Maelwys

Yep. And more to the point the introduction of Threat Duration sets also allow you to use your Placate (the Stalker/VEAT Power) base enhancement slot for boosting multiple aspects or a psi damage proc. Back when they were just "Taunt Duration" I also found the Taunt/Range IOs pretty handy to slot in melee AT taunt abilities, particularly on toons that could fly. I remember hovertanking a lot of nasty AVs back on live that way (keeping their attention whilst outranging their attacks). Also IIRC once you surpass the target's required mez protection (typically mag3/4) the Longer the Taunt Duration effect the more an enemy's attention focuses on you. Take two tanks and the one with the longer duration Taunt is always the one that ends up holding the aggro.

I've encountered many occasions now where what the UI claims doesn't quite match up with the real remaining recharge time of a power. When this occurs it's usually a 120s or longer ability such as Hasten or one of the Incarnate abilities (especially Lore). If I attempt to manually trigger such an ability then I can sometimes get it to activate even if the UI claims there are 5-10s left before it fully recharges... and it can work the other way too, as sometimes whenever the UI claims a power is fully recharged my attempting to manually trigger it will fail and I'll just get a "recharging" message. The discrepancy seems to happen more frequently if I encounter a cutscene or moved through a doorway or elevator during the power's recharge cycle. I'm guessing it might be due to lag spikes or just the client playing catch-up.

Looks fine to me. Midway through the recharge time of Spinning Strike; a single helping of Cryonic Rounds only budged its remaining recharge time by a second or two. Trying to activate it after already being under the influence of a Cryonic Rounds debuff bumped its (unenhanced!) full recharge time from 16s to 19s. I suspect either you were being hit by a UI display bug or you were under the effect of *lots* of simultaneous debuffs.

Cheers. Whenever I get home later this evening I'll hop on and see if I can replicate (assuming nobody else has beaten me to it!)

Are you sure that's Spinning Kick? Spinning Kick is a Dominator-only power (from Martial Assault) and I see what look like Willpower Toggles there. (i) What level are you? (ii) What level were the mobs you were fighting? (iii) Do you know the actual name of the specific mobs (as opposed to Council "marksmen") (iv) Where did this happen: is this in a specific Mission map; a Radio Map; AE; Street Sweeping....? Chances are that it's either a UI bug or a specific enemy power has got a decimal point in the wrong place (it's happened before) But whilst you're seeing weird numbers on the screen... in order to narrow down the culprit and replicate it we're gonna need more accurate details. If someone can jump into the same situation and actually review the combat log + observe what values the current -recharge debuffs are doing in their Combat Numbers display we'll have more to go on...

There are indeed powers out there which inflict Knockback that cannot take Knockback Set IOs; but take Universal Damage Set IOs. And an example; as mentioned earlier; is Rise of the Pheonix. The "real issue" is nothing to do with the set bonuses of Overwhelming Force. I could not care less about those set bonuses. None of my characters (and I have a LOT of characters) are using two or more Overwhelming Force pieces anywhere in their entire build. This is mainly because the OF set comes pre-attuned and so the strength of their aspect enhancement cannot be boosted to +5; therefore slotting boosted 50+5 IOs from other sets or Lv53 HOs is virtually always mechanically better. This is compounded by the fact that its set bonuses are actually pretty weak and forgettable (with the possible exception of the 5-piece +2.5% Energy/Negative Defence - and even that gets soundly trounced by the likes of 3-piece Eradication). Let's take some examples of where I'm actually using the OF Proc: You can probably see a theme developing here. More useful set bonuses (like Global Recharge, Recovery, S/L Resistance) can often be had; and stronger aspect enhancement can virtually always be had. There is simply no need to slot more IOs from the Overwhelming Force set into those powers - doing so would hurt my build's performance. The reason I would like the Overwhelming Force IO to become non-unique is that it contains some damage aspect enhancement; which provides at least a little mechanical benefit over and above the KB>KD conversion. So using up one of my very precious enhancement slots on an Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO doesn't have quite as much opportunity cost as doing so on a Sudden Acceleration KB>KD IO. I would also happily use a new KB>KD IO that contained something extra such as additional % aspect enhancement or some minor "PPM Proc damage" instead. For anyone who cares about min/maxing (and there are a lot of us out there) having to use up one of your precious enhancement slots simply to "fix an annoying secondary effect of a power" is extremely painful. Even if you (somehow!) have spare slots left over at the end of your build... you only get a maximum of six slots per power. And in almost every case where I feel the need to convert KB>KD I could instead be using that 6th enhancement slot to gain additional mechanical performance via damage aspect/damage proc/set bonuses/whatever. This is why people claim that there is an "enhancement slot tax" for taming Knockback. All that said, there is currently one single exception to the above across all of my builds: In this particular case I'm actually not utilising the KB>KD conversion component of the OF unique at all... but instead simply adding a "chance for KD" to my pets' attacks whilst also (just about) ED-capping their damage. The OF proc in this one case is actually being a mechanically useful efficient use of enhancement slots. In every single other case where I slot it across all of my toons on HC... the best thing I can say about the Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO is that it is not causing quite as much of a performance hit to the build as using a Sudden Acceleration KB>KD IO would.

