet who're blowing my times out of the water. Best I could manage on a Peacebringer in the Flea Cup was 36s. But that's still far slower than it should be. So, I made a chat channel just to monitor attack roles and realised I was nowhere near hitting the 4 attacks per second limit the server allows. (Despite trying to. Guess I'm not quite the Street Fighter button mashing badass I thought I was.) Anyway, I'm pretty confident a more experienced Kheldian player (or just a better player in general) could take my build, tweak it a bit, and blow my time away with better inputs. California's Crab 2.0.mbd

Run Type: RWZ Pylon Division: 1 Archetype: Arachnos Crab Primary Powerset: Arachnos Soldier/Crab Spider Soldier Secondary Powerset: Training and Gadgets/Crab Spider Training Time in seconds: 19s Burst: Burst Hybrid: Assault Doublehit Build is usable for General Purpose: Nope. Temps Used: -Lord Recluse Sig Summon -Red Wisp Pet -P2W Offensive Amplifier -Recharge Base Buff Number of Runs Averaged Together: No idea. Loads. Been testing them a bunch today. Version: 1.0 Build: See attached. Notes: Had a feeling it was either MMs, EM/Bio Scrappers/Stalkers, or Crabs that would be the best at this. The best I could manage on an EM/Bio Stalker was 22s. (35s under Flea Cup rules). That's about what the Peacebringer does so wanted to try pushing further. Video Link (Division 1): Video Link (Flea Cup): Managed 29s under the Flea Rules: California's Crab.mbd

Run Type: RWZ Pylon Division: 1 Archetype: Peacebringer Primary Powerset: Luminous Blast Secondary Powerset: Luminous Aura Time in seconds: 22s Burst: Burst Hybrid: Assault Doublehit Build is usable for General Purpose: Nope. Version: 3.0 Temps: -P2W Offense Amplifier, Survival Amplifier, Defense Amplifier -Lord Recluse Signature Summon -Red Wisp Prestige Pet (Even though it just seppuko'd right as the fight started.) -Recharge Base Buff -Aura of Mot -Anger Monument Build & Notes: I was clearly half asleep last night when I made Kansas's Kheldian's build: Ahem...switching those out for panaceas netted another 15% recharge. That plus weaving Judgement into the chain rather than as the opener, I managed to get 22s. New Build is attached. Note: the video below has a visual bug happening with some of the power icons on the buff bar. As you can see from the combat attributes window, none of those buffs are actually double-stacked. And there aren't two Red Wisp Pets flying around. Video: kansas's kheldian 3.0.mbd

Build is attached. kansas's kheldian 2.0.mbd

Run Type: RWZ Pylon Division: 1 Archetype: Peacebringer Primary Powerset: Luminous Blast Secondary Powerset: Luminous Aura Time in seconds: 23s Burst: Burst Hybrid: Assault Doublehit Build is usable for General Purpose: Nope. Number of Runs Averaged Together: First attempt. Version: 2.0 Build & Notes: Build is the same as last time. Except this time I switched out two regular damage procs for FOTG and the Decimation proc. As well as picking up The recharge base buff, the Aura of Mot, and the Anger Monument. ...all to get the same 23s time as before. Could probably get it lower by grinding it out ala the ski slope. (Or by the build being piloted by someone who's played Kheldians for longer than 20 minutes since 2012.) I imagine weaving in "burnout>inner light>photon seekers" at the 10s mark might also work. Plus there's also Judgement, Envenomed Daggers, or the Annihilation proc. Might be able to shave some time off with all that. (Although opening with Judgement probably isn't wise on a PB that can get 23s without it. Because Pyronic's arcanatime time is 1.188 and the Animation Time Before Effect is 0.6. So that means after the damage hits, you're doing 0 DPS for 0.588s. Which, works out to losing 1055.5 damage. On top of this, the 0.6s where you are doing damage, you're doing 1132.83DPS, which means you're losing another chunk of damage compared to just jumping straight into your regular attack chain.) Honestly? The biggest swing factor in my testing this was whether or not the BU procs double-stacked. If you watch the buff bar in the video, you'll see this little icon show up a lot: . That's the BU proc. Video Link:

