Scrapulous

I haven't done the math, Vee, but I have been conditioned by the ATO and by Concentrated Strike to just slam BU any time it comes up, because I loathe triggering a reset when it's up. This happens often enough that I just now use BU whenever it's up. I took Moonbeam too, so I follow any use of BU with an instasnipe if Moonbeam is up, and I gamble on an AS regardless of Assassin's Focus stacks if Moonbeam isn't up. It's hell on my endurance bar to keep using BU and insta-snipe and insta-AS, but Energy Aura helps well enough with that. I am now at a point where my attack chain is roughly> T2, T3, AS > did I hide? If not, repeat, if so, T9 (or Burst) > BU > Moonbeam > repeat; I monitor constantly for an insert of BU > Moonbeam into that chain. I used to try to wait for guaranteed AS crits, but I stopped doing that because it wound up sub-optimizing my chain and I have enough to monitor by watching BU and my hidden state. It may even be theoretically less optimal to do things this way, but this is what I have found feels the fastest to me. I should probably download that damage monitor tool and find out for sure. Scrap

Do you feel that this is not true of other stalker sets? I'm not quite certain what's exceptional about Broadsword in this analysis, especially when I compare broadsword's numbers on its two big attacks to the numbers on other sets, which mostly appear to come out ahead of BS.

A lot of this work has been done. There is frequent discussion of this topic in the mastermind channel of the Homecoming Discord and a few good threads in the MM section of these boards. My impression of the state of the art in MM proc placement is, roughly: The Overwhelming Force proc is something that most any MM primary has a use for and the chief question is in figuring out which power gives it the most impact. Certain primaries do very well with certain procs because all or nearly all of the pets' powers benefit from the proc. This is what I think Maxzero was getting at with his layering notion. An element I didn't see him mention but that is very significant here is that each of a pet's powers has its own PPM timer. Notable primaries are mercs, who very much like slotting Achilles Heel and Touch of Lady Grey, and Necromancy, where the Lich goes from Controller to Dominator with the addition of a single Cloud Senses proc which will happily fire off of all of her powers, including her three big dark cones. Some procs are worth slotting even when the number of attacks that can use them is low-ish, because of their high recharge timer and wide area of effect - these procs will fire a lot when the power that employs them is used and so a single slot can result in a huge amount of effective damage enhancement which also has the benefit of being exempt from Enhancement Diversification limits. Examples include knockback conversion in Assault Bot (most especially Overwhelming Force) or -res procs in Grave Knights, whose big, chunky Broadsword attacks seem to fire it frequently. And, of course, each of these needs to be balanced against the "aura" procs and the difficulty of finding enough raw enhancement value for the pets, as well, which is the central puzzle at the heart of modern MM slotting in much the same way that softcapping defenses and hammering out enough recharge for a sufficiently optimal attack chain are the central concerns for certain melee sets. This is may not be especially useful for most defenders, but Dark Servant is a notable application and a very obvious opportunity for Maxzero's layering notion to apply profitably. I haven't yet had an opportunity to play with procs on Storm's pseudopets, but I see that you all have already begun that discussion without me so I look forward to reading what you come up with when my altitis allows me that fun.

Some thoughts from your low-damage-scalar cousin, a Dark Miasma Mastermind: Fearsome Stare can take a psi damage proc from the Glimpse of the Abyss fear set. I have both of the possible damage procs in it, and typically damage 70-80% of the mobs in a spawn with it, most of them with both procs. It's an exceptional boost in damage for an MM and I think it might be worth considering here. Dark Servant can take the Cloud Senses negative energy damage proc. Everything Dark Servant does has a tohit debuff component, including its passive damage aura, and every one of its attacks checks on its own ppm timer. Lich and Dark Servant slotted this way are significant DPS contributors for me. Do you get much proc mileage out of Dark Blast? I'd be very tempted to pull the two procs out of that power to make room for the above suggestions. I'm not usually a fan of the "Chance for [control effect]" procs because they tend to be low-magnitude, low-duration, and low-impact. I'd recommend replacing the Gravitational Anchor chance for Hold proc in Tenebrous Tentacles with either a Posi energy proc or probably Annihilation chance for resistance debuff proc. Chance for Build Up in Gloom: how is that working out for you? I haven't given up on it yet, but I'm close - I have been very underwhelmed by the proc rate I have been getting from this on my Night Widow and my stalker. Thanks for sharing your findings! Scrap

