Coyote

The first thing that comes to mind is that in incarnate content, due to the level shift, controls and debuffs are a lot more effective than in other high-level content. And due to the mobs having good debuffs and accuracy bonus, going on pure defensive stats is less effective. So I'd want a combination that puts out a good amount of mezzing and control in addition to defense. The second thing is... mez protection. Are you going to rely on Clarion, or need a build with mez protection? With Clarion, you can go with a debuff set that has a good -ToHit toggle and rely on it holding up. I'd look at the following: Dark/Sonic. AoE Fear and Sleep up every spawn to allow you to set up debuffs, great -ToHit debuffs, and some knockdowns. EA/Electric. EA is very strong defensively but allows you to get hit, which means you start getting debuffed... but between EA having an AoE -Endurance in one power and another through the pet, and /Ele having Short Circuit up every spawn (and Thunderous Blast every few), add in Mu epic so you get Power Sink, and you can drain large portions of the spawns pretty quickly, limiting incoming damage, mezzing, and debuffing. Time/Water. Time is strong defensively, Water adds knockdowns, more movement slows, and another self-heal.

I played on Siege Perilous so I can speak from the experience of someone from a open-PvP with full looting: it can be fun. It can also suck a lot of different type of fun from the game. A lot of players will not be interested in the forced challenge kind of fun, and therefore will move out. This was true in UO where there were no level differences... it would be far more true in CoH where one character literally cannot beat another character who goes AFK. Or who can get 2-shot before being able to activate an action. Now add in having your Merits or stuff looted after dying from two shots that arrived at the same time so you couldn't react... can you say "ragequit"? Conceptually, this idea has some minor benefits, but they are hugely outweighed by the drawbacks. I'm always surprised when this is seriously suggested as something that would be good for the game.

Hey, what do you think of Parabellum Time?

One thing that I wonder about is this.... Everyone who is interested in them has run multiples of the common TFs, Hami Raids, MSR, etc. How many have formed a team and run the First Ward/Night Ward arc? Have fun on that with a +4/x8 difficulty, hehe. Each zone's arcs is bigger than a TF, but you could run just a couple of the contacts and have fun. There are some other arcs that could be interesting... Mr G or Provost Marchand, Number 6, etc. Fighting the arc that ends in the Jade Spider would probably also be cool. Only catch is that it may not be so easy to get merits for everyone since everyone would need to have the contacts to get the arcs and thus the merits... but if merits are the goal, then just run one of the repeated TFs. If seeing new content is the goal, frankly, I've seen all of the above TFs advertised on LFG channel... not seen those difficult story arcs advertised much if at all.

I would but only due to putting two -Res procs into it. Otherwise, not sure about that. But with two -Res procs it's not a bad addition to a single-target chain... low effectiveness on itself but it boosts damage from following attacks. And it adds AoE that's helpful when in a large spawn... you don't have to reposition to hit multiple targets with it, and with 2+ targets it's pretty good. For fun I added the Overwhelming Force Dam/KD IO into it, and knocking down multiple targets that are bunched up is always fun. Note: I think the chance to activate Achilles Heel is about 30%, so that's an average of 6% -Res from one of the IOs. If Gladiator's Fury has the same numbers, then 12% -Res isn't a bad average value.

Same, though I've gotten good use of Mystic Flight / Translocation on squishies who are Immobilized, and on both squishies and melees who are greatly Slowed, to get out of patches or reposition at better than a slow-motion crawl.

Be more realistic... and also more unfair. Use Fusionettes, instead 😉

Protector Bots get a surprisingly good AoE in Photon Grenade, which is on the same timer and does almost the same damage as an Ember Demon's Fireball, and I put the Overwhelming Force Dam/KB2KD IO into the AssBot, and that all works out fine. Their AoE isn't really a problem.

/Time is probably the strongest for them, though when they do get hit, well, they'll be dead. /Thermal is going to be more active due to them getting hit a lot, but they're more likely to survive the hit so you have a chance to heal them. /Pain is the same idea, with less debuffing but a +Regeneration aura that will make it easier to keep them topped up. /Storm might be an interesting idea... build for personal defense, lead them into the battle, and keep them alive by tanking for them and pulling aggro with Hurricane.

