ClawsandEffect

For defense on squishier ATs I usually go villainside at 35 and open up the Patron pools for Scorpion Shield. It's really easy to softcap S/L/E defense with it with some effort, and using it alongside Weave and Combat Jumping nets decent defense on just SOs. I usually justify it as a double agent or undercover sort of thing. And I almost always run the Black Scorpion arc because the storyline involves something a hero would want to prevent from happening just as much as a villain.

Yes, you're the only one wondering that. In this thread at least. Controllers are one of the best force multipliers in the game. A well built and played one can turn a mission from nigh impossible to easy mode. You mentioned your experience with Controllers is with Mind, Electric, and Gravity. You picked 3 sets that are oddballs in the AT and haven't gotten any of them past level 22. That is going to color your perception of them a bit. What boggles me though is that you apparently haven't noticed what your Controller teammates have been doing all this time. You've never had a team go from steamrolling to struggling when the Controller left, or you have and didn't understand why it got so much harder. It also seems like you weren't playing on live when the most common farming combo was a Fire/Kinetics Controller. Keep in mind, all this is coming from someone who really sucks at playing Controllers. I just have enough experience with the game in general I understand how valuable a good one is. And a well built and played Dominator can and will outdamage your average blaster over time, especially once they hit permadom. They can also lock down targets that a Controller can't when Domination is active, because it doubles the magnitude of your mezzes.

I made an Energy/Energy that's going to be a slow burn character. He's fun so far as a lowbie, but I have so many characters that take priority he likely won't get played a whole lot. Edit: I don't plan builds anymore. I improvise on the fly in-game. It actually works out better for me that way because I can address issues that crop up that a Mids' build doesn't always make obvious. I'll still occasionally make a Mid's build, but lately it's just to get an idea of what's possible to do with the character. My on the fly builds have been better than anything I did in Mids' 100% of the time so far.

It occurs to me that this entire discussion is largely moot when you take into account that players in game will almost always take the path of least resistance. Even if you remove Incarnate powers from non-Incarnate content, you still won't see all that many people running Incarnate content. I solo my way through the Dark Astoria arcs on all my 50s after they unlock Alpha, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen anyone else in the zone that wasn't on my team (for those times when I can actually play with my wife). Take away the Incarnate powers and the majority of players will still keep running repeated Council radio missions. Except now they'll be bitching that their Incarnate powers don't work anymore.

What I like: The fact that my characters can gain more power after level 50 and it gives me something to work toward and thus a reason to play them aside from the occasional TF where AT X is needed. For some of those characters, the Incarnate powers finish fleshing out the concept I had in mind for them. For example, my Dual Pistols/Martial Combat blasters concept is he is a teleporter who uses guns and martial arts. Outside his ability to teleport he is otherwise an ordinary human. Vorpal Judgement is absolutely perfect for him because the kicking animation in it is identical to the version of Storm Kick in his secondary. I went Reactive Interface for the fire DoT, which ties into him improving the Incendiary Ammo he uses (he never uses anything else). What I don't like: The fact that the Incarnate system is incomplete. We're still missing 4 powers from the 10 we were promised when the system was announced. Finishing out the system would be awesome. I'm also not that fond of the fact that we can use Incarnate powers exemped down to level 45. I'm good with being able to use them in TFs that were designed for level 50s. But they trivialize the occasional level 45 TF a little too much. It makes Dr Quaterfield almost too easy for the amount of rewards you get for it. Locking Incarnates to only level 50 and above content would be nice. I also don't like that some Incarnate powers are too powerful and some are too weak. And thematically limited. I'd really like to see a Judgement power added that would fit a natural, unpowered character a little better. A storm of shuriken or a satchel charge or something like that would be cool. The animations are there, just a matter of putting it together. Also: Can we have the mirror option added to Phantom Lore pets? My Illusion Controllers would really appreciate that.

Thought about it. No room for another power pool. That particular character's build is pretty tight.

Some of my characters have bios. All of my 50s have a backstory. About half of them have it actually typed out in-game. The other half are in my head. Any of my characters that make it past level 20 I have at least some idea of who they are.

the powexec_location target macro has been a lifesaver for me. I have a Dual Pistols/Martial Combat whose theme is he's a teleporter. I run Speed of Sound full time with Jaunt macro'd to current target. So I can teleport to them and kick them in the face. And I have a macro named Retreat that is Jaunt with the location set to 50 feet straight backwards.

Login music when I came back. Atlas Park theme. Both of those got me misty eyed. But for some reason, the cheesy pseudo-porn music from Blyde Square in Steel Canyon hit hardest. I think because that's when it clicked that I was really back. Sound-wise, Spinning Strikes in Street Justice just sounds MEAN. Like you just broke those poor guys. Most satisfying though has got to be my Dual Pistols/Martial Combat blaster. He is the only character I have that doesn't have a set attack chain. I just really enjoy hitting attacks in a more or less random order to see what kind of animation combinations I can come up with. Out of every character I've ever created he just feels more alive than the rest, because he's the only one who looks like he's actually reacting to what's going on around him.

I feel you there. There's a name I'd like to use, but I can't for the same reason. Corvid 19 or Corvid XIX I play Warhammer 40k as well, and the Raven Guard are my main army. Ravens are corvids. In the game lore the Raven Guard were the 19th Legion of Space Marines. So, Corvid 19 would be a wonderful name for a Raven Guard themed character. But pretty much everyone would assume it's referencing current events while it has nothing whatsoever to do with it. On topic: I use character appropriate badge titles all the time. Except on my main. His badge title is appropriate to ME. Poor Impulse Control. I have a reputation for being in scrapperlock pretty much all the time

Golden Girl, is that you?

