Sovera

There have been quite a few changes since I posted this. Power levels were changed so things can be picked sooner, Fire Armor had a rework, Tankers no longer are forced to take their T1 power, etc. I will not bother going through the post changing everything to reflect the new changes and will just post the new build here and my thoughts: - The level changes were godly of course. Now we have Freezing Touch available as low as Synapse making the single target rotation available sooner. In the same vein getting a free power with Frozen Fists no longer being a forced pick and Frozen Aura becoming available at level 30 was enough to turn it from a mediocre power to a welcome addition to the arsenal and I endorse picking and using it as it is available as soon as Yin. - Fire Armor's rework made it a bit sturdier and some much needed QoL sprinkled here and there like with Consume no longer having a chance of missing, some regen in Temperature Control, but making Burn no longer useful for single target damage. That just means stick to ice powers for ST, but if having as little as two enemies in range then Burn is still a nice heavy punch as other than Freezing Touch no other power hits as hard as Burn, but the slow animation makes it a wash for ST with the changes. Considering it's low costs there is something to be said about using it anyway, but... - The slotting in Punch is expensive and not needed, it's just a bit of min-maxing for the slow resistance and a little bit of extra recovery. A much cheaper alternative is removing one slot, use four Kinetic Combat, then put the slot in Weave and put in a defense from Reactive Defenses. Same numbers in the end, but saving close to a 100 million inf. It's just not very important since 100 million inf is not hard to make and we can always take the Superior Blistering Cold and give them to an alt or sell them again. - I did not bother redoing the leveling build with the changes but I could if someone needs it. Tanker (Fire Ice).mbd Fire/Ice: the hidden gem. This combination came out on a lark since I had pretty much tested all I wished to test, but decided to give it an hesitant try only to be very pleasantly surprised. Ice Melee has always been one of those sets which are praised for being good but not standing out and it's understandable. Frost is a big thing and Freezing Touch is borderline Energy Transfer, and Ice Patch is a cute gimmick, but overall the set lacks something. Well, the pairing with Fire Armor plays like a dream. It is common to start the leveling and by level 20 to be Build-Up, Frost, Burn and only bosses (barely) still stand. Doing Synapse in particular is a pleasure at seeing those huge Clockwork packs of enemies simply melting. This is not something that Energy Melee, for example and amongst others, manages. Their AoE is mediocre and, yes, to be used since it's there and we are surrounded by enemies, but they do not nearly clean a pack by themselves. Frost does. And what survives rushes in only to be melted by Burn. In terms of ST it behaves very well as well. Frost ends up being incorporated in the ST chain due to lack of a T3, but for actual gameplay this plays much better than it may sound on paper. Just focus on the boss and with minimal positioning Frost is cleaving said boss and all things about it. After all Tankers get a nice widening of a cone's angle due to their inherent. I found that Frost, Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Frozen Fists suffices until Freezing Touch opens. Ah, Freezing Touch, one could wax poetic about it. Energy Transfer still hits harder-ish (687 Freezing Touch VS 787 fast Energy Transfer), but ET 'requires' Total Focus first for the fast version. With Freezing touch we can Dim Mak mobs as we float past them. Freezing Touch also takes to procs very very well so it can be charged up with those. But that means less FT-per-minute. After extensive testing against a pylon I determined there is no particular gain in charging it with procs since it did not improve times. But it does increase FT's damage a fair bit (from 540 to 687), unfortunately after X uses we could have used another FT which then catches up. So I have decided to slot five Hectacomb instead of one +3 Hami and a +5 Damage/recharge Hectacomb with four damage procs. But it's a decision others can do according to their playstyles. With that extra bit of recharge once FT opens the rotation changes to FT, Burn, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword. Use Burn when up but I try to time it to come after FT when Build-up/Fiery Embrace is up. Repeat. Once everything is slotted at maximum level one of the Ice Swords can be removed. Eventually Frozen Aura opens but it's mediocre in my eyes. I will use it once or twice if surrounded but it's mostly a mule and instead I'll prefer to cleave the pack around the boss via Frost and Burn. The way I ended up playing it was: approach a pack, but not land in the middle of them because Frost is a cone. Once the mobs wake up from their stupor and rush me then I would BU, Freezing Touch the boss, Frost, Burn, Ice Sword, Fiery Embrace, FT the boss again, and then clean whatever is still up while pumped by FE. In most cases this combo was available next pack. I did it like this because I leveled by soloing all the TFs starting from Posi 1 and 2. Taking longer chewing through +0x6 during Posi and +1x8 from Synapse upwards worked out that way for BU and FE. In a team I would rather go BU for one pack. FE for the next pack. BU for the next. Then have neither for the next but start again afterwards. In terms of actually playing the game Fire/Ice is as close to Fire/Claws as it gets. It starts early with annihilating AoE then progresses smoothly to FT and obtains a very heavy hitter in the mid levels. In the meanwhile Burn helps being a heavy hitter until FT arrives as well as being a heavy hitter for AoE to support Frost. This is the level 50 build. It has the same defensive values as my other builds, AKA 40% to Smash/Lethal (45% with Barrier) and 90% resistances to the important stuff (with two ATO stacks and Barrier). This is my current Fire/Ice. I don't particularly recommend it since not taking Frozen Aura is a peculiar choice. It's just a peculiar choice adapted to my own playstyle though. I have managed to remove Tough so it's one less toggle, one less button on the bar, and Tough's 15% S/L baked into the build. I have managed to squeeze two damage procs into all attacks and the ATO in Frost improves the chance it will go off during normal gameplay. Cheap level 50. It's nearly identical to the 'min-max expensive build since it has 40% to S/L (45% with Barrier), 87% to S/L/E/N with two stacks of the ATO (over 90% with Barrier's 5% or the third ATO). In fact, all numbers will become better once at 50 and turning all ATOs into their superior versions. Overall if a casual player and not wanting to spend much while getting the full experience this build has the same qualifications as the expensive one, it just has a slower Hasten and Tough actually needs to be toggled up instead of not being used. Leveling build with varied tips also.

