Sancerre

The Tanker/Brute version of Eviscerate from the Claws Powerset applies -7% defense to the target. It does _NOT_ accept defense debuff enhancements, however. I would imagine this is related to how the striker/stalker version do not have the -defense piece added but instead have additional critical chance. This should not, however, block the tanker/brute version from access to their stylized perk of eviscerate. screencap for reference (of the tanker version)

try something like this maybe if you use ageless incarnate, you should have perma hasten -- would personally recommend the debuff resistance version because BIO doesnt really have much debuff resistance to really anything as a whole. some notes about why i moved some stuff around as a general note... virtually all of the defense IOs are +5'd cause it just barely bumps you over 45% doing so swapped tanker IOs between ice sword and genetic contamination... the absorb you would moreso want in aoe saturation, the resist proc you would want _always_ makes the resist proc more consistent... especially for smaller critter packs ablative carapace is one of the biggest strengths of bio armor, not sure why you didnt slot it up dna siphon i found to be a lot more useful as a full endurance bar button (via essence theft) rather than a heal... the regen and shield of ablative carapace takes care of you otherwise you can reverse these slots if you prefer it the other way environmental modification.. the reactive IO set is great but ultimately recharge bonus isnt much different than LoTG and you can fit in other items here (save slots elsewhere) Freezing touch is an amazing vehicle for procs... you have purple procs available, you should get them in there (hecatomb and unbreakable)... just make sure to note that i +5'd the kinetic combat accuracy otherwise you will miss against +4 stuff flipped frozen aura away from winter set... didnt really need those bonuses (although the recharge resistance will be missed)... to favor global recharge dumped obliteration for vengeance (as a LotG mule, more global recharge) didnt have enough slots left for obliteration anyways. frost and frozen aura are already great aoe tools. dark obliteration wouldnt be helping you much... especially since you didnt have it slotted up with procs. and some pieces i wasnt too happy to be missing but made concessions with (due to lack of slots): gloom is an amazing proc vehicle and can boost your ST damage considerably if you could get 6 slot with all kinds of procs in it would need to be willing to dump the 10% global recharge here Frost so much better with some +range enhancements in it DNA siphon is a great proc bomb, but also serves a great purpose just getting massive endurance and big heal as is slotting out brawl *and* kick feels disgusting, but i didnt see a better path. as another consideration, you can go more lenient on defense bonuses and make the goal 40% instead... and plan to use barrier incarnate to bump the last 5%. i think ageless (with debuff resistance) is just better for BIO armor however.

titan weapons is fine set but the tanker AoE arc/radius benefits were specifically _NOT_ alloted towards titan weapons... i left the link at the bottom of the post for your reference... making it slightly less desirable for Tankers specifically compared to Brute/Scrapper. As for TW itself -- The single target damage is still solid, the momentum is far less annoying than it used to be, and the endurance use feels more manageable, but the damage output is definitely lower than it used to be. as far as gloom is concerned, it doesnt really 'ruin' anything but i would say it is not really 'necessary' for titan weapons because it already has great single target options. gloom would probably be used in an 'optimal' single target DPS chain, where you use gloom as momentum is expiring. to be clear on that... they 'fixed' the redraw with most abilities. things like recasting auto-hasten would be a royal pain before. i dont personally use the soul pool but fireball for example doesnt have any glaring conflicts. that said you probably still wouldnt want to 'waste' your momentum time casting gloom if you can avoid it. dont let any of the comments scare you though. TW is still a great set, just no longer the 'king'.

not sure you need to compare it to the real world, but i do think the example fits. I would personally just liken it to any MMORPG period. the sequence of events go something like this: 1) Rush to 'end-game' (getting to 50) 2) Have base-line equipment to run 'end-game' (getting your 50 IOs) 3) now there is 'nothing to do' city of heroes is somewhat more unique in design because the 'end game' content does not reward you something particularly unique and some of the early game content provides you with permanent significant bonuses (accolades). but ultimately there will be a point where you are 'done' in terms of character progression, and the process doesnt take very long.... unless your goal is to collect every badge. the only thing left to do (that will provide a 'reward') is to create another character. so, just like any other MMORPG, providing someone that shortcut may not necessarily 'ruin' their experience but it will very likely diminish their retention/playtime in the game. The experience is the journey getting there... cause otherwise we actually have the test server to just instantly max out a character with perfect IOs.

