Sovera

We're a lot older than I thought, but on hindsight it's not that weird since so many of us are here for the nostalgia angle of a 15 year old game. I'm just glad I'm not the oldest ^^

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements Place them in your heavy hitters. Purple sets aren't actually super great (though their damage procs are very good) but they do give 10% recharge which is a precious commodity. You don't need to blindly slot in purples just because. For example the Apocalypse Ragnorok purple set: - It will give 0.07% endurance recovery, 6% resistance to fire and cold, 15% accuracy, 10% recharge, and finally 6% resistance to psionic and toxic damage. The recovery is good (but really small), fire and cold resistance isn't very important since not many enemies even do fire or cold damage in the end game, the accuracy is good, the recharge is why they are slotted in the first place, and the toxic and psi resistance could be good but it's niche since not enough enemies do toxic/psi to warrant building for it on a generalist character. The same power that takes an Apocalypse set can also take a Bombardment set: - 5% to range, 2.25% resistance to smash and slash, 7% accuracy, 5% recharge and 4.5% resistance to negative and energy damage. Of these only the 5% to range is of dubious utility. The smash and slash is the most common damage so it's good to have, the accuracy is good to help reach the cap of 95%, the recharge is good, and energy/negative is the second most common damage type and 4.5% is a nice fat bonus. Where possible I've stopped slotting Apocalypse and always take Bombardment. If you intend to examplar just remember to use attuned IOs (don't attune them yourself though, it's too expensive. Instead buy them already attunned from the AH).

I do understand where he is coming from. But he is only seeing it from his side too. Eight people milling around trying to land a last few hits on a few stragglers means what? Hits animating after the thing already is a corpse. What Scrapper or Brute or Stalker can't handle a +1 boss that a Tanker needs to be there babysitting the last slivers of HP being removed? What AT can't eat a purple or two if they are in danger? Just make your own tank and play it how you believe it should be, but don't be surprised to see a Scrapper moving ahead and do the Tanker's job of gathering the enemies, getting agro, starting to AoE, so that when the team arrives they find a neat ball of enemies to unload on... and then the Tanker joins in along with the rest.

So, you're railing because people are playing in a way different than what you'd like. k. Make your own tank and play as you think tanks ought to be played then.

If you're looking at it from a Excel spreadsheet angle, I guess. In practical terms not so much. But it's solid for those who want to give it a go.

I've tried it but I was not impressed. Soul Drain failed to convince me and the heal from Life Siphon added little when Healing Flames is up every 13-15 seconds.

