marcussmythe

Thank you. That explains why all my 6’ tall characters feel a bit short.

*scratches head in confused fashion* Is it just me, or did Invuln gain a good bit in the translation to Sentinel, compared to other sets?

That actually sounds potentially -awesome- once the incarnates and purples set in. TW hits like a truck, and will love the recharge, and has a DEF power and KD mitigation. SR brings easy softcap and pretty easy incarnate softcap and all the DDR. Sure, youll carry greens, but my Bio carries purples to fend off debuffs, so thats a wash? Let us know how it works out. I think with work to master it and time to gear it out (and likely a respec or two!) it will be a lot better than its given credit. RE: Resist - remember that youll get some as you fall under 50% HP. 1:1 IIRC. Putting on some RES to stack with that might be worthwhile - and obvs tough... or maybe the Rune from Sorcery for emergencies? PS: Given your DDR and low resist and no healing, you might be in a great place to leverage Barrier Destiny and Melee Hybrid.

So the best way to Energy Melee is to Leap Attack and Cross Punch? :D

I was racing a few other scrappers on Pinn. The Fire Tanks beat us, but it was a close run thing. (Of the Scrappers, I think I was third). 3000 Even-Con Minions sounds.. about right for the era? Though its also a valid point that nothing that existed at the time the first of us were coming up had anything like the kind of 'Are you JOKING' power that we now take for granted as expected on a lvl 50.

In my testing, it came to a 30% Damage Bonus (calculated like any other damage bonus) and an additional toxic hit that seemed to be about ~22% of the base damage of the power (so ~10% once you have hit ED from damage enhancements, etc). My testing wasnt perfect, and there were some anomalous results - for some reason, it provided a much larger bonus, % wise, with Brawl than any other power, but for the rest of the powers it seemed to hang out at close enough to 22% so as to not matter. I should rerun the testing, though, on a no-enhancements 50 punching another player with known 0 resists, or with a power monitor. And you are right, the result out the back end is pretty crazy. I can also confirm that the result in play on a mature Titan/Bioarmor Scrapper is insane (as pylon times will indicate). My gut feeling is that the original design intent was EITHER 30% Dam Bonus OR ~20% Addon to Toxic, and then a mistake was made and both were left in.

Do we know what the change in XP rate as between Launch and Sunset was?

/signed

I coule get hehind expanded brusing (more team offense value, more output solo against hard targets - where tank solo misery lies) and handing out debuff reist generously with bith hands to the AT. This would allow them to function with less pain alone, and give them the ability to tank the Vanguard/Imperial/Banished/etc. mobs that late game devalue any untility beyond ‘kill them NOW’

1.) My version of Pines lists Cloak of Fear as Mag 2 for Tanks. The wiki lists it as mag 3 for Brutes (and does not list a value for Tanks). Which is correct? 2.) If given fear enhancement duration, will Cloak of Fear stack with itself on a target, allowing it to fear bosses? 3.) What is the practical in-the-field reporting on the value of Fear? My assumption is that if there is a lot of AOE flying around, it would not provide much mitigation (other than the -ACC debuff), as the foes would regularly be attacked and thus able to counterattack.

Performance is so close, IMHO, to allow choice based on feel and animation, even if you are a number cruncher. I personally prefer Claws for the ranged ability, but have also played some DB because I really like the flowing sword animations, and DB is in the running for my next character.

WP, being a multilayer set, responds very positively to IOs.

They are still there. All the origin contacts (Azuria etc) are in City Hall and hand out their missions, and intros to other contacts. Out of curiousity I've recently skipped all of the newer stuff on one alt, even radio missions, and that alt is cheerfully meandering around Perez Park and doing hunt missions in KR and Steel Canyon. This. You just have to go in the building and get started. Oh and watch that you don't outlevel the contacts too quickly or you'll miss stuff. The contacts push you off very abruptly at certain levels. But there's a HORDE of content that almost no one touches. I know this because my wife has decided to do the ultimate completist run and get a full bar of red on every contact in the game. Wow... that's a feat I wouldn't try to repeat! My regards and best wishes to your wife. I tried this, turning off xps to stall before I outleveled contacts, and just could not do it.