i'm not sure i see the point because we have 3 builds available per character. My personal take is this -- if you cannot find a way to fit an SO build as one of your 3 options, then you dont truly deem the SO build as desirable... otherwise you would ASSUREDLY find a way for it to exist on your character. as a compromise though, the easiest way to implement a solution, if all 3 builds are somehow absolutely deadlocked on some characters, would be to advocate for a 4th build slot and have a very good reason for demanding it. the most challenging part of your suggestion to decipher is understanding exactly WHICH IOs that you deem 'essential to the character' or to be of 'negligible balance'. this is where your entire argument falls, i believe. you want to cite that +defense set bonuses and things like steadfast +3% defense are very powerful and i agree. however, so is performance shifter that appears to be in 'negligible' category to you. if you are playing empathy defender, for example, Recovery Aura is a MASSIVE benefit to an SO team (and indeed it was incredibly powerful back in the early days of CoH... the discovery of the fitness power pool becoming virtually 'necessary' was a big part of this to be fair). conversely, if you are playing in today's modern CoX, recovery aura is virtually pointless because 90% of players are entirely self sufficient on end recovery already (or slamming ageless incarnate) outside of fighting sappers. and i dont think i need to really dive into damage procs at all (its own can of worms) because there are constantly balance discussions around how they warp the power of various archetypes. if the game is balanced around SOs, as your first point states, then NONE of the IOs should be considered 'essential' or 'negligible'. they should ALL be outright banned (function-less) from this mode. if we base the design of this notoriety option around that notion (function-less IOs period), then you run into the problem of min/maxing a build with filled up with damage procs or various other unique bonuses that would be literally function-less slots in this mode. so why not just have a completely separate build that is SO only (again, you have 3 available). i think this PROBABLY (speculation warning) comes down to the idea of ensuring/forcing the challenge onto pickup groups... and not wanting your group experience to be 'ruined' by folks that do not follow your rules. to that i would just say find a group of friends willing to play by your rules and each of you need to dedicate that SO build for this team play. as a final note i will spell out specifically (incase it isnt obvious and hopefully nobody would even attempt to argue this) that SOs are incredibly cheap (influence) so that should really not be a consideration here at all.

This is interesting... i feel like it was just 2 weeks ago that someone was posting how 'useless' this crit proc ATO is... specifically from the perspective of energy melee (which you coincidentally picked to illustrate here). i would personally tend to agree this ATO, in its current form, is incredibly potent. and the reality is that you arent even highlighting the more fringe cases like slotting it into AoE powers. As an example... Arc of Destruction in titan weapons has 16s recharge with 2.7 cast time (without momentum), making it incredibly powerful to proc critical strikes even against single targets (turns out to be 40-50% per target). and then further when you combine it with AoE proc forcefeedback recharge (whirling smash, for example). you can quite literally have 80%++ uptime on critical strikes against 4+ critters. on face value, the ATO proc should be a moderate and 'lucky' boost whenever it occurs. but... through 'clever' abuse of proc formulas, you can drastically scale up consistent DPS. i think it is more of an issue with the proc system itself. ultimately i dont know where i stand with this holistically. i personally think scaling back the ATO itself and giving more raw power to the scrapper is fine, but others would probably complain that you are making the game even easier than it already is. i am sure plenty of folks are just absolutely unaware of -HOW- to maintain incredibly high uptime on this ATO and dont imagine the ATO is as powerful as it is. i suppose i am not sure if how you are re-allocating the numbers specifically is 'right', but it appears fine.

your build on the front page doesnt work with the latest Mids (presuming cause of afterburner). posting mine for reference... made a few changes -- im not particularly attached to Flight pool, but it is still soft capped positional with barrier incarnate + storm kick. appreciate the awesome thread, analysis, and in depth explanations... and also quick responses to questions! build:

Getting closer to the fundamental issue -- global recharge not effecting procs per minute... and more directly the abundance and flexibility to put global recharge in any build to the extreme. one of the most obvious offenders perpetuating all of this... that has been a notorious as long as the game has existed... perma-hasten. Force feedback proc is additionally, and specifically, is all kinds of broken because it cascades the global recharge abuse on itself. the real question to ask is -- are any of these procs fundamentally a problem to the game design if global recharge did not warp their use? on a personal level, i feel like 95% of the proc IOs are not particularly a problem with that question centered around that. and further, the overwhelming majority of any "problem" IO procs are self-buff proc-on-hit slotted into AoE powers... where you get to leverage the relatively low proc rate on the position that it only needs to flip heads on 1 of the 16 critters hit, despite the coin being very heavily weighted towards tails. Gaussian specifically... other than pairing it with judgements (which is its own issue), i dont see much issue with the concept. i think stalkers are the only ones that really get to abuse this... and i would just say that is a perk that stalkers get to leverage. the exact buff numbers could stand to be reviewed i suppose. All that said, i currently enjoy the system (procs and hasten both) as is and would not like to see much change. Force Feedback recharge is probably the only one specifically that i think needs a VERY hard look at (or just outright removed).

