Tiresias

Thank you! It's a possibility that I understand the AT well because a certain someone took the time to answer a bunch of questions for me when I was running in a League with them during the Mapserver event...

Here is my current single-target Peacebringer build. It's a melee-focused "Scrapper" Peacebringer that can also tank very competently and focuses on outputting bursts of heavy melee damage. It's perfect for people like me who do not enjoy the Changeling lightshow excessively (I'm light sensitive) as it only swaps forms once every 7-ish seconds to White Dwarf for a filler attack and a debuff attack. This is an excellent team build, especially where you can count on teammates to take out weaker trash enemies, allowing you to focus your single-target damage on tougher ones. The build is also super-flexible: if you want to focus on Bright Nova form you can drop Radiant Strike and Incandescent Strike from the build (replace them with Teleport Target and Fold Space) and move their slots into Bright Nova Blast and Bright Nova Detonation. The core of the build is an excellent framework for plugging the Psionic hole in your resistances, getting all 5 +10% global recharge and LotG boosts, and giving you excellent utility via Stealth, Combat Teleport, Grant Invisibility, and Experimental Injection. I have not pylon-tested it because, to be frank, I cannot be bothered. What I know is that it performs well when playing with my friends and is a ton of fun -- it's very satisfying to Combat Teleport into a group of enemies, hit them with White Dwarf Flare, and nuke down the toughest ones while taking basically no damage in return. It "feels" like a Tanker with much more utility and flexibility. Here is the attack rotation: Pull with White Dwarf Antagonize. You can nuke with Scatter and Glinting Eye while the enemies are running up to you after the Alpha Strike. Once they are gathered around, start your rotation with White Dwarf Flare to potentially double-debuff enemies with -40% Resistances. From there the rotation is Radiant Strike > Incandescent Strike > Radiant Strike > White Dwarf Smite > White Dwarf Flare > repeat. The rotation is about 8 seconds long and has no real-world gaps (the 0.3 second gap between Incandescent Strike and the second Radiant Strike isn't noticeable in actual gameplay). Since you don't have a Taunt aura, be ready to liberally use White Dwarf Antagonize. Glinting Eye and Bright Nova Scatter can be used deal with low-health runners, or you can chase them with Combat Teleport. A few things: Photon Seekers and Dawn Strike are best used to "take out the trash" on pulls. They have cooldowns of 50s and 40s respectively, which is very reasonable. Photon Seekers WILL CAUSE KNOCKBACK. The build is too tight to include a Sudden Acceleration IO. If you REALLY hate the modest amounts of knockback every 50s, you can drop the Luck of the Gambler IO in Combat Flight for a Sudden Acceleration IO, sacrificing a small amount of global recharge to fix the problem. Make sure to keep Essence Boost (+700HP!) and Inner Light active. Stay in White Dwarf to absorb alpha strikes when pulling; it provides a massive amount of additional health as a buffer. Experimental Injection is a "choice" power. I frequently play with friends, and being able to buff one of them with Experimental Injection is valuable to me. You can swap it out for Combat Jumping for more Defense (which will give you a slot back since you can move the LotG from Combat Flight to there), or you can drop it and Infiltration for Teleport Target and Fold Space (sacrificing a bit of global recharge since you lose Infiltration as a LotG mule). The only toggles I run are Combat Flight, Quantum Maneuvers, and Stealth for added Defense and mobility. There is no need to run your Shining and Quantum Shields. You can use whatever Incarnate abilities you want! The capped resistances and the rotation, along with perma-Light Form and almost perma-Hasten (5 seconds on cooldown if you get no Force Feedback procs and don't use Ageless as your Destiny) are completely independent of Incarnates. In fact, you could run entirely without Incarnate abilities and the build still works, making it perfect for a fresh 50! Due to how the "Superior Kheldian's Grace: Form Empowerment" IO works, you actually have 5% LESS Psionic Resistance out of Human form! If you are getting attacked with heavy Psionic damage, stay in Human form. Bright Nova Detonation is a mule; you aren't intended to use it frequently. It will cause a lot of knockback if you use it, but if that isn't a problem to you it DOES have good accuracy as it is set up, so you can throw it on out there and watch the chaos! Infiltration is a mule. There's never a reason to use it over Stealth + Energy Flight. About Incarnate choice: I prefer Vigor Core as my Alpha for the healing, accuracy, and especially the Endurance Reduction. Peacebringers have NO innate protection from Endurance Drain or To-Hit debuffs, and this Alpha helps by lowering the cost of your powers and increasing your accuracy to help cover for that weakness. Also, if you have a Kinetic Defender / Corruptor / Controller, the 45% damage boost from Musculature will go to waste as they will damage cap you. However, if you really want the extra damage and don't have a Kinetics with you, you can swap to Musculature. I have both Alphas and swap them as necessary. Do not take Alphas that have Recharge Time Reduction! That Recharge Time gets factored into your proc rate calculations and you will ruin your three primary attack powers for basically zero gain. I prefer Ageless Radial for my Destiny slot, as the build really doesn't need the +Recovery but the debuff resistances that Radial provides is very valuable. Outside of very heavy Endurance draining, this build has no Endurance issues thanks to Performance Shifter procs, Conserve Energy, and Ageless's Endurance recovery; Ageless Radial's debuff resistances help with that and enemies that blind you. You can run Barrier Destiny and not notice any performance difference from the build, which is a huge strength of it. The Hybrid that makes the most sense is Assault Radial, as Incandescent Strike's EXTREMELY long cast time will keep you from stacking up Assault Core and double-hitting with Incandescent is a thing of absolute beauty (it deals 560 damage on average baseline with a capped 90% chance for procs). However, if you are going to tank a 4* as the Taunt for the group it may make sense to take Melee Radial for additional Defense. Reactive Radial is likely they best Interface. It provides a small fire DoT and a -5& Resistance debuff. I use Mighty Radial Judgement because I love seeing everything flying up in the air. Use whatever Judgement you prefer. I use Polar Lights Radial as my Lore because I like the way they look. Why Radial? Because the damage of the Core secondary is very minor and I prefer to be able to cast them more often. Yes, I know this isn't optimal; feel free to use whatever lore you prefer. Lightshine balanced ver1 - Peacebringer (Luminous Blast - Luminous Aura).mbd

