Without_Pause

RE: Self-found It is more interesting than a challenge depending on the restrictions one puts into place. Once those are in place, then it becomes easy to set one's expectations. Self-found can be rather easy to do based on farming and converters. Case on point, old school CoH had people slotting SOs at 22. One could simply make a farmer and stop XP at 25, and run them so they can at a minimum fill out any builds with level 25 uncommons and end up with a decent build to level for any of their characters. Add in a way to make them attuned, and it is a mere matter of time before one would have everything they need for a leveling build. I would almost do this, but the uncommon market is on life support at best as I can grab even attack set recipes for all of 5k. Once a player had attuned rares to pass around, uncommons fall by the way side. It took about a week, but I IOed my main based on playing the market. They didn't do a single mission during that time. I used resources from other characters, but that's about it. Build included Winter IOs and ATOs, etc. Likely do a slow burn on the market to build back up, but it might be awhile before I move onto the next one. I have three done, and likely take another break after the next two. Once any 50 gets done, I'll likely barely use the market to get stuff and just sell off whatever.

Excelsior. I was on Torchbearer to start, but moved sometime after Excelsior took over as the most popular server.

Agreeing with ZemX. BS is slow so EA offering +recharge will help. BS and Dark would be good on a tank.

Melt mobs and murder AVs. The idea is to stack as much -res onto things so they simply don't last long.

I played a ton of Defenders during live and kind of ODed on Kins. I avoided rolling Defenders at all on HC until more recently. The ones which have stuck out are: Dark/dark. I got the Controller version to 50, and assumed that would scratch enough of the itch to call it good. Well, a funny thing happened. Steamrolling teams didn't feel like they needed that much control/mitigation so I felt like I would be better off with just blasting away and hence, I rolled the Defender version, and it stuck. Poison/rad. I enjoy finding combos which work well together for whatever reason, and more so if they seem below people's radar. Not sure what all rankings for the blast sets would be, but to me /rad feels like an S tier set for Defender. I had never played or paid any real attention to Poison, but I knew it was debuff heavy. Poison also needs to hit. Add in /rad with -def and the ability to slot -res procs, and it feels like a huge debuff machine. Me being me, I still likely play it a bit too aggressively, but I have seen the combo work even on a low level, and just melt things. I felt like people talk about how ST the debuffs are, and in all honesty, I'm not seeing it. Kin + Rad. I rerolled my Kin/sonic and yet another attempt at Kin/rad, but neither stuck partly because I felt like I was done with playing a Kin. I did get a Elec/kin controller in the 40s before rerolling it, and that's honestly one of the best pairings across all ATs. I might reroll it again. The Poison/rad had me come to terms with X-Ray Beam, as in I skipped it. Fast forward to me rolling a Rad/kin Corr and it just feels right. While, not a Defender, there's almost no real reason why I would deem one better than the other. I think I went Corr since I have played so few of them. In waiting, Time/*. For the life of me this hasn't clicked yet, but it should be really great. I'm just waiting for moment when it flips in my brain. /beam. This feels like one of the sets where a great idea is partially implemented. (Glares at Psionic Melee) When Beam clicks, it is amazing. When it doesn't, I feel like I should be playing something else even if things are fine. It ultimately requires setup and often times that's harder to pull off depending on the team. I have a Time/beam, but the Time/dp just feels better with both wanting to be in melee. While yes, Time/beam will murder AVs, I wonder if that alone will be enough.

Another vote for Poison/rad since you can slot Rad for -res procs.

I was on vacation so just got back today and finally got in some playtime outside of just checking the market. Got on a Frostfire mission. A person made a comment how few of us had 2x XP boosters. There was some chatting going around about people coming back and how nice the community is. We steamrolled that bad boy at +4/x8 like the OGs we were and had a gay ole time. My Rad/kin, Damage Cap, went from 7 to 14 in a mission. Oh, I could level a Kin via 2x while sitting in AE because Lord knows I don't need to be taught the ways of Kin, but bah. I'm enjoying it old school.

Inv/em tank. Punch stuff with your Balls of Doom. Be damn near unkillable. EM has been fixed and is very legit now. Also, I will nit pick by saying heavy damage and solo can also be done via Stalkers. They just can't go all-in on AoE like a scrapper can unless you are talking Elec/shield.

People brought up valid points in a previous thread. Miss Magical had no problem giving various post in said thread a thumbs down without giving a genuine response to what was being said. As someone who has played CoH for 9ish years, the forum vets I know from live who are still around I have never really had any issue with. I would honestly seek them out first if I had a genuine question in regards to something. I see flare ups happening at times, and let's be honest, flare ups happen on the internet. My general feeling is, "Oh whatever," and I just carry on.

I stopped getting 2x XP boosters. I found leveling my characters made me enjoy the characters more. The only things I grab from the P2W vendor is the Inner Inspiration, Steam Jump Pack, Athletic Run, and Reveal Me. Those make life before a travel power way easier, and the inspirations are nice. Reveal Me is good for looking to find badges. Needless to say I added in the Vidiot Map extension. The vet attacks I have used, but not always.