i more or less dont mind frozen fists being the hot garbage that it is. i think it is a general overlooked design 'problem' at this point with virtually every damage powerset in the game -- either the T1 or T2 power is skipped and never looked back on. i do not necessarily see this as a problem, but instead a consequence of having greater amounts of recharge vs activation time of skills as your character progresses. Frozen fists is technically useful while leveling (if you ignore the prestige powers). This follows along with any other such T1/T2 powers... nobody concerned about optimizing damage will be taking T1 Bash in the War Mace tree, for example. to the stalker point -- stalker has its perks and its downfalls. there are 4 melee ATs in the game sharing virtually the same powersets (minor adjustments). I dont think it would be fair to assert that Greater Ice Sword does not need to be changed because Stalker specifically doesn't even have access to the ability. I do _NOT_ believe that was your intention with the comment anyways. you are not the only one to have made this type of comment though, so i am just intending to be fully clear about the message for the topic. **i suppose it was a bit unfair to write off frozen fists for tankers specifically as they are absolutely _forced_ to take it. i will still, more timidly, stand with my original comment. on a personal level, i dont mind it being what it is, but i am not opposed to changes to make it better (along with other such T1/T2 powers).

My opinion, along with what appears to be general consensus of the thread so far, has been that Greater Ice Sword currently lacks punch and is very skippable in its current form. whatever recharge it takes to make this thing use-able is fine in my mind. there are other implications with recharge that surround the 'balance' of the skill. If i could change the skill to be 'perfect for me', i wouldnt stop at 13s, but again the goal of this thread is not to shake-up the powerset. and thats the value of making a thread like this. to bring attention to skills that _need_ modification. i really appreciate the change to ice patch. i do think it is in a great spot right now and is very powerful as is.

so we agree that Greater Ice Sword is terrible. Lets take the opportunity to FIX it instead of just shunning folks away from it.

i dont think reducing animation time is a thematically good option. it is supposed to be the more weighty and impactful 'greater' ice sword. the animation matches that already. the damage doesnt. the ability fails spectacularly in its current form. to note, i did call out to increase recharge as well (10 -> 12 seconds). i think more folks would be happier if it did noticeably more damage and DPA than standard ice sword, but i am not trying to create waves here. i have have illustrated some guidelines to bring the skill into (what i believe to be) a functionally neutral state and 'worth taking'.

i appreciate the feedback, but i do want to keep this thread focused specifically on greater ice sword and away from an 'ice melee rework' concept that said i will branch off on a tangent here for the ice patch suggestion. i am not personally opposed to the idea. there are obviously implications attached to adding damage to ice patch of being able to proc bomb it. however it could be implemented as _un-enhanceable_ damage as well. anyways, further discussion on it would probably merit its own thread.

a bit of apples and oranges. ice melee is _NOT_ the king of single target DPS despite it having _ONE_ very high DPA attack. i can ponder why Freezing Touch is as good as it is, or we can fix a thematic problem with a bad ability (Greater Ice Sword). also Ice Sword DPA itself is very 'average' in comparison to other melee powersets T1/T2 attacks. It is certainly nowhere near Dark Melee's Smite, for example. 'Greater' Ice Sword is actually just one of the worst single target DPA powers available across ALL of the melee powersets while offering very little meaningful secondary benefits... especially being at Tier 8, making this even more of an outlier. The 20% request only brings it in line with standard ice sword... not particularly above and beyond.

your reasoning of the unique taunt ultimately boils down to 'because i want it to be overpowered'. i'm not entirely against the concept but if you set a precedent here... the more direct question is... why would this powerset be uniquely positioned to have that advantage over ALL of the melee powerset taunts. and i am sure you are well aware that -defense allows you to slot Achilles heel -res proc. far be it from being anywhere near 'guaranteed' it would still just be a nice 'why not' IO to dump into it that no other melee powerset has. as for the targeted AoE abilities -- i think you are framing that it would function more like Thunderstrike (from electrical melee). I personally never liked that style of button, so it surprises me you would want 2 of them. balance wise... that is a whole lot of force feedback recharge. In all, this certainly does sound overpowered... as you intended i suppose. And i havent even touched on the overly bloated inherents. a case of ask high and bargain down maybe? again the concept sounds fun.