No problem! You're busy, and I'm the one asking for help. I appreciate any time you can spare. Thank you!

Hi @Laucianna! I won't be able to make the raid this Monday, but I hope that it goes well and you do this again in the future. I will say that 4:00pm (EST) on a Monday is likely going to be a non-starter for anyone Stateside, as we will almost universally be at school or work. Would it be possible to get a future raid on a weekend? Regardless of what is possible, thanks for always organizing community events. I know many appreciate your efforts, myself included.

I can't speak to Warshades, as I've never played one, but my experience with Peacebringers has been as such: 1. Properly built, they have a truly insane amount of versatility. No other archetype in the game is going to soak an alpha strike, heal back to full, AoE down the melee mobs, and blast the mobs standing at range ALL AT THE SAME TIME. 2. The amount of durability they get with the push of a single button is comical, to the point where it's probably not okay. Not that it should be nerfed our changed outside of a major class rework, but you can slot a single power and IMMEDIATELY get access to 50 points of resistance across the board in everything but Psionic -- which happens to be the easiest resistance to patch via enhancements. 3. Similarly, the Changeling feature/bug/exploit is simultaneously terribly degenerate and the only thing keeping the AT viable in high-end content. The class also has some very confusing design decisions, such as having a primary attack set that is mostly ranged blasts with insanely low damage, making most of the attack powers useless. Even worse, those powers are largely the EXACT same ones that Nova Form gets, so you don't lose anything by not taking them. As a game designer, I have some strong opinions on how the class could be improved, but I'll save those for another time and place. All I'll say is: if you enjoy playing the Peacebringer in the pretty narrow way that makes it useful and viable right now, it's a fantastic play experience that cannot be had on any other AT in the game. If you do not, play a different AT, as getting outside the rather narrow boundaries that the Peacebringer operates successfully in ruins the play experience.