My son got a name yesterday that I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first: Shocking End

My personal best was a crit for around 2k on my StJ/Bio scrapper with Crushing Uppercut. Not sure how I did it though, I must have had an extra buff on me I didn't notice, because 1800 is my average on a crit.

My DP/Martial was a blast to play from 1-50. I had to be more cautious at lower levels and leverage Jaunt a lot to get me out of trouble, but post 50 he rocks just as hard as any of my melee characters.

My DP/Martial takes a slightly different approach, and he's one of the most fun to play out of all my characters. He's been an Incarnate for a little while now and Clarion set to autofire has solved his biggest problem nicely. I don't have a build handy because 1) I'm on my phone, and 2) a Mids build doesn't exist for him (I tend to build on the fly in-game. I know the powers and sets well enough it works better for me) Some highlights: S/L/E defense all at least 50% to give him a little cushion to debuffs. Speed of Sound is on full-time so I can use Jaunt with macros to bounce around a fight at will. Suppressive Fire and Piercing Rounds are the only DP powers I didn't take. Throw Sand is the only Martial Combat power I skipped. He doesn't have a set attack chain. That's what makes him fun. I like to see what kind of cool looking combinations I can come up with. He looks like a John Woo movie in action.

Not sure how you're playing your blasters, but my DP/Martial blaster pretty much lives in melee range and rarely dies. All of my other 50s are melee ATs, and his survivability is on par with all but one of them.

One thing I need to point out that a lot of WP players overlook: Max HP is your friend. You want to slot for as much of it as you possibly can. I see so many people ignore the max HP side of HPT and it drives me batty. When your defense fails (and it will, not much debuffs resistance in WP), you will be relying on your resistance and Regen to keep you on your feet. Max HP directly affects your Regen rate, since the amount you get back per tick is based on a percentage of your max HP. My Claws/WP build is sitting at 2748 HP and around 70% S/L resistance. He's still softcapped, but he suffers from cascading defense failure on a depressingly regular basis. He's powered through on resistance and Regen with his defenses in the negative on numerous occasions.

Bill, just food for thought here. I went Spiritual Alpha on my main Claws/WP brute and my recharge in Follow Up is around 124% enhancement. Pretty sure with your other slotting that would make your desired chain completely seamless. It would slightly bump your passive Regen too.

Bind key powexec_location back:80

Removing Set IOs from the game would have the same end result as removing gear in other MMOs. Sure, you'd make the legacy content challenging again like it used to be. But you'd also make the content that was designed with IOs in mind nearly impossible, or only possible with a narrow set of ATs and powersets. I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy the fact that in this game you don't need any particular thing on your team to succeed at a task. Do certain ATs make some things easier to accomplish? Sure. Having a dedicated Tanker built for survivability to tank Aeon and Recluse in the MLTF makes it loads easier on everyone else, but you don't need one to succeed. I'd rather not see CoH follow the same path that other MMOs trod and have things be pretty much impossible without a specific team composition. Especially when you consider the fact that not following that model is one of the things that made it stand out in the first place.

I'm actually okay with a 5% guaranteed miss rate on powers, mostly because as far as I can tell the overwhelming majority of enemies in the game are playing by the same rules. The only ones that break it are particularly challenging enemies that are meant to be taken on in groups. I wasn't there when the game was designed, but I suspect the original developers probably played D&D or were at least familiar with the system. I could easily see them taking the "natural 1" mechanic and translating it to their to-hit system.

The chance is identical either way if your character is at both extremes on defense and accuracy. A 1 in 20 chance to hit or be hit. Saying it isn't the same thing because the miss happens above 95% instead of on 1 is nothing but semantics. I don't want to see a "fumble" mechanic added into the game though. That only exists in tabletop games to add a storytelling element to what actually happens and it's up to the GM to define that. There's no way to do that in an MMO because there is no human there to determine when a simple miss is called for and when a catastrophic accident is.

To address Luminara's post. We actually HAVE a "natural 1" and "natural 20" mechanic in place already. If your defense is softcapped versus a normal enemy they have a 5% chance to hit you. To translate that to D&D terminology, they have to roll a natural 20 to hit you at all. If your to-hit is 95% (it won't go higher), then the only way you can miss is on a natural 1.

Personally, I feel like changing procs from a percentage chance to a procs per minute system was a mistake. It eliminated the "buzzsaw" builds of the past, but created builds just as skewed to replace them. And it had a negative effect on certain procs overall. My Dark Armor Scrapper would sometimes GAIN endurance from the Theft of Essence proc. The best I can hope for now is for it to break even with the power's cost.

In Superman's case it is entirely believable, because his disguise has almost nothing to do with the suit and glasses. It's his mannerisms and how he carries himself. He slouches and does anything he can to make himself appear shorter. He scrunches his neck up and makes his jawline look softer. He stutters deliberately. He makes a point of visibly flinching at loud noises. In short, he acts like a little bitch. No one would ever associate that person with someone who can take a tank shell to the face without blinking. Then when the glasses come off he stands up to his full height, speaks confidently and distinctly and nothing fazes him. In Superman's case it's not about people being dumb and easily fooled. It's about using their own perception and unconscious assumptions against them.