Finished testing the Fire/Katana. This has the closest in numbers to the Claws, the undisputed champion so far. 2:47 2:51 2:54 2:51 3:15 Swapped Degenerative for Reactive. 3:14 Returned to Degenerative but tried swapping the Fury in Burn for the Armaggedon proc and Golden Dragonfly using a five piece Obliteration. These numbers are pretty much on par with the Claws whose average was in the 2:45, but I never managed to get the elusive 2:30. But those were super infrequent with the Claws too with only two in something like ten tests. So performance wise I'm going to say that the Katana is right there with Claws and I'm pretty sure I can shave it some more. The rotation was Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon, Golden Dragonfly, which attention paid to: - Trying to use Burn before Soaring Dragon. - Avoiding Divine Avalanche when possible. If I had to click Build-up I'd use it in Divine's place. If Hasten was recharged I'd so the same. When it was time to use Burn I would ditto. When I used Build-up I would start with Soaring Dragon, then Golden Dragonfly, then Burn, then return to Soaring Dragon and Dragonfly. Since Divine does not stack and the buff lasts long enough for these shenanigans it makes sense to skip the 179 damage attack for the 438/496/555 attacks. The good: - The 15% defense Divine Avalanche provides is a largesse in riches that allows to mess around with the build as we please. Notice the lack of a single Kinetic Combat and muling precious slots into stuff like Brawl or Punch like I did on the Claws. Notice me just faffing around with Blistering Cold to grab an extra 45% slow resist. This is good. - Fast-ish animations, a simple three attack rotation. - Pretty good AoE even when exemplared with Flashing Steel, Burn, Flashing Steel cutting a swathe through low level enemies. Once obtaining The Lotus Drops I stop using Flashing Steel and prefer to ST a boss and throw both Burn and Lotus as they recharge to clean the surrounding minions. The bad: - The exemplaring is okay. The two big hitters are at 35 and 38 forcing to level with Flashing Steel and Divine Avalanche. There would be barely be a point in slotting Sting of the Wasp for examplaring since it does pretty much the same damage as the other two attacks (Sting 88, Divine 64, Flashing 75). With Divine Avalanche providing defense and Flashing being an AoE Sting doesn't find a spot for the small extra it does. To compare Soaring Dragon does 154 and Golden Dragonfly does 194. All these numbers are base values. But this isn't as bad as all that in practice. In practice Build-up + Gaussian then dropping Flashing Steel, Burn, Flashing steel will melt spawns in the early game. As much as Follow-up is good if we start the fight at 160% damage when dropping Flashing and Burn it does outpace handily dropping Burn and Spin with 30% from FU. Then at Yin level we get Fiery embrace and can alternate/stack with BU (basically Fire Armor solves a lot of problems both in the big hitters being at 35+ and Lotus only coming at 28). This is why I say it's okay instead of saying it is bad. - Tankers are the only AT to whom Divine Avalanche does not stack. Any other AT it stacks three times. - Slotting around Divine Avalanche leaves a hole in ranged energy based attacks. Those usually incorporate a Smash component that is now lacking in the build. This may or may not be an actual problem in actual gameplay. Not many enemies will stay at range pew pewing if we go into melee and most enemies tend to pew pew a few times and then close in to do melee attacks. So in practice this might not a problem at all, but it's a hole, and ranged attacks with debuffs (any kheldian hits, the Penumbra mobs in Council, the Wailers redside etc etc) now have an easier way in. Again, in actual practice this might not be a problem, and when things go sour that is where Barrier goes in. I can say it's a toss-up between Claws and Katana with Katana being more appealing to me for the lack of wasted slots thrown into Kinetic Combat mules. Claw still exemplars better.

On a different note I remember actually testing it on a MM and it showed that the pet actually managed to kill a trio of even level minions at a decent pace. Nothing spectacular, but remember it's a non damaging pet. Even if it's not much it's something. Musculature isn't much (15% damage increase, about ish 20 points of extra damage), Assault (from Leadership) isn't much (another 20-ish damage points). Procs aren't much (by themselves). But when we add Musculature and Assault and procs all those little somethings add to a bigger sum. I feel the same about Dark Servant proccing.

I'm all for buffs ^^ ... but it's also the best set as far as I am concerned. On non-tankers it has a gapless self-contained AoE chain, it has all powers early (thus exemplars well), animates fast and etc on top of Shockwave mitigation. On Tankers I've been unable to find something that breaks my record (2:30 on a non whiffing run but 2:45 average) which while still behind double stack Rage and Titan Weapons is still a better set that those two.

You do need to wait for level 38 for it, and I don't believe it stacks with itself. Though you add that, then Defensive, then Cardiac, then the ATO proc, and yeah, you can start finally having decent energy resists for Bio Armor.