It think it qualifies as the typo of the week. 😉

For Ice/Poison, you will have serious problems running both AA and Noxious Gas. Separately they're expensive toggles, but together they combine to form Exhaustron, a vampiric invisible fungoid living on your character's back, possibly masquerading as a cape, that sucks your life and saps your energy. I would 3-slot Stamina at a minimum, and probably 4-slot it, and 3-slot Health to get all of the uniques that give +Recovery or +Endurance. Unless you're planning to run Ageless, but I think this combination requires Clarion instead. Also, not slotting End Red in toggles like Weave and Maneuvers is going to make the Endurance problem worse.

IMO, Poison is a late-blooming set that will do little to keep you safe early. It's main strength early is good single-target debuffing, so I think it should be paired with a primary that is strong defensively especially against large groups. Unless you PL into the mid-late 30s, when you get enough enhancement slots to start building a defense build based on set bonuses. So, if leveling it up, I would look at the primaries that seem like they're going to give you good defensive opportunities early, and that leads me to: 1) Plant. Thematic, and best option. Seeds of Confusion takes care of LTs and below, and stacking the Hold with Poison's ST Hold or Poison Trap takes care of a single Boss fast (and the debuffs are good against a Boss before the Poison Holds become available). Envenom can be used to increase damage done by Confused mobs, without lowering their damage or chance to hit. 2) Dark. Also pretty thematic, and works well by stacking -ToHit debuffs along with Poison's. Then, Heart of Darkness with procs as a PBAoE together with Poison Trap also as a PBAoE puts out a lot of AoE damage for a Controller. 3) Electric. It's a good shutdown control set by draining mobs, and then later Poison Trap can help with AoE damage. Alpha strike can be a problem, but once that's survived, it doesn't take long to drain mobs. Poison Trap is supposed to do huge -Recovery, but I think the duration on it may be bugged... if it's not, though, then this should be able to End drain AVs. 4) Earth. Always a good control set overall, it gets Stalagmites and Earthquake early.

The only ones that generally have problems with getting more powers are Mercs, who have a very slow Full Auto and a pretty slow Flamethrower... but at least the Full Auto is being fixed. Robots have Full Laser Auto and Flamethrower, both over 6 seconds animation (!!!). I don't think there are other henchmen who have an attack that's too bad, though Hurl Boulder from the Bruiser might be there. But Thugs don't really need a balance pass, hehe, while Mercs at least do... Bots aren't too bad, with nice AoE, good defense, and huge -Regen, at least they have some nice advantage to balance against a big single-target damage hole.

All that, and also all of the Tentacles are separate entities so there is no way that you have to worry about the aggro cap. The mobs will always have some target available to aggro upon, so if they're not Confused, they're not wandering away... and if they're Confused, they're also staying. So you can get a nice pile going, and a ton of tentacles popping up and doing a lot of damage. It's way better than Fire for both damage output and safety, except if the mobs have resistance to Confusion.

Kin, IMO, undoubtedly. For the same reason that I chose it: 1: Kin is a great offensive secondary, but doesn't help that much on defense... pairing it with Fortify Pack and pretty solid defenses/resists for the Beasts covers its main hole. 2: Beasts is an excellent defensive primary, and good offensively against single targets. It kinda sucks in AoE. However, there is a way to get around that... Fulcrum Shift and a proc-based build with the Leviathan Mastery secondary allows you to FS, then throw: Call Ravens - School of Sharks - Bile Spray - Call Ravens. AoE missing from your Beasts? That's okay, there's nothing left but the Bosses anyhow. The Beasts are there just to Bodyguard you and finish off the Bosses. Those cones average out around 300 damage, so that's about 1200 AoE damage. Now you have defense, AoE damage, single-target damage... and the fun of directly killing the mobs to show the puppies how it's done. And a base 800 damage from Knockout Blow just in case they need more lessons about who is the pack leader and who learns to Sit, Stay, and Roll Over. This is the build I'm running (so far in the 30s), but it's not quite perma-Fortify so I'm not sure if I'm going to try to tweak it to aim for that. It's hard to give up some of the damage, though...

