Zumberge

The original reasoning behind EA was that it was the redside equivalent of Ice Armor, when The Powers That Were (cf. The Powers That Be) didn't think that a set which relied on slows and -recharge as a secondary defense mechanism would play well with the Brute's Fury mechanic. This is also why Ice Melee wasn't given to Brutes. More practical knowledge about its performance might be available now and things could be different, but that goes without saying.

"Oh god, he calls himself a 'healer.'" *swipes left*

Melee Sentinel. I won't lie, Master Brawler's bonuses to Focused Fighting and Focused Senses are pretty appealing, and with the addition of Cross Punch, and Boxing and Kick all providing buffs to the other, all you really need is Jump Kick or Air Superiority to get a good attack chain going.

Yeah, until Willpower came out and Dark Armor was shifted over, Stone was the only Tanker Armor for anti-Psionic. Combine that with Granite and Rooted, and you have a very strong and diverse, if incredibly slow, Armor set. It's actually kind of funny since psionic damage has been a problem since day one, but the answer was inside of us all along. If someone was so inclined they could make the argument that it might still be preferable owing to being a high value (cf. Willpower) of defense (cf. Dark Armor), because psionic has -recharge as a secondary effect, and even if you take a fraction of the normal damage that effect is still hitting you. Though if you've taken the set that has Granite Armor you probably aren't overly concerned with slowed-down recharge times on your powers.

Generally speaking, the reason you pick Stone Armor is precisely because of Granite Armor. Stone doesn't really excel outside of that, except maybe with Psionic defense with Crystals.

For context: Fairchild ex Somnium is a kind, polite, supportive herald of a slumbering ancient god who views the path her mission has taken as a sad, unfortunate set of circumstances, and warns others of the Legacy Chain and Midnight Squad ("Emperor Cole has taught us what we had long since known: Too often does protection become control"). Her title is "False Prophet," which says everything about her real intentions. The one for The Patriarchy (this guy is self-explanatory) is gonna be a long time coming, but once I hit 50 I'm hitting Recluse's Victory and beating Miss Liberty so I can get "Oppressor." Zoe the Outlander's story is... convoluted (I am actually quite terrified of trying to explain it because it sounds like a fever dream), but "Demiurge" fits in the Platonic sense rather than the Gnostic one. (A little context behind the characters would work great for this, 'cause I can't remember all of your guys' backstories. Sorry, it's been a busy month.)

Ice Mistral is 35-40 and there's the Tesseract and Lazarus SFs in Ouroboros, but yeah, the amount of SFs is quite small. Can't remember if you throw down in any of the casinos but a boss fight against a Wailer who busted through the wards would be neat. Failing that, Viridian II: Let's Just Punch All The AVs Ever. (Oh god Viridian was great. Half a dozen Council AVs versus a Fire/Psy Dom, Dark/Dark Brute and Ice/Rad Corr. None of 'em stood a chance.)

Listen to this man. Beam Rifle/Devices gets good really early and stays good. You can lay down a bunch of caltrops near the tank and hang out back with the Defender or Mastermind melting every problem lieutenant or boss that comes into your line of fire. Beyond all that, you feel like a sniper; pure long-distance interdiction with the satisfaction of knowing that piece of shit Tsoo Sorcerer couldn't do a thing to stop you.

Also, addendum to the prior: Someone commenting on my bio mentioning that it's a welcome change from all the "parents killed, out for revenge" and "catgirl" ones made me remember that at one point I really did have a character whose backstory was "parents killed by catgirl, out for revenge." Mynx, more specifically, and it would not be the unbounded hilarity that the concept suggests. To sum the story up, they would've succeed at great cost, and the denouement would've involved a conversation with Synapse talking about the nature of justice, when it becomes revenge, the cyclical nature thereof. The main problem with the character existing is that the plot would not and could not eever be resolved. It would just be in potentia forever.