No, procs in toggles are pretty bad because they check for activation once every 10 seconds. I don't exactly remember the %, but I do know I tested the Might of the Tanker when this subject came up and I came out of it with the data that the proc reliably got one stack, two stacks only some of the time (it has a duration, and checking once every ten seconds on top of possible misses made stacking it actually difficult), and three stacks almost never. The number of enemies did not alter this. This is when I changed it to a single target attack instead and it became much more reliable. Gaussian has a funny interaction with Tactics that makes it worth using (particularly with Claws that lacks a Build-up power that effectively triggers the Gaussian) and that the Gaussian procs -still- checks every ten seconds because it's in a toggle, but it gives a chance of going off per ally in range of Tactics ^_^ It ends being something like 40-50% chance with seven other players around (if I recall correctly but please do not quote me) which goes even higher with pets and MM minions. To be perfectly honest and as someone who exemplars a lot myself the level 50 build does very well. To give an idea I wanted to test the latest build with the procs and a friend wanted to run the Hess TF (level 30 if I recall) so we merged endeavors. ...she then forgot to change from +4, so there we were level 30 surrounded by +4 mobs. And we did it fine. At some point I actually had to use Healing Flames (gasp) when taking three +4 spawns at the same time (ok, it's Council, they are wimps). But trying to respect your choices here is what I would do with your build. It's not super perfect since resistances with two stacks of Might of the Tanker only end at 84-85% but trying to reach 45% without incarnates needed sacrifices. As a resistance set I feel 40% is fine (I reserve Barrier as a panic button or pre-emptive ambush defuser, so I'm not using on cooldown the second it recharges for the 5%) and with 40% you could increase the resistances some (switching back from Panaceia to Preventive Medicine and slotting Consume with a Synapse's Shock).

- Well, why did you six slot Fire shield for example? 2.5% to fire and cold res? Neither is important in end-game, and you're over capped to Fire anyway. Even five slot is dubious since we do have a Toxic hole but it's not taking one bonus that will alter that. You could take those two slots and put them somewhere else. - 6 slot touch of death in Slash for the melee defense? Slash is your sole source of -defense which lets you slot the Achilles proc that boosts all your damage on that target you're hitting (including the damage of the damage procs in the attacks). - 6 slot Tactics for 2.5% melee? Melee defense is good, but S/L defense is better. Melee defends only against melee. Smash and Slash defense protects against everything that does smash or slash. Energy blasts are energy/smash for example. Sonic attacks are smash and energy as well. Some psi attacks (not all) also have smash. Arrows and guns do Lethal damage. Melee will do nothing against any of those but Smash/Slash defense will. So building S/L first is a better option and then, yeah, sure, Melee too, but what is melee? Melee is usually someone swinging a sword (slash) or a hammer (smash), or being punched with electricity (usually with a smash component). in the original post I talk about Barrier and how it adds another permanent 5% defense so there is no need to aim for 45% and instead 40% is fine. You might want to take Ageless instead (personal choice, go for it) but it's not adding much since the ST rotation is pretty much in place and we are not Blasters who live and die by their 40 second nukes nor do we need the endurance from Ageless since we have Consume. - Spin is in the red (meaning it has too much and its being wasted) for accuracy and damage. Replace the acc/dmg IO for the knockdown one and you're losing nothing but instead gaining both recharge and a soft mitigation with the knockdown. - You have your Weave underslotted (same as Maneuvers but more noticeable in Weave) but have a Defense IO in Combat Jumping where it adds almost nothing (removing the defense