See also Rad, EA, and WP for armors which benefit with being surrounded by mobs, sans Stalkers in some cases, and anything with a PBAoE aura. Don't even get me started about people who KB a mob while I'm on my Kins. I've literally watched PuGs perform better once people got on board with trying to keep mobs reasonably packed. I'm well aware about teams without melee steam rolling. They tend to be end game builds and/or loaded with support. The art of herding around a corner feels nearly dead these days. The current meta being what it is, I can see where people going off on their own is fine if it means the missions are done quicker. Unless specifically stated, most teams want to be done asap.

I skipped Jab and Hurl on my SS/elec brute and got Cross Punch and Spring Attack. Instead of wasting time in a 2.5 animation time to chuck something from a distance, I can move onto the next mob with an movement power which happens to also do damage. Add in Fury and Rage. I'm now in the position to Foot Stomp and Lightning Field has already kicked in. Will it be in the end version of a build? Who knows, but it currently serves its purpose. I also have enjoyed trying to not make a cookie cutter version of build. Captain Obvious here, but the KB can be KD and with Foot Stomp you can put mobs on their butts all the more.

Ah, my experience is vastly with the Stalker version which is a flat +20%. I see Scrappers get the better version as well, but mine is level 22 so I haven't had much of a chance to experience it.

Your question was why are DoT good for brutes. It wasn't about it being best for brutes. If I had to do Claws again, I would go Rad. If my numbers are correct, 5+ targets means you have equal to if not better recharge coming from Beta Decay than any other armor with +recharge. I've felt it on my Savage/rad. This did lead me down a wormhole which makes me think using Rad with StJ would be fun to play since the animation times on StJ are so clean.

Damage is based off of fury.

Not all builds are soft capped. A number of builds might just soft cap ranged. More so until level 50. There is also the issue with def debuffs so having extra def isn't a bad thing. Cold does have some resist built into it as well.

My reason for not picking Thermal is needing to look at other people's health bars which isn't a laid back way to play.

I debated doing it on a tank to the point I ran around Atlas with one, but went "Screw it," and rerolled to a brute. Reasons being, I wanted to skip the T1 since I don't think I'll need it for an attack chain and it triggers Insight the lowest. The DoT from Insight should be boosted by fury. Also not if you skip Mental Blast, and Confuse or fit things in anyway, Force of Will is right there with a variation of SJ, a ST attack, and a cone attack.

FF, Sonic, and Cold will be less click based by default as the shields can be done every few minutes. I don't like FF for end game content. Technically Sonic might be the least click based of the two due to toggles, but Cold is really strong, and I can see it being favored for end game content. Side note, TA can be deemed less click based since all you are doing is shooting stuff anyway. I should add the Defender ATOs work insanely well with Sonic so a secondary you aren't going to proc out(/fire, /sonic) would be a good pairing.

Confuse is good for anything annoying. If you don't have end drain protection, you can confuse a sapper at the start. I lean with it being better for solo play. I rolled a Psi/dark brute yesterday so only level 12. The biggest issue with Psionic so far is how little control you seem to have when you get Insight. It seems great when you get it. I have no good solution outside of the devs making it a toggle which generates the DoT on your Psionic attacks. I did purposely pair Psionic with a damage aura to offer a different type of damage for later on. I'll add in Soul as a Patron.

I looked into some numbers. StJ should be high due to its animation and recharge times for building fury, and it has a heavy hitter as compared to Savage even though Savage has more AoE. Psionic is interesting in that is a slower animation time set, but not terribly so. The advantage to it is getting Insight since that adds DoT to its attacks. The downside is Insight. My fix just feels like "Anything but that." The closest thing I got is having a toggle which adds the DoT so it is like a damage aura, but different. I rolled a Psi brute today and got it to 8. I'll see how it goes as it levels. When I had Insight and could get some attacks in with it, that felt great. I went /dark to offer additional non-psy damage for those times when it is needed. Kinetic is better off for a Scrapper or Tank since they don't need to worry about building fury. Animation and recharge times hurt it. The only benefit here and it isn't exclusive to Brutes is the -DMG being used with armor sets. Animation times on WM aren't special and those recharges are long. I tapped out on a build which offered +recharge in the armor and still couldn't deal with it. Crowd Control is a beautiful thing though.

Stalkers: More control over crits. Innate ability to ghost missions, see merit and Incarnate component farming. Scrappers: Mildly sturdier AoE in terms of primary and secondary since scrappers can get a damage aura. With ATOs factored in, they are rather comparable, Another strike against MA as a stalker is the lack of adding AoE via the secondary unless you go /sd, but you would still be just at Shield Charge as your AoE. MA on a brute with a damage aura is much better option. As mentioned, MA on a brute can lead to a rather sturdy brute.

I did a Citadel TF with 8. set at +0. We decided we could do it with splitting the team to help cover more ground and more so with the defeat alls. We cranked through it at a brisk pace. I think only I died on my blaster, and to be fair, I wasn't paying too much attention since it was such a cakewalk.

Still happening.

FYI, you are slotting end redux in those toggles.