As contrary as it is to the thread, very few. It's weird because the characters with in-world connections were never made, and the ones that I ported to this from other settings have a ton of history. Zoe the Outlander has two novella-length stories and a bunch of shorter one-shots which total about 75,000 words and for all intents and purposes CoH is just a side-story. Fairchild ex Somnium is at least twelve years old and has existed in at least two forms prior in writing practice and fantasy heartbreaker-style projects, and if that chimeric body horror hivemind with a human consciousness mostly along for the ride (Savage/Bio Brute) ever gets off the ground that'll probably be the single oldest character I've made. To say nothing of all the other ones that I'm like, "I really want to make this guy but there's no Arcane Control/Dual Blades Dominator." Back in Live I had the idea of a last reluctant survivor of a Longbow incursion into Mercy that was cut down by a villain who was in turn killed by a dying Warden. He took the villain's sword and ditched the uniform in an attempt to defend himself and survive, but when he realized how much of a craphole the Rogue Isles were he ended up becoming a low-level vigilante (Port Oakes was more or less the upper limit) to protect the citizens. He eventually attracted the attention of a nihilistic low-level villain about his age who clashed with him a few times, who saw what he did and gradually grew obsessed with the question of why he thought anyone was worth saving. Their final showdown ended with the vigilante defeated and the villain frantically demanding answers, but the vigilante quietly passed away before he could get them. So he did the only thing he could think of: He took his sword and tried to reproduce what he was doing to see for himself. It might be a good story, but there's not much demand for a character who caps out at level 12 and couldn't team with 90% of redside. Then there's the origin story of a Peacebringer host who watched too much giant robot anime and their arc where they uncovered a Council plot hinging around their thefts of other factions' technology and the plan to literally build a better Nictus host. People really aren't eager to read about characters they don't know about or have connections to, and the idea of making a character in a game just so you could write about it is... I dunno, wasteful? Presumptuous?

That's excellent attention to detail and also kind of a letdown that they changed it.

-dmg synergies much better with +def sets then with +res sets (basically 40% -dmg and 40%+ res works out to around 60% total dmg mitigation not 80%) Huh. You learn something new every day.

A basic reason or motivation to start out with would be that the villain wants something and is willing to put their own wants and desires over the needs of others. It's about pride, and pride (it is said) is the sin that leads to all others. From there you figure out how they take steps to get it.

Well, here's what I remember from the olden days, so anyone else can correct me if I'm wrong. * A few primary sets do have heals or other things like stuns or holds, several more have secondary effects like -ACC or knockdown that benefit your survival, and at some unknown point every secondary got something so that the AT isn't completely helpless, whether it be a heal, absorb, or faster regeneration and recovery. That said, a lot of it is killing them before they kill you. The reason Blaster secondaries get an immobilize as their first power is that they're "meant" to hold the enemy at range, where generally they deal less damage. If there's something to take the aggro (e.g. Tankers, Scrappers) then life gets much easier, to the point where you can probably wade in if you've got a secondary with melee attacks provided you wait until everything is distracted. * To that end, if nobody's asking you to pull, wait until the tank goes in first or the control powers drop. * I think Time Manipulation might be a post-Live addition so it might be unbalanced overtuned just a little. No experience with that, though. * Devices, contrariwise, has always been a pretty go-to pick for people with regards to theme and utility, thanks to Field Operative née Cloaking Device providing stealth (and now +recovery!), Targeting Drone giving you To-Hit (which makes pre-SO and IO levels much easier, plus your snipe goes off instantly if you have more than +22% To-Hit, easily achieved with it) and utility like Caltrops. In the days of yore you could lay down a huge patch of Trip Mines given time and pull AVs onto them for an alpha strike but things might've changed since then. Gun Drone is kind of meh but at least it's not stationary like it used to be. Skip Time Bomb, and arguably Taser and Smoke Grenade. * As far as pool powers go, Leaping used to be (boy, that phrase is coming up a lot) a solid pick thanks to Acrobatics providing knockback resistance because oh boy you have no mez resistance at all and will fall on your ass in the slightest breeze. If you're willing to lay down some money, though, the Karma IO set(levels 10-30, Defense) has a global knockback bonus IO that you can just shove into Combat Jumping or whatever provides defense and at least stay standing when a Sorcerer teleports into your personal space.

You mean the mechanical functions of a set where only three powers gain any sort of benefit from the Dominator's inherent power? One would think that in their mass proliferation of powers, the developers would have considered this and done it already had they a mind to. Unless there's another explanation?

