Maelwys

This is the typical historical view on giving Scrappers Super Strength e.g. "Nope, It'd be too damn strong" That said; we now have stuff like /FA Scrappers with additional base damage from Fiery Embrace; /StoneA Scrappers with Brimstone Proc Crits, /RA Scrappers with ProcBombed Radiation Therapy + Ground Zero... let alone specific combos like StreetJ/Ninjitsu (Shinobi-Iri + Combat Readiness + Crushing Uppercut = ~450 base damage). So IMO that ship has not only sailed; but gotten to its destination, offloaded, disembarked again, and is now merrily cruising the Caribbean.

Its base values are fine but yes it likes Recharge. So ideally you want a LotG +7.5% plus two Lv50+5 Recharge IOs in it. Realistically it'll probably end up sitting at 60-90s depending on your Global Recharge (since you'll be after Perma Dull Pain and a decent uptime on IH anyway) Only in cases where incoming damage is beyond a certain threshold. Admittedly that threshold is considered rather low these days (unless you have additional defense buff from your primary and/or IOs and/or Shadow Meld) but back in the day Arcanaville performed very extensive comparisons between the various Scrapper Secondary powersets and post-nerf Regen's Immortality Line was second only to Dark Armor. SR was (and still is) better at mitigating short spikes of severe damage but much worse vs "chip damage", being two-shot, and attacks that have high ToHit or are autohit. Since then we've gotten IOs (which benefit everyone, but noteworthy Global Recharge and Defense/Resistance is far easier to gain via globals and Set bonuses than noteworthy Regeneration) and Incarnates (which benefit everyone and have made it rather hard for even a Blaster to die except versus really overwhelming odds) and pool/patron powers like Rune of Protection and Shadowmeld. Honestly these days Bio Armor is the only set I'd rank head and shoulders above Regeneration in every category. Whilst SR is currently considered to be a very strong set, IMO it's the inherent Defense Debuff Resistance that really makes it shine; and unless you're pairing it with Dark Melee or Radiation Melee or popping green insps like candy it can still get tricky to balance out sustained bouts of incoming damage (as it often requires Ageless for Endurance Management, so Rebirth is out... which leaves Radial Lores, Melee Hybrid, Heal Proc IOs and Unrelenting/Unleash Potential). On Brutes their higher Resistance Cap definitely helps at very low Health (assuming the SR is leveraging their Scaling Damage Resistance) but the same is true for Regen whilst MoG is up and/or they're using pool power or Incarnate godmode buttons etc. Personally my ideal buff to Regen would involve adding +Absorb to Dull Pain, Reconstruction and IH (50% of the healing rate would be about right); as it suffers from much the same problems vs severe spike damage as Empathy. Then add a bit of Recharge Rate Debuff Resistance and Regeneration Debuff Resistance to Fast Healing, Integration and Resilience. Done. And if it's still below par, tweaking Resilience to provide scaling damage resistance as its HP drops would work just fine without violating the cottage rule.

If PB is out IMO the next best thing would probably be an Energy/RadArmor Sentinel. It's appropriately blasty and glowy and explodey and Ground Zero can heal allies even before Epic/Patron pools and Incarnates are considered.

To clarify: the build is a prerequisite for me marking a character done.... but it's (usually!) not the very last thing I'll do on them before moving on to my next alt. Thematic Badge + Title attained? All contacts at at least phoneable level of familiarity? All the Passive Accolades? At least one completed Lv50 Purpled Build? At least Veteran Level 100? All the relevant Incarnates (with multiple copies of Destiny; Lore and Hybrid) at T4? If the answer is yes to all of those (even on my "dedicated farmers") then it's done. I don't particularly care about badge count or TF completion beyond getting the aforementioned accolades and potentially a single thematic badge. Even my "done" characters will still get played occasionally; because I won't bother rolling a toon in the first place if I'm not going to enjoy playing it. However I won't intentionally make any further adjustments to them as long as the devs don't make any powers changes or introduce new IOs etc. that drastically upset the apple cart.

This. I don't mark a character "done" until they have a level 50 money-is-no-object build completed. I've also got a few toons with multiple such builds (VEAT = both Crabbermind and Bane, etc) on the same character. As for my most all-round powerful toon? Likely one of the /Marine MMs.

