Sovera

I'm not an AE farmer even though I mainly play Fire Armor. All the accolades are very easy to obtain if you put the settings to -1x1. They mostly involve running around clicking on things. You can skip doing all the TFs by doing the red side version of the accolade. The real question is why do you feel you need the accolades if you're just farming? A bit more HP and a bit more EPS is of no particular use when doing easy content on a character tailored for it. Just see if you're after something thinking it is important and it isn't.

During the first phase when we just come down from the roof the blue patch can be tanked with high enough resists and minimal healing. Once she disappears to summon all her buddies this is over. Never again stand on a blue patch for long. You can use the tram behind her to break line of sight and force her to walk out of the blue, but this is a bit of a doomed perspective for a Stone Armor to easily manage.

Yes, and it's the reason Market Crash is a source of puzzlement for unprepared soloers. Monitoring your HP allows you to see the HP being shaved off. I usually break off and run to let the debuff expire once my HP reaches around 800 HP because once our HP is low enough the auto hit skill will kill since we don't have enough HP to soak it.

Also, how to die through 90% resistances and 45% defenses:

I have consolidated testing results, Incarnate priorities and tips, rotation clarifying and etc in the OP. I don't think that there is much to add from here on.

I will be honest with you. The game currently does not have an exciting end-game content. That means we reach level 50, explore the game, do TFs, run arcs, and then try to find a reason to stay motivated to log on (spoken like a jaded veteran that has played the game for years). Leveling new alts and combinations of doing things is a way to remain entertained. You have double XP to speed things up, you have 1000 character slots. There is no reason not to TRY ALL THE THINGS! But since you've asked: - Sentinels are great for the ego. You get to be ranged like most comic heroes and be sturdy just like them too. For a new player you won't even notice their damage isn't exciting, and as a new player it's better (IMO) to play a sturdy character that survives instead of something that keeps on faceplanting without careful babysitting. That said endurance draining is an advanced tactic that usually has all mobs killed before the endurance is actually drained. It makes that gimmick unfulfilling. - Controllers are somewhat obsolete nowadays. They do not add much and in a team you may just find yourself not very helpful. Radiation is indeed a big boss killer but big boss killing is 3% of the game. Do you want to drag yourself over the other 97% with the concept? Illusion in particular is good at soloing once they have sunk several multiples of hundreds of millions of cash into a build which is not a newbie friendly proposal. - Storm/Ice is great. You'll be having good fun with it and both helping and doing decent damage. Remember to visit the Defender forums and lift ideas on how to slot the character. - Dark/Dark is pretty decent as well. The Dark Control side of things lets you boost the damage of the team, heal, CC mobs. You will be both useful and helpful. - Another Controller. I've said my thoughts about it above. The only Controller I'd subscribe to is Plants/Kin since they can heal and boost the damage of the team making them useful while plants is pretty helpful at speeding things up with Seeds of Confusion. TOO good a combo tbh, it may turn you off to rarely even be at risk. - Masterminds are a bit eh. They are great for new players since they avoid many of the things that make early game boring such as few attacks and endurance problems. The minions just keep on attacking regardless and all a MM needs to do is buff and heal them while debuffing the enemy. Later on they become a drag even with top dollar builds since the pets are sloooooow to follow between packs of enemies and become super squishy. This is more of an end game concern and you should definitely give them a try. Beast/Nature plays well together with the absorb shields and heals helping the squishy beasts. What I did not see in your list is a meleer. Give them a try if you find something that pleases you. I personally recommend meleers (or Sentinels) for first players since they are much sturdier than their ranged brethren. They also can ignore crowd control effects such as stuns and knockbacks. I'm a staunch ranged only person, but CoH is the one game I always gravitate back to melee. If you are new new check the guide on my signature for a bunch of tips, and while at it consider the Fire/Martial Arts tanker. The downside of that character is that you might come out with a skewed idea of how powerful characters are meant to be from the start, and then you try something else and see that nope 😜 Unlike other games Tankers don't have a stressful job here having to protect the team, juggle defensive cooldowns and memorize routes and boss mechanics. You are just a sturdier character than most and will be jumping into the thick of things first. That's about it.

