ClawsandEffect

If this idea were implemented it would make the ITF nearly impossible for a large swath of players. You can't look at it in a vacuum of ONE enemy having the proc go off. Because you are almost never fighting ONE enemy. I used the ITF as my example because it is the nightmare scenario of this idea in effect. Every enemy can proc a higher chance to hit you, and every enemy has defense debuffs in pretty much all their attacks. If your resist based tank who has gotten significant amounts of defense through pool powers and IO sets dives into a mob of Romans they're going to be faced with cascading defense failure almost immediately. 90% resistance is nice, but when you have 17 dudes beating on you with a 95% chance to hit it's going to drop you in a hurry. And that's what would happen to a TANK. Scrappers would be virtually unplayable in an ITF if enemies got random to-hit buffs. It would have the net effect of making some high level content almost unplayable and would force lower level non-minmaxed characters to play at the lowest difficulty settings all the time, especially if they're a new player who doesn't know what they'll be fighting in any given mission. Gonna have to jranger this one.

In my experience, Dark Armor is potentially the most well rounded Tanker primary with the possible exception of Rad Armor. However, it takes a lot more investment than other sets to get it there.

I softcapped mine to all types but Psi and he plays like an SR until defense debuffs start coming in. With significantly more damage output. I'd share a Mid's build...but I don't have one. I built him completely by the seat of my pants in-game. He's solid enough I was able to skip the tier 9 absorb shield and not really miss it.

I played CoH for 7 years before shutdown. I played CO for.....maybe a month tops. A ton of reasons for that. I'll summarize. 1) Combat. I've heard people say that combat in CoH feels slow and clunky. These people often say that it would be SO much better if it were an "action oriented" combat system where you actualy had to block and move out of the way of attacks. That would fail spectacularly for one major reason: The average CoH player is significantly older that the average player of most other games. I'm 40 myself, and I grew up playing video games so a twitch reflex based system would be no big deal for me. But there are a lot of players that are significantly older than me and just aren't physically capable of reacting that fast anymore. Combat in CoH doesn't need to be fast and twitchy for the main reason that it emphasizes the last 3 letters of MMORPG that most people drop nowadays. It is at it's core a ROLE-PLAYING game, and not an action game. 2) Writing. CO's writing is just bad. Full Stop. Don;t even try to defend it. It has racist stereotypes galore (which has been mentioned earlier in the thread), and you just can't take anything the characters say seriously. CoH's writing tried and (mostly) succeeded in capturing the Silver Age comics feel. It has stories that I remembered for YEARS after the game shut down. CO on the other hand....well my wife asked me what the mission I just did was about after I logged off....and I couldn't remember 5 minutes after I finished it. CoH's stories had gravity to them, and you felt like what your character was doing actually mattered. 3) Community This is the big one. I met my wife in CoH, and a good number of people I consider close friends even though we've never met in person. With the new crop of players showing up there's more toxicity than there was on live, but it's still for the most part a friendly and welcoming game. Hell, go down and look at our Archtypes forums literally right now. Skim some threads and see if you can find anyone just outright being a dick. There's very little of the "git gud noob" mentality in this game and a whole lot of people who want to HELP you get better. CO's forums were a frigging cesspool. It seriously made me wonder if everyone who got banned from CoH's forums found their way over there.

Going to chime in here with my .02 influence. I don't want to see defense or resistance reduced at all. At the end of the day, CoH is a 16 year old game that was never that difficult in the first place, and only got easier over time as people learned the ins and outs of the mechanics and shared that knowledge. Personally, I find that the game IS easy. Ridiculously so in some cases. And I would prefer that it STAY that way. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally tend to log in and play after a long, sometimes frustrating, work day. The LAST thing I want is for the entertainment I choose to unwind with to be just as frustrating as my work day was. If I want a challenge I have literally thousands of more difficult games to choose from. When I log into CoH I want it to be easy, fun, and stress free. I want to laugh about getting killed repeatedly by something instead of being frustrated by it. I don't want to have the anxiety of worrying that I'm going to be the one to screw up a raid it took hours or days to prepare for. Would I like there to be the OPTION of some more challenging aspect of the game? Sure. But I accepted the minute I heard the game was playable by the general public again that anything like that was a pipe dream. Because the HC team (or any of the dev teams on different servers, really) doesn't have the resources necessary to really add much to the game. New powersets are possible, but if you look at them they are all using mechanics that already existed and are mostly using recycled animations. There is very little of the new stuff we've seen here that is actually NEW. That leads to the scenario where the only way to make the game more challenging across the board is to nerf player capabilities. And I don't want to see that happen, because I play the game to get away from things that are stressing me out in real life, and don't want my entertainment to be stressful too.

