Sovera

Funny you should say that because I have found nothing that beats Claws so far. I've been on an altitis spree and the only one that truly tickled my fancy was Rad Melee with the passive AoE allowing to just focus on STing bosses. Tbh I'd be all over it if only Irradiated Ground was at level 20 instead of 28, but it is as it is. Even so I don't much like the slow animations but the AoE sells it to me (and the heal). I haven't found a way to fit Gloom in and not lose my defense caps, but eh, not fussed since 28 instead of 20. I looked at Fire/Staff and played it for a bit (25-30) and it felt like a spiritual successor with the early AoE, except it takes both cone and PbAoE to match Spin, and then lacks good ST moves (using Gloom is an option but Gloom does not generate combo points, and Burn certainly helps a -lot- with Staff's low ST damage, but again generates no combos). Fire/SS is truckloads of damage, but dat late AoE and then the Rage crash saps my will to play. One thing I'm realizing as I play is that Fire Armor is to Tankers what Stalkers are to certain power sets. SS only has an AoE at 38? Burn got you covered until then. A set has poor ST moves? Burn and alternating BU and FE will help tremendously. Claws has everything. Good strong AoE early on so we are not made to ST our way to 28, early damage boost and accuracy as well at a time when someone leveling needs it the most, fast animations, good places for FF. Ok, ok, we all know Claws 😄 And yeah, I miss the old EM too. When BaBs changed it from the Dim Mak touch of death to 'Look at mah hands, mah hands are amazing' (sung to a populaer internet song) was a sad day to all (that said I'm leveling a Fire/EM and it's not being bad actually). Yes it does, Werner ran the numbers (and Bopper confirmed them) before testing in game. It's back in page three or so. If you want to ignore the defense goals you can certainly do a full on proc build. But trying to reach 40% S/L will demand sacrifices from the secondary. Bio is too squishy not to build defense so Fire might be a better option as it reaches 90% resists pretty much on its own (and with a lil help of the ATO). It is something I've been pondering to try on test. I don't actually know how much defense is helping me in the actual game and though it is easily stripped by factions who can debuff defense not all of them do (and some do in small numbers, such as Crey who rely on minions to do it but minions are the first to die). On one hand I posit a full proc Claws build relying on Shockwave to fill the rotation gap should put a dent on my record of 3:07 (incidentally never repeated), but on the other hand I'm satisfied with the times I got. I would need at least a good 30-40 seconds better times from it to consider a change.

You could, but why would you want to hurt yourself like that? Staff has a low damage output and Invuln does not help in that aspect. You'll be gently caressing the enemies to death.

I came from testing an Invuln/Claws. The numbers looked good and in my mind I cast aspersions on Werner thinking that maybe -my- build would do better (hon hon hon). After building the character I went to test it. Invuln blossoms early and so does Claws, so my first test was a +1x8 with bosses Posi 1. Got trounced. Not a good start. Second test was an ITF +4x8. Romans? No problem. Purposefully triggered the ambush at the top of the hill. Zero problem. Yeah, you know, that ambush that tends to wipe parties if everyone is not ready to dump incarnates and play tight and maybe eat skittles? Soloed it, did not use incarnates at all, did not use inspirations. My endurance reached 80% once and then shot back up. My defense never once went into the red. Once, while in the middle of the ocean of sea food, it reached 35%, but then during a lull caused by Shockwave it shot back up to 54%. My HP stayed solid at 100% with dips to 95%-97%. For obvious reasons I never touched Dull Pain. The ugly: tried to solo a pylon and got the same result as Bill. At the four minute mark the pylon was at . Tried again with two spawns of monkeys to try to trigger Gaussian in Invincibility and got a slight improvement at the four minute mark . Unfortunately it's why I can't play a primary without a damage boost of sorts. It's literally half the damage output to play without Bio or Fire Armor. And while Invuln was a dream of playing in auto-pilot without touching clickies (I even took Rebirth expecting the need of a second heal) I don't think it could do the ITF at +4x8. When I did the no deaths +4x8 ITF on the Fire/Claws doing Romulus at twice the damage output was whittling it down. Doing it at half output simply would not happen. Now, does it matter being able to solo the ITF or doing the pylon in less than four minutes? Absolutely not. If someone's intention is to be super sturdy then this sort of thing is right there where they need it. The build that I used: I may have gone a bit overboard in endurance recovery since I was steady at 90% for most of the time with a one time dip to 80%. I did not bother adding more defense for the simply reason of how Invincibility works. I just find that Tankers do not fear one tough enemy, but they fear many smaller enemies. With how Invincibility works this is perfect as we get more defense while there are many enemies, and as they die we no longer need the defense. With one enemy it's at 40% defense, easily workable for more, but in practical game play this is fine IMO.

JUBILATION!