Also a lot depends on who the dev team was when a powerset was created/last time it was touched. Different powersets reflect different visions of how the game is/is supposed to be played and different developer expectations - notice how over time weve gone from "Stamina is a Pool Power" to "Inherit Fitness" to "Bonus END IOs" to "Lots of new powersets have END/REC mechanics"

*nods* Its the +3 or 4/x8 Vanguard/Banished/etc. that get me.

Literally anything because Bio is OP. I've run it on scrappers and brutes both, and it's just monstrous, I've also see it quite effective on stalkers and sentinels. The only thing I don't think I really see with bio a lot is tanks, and... that's more because you don't see a lot of tanks around. (Bio is also a ted aggressive of a set for most tank builds, honestly) Thus the smiley in my post, as Bioarmor offers both a rather extreme +DAM bonus, and the ability to reach 90% Smash/Lethal on a Brute with pool powers and IOs.

Once IOd you'll find you rarely need the clickies in bio apart from using them as debuffs. But when you do need them they're great. I'm loving my rad/bio brute - 3 debuffing auras ftw. Ive got an IOed Bio, and I lean heavily on my clickies. May go to target villian groups?

So what do I use Bioarmor on? :)

True. Still, even if we consider "objectively OP" equivalent to being almost indestructible, I want to emphasize that there's a really big distance from "being essentially immune against conventional guns and blades or a particular element" to "being only weak to one specific thing", and our +4/x8 soloers are closer to the former, which isn't all that uncommon when you look at comic books. There are several enemy groups I'd be pretty confident to claim can't be consistently soloed at +4/x8: Vanguard, Banished Pantheon, many Praetorian enemy groups, etc., so there's a variety of enemies that in high level mobs can overcome our most powerful heroes. We don't need nerfs or Kryptonite just yet because no builds are that powerful. The Debuff Crew (Vanguard, BP, Longbow, various praetorian groups) I treat with a lot of care and respect. I enjoy ramping up the diffy against them and hitting every button just right and having a plan before every pull - and I still spend a fair amount of time running back from the local hospital. The secret (if there is one) to handling them seems to be hit and fade. Dont be married to the idea that once you enagage that group, you arent moving till the last one falls. Get in, lay down as much damage as possible, cut the incoming fire/debuffs, and then get out when your (monitored) DEF, RES, etc. start collapsing. Dont wait for your HP bar to move - once they have your defense/res/regen down and your HP bar is moving, its usually too late. Its honestly a refreshing change from 'Oh, look another group of Demons/Warwolves/Hydra/Warriors/etc stomp stomp stomp loot'. Im sure there are builds that can faceroll all those groups, but I dont know what they would be. Threadtax: Whatever we want the overall temperature/power level to be of the game, I -really- want people to be able to pick any powerset within an AT, because it fit their story/theme, and not feel particularly disadvantages. The times I get cranky about set imbalance is when my choice fells like its reduced to 1.) Play what is good. 2.) Play what fits the character and accept a large mechanical disadvantage.

Rad Melee is newer, so didnt get the ‘cannot crit for full damage’ punishment that KM and EM did. Same goes for StJ, and is a reason for much if its current strength.

Stalker Invuln is the best designed version of Invuln, IMHO. Merging Rele and Rnrg and making Invincibility a flat buff puts some wind back in the sails of whats otherwise a kinda flagging I0 set. Ive got a Kinetic/Invuln Stalker thats a reroll of a live Invuln/EM tank, and Im quite happy with her. Regen remains regen. Placate might serve it well. Ive not looked closely at Stalker Regen to see what changes.