Never got into Masterminds, Controllers, Dominators, or EATs (any of them). I've played pretty much everything else to 50 at least once. I'm a Scrapper at heart. Always have been and probably always will be. And I disagree with the notion that they don't take skill to play. My current best character is a Street Justice/Bio Armor scrapper. To an outsider watching me play him it looks like I'm just randomly punching things until they fall down. That is not true. I am punching things in a very specific order until they fall down. Even at full scrapperlock I am still making tons of calculations and making decisions on the best way to approach a given fight. I've also been accused of being a poor team player. Okay....you're getting hit and your health is dropping. Literally the only thing I can do about that is come punch the thing hitting you so it hits me instead. But I'm not a tank. I cannot pull aggro off 4 different people at the same time. I just can't. So I help the person who either needs it most or who is most crucial to the team's success if the risk is equal. I doubt I'll ever play a Kheldian and the jury is out on VEATs. More because I don't like having a large chunk of their backstory chosen for me than out of any inherent dislike of the AT.

Interesting how many of the combos mentioned are things that either me or my wife played, and played well. Illusion/Storm Controller and Necro/Poison MM were 2 that jumped out at me as 2 that my wife played extensively and loved. I played a Sonic/Devices blaster to 50 and regularly afterward. He was probably my best blaster, as dead blasters deal 0 damage and he rarely died. Currently I'm playing a Dark/Mental blaster and really enjoying her. I built her for the sheer number of cone attacks that combo has access to. I play it as a hover blaster and kill mobs with impunity. For me the worst set is Stone Armor. Tank or brute, it doesn't matter. Sure, it's great for survivability, but you should never be FORCED into a certain travel power just to be able to function normally.

Sure. That's basically what World of Confusion from Mental Manipulation is already. Castle told me straight up that he COULD do a damage reflect power, but he would not because it had great potential to actually crash the game by overloading the system with calculations.

I actually had a conversation about this with Castle back on live. He actually sent me a PM explaining why it didn't exist in game. It is very doable with the game engine, but it requires so much computing power to keep track of what attack is reflecting back to what enemy that it will bog down the rest of the zone to an unacceptable degree. This problem gets geometrically worse when you add additional characters with a reflect power. I have to assume that this hasn't changed.

Just hit 50 on my Rad/MA tank. Once I get Gauntleted Fist and the ranged Winter set slotted and Superior I'll be at 90% resist to everything but Cold and Psi without needing Barrier. And according to my quick math I'll be softcapped to S/L/F/C and really close on E/N. I just unlocked my Alpha slot and have been waffling on what I want to go with. Torn between Musculature and Agility (more for the recharge than the defense). So far I've been virtually immortal. I don't have an active MIds build for him, as I have discovered that I build characters better by the seat of my pants in-game.

On the VEAT costumes I agree. On the Kheldians, I have to disagree. The 2 other forms are not a mandatory part of playing a Kheldian. If you got extra enhancement slots for being one there would be nothing stopping you from running an all human form Warshade or Peacebringer and having an unfair advantage over other ATs because you can acquire more set bonuses from IOs.

For me the existing animation just feels....off. It looks cool, but it doesn't make a lot of logical sense for this whirlwind of destruction to do a double backflip in the middle of a fight. Ripper in Spines has the same issue. Note that I'm not actually expecting this to happen, just throwing out a suggestion. Out of all the Claws players I know, most of them do not like how slow Eviscerate is when contrasted with the feel of speed the rest of the set conveys. If there was someone that could tweak animations and make it a single backflip I'd be cool with that too. But I don't think they have anyone that can do that.