Melee cones are not AoE now? Huh. I guess someone should tell high-level Dual Blade Stalkers that they can only kill one mob at a time. Usually they hit fewer targets than radial AoEs, but do more damage or have a shorter recharge, to make up for their smaller area. Savage and Electric are high in AoE damage in my experience. Spines is probably higher, though.

Thank you. That's great to know, I had wanted to use it on a /Kinetics MM since they normally struggle to do AoE damage and a Fulcrum-shifted SA with procs working would be great... but I remembered that it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. If it's fixed, I think I'll have to revisit a couple of builds that could use an AoE damage bonus coupled with a teleport into melee. A Dark/Kin Controller, for example.

@PsychoThruster already beat me to it, but I'll reiterate what they said... Powers like Smoke Flash could be changed to be made more useful... maybe a PBAoE -ToHit debuff PLUS a 2-second flag on mobs hit that sets up Jounin and Genin to get critical hits against them. And add 2 more similar powers to replace the upgrade powers (or 1, and a debuffing attack), and then getting more Recharge would allow you to put out more debuffs and damage, so you wouldn't get so little benefit from getting +Recharge buffs. Pretty much all sets could thematically gain some kind of temporary damage boost... Smoke Flash blinds opponents so they can be critted, Set Lasers to Slaughter for Bots, Power of Midnight for Necros, Howl of Rage for Beasts, Focus on My Target for Mercs, He's Got the Loot! for Punks, Unholy Word for Demons... all could be some kind of temporary henchman buff or target debuff, so getting more Recharge to use it more often would help with damage. It wouldn't be as big a benefit as an AT that has its entire offense get boosted by +Recharge, but it can be done.

Dark/Savage Dominator is both effective and great fun. Dark/Sonic Defender is very strong defensively, and okay offensively solo... but great for team damage. Also a ton of control, so it's like a Controller who doesn't need Containment to do damage.

Don't get me started on cavatelli code

Well, Enchanted Impervium is, IMO, already #1. I mean, it's like Impervium, but enchanted. And since Warriors use some magical weapon artifacts, it would be reasonable for them to focus on it.

Neither. If the Tier 1 power that you're forced to take is the least relevant power that you have, then the power that you take at 49 is usually the next least relevant. So the replacement power that you get by not having to take a nearly useless Level 1 power isn't going to be that great, or you would have selected it by 49. So you're really just taking a cool power, or one that may be helpful like Stealth, but wasn't important enough to squeeze out more important powers, etc. So it's not going to make a great difference on ANY build, because if whatever power you end up taking would make a great difference, then you would have picked it up already in the build. I like the idea, it would be cool to not have a power pick that is useless at high levels (and some of the powers do remain useful at all levels)... but in the long run, characters won't end up significantly stronger for getting the choice.

This is exactly my feeling about the major MM problem at high level. And then I add in that MM damage is highly oriented towards DoT-like effect... even single attacks from henchmen come fast enough and do low enough damage that they're more like chunky DoTs than like single-target attacks. So... DoT damage at high level in a teaming environment that's overloaded with Judgments and nukes means that their contribution to team damage is rather limited. This is a harder issue to solve, though... I think there may be more straightforward solutions to the level shift problem.

Great, glad to hear it clicks well for you. As Crysis said, it does lack for +Damage (though it's great against AVs/GMs due to the huge -Regen). I maxed out the single-target Hold in Mu with procs to try to squeeze a bit more single-target damage. And before I switched to Group Fly for fun, I had Weaken Resolve to try to help with burning Bosses down. AVs go down easy, trash mobs go down easy, it's just dealing with a lot of Bosses that is annoying. Also, on the +Damage power: like all other powers in EA, the first target gets the max effect, the second target gets about 2/3 (I forget if it's 2/3 or 3/4) of the effect, and target #3 and on get 50% of the first target's buff (or healing or Absorb).

I don't know, Nerf Regen Tuesday was earlier in the week... have we added Fix Regen Wednesdays? I think Fix Regen Fridays would sound better 😉