*dusts the thread* Oi return. Shadowlands was okay but nothing much to actually do. This is a cross post from another thread, but those interested in a Fire/EM Tanker won't be looking for it in a Fire/Claws builds so I am giving it its own crib: So, with the changes to EM it behooved me to give it a try. I leveled a(nother) Fire Armor/Energy Melee and soloed it through the different TFs to 50 after an initial boost to level 20. I have three end-game builds. They all work so I will leave them up. They all rely on two stacks of the Might of the Tanker +res proc combined with Barrier to reach 90% to all res. If the content is not hard enough then there is no reason to use Barrier, but it also means it is not difficult enough to warrant having 90% resistances. Regardless if the Might of the Tanker procs a third time then resistances are capped. It also has close to 40% Smash/Slash defense which with Barrier becomes a permanent 45% (softcap) to most of the damage in the game. I did just a quick and dirty two pylon tests, no clickies, T4 45% Musculature, T4 Hybrid Assault not clicked (I need to test which one is better, will post it later), T4 75% debuff Degenerative: - No Gloom and non proc based Burn: 3:15 - 3:20. Considering there is no -res shenanigans not bad, but the loss of the procced out Burn is ow. As a bonus better endurance as well with only Tough needing to be turned off (played with FA on) for three minutes of non stop hitting: - Gloom and procced out Burn: 2:30 - 2:40. Worse endurance but with Consume this is not a problem. Did not have Tough turned on but still had to turn off Tactics as well since I did not want to use Consume mid test. This is the most damaging of the three in no small part due to Gloom being so good. I would not subject myself to the more exotic content without FA but if usually just farming Council or only teaming, or even carrying a few yellows, then this should still be fine: - Barrage and procced out Burn: 2:52 messily done (I even used Whirlwind Hands instead of Burn one time :D) - 2:34. Overall Gloom is better (no surprise when we compare the numbers between Gloom and Barrage) but Focused Accuracy makes for a better all rounder IMO. A better slotting of Barrage also helps for leveling and exemplaring instead of relying on Gloom to fill the gaps in the rotation, and FA protects from Arachnos' smoke grenades to Hurricaning witchies/Tsoo and Banished Pantheon/CoT -ToHit spamming. This is the build I will be personally using: The rotation is Burn, Total Focus, Bone Smasher, Energy Transfer, Barrage, Bone Smasher. Repeat. For AoE just spam WH and Burn while squeezing TF and EF on bosses in between. This is what I leveled with. I did not fine comb it so use common sense (replace level 50 IOs with 25, etc). If there is a request I can make a cheapo leveling build. Burn and TF are the big hitters so six slot them ASAP. I may not be singing praises to the build like I was for Claws but it is more because I am jaded now. It is still nice big numbers for a tank. To put it in perspective I have several Scrappers and even Stalkers who have 2:30 times so picking a Tanker as a character does not need to mean slow whittling of enemies.