https://homecoming.wiki/w/index.php?title=Acronyms_and_Abbreviations Not all of them are expressly listed there; but stick an acronym itself into the search bar and hit go + chances are it'll find it OK.

What Lunar said! Necro/ is pretty powerful these days and quite forgiving. Although a good set of binds (see also here and here) is a great help to any MM + is worth looking into. /Time lends itself more to preventing damage (via buffing everyone's defense with Farsight) and dealing additional damage (via Chrono Shift and Temporal Selection's +Damage and +RechargeRate buffs) rather than to merely healing damage after it's already been inflicted on you or your team. You can also definitely push the envelope quite a bit on /Time in terms of what buffs/debuffs are achievable - but honestly that's something you won't need to bother with until much later on. If/when you start getting to the point where you want to see how you can tweak your current build to be more mechanically effective then ask in the Mastermind subforum... however as a quick example: whenever you gain access to Ancillary "Epic" and "Patron" Pools (which despite the name are not "epic" in the "overpowered" sense and really just provide access to different sorts of abilities than your primary and secondary sets get) you will become able to drastically increase the defense numbers granted by Farsight if you take Power Boost from the "Mace Mastery" Patron Pool and use it right before clicking on Farsight.

As others have pointed out... CoH tends to be more about just "having fun playing the game" than about grinding. There is a loot system... but it's very tame by comparison to other MMORPGs. None of it requires you to personally run specific content; and you can buy everything off the AH aside from "Incarnate currency" (which is only relevant after you hit level 50 and whilst you CAN grind for that (repeating the first Dark Astoria mission arc over and over is often the "quickest" but can get quite boring) you get handed lots of it passively by just continuing to "level up" and attain veteran levels. In general you'll find teams running Taskforces or Missions either just for fun; or to get specific badges (which give cosmetic "bragging rights" rewards only; aside from a few which contribute to accolade abilities - and you can comfortably get the most important accolades solo in a single afternoon) In terms of "making money" - it's true that earning influence via farming enemies and selling the drops is by far and away easiest after hitting level 50. However you can make money on the market at any level (type "/ah") by buying low and sell high; getting recipes and crafting them before selling; using enhancement converters to change a recipe into a more desirable one, etc etc. And as you level up and complete mission arcs (and/or collect exploration badges) you will earn merits that can be exchanged for Enhancement Boosters/Convertors and sold for influence on the Auction House. Same for rare Invention Salvage and Prismatic Aethers. As a first timer? I'd probably recommend playing a traditional melee toon Scrapper/Brute/Tanker on heroside (training wheels) then for the next one maybe swapping to villainside and running something that doesn't have mez protection and takes a little more effort to handle (Blaster? Corruptor? Mastermind). Then after that there's Goldside (Praetorian Earth). Then finishing all the mission arcs and side missions you missed during the last few runs. Never mind Task Forces, Strike Forces, Seasonal Events, Collecting badges... and all that's before you touch the likes of Hamidon Raids and Themed Player events (like Tanker Tuesdays) or Architect Entertainment or PVP or Roleplaying. Even most long-term vets haven't done all the content yet (Base Raids and Gladiator matches anyone?) 😅