I haven't paid for Antivirus since the '90s; and it's not because MS Security Essentials and/or Defender are any good. Ad + Script Blockers in the Web Browser plus a decent email filter (or just reviewing your messages in a plaintext-only app before they hit Outlook etc) stops things dead. Regarding the Win11 upgrade... yes there's very little (if any) reason to jump from a performance viewpoint. It's a pure cash grab from MS under the guide of having a "more secure" firmware and boot environment; but they've a monopoly on the critical/security update streams so unless you're confident with keeping your Win10 device secured via other means beyond 14th Oct 2025 (or you're willing to shell out for an Extended Service Update license) then you'll need to jump ship either to Win11 or another platform (like Linux). I've three laptops and one desktop PC all of which I use pretty regularly; and one of those laptops is an older HP model that can run Win10 perfectly well... but because its CPU isn't on the MS lists for fully supporting Win11, the only way of getting Win11 onto it would be to fiddle with the registry (e.g. 'AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU') which would only work for one major software revision before I'd have to reimage it again. Sod that. So about six months ago I stuck Linux Mint on it and it's been merrily dual-booting even since (and Homecoming works just fine via WINE). The other two laptops and PC are already on Win11 (albeit with all the useless tat and drivel ripped out) and are also running Homecoming just fine... so whatever you choose you can still get your CoH fix. Disclaimer: I'm apparently decent enough at Cyber Security to make a living from it (Blue side!) and I detest Microsoft with a passion.

When soloing vs non-S/L critters you probably won't need to run Ageless (as the bulk of PVE -Def comes from lethal-damage-typed powers) so that frees you up to run Barrier or Rebirth instead. So first Rage crash, activate Barrier/Rebirth... and second Rage Crash; activate Dull Pain. And spam Footstomp for the KD. I'll typically try to time my Dull Pain and Hasten activations to the Crash; along with a Footstomp or two. Mainly because the -damage debuff hurts much less whenever you're using it to activate things that aren't attacks... 😉

That was fixed in 2007. The newer crash was introduced later and IIRC was never impacted by it. Lots of folk double stack Rage constantly... and presumably that's why Wu Tang is complaining about having to pop an insp every 60 secs instead of every 120 secs. The -Defense aspect of the crash is most problematic on pure Defense powersets - Invulnerability tends to have more than enough MaxHP and Resistance to power through it, and building for softcapped defense with 1 foe within Invincibility range is pretty common which means in typical scenarios you're overbuffed. The -Damage aspect of the crash is IMO usually more annoying but can be compensated for via Damage Procs.

I've a Windows XP VM that'll happily run it (and I'm fairly sure Win98 is technically still doable with a minor bit of poking). So I think you're safe.

IMO Damage/Anim is about the only useful metric in that view; and even then you really need to look at each set as a whole rather than whichever powers that Mids happens to match up with each other in isolation. For example: Chop, Gash and Swoop and Cleave are BA's main Single Target attacks; so they should be compared with Contaminated Strike, Radioactive Smash, Radiation Siphon and Devastating Blow. Likewise Pendulum and Axe Cyclone should be compared with Proton Sweep and Atom Smasher (Irradiated Ground is bugged and doesn't show damage in Mids). Just looking at high level and recognising which lines are overall longer will give a ballpark indication of which one is the better set; but for a true comparison you also then have to factor in things like which sets take stuff like additional Damage or -Res or FF procs; then eventually plot out required levels of global + local recharge for optimal attack chains and how that affects proc activation rate and Scrapper ATO placement. (Spoiler Alert: FWIW in my experience RadM is mid tier at best for "non-AFK" AoE damage and near the bottom of the pack for Single Target Damage)

I think ~100HP/sec with one foe in RTTC range plus softcapped typed Defenses and Hardcapped S/L Resistance is probably a good target to shoot for... and you can lean into the SMoT Proc ATO to close the resistances gap a bit. I'm a bit iffy about relying on Barrier or Rebirth Destiny though since Ageless gives both Recharge and Defense Debuff Resistance. Even if you're not taking any Patron AoEs, Rage plus a few Damage Procs (and a Force Feedback) in Footstomp is still pretty decent. You'll never be competing with the likes of a RadArmor Tanker for sheer AoE Damage mayhem anyway. zTanker - WP_SS IOed (CrossPunch).mbd

Yeah; it's effectively "3-13% resistance to all; depending on your current health" - blame the usual inaccurate short description gremlins. That up-to-10% additional resistance seems to work off a flat sliding scale, so at 50% HP you should be getting 8% total resistance from it. It also works off the same HP percentage variable as Super Reflex's sliding resists; so +MaxHP buffs from accolades/set bonuses/etc shouldn't negatively impact anything. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=set_bonus.set_bonus.reactive_defenses&at=tanker

This thread?