At least I got to test my endurance consumption with a small change I made and it looks good, but yeah. I'm not even sure if Terrorize drops toggles or not but it's a case for always having a couple breakfrees in the inspiration tray. I just always run that arc at -1x1 to speed it up and my friend needed XP so we did it at +2x8. Now I'm more aware I can be quicker on the breakfree usage if I face them again.

It's true. Was playing with a friend at +2x8and it was run to mobs, build up, Burn, Dragon Tail. Keep hitting things, Burn is back up so use Fiery Embrace first. I did get killed once. Damn those seers. They were doing -recovery, -defense, and I think maybe -recharge. ON TOP OF TERRORIZE! Watch my defense plummet, and being psi damage no resists to help, while my character cowers in place. *angry fist shaking*

FF proc in Kick is on. And in Arcane Bolt. You have too much accuracy to need the Kismet. If you lower your ToHit in options to 48 it will simulate +3 enemies which is where you are once your Alpha is at least T3. Most attacks without the Kismet already are over 95%. I would personally take Focused Accuracy to avoid whiffing like mad against the enemies who do -ToHit and just drop a +5 endurance reduction in there. I would also go tanker tbh. Get more out of your slotting and reach the hardcaps without faffing with Rune of Protection. But this is personal taste, Brute will be fine.

You're not going to get magical solutions just from picking a new power. The good news is that leveling is easy thanks to the double XP, and you probably have quite a few merits to your name (check my signature, and if you're new read the guide fully). I have never played energy and pain domination so I don't have much offer to help there, but being your very first character I'd suggest trying a melee class next since they are much easier to get started and sturdier out of the box. Next I suggest you grab this program so you can import builds from the forums.

Poor Fire Aura...

You're a fickle beast, Strider.

I usually stick to Pyronic partly due to theme. Haven't tried the others TBH, but it kills minions and leaves lieuts hurting. That's about all I ask.

All this talk about Energy being great damage. Did I miss a memo? When was the last time Energy was used to break any record?

Would it? I can't advocate taking 5-10 minutes PER spawn for a WHOLE mission. At best of times a single AV takes like 1 minutes to kill under focused fired and most spawns are composed of 10-12 mobs.

...challenging? Where? The part where they don't do any particular damage and attack slowly for piddly damage while we can't hit them back? We have different opinions of challenge and taking a break to go make a sandwich each time we don't finagle killing one before it enters MoG in a kill all mission does not register in my book. The cyclops and minotaurs are less annoying in that we can still hit them even for reduced damaged so despite not having the PP option to CC or kill fast we can still go full team on them until they go down (plus debuffs still work and help speeding things).

C'mon, don't forum PvP. BM -is- that one fight in the game where meleers are hindered. And even then someone who knows how to deal with it can keep things going (except when someone rolls a Brute to do melee damage and then has agro on her). The other 99.99.99% of the game have nothing in particular hindering meleers except that one fight. CoH is the only game I play in melee because it's so easy and no BS mechanics are present to hinder me. Playing in GW2 it's good luck discovering when the mobs will do an PbAoE when they don't do a ground telegraph and instead it's an animation telegraph such as pointing a finger at the sky. Good luck seeing that with the mob covered in dozens of different particle effects! And that's not counting the spam of abilities who does KD or CC as a setup for those PbAoEs. Or WoW when meleers need to bounce in and out of telegraphs all the time and are unable to do damage while this happens. In CoH meleers tend to have self healing and be resilient enough to eat damage and their anti CC toggles makes them immune to most. Holds? Knockbacks? That's something squishies worry about. A meleer may not even be aware such things exist after level 10 or so.

That's not casual VS hard. It's casual VS grindy. Grinding for 12 hours is not hard, it's just boring. Young me who spent whole week-ends doing Mephisto runs in D2 would have been fine with it I guess. Yeah, we had this talk a few posts back. Obviously this game design is great to feel powerful but has the flaws that normal mobs who are barely a threat against one person will evaporate when facing eight.

This is not new to now. Back when I first started in Issue 6 or 7 I remember trying a Rad defender and berating team members for killing my toggles. It did not take long to realize my toggles were useless when everything was dying so fast. A Rad defender's debuffs are for tough enemies. Enemies we find out in the streets if sweeping are not tough enemies.