Tried it, didn't like the sloooow animations. You get the same AoE and better ST and a heal just by using Rad Melee. Dark Armor is a bit like Spines and got left behind by the newer sets. Rad Armor has a little cousin of Dark Regen in Radiation Therapy and instead of being an endurance hog it's an endurance faucet. I'm biased by Fire/Claws is my baby and I've yet to find a more well rounded build. Immense damage straight from level 20 (exemped to 15) and sturdy. Though not as sturdy as something like Rad Armor.

50% of 8 does not 15 make. You get 12 and you'll like it!

Trying Fire/SS. Yeah, I can see why people are in love with double Rage. Taking a nice chunk from a boss, popping FE, simply taking half a boss' HP, etc etc. Still clunky though, that Rage crash is both annoying (WHERE IS MY DAMAGE!) and potentially deadly. The Rage Crash is a big flow breaker. It's almost like being CCed. Not being able to play for 10 seconds is just not fun, though it can be the moment to use buffs like Consume and such, but still, not fun. The more recharge the more often it happens. I wish I could set an addon with the timer so I don't jump into a group of enemies or pop buffs when it's about to expire. Leveling to 26/28 was a pain as the set has nothing to its name. No AoE, only KO Blow as a good attack. Being forced to used Punch (itty bitty better than Jab) was horrible as even fully slotted it hit for pathetic damage. Only having paired it with Fire/ made the leveling bearable with Burn pulling the wagon both in ST and AoE. Reaching Yin the combo takes off. Still no AoE, but Rage and FE make Burn shoot up (speaking of I have a new leveling slotting for Burn that allows to get two damage procs in and mimics the playstyle of level 50) which really makes a huge difference in killing speed. Reaching 35 allowed to take Gloom and Punch can finally be thrown to the compost heap. Even just leveling and underslotted (so much hunger for slots) I find I can do the rotation I envisioned for level 50 thanks to KO Blow proccing everything like a swiss watch (including a FF proc). I can Burn, KO Blow, Haymaker, Gloom, Burn and repeat which is pretty much what I intended to do just looking at Mids. Despite the love Footstomp has I'm not impressed. Wide radius, yes, built in KD which does mitigation and carries a FF proc amazingly, yes. But when I pop an AoE I expect damage and even with double Rage it still does less than Spin with just one stack of FU. This is offset by double Rage doing -things- to Burn (not just the initial burst the the burn patch afterwards). Verdict: - Sticking to level 50 play and capable of overlooking the jarring Rage crashes? Fire/SS might be your baby. It's Scrappers levels of damage and I'm going to finish leveling and incarnating it to give it a whirl. - Intending to play with friends who level new alts and be with them as they do their TFs or mission arcs? Fire/Claws. Most well rounded character and damage on wheels exemped down to level 15. This is the build I will be using at 50:

I've been thinking of trying Fire/SS for moar dakka. But the whole build feels like something I should station at level 50 and only play it at that level since its exemplaring is execrable. No Rage until 28 means no damage boost until level 23. The damage boost would at least push Burn to take up the slack until... 33 when the second AoE is available. Then it has a weak ST rotation until... 30 when Gloom can be picked. On the other hand I -can- keep it to play at level 50 (or anything Citadel/Manticore and up) and use the absolutely superb exemplaring of the Fire/Claws for low level play.

Did you get to try it against a pylon, Camel?

Farm thread, yeah.

You have only my respect, Infinitum. But I threw my Fire Armor at the 801 (in a full group, not solo) and survived it. 50% survival seems fine. I can also tank Recluse with four towers up and not die (if I remember to use Consume so he does not drain me in one hit). Soloed ITF at +4x8 with no deaths (ok, ok, not a big achievement 😄). And this is me without Shockwave for extra mitigation. Carnival is still iffy though but doable. And I also had a magnificent death against Awakened Longbow who threw me around up and down until I died. In both cases it means I don't plunge in Leroy style and actually choose targets. I'm not downplaying your comments because you are correct. But once we are capable of surviving those tasks I mentioned is it safe to say that 95% of the game can be done with a build emphasizing damage? We should not downplay the effect of killing faster. Dead things are not hurting us back.

It's fine to slot the way you'd like. I just didn't want new players to think it was a good way to do it.

I have to confess this slotting hurts mah sole.

I'm not gonna lie. I never played invuln because I disliked the lack of a 'real' heal (being one that is only up once a minute or so). Looking now at the interactions with Invincibility made me want to try it but eh, if Fire Armor melts 90% of the content at a good clip (for a Tanker) I don't feel like being able to tank 99% of the content makes up for the damage loss. I'm very into the Path of Exile methodology of assigning the budget into being 'tough enough' and then the rest into damage instead of assigning 100% of the budget to surviving. If 50% if enough to survive then the other 50% are better spent somewhere else. I don't think this changes the baseline. Even if a different build does more damage it's still a % game and 8 or 16 mobs providing saturation wasn't a big swing with Gaussian.