Would like to see the animation swapped with the animation for Sweeping Strike from Dual Blades. Since entirely new powersets have been created using existing animations, it should be possible to do. I'd even be willing to accept a slight damage reduction on the power if it is deemed too much for a 1.33 second animation versus a 2.33 second animation. According to Mid's the base damage is 143 for Eviscerate and 122 for Sweeping Strike. I could live with 21 points less base damage in exchange for a faster animation.

It's quite doable. My Claws/WP brute build hits it, and brutes start at the same place scrappers do on defense.

Probably pretty solid. I'd personally be inclined to try and softcap all typed defense, since you get a decent amount from Heightened Senses. That way you can drop Divine Avalanche from your chain and get more damage out of it.

Okay guys. I jumped back in a few months ago and (of course) immediately started working on Scrappers. Some of you might remember me from the old forums on live. So, yeah. Claws is back. Anyway, my namesake character is actually a Claws/Willpower brute, but after I noticed how much easier it is to make stupidly good builds now, I decided I wanted to give my old main another whirl. So Claws and Effect 1.0 was born. This is the build I'm working toward currently (toon is level 43 right now). It is softcapped to S/L, which if I recall correctly covers some 70% of the attacks in the game. It also has permahasten and Instant Healing recharging in 176 seconds. Oh, and his passive regen without Instant Healing is 724% I want to improve his damage output as much as I can without giving up the S/L softcap or permahasten (so switching to Musculature is off the table). Thoughts? Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Magic Scrapper Primary Power Set: Claws Secondary Power Set: Regeneration Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Concealment Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Swipe -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(3), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5) Level 1: Fast Healing -- NmnCnv-Heal(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(19), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(19) Level 2: Slash -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(5), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(25) Level 4: Reconstruction -- Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(A), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(21), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(21), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(23), Pnc-Heal(23) Level 6: Spin -- SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg(A), SprScrStr-Dmg/Rchg(13), SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), SprCrtStr-Rchg/+50% Crit(15), SprCrtStr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), SprCrtStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17) Level 8: Follow Up -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(9), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(9), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Hct-Acc/Rchg(11), Hct-Dmg/Rchg(13) Level 10: Dull Pain -- DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(A), DctWnd-EndRdx/Rchg(36), DctWnd-Rchg(37), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(37), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(37) Level 12: Quick Recovery -- PrfShf-EndMod/Acc(A), PrfShf-EndMod(25), PrfShf-End%(39) Level 14: Super Jump -- UnbLea-Stlth(A) Level 16: Integration -- RgnTss-Heal/EndRdx(A), RgnTss-EndRdx/Rchg(27), RgnTss-Heal/Rchg(27), RgnTss-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(33), RgnTss-Regen+(33) Level 18: Focus -- Apc-Dmg(A), Apc-Dmg/Rchg(34), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), Apc-Acc/Rchg(34), Apc-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Dcm-Build%(36) Level 20: Resilience -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(29), UnbGrd-Max HP%(29) Level 22: Boxing -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(39), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(39), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 24: Tough -- ImpSki-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpSki-ResDam/Rchg(31), ImpSki-EndRdx/Rchg(40), ImpSki-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(40), ImpSki-Status(48) Level 26: Eviscerate -- SprScrStr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), SprScrStr-Rchg/+Crit(43), Obl-Dmg(43), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(45), Obl-Acc/Rchg(45) Level 28: Instant Healing -- Prv-Heal(A), Prv-Heal/EndRdx(31), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg(48), Prv-Heal/Rchg(48), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(50), Prv-Absorb%(50) Level 30: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(A), LucoftheG-Def(31), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(33) Level 32: Shockwave -- Rgn-Dmg(A), Rgn-Dmg/Rchg(40), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(42), Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(42) Level 35: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(A), LucoftheG-Def(45), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(46) Level 38: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(46) Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- RctRtc-ToHit(A) Level 44: Stealth -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 47: Physical Perfection -- EndMod-I(A) Level 49: Invisibility -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Critical Hit Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Heal/EndRdx(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(46) Level 50: Spiritual Core Paragon Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve ------------