@Infinitum Can I get some feedback on my next build? I got the Shield/Sword Tanker to 50 and have been slowing taking my friends through endgame activities. I also got my Peacebringer to 50 and consulted with Laucianna about that build, and I feel like it's in a good place. I play the Peacebringer solo, so she's bringing in WAY more influence than my Tanker. I'd like to use that money to fund a Villain Dark/Dark/Soul tanker that I could use feedback on. The general purpose is to support my friends when they play through the red-side content, which is next on our list. I've attached the build, but here is the general concept: Overcapped resistances to prevent Resistance shred. I've been able to achieve this on everything but Energy, because Dark has a MASSIVE Energy hole. If there are at least 3 enemies in range of Melee Core Embodiment, everything is at 100% Resistance except for Energy, which is simply capped. Use To-hit debuffs in place of Defense, as I won't have reasonably up-time on DDR effects (only Ageless Radial Epiphany). Yes, I know debuffs are resisted by Purple Patch, but not everything I fight will be purple, so I feel like the debuffs still have a place. Truly glorious amounts of healing and regeneration. Fill the Knockback hole in status protection. 100% Recharge Time protection (thanks to Ageless Radial, which always provides at least 21% Recharge Time Reduction). Perma-Hasten (thanks to Ageless Radial). A Summon Widow that is permanent, for almost all practical purposes (I believe she will have a few seconds of downtime). Good single-target damage. I achieved this by putting aside all damage and cost considerations. As such, here are places where the build could be changed: I'm using Oppressive Gloom as a mule, opting for it over Touch of Fear. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad, but the build will certainly lack AoE damage as a result, relying entirely on Death Shroud and Shadow Maul (i.e. very low AoE damage). This isn't to say that I can't turn it on, but I'm not sure how effective it actually is in real-world scenarios. Only 4 Luck of the Gambler global recharge enhancements, as I just ran out of room. This could be fixed by dropping Taunt for Evasive Maneuvers, but I feel like this Tanker will need Taunt due to the low AoE damage potential. I have heard that you may actually need 16 points of Knockback protection to cover all content, so I would have to drop a slot from Smite to get a Blessing of the Zephyr into Hover, which would hurt my "Filler" attack and reduce my Endurance recovery slightly. No Maneuvers or Tactics, largely because I believe the build is hard enough on Endurance. I actually don't know how big of a problem this will be. I know I could drop Combat Jumping for Maneuvers (which I would simply mule), which opens me up to dropping something like Taunt or Hover for Tactics. No To-hit debuff protection outside of Ageless Radial. I know that can be an issue with Resistance-based Tankers, but I'm not sure how to fix it outside of "more Accuracy". Thank you for any feedback you or anyone else can provide! Here is what the Core Stats look like with no enemies in range of Melee Core Embodiment: And Debuff Resistances without Ageless Radial: Ravenwraith - Tanker (Dark Armor - Dark Melee).mbd

If you have aggro for your team, your damage comes fourth. First is keeping yourself alive. If you are dead, you can't hold aggro. Second is keeping your pull managed. A properly managed pull is easier to tank and is cleared faster. It's also safer for the rest of your team. Third is keeping your teammates alive. CoH gameplay tends towards self-sufficiency, but everyone could use a hand from time to time. Fourth is dealing damage. If you are managing your pull properly, you don't need much damage to keep the targets on you -- at least the important ones. As the pull pares down into a less-dangerous state, you can worry less about your own survival and start dishing out pain, because you know you aren't going to get insta-popped by an edge-case event. When I'm the primary source of pull management for the team (notice I'm intentionally not using the word "tank", because I may not be the tank), I generally start the pull by teleporting in with White Dwarf, using taunt to pick up aggro, slamming everything to the ground with the AoE attack (I forget the name), and then soaking the alpha strike damage up with the White Dwarf heal. After that I'm into my Changeling rotation, including spamming taunt if I'm the tank. I will turtle up in White Dwarf if I'm taking a lot of incoming damage, because the additional health can make a difference. Ideally, I'm just soaking the alpha and then handing off the pull management to a Tanker so I can just freely go through my damage rotation.

I feel like the best option is to be tracking Light Form and be ready to fire off a heal as soon as it drops. In general, I'm standing by with Essence Boost, which has a 92s recharge on my build, so it lines up perfectly with Light Form's crash. I actually find it harder to deal with the Endurance crash than the HP crash if I am facing enemies that End drain me.

Hey guys! Thanks for the advice. We played some Radio missions tonight for fun and found that leaving the party size option alone but raising the difficulty to 2 worked well. Toggling the AV/EB option didn't seem to do anything for the Radio Missions. My friends enjoyed things more, mostly because I was actually taking damage, so the Defender and Dominator felt like they were being useful with their defensive, healing, and CC effects. Thanks for helping me work through this issue! I know a little more about the fundamental systems now too.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "difficulty level". The missions aren't offering us "hard mode" or "mythic levels" or anything that I'm familiar with from other MMOs. We just go into the missions, be they normal door missions, Strikes or Task Forces, and beat things up. It seems like the number of enemies scales with the people we have, as when we are short a person the pulls seem smaller, but I'm not controlling that in any way, I believe.

