Sovera

The effort at making pool powers useless makes so people do not pick them because they are useless. Manpower, code hours, etc, all gone to waste. I can imagine the statistics and devs sipping coffee as they look over them: Dev1: 'Hmm, 20% of the players were using RoP. It dropped to 5%.' Dev2: 'Our job is done.'

This is something I cooked up but never really played. There are sacrifices made (nearly no -recharge protection) in order to push defense and above all energy resistance. I don't necessarily agree with my own choices 😄 Such as having more AoE in the form of Fences and Lightning Ball instead of Focused Accuracy for the -toHit debuff protection and Physical Perfection. But you get the gist of the idea with the 40% defense to melee, ranged, and AoE, as well as capped resistances to everything except toxic and fire/cold with two stacks of the ATO (14%) plus Barrier's 5% resistance and defense (making 45% to defense). You can pick things apart for your own build and see what ideas you wish to keep.

Some people can bear Eviscerate and use it. I don't remember seeing it did not get the boost but as I don't use nor intended to using I may have skimmed the patch notes. Spin does get the extra radius and Shockwave was excluded, yeah. Not even close about Spin and Burn, sorry. But Spin does recharge a fair bit faster. IF you can squeeze in Shockwave you can make everything faster thanks to the FF proc. Because of Burn and because Shockwave is kinda expensive in endurance I found I didn't mind filling the gaps with ST attacks instead. Minions and alieuts are going to melt from Burn and Spin anyway, and then we have the bosses needing to be killed. So I focus on them while spamming Spin and Burn. They will still die before the boss since both AoEs are pretty damn strong.

Don't get me started. Duoed Yin with the same person I did it on the Scrapper and we shaved 20 minutes off it 😄 Okay, what? Focus comes up at 28, how is this a late bloomer. Just substitute it for Swipe if exemplaring lower than 23. It also only has Shockwave at 38 (33 if exemplared) but Spin is the meat and potatoes of the set where Shockwave does... okay damage, but is more of a nice turbo booster and CC spam. I can honestly say I never considered Claws as a late bloomer. Lets look at Katana whose only skills worth using come at 35 and 38 for a Tanker. What is someone even meant to use lower than 30? DA and a T2? I'm currently leveling StJ and it shaky as well. Rib Cracker comes early at 20 and is all well and good (gorgeous animation too) but then we tickle mobs with the T1 and T2 until 35 and 38. No, hard disagree on Claws.

I'm not shy to say we can do most of everything in the game with Fire Armor. On the caveat we accept that incarnates exist and Barrier is a panic button that saves a life. In a world without Barrier I would be much more hard pressed to sing the praises of FA but still inspirations would be there if need be. My own point of view is that if we kill things they don't hurt us back. I have done more durable but that killed more slowly and I died as much on them as on the FA because things lived longer. Dark Armor/Claws, for example, is pretty durable. Dark Regen can be brought down under 10 seconds. Combined with Claws KD in Shockwave you can get a breather for Dark Regen to come back up. But if I had to pick I would say Radiation Armor/Claws. It has more bells, more whistles, more debuff protection. That said I'm definitely on Fire Armor's side. You can cap most of your resistances and soft cap S/L defenses, and Burn does -things- to my libido. As low as Positron you can be melting packs with Burn and Spin.

I had a sudden harkening back to the days of 'moderate damage' and 'superior damage' and no numbers until the playerbase united and got those numbers by themselves.

It takes literally 2 minutes by the clock to put a base together and then it lasts for months until the next wipe, but I made one for me and others can use it if they want: /enterbasefrompasscode TEST-7

This is the build I intend to use. Because of Spinning Strike's awkward 'targeted AoE' instead of 'melee AoE' I had to change things around and skimp here and there. I'm not sure how you managed to level without an AoE 😛