@Koopak Run Type: RWZ Pylon Division: 1 Archetype: Peacebringer Primary Powerset: Luminous Blast Secondary Powerset: Luminous Aura Time in seconds: 23s Burst: Burst Hybrid: Assault Doublehit Build is usable for General Purpose: Nope. Number of Runs Averaged Together: First attempt. Version: 1.0 Video Link: Don't have one. But see below for pic evidence. Notes: Temps used: -P2W Offense Amplifier, Survival Amplifier, Defense Amplifier -Lord Recluse Signature Summon -Red Wisp Prestige Pet Build: Attached to the bottom of the post. Here's the mids: And here's the picture proof: Same build as above, but with no temps/insps turned on. Time = 47s. kansas's kheldian.mbd

Very late to the party on this. Saw you asked for feedback, had a few thoughts. I would suggest running only two divisions, to reflect the actual ingame rulesets: Division 1 = Same restrictions as 4* Division 2 = Anything goes except beta QA powers. (Anything other than these two divisions feel a little too "house rules" for me. A lot of the restrictions in the current divisions don't exist ingame.) Players would create a single build for one of the above two divisions, and then: Run Ston's AE mission. Fight a pylon. And then add the Ston AE clear time to the pylon time for their overall time. The idea of running the same build through each would be to create a more rounded build. Which would hopefully closer represent how people play the game. Fun thread btw. Has been interesting reading through it.

As someone who helped playtest these changes, I can safely say that testers against these changes were not ignored in closed beta, we were disagreed with. A lot of the concerns brought up in this thread were brought up in closed beta, and were discussed with the devs. That discussion couldn't have happened if we (testers) had been ignored. So it's not fair to accuse the devs of that. I personally am not a fan of making old enemy groups harder. But I understand that's a "taste" thing on my end. CoH, to me, has always been an extremely easy game that granted me, and my roleplaying buddies, the illusion that we were better at it than we were. "Check it out! I can solo +4/8! I'm so OP!" we'd cry. It was a validating superhero power fantasy that played into our delusions. These new changes remove that delusion somewhat. As will future changes to the other level 50 groups, when they're buffed to be as tough as the new Council and CoT. With that said, the new changes are mostly fine on my tanks. I can still roflstomp everything on +4/8. (Less broken ATs might struggle more now, though.) There are only two real areas I have issues: #1 - Council taking longer to kill This isn't harder, it's just tedious, and mostly just when soloing. I imagine it's here to stay, though as the dev team can use the intangible Fake Nems/Carnies, and self-rezzing Freakshow tanks as precedent for this design. I would counter this by saying that any mobs, new or old, who artificially lengthen fights, are built upon dated time-wasting MMO design principles and should be reworked, not emulated. Take it away from Fake Nems, Carnies, and Freaks. Don't add it to Council. #2 - CoT Boss Nukes & Masterminds A Mastermind can be "pretty much oneshot" (i.e. when at nearly full health) by the CoT boss nukes. This is just bad game design. I understand Masterminds are going to be looked at soon, and because of this it's considered a non-issue. I understand the devs don't want to limit CoT boss AoE options if future MM updates would make such limits unecessary. But it is nevertheless frustrating that my Mastermind has to avoid CoT until the MM rework.

Good suggestion. More player options is always a good thing. IIRC something like this was being worked on. Can't remember which dev was doing it, though.

Let me change that. Should say at least Tier 3. Tier 3 or Tier 4 both work. The reason why is that it provides a level shift which decreased the value of incoming KB attacks from the mobs.

@EmpradDon't toggle on Focused Acuracy, it's a set mule.You need all your incarnates. If you're having endurance troubles, switch one of the damage procs in Atom Smasher to a Dam/End IO +5'd. @Vinyl RichieThe mobs have 0% AoE defense.

Shouldn't be end crashing. Let me check tomorrow. I think you might be toggling on something that's just a set mule, but it's been a while since I messed with the build so will need to double check.