My apologies if this has been brought up but I did not see it mentioned in the past pages. I am currently testing EM with a tanker but checking the lil box for Energy Focus does not alter the cast time of Energy Transfer. I am a bit confused about why there are so many lil yellow dots on the powers now (I should read the patch notes but I could not find them. I blame only myself. Found them by joining the discord). This is something I'd like to get my hands on since I believe with the change to the animation time the proc chances will be altered. Or will these be calculated by the regular animation time of ET such as has happened with other powers (Water Jet in Water Blast that insta refreshes)?

Dinictus the multifaceted gem!

As someone who did the challenge with buffed enemies on a Fire Tanker I can say that Barrier carried the day. Doing a spot of kiting to let the debuffs wear off works too. It's not particularly emasculating to mix a bit of strategy instead of just face tanking to the max. DDR is damn good to have, but having damage isn't a bad alternative though. If there is room in a Rad Armor to proc the mini nukes and use them at each spawn it greatly diminishes the sources of debuffs. Even if I say that Barrier carried the day it is only up every two minutes and the last minute it only provides 5%, so I wasn't playing one minute then waiting one minute before popping Barrier and playing another minute. With Fire Armor it was a case of killing lots and fast to diminish the damage and when/if it got too much (no FE to help kill fast, RNG, etc) it was when Barrier got used.

Aura? Kinda works.

We have already run this test in the past though. Turns out that of all the possible tank primaries it's Werner who is the strongest.

But, one Tinpex takes half an hour and earns 25-27 million. It's not even the most efficient way of making money but how I lazily gear my characters since it also drops incarnate salvage. So one run equals at least one purple or event IO even if I do nothing else with my time. Your friends ought to have pointed you towards how to money making. I find leveling (the time where we make the least money) usually earning me 100 mill in the two or three days it takes me to reach 50, which is when the real money making starts. Yes, again, new players don't know these things... No one is born knowing all things. And the game does not explicitly say things like go sell your merits. But once the interest is there it's as simple as to google 'how to make money in city of heroes' and come across the wealth in information. Heck, my way of making money is the most basic possible: do TFs and sell merits. It is literally 'play the game and sell the loot that dropped', no crafting involved, no investigating the market. Just... go out and play. I'm rambling a bit and digressing but the point I was originally trying to make is that the cost should not be used as a con. Stuff costing money and players learning how to earn currency to buy armor and weapons, or potions and scrolls, or a mount, or crafted gear, is a part of most games out there.

No such thing that I know of unfortunately. It has been asked in the past but we still need to use actual names in titles, not ranks.

Easiest way is to input this in-game: /optionset ShowVillainName 1 /optionset ShowVillainBars 1

War Mace is an outlier though. It was nipping at TW's heels back when TW was the most OP of sets. Just like TW it breaks the mold by having strong ST, strong AoE, plus useful utility (so... many.. KD/KUs...). It is hard for other sets to compete other than WM having pretty damn meh skins and thematically not being very fun (furthermore without good skins allowing to diversify. WTB mace version of the Vanguard skins all light saber... Er... light mace. WITH SPIKES!)

But it isn't. though. Even if we take pylons loosely they still are a metric and no AT has ever brought DM to a competitive range. The 'strength lies in ST damage' seems to be a parroted term with no actual basis. What DM does have is a small heal and a different build up power that, ultimately, falls short since it imposes a tax on the set (can't be -too- good at base or Soul Drain will make the damage explode. But on any circumstance that does not have SD saturated then the set lags behind). It also has an endurance clickie. So DM is not really something strong in ST but rather a set chockful of utility with a small heal, an endurance recovery power and a minor -ToHit debuff. All of these impose taxes. If a set has a power rating of 100 then a % of it goes to ST, a % of it goes to AoE, then utility takes % (knockdowns, stuns, heals, etc). The more utility the set has the more % is shaved from ST and AoE to stay within the original 100. Back in the day all of these might have been more useful, but today when people go around softcapped without much hassle the -ToHit does little, and, in my experience, the small heal DM has does little (what we would survive without the heal we still do, what we would not survive with the heal we still don't). Just like other ATs and some sets DM is subtly obsolete. Now, I have not tested DM in the PTS so I offer no feedback, but the crushing majority dislikes it and what they say about it sounds like it's just not fun. Which is important in a game. I suggest if extra AoE is desired to look at Soul Drain instead. Shorten the recharge, shorten the buff time so the uptime remains the same. Up the damage. If it is up every 20 seconds it can serve as an opener that softens a spawn and then buffs the player to handle what is still alive.

Fold Space and Soul Drain is a happy marriage. Trouble with SD was always getting saturation and Fold Space neatly fixes that.