Willpower is a set that got a lot of good press when it was first introduced in Issue 11; back when everyone was still getting to grips with these new-fangled IOs and Regeneration was still considered to be a pretty good powerset (Regen Tankers with added damage resistance and defense? Brilliant, sign me up!) However it has no Absorb and limited Defense Debuff Resistance and limited Regeneration debuff resistance. It lacks any on-demand additional mitigation so it struggles to counter particularly difficult situations (Strength of Will doesn't have a particularly problematic crash at the end, but it's only a middling +Resistance Buff. For additional "spike survivability" you really need to lean on stuff like Unleash Potential, Rune of Protection or Barrier... or take an offensive powerset that has a +Def ability). It also struggles to compete performancewise against more modern sets even in the most optimal situations - Rad and Bio armor simply blow it out of the water offensively; and Bio can also actually achieve substantially higher levels of +Regeneration. Also its Taunt Aura is pathetic - each tick of RTTC gives 1.25 second duration mag3 taunt duration compared to other Tanker defence sets' 13.6 second duration mag3 taunt - so stuff can peel off you more easily. It does get Repel, Confuse and Terrorize protection; and it gets built-in +Perception and passive +MaxHP. On 4-star premade teams (where everyone is cycling Barrier its lack of DDR and uneven spread of resistance/defense largely doesn't matter) those can all be useful. But it's still lacking Absorb and it can't buff its own damage or recharge, it struggles to hardcap its own MaxHP and Bio Armor will beat it into the ground in terms of raw +Regen and +Recovery.

First things that spring to mind are these: The various mechanics sections in the HCWiki are very useful primers, and you've already covered some of the other bits (yes, save your merits and convert them all into inf by exchanging them for Enhancement Convertors or Enhancement Boosters + selling those in the AH. Don't slot Common IOs before Lv25, but Procs and Globals are fair game. Orange salvage and Prismatic Aethers sell decently on the AH, etc...) And also... Ask! The community is still pretty friendly and welcoming even if it constantly argues with itself about minute performance differences whilst posting memes everywhere... 😉

You definitely don't need Tough on an INV. Even without SMoT procs; hitting the hardcap is pretty trivial. Looking at the variant posted above, it seems to be leaning into +Recharge via multiple Force feedback Procs (in KO Blow, Footstomp and Handclap) and high E/N/P Resistances... and it's using a Cardiac Alpha to shore up some of the other Resistance numbers and reduce its End Cost. Its achievable MaxHP is capped (good) but the recharge time on Dull Pain isn't going to be permanent without a lot of Force Feedback Proc triggers. Its defence is a little under par too - without Barrier running you'll need 4+foes within range of Invincibility to hit the Softcap to S/L/E/N and F/C is even further behind. Damage output is also suffering a bit due to the Alpha Choice; and it doesn't have a complete Single Target attack chain (unless you include Kick). For the sake of a little variation I'll throw out this; just in case it gives you a few other ideas: zTanker - INV_SS (CrossPunch).mbd This one is an all-rounder. It has a fair bit of focus on Defense (1 foe in Invincibility = S/L/E/N/F/C Softcap) and good all-round resistances (SMoT Procs add 6.7%-20.1%; with the option to use Melee Core Hybrid to redline everything) and constant capped MaxHP with decent regeneration (~37.7 HP Passive Regen plus Panacea + 2x Power Transfer Procs; plus the option to use Rebirth Destiny to push it even higher) and a fair bit of Absorb (Preventative Medicine + Superior Entomb + SGF ATO). But it also has good damage output (a solid ST attack chain plus a sizable number of procs in Footstomp and Crosspunch. And Double-Stackable Rage. Plus the option to use Assault Radial Hybrid to spike it higher). It doesn't have the same capacity for FF +Recharge proc activations as the first build, and its unbuffed resistances (particularly E/N) are lower... but it has similar Net recovery (2.76 vs 2.54+PS Procs) and buffed Resistance numbers despite using a Musculature Alpha; and the damage output and the HP Recovery/Absorb is substantially higher. Incarnatewise on Tanks I'd typically try to use the Destiny slot for Rebirth (+Regeneration) or Ageless (+Recharge and Defence Debuff resistance) as Barrier is normally overkill outside of specific 4-star content. "Best" Alpha is normally Musculature, but Rage takes the edge off it so going for something else like Cardiac instead is a perfectly valid way to build. For Hybrid it's Melee Core for survivability or Assault Radial for offense. Interface is Degenerative (for AVs) or Reactive (for everything else). Judgement is dealer's choice; but Void's -damage debuff secondary effect can be very useful. Lore is almost always either Carnies Radial for +damage buffs (less useful with Rage), Banished Pantheon Radial for -res debuffs and a bit of additional immortal AoE damage, Talons Radial for team buffs, or Longbow Radial for soloing AVs (-Regen debuffs).

