Sovera

I don't want to put too much of a fine point in it, but, considering the problems pets get mostly arrive in the form of the big level shift that steals damage and durability, bragging about a +1 solo ITF is a bit eh. I have stopped playing MMs a long while back when softcapped defense only meant they survived longer but would suddenly be vaporized. If the poor things got agro they just disappeared. Not ALL of them. But then there's what others in this thread have mentioned. Welp, the Arsonist is dead, welp. I'm not going to waste my summon +upgrade just for one. Keep playing, another one dies. Ok, I'll summon now. Summon, upgrade. Resume playing. Argh, now another one died. The fact is, saying that the upgrade powers are a downgrade and better not used for some of the minions tier is NOT A SOLUTION! It is a PROBLEM that UPGRADING a minion makes it perform WORSE. Clever ruses like not upgrading are contrary to the way the game is intended to be played. The fact is that the team will have to give MMs a pass so that upgrades are indeed upgrades. Now the fact the upgrades are not automatic also means the MMs get screwed in a myriad ways when exemplaring. They get fewer minions at certain cut points, and those pets don't get powers from the upgrades. It's a double whammy. Other ATs simply don't get access to their powers exemplaring, but MMs don't get access to their powers AND become objectively weaker on top of that.

You can solve that last problem with a keybind that summons them at your feet. /bind lshift+1 powexec_location forward:3 little bots /bind lshift+2 powexec_location forward:3 heal bots /bind lshift+3 powexec_location forward:3 big bot Change to the actual names of the pets and whatever keybind you'd like to use than left shift + number. If someone happened to read my posts during the Tanker patch they would know I advocated for some sort of reverse KB PbAoE replacing Taunt. For all purposes Fold Space. So, people might think I would be all over Fold Space since it is very much what I'd like? No. Never picked it. Have no intentions of picking it up. Having to use the clunky Teleport who is useless for anything but crossing zones is a hard no and then I need to pick two useless powers. Hard no. For those who like Combat Teleport and Teleport kudos to you though, I watch your use of Fold Space with -deep- envy. Trust me.

You don't pick AB. It comes for free when you pick Fly. You may decide not to use it though and that's your prerogative.

Piecemeal best... meal? *zoombie noises*

If you feel like trying something dumb you can either go with EM/Dark and keep on stunning everything via AoEs + ST + Oppressive Gloom, or go Ice/Dark and dropping an Ice Patch (soon to be 1.5 seconds instead of 3.4) keeping you safe while you're hurting things. While Ice is not super in the ST Frost alone carries it. I frankly prefer not to take Frozen Aura since it detracts from Frost, but heck, I take Frozen Aura anyway (even though I don't like using it, and sometimes don't).

It's been explained. It uses a pseudo pet. If you'd slot the ATO there then the pseudo pet would be the one getting the buff. So it cannot be done. Just be happy you get Irradiated Ground, it's the one thing that makes me pick Rad Melee every few months before I drop it with a shudder at the rest of the set's animation's and their times.

I'll be honest and say not to hurt yourself. It's not particularly good at AoE despite the number of AoEs it boasts of, and the single target is pretty damn subpar. People just tend to look at all the AoEs and drool, but in practice it's better to have fewer but better ones, I.E Claws/Bio is an absolute blender in AoE while also boasting of amazing ST.