I like Jack's second build a lot, but I would make the following tweaks: [*]Take a slot from Incinerate and move it to Tough. Incinerate is over-enhanced and the loss of the set bonus is nearly made up for by the increase in enhancement value in Tough - Jack's is at 95% S/L res, and this change takes you down to 93.65%. If you slot the new Tough slot with the Resist IO from Gladiator's Armor, you pick up the third set bonus, which is 3 points of knockback protection. That'll be significant later on... [*]Swap GFS and Incinerate slotting. Jack's version has a more accuracy enhancement in GFS and more recharge in Incinerate, which is backwards: GFS has inherent accuracy bonus and wants recharge more than Incinerate does. [*]This is a matter of personal preference, but I took two slots out of Plasma Shield. This costs two set bonuses: 3.75% Toxic and Psi resist, and 5.25% Fire and Cold resist. I think these slots have more use elsewhere: personally, I'd put one into Scorch for a Crushing Impact acc/dmg: 4 pieces of Kinetic Combat leaves me wanting more acc and damage in Scorch, and I don't want my T1 attack missing. The second I put into Combustion so I can add the Perfect Zinger proc into it. It might actually be better to swap the Combustion and Fire Sword Circle slotting to get more out of that proc in that case, but I'm not sure. [*]Since we gained 3 points of knockback protection from the first change, I'd ditch Super Speed in favor of Fiery Embrace, which I think is a must-have for a fire/fire tanker. This is a great discussion. I'd also like to see Profit's offensive build. Unfortunately I can't open Hyperstrike's build using Mids Reborn, so I can't comment on it. Scrap

Do you see any problems with giving mind controllers the ability to defeat bosses in one shot? Depending on the recharge time, the most optimal high end use for this might be removing a single troublesome boss from every other spawn in an eight man team, for instance.

I figured out the comment character. * works. I imagine any of ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) would work, since typing those is interpreted as SHIFT+1 or the equivalent number key. I haven't tested those, but I can confirm that * has the advantage of not spraying errors into your chat window when you load it. On to rebuilding.

Thanks for the links. I have figured out that my old keybinds were decisively lost in the purge I did over the summer. It's going to take a lot of work rebuilding them. But for now, I'm having trouble mainly with one thing that's making it hard for me to progress: how to comment out a line. Does anybody remember? It's driving me nuts that I can't comment things out or mark sections or leave notes, and I'm certain that it's possible because I remember doing it. Does anybody know the comment characters?

There are a lot of things I love about CoH, a lot of ambitious design elements that wound up working well (robust keybind system, very mobile, dynamic combat, a low reliance on instancing, breaking a city up into zones), but what made this game really special boiled down to one crucial, elusive, gossamer element: community. The prevailing toxic bullshit in every other mmo community I've seen just didn't ever dominate in CoH, perhaps because the game makes you a hero by design, perhaps because of skilled community moderation by people like CuppaJo, or maybe due to some magic invisible to me. Community. I have not seen another game community quite as engaged, helpful, and applied as this one, and definitely not in an mmo. CO didn't have it in the short time I tried it.

I played and enjoyed red side, but their daring zone design choices make for a pretty daunting experience. Mercy Isle is a weak starting zone, where it's tough to build a community and there isn't an obvious central hub. There are also many more vertical challenges in all of the zones and lots of hidden pits and such, not to mention a gloomy atmosphere general. All of these things and the zone design issues other folks have mentioned were surmountable but add to the effort required to make a home red side. One of the things that surprised me when I logged on for the first time last week was that the CoX zones hadn't been tweaked between I16 and shutdown.

Yep, Freedom was my main server until I stopped playing right before Going Rogue came out. I was (and am) Scrapulous and Scrapulouss (I had two accounts because I like having alts. Don't have judgement. You don't know my pain. OK, fine, you probably do.). There was a RadioFreedom global chat channel that was very active (and full at times, meaning nobody else could subscribe to it), and that formed the basis for a small, very competent, very charming and funny crew of people who frequently ran TFs and were gracious enough to allow me to participate. I'm going to embarrass myself by not remembering some of the names, but Rose and Morna were among them (in fact, I think there were very few of those TFs I was on where there was not one of the Mornas attending), as were Arbiter Kitsune and a fellow named VaeVictis among many others (Sneaky Prophet, I think, was another). In fact, I found a screenshot of a Hamidon Raid in 2006 where Rose and I are bantering with Tundara in RadioFreedom during the raid. That crew was the most fun I had in CoX, and that's saying quite a lot. There was something really satisfying about blowing through difficult Task Forces casually while having an absolute blast making fun of one another. Given that I stopped playing before GR came out, I would not be surprised if I had been forgotten by most of those folks (VV once sent me a very nice email telling me that folks missed me and asked about me - that was touching), but I certainly remember them, and miss those times. Hi, Morna. Hi, Rose. It makes me smile to see your names here.

Hitting 40 on my Gravity Controller in the days before the Singularity pet, Containment, or revamped Propel. It felt like such a slog, and I watched my Illusion and Fire Controller pals crushing enemies. I was lucky that my secondary was Kinetics, so I was at least valuable ;-) After that, it was probably building a non-squishy Fire Tank using IOs, and despite advocating for the concept with a theoretical build on the forums, not being totally confident that I'd be able to pull off tanking Lord Recluse or Main Tanking Hamidon. Of course, the credit really goes to the support, but they were gracious in both instances and said I made it easy. It felt like a vindication of the idea that Fire Tanks didn't have to be squishy.