My StJ/Bio Scrapper is by far my best character. I managed to softcap him to all damage types if I use Agility T4, and using Musculature he is no lower than 43% to any type. He's built for survival first and foremost, as I'm a firm believer that live scrappers deal 100% more damage than dead ones. Bill Z and I duoed Kronos a while back and I could have tanked him indefinitely if I had to. He solos AVs with a little help from Enevenomed Daggers. He can do it without them if the AV doesn't have significant smashing resistance, but it just goes faster if I fling a dagger now and then. I actually skipped the tier 9 in Bio on his current build as I found I almost never used it. I haven't missed it so far. Sadly, I don't have a Mid's build to share with you, because a Mid's build does not exist for him. I built him as a personal challenge to make the best character I could by the seat of my pants in-game. So, in answer to your initial question: Yes, it's a good combo.

My softcapped Street Justice/Bio scrapper CAN solo +4/x8, but I typically run at +2/x8. I built him for survivability rather than raw DPS, so while he is capable of soloing at max difficulty I usually don't do it because a defeat all mission takes a long time with such a single target focused set.

Claws and Effect is my main. He was originally a Claws/Regen scrapper. Now he's a Claws/Willpower brute, which was impossible when he was originally created. The new version of him is actually his Praetorian counterpart who took up the mantle when the Primal version retired. Lately I've been missing the playstyle of the original so I created Claws and Effect 1.0. The original who came out of retirement. However, my main is not the character I play most. That is Adam XIX. He's a Street Justice/Bio Armor Scrapper. His name comes from him being the 19th and only successful creation of the Adam project.

I just came back a couple months ago, but I already have a pretty beastly Street Justice/Bio Scrapper. The classic RWZ Challenge was a cake walk. I duoed a Lady Grey with my wife's brute. Neither of us had any holds so we had to brute force our way past the mitos in the Hami fight. I have a planned build for Claws and Effect 1.0 (claws/regen) that hits 47% S/L defense and permahasten with Tier 4 Spiritual and has 724% passive Regen. I expect him to do great things.

I put it in my Street Justice/Bio's damage aura. It procs pretty regularly when I am stuck in with a bunch of enemies.

No, I understand just fine. You want the game to be more challenging so you can run it with any random group of people and have it the way you want it. I gave you a solution. Form a group of people who DON'T USE THAT STUFF. EVER. Play with those people and those people alone. It's not hard to find like-minded people to do just about anything in the game. There are some people who play what they call "hardcore", in which if your character is ever defeated you have to delete it. If you just flat out make the game harder it isn't fair to people who don't build min/maxed characters. They join a random team and find they can't do anything because the team leader didn't inform them that they need a min/maxed character to play with them. I'll let you in on a little secret (that isn't much of a secret): I played on live from 2005 to 2012. The game has NEVER been very difficult. The thing that has been explained to you that YOU don't seem to want to understand is that adding higher difficulty settings is a problem to do with the game's coding. Anything higher than +5 will start getting nearly impossible to hit because your base chance to hit goes down the higher above you in level they are. And last I checked anything above level 54 just doesn't exist.

Then don't use them if you want the game to be more challenging. The game is perfectly playable without them, and was in fact designed to be played without them. IOs will never be removed from the game, so there's no help there. And adding more difficulty levels is problematic for other reasons already covered above. You want the game to be more challenging? Get a group of people together who will run characters with no IOs used. We have a thousand character slots, pretty sure one can be spared for a non-IOed character.

And here's your problem right here. If the game is too easy, stop using Incarnate powers in content that was never designed with them in mind. You may not realize this, but Incarnate powers were intended to be used in content that we never got to see because the game was shut down before Paragon Studios had a chance to actually design any of it. Using Incarnates in regular game content is like taking a Top Fuel drag car to a friendly street racing event and complaining that no one can beat you.

Wasn't Savage Melee originally developed in response to players asking for a way to NOT have claws as attached weapons and use natural claws instead?