The problem I see with these arguments usually lays that 'my X is super survivable' does not say against what. Heck, Scrappers are survivable. Throwing ourselves at a LGTF is not exactly difficult. It's all bland energy, smash, and some small lethal from those few dribbles that do sword attacks. Without debuffs what is dangerous about it? Arachnos aren't particularly hard if not getting blinded (Focused Accuracy is a near have-to-pick) or recovery debuffed. But they suffer from being a varied faction. Just a few doing hard debuffs is not complicated to deal with if the rest are doing bland attacks. Like Carnies. Only some do psi, the rest are basic fire, smash, etc. As long as having high enough defense to avoid their death and/or recovery debuff protection they are not difficult. On the other hand the... seers, I think they are, are all psi, and the way they ignore defense they don't seem to be tagged as Ranged so without specific psi defenses they will hurt, bad, especially when we get a full spawn of them unleashing the alpha. Where problems come is anything that debuffs. Cimerora, most of DA, what ever other faction like the bots we find in Tina's arc that also do -defense. That stuff will eat through most 'tough' characters. Dark Armor is propped up heavily by Dark Regen, Bio by Ablative, but even Dark Regen on a 15 second timer is NOT enough to survive jumping into a Cimerora pack of +4x8 enemies debuffing defense deep into the negatives. 15 seconds just won't recharge fast enough. That's mostly my reaction to 'oh yeah, Bio is super tough'. Against what? Council? Rikti? My experience with it is surviving the easy content and then scampering against debuffers to let the debuffs expire before coming back to kill the rest. On a Tanker with bigger numbers and a solid damage secondary I can see Ablative propping things up until most things are dead as long as the minions are swiftly dealt with. But I'm not sure how it deals with things like the cyst packs who both strip defense and then hit at a Bio's weak energy/negative resists. Oppressive Gloom neutering minions helps. Being in a full team that unleashes a flood of AoEs helps. Staggering Judgements helps. Playing in a team reduces the risk in 70% since everything dies in seconds.

Nayreia best reia.

Something like this I guess. 40% defense to most, use Barrier to get the last 5%. Smashing and Lethal resistances are near capped with one enemy in range, two stacks of the Tanker ATO and Barrier's 5%. You'll want to do something like Devastating Blow, Bone Smasher, Radiation Siphon, Bone Smasher. Focused accuracy is mostly a mule but also to deal with the end game annoying mobs who do blinds and -tohit debuffs. You don't need to have it toggled on all the time but endurance shouldn't be a problem with DNA Siphon.

KM's low key strength is in how you can slot a Force Feedback proc in its AoE. In AoE situations this is constantly going off which speeds the whole build. But neither KM itself nor DA really have anything worth speeding (except Burst itself) with Dark Regen already in a very low timer (though it would reach some absurd 10-11 seconds or so Dark Regen is already at a decent 13-14 seconds to begin with). Burst's AoE KD is also some easy soft mitigation with the mobs bouncing off their butts. KM's damage is low key decent with a pretty darn heavy proc-based approach to make up for this (I actually have a Fire Armor/KM build in my signature you can pick apart for that purpose) to make up for this. I remember getting some 3:30 pylon times which is 30 seconds worse than my current FA/MA, but it also only had one -res proc where MA had two. I've moved on from -res procs due to not finding them useful for play outside of pylon tests and I don't know how both would compare in terms of damage without that advantage but we can see it's close. KM also primes for fast animations outside of Burst. The idea is to stick with the T1, T2 and T3 since the T9 has an absurdly long animation time. The rotation was, if I remember correctly, T3, T1, T2, T1. Repeat. The fast animations are, IMO, more pleasant since if we whiff it doesn't hurt as much. On the other hand we are speed maniacs to kill something. It exemplars better with all attacks available soon, even though Burst is only for level 28. Perhaps you can squeeze in Repulsing Torrent and with an Overwhelming Power slotted in you'll have two AoEs you can spam and keep mobs on their butts. Repulsing Torrent has a pretty narrow 45 angle though, and even with the Tanker inherent it will only go to 60-ish. It's too narrow for me so I didn't take it, but I had Burn to lean on. EM is the current best ST set we get. Without -res procs my current downs a pylon in about 4 minutes (3 with) and EM did it in 3:15 without -res procs. But, it also has a pretty good interaction with Dark Armor in that the stuns peppered though EM (all the attacks carry a chance for it, including 30% in the AoE) stack with DA's Oppressive Gloom stun. So you can jump into the fray and have a good chance to be surrounded by stumbling mobs as they get repeatedly stunned by AoE and ST. ST alone is enough to make even AVs stumble drunkenly when outside of purple triangles, and Oppressive + Whirling has enough to straight off stun a boss as well (not reliably since only 30% chance for a stun in Whirling, but math backs up that it is pretty damn good mitigation). EM's AoE is pretty poor if you can't fit both PbAoE and cone. Just Whirling is an exercise in frustration to whittle down +1 mobs, but I've reached a point I can't play anything than Fire Armor to press a button and melt half a spawn so take it with a grain of salt. The cone has a huge 120 angle making it a lot more appealing to fit into the build. It also carries a 20% chance for stun, so, again, Whirling = chance for stun, Power clash = chance for stun, Oppressive Gloom I'm not sure if it's a chance or an automatic thing, though by itself it will only work on minions. EM has some long animation in TF but the rest is fine. The rotation I was using is Total Focus, Bone Smasher, Energy Transfer, Barrage (Energy Punch would be better but I could only fit it at level 30 which defeats the purpose), Bone Smasher. Repeat. That said DA doesn't hugely need mitigation when it heals to full on two mobs so both secondaries are down to what you want.

