Without_Pause

The Scrapper will do more AoE as it has Innocuous Strikes and Blazing Aura so I wouldn't consider going Stalker as a win.

Partly interesting about the list is how do you define damage as some lean more ST vs. AoE or vice versa. Elec might be middle ground, but it is incredibly popular for a reason. My generic rule is if AS replaces a ST attack, it is good for stalkers. Also, damage types are important. Dark gains the benefit of being the least resisted damage in the game. Losses AoE in exchange for AS: BS drops Whirling Sword. Claws drops Spin, which is a straight up crime. DB drops Typhoon's Edge which is a finishing move for two combos. Said finishing moves are moved elsewhere for DB. Energy drops Whirling Hands leaving the set with no AoE and has long animation times for its heavy hitters. Wee. Nin drops The Lotus. No really. 😛 Kin drops Repulsing Torrent which is odd as one would think Stalkers would be the ones wanting to KB things away versus brutes. MA see Energy but Dragon's Tail and with better animations times and they are cooler looking anyway. Psionic drops Psi Blade Sweep. Rad drops Irradiated Ground. (pours one out) Spines drops Quills although gains AS which helps its anemic ST attack chain so not a terrible loss. Staff drops Innocuous Strikes. Gains AS with minimal loss if not straight benefit: Dark dumps Dark Consumption although not really a straight win, but End can be managed well enough in the end, so yeah. Elec dumps Lightning Clap, which is pure win. LR is a pet and thus doesn't break Hide. Fire dumps Incinerate. The advantage here is burst damage. Ice dumps Greater Ice Sword. Savage dumps Vicious Slash. Also switched Blood Thirst for BU which people generally consider a win due to Stalkers burst damage nature. Street Justice dumps Rib Cracker. I would say this isn't a bad versus good list but as a general guideline as I think some in the AoE loss list can still be good as a Stalker. Kin, Rad, and Spines feel a bit better off in the loss column. BS hits like a truck from Hide. Even the so called bad ones I could easily see playing but on other ATs as I already have a level 50 Claws, level 42 and 39 Rads, and a level 29 Staff. Oddly enough I've played more sets from the bad lists than I have from the good list across all ATs and that's with adding in a recent Savage Stalker. I don't have much experience with Stalker secondaries, but /ea is really good although I do see where /rad's ability to generate more AoE damage would be a good thing. /bio would also increase overall damage. Sadly /shield isn't an option as that's a quick fix for lack of AoE and damage in general. Edit: One thing to note as showing how a "bad" set could be good. As mentioned before BS hits hard as hell from Hide. With ATO procs refreshing BU and flipping Hide back on, that burst damage will happen all the more often.

I would lean /dark more as a brute since resists work better on a higher HP pool. If you don't mind going Stalker, that's where I would lean with /ea and BS would hit like a truck coming out of Hide. BS/ea would still be great as a scrapper though with added in ATOs. I don't have many preferred defense sets, but I like /ea a lot. Just started working on /dark.

Defense and recharge are by far the two biggest.

If we limit one side it will make new players feel like that is the only side which in turn will limited how much stuff they get to experience and limit their time playing the game. If life offered me the chance to have more set time to play CoH, I would run red side events. Currently I have two characters for red side content and use them when I can based on red side grouping. I get some people don't like red side, but I think the move ought to be towards those who are undecided. I don't have issues with red side, but there's also a lot more teaming on blue side so that's where I go. A plus for red side is the short SF's which I wish were replicated on blue side. Blue side TFs are boring and monotonous as hell.

In your listing you have Traps selected which will cover the mezz protection as well.

A proper all-defender team has 8 using Maneuvers so FF is vastly wasted. Interesting to not see Time listed.

Both will work fine. Debuffs sets are the most useful 1-50. Kin is the only real exception to this outside of specific cases, but Kin plays better on other ATs. Just about any AT can feel useless on a steamrolling team.

Kin/rad. Pimp out with -res procs and damage cap yourself and teammates. I've tried to play Time and while it is a solid set, I have yet to get any into the 40s. I got two Kins to 50 and another to 40. Kin is just more fun to me.

I never tried. I feel WM is simply too slow for my tastes and that's with /elec. Yes, the damage is there, and I made sure to level it far enough to give it a chance.

At 39. My last run was on a team running level 54 missions. I deleted it vastly because of WM, see also deleting my WM/bio scrapper. I have two other /elec builds and I had a Dark/elec on live and it was the first brute which really clicked for me. I soloed an EB with it with no inspirs and common IOs, so I was pumped at the time. I'm tempted to give it another run even if I'm still not a super fan of SM.

Well, you do lose the damage aura. StJ is better on a stalker as it loses a ST for AS so that's a win. I haven't tried /bio on a stalker yet. I have a /bio already so I'll likely roll /invul for my next melee.

