Sovera

I don't know what I'm missing with Axe VS War Mace. On a Tanker testing both Mids shows Axe as having better damage in every skill (sometimes largely so) with the same AoE. Pylon times were about equal as well. But with the bonus that Axe's early AoE allows to slot a FF proc 18 levels before the cone is available.

It's not complicated. Blasters have done it at +4x8, Defenders have done it, Scrappers have done it. Not being complicated doesn't mean it's easy either though. A character that survives defense debuffing is good, something that can self heal or regenerate, something with good resistances. Most of the time this means an optimized build and several hundred millions spent in IOs.

They are rare. First Hami needs to be killed, then of the big pool of Hami-Os the right now has to drop. At most people will kill Hami twice a day (so four kills total). That's really really small compared to killing hundreds of NPCs during an TF or farm. They also give the best numbers even better than purples (if +3-ing the Hamis) so for maximum min maxing they can come into play. Though the casual player won't notice, and with the way combat is set I doubt outside of spreadsheets we can even notice a difference. $Deity knows that using the exact build with the exact rotation can give differences of 30 seconds so 10% damage difference just gets swallowed.

I'm probably re-hashing what has been said already but more voices might help giving credence: - Basically all melee characters are going to be easy mode in this particular game. They come with a built in crowd control (near) immunity which becomes important, they have armor for protection (ranged characters either get buffs or more damage), and they tend to do a lot of damage (ranged will have wider AoEs and be able to take enemies before they get too close, especially if having chosen Fly as your travel power). - As a new player I suggest a Brute. Their AT (class) mechanic makes them do more damage the longer they fight. In the low levels this is blown all out of proportion and you can go around two shoting enemies. Eventually this tappers off by level 20-22 and the damage goes back to being in line with other classes but until 20-22 you are a mini god. - That said you can be spoiled if you try a Fire Armor/Claws Tanker character which has very good AoE and single target damage, plus a heal and endurance recovery power. All of it obtained before level 20. As you've no doubt found Burn is a lot of damage and it is obtained at level 18 for a Tanker unlike 28 for a Brute/Scrapper. Staff is nice, but slow, and the single target is a bit weak and the AoE isn't amazing since it is slow and relatively weak. - A Sentinel doesn't have super damage but it's the single ranged character who comes with a crowd control (near) immunity like melee characters have. This coupled with choosing to fight in the air instead of melee range makes them exceptionally sturdy and a great starter character (I'm still going with Fire/Claws as a better starter). - You can control the difficulty of missions with the little speech balloon down at the bottom of the chat box though if you didn't mess with it it's already at the near easiest. - While the Tanker is the sturdiest of the lot a Scrapper will do more damage (but depending on the armor it may not have agro so enemies will run away), followed by a Stalker (very good damage and you can pick when and where to fight and open with a 'backstab' power that can one shot lieutenants, but this is a bit more advanced and requires some money. It also has zero agro so enemies will just run away when at low life) with the Brute between both. Ranged characters work in a pure basis of kill them first which can work, but not something I'd send a new character to since they can be overwhelmed or die to stuns. Check my signature for links. The guide is particularly useful for new players and if you decide to try a Fire/Claws I have a build stashed there (also Fire/Staff).

Let your 'Active Defense' stack and it will make DR a non problem. Each Active Defense adds more DDR.

Or swap Sweeping for Vengeful. That extra one point two second of animation tidies the rotation demanding less recharge sacrifices with the bonus of working a FF proc into it to speed all other cooldowns.

I don't see what the problem is. You can play at whatever level you desire to, even once at 50. And +3 enemies aren't exactly a problem either. If your problem is that 8 people with incarnate characters will blow the content then make small teams. My favorite stuff is duoing content. Knockback is bad? Or course it is bad. I personally won't rail (much) against who use it other than politely telling them to slot a Sudden Acceleration in and move on letting them finish the mobs they scattered all over the place. You see, it's your choice to use knockback. It's my choice not to deal with the mess it creates. You can't say you're entitled to do as you wish but I'm not. Frankly this is all first world problems. I won't deny they are things that upset you, but like the definition of first world problems they are problems with easy solutions.

As a landlord I can't tell you how often I've rewritten an ad trying to make it clear that I am renting an -apartment- to -students-. No matter what when it's time to rent it again I have people from all walks of life asking for it, and if the price is for a room or for the apartment (you'd think the price would tip them off that it's for the apartment if the ad itself had not clued them in enough). Even after changing the ad to have in caps lock 'an APARTMENT for STUDENTS' the phone calls still continue.

Wrong? No. A good pairing for a new player? My opinion is subjective, but also no. No means to recover health or endurance coupled with low single target damage will be something that veterans can work around but a hurdle for new players. I would recommend a Fire Armor/Claws Tanker to plod through content. Good low level AoE, good low level single target, and an early heal and endurance button. I have a build for it in my signature plus some means to make influence while playing.