I've posted this somewhere else, but I'll copy the relevant part here to consider math and slotting: 4a -The game can be easily separated into two modes: easy mode, and hard mode. Easy mode is 90% of the game without debuffs and the problematic factions. For that mode you don't need to be ultra buffed to the gills and popping Barrier on CD. For hard mode we have things like the ITF where even resistance based sets can be debuffed to a point they take a ton of damage (at base every enemy has 50% of hitting. But once we are debuffed that chance increases to 80-95% chance of hitting. At that point blocking 90% of the damage is not enough since we are taking twice the damage we usually do). That is when we use all the buffs at our disposal. Enter Barrier. 4b - At base Barrier is a great team wide protection for the hard moments (my often repeated example of the ambush at the top of the hill in the ITF's first mission), but it also adds a permanent 5% defense and 5% resist to the build. During easy mode play you don't need to be at 90% since, well, it is easy mode, and aren't going to bother using it (unless noticing your squishies are suicidal, then you try to encompass them in it like a dotting momma tank). During hard mode softcap defense and hardcapping resistance is when you will want it. 4c - The Tanker +res proc gives 6.7% and stacks three times. Between this and that three stacks is best not be relied upon but two stacks is fine to assume as permanent once the fight has started. So looking at the build numbers (with one stack of the +res proc) S/L is at 78.86%. You're happily slapping things around and collecting a second stack making it now 85.3%. This is perfectly fine for most of the gaming, but hey, the going suddenly gets tough and you pop Barrier and now have 90%. As you can see this is still a little bit too much since Scaling Resists slotted in Hover would add another 1% at 90% HP but lets not nitpick. Negative is at 77% and with the above math ends neatly at 90%. Psionic is lacking (not having infinite slots) but 60.60% with one stack, 67.3% with a second stack. Barrier goes up, 72.3%. That elusive not-totally-reliable-but-still-worth-accounting-for third +res stack happens and 79%. Scaling Resists kicks off at 90% HP and 80%. Not hardcapped but hey.

I'll agree with you, but, though I haven't kept track, I don't think I've found a non Titan Weapons or Super-Strengh Tanker that could do better time than my 2:45 on a pylon (someone chime in if so in case I'm incorrect). Katana was pretty close by a handful of seconds, but it's lethal damage as well. On a target that is S/L resistant it just means I reach the same times as other sets who don't suffer from using lethal to do damage, and then I'll do better once we hit damage neutral mobs.

Purples are cheaper than the superior event IOs you still have. Last I played purples are something like 19-20 mill while a superior event IO is on the 25-40 range (cheaper if you buy normal and buy catalysts). The +res proc should not be in the damage aura. It does much better in a ST attack. Toggles like Blazing Aura don't much care for procs either. You should slot Bash since if you exemplar down too much you'll have Jawbreaker... and an unslotted Bash. Oh, and Burn. It will be misery. Burn wants procs, lots of procs. It goes from a stiff warm breeze to a mini-nuke with the slotting I posted. It's up to you if you wish to play using warm stiff breezes or lobbing mini nukes. Two +5 recharge slots on Fiery Embrace. It's big damage and you want it up as soon as you can. Fire/Cold defense is not particularly important to be wasting a slot for it in Whirlwing Mace. Same deal for Toxic and the slotting in Taunt or +9% movement speed and Mystic Flight. You killed your S/L defense and your E/N resistances are crippled (that's bad since you have no defense towards E/N so you must rely on resistances). You'll feel squishy. I suggest you look at my Fire/Claws link in the signature. The first post has a cheap version that still has defenses and resistances. You will have to adapt the Claws part to Mace but you can compare both side by side and use it as guide.

I'm not seeing it, Tsuko. Yes, Shield is one of the best all rounders, but should that really mean Fire Armor needs a serious rework? I've done the solo hardmode ITF (without debuffed players) and if a squishy Fire Armor can do it how much of a rework does it need? Only one in a world where Incarnates do not exist but that is not the case. Tactics gives resistance, not protection, AKA fears last less instead of simply not happen. I had some early deaths with it until I wised up. End recovery debuff is a problem, but again, hit first the enemies who do it, use Recovery Serum, use Consume to recover endurance, use inspirations, etc. In a world without Recovery Serum and etc? Sure, but it's not the case I do GET what people are saying but should we really look at it as the only armors worth playing are the ones who 100% protect against 100% of everything? I've done my share of content against endurance and recovery debuffing enemies and survived it (in some cases I've done better than the rest of my whole team) just alternating Consume and Recovery Serum. A good part of being a good player is strategizing. Not much need for it when we can just run in toggles up and ignore most or all mechanics but in other games the difference lays in knowing what enemy does, when they do it, how to stop it. A simply example in CoH that saves -so- much time is timing KDs on Crey PPs to they flop down at around 20% in order to kill them while they are doing the getting up animation and not pop their T9.