It's like a drug. We're all just hoping against hope for one of those sweet elusive occasions where they grace the thread with their presence again and occasionally even express gratitude. Maybe, just MAYBE this time they'll learn... 🤞 ....Nah. 🤮

Counterpoint: The original post was already appropriately responded to. The ONE engaging question the OP asked of the forum was "Am I imagining this, or was there a change recently?" which Hedgefund gave a succinct snark-free answer to in the 5th reply. The intervening replies were a request for more information from Lemming; some examples of how to combat Recharge Debuffs from Glacier Peak; and a followup from the OP with another separate outlandish claim with no supporting context or evidence "I'm finding my endurance drained from full to 0 in two shots, from MINIONS." Glacier Peak and Without_Pause also repeatedly pointed out that more context would be required in order to provide accurate answers. ZemX (after a very brief bit of calling out) and Riverdusk and SeraphimKensai actually tried to engage and provided generic help. Without_Pause again asked for more information. The first sign of blatant snark I can see is from Luminara in reply #24; and I'm pretty sure she's got a doctor's note to cover it (my money's on a rare strain of Tourette's that manifests itself as an involuntary reflexive posting of memes in response to viewing emotionally-laden rants with no observable factual basis). Into Page 2: Memes start flying, but Hedgefund was still trying to helpfully engage. ZemX was too; albeit with a bit more exasperation showing. Into Page 3: Finally we get a screenshot of one specific power on cooldown (and I eventually draw out which power it actually was; without snark and instead giving a thanks and a thumbs up for finally providing some solid contextual information) which allowed for a controlled test of the enemy attack in question. Since any powers bug server-side was disproved; that leaves a Client-Side UI bug, lag, or user error as the possible culprits. We can't help with those and there have already been PLENTY of generic "here's how you can tackle recharge debuffs" guidance given further up-thread. So it's "case closed". Second half of Page3 and into Page 4: After 2 months of the thread being "finished" (from what I can see the OP's original queries have been fully handled + server-side bugs disproven as best we can without any Dev interjection)... various unrelated forumites commence arguing with each other about rudeness and posting etiquette; despite the thread itself apparently not being worthy of being reported or hit with a Mod lock; let alone any banhammers. IMO requests for more information intermixed with (largely equal parts!) helpful responses and impolite snarkiness/memes does not constitute bullying. And here is an example of how the original post could have been worded: "Recently sometimes when things hit me my powers suddenly take a very long time to recharge. I'm finding it very annoying and impossible to play. Has anyone noticed the same happening?" Remove the factual errors and absolute statements such as "ALL my powers suddenly take 40+ seconds to recharge" and "There's literally no way to fight back" and "it's basically impossible to fight some of these guys" and suddenly it's not a rant; but a conversation. Or better yet: "Hey; my level 23 Street Justice / Willpower Scrapper was fighting Council in a radio map and suddenly my powers started taking a very long time to recharge. I noticed one saying 54 seconds. Is this normal or a bug?" Or best of all: Put it in the Bug Report subforum; titled something along the lines of "Possible recharge time debuff bug?" "TOONNAME - Lv23 SrtJ/Wp Scrapper Council Radio Mission MISSIONNAME - MISSIONMAPID# After getting hit by a POWERNAME from MOBNAME ; my powers suddenly starting showing an abnormally long time to recharge. I'm unsure if it's intended or due to a UI bug or a wider server-side powers issue; but my POWERNAME went to [54] seconds as per the screenshot below. Combat log attached. Thanks in advance!" Whenever someone wants to ask their peers for something on a forum then regardless of their intelligence (emotional or otherwise) their request should not require the respondents to possess a functioning crystal ball or run it through an incoherent-rambling-to-human parser first. I fully acknowledge that some people simply cannot process life without continually verbally expressing their immediate thoughts to those around them (no inner monologue, nor ability to internally reflect and consider things). I'm married to one of these people. But before committing a query to paper or print or post there exists a more than adequate opportunity to take sufficient time to formulate your question in such a way that people can understand what the f%$k you're asking; assuming that you're actually intending to ask something instead of just vent/rant. Otherwise you end up with this; where GM_Impervium put it best:

🎵 🎵 With a pew pew here and a pew pew there... 🎵 🎵 My Bot/Kin/Flame's stats and builds and ramblings are still in that thread. Keeping them buffed with SB + ID and all the Aura IOs with Group Fly toggled on solves a lot of issues. But you'll be using Goto a LOT for proper Fulcrum Shift placement. It's fun and powerful, but very active. Also, if you've a feeling for farm related mechanical mayhem, the last mission in the "Farmer Joe" AE arcs still cracks me up every time.