from CJ drops your melee defense from 45.52% to 44.89%. That slot could go into Fiery Embrace. - Why is Swipe, your weakest attack, five slotted with a purple set? You're not even supposed to use it once you get to 28 (23 if exemplared down) since Focus replaces it. You could swap the slotting with Slash, still keep the Touch of Death for the bonuses, but Slash, which you do use, is now boosted with a purple damage proc (these both activate more often that regular damage procs but also do more damage). As a bonus you now have a sixth free space that you can put the freed slot from above and place the Achilles proc in. - You skip taking Focus, your strongest Claws attack ((470 damage with one stack of Follow-up, according to Mids. Slash only surpasses it once all procced out in the latest build) for Cross-Punch that does 256 with one stack of Follow-up. If you want a cone that does +recharge and superb mitigation you already have Shockwave for it (one stack of Follow puts it at the exact same damage as Cross-Punch, but animating in 1.2 seconds instead of 1.9 and with a munificent 30y range instead of Cross- Punch's 9y-ish range (with Tanker buffs). I have a build with Shockwave in the first post though it hasn't been updated with the proc findings. - Conserve Power is of little use since you have Consume and Recovery Serums from the P2W vendor NPC. - ...though you did not slot Consume (the slotting with Synapse gives 10% resistance to recharge slows (you have 35%, so you'll notice once you start fighting anything that does slows), 6.5% recharge and 4.5% resistance to negative and energy damage (you're still at 76% so another 4% would have you at 80%. See math below)). Consume is your endurance recovery clickie, why skip it? - Hasten is three slotted (acceptable if you examplar a lot as it gets more recharge that way but other than that two +5 slots gives the same recharge at level 50). - But then Fiery Embrace (your biggo damage boost) only with one? - Punch and Tough is rushed before level 20 but Cross Punch is only taken at 38 which defeats the purpose of rushing those skills. You need to consider you might want to exemplar down for whatever reason and if you do then what? Punch and Tough is not exactly going to be of use. If you had taken Cross Punch much earlier it would have made sense to fill out your attack chain. - I just want to re-insist with the exemplaring. You might absolutely 100% be sure that you are never ever going to exemplar down, but, there is no reason not to be 100% absolutely sure it will never happen and still place the powers in the right order. It will not hurt if you never ever examplar anyway, but if you do happen to do it (and this build is amazing for low level content) then you don't have your biggo damage boost at 47 instead of 28, and your travel power at 35. - Blazing Aura is a poor place for the Might of the Tanker to begin with (it's procs-per-minute mechanics), but why is it six slotted for the 6% to smashing and lethal resists if you're already at 103% (the cap is 90%)? Ditto for Follow-up. Your Might of the Tanker proc gives nearly 7% to all resistances and it stacks three times (though it's better to always just assume two stacks) so there is no point in aiming for 90% (less alone surpass the triple digits). You will notice the little green light in Blazing Aura. This appears in whatever power you slot Might of the Tanker into and when clicked (you can turn the lil green light on and off at will) you'll notice you gain those near 7% to all resistances. The program doesn't allow to add more stacks so you need to do the math in your head: if you have 80% with the lil light on, then assume you will get a second stack of the proc for another 7% making your 80% as 87%. If you want to go further once you're at 90% HP your Scaling Resists IO you've slotted in Maneuvers adds another 1% becoming 88%. So aiming for 90% with one stack (or 103%) is not good planning. This is why I did not want to go into detail 😛 But with all of this said you'll be fine if you run your build. CoH is easy and you'll still be melting enemies and headbutting Recluse into compliance. There is no 'but' in the above statement.