It might. And in that case I'd happily use it in one power and an Overwhelming Force in a 2nd power: then repeatedly pester the Devs for new useful KB>KD IOs to cover the 3rd and 4th and 5th etc. etc. powers... And hopefully at some point the realisation that a great many players really want the means to reign in their KB without rendering lots of their precious enhancement slots "otherwise useless" might even start to sink in a bit more. I grok the argument that "if it's possible to swap all KB to KD without any opportunity cost then doing so will become expected on PUGs to the point where nonconforming players are excluded". I just don't believe that such an expectation is a major issue in these days of multiple builds, increased soloing performance, and most of the playerbase now being old and grizzled enough to simply NOT CARE and instead avail of the many Premade/Friendlist/LeadYerOwn teaming opportunities.

The set bonuses are grand, the aspect enhancement could use a hand though. Being unable to boost them to Lv50+5 because they all come pre attuned is a nasty performance hit that you have to consider when comparing them to other regular IO sets. Although my preferred option if we're wishing on a star + sticking to non global effects would be to add a reduced PPM damage proc effect to the existing Sudden Acceleration Proc IOs so that they can actually do something vaguely useful other than "help me counteract my own powers"...

Even simply removing the unique flag from the Overwhelming Force Proc would go a long way actually. (And preferably also making the set itself available as an "unattuned boostable" or "superior" version whilst they're at it so that its aspect boosts can become competitive with other more regular sets!)

TBF it doesn't have to be a global IO or a Null the Gull setting... although coding a power as a Set Bonus that gets triggered by one of those would be a very technically straightforward method of achieving the desired effect. It could be a START purchase, a craftable Temporary Power, a Prismatic Aether or Incarnate currency unlock... or even a new Alpha Slot ability that contains a large Negative amount of KB % slotting. Anything to avoid having to stick more of those bloody Sudden Acceleration procs everywhere (never mind that some powers such as RoTF can't take those in the first place!!)

Which is kind of ironic TBH... 😛 For my part, I would appreciate having a means available to turn my KB powers into KD powers that didn't involve having to utilise a separate enhancement slot within each relevant power. For any build designer worth their salt those enhancement slots (other than possibly the Overwhelming Force unique) are "wasted" because you're utilising them to tweak the secondary effect of the power, rather than utilising them to boost its aspect enhancement or gain additional damage output, utility or survivability via set bonuses, procs or globals. It is indeed IMO an unnecessarily harsh enhancement slot tax on anyone who wants to reign in the effects of their own KB powers. And it's not just the obvious powers like Energy Blasts that benefit from taming KB. I recently redid my Fire/Ice/Fire Blaster in order to shuffle slots around, and sticking an Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO into Rise of the Phoenix effectively triples its damage output because normally any foes around you will get knocked back from the first tick out of range of the two followup ticks. All that said... I appreciate that we have any KB>KD options available at all. Because I remember the days back on live when the only method of taming them was hard mez like holds and a few very specific immobilizes.