Well, how it's easy, just don't pick it. I'm not joking. Obviously I had to make sacrifices because I dropped it and lost that defense and capped resistances. It still has 40% to Ranged and 52% resistances to S/L and 72% to energy. To get Fold Space sooner you would need to replace Flying with Teleport as your travel power. I would still keep Hover for combat though because the point of stacking Ranged defense is to force enemies to hit us from range.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I'll take the genie making sure things will work out fine for the wisher any time instead of monkey paw genie. Even just 'how long you want to fly' shows there is care, instead of 'welp, you can fly so your wish is granted. For two minutes and then your muscles are over strained and you're now ravenous'. Of course by now the wisher is probably 'wait wait, telekinetic flight plztnxboss'.

Should be, but how to know unless a dev of old?

Not for the Tanker. Parry from Broadsword doesn't either, and neither does Defensive Sweep from Titan Weapons. Guarded Spin from Staff is the only one who does.

FE is pretty strong, but if you don't subscribe to Tankers doing damage then don't take it. But it and Burn are the reason to go Fire Armor and I'll be honest that if you're not taking either then you might as well go Rad Armor instead and become much sturdier. Fire Armor is one of the squishiest sets because it is the offense oriented armor and it should be embraced. As for the Tanker's Might it stacks three times. If you guys just want to rely on one of the stacks it's certainly acceptable, but, you're wasting the other 6.7%. Two stacks can be kept up for nearly forever, though three are more iffy which is why I just make my math accounting for two stacks. It's a lot of min maxing that won't really change things much though, so just wanting to rely on a single stack is fine. And if you keep it on a toggle then one stack is all you're going to get at best, and at worst it might drop off. The number of enemies around you won't change this. On a single target attack you will use (for example in Haymaker) it can stack up to three times. But, again, if the resistances are tailored to reach 90% with a single stack then there is zero point to moving it to a single target attack. Regarding the last bit, yes, you definitely ought to cast Consume pre-emptively, and then you have a 2 minute long endurance drain protection (endurance drain protection, not recovery debuff protection. The first protects against sappers and Carnies dying, the second protects against Freaks' Superstunners ressurecting).

Something like this. At the start you'll be doing Heavy Mallet, Stone Fist, Stone Mallet, Stone Fist. Later you'll be doing Seismic Smash, Stone Mallet, Heavy Mallet, Stone Mallet. There will be a small gap when the FF proc doesn't go off, but not much to be done there. 79% S/L resistances will be capped with a second ATO proc and Barrier. Nothing much to be done for E/N which has always been Bio's weakness. It will still go up by another another 20% between ATOs and Barrier though. (Near) 40% defenses will be softcapped when you hit Barrier. For 90% of the game you won't even bother using Barrier because you'll be using Ablative on cooldown (no pointing saving it). Skimped on endurance recovery because you have DNA Siphon. Remember if you use it on corpses you get Recovery and Regen, and if used on living it gives HP and endurance. So it's versatile and with the recharge it's up for nearly every spawn. The build should be decently sturdy with all the knockdowns going on and the FF procs accelerating the return of Ablative and DNA Siphon.

Correct. Two stacks are easy to both obtain and maintain. And if taking Barrier then that accounts for another 5% as well. I personally aim my resistances to 77% ish with one stack (which is how Mids shows). Another 6.7% from a second stack and 5% from Barrier finish covering it up. 76% isn't bad either since the Scaling Resist IO gives 1% more at 90% HP.

HC devs have been pretty close lipped about this, so don't expect much. They aren't accepting help either. There used to be a a thread for people offering their their help and their CV but I can't find it which suggests it may have been removed altogether.

As someone who did a Brute version of the Tanker Brunker build I have to say so many sacrifices were made to just squeak by, and even so there is a massive 30% less negative/energy resists compared to the Tanker build. But it does do a bit more damage on all attacks compared to the Tanker build. But the downsides (It's martial arts and not Rad) is no AoE until 26-28. Rad melee at least avoids this.