Mine was Ice/... I'm not sure if it was Dark Melee or Rad melee. I'm not saying the combo itself is bad, but hot damn I dropped it fast. Ice is super heavy on endurance and I'm not sure if Dark (pre AoE pass) or if Rad but I was wheezing for blue bar. I realized I was expected to spam Energy Absorption every spawn for my endurance to survive (and it was incapable of coping on a ST scenario) and just dropped it like a hot potato.

My worst one (but recouped, so meh, which is unlike your case. My condolences) was buying converters in stacks of ten, switch to purples, pay no attention the 'stacks of ten' wasn't cleared (which is this even a thing??) and put up an order for 10 purples at 19 mill -_- In my case I just put them back up and lost the listing so it wasn't much of a big deal.

Even when I like a character I put them aside and start another. Claws/Bio Scrapper played amazingly and I don't even I even had double digit vet levels with it before I turned it into my PLer for my other account. Fire/Claws was love at first sight and I played it SO MUCH. I'd just see random people forming a TF and I'd join for the heck of playing. It cured my altitis something fierce. It just had everything from starting early so that exemplaring was champion level good. It was sturdy as befits a tank, it did excellent damage (and not just 'for a tanker') with two build-up mechanics. It remains my only character with triple digit vet levels and all T4-ed. But even that gem got dropped for the newer shinier replacement that is Fire/Martial Arts. It has everything Claws had including damage and early start, but much better defenses and FF procs in its AoE accelerates every cooldown the build has so it feels like playing in fast forward. The only thing slowing it down is that I don't really have people to play with and just doing random TFs has been done. I haven't slotted more than half the incarnates and haven't even finished the accolades. But I see no point in playing other characters. It has everything and I feel like a super hero wading into the fight first, seeing the visible drop (or one shotting) of HP when I press my AoEs. A friend is making a new alt? It can exemplar all the way down. High level content? It can tank it. Duoing a TF? Bish, it soloed them -while- leveling and now it's 50 and slotted up. Plus it pleases me to see giant robots flipping twice in the air when my tiny barbarian paladin that reaches their knee kicks them

Maiden is not complicated to handle on a melee heavy team, but it can be shit when there are Brutes and Tankers who steal my agro and then do nothing with it. The easiest way is to use the tram right behind her when she spawns. Blue circle goes down. Use tram to break line of sight. She follows after leaving the blue circle. Keep hitting. Next circle happens, move to the end of the tram breaking LoS in the process. The timing of the circles matches that by the one drops the other is just about disappearing so this can be repeated until dead. Anything else does not work in my experience. Using Taunt, using Envenomed Daggers. She ignores it and stays plinking at a distance without moving from the circle. That method works. Except, of course, when there is another Brute or Tanker, they steal agro, and then bounce around making her ignore me to plink them. As for the original question I dunno. Other than CC classes there is room for everyone. While in the perfect scenario everything dies I find that in practice lieutenants and bosses tend to still be alive and provide a target for meleers to deal with. I do feel the pain of Kins, so appreciated and wanted, but, in my experience, seldomly managing to get a FS off before AoEs have exploded a pack apart. What people seldomly do but would make the difference between Blasters and Brutes is split up. Blasters seldomly do so. Brutes sometimes do that, but more often than not are not sturdy enough to handle it. As someone who mainly tanks I don't get to split up but if there is another Tanker aboard I will let the team go left while I go right. Blasters can do that in theory but in practice they are slower. Runners happen, no agro to glue mobs close and hoverblasting exacerbates thing, and even 45% defense is iffy on a Blaster's HP.

That would have been really nice, yes, and make the power more popular despite the pitiful damage it does.

The reason I seldom visit this area of the forums is my inability to contain my snickering at non devs puffing their chest and saying no to suggestions, as if them saying no had any sort of impact on devs making a suggestion happen. Not that I am really sure of the point in these part of the forums in the first place. Someone refresh my memory on suggestions that have been implemented? I could have used the no salvage recipe and being able to drop 100 converters at a time to the AH so I'm not repeating the same gesture 95 times as I did today.