I just want to say that I wanted a break and tried several Scrappers these past days. Caveat: none were leveled to 50. - EM/Shield. Went into it wanting Shield's DDR. Didn't have significant amounts of it in the low levels. - DM/EA. DDR scales with slotting, so only 31%-ish by Posi 1. Defense was being stripped. Got bored by Citadel but more because of DM than EA. - EM/Bio. Balls to the wall damage search. But so so very squishy (early levels, not enough slotting to go around). - Kat/Rad. I know this combo is very good. Katana gets 45% defense to Slash/Melee out of the box and Rad has lots of goodies including Radiation Therapy. But the damage was terrible. Leveling with just a T1 and DA was frustrating. By Yin I had Soaring Dragon and it helped but I was already bored. The ability to chain cone, PbAoE, cone, was of little help with so low damage. I know the damage takes off once I could do DA, Soaring, Golden, but couldn't stomach the idea of exemplaring and returning to this. - EM/Rad. Best of both worlds. Not as squishy as Bio. Not as low damage as Katana. Was actually pretty decent. Nice fat crits and TF hitting hard with two damage procs and chaining cone, PbAoE, cone, was nice to clear packs. But, in the end I duoed Yin and.. it was... so slow... One hour and ten minutes. I usually solo it on my Fire Armors on the 50 minute mark since Freaks are annoying with the ressurects and heals. That was my last Scrapper. None appealed, all were squishy, damage was good but not great. Nice burst, but the Yin showed it was not sustained. This would change later with more slots and etc, but just, no. So I returned to Tankers and made one of the last combos I had not yet done: Fire/StJ. StJ has a reputation for terribad AoE, but oh hey, izzat you Burn? Also the Tanker inherent increases Spinning Strike's radius by 50% which helps fixing the AoE problem StJ has on other ATs. Oh god.. It's so good to be back. StJ does not get their PbAoE so I'm just using Burn for AoE. But it does have Build-Up and Build-Up makes up for that loss. It's so good to be back. Melting a pack of enemies is orgasmic after these past days. StJ also has very good animations (I could live off Rib Cracker alone) and an easy early rotation. I'm always pressing buttons which is very nice. In the early levels Rib Cracker, Initial Strike, Heavy Blow, Initial Strike keeps me busy instead of waiting for things to recharge. I don't need to, but I've taken Heavy Blow because of the FF proc I can slot into it. My next ST with an FF proc comes only at 38 so for leveling and exemplaring purposes I am going to keep it. Once at 38 the rotation will fit in beautifully with Burn helping with Crushing Uppercut's awkward recharge. By then things will be Rib Cracker (1.6 animation), Shin Breaker (1.6 animation) Rib Cracker (1.6). Crushing Uppercut recharges in 7.7. So 1.6 + 1.6 + 1.6 = 4.8. There is a hole. But, we have Burn. So 4.8 + 2.3 = 7.1 and that leaves half a second-ish. Burn recharges in 7.7 and the same applies. 4.8 + 2.4 from Crushing Uppercut makes 7.2. That means I will be able to: Build-up (get three combo points), hit Burn (BU + Gaussian), Crushing Uppercut a boss (Bu + Gaussian + 3 combo points) and then start on the above rotation. Substitute Crushing for Spinning Strike in AoE scenarios. The hole in the rotation has always been a problem for me. I've done tricks like using Spinning Strike to fill it but they were not just not optimal but forcing piano play. CoH is not a piano play sort of game to be honest. Overall StJ is behaving well but I have only just begun leveling it. Despite the lack of slots things are dying faster than I expected. Perhaps the sure -10% res from Rib Cracker is helping there. I expect the same sort of Burn pushing behavior MA does thanks to the FF proc in Spinning Strike. It does not get the defense boost though. According to Mids Crushing Uppercut's facility with procs (two purple damage procs which even with near ED recharge are still at 89% to go off. Even the non purple ones) is what lets StJ push ahead of MA, but not by much by Mids' numbers. Using the ubiquitous pylon testing lets StJ push ahead thanks to the baked in -10% res but I will rather test the set against an AV and report my findings. For now I'll keep on leveling it and say more in the future.

You don't need to build specifically for the ITF. My 'squishy' Fire Armor tanks the ITF all the time. Straight on, face first.

You don't find many because the combo is not particularly good for the objective. There is a Farm Fresh guide over the guide section and they cover many different builds.

If we could convince the devs to make one of the color choices in the palette be 'invisible' it would solve all the problems everywhere and no more requests for minimal FX since we could carefully tailor all our auras. Is this one too obtrusive (all the Adaptations in Bio Armor for example)? Color it 'invisible'. Does this power have a too loud effect and we don't like to be constantly spewing vapor (Beta Decay, Irradiated Ground)? Color it 'invisible'.

Yes. As I said there is a little known effect of ED that once exemplared the maximum non boosted value of an IO takes over. If it is 42% then 42% comes into play instead of the 53%. Even at max level the gains are so minimal but people do it for bragging or under the erroneous assumption they are shaving a lot. The real use of boosters (with the tax of losing set bonuses) is that it allows to save a few slots here and there. Two slots in Hasten instead of three, etc. And I'm deep into build making when I say this. Regardless despite being unhappy the devs have not made noises to remove them, and on the contrary helped with the use (kudos btw, it is welcomed).

The stacking effect for the endurance cost is quite brilliant IMO. Like most things such as Fly being considered OP despite everyone able to buy a jetpack for 5k the cost of Teleport is a relic from the past. There is no travel power that sucks so much endurance that it may simply turn off. The fact Teleport is clunky as heck is enough of a downside by itself without the need to artificially add another just because 'fastest travel power'. If in a straight line. And in open air.

Nothing will be as good as the first mission of Pandora. Set it to -1x8, no bosses, and you have 25-ish fake nemesis spawning as -1 lieutenants that can be killed in two hits. Ignore the other enemmies and run around finding fake nemesis. Once the map is clear just log off and back and the mission will reset for another 25-ish fake nemesis.