You're asking if you want to be more durable or do more damage. You are the one who knows the answer to that. Katana helps with Bio's lack of defenses but it only adds 15% to Slash/Melee unlike as with all other ATs where it reaches 45% via stacking. Heck, Fire/Katana did really well in survival and damage when I tried it other than exemplaring in a mediocre manner.

I read you, but, even Super-man has a weakness. You are a tank who has one as well. Nothing wrong with it. Carry a few breakfrees for those elite bosses or kill the mobs that do fear first if they are squishier. As for being end sapped use Consume before engaging them and it won't happen. Fear protection is not as widespread as you might assume it to be.

At the time I thought it would just +5 all my slotted IOs. WHAT LITTLE DID I KNOW!

After all the testing done with my Fire/Claws (new record of 2:30, no clickies used!) I took a look at Dual Blades and thought it could adapt well. Basically all attacks could be procced thanks to the lengthier animations and the extra attack, and Attack Vitals would basically be free damage. There would be a spot for Fury of the Gladiator outside of Burn too. All T4 using Reactive and Cardiac (even with Cardiac it was touch and go and this with some toggles off: 3:54 Switched to Musculature and Degenerative: 3:30 I expected perhaps a bit too much. It does highlight my point about Cardiac when the Recovery Serum kept my bar near to full for the duration of the test and Cardiac saw it dip down to 15-20%. I had such high hopes for this too, and it was so much trouble (almost finished slotting everything when I had the sad idea of checking what 'auto enhance with IOs' did and it wiped all my slotting with random sets). The build could use some tweaking still (dat Rectified Reticule in Blinding Feint...)

Since I was on a row I went to test a super heavily procced Fire/KM to see what would happen. The answer? Not much. 3:50 with Reactive. 3:27 with Degenerative. The build I used. The good thing about testing is that at least I get them out of my mind instead of pondering if they are the next best thing as I was with the DB one, as well as this one.

Posted this and the next couple posts on a different thread but adding them here to serve as my compilation of Fire Armor builds. I've made this build my lil bitch and roll over to offer its tummy. I've managed to keep Whirlwind Mace and Crowd Control, AND near max resistances, AND include damage procs, AND not skimp on recovery or endurance reduction on attacks, AND just abouts 40% defense, AND quite decent recharge (132 Hasten with no FF proc active). Looking at Mids I'm not sure it will really surpass the Claws though. Claws with two stacks would make Follow-up do 196, Jawbreaker with no Build-up does 240. Slash all procced out would do 513, Shatter would do 366. Focus 433, Clobber 479. Burn 585. WM Burn 361. ...of course these numbers don't include Build-up with Gaussian Fiery Embrace likes WM more too. With two stacks and FE: Follow-up 271. Jawebreaker 349 Slash 572. Shatter 491. Focus 522. Clobber 635. Burn 731. WM Burn 465. For funsies I clicked on FE and Build-up (but removed the Gaussian since it only lasts 5 seconds). Jawbreaker 469. Shatter 631. Clobber 814. Burn 598. So overall I have no idea which of the two would come out ahead. Claws hits for less but nearly does three attacks in the time WM does two. WM has bigger bursty numbers, but Claws has theirs pretty much all the time. So, best way is to not try to math but just empirical it. Be back in a couple of hours. In the meanwhile this is the build. I return from testing. Fortunately it was much easier to strip one of the previous Fire Armor characters than to painstakingly recreate it from scratch. Drumroll...... 3:51... Yeeeeeah, no. 3:37 - Switched to Degenerative. Don't feel that there is a point in continuing.

I tried it. Wasn't impressed with the ST (Claws substantially better). Near 90% resistances with two stacks of the Tanker ATO and Barrier's 5%. 45% S/L with Barrier's 5%.

Strictly speaking there is not much need for Fire/Cold defense in the end game. If you take that in mind you can shift your slotting around a fair bit. You are already at 36% Ranged defense and if you intend to stay hovering out of the way grabbing a few more percent points would be a better way to spend your slots. You'd still be capped at S/L (the crushing majority of melee attacks tend to incorporate one or the other) and just as an added layer N/E and Ranged. I feel that S/L defense is mostly enough for most things and adding more is semi redundant but heck, what else is there to add anyway? Hasten is at 132, attacks have damage procs, I find Fire Breath instead of Rain of Fire questionable but you do you. See if there are any ideas you'd like: The Recovery seems a bit low so maybe get Recovery Serums.