With AB on: With AB off: I don't have Swift slotted.

No Bopper, apologies but you may be misremembering. Looking at my own character at level 50 power details using just Fly the speed is hardcapped at 58mph without any (direct) slotting (I have the usual little speed increases incidentally found in sets, not something I worked for) or gimmicks involved. Fly + AB without any (direct) slotting puts it at 72.95mph. The jump pack caps it at 87mph.

Fly alone does not make us faster than old fly + AB (unless you're thinking of new Fly slotted up, but who has spare slots for that anyway?). Old Fly + AB = 72.95 New Fly alone = 61.49 Fly + Defensive maneuvers = 87-ish

The new Afterburner will detoggle (and not incur a cooldown) when zoning. I sort of doubt it is on purpose albeit it's not unwelcome.

I also don't much see the point of Defensive Maneuvers. It's way way way too expensive for what it does. 0.52 for knockback resistance (someone correct me if wrong but all this does is diminish the distance we are knocked back, but since we are flying we are not knocked back, we just do a lil somersault in the air, so what does knockback resistance actually do in this scenario?), a bit more speed, and defense that disappears if in combat. What is the use of this if I can use Fly combined with Hover for 0.46, get more speed, lose the defense but what is the point of defense if not fighting, and the knockback resistance. Perhaps if it was knockback -defense- which -prevents- knockbacks, yes, but at 0.56, booyah. It would need to have a pretty damn good magnitude to compensate the cost (again, who has the slots to faff around with endurance reduction on a niche power?). I'm happy to still have my LotG mule choice since i wouldn't have the pool choice to pick other lotG mules, but the way it is built now it is just that. a mule, for no purpose in actual game. Edit: Booper answered above of the use that knockback resistance has when combined with KB protection. On a Tanker it turns 4 KB protection into 8. Still, not all builds can afford another 0.52 toggle (and most builds already have a near full tray of toggles to begin with).

Detoggle Hover when you have Fly on? It's how it works currently. If need a simple bind allows to alternate Fly and Hover.

Regardless the 30 second duration of Afterburner is not welcomed. None of the other power has it why does Fly need a one minute cooldown extra speed buff? it's already moving 20kmh slower than SS even with it. I say remove it, bake Fly to be under the speed of others if we insist in that outdated view it must be slower because it's so superior to other travel powers. From what I see people choose their travel powers for theme, not because of perceived 'betterness' that the old devs stated such as Fly having 3D movement, nowadays a thing that near free jetpacks offer to everyone anyway. So fine, keep Fly the slowest of all travel powers but drop the one minute buff angle. I'm also not sure who has the spare slots to faff around boosting movement speed when 90% of the game is spent in a mission and only 10% moving between them.

You have a good point. The effort in making Pool powers unappealing managed it so well that they could just as well be deleted from the game. The opportunity to have Pool powers fill up a deficiency in a build is not present. Are we leveling something with bad attacks? Lets use a pool power to make up for it. Are we leveling a build with bad or poor AoE? Lets use a pool power to make up for that lack. Instead there is an effort at creating things (I'm looking at you, Experimentation), tweaking, code hours spent, adding to the game, and thanks to the effort at making them useless no one uses them.