We accept mule powers because we have been indoctrinated into it. Most of the time the T1 and Punch is not even serving as a mule (and yes, some people take Kick and put a FF proc in it, but I'm just 🙂 Good luck hitting anything with zero accuracy). Sometimes they do serve as mules which makes the point they are not useless and would have been picked. But this was attempted back on live and it did not work, and then re-attempted recently and it did not work either. With all the copies of CoH's code around someone brave could try to untangle things and then offer the solution to the devs.

I give up.

Taking a break is good. I've taken two since CoH HC returned. And it sounds like you need it too since you are in such a state that numbers are unable to break through, and explanations are hitting a wall. Have a good break, Arthur.

No, they don't. The improvement is minimal. I have screenshots somewhere of a +5 purple set exemplared down to Positron part one and the same power with a non boosted purple. But instead of talking it's better to show. So, as seen here. One second shaved of recharge with full +5. 5 points of damage with full +5 0.12 endurance shaved with full +5.

There is minimal improvement in the stats. A lot of boosting is done by people without a clue. They will happily brag about their '+5 all IO boosted build' when really, what? Compare a five slotted purple set and the same set +5. Exemplar down to Posi 1 and compare the same set fully +5 and not. The difference in stats is pretty minimal since there is a cap in place. That's why it hurts my Hasten's recharge when I exemplar down. For example at 50 my two +5 recharge IOs in Hasten gives 53% which allows me to reach the ED cap with just two slots, but once I exemplar down this value is immediately cut to the cap of 42%. That's why three level 25 IOs in Hasten would give me 95% to recharge from level 22 to level 50, but my two +5 recharge in Hasten leave me at 75% at level 25. Regardless, this is just my opinion on the subject and if the devs hate them they hate them. I'm just glad I can skimp on a few slots here and there. As America's Angel said we have more build diversity with them.

I see boosters as such a non entity I'm surprised to hear the devs hate them. I save one slot in Hasten/Fiery Embrace with them at the cost of hurting my recharge once exemplared. I +5 things here and there like the slots in Assault from Leadership and my one non proc slot in Stamina. I may +5 the damage/endurance purple to increase endurance reduction a bit more. Anything else is a non thing since boosted IOs break bonuses once exemplared.

You should finish read the last pages instead of skimming. The argument was made regarding relative speeds. Just because old speed is inferior to new speed does not mean new speed is not inferior to all the other speeds since they too were buffed. But this argument is, it was made, discussed, practical testing has been done, and posted, and there is no need to ignite it once more. As someone who was on the same side as you at the start of this I'm starting to regarding you as a normal feminist regards the vitriolic ones on Twitter. Your arguments make less and less sense and are based on a lot of 'feels', and 'annoyances', and aren't based on anything resembling tangible problems. 'Too much speed' with EM is suddenly a problem because turning it off while in combat is suddenly 'micromanagement' of toggles. The plethora of uses EM brings as a one slot wonder is 'too much and silly'. What in the world is this where something useful that allows to skip wasting slots is being argued stridently? I am going to reiterate one last time before I give up. I cannot make this any more clear. Yes you can hit your old speed cap with your old slotting. Your old speed was 72mph capped. You were unable to go faster than this. It involved using Fly + AB = two toggles. You now reach 87mph with Fly + EM = two toggles.

I'm interested in this. How do we load these demorecords to reconstruct the base once in the game?

It's not by posting on a forum that things will change. I lead. I lead all the time. I did my early stint posting a hopeful '<AT> looking for work!' and then wait twenty minutes posting and no one recruiting me. After a week of this I said screw it. I'll lead. Spend twenty minutes asking to be recruited and it not happening or spend 5 minutes forming a team and doing what I wanted to do. The math is obvious. I've done so much leveling via TFs and using the same names (if there if someone with a v2 or v3 in their name there is a good chance it's me having rolled a different alt. I can't be bothered coming up with a new name, theme and costume for alts so I just load the costume and add a v2 to the name. There was a time I was on Sovera v32 😄 ) that people would recognize me and mention how they had joined one of my TFs. But though I was not like Veracor with a background of introversion I still had the whole 'I've not played this game for well over ten years and don't really have a clue' and had to go through the phase of asking how to start Posi part 2, or not knowing where to go next on a Numina hunt (until it was compiled and now I just post the hunts after the Perez park mission). Rewards. You're not doing Yin on x8 in 20 minutes. It takes me about 50 minutes at best to solo it because Freaks are a pain between heals and ressurects. If you're just doing it for the merits or for the accolade then hey, sure, but the XP between +1x1 and +1x8 is tremendous.

When I return to it. I usually drop a character and play something else. Got a bit boring of having no one to play with so I got struck with altitis. Tried several characters and they all felt squishy or low damage. Not the EM/Bio scrapper, that one hits hard. Plenty of cannon there. But plenty of glass as well. Dropped it, stripped it of IOs. Made two different characters, compared my experience. Re-respeced the EM/Bio and re-slotted it and I'm tentatively re-leveling it again. ...but the experience just made me feel how my Fire/MA baby is such a gem with the early big damage and tough enough. I actually restrain myself and don't use BU/FE in lower teams so they get a chance to play too.