There is whenever your chart is literally titled "Total of Accuracy Enhancements + Acc Set Bonuses needed to get 95% ChanceToHit" and yet a character who attains the Accuracy values listed within it will not in fact achieve a 95% ChanceToHit! I double-checked the results of several of the lines on that chart; and none of them actually attain a 95% Hit Chance or above; they all fall short by up to half a percent. For example: versus unbuffed +3 enemies a Kismet plus 75.0% acc slotting will only result in a Hit Chance of 94.5%, you actually need >75.9% acc slotting (which is not a negligible difference if you're trying to fine-tune various enhancement combinations!) in order to hit the 95% threshold. So if you're using 0 decimal places then that figure should be rounded *UP* to 76% instead of being truncated/rounded down to 75%. It may seem pedantic to quibble over a 0.5% difference in Hit Rate; and doubtless in most cases 94.5% Hit Rate is going to be "good enough"... but your target audience here would seem to be those few CoH players who are reading a forum post about Accuracy and ToHit and have a high enough tolerance for boredom and bullshit to have made it 3+ pages in. I very much suspect that anyone who has taken that much interest in this topic is going to care about the accuracy of their accuracy numbers (ha!) and whether their character is actually reaching this very well-known and established performance threshold or falling a little bit short. (Never mind the fact that there are still some maverick builders out there who care so much about a few hundredths of a percent that they'll ignore ED and six-slot Hasten...) I'd also question the wisdom in trying to maintain a separate static chart for "Tactics" whenever the value of its ToHit buffs (even unslotted!) vary drastically depending on the AT's Ranged_Buff_ToHit modifier - Brutes/Scrappers/Stalkers will get 7.0%, Dominators/Masterminds will get 7.5%, EATs will get 9.0%, Tankers/Blasters/Controllers/Corruptors/Sentinels/VEATs will get 10%, Defenders will get 12.5%... and slotting can be anything from a full Gaussians set to a single Cyto HO in the base slot! Not saying it's impossible, just that all those possible variables would seem to suggest a classic use case for an accurate character builder utility.

Back in early 2006, I was happily running around heroically whacking stuff on my very first toon: a barely-SO'ed Katana/Regen Scrapper. They were a "Boss Handler" on teams; and whilst they didn't always have the Spike Damage Output to end +4 Bosses quickly, they sure as heck could "remove them from the fight" by keeping them tied up bouncing up and down on the floor indefinitely whilst I gradually whittled their HP down. It wasn't uncommon for me to juggle more than one such Boss simultaneously (whilst Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly alone couldn't quite do that; in those crazy long-gone days I purposely chose to take Air Superiority and eventually Laser Beam Eyes for a "backup non-lethal-damage attack chain"... 😹) The Maelwys of back then definitely approved of Knockdown; and to a lesser extent, Knockup (knocking things too far up has a nasty habit of momentarily interrupting the flow of an attack chain)... but as for Knockback? They hated it. The Fitness pool wasn't inherent yet and newbie Mael had chosen to take the Teleport pool for their Travel Power (because it looked fun; and for some reason I could headcanon the character having access to a device that let them "bodyslide by one" cable-style) so they hardly had any unsuppressed movement to speak of. Chasing after runners was painful; let alone running after enemies that I was already actively whacking at which suddenly got punted away from me by a total idiot well-intentioned teammate. Eventually I ended up respeccing into the Fitness pool (for Hurdle) and the Leaping Pool (for Combat Jumping) out of sheer frustration. My second toon on Heroside was a Human form Peacebringer. They had oodles of Knockback: Gleaming Blast. Radiant Strike. Solar Flare. Photon Seekers. Dawn Strike. However I took my earlier bad experiences with Knockback from my Scrapper to heart; and I made damn sure that (i) I had lots of unsuppressed movement and (ii) the team knew in advance that anything I knocked back was "mine" (e.g. I'm responsible for killing it now). I also tried wherever possible to only use my AoEs on the outer edge of a mob so that they were all knocked in a single "useful" direction rather than scattered to the winds (although that wasn't always possible when toebombing with Seeker Drones!). I never had any complaints... but I still would have killed for a global KB>KD switch/IO.

The guy on the left is apparently a bit of a legend in the "Bullshido" community (and good grief internet... I really didn't need to go down that particular rabbithole today!) See: I had tried to embed the below linked FB reels also; but the HC Forums (probably for the best!) seem to not automatically recognise + translate FB links... 😉 https://www.facebook.com/reel/814110690846243 https://www.facebook.com/reel/740099061632099

In the olden days it was "Push for 45% S/L defense; and run Clarion Core". I had a Sonic/Elec Blapper for years back on Live that was built that way; and they did pretty well as a "Scrapper lite". However currently I personally would have a hard time justifying the sort of build compromises that pushing for that much defence requires. The new Blaster sustains are rather good at letting them survive in Melee range (at least temporarily) and in most cases whenever you're standing next to something that has enough oomph to kill you then you're going to kill it first. Exceptions certainly exist (e.g. constantly surrounded by mobs in an AE farm or on specific TFs) but in those cases I tend to go with "I need more damage" over "I need more defense" ...and maybe keep a Rise of the Phoenix (slotted for damage and recharge + an Overwhelming Force KB>KD IO) in my back pocket...