*vibrates*

I wanted to branch out a bit from Tankers so tried a few different things. I mostly wanted something with DDR. Rad Melee/Shield was too annoying with the slow animations and the DDR was being stripped in the low levels so I dropped it. I then made this. 51% DDR, medium resistances (S/L capped with Barrier which I intended to take for a panic button), softcapped defenses (even negative). Turns out the DDR is scaled by level (or effectiveness of slotted defense) so it only had 31% in the low levels and was being stripped by CoT but not as badly as something without any. Lack of endurance recovery is spackled over by Recovery Serums until Energize comes into play. I do not advocate using it for endurance purposes instead of a heal, but, between softcapped defenses (with amplifiers) by level 32-ish and Siphon Life that is the use I have been giving it until Energy Drain opens up. Focused Accuracy is taken just to avoid annoyances with blinds and ToHit debuffing but there is no reason to use it otherwise. Though with it turned on it makes a nice list of debuff protection. An AoE rotation of ToF, Shadow Maul, ToF, Siphon Life (recover HP and ATO proc) can be done forever and it cleans up packs decently between the crits and with two damage procs and Soul Drain to help. When taking a lot of damage ToF, SM, SL can also be done without pauses. The damage is... okay? Crits are noticeable and I have aimed at the old chainsaw rotation of Siphon Life, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch, which works pretty decently. I soloed Posi 1 - 2 and Yin, and the AVs were whittled faster than on my Tankers. Which is nice when we consider it was done on a half slotted build. I am just feeling a bit uninspired. Or as a friend said, frankly spoiled by Fire Armor and Burn. Dropping Burn in the low levels and half a spawn dies feels a lot better than whittling things down with ToF and SM. It just feels like everything lives too long. Anyway, it looks like a decent build so I'll drop it here if others are looking for something similar.

Calling Soul Drain near useless is a bit much. Regular BU is 100% damage. SD with one mob is 60%. It does require having at least 4 mobs in range to give as much as regular BU but if hitting more than four then it's a benefit. ... that said it's clunky. 10y radius isn't much and it is not realistic to hit ten mobs with it, teams will kill the enemies before SD can go off, and 2.5 seconds is way too long. People can of course do what they want to do. But skipping a 1.2 animation that gives 100% damage (180% with Gaussian) and makes for a perfect opener coupled with one or two AoEs to mow down half a spawn, is a tough logic to follow. I'd worry more about it if the stacks were particularly useful. 20% endurance reduction is nice, sure, but what does it really add in a world that has insps and Recovery Serums, plus whatever endurance recovery a secondary brings? 25% recharge is nice as well, but, with the fast attacks SM is not exactly having to wait out gaps. The rotation is supposed to be something like Savage Strike, Vicious Slash, Savage Strike, and then Maiming Slash, or even avoid it having another attack from a pool or secondary. Even in the very low levels this is not onerous. Furthermore when engaged in pure ST the stacks are not spent at all since Hemorrhage is not taken. Thanks to early mistakes we thought Blood Frenzy gave a damage buff and then yes, for 25% extra damage we'd contort to avoid spending the stacks. But as long as there are no gaps and endurance does not reach zero Blood Frenzy as is can be there or not be there and none will be the wiser.

I mentioned this to someone else yesterday. On one hand I had someone vociferously rejecting the idea that Claws on a Scrapper was a good AoE set because 'it only had one AoE' as opposed to Spines or Elec. Saying and showing that Shockwave takes the KB>KD IO and that Claws can chain those two AoEs with only Follow-up for infinity, effectively turning it into a blender, did not make them change their mind. On the other I very recently leveled a Fire/Elec Melee character. Thunderstrike is slow but heavy AoE damage (better on a Tanker because it makes the small 7y AoE wider), Chain Induction bounces around, Lightning Rod kills minions and hurts all around every 26-ish seconds. So, obviously it must be great in AoE, right? Well, no, it has the same farm map killing test times than Fire Armor paired with humble Martial Arts with its single low damage fast animation Dragon Tail. -And- it has execrable single target damage. To not derail I put my Fire/MA Tanker through the paces. No incarnates clicked, no inspirations, +4x8 with bosses: - 6:20 - 6:12 - 5:58 - 6:01 - 5:57 Pylon times of 3 minutes (with -res procs slotted which I did not use here). Interesting how the character feels pretty strong but still has low Tanker damage when we compare to Scrapper times.