Hey again, Infinitum! You helped me with a Shield/Sword build last week, and I've been playing it with my friends recently and have gotten the most insane complaint from them about it: They feel like I'm making the content too easy. I'm not even joking about it. The Defender says that I never need any healing and he's not sure if his debuffs are doing anything of material important (he's playing Drk/Ice). The Dominator says that it doesn't matter if she CCs any enemies because they don't do any damage either me or anyone else. The only person who seems to be having any fun is the Elec/Elec Blaster who can run around with impunity and blow everything up. Do you have any suggestions on what I can tell them to do in this situation? I don't want to make the build worse just because, and I have a feeling that things will change once we get to level 40+ (we are in the mid-30s now). What is the best thing a Defender and Dominator can do in a party with a self-sufficient tank that doesn't really need any external support and that has a "blapper" running around annihilating everything in a couple of hits? Are there any skills the Def and Dom should at least be practicing for harder content while things are pretty safe now? What do YOU, as an experienced tank, like to see a Def or Dom doing in tougher content? I'd just like to find a way to make things fun for them before they ask me to reroll to a Scrapper!

Thank you for putting together this event! What you guys have done here is literally unprecedented! I hope that your trailblazing opens the way for CoH and many other MMOs that were lost well before their time to enjoy a new life with new communities!

Well, my Tanker is set up to play in a team of people who have been friends for a long time, so it hasn't been an issue so far. We played WoW in the old days when you HAD to let the tank and crowd controllers go first before you opened up with damage or you would just rip aggro and die. My friends still play that way; I don't even have to ask. They just know to wait until the count of 5 after I start a large pull to ensure anything that isn't a minion is hard-locked on me. We also have a Dominator, so anything that breaks loose is quickly CC'ed. Like I said, my opinion my change at higher levels or if we start grouping with randoms a lot, but right now I've never found myself wanting for a taunt. It feels like a very "Specific Use Case" power, like having certain Sorcery powers can be valuable to Defenders and Controllers.

Now, I'm only level 25, but I haven't found the need for it yet. Maybe this changes later, but if it does, I'll just drop the travel power from the build (Super Speed) and pick it up. My friends can wait a few extra seconds for me to arrive at the mission if I'm going to be the one getting punched in the face for them!

Thank you for the reply! I've been playing the Shield Tanker for the last couple of weeks with my friends and she's 20 now. We ended up going with a "Silver Age Superheroes" theme, so she's dressed in Roman-style armor akin to some of Wonder Woman's old costumes (she used a sword and shield a lot in her old comics!). The build works well, and I'm surprised at how durable it is even at low levels, especially with a Rad/Dark defender debuffing everything like crazy.

Just like anything else, it depends on how you build you Defender. My Rad/Dark/Soul Defender is some of the most fun I have in this game, permanently running Accelerate Metabolism and Hasten to spam out abilities while flooring enemy to-hit, defense, damage, and resistances. If you consider that everyone on my team is benefiting from being permanently AM'ed while nuking down a target suffering from Enervating Field's -30% Resistance while I also run the best Leadership buffs in the game... Well I consider all of that extra damage to be MINE because it wouldn't be there without me. I've always considered buff/debuff Defenders to be the way to go, because most people build in so much personal defense and sustain through IO sets. I believe my best group contribution is in uplifting team damage and accuracy while spoiling enemy defense and resistance. My blasts are there to provide secondary effects, and I tend to prefer Dark because I love all the additional conical control effects the set provides that allows me to help shape the battlefield. If I wanted to stand in one place and blast out big numbers via a damage rotation, I'd be playing a Blaster.

Yikes! I hope that you son had a speedy recovery. Children are surprisingly resilient, unlike old people like me. There's no rush on anything. I'm just enjoying playing the tank casually. I also started up a few alts to get a "feel" for how some of the other sets work: a Dual Blades / Bio, an Invul / Martial Arts, a Super Reflexes / Katana, and a Radiation / Super Strength. I'm casually playing these to about level 20 while waiting for my friends because I don't want the "main"t to get ahead of them. I'm just slotting vendor SOs in the alts for now, as it's basically free to do so.

Thank you for writing this up for me! I really appreciate it. I have a few questions as I get started: I see that you didn't take taunt. Is that typical for Tankers? I don't honestly know if taunting is even important. Do I need to have Fly as a travel power? My concept was a "Natural" origin -- just a grizzled old soldier Legionnaire from ancient times thrown through a time warp into the modern era. So he would have Super Speed, and Combat Jumping makes sense (I know it's not really a "travel power", but still...), but him flying feels a bit... off to me. When should I use Parry if my Melee positional defense is softcapped? Does going over the softcap help in some way? Finally... can you possibly explain "Attuned Enhancements" to me like I'm 5 years old? Or your grandfather? I Googled it, read explanations on both the Homecoming forums AND Reddit, and I swear that I'm more confused than I was when I started. I started leveling the character tonight, but didn't have much time so I only got to level 4. I'm going to run some DFB with my friends this weekend.