That's not really a valid comparison. The problem with Super Strength on Scrappers is really related to Rage. The set as a whole is balanced around the idea that you have an 80% damage buff up pretty much all of the time. The problem is that an 80% damage buff is a lot more powerful on a Scrapper than it is on a Brute or a Tanker since Scrappers have much higher damage modifiers. Functionally speaking an 80% damage buff for a Scrapper is more like a 120% damage buff for a Tanker or Brute. So at an absolute minimum if you ported Super Strength to Scrappers Rage would need to be nerfed to about 50% damage boost to keep the damage output in line with Brutes. Even then you might find it a bit to powerful due to Critical Strikes. Would have to be just a hair higher to be equal to Brutes. Normally at 50% fury Brutes and Scrappers will do equal damage outside of crits. Scrapper Attack: 150, slotted w/ 100% damage 300. Add 50% rage 375. Double rage 450 Brute Attack: 100, slotted w/ 100% damage 200. At 50% fury 300. Add 80% rage 380. Double rage 460 50% would put them below this threshold but 53% would put them equal. Another thing to consider when comparing the 2 ATs is that Scrappers for most sets have a higher damage buff with Build Up and similar powers vs Brutes. So during that 10 seconds with 100% slotting for damage, instead of 300 they would do 450 but a brute instead of 300 would only do 380. So for all other sets, the scrapper does slightly more damage over time. At base recharge this means around 55% on Rage would make the difference between a SS Scrapper and SS Brute about the same as any other set. Then that brings us to another issue. When you compare 2 identical sets and have the brute at 50% fury and exclude crits, the Scrapper version and the Brute version are exactly the same. Over time including crits, they are the same at 65% fury. Where things change is with Build Up combined with recharge. The more often build up is used, the farther the scrapper pulls ahead with the exact same attack chain. If you have Rage nerfed to 55% then a high recharge SS scrapper would be roughly the same as a high recharge SS brute where every other set, the scrapper pulls further ahead with more recharge. So if they were to port SS to scrappers they have several things to consider. If they nerf the Rage percentage too low then SS will suck on Scrappers and all the work that was done will be futile as almost no one would play the set. If they leave it too high, then it becomes super popular and everyone is running around with SS/Bio Scrappers stomping everything to death and popping Parasitic Aura right before rage crashes. (Don't pretend this isn't why we want SS on Scrappers) Finding a fair middle ground would take a lot of work and I would not expect that of people who are bringing the game to us without getting paid for it. So even though I would love to see it, I don't expect that port any time soon. This is all made worse by ATOs, Scrapper ATO's take scrappers from "Better than a Brute at Low Fury, not as good at high fury" to "Just plain better than a Brute." Well, given the res and hp discrepancy, id argue thats probably a good thing? Given how hot Stalkers are at Scrappers heels... though for me Ive mentally just merged the ATs. Ive got ‘single target melee with stealth’ and Ive got ‘AOE melee’ and its mostly about which version of the powerset I like and how badly I wanna see the costume.

Why the focus on rotating around Shockwave? Is that for single target? It looks like the other t1/t2's in Claws do more damage. Thanks. Dont have chart in front of me. Recall Shockwave being pretty good DPA for the set. May be wrong.