Broadsword/Regen, but only because there was a costume option that let you not have a head. It makes sense in context.

There's no fewer than four impending dooms in canon so she has her work cut out for her.

Bio Armor has a power called Adaptation which gives you three toggle powers: Efficient, Offensive, and Defensive Adaptation. Offensive is probably the one you're wondering about; when active it increases your damage at the cost of slightly reduced resistance. You get it relatively early, so don't worry.

(I was a little inspired by Zolgar's post on CoH's mechanics and how they differ from WoW, and after seeing the subject come up on the boards a lot and hearing people ask about it in the Help channel I felt like trying to whip up something to address the issue. If anyone with more experience than me reads this and sees a problem, point it out real quick and I'll amend the issue or, if this is too misleading, scrub the topic entirely.) So you just installed City of Heroes and you're a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options. Maybe you're a new player, maybe you're a returning player who forgot a lot of what they knew, or maybe you remember a lot but know nothing about the new power sets and archetype that were added. So you might be asking a question that a lot of people have asked before you, even when the game was live: "What's good? What's viable?" Here's the thing: Everything is viable, and I'll tell you why. I can't pretend to know where you came from or what your history in games is, but I can give some examples you might understand: It's not like Final Fantasy 5 where the Berserker job isn't worth using because you get better jobs earlier. It's not like D&D 3.5 where the Cleric and Druid completely blow Fighters out of the water. It's not like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 where Magneto and Sentinel are leagues above Roll and Dan. It's not like World of Warcraft where... well, it's not like World of Warcraft. The point is that you can pick whatever power sets you want and function entirely well. Are there sets that are better than others? Depending on what you want to do and what you're fighting, yes. Are there power sets with good synergy? Yes. Are you gimping yourself if you don't pick them? No. Will people will get angry at you if you don't take them? Hell no. I would go so far as to say that you could put together an eight-person team of eight different archetypes, all using the worst primary and secondary sets in their respective categories, and they could still handle high-level content with no problems. The important part is knowing how to play what you've got rather than what you have. Above and beyond other MMOs of its time, and even now, City of Heroes gives you an absurd amount of creative freedom. Do you have a superhero you made when you were 15 that you want to make in game? You can do that. Are you sitting there wondering, "Professor X is cool, but what if his legs worked? And he's a werewolf! With a shotgun!" Absolutely possible. Even if you pick an objectively "good" set of powers, if you don't enjoy using them or like the idea then what's the point? So don't worry about accidentally picking "bad" sets right off the bat; just go with what you think is cool or fits your concept and learn and try to have fun. If it doesn't work out you can just delete the character and try something else. Once you have some experience under your belt, then you can start worrying about optimal builds if you want.

In order to do that you'd need 200% total recharge, which would be 3 50 recharge speed IOs in the power and another 100% on top of that, assuming you wanted to use the other three enhancement slots for making the thing actually hit. The amount of sets that give recharge speed certainly add up to more than 100%, but you can't use them all at once. Hasten is good for two minutes of +70% recharge but that's not consistent; there's going to be down times on it without an even higher amount of recharge to keep it perma. I had a Plant/Kin with Hasten, IO sets out the wazoo, and spammed Siphon Speed and I'm not wholly sure I could manage it. tl;dr: I'm leaning towards "no" with /Storm, but someone might be able to prove me wrong if they're willing to use .

As far as numbers and types of AoE attacks go, Dual Pistols and Radiation are fairly comparable. Beyond that, DP has lower damage than average for a ranged set and no Aim equivalent, but more utility in its different ammo types insofar as you can change secondary damage types and effects. Rad comes with -def but it's ranged AoE comes much later, and it doesn't quite pack the punch of Fire either. Assault Rifle has three cone attacks and an AoE burn patch, so I suppose it would come in behind those two.

You mention "all Controller pets" but speak exclusively of fire imps and bring up farming speed. If you're not careful people might wonder if, despite your clearly noble intentions in asking for a buff to such a weak feature that's rarely ever taken on Controllers despite being their main focus, that there's some ulterior motive behind this desire for revanchism.