Turn and face the strange! 👨‍🎤 🧑‍🎤 🎤 🤘

FWIW; my experience of current "Bots" gameplay is quite similar here - in that thinning the herd via other powers does make a notable difference because post-rework (e.g. after the Burn Patches were gutted) your henchmen can only focus the bulk of their AoE damage output on a very limited number of targets. The Assault Bot's Incendiary Swarm Missiles still has a respectable target cap of 10 on the original hit; but a mere 3 on its Burn patches... and their Flamethower only has a 30 degree arc. Likewise the Battle Drones' Full Auto Laser has an arc of just 15 degrees. Therefore if you're in a target rich environment (farming at +Nx8) and/or you're not making your pets hang back a bit (Goto/Group Fly helps line up those Cones) then your henchmen will very likely be only hitting a small portion of the surrounding critters with the bulk of their AoEs. And whilst the nature of the Burn patches means that the damage ticks will flick over to a new target as soon as the old targets die off; the MM opening up each encounter with a big radius Procbombed AoE or two (like Photon Grenade, Epic Pool Fireball, etc) makes things go considerably faster. Thinning the herd whilst inflicting AoE -res. However IMO the single-target Robotics personal attacks are quite forgettable and if it wasn't for the -Regen debuff I'd skip them all day every day. Even procbombed their endurance-to-damage ratio typically isn't worth it... but MAYBE for some secondaries Pulse Rifle Burst might have some benefit as a FF +rech mule.

It was far more than one instance. However more importantly: the OP wasn't actually asking how to fix something, they were making absolute (and disprovable) statements whilst asking if anyone else had seen the same thing (and we hadn't). This is essentially a rant thread that some of us valiantly attempted to turn into a viable bug report. Rereading the thread; it's less "lol you're dumb ROFL" and more "That doesn't look right. Can you provide more information and check those facts so we can check?" Even our resident crazy cat lady took a moment from posting memes to point out how the claimed level of debuffery in the situation as-stated simply wasn't possible . Multiple posters highlighted the discrepancy of the debuff values that were being claimed; and multiple posters (like ZemX) pointed out generic methods of countering the debuffs. Actually on occasion I do look forwards to those posts... because the OP almost always forgets to return but once the memes die down the followup conversation often tends to be a fun back-and-forth infodump which helps clear up any misunderstandings for newbies who happen across the thread and wonder what the hell just happened. But as mentioned earlier; after several years worth of trying eventually you start getting jaded.

This. FWIW, the recharge time on my Fire Blaster's Inferno is ~42s; and the Incarnate Pyro Judgement Nuke is every ~90s. And Rise of the Phoenix (slotted for Dmg and Rech and with a KB>KD IO!) also recharges in ~90s. That's roughly one "Nuke" every ~20-25 seconds; providing the rest of the team actually let me faceplant whenever i want to... 😁

Regen's main shtick is getting Health back fast after you've already been hit. Aside from the tweaked version of the set that Sentinels get; it's the same set that has been around for decades with minimal tweaks - so it has plenty of +MaxHP (in Dull Pain) but no +Absorb. It also recovers Endurance very quickly (Quick Recovery) and it has a short duration GodMode power in Moment of Glory. There is one passive power (Resilience) that contains a smidge of damage resistance; but it is a very click heavy powerset (Dull Pain, Reconstruction, Instant Healing; Moment of Glory) and most of those clicky powers are reactionary - assuming you have "Perma Dull Pain" the only click that will help you BEFORE you start taking damage is Moment of Glory. IMO taking Hasten and building for lots of Global Recharge is practically a must to get Perma Dull Pain and both IH and MoG up sooner; and getting some Defence or Resistance on top of all that +MaxHP and Regeneration/Healing is extremely effective - whilst you can look at Tough/Weave, set bonuses and things like Rune of Protection... on Scrappers and Stalkers IMO an easy way to go is to lean into Shadow Meld from the Soul Mastery Patron pool; or pick a primary with a stacking +Def boost like Katana or SR. Personally I'd take Tough + slot Resilience and aim for ~65% S/L damage resistance with set bonuses + Incarnates; then lean into Rune of Protection to get me to the hardcap. That'd give me a decent survivability baseline plus some additional situational buffage with minimal build tradeoffs (leaving plenty of wiggle room to push for "moar damage"!) Disclaimer: I mained a Katana/Regen Scrapper on live; but it's never been top of my list to remake on HC. IMO the powerset just lags too far behind stuff like Bio or Rad.

Yeah mine too. I went hoking on the forum archive, but can't seem to find the original video or rant threads. There are plenty of comments from the circa-i4/i5 days that touch on it; but the closest summary I could find of the event which matches my own memory is this one (and Arcanaville's followup a few posts down!)