It's true that the MA variant suffers from the AoE angle, but ultimately it manages to pull next to the same (or better?) numbers than the Claws both in ST and AoE. It's just how the testing turned out. But then on top of having the same (or slightly better) numbers it also boasts of the full defense kit. This is mostly because of the quickness of Dragon Tail (1.87 VS 2.5) and the Force Feedback proc. While the numbers are smaller since DT hits like a noddle (I could never play MA alone) it churns out more Burns-per-minute which evens it out. This doesn't even include how DT offers soft CC and how its recharge is sped by its own the FF proc, or how it speeds up Consume and Healing Flames in the process. The best way to test is do something like clearing a farm map, time it, then do it with Claws. Spin hits for twice the damage of DT, and yet the times end being similar. That's why I advertise MA since as you've noticed we can plow through things that makes other tanks leery such as Carnies or CoT. That said Claws is super solid and suffers only for the lack of burst that BU + Gaussian allows. As for Burn it is chicanery involving pseudo pets. As you can see the animation and recharge time means the procs have a good chance of going off, but the little orange numbers that come after Burn's use is from a summoned pseudo pet. That pseudo pet has a second chance of activating the procs. It's a much lower chance than the initial hit, but its there, and it's visible as it takes chunks off low level mobs. A super procced out Burn is possible with two ACC/DM Hamis and then quadruple procs. This is because Burn has a negligible five endurance cost and once everything is in place even without recharge slotted in it only recharges three seconds slower than a regularly slotted Burn. The quadruple proc makes for mini nuclear explosions thanks to the row of 90% chance procs who then get the pseudo pet's chance to go off a second time. But ultimately those three seconds add up and in tests clearing a map I had the same results with just two procs as the current slotting goes. Since I exemplar a lot and at times lose many bonuses I preferred the full slotting for the raw stats.

Work, yes, it will, no reason why not. In AoE toggles its iffy and I would not recommend it. But the downside of placing it in an AoE is that you're not using those in single target scenarios which is why I would suggest finding a way to place it somewhere you would use in either case.

This part of the forum is thick with 'this doesn't bother ME, so it's not a problem. Also, the Devs Time Is Precious So No' (as if they had any sort of say on what the devs do or do not...). That said I believe you are wanting only the benefits without any of the drawbacks. While an extreme example it is not too unlike wanting the benefits of a defensive T9 but not the downside (the crash). It's an extreme example, but, I think fitting. Wanting the -fly is no different from wanting Super-Speed's super speed but asking to have it able to jump too so it can avoid walls. When you take EvM you choose to take the speed in order to get the -fly resist, which at some point you decide whether one is worth the other or not, just like we do with most choices (I'd love to have Fold Space in every character, but I'm -not- taking Teleport as my travel power, thankyouverymuch). That said I'm just giving my two cents, the devs will obviously do it or not as they see fit. More options never hurt.

All is good, you can hardly mess things. Even Fire Armor which is considered squishy solos +4x8 ITFs as seen a post or two under this one. If you're spoiled for choice and not sure what or how to build just copy something until you get your bearings.

Pre-emptive 'fun would be defense at 40%'. Ok, now he won't post it here since it's been said. Carry on.

As the (self-proclaimed) Fire Armor guru I whole heartedly approve of this thread. We will follow your career with much interest. On a more serious note I see nothing that warrants corrections, build's top notch. I would personally change the slotting to have two damage procs in Burn since it makes the skill bursty, or scrounge slots to finish beefing Gloom, or lower resistances a tad for the second ATO stack to finish capping them since it is so easy and quick to obtain, but it's almost cosmetic and as you've proved by testing it the build's standing firm. Now it is just you playing it and refining. SS is singularly well suited for the kill-them-first-before-they-kill-us with the massive burst that is double stacked Rage and KD Blow. Squishy fire armor indeed!

Removing Taunt would be fine if the game behaved a bit more mainstream. Mobs we fight we fight until they die. Instead mobs invariably at 20-30% decide to leg it. All mobs. Every mobs. Even robots of psionic constructs, or ghosts. This is not a case of Scrappers stealing agro from a Tanker or if a Blaster and a Scrapper both hit the same mob it will choose the Scrapper. It is a case of the flee code being extremely, extremely, obnoxious. It adds very little to the experience and in the end it pushes the ATs with agro to the front when soloing and everything else has to bear with enemies sprinting away. But, you say, it's logical. They are running for their life! Well, sure, but after 20-30 seconds they return in dribbles. Lets make up our minds here. Either they are running for their lives and they just huddle to the nearest pack of mobs, or they are running for a bit and then returning later because... the brief sprint activated serotonin and they feel optimistic that they can take the guy who downed all its friends. So we can ignore them and move to the next group, and then if it's a kill all we need to back track and find that one or two mobs who ran off now standing where they were before, or we need to chase them. Or we play something with agro. For all of it's many faults WoW handles it better. Pretty much the only enemies that flee are humanoids. Everything else from animals to constructs will fight to the bitter end. Since it is not about fighting 7-10 enemies at a time it is fine that the single humanoid enemy we are fighting decides to leg it since we just keep on hitting it. But in CoH we have a dozen enemies and we might have half that who decides to run in all directions. While this is a bit of a tangent what I am trying to bring to bear is that more ATs wanting taunt is a symptom. The disease is the flee code.