I'm just going to nominate the entire genre of power metal because the overall lyrical content and themes - often focused on mythology and fantasy, war, camaraderie, hope, and personal struggles - as well as the style's use of clean vocals fit the archetype (and the kinds of characters people make with it) entirely too well. Most of the time, at least.

Oh hell yeah this is my fucking jam. * Redside, there is a Mastermind that is quite literally responsible for the misfortunes of half the entire planet. Entire organizations struggle against him in the hopes of overthrowing his iron-fisted rule, and yet he reigns supreme with a callous disregard for their suffering. Even Arachnos is not free from his influence, as seen within his ranks of soldiers. From the highest echelons of government to a single spread pair of legs on the subway... he is there. He is omnipresent. He is... THE PATRIARCHY. (Thugs/Poison, because toxic masculinity.) * The situation in Paragon City is grim, and darkness threatens to swallow it. Cultists, traitors, xenos, rogue psykers, and tech-heresy threaten the world, yet it is still within the power of others to save it. The Imperium of Man has noticed its need, but unfortunately it's at least 20,000 years too early and from a different setting entirely, so they amount of help they can provide is limited to a single Guardsman. Enter Guardsman Willis. (Beam Rifle/Devices, pls no sue me Games Workshop, I am but a humble farmer ;_;) Aside from that there's a Dual Pistols/Thermal Corruptor that I'm giving a go at. His whole thing is that the Rogue Isles medical community realized that when villains die in warehouses and sewers there's a tendency for their bodies to leak incredibly toxic blood/their super-suits reactors melt down/all the souls bound to their armor to break free/all the demons under their control/all sorts of terrible things that endanger the lives of normal people and make their work harder. So they're outsourcing medical jobs to private contractors with the reasoning being that keeping villains alive keeps parts of the country from going up in mushroom clouds or burning down in balefire. A little more subtle and complex than the other two, I guess.

Had a 50 Kinetic Melee/Super Reflexes Stalker. The rest of you know the drill: You see me spout bullshit, you call it out. As far as fluff goes KM has some nice sweeping strikes and animations that are kind of the midway point between the high-flying wire-fu of (original) Martial Arts and the very practical-looking, grounded Street Justice. The energy auras around your punches look nice, too, if you want an "energy punch" kind of character without going into the glowing pom-pom territory of Energy Melee. Crunch-wise, all the attacks are smashing/energy damage, cause -damage as a secondary effect, and either knock down or disorient. Because of this there's a decent amount of potential damage mitigation, and while -damage synergizes better with healing and resistance-based sets (e.g. Regeneration, Electric Armor) you still benefit from it when running defense because the hits that do get through hurt less. Plus if the team tank is drawing aggro from an AV they'd probably enjoy the -damage you're delivering to it as you punch it in the spine. The main downside is that, while fast, the damage is a little on the low side. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about KM's attacks in particular until you get to the last three: Firstly, Burst is a PBAoE with knockdown. Now I've been out of the loop for a bit, but PBAoEs were fairly uncommon to see in Stalker primaries. That said, Burst from Hide causes some pretty good damage to groups while knocking a bunch of guys flat on their asses which, again, damage mitigation. I'd argue that having it means playing your Stalker more like a Scrapper; getting stuck in next to the tank and fighting alongside them throwing out AoEs. Just make sure you stay in Hide until they have the aggro. Secondly, Focused Burst. Longish cast time (2.2 seconds), but it's a ranged attack with knockdown. Again, Stalker primary with a ranged attack; kind of rare. Good for catching runners. Finally, Concentrated Strike. 3 second animation, long recharge (20 seconds), but high damage and if it crits Build Up automatically goes off cooldown. I get the feeling that prior to the Stalker rework, this was a gentle nudge to get you to do things besides Assassin's Strike out of Hide. Regardless, that's a fairly nice boon that helps up your overall damage a bit, and almost turns Placate into a second Build Up. tl;dr: You won't be punching out gods but you look pretty and have some tricks up your sleeve that many other primaries don't. With regards to synergistic secondaries, uh... maybe someone else can cover that better than I can. Super Reflexes' +20% recharge doesn't hurt, though, considering Burst and Concentrated Strike.