Aimed Shot has a base recharge time of 4 seconds. The Recharge Debuff limit is -75%. That means the maximum time Aimed Shot can take to recharge is 4/(1-0.75) = 16 seconds. Therefore Aimed Shot getting debuffed to "over 8" seconds net recharge time is quite within the realms of possibility; especially if you were on a TF with lots of debuffs flying around. Plus; the Manticore TF caps out at level 35; so even if you were exemplaring down you likely wouldn't have had a full set of powers/set bonuses available to increase your defence or debuff resistances or global recharge in order to combat those debuffs. So there's nothing suspect about that at all. However... the OP came out with some suspect absolute statements like ""There's literally no way to fight back" and "it needs to be changed back, or at least toned down. Right now, it's basically impossible to fight some of these guys" alongside multiple claims which are blatantly factually incorrect such as "An enemy with ice powers can hit me once, and ALL my powers suddenly take 40+ seconds to recharge" and "I have a Dark Melee/Willpower Brute who, being around L17 at the time, tried to take on 3 Cogs on a rooftop. All three shot at him, and his endurance dropped to perhaps 10%.". Spinning Kick (which the OP originally mentioned via "My Spinning Kick power cooldown counter went up to 44 seconds, but then dropped back down to normal a few moments later") has a base recharge time of 10 seconds. It's literally impossible for that power's recharge time to be debuffed beyond 40s; let alone 44s. Clockwork "Cogs" only have one ranged attack which drain one endurance per hit; and so simply cannot drop your entire blue bar to "perhaps 10%" with one salvo. Now bugs are certainly possible; but the scenarios that the OP was claiming here had as about as much chance of occurring as being hit by lightning on a subway train; and yet they were doubling down on it rather than fact checking themselves. Eventually it turned out that the power they meant which recharged in 44s was in fact Spinning Strike; which has a base recharge time of 16s and so theoretically could have ended up at a maximum of 64s. So we checked; just in case... and a test encounter against the enemy mentioned (which only has one single recharge debuff according to their CoDv2 profile) confirmed that those debuffs were currently working correctly and could not possibly have induced more than 15% recharge debuff with a single attack. Therefore in the absence of a more coherent description of the situation in which the recharge discrepancies occurred... the evidence all points either to a UI bug (and/or lag) or the OP misremembering important details (e.g. they were under at least five copies of the same debuff, which can be countered by things like jousting, popping insps, or playing a toon with noteworthy defense buffs such as the defensive powerset they were apparently using at the time...). Speaking personally... I believe in giving someone the benefit of the doubt if/when they see strange stuff happening in CoH; as this game is old and complex and buggy and so are many of its players. I don't even get particularly uppity whenever someone leaves out information that might be crucial for diagnostic purposes (what mob, what power, what mission, what level, etc) as I've worked in IT support for decades and am well used to having to tease that kind of stuff out. However when someone gives inaccurate information and wild claims with no supporting evidence; that's a red flag; and the longer someone's been around and the more inaccurate information they spout and the more they double down on nonsensical claims/absolute statements/blanket assertions the lower my opinion of them will drop. Either here or in RL. (That said - I'm from the UK. So my typical response to being annoyed with someone is a bit of light ribbing or at absolute worst dropping the "Kind" from "Kind regards" in my email signature...) Regarding toxicity... I'd hope that if/when a new player posts, or even someone who has been around for a while and genuinely wishes to engage/learn (and who doesn't have major post history baggage) posts then they would get a slightly more patient response then someone who just comes on and rants without providing any evidence and/or a coherent argument. And I've seen this recently even in posts where a query has already been fully answered less than two threads down - people tend to play nice as long as they don't perceive a post as lazy or utter garbage. But portions of the forum community are rather more prone to resorting to mockery if someone has been around for a long time and repeatedly posts incoherent or factually incorrect statements. And FWIW in this particular case I'd say the OP got off extremely lightly... at most a 2 on the Diantane scale.

Better yet, perform the same search in the Tanker forum. Fiery Aura Brutes have sucked for farming since 2022 (see the i27p4 aggro revamp which made farming survivability requirements skyrocket and the i27p5 nerf to Burn which stopped it summoning multiple patches) and also Spines hasn't been in favour ever since the introduction of Radiation Melee in i25. Whilst it's still possible to Farm on them, it takes considerably more effort (and therefore more influence) to hit the new survivability requirement thresholds and no matter what you do they'll woodchipper through foes more slowly compared to an equivalent Tanker.