As mentioned, using Hover while using Grounded isn't a winning combo. After you take SJ/CJ, you can take Spring Attack which will allow you to teleport into a mob while doing damage. I think in all of my time on live I might have seen 1 MAYBE 2 people use Teleport Foe. I have yet to see it on HC. It kind of feels like if you need that, you likely are in over your head to begin with. People simply don't wait for someone to use TP Foe these days. Lower level, definitely manage what mobs you take on. I did fine going through the Posi TF though. You need to hit 28 before you get a heal, so have purples and greens on hand. The good news is /elec covers the most often used damage types quite well and end drain resistance is awesome late game.

Minor update, I'm not a fan of two of the primaries so I did roll a Rad/bio as I figured it would be a good candidate to "break the world" with and got it to 42. Still not 100% set with Bio, and Rad will likely be forever 2nd tier for me. Not surprising, but still interesting to see other secondaries die on the vine for me and keep coming back to how smooth WP is. I rolled a couple WM characters and got the brute to 39, but it just doesn't click for me so I deleted both. The speed of the set doesn't work for me and it was paired with /elec, so yeah. Currently working on a new Staff/dark as neither set has been rolled for HC and I only got a /dark brute on live in the 30s if that.

1. No. 2. Yes. I have been working on having no powerset at 50 being used more than twice. I found the builds I like the most offer the most different feel.

One thing missed is some controllers get a PBAoE def based toggle which obviously makes it easier for them.

Ill is the ideal off tanker for a controller. If you don't mind a slower pace, Ill/traps can wreck things while in comfort. Part of the tank question is how do you define it? Is it taking and holding aggro or merely taking alpha? Tanks and brutes are obviously build for holding aggro. Scrappers and sentinels a bit lesser and their taunt aura and Confront are more limited. MMs, see Bots/traps, should be able to off tank on a 4-person team grabbing Provoke. As a lover of brutes, blasters and stalkers were honestly the biggest surprise coming back to CoH. Not to say I would build them for off tanking, but in terms of change of pace. An /earth dom is also good for a change of pace for a melee minded person.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Very_Rare_IO_Sets There's an extra "}" in the listing of each purple IO.

The rest of Kin feels slow to me though. I prefer StJ even if it's AS attack isn't standard.

I don't think any of the builds are really known for ST damage. I would like at least one decent damage AT with some ST. Another debuffer would have helped as well. One exception to the ST damage character having a higher base for damage could be a /sonic defender since they can help other player's deal more damage. Teams could be built a number of ways, but a tank/brute with three debuffers or one less debuffer with a blaster would likely be my default. Due to smaller teams being on red side, I intentionally switched my Ill/dark to red side since I figure it is built for smaller teams and have enough control in those situations.

Can a +0 AV be drained? Absolutely. The issue is I can count on one hand level 50 teams who I see running below +3. This also ignores how much draining an AV actually impacts their attacks. The build is more than fine. I'm not here to have someone reroll it, but end drain against AVs in HC's meta is an issue. I've seen AVs have their end bar not even go down 20% and a number more not even 50%. Hell, on live I've drained AVs as the rate of their health bar going down.

What is your Alpha slot? Bottoming out after 2-3 rotations seems a bit much. Are we talking a basic ST attack chain? Tested. I have a level 37 StJ/shield laying around. Single slot common level 25 IO for Stamina. Same level common IOs elsewhere. No epic. I cleared three mobs at +1/x1 without bottoming out and used AoE attacks as normal which is often. I would have needed a blue for a fourth mob, but again, solo with minimal slotting and I cleared three mobs.

I did reroll my main from live going from Defender to Controller. I think if I were to use one version, the controller would be the one. It is a vastly better pairing. Elec control plays better in melee and having a built in AoE sleep power is a godsend for Kin. The #1 issue for me is in regards to end drain and AVs. I wished it was worth a damn, but it isn't. Regular mobs are rather easy to drain unless they have specific resistance to it, ie Sappers.

It is also really difficult to read much of anything in a build at level 9. Hitting level 22 and slotting level 25 common IOs is where I do my initial look into a build and wait until 35+ before I decide it is worth it. Debuffs sets are useful all the way through. Steamrolling teams happen. More so in end game content with teams using builds with IO sets and Incarnate powers against non-Incarnate content. There's honestly teams which would steamroll said content with all of 4-6 players doing +4/x8 diff setting. There's also a lot less annoying mobs in the early game. There are certain mobs in the 40-50 range which will make a lot of teams slow down.

Says poster who quotes me and thus gives me a notification of it happening. Back on topic, I just dual box farm for alts. Time is better spent on the markets when wanting to gain currency.