Decided to try a Fire/Elec Melee. To my surprise it actually leveled pretty well. Having Build-up available at level 20 allowed to get through Posi 1 and 2 at 0x8 without a big hassle since BU + Gaussian is a pack killer. It is particularly welcomed in the parts with early Circle of Thorns since BU (and Gaussian) is great at punching through the mage shield and the -accuracy the ghosts stack which can mean the death of a soloer once we are unable to strike back. The ST was nothing much since I leveled with the T1 and the T2, but Burn saved the day as it does. Once Chain Induction was obtained the extra punch was also noticeable and packs melted at a good clip. The AoE was quite alright to be honest. Thunderstrike is too lenghty for what it does but the Tanker buff makes that AoE a lot wider than it is with other ATs. The gimmick of stealing endurance from enemies did noticeably sap them, but not enough to be of actual sapping use. It did alleviate endurance concerns by a fair bit though even if not enough to overcome the sapping from Freaks. I don't particularly like Lightning Rod, but, it has value especially for a soloer. With a 60y range we can start outside of the enemies' agro and with BU + Gaussian buffing it minions tend to die straight away. This is welcomed since it limits the alpha (KD effect, killing part of the pack), and immediately followed by Chain Induction and Burn most things are dead. For a soloer this is, IMO, a pretty good combo because of this. The slower speed at which soloing happens allows BU + Shield Charge to be up for every happen. Not so in a team that will murder things at a great clip. In terms of actual damage per second this combo does not outdo the current champ. Unfortunately the long animations and lower ST damage plays against it making it so that doing a couple of clears of the farm map to calculate AoE killing speed left it in the same range as Martial Arts. ... Yep, one AoE only doing half the damage of Thunderstrike versus three AoEs in Thunderstrike + Chain Induction + Lightning Rod. But the blazing fast 1.8 animation of Dragon Tail + the FF proc + stronger ST damage did not let the loudly proclaimed 'AoE set' get ahead. They both did it in around six and a half minutes. Now, IMPORTANT, this is literally damage per second. CoH is not a damage per second game. It's a burst game. Kill things, run to next pack, kill those. Also the longer something lives the more time it has to hurt back. A fighting that starts outside agro range and neutralizes the alpha while killing most of the pack before they retaliate is very good for anything that is dangerous. if sticking to easy game like Council then this advantage will not be felt. Unfortunately the ST is pretty poor. Just like playing Elec Melee with a Stalker so does Fire Armor help, of course, and if comparing Elec Melee with a different primary it will be night and day. Burn and Fiery Embrace makes a big difference. So if having tried Elec Melee with a different AT or primary and having been disgusted by the low damage this combo will play a lot better. But downing a pylon still happened in near 6 minutes. This is because no -res procs were slotted. As per my previous posts I am no longer interested in slotting them. But I do have the Fire/Martial Arts runs done without -res procs and they were 4 minutes (3 minutes with). Two whole extra minutes showcases the low ST as befits making an attack rotation that uses a T1 and T2. Can't do amazing numbers with that. My ST rotation was Chain Induction, Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Charged Brawl. Overall I found this was a pretty nice combo to level with. Everything I soloed I did so easily. Packs melted and the lack of DPS was not felt when the burst killed things. Early BU allows to play like a demi god when Burn followed by Thunderstrike does nice things to the ego. I reduced a couple of slots from Endurance recovery to lean on the endurance stealing gimmick. I felt it worked alright since we have Consume. It took several minutes of fighting a pylon with Tough and Focused Accuracy toggled on to eventually be forced to use a Recovery Serum.

Toggles stop working if you are stunned, held, etc. But they will not detoggle. Offensive toggles (damage or debuffs) will detoggle though. On a blaster without CC protection I imagine anything will do a micro stun or disorient and off it goes.