Yes, but the longer the recharge a power has the more likely the chance of a proc has of going off. And Aim/Build-up have a whooping 90 second recharge that pushes the envelope regarding this. So much indeed that 90% being the capped chance for a proc to go off won't be changed even if we add recharge to it until at least 75%. I still go 95% recharge personally as if I recall correctly it only lowers the chance of going off to... 87%? Please do not quote me. When in doubt about these things click the power and choose Info and details and you'll see the nitty gritty of it. In the grand scheme of things (400% ish or something damage cap) 62% isn't tremendous, but a lot of old CoH lingo was deceptive with attacks who did 'moderate' and 'minor' damage until we finally got actual numbers. As for Tactics, sure, people do what they wish to do. Perhaps they are explicitly building so that Tactics makes them reach the hit chance cap.... Or more likely they just take it because they want to help the team, which is a valid outlook as well.

That makes sense. I haven't done red content enough to investigate which transport is closest via teleport beacon on red side. On blue side it mattered to me so I started looking it up and King's Row was perfect. I'm sure one of the base exits on red side must do the same. But if you are sure it is tram only then yeah, it's going to suck since the tram isn't close and Kallisti is huuuuuuuge. Even leaving the mission via macro and teleporting back to Kallisti will still leave you at the middle of the map saving half the trip, but it's still half a trip.

- Build-up is 100% damage boost with 20% ToHit. - Aim is 62% damage boost with 50% ToHit. Being a lower damage boost I like the gaussian there so clicking it still feels impactful. So yeah, always use Aim. The extra accuracy isn't bad, but, if you're not building to have 90+% chance to hit natively you're not doing right. Part of the reason why Tactics is seldomly taken since 95% to hit +3 (since it's where the incarnate shift leaves us) is not super difficult to do and more is not helping much other than niche cases. The Gaussian in Tactics is a valid option though, but it will fire at random. It can fire during your walk to the spawn, it may fire after your nuke, it may fire during a lull in combat (and it only lasts 5 seconds). Considering how Tactics is usually not a worthy pick (other than for niche reasons not realated to the actual ToHit) and how Blasters are tied to the initial burst to annihilate a spawn to reduce incoming damage (ence my earlier strategy of nuke + AoEs for one group and then BU + Aim + AoEs for the second group.

A bit of a tangent, but if you use the base macro (big if) when the mission ends don't lose time exiting the mission first. Use the macro while still inside, then hit King's Row. You are bound to always be the first in the map like that.

It's a damage boost also, albeit lower than Build-Up. What I personally do is put the Gaussian in there to make it up for that. BU is strong on its own and Aim needs the help. Having the Gaussian in Tactics is an option as well, but, IMO, it firing randomly is better for ATs without nukes. My Tanker for example is all a constant stream of damage. But a Blaster will have their T9 and that's how they will want to initiate the fight. Back when I did my stint as a Blaster I slid into the strategy of using BU + Nuke for one spawn and then run to the next and use Aim + all the AoEs the Build had. And at some point found it was better to use nuke + AoEs, and the next group my nuke would be down but I would make up for it by BU + Aim + regular AoEs.

What do those numbers mean? You had more Gaussian proc uptime on Focus Chi? Oh wait, I get it. You took a pylon in 547 seconds. Hory sheet, 9 minutes? That's some bad levels of bad. There go my dreams of Gaussian allowing Invuln to acquire an offensive edge.

We may need our resident mathmagician. I've re-read the entire Rad VS Invuln thread trying to find it but was unable. Obi wan @Bopper, you are our only hope.

Or inv/Claws that -also- doesn't have BU, and in FU Bopper mathed it at a 10% chance to go off. I don't know how much of a positive effect it would turn out to be though. 5 seconds every 10 seconds of having 80% damage is in no way bad though, even if it is not Burn (and Blazing Aura/generic damage aura). That said Invuln/Rad Melee. What was the chance per enemy every 10 seconds though? Anyone remembers? 10% chance? 50%?

That's why I mentioned it not being good for pylon tests since only one enemy - the pylon - around. It's basically the reverse of slotting it in Tactics. In Tactics it gives a chance for allies in range. In invincibility it gives a chance on enemies in range. If I solo or duo the effect based on enemies is a lot more interesting and I do spend more time with enemies around me than I do fighting one tough enemy. It just depends on how reliable this effect is.

To be honest I'm fairly interested in how Invincibility interacts with Gaussian. It sounds to me like a constant stream of BUs would surpass Offensive Adaptation and even Burn. I mean, yeah, it's not something for a pylon test to shine on, but if Invuln is pretty good defensively and just lacks an offensive edge, then wouldn't this be it with a chance to go off every ten seconds multiplied by all enemies in range?

Wondering about it as well.