1. How do you guys slot the attacks? Im a fan of 1 END, 1 ACC, 1 RCHG, 3 DAM at the SO/lvl 30ish IO level. Later, this will be replaced by sets. 2. Do you use all of the attacks or skip one? I skipped defensive sweep, and do not miss it, though others have good arguements for its value. I used Titan Sweep leveling, but eventually dropped it at 50 - I use Arc and Whirling for my AOE, and find them more than sufficient to finish off the minons/lts before the last boss drops in a x8 pull. 3. Do you 6 slot all of the attacks? Yes 4. What's your opener and your attack rotation? Depends? Generic Case... Rend Armor on Boss to gain Momentum, Follow-Up, Arc of Destruction, Crushing Blow, Follow-Up again right before momentum fades. Throw in WS any time it is up if in AOE situation. On my way into the pack, Build Momentum, single-target bosses prioritizing follow up, throw in Arc of Destruction angled to catch the rest when possible, Whirling Sword whenever off CD if in AOE situation. 5. Any cool tricks or tips? Something you've learned from Pure experience? Make sure weapon is drawn before hitting build momentum. If it isnt and you hit it while running towards the pack, you will pause and draw your weapon and they will all shoot you while you look at them funny. This is bad. If in high threat situation with large groups of mobs, time your attacks to maximize time foes spent knocked down. This is substantial mitigation. Against AVs, monitor their regen. It may not be worth debuffing their regen with enchanted daggers if your losing too much damage by interrupting your own damage cycle. The Wedding Band and Kinetic Dampner are your friends. More generally, any temp power that may be useful should be looked at - weve already accepted lots of micro, and all in service of the Titan Weapon. May as well embrace that - if we didnt want extra buttons and timing worries, wed be playing Mace/WP (a favorite of mine!) 6. What is something I should avoid like bad habits or something? It can be tempting to just hammer attacks, and some sets reward this. TW is not one. Its long animation times and wierd momentum mechanics reward thoughtful play, and taking a fraction of a second to go 'no, I dont want to be locked into a long animation when Im taking damage and I have a healing power coming off cooldown in .3 seconds' can make the difference between survival and defeat. ______ Bio: 1. What powers are relevant on this? -Of those Powers, how many slots did you put and what did you put into the slots? I'm pretty lost on how to maximize usefulness on Bio. A lot of this is level dependent and set dependent. Your generic DEF/RES Toggles are much like anyone elses. I use inexhaustable with 2 slots to hold 2 pieces of performance shifter. Ablative, Siphon, and Parasitic end up with 5-6 slots in a final build, depending on desired sets. Genetic Contamination gets 2-3 slots of damage and endredux. 2. For toggles, do you always run your toggles or are they situational? Always. 3. Any general advice around this one? Stance Dancing is great at low level - TW is hungry, efficient stance feeds it. High level youll likely build towards surving/sustaining in Offensive, but dont forget that efficient and defensive are there, they may on occasion help. 4. Anything to avoid around this one? Avoid firing off DNA Siphon or Parasitic Aura without forethought. Parasitic Aura wants a crowd, and will NEVER have 100% uptime. So fire it when youve got a huge crowd and you expect to need it this fight - erring on the side of caution. DNA Siphon is a situational tool - its a large heal with a crowd (and an okayish one on a single target) or a decent REC/REGEN buff on a dead crowd. I lean more on the heal -but not the animation time can make it a dicey self-heal at endgame, where the line between 'fine' and 'dead' is measured in debuff stacks more than green bar. Ablative Carapace is great pre-pull or early pull - I like pre-pull, so I have more breathing room to reduce incoming damage by dealing damage. General Thoughts: Someone said, and they are right, that the Titan Weapons set is like the main gun on an A-10 - its a gun that has been equipped with an aircraft. If you choose TW, its best to go all in.. the rest of the build is a life support system designed to keep that TW alive and deliver it into position for maximum effect. TW, and TW/Bio specifically, is supreme in its ability to deliver violence - but to do so effectively, that violence has to be thoughtful and measured. Bio is very powerful, but its lack of debuff resistance and somewhat 'holy' resistances can result in frequent faceplants if one is careless against the bad enemy groups at high difficulty settings. You arent Titan/Bio so Bio can keep you alive while AFK in the middle of +4/x8 Arachnos, your TW/'Bio so Bio can support the TW long enough to kill them. Make sure you have your ducks in a row as much as possible before jumping in - stopping your offensive cycle because you forget to hit a now-necessary buff exposes you to yet more damage and debuff. TW is a long recharge set. Bio is a healing set. Dont be too proud to disengage - Bio will bring you back up to par very quick if you can get out from under fire, and if you start seeing your DEF and RES drop in a tough crowd, take action BEFORE your HP start to fall. Eat purples to get your DEF back up over 45%. Eat Oranges to get your RES back online. Or just cut and run, and do so BEFORE the incoming damage gets ahead of your regen. At endgame against +4/x8 Debuff packs, Bioarmor feels a lot like old Regen.. your health bar is binary. (You are monitoring your DEF, RES, REC, REGEN, and other important bonuses? If you arent, please consider doing so. This cannot be understated) Finally, of all the characters I've played in CoH, TW/Bio is the most micro intensive and the most twitchy/situational, and this only grows as more powers (and incarnates, and temp powers) come online. Im in decent Vet Levels on it, and Im still getting better at timing and tricks and feel and learning how to approach various bad guy groups/AVs. TW/Bio is a solid build even if you are just hitting the keyboard with your face, but it has phenomenal room for performance increase beyond that if you put the time in.

Though almost certainly redundant, the temptation of Spring Attack Lightning Rod Shield Charge is a thing...