So taking a hard look at Ice Melee's "Greater" Ice Sword, one would think this "Greater" version would be flat out superior in just about every metric compared to just a very standard Ice Sword. How it stacks up (Tanker Numbers): First off -- a look at the pieces that, frankly, very few people care about... yes the debuff numbers are better on Greater Ice Sword. aside from maybe applications in PvP, the difference in travel speed is very negligible and appears to be there as more of a theme of the powerset... that is fine. if critters want to run away, a -16% travel speed debuff isnt going to stop them all the same as the -8% debuff wont. My point here is that this attack is not particularly rooted on a secondary status effect, so the focal point SHOULD be the damage part. Next up -- the accuracy modifier. it has a 90% base chance to hit instead of the standard 75% chance to hit. this is certainly a nice bonus but probably very overlooked even by veterans of the powerset. there are some niche applications in PvE here (where to-hit debuffs roll in) but for general content, you will be built around 95% accuracy regardless. PvP goers probably care about this much more i suppose. Now for the meat and bones here... the damage. the damage is certainly higher as a raw number but it fails on the other 2 metrics, as the Tier 8 power of the set. It has _BOTH_ a lower Damage Per Activation Time (18%) *AND* Damage Per Cast Cycle (13%). My understanding is that the original developers (attempted to) 'balance' around damage per cast cycle, but eventually discovered it was a flawed metric to use. I am not sure how much value DPCC stat actually has but it is conveyed in the stat sheet here, so i dropped it in. As an interesting piece... there are recommendations for ice melee to pick up cross punch (a melee cone, from a power pool) instead because the DPA wins out against the "Greater" Ice Sword (single target melee, tier 8). I think cross punch is a great attack (fully synergized), but this just feels wrong. as a final comparison -- a look at the other 2 powersets with elemental sword attacks, fire and psi (data from Mids this time). Psi Blade DPA: 66.72 Psi Blade DPCC: 14.02 Greater Psi Blade DPA: 87.49 Greater Psi Blade DPCC: 12.5 Fire Sword DPA: 61.81 Fire Sword DPCC: 11.22 Greater Fire Sword DPA: 67.52 Greater Fire Sword DPCC: 10.98 in both cases the 'Greater' version is fundamentally a better attack DPA wise. Again im really not sure on the value of DPCC, but included it for comparison. Also note that these 'Greater' versions have the 90% innate accuracy all the same. Proposal -- Can we take a look at bumping the numbers on Greater Ice Sword to be more competitive? Change would effect Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers (Stalkers do not get this button). Not intending to turn Greater Ice Sword into the god killer sword, just bring it in line with ice sword's numbers so that it _feels_ more impactful to match the heavy looking animation time. a straight 20% damage buff to Greater Ice Sword would just barely edge over the DPA stat above standard Ice Sword (currently 18% lower). If you need to 'counter-balance' in some way, hit the recharge end -- 10 seconds to 12 seconds (20%).

sounds fun but a couple questions: -i dont understand why this version of taunt would uniquely have an extra debuff (-defense). and i dont think 'to be overpowered' is a good answer here. -Can you clarify Trembling Quake and Converging plates -- both labeled 'targeted area of effect' so i was imagining rain of fire i guess, but the description sounds more like Burn (simple PBAoE).

would generally say that a lot of cone attacks feel awful to hit multiple targets with... and especially so with melee cones. i would caution that if you take a look here for cross punch, it should probably follow that a lot of very similar skills would want the same treatment. jacob's ladder in electrical melee, proton sweep in radiation melee, shatter in war mace... to name a few. that said, cross punch is surprisingly just a good attack (when fully synergized) regardless of multi-hit and also the bonus +to hit and +recharge both scale off the quantity of enemies hit. being able to (reliably) hit 5 targets would net a pretty massive to hit and recharge bonus compared to its current iteration. maybe it is 'intended' to be a functionally terrible cone.

so i was taking a look at the powersets on test server... i see you didnt take eagle's claw T9 and i can fully understand why. has the homecoming team ever taken a pass at this monstrosity? absolute terrible DPA and the damage buff is super wonky... starts 2.5 seconds after the skill finishes? doesnt make sense at all. rest of martial arts seems awesome. was curious did you absolutely need focused accuracy/physical perfection? gloom or ball lightning could add a ton of damage in either ST or AoE. also crane kick doesnt seem like it would activate FF recharge very much... is that just a 'nice when it goes off' kinda thing?