Hey, you take all the time you need! I'm the one asking for help, and I'm more than grateful for the assistance that you have already provided.

I appreciate the assistance, but don't give me all the answers. Perhaps point me in the right direction of sets to consider, or show me how to identify gaps in the power sets that I need to search out ways to fill. Worth noting: I have basically no idea how to make use of pool powers, including epic pools, on a tanker. I don't know if it's worth it to grab things like Combat Jumping/Hover/Tough/Weave or if I should pick up Leadership since I will be in a party much of the time or what!

Okay, I got home from work and benchmarked a few tanker set combinations that appealed to me entirely off of looks using SR or Shield and I gotta say that -- while I recognize that it's probably pretty cliche -- Sword Defense and Broadsword is what I would like to do if you think it's a good pairing for a beginner. The Broadsword set looks pretty easy to understand (I'm not 100% sure how Parry works, in that I don't know if multiple applications stack), as it seems to have a lot of super-basic attacks that debuff enemy defense, making it easier for my friends to hit their targets even in their non-optimized builds. I like that the Shield Defense "ultimate" doesn't have a massive crash like some of the other sets; it just looks like a really solid emergency button with the downside of losing Endurance at the end of it. I know that I need to be careful when it's ending or I can end up dropping my toggles, but that seems easier to deal with than, say, the crash from Invul. I hope I'm thinking about this all the right way, in that I'm trying to pick some pretty basic sets so I can focus on leading the group. I can work up to more advanced active sets later, like you suggest. So... presuming I'm heading in the right direction, what is the right way to go about planning a build from the very first level? I know very likely need to get every power in Shield Defense, but I'm thinking I don't need every attack in Broadsword -- except I don't know what separated a "good attack" from a "bad attack".

I have about 50 million from the recent event (I leveled a Peacebringer and a Warshade and got their Incarnates fully unlocked). I'm really new; I started playing about two months ago, and seriously only a month ago. I'll be honest: I have no interest in "fire farming" or anything else that is similar; I'd prefer to play the game itself to earn influence, as opposed to jumping in an Architect mission designed to simply feed my character experience and Inf while I watch Netflix. I don't favor any particular sets, but I think I'd enjoy a more active defense set. I know some of the defense sets are rather "set it and forget it" with a few emergency buttons (like Invul), but I think something like Bio Armor or Radiation would feel better to me, especially since it has some debuffs. I know there are also sets that let you directly protect your teammates, like Shield Defense, which seems pretty attractive to me. I just don't know how useful it would be since my friends tend to play ranged characters almost exclusively.

Alright, perhaps you can get me started based on this use case: I would like to tank for a small group -- between 1 to 3 other people depending on who is available to get on and play on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would like to do more than just stand there and get punched in the face, but it doesn't necessarily have to be all damage; I want to help my friends feel powerful by protecting their characters and providing them with buffs or debuffing enemies while they drop the enemies. We aren't looking to run +4/x8 (did I get that right?) or anything nuts like that, just strikes and task forces and participate in events. So here's the challenge: I'll be tanking content for 4 people (maybe more) but I can't really count on my friends to "support" me as they aren't... amazing at the game yet -- and may never be as they aren't hardcore players. They just want to have fun, and I want to enable that for them while learning how to build characters so I can personally run pinnacle content one day.

I do! It's... overwhelming. I understand the very basics of game mechanics: Resistance vs. Defense, defense caps, crowd control MAG defense vs. CC resistance, healing vs. shielding, etc. A lot of that stuff makes sense to me because I've played other MMOs. But where my noodle gets baked is in the SHEER NUMBER of IO sets and how they interact. Also, I know for some ATs cooldown reduction is more important than raw numbers because of how they function. I don't know how to deal with powers that have massive "crashes", how to patch "holes" in sets that don't have good DDR or don't provide any Psi defense, as an example. I also know that you can just slap every IO set into any power; the power has to be able to "accept" the set, so sometimes you need "mule" powers, which means you have to sacrifice powers from your main ATs to pick up pool powers... Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Hi Infinitum! I'm new to CoH (well, I played for a bit in 2006, but that was forever ago) and have been enjoying Tankers and Defenders since picking the game up. Can you point me towards something that explains how to build characters? I'd love an overview of how to pick IO sets, general concepts that are important to Tankers (and possibly Defenders), etc. In other words, I see you giving a lot of people builds, which is fine for the vast majority of people, but I would prefer to learn how to fish instead of just being given the fish, if you know what I mean. I'm sure all this information is out there, but because I'm not overly familiar with game terminology and resources, I'd don't even know what to search for; blindly browsing forums is not being very helpful.