Fair enough. I think for the purposes of most people; Mids is going to be a pretty good yardstick for accuracy estimation (given that you can set the target enemy level and active buffs with a few clicks, and the resulting estimate *IS* being demonstrably accurate to within a few hundredths of a percent). However there are definite shortcomings. As an example; I've got an active request open with the Mids Devs to get the BaseHitChance override setting working again so that it's easier to display + predict the effects of specific static enemy Defence Buffs such as you encounter on 4 star content etc. (In Mids Reborn this setting is currently hidden under Options --> Advanced --> Homecoming Database Menu --> Server Data Editor --> Base Values; and accessing that menu requires you to first toggle DB-edit mode on via CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+A... unfortunately at present if you change the listed base value to something different it does not actually do anything!) It does indeed. And that is, in fact, the main draw of using Mids. Being able to observe the effects of tweaking enhancement values and toggling/untoggling specific powers on your totals (including Hit Chance) in realtime is extremely valuable whenever you're trying to squeeze more performance out of your build. And since Mids' does not automatically clamp its Hit Chance estimations at 95%; it allows its users to see just how much each of their attacks are currently "overshooting the mark" and tweak things accordingly ("OK, Mids is showing 98.2% for this power which means it's a smidge over the 95% Hit Rate softcap... so I might be able to swap that Acc/Dam HO for this Acc/Dam Set IO and gain a set bonus whilst still remaining capped - hurrah; it worked!") However if all someone is looking for is a rough estimate of what ballpark of accuracy to aim for ("75-ish"); then taking a quick glance at a graph might well be good enough + is certainly a lot less time consuming. So it'll depend on the use case. I'm not downplaying the usefulness of tables/charts by any stretch (I certainly compile enough of the bloody things in my dayjob); just highlighting that you may want to round the listed accuracy requirement figures in your earlier chart *UP* in order to avoid any confusion! 👍

They do, actually. "+0 needs 26% acc enhancement" "+1 needs 46% acc enhancement" "+2 needs 69% acc enhancement" "+3 needs 97% acc enhancement" Note that in each of these cases, the estimated Final Hit Chance calculated by Mids (labelled as "Accuracy" on the bottom left) is just under 95%. Whilst there is a slight discrepancy here (it's not quite reaching the 95% clamping threshold due to truncating/rounding errors; which I'll get to in a minute!) this is close enough to show that "on paper" Mids is pretty much matching up with your expectations. And when we factor in the Kismet? "+3 needs 75% acc enhancement" Once again; Mids is showing an estimated Final Hit Chance of just under 95%. Now... let's check that slight discrepancy in the numbers between what your chart predicts and what Mids' estimates. As shown above, with 75% Accuracy and a Kismet Mids' is estimating a 94.5% Final Hit Chance vs +3s; whereas your chart predicts a capped Hit Chance (95%) So what is the actual Hit Chance observed in the game itself? TL;DR: Mids still appears to me to be giving accurate figures; and they mostly match up with what your chart is predicting. Your chart's listed numbers are roughly right; but it seems to be slightly underestimating the required accuracy slotting (likely due to rounding/truncation) This is true; and it's definitely worth folk remembering that this doesn't just apply to "mobs attacking players" (e.g. pushing your defence to the clouds won't mean that mobs will always have a 5% chance to hit you - because higher level/rank foes and specific higher-inherent-accuracy attacks will end up with a higher "floor") Whilst it's rare that player HitChance against PVE enemies ever gets completely floored; "overslotting" accuracy does indeed have occasional benefits. That said... I honestly can't remember the last time I was in a situation where I couldn't get away with countering incoming ToHit Debuffs (via toggling on Focussed Accuracy; etc) or simply powering through the issue by popping a yellow Insp or triggering a temporary Tohit buff (Aim, Gaussian Proc in Build Up; Geas of the Kind Ones accolade, etc).