There are too many weird or dubious choices for me to get into a detailed analysis. If that's what you want to run, then go for it, broseph.

The math may be basic (and I would take it with a grain of salt) but the reasoning remains odd. If you're running to a pack of enemies you're not attacking since they are not in melee range yet. You click BU as you run. By the time you're in melee range and can attack BU is in effect. No attacks were skipped and the first 2-3 attacks are boosted by 160% damage (80% BU, 80% Gaussian). On a Brute or a Scrapper or a Tanker I don't run to the enemies until I am rubbing my nose on theirs, and -then- press BU. I use it as I run so my first attacks are boosted for additional burst. In WoW cooldowns are divided into 'uses every fight' and 'saved for when it matters'. Time to run between enemies is taken into account. There is no buff that we can click for 100% time, but, there are buffs that are available at every start of the fight since between killing the rest of the enemies and then run to the next pack the buff has finished recharging. BU is very much in this category and we can unleash the initial burst of AoE boosted by 160% damage + Fury. There is no need to choose and pick which to go with. This sort of math in any other game I'd say to just hit something for a minute with and without using BU and report the empirical results, but in CoH with 5% whiffs it's heh to test stuff.

I find the arguments counter to using BU a bit odd. I always take it and don't see a reason to ditch free extra damage. It would take me to be at the damage cap not to take it. If nothing else it's a renewable red insp that I can munch every 30 seconds. More to the point if we are running to the next group of enemies and are doing nothing because they aren't in range, they why not click on it so it's active by the time we -are- in melee range of the enemies?

Well, it's a choice. Strategy and double the output or wallowing in an ocean of enemies without having to click stuff but do half the damage. Now that I've improved on the build further with the procs I'm thinking I ought to try it again and see what times I'd get.

Are you saying you tried it as a Brute or tried it as a Tanker?

Accept your lord and savior Fire/Claws in your heart, Bill.

I was so disappointed on the Fire/WM. Maybe the Bio/WM would act different.

I haven't found a loooot of content that requires extra KB protection. I only do the base empowerment for the testing. At the top of my head... - Cabal witches would do KB with their Lightning Storm. Since they are medium level content the defenses aren't high enough to counter it. I don't remember Katie Hannon's TF being a nightmare though, but it's been a while since I've done it. I'll test it and report. - Fake Nemesis, but the staff uses Smash so they need to get past the 40% to even hit. - Something in Longbow was a nightmare to deal with. I'm not sure which one was doing it, maybe some Warden. Or perhaps Awakened? I do know I jumped into a group of them and spent my time being Levitated up and down until I died. The second time around I went for everything that looked important first (like killing sappers first) and it did not repeat. But I could have saved myself by popping a Breakfree. Which brings me back to inspirations. My current inspirations are: - One row of greens for emergencies. Might never be needed, but, if it's needed it's there. - One row of purples. Same deal. I used to have three rows while leveling but realized I stopped using them at around level 25+. Posi 1 and 2 has too many Vahz with toxic and either leveling or exemplared they -hurt-, so pre-emptive popping a purple makes a difference. But then we reach Synapse and everything else from Synapse on stops hurting nearly as much. While leveling they still whittle the HP down and an unslotted Healing Flames does not keep up, but if exemplared down there's not even that. For leveling even a small purple makes us invulnerable. Other characters may fear Devouring Earth in Numina but I just plunge even, without purples, without fear :D. - One row of yellows. It takes doing content with Tsoo or low level Circle of Thorns to appreciate being at the mercy of the AI. If the mobs did not deign to turn off Hurricane we simply cannot kill them. Fortunately they untoggle it on their own and there is a window of opportunity to kill the sorcs. So I keep the yellows for that. And once at a level where we can access Focused Accuracy (in theory just a mule, but priceless) I've waded into Tsoo and Arachnos throwing Blinds and etc and not even notice. - One row of misc insps. These are one blue (in case I am caught with my pants down), two breakfrees (for random terrorizing or the aforementioned rare KB situations), and one orange (emergencies such as re-toggling in a hurry or wanting to go into a fight with no ramp-up). Regarding your question I might ditch the Gaussian in Follow-up. It's the one who does the least noticeable impact. Bopper did the math about it back in page one and while it does -something- on the long run it's a pretty low chance. Or swap from Preventive Medicine to Panaceia. You'd lose 2.5% S/L but it's not a huge deal since it's the resistance covered by the S/L defenses, and you'd lose the absorb proc (which isn't a huge deal either, though both it and the absorb proc in Blazing Aura can make for a nice buffer).

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.

I return, 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'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.

Onyxia is deep breathing more?

Considering how well the Claws showed itself to be I've been thinking that War Mace ought to push the envelope even further. I just don't have the room for Crowd Control. Taking War Mace and not taking Crowd Control verges on blasphemy, but it's either not take Whirlwind Mace and only have Burn for an AoE for 38 levels or take Whirlwind Mace and skip on the 180 degrees hard hitting FF ensured knockdown mitigating cone. Well, ok, the solution is to have two builds and if doing content lower than 33 then go with build 1 and if 33 and more then use build 2 with Crowd Control 😛