MoonSheep

i solo’d most of the levels on my poison/fire defender - incredibly powerful and an exciting character to solo

i sample war mace/shield often also, which has better damage but there’s just something so appealing about elec armour, maybe the icon colours? making me tempted to actually level one.. for WM tank, i believe the tank AoE bonus doesn’t impact crowd control as it already has the maximum permitted arc, but happy to be corrected. the bonus increase is another great positive and can really bring some sets to life

“boy, sucks to be that g.. ah, time to run”

i often play a war mace / elec scrapper on test to compare it with an elec armor / war mace tank - the scrapper crit ATO works really nicely with WM i find. not as survivable as a tank but great fun being able to dish out some serious damage if damage is your priority, i’d go scrapper, if you want to survive a bit better, tank would be the way to go in my opinion

PREACH 🙏 ”Sleet, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Sleet is the dominion, O Lord, and Sleet exalts itself as head over all” 🙌 Chronicles 29:11 also wheeling out my standard opinion: building for defence is a boring way to play dominators, bash out the mez powers and enjoy the dynamic of the AT

what server do you play on voltak? would be good to run a challenge with you later this year

if you’re not dying you’re not living 🙂

i main a mind/fire and i’d say if you team a lot, don’t spend too much time focusing on defense locking things down at range will be the best way to stay alive, a mezzed enemy deals 0 damage

melee ATs are inefficient however as you’re forced to choose a secondary (or primary for tanks) with defensive shields that don’t add anything to the battle or the team, whereas squishy ATs have a beneficial primary *and* secondary set that benefits both the battle and the team. a team of 8 melee ATs is half as capable as a team of 8 fully fledged squishy ATs as you point out, they are often a good entry level archetype as they’re pickup and play, but are limited in overall ability compared to defenders/corrs/doms

the same thing could be said about melee ATs - some of the fastest runs of the game’s hardest content is achieved with all defender or all controller teams. is there a need for melee ATs when defenders/controllers can combine to become a much more powerful force?

“i only recreationally smoke crack” 😛 i’ll probably give in with my inspiration abstinence, though it has rekindled the fun of playing a scrapper-esque archetype. elec is quite a poor choice for the experiment as it has no secondary mitigation like knockback, stuns etc. running like a coward is an effective backup though

an update that nobody asked for have played my new elec/shield scrapper to the lofty heights of lvl 14 (4 month old baby delays gaming somewhat!), the no-insps regime is making things quite strategic. the stalker can’t simply hop into any mob or battle and survive through smashing a ton of insps with /ah open - even bosses are quite challenging have just kitted him out with SOs which was a surprise, forgot they bought them down from lvl 25 min. things feel a bit too easy now - will have to up the difficulty a bit next time i’m on in summary, so far so good. a new playstyle

and the P2W one

it’s best to have hasten and also enough recharge to activate dom without using hasten - helps when you’re idling or between mishes/TFs

and it’s perfect for stopping Rommy/Requiem going for a jog during the third ITF mish!

siphon power / FS: 2acc and 2 recharge does fine siphon speed: i’d go 2 acc / 2 rech for this, it’s surprisingly useful dominate: if you slot with 1 acc and 5 damage procs it becomes a genuinely strong power not picking up vengeance is a mistake if you ask me, slotting for 2 def on a defender makes it a very strong team buff for my kin/sonic i didn’t bother with many set bonuses or particular direction and it does fine, my advice would be to pick the sets you find fun as kin is so powerful nearly any build will play fine

agreed - happens very often

i think they’ve always been that way - i suppose people pay for the convenience/design. you can of course get a better value pre-built from more specialist companies though not everyone who wants to game is necessarily techy i built my first rig specifically for CoH back in 2005 and did the same again in 2019 when it came back! a lot less neon lights and gimmicks this time though haha

thank you for your contribution

what changes to stalkers have been made since the post? i’m a bit out of the loop on melee ATs

i absolutely agree - if you’re looking to play a buff/debuff set why play anything else apart from the best? i also choose defenders as i want to play a certain role/mindset - on a defender i feel more “free” to focus on team support / enemy debuff without needing to invest too much in attacks getting the buff/debuff powers earlier is a great advantage too, some of the best game content in my opinion is before lvl 30

how are you guys finding endurance on this combo? i’ve just rolled one as my third alt in 3 years and quite excited for it i see you’ve both chosen thunder strike, does it regularly feature in your attack chain or is it mainly for limited scenarios?

that’s a good point - playing on teams where mostly everyone is able to afford a fully min/maxed build will certainly help with mission/TF progress

i would argue that it’s a bad thing that characters are now more powerful - if people have become better at playing *and* characters have had a boost, that’s a double whammy of content being less challenging for me, the new Aeon TF on relentless was a breath of fresh air as it introduced challenge and success uncertainty into the game. in my opinion CoH is best as a cooperative / slightly strategic game rather than a superhero version of Killing Floor i’m playing much more redside lately to see if it brings some of the spark back, i’ve never explored CoV much other than the TFs, will be playing an unfamiliar-to-me AT also (stalker)