you definitely want to slot in knockback protection somewhere... travel powers have an IO set for +4 magnitude and steadfast resistance set has something similar as well... however you fit it in... you WILL want at least magnitude 8 protection. as /time you will be in the middle of the pack with times juncture running... you dont want that to be a bounce house. i would advise NOT taking acrobatics however (not worth the power selection). you are not really building around farsight. it gives massive +to hit and +defense all on its own. between farsight and perma soul drain, you will already have an insane +to hit buff active. if you want somewhere to have the gaussian proc, you can dump it in soul drain concerning the +defense... look to either use power boost (from Soul Mastery Patron) or Clarion Radial Epiphany incarnate WITH farsight. you can entirely skip over the fighting tree with that. there are pros and cons of using either, but it would be a mistake to avoid pumping farsight. assault is fairly worthwhile on corruptor... especially cause you are not particularly slamming proc bombs everywhere malice of the corruptor ATO set has some good bonuses, notably 10% range. should help a lot to slot that in somewhere especially for your cone heavy blasting set. regenerative tissue IO (+regeneration) seems really unnecessary in a build that has a low cooldown big heal. seems like a waste of a slot...

something overlooked with 'soft capping' is the availability of to-hit buffs on critters. the most obvious example is nemesis faction with vengeance, but they are _NOT_ the only faction. doesnt matter if you have 45% defense and 100% DDR. if the critters have massive to-hit, you are going to get railed hard. like others have mentioned though... having powers that are skippable allows you to pick up other powers. katana is a solid set that doesnt particularly crutch itself on divine avalanche. you do not 'need' to use it. it is there if you want it.

thanks for the replies. appreciate all the feedback

curious on a couple points value in focused accuracy? you arent the only person ive seen with this. i know blind can be annoying but i tend to have a yellow available... unless this is specifically for no inspiration challenges? to hit buff and accuracy seem like a wash with kismet being available, bio offensive adapt giving to hit, and high end IOs (and set bonuses) having tons of accuracy everywhere. you find clobber to be the best spot for crit ATO? have you tried it elsewhere - whirling mace, shatter, crowd control? DNA siphon and parasitic aura slotting seem odd to me -- no interest in essence theft (accurate healing) IO? ive seen DNA siphon used as a proc bomb in other builds, not sure if its all that great though.

i came up with a build for war mace / shield that gets soft capped defense and rotates sorcery RoP, t9 shield, and melee core to achieve consistent 75% S/L resists as well as pretty solid numbers on other damage types. was interested in any war mace veterans opinions on slotting... specifically the crit proc. seemed to me like Crowd Control was the natural fit here to have high proc chance... and with decent luck on force feed back charges could even loop on itself pretty consistently. that said the single target string would suffer forcing myself to use crowd control for a chance to proc crits, but overall the DPA is actually pretty decent even for a cleaving attack... so i dont think i feel too bad about it. also allowed me to save 4-5 slots not worrying about slotting out jawbreaker or shatter since i only need to balance around a 5 second clobber cooldown anyways. Couple notes-- im not particularly stuck on the RoP rotation but it seemed like a why not scenario... i feel like im only losing out on the hybrid damage (honestly assault hybrid can feel underwhelming a lot of times anyways and it only has 50% uptime). Destiny incarnate seemed like a tossup between just fluffing out DDR with ageless or grabbing big regen from Rebirth... rebirth has always felt underwhelming but the WM/SD combo otherwise has no major heals (green candy i guess). not the happiest camper with my ball lighting slotting but couldnt find a better way to get a big chunk of defense spent a few slots specifically geared towards psionic resistance IOs... dont think its particularly necessary but it does look like it rounds out the numbers nicely i guess... didnt have anything better to slot RoP and OwtS with anyways because i do want to have the (2) 3% defense IOs much earlier in the build for exemplar purposes. my war mace/shield build below: All that said, i havent ever tried Bio... despite its high profile and praise... have generally felt comfortable playing with positional defensive sets but im interested in maybe branching that out here instead. ive attempted to cobble something together alongside looking at other builds with /bio, but it just look like an absolute mess of defenses with no clear direction... so im a bit lost in /bio. if anyone could give guidance on their /Bio setup (even if it isnt war mace), i would appreciate it... sky is the limit on influence.

tried out claw scrapper and it felt odd constantly repositioning for 'better' shockwave use... i guess i could have tried doing the hover thing, but that wouldnt work too well in this kind of map for example. wasnt a big fan of it overall. the stalker build you have there looks really unique and fun. specifically unique to stalker variant cause you dont need to particularly worry about spamming follow-up... and also not having spin. seems super durable too -- i would guess mostly from the bounce house effect... and invulnerability is just a solid defense set. awesome find!