Sovera

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.

Kinda is though, but only in more extreme situations so you are correct too. But defense can go into the negatives which means we get hit more. Even blocking 90% of the damage it's still more hits coming in. But this is a more ITF level of extreme when we get to the -40% or -50%. A -20% would certainly take us to that level faster,

I'm going to generalize here so don't take it as gospel. But if they are like me players who tried Stalkers did not found the small damage increase worth the loss of an agro aura. In another game where DPS are frail and need to hide behind a tank a Stalker would be flocked to. High damage and low threat agro? GIMME! But we are in CoH where DPS are sturdy (actually everything is weak since we fight normal enemies of which half a spawn is minions) and thus don't fear wading into the thick of it. But the 'it' does not want to be thick and will run off once their HP gets low. They don't with a Scrapper (with the right secondary) but will Benny Hill with a Stalker. In the end I couldn't stomach the runners anymore. As for Blasters VS Melee it's hard to say really. Not going to say no but gut feelings don't compare to an actual damage meter. Of course a Blaster cleans a pack of enemies with BU + Aim + their nuke. But then they spend the next 40-ish seconds with none of it while meleers keep on plodding. Honestly? If we were to recount the damage at the end of a whole instance/TF I feel my Tanker could well be the one on top. Being constantly 360º surrounded by a ball of enemies, constantly dishing AoEs and having a ticking aura beats a nuke every 40 seconds or another meleer on the edge of said ball of hate not getting the whole 360º coverage. But it's all gut feelings without said damage meter.

It shouldn't be weaker in S/L since it is the easiest resistnce to get up. More often than not I find myself skimping in Tough slots to not grossly overcap. SS in general is just shunned because of the Rage drop. I do have a Fire/SS in one of the pages in my signature if you'd like some ideas.

And remember that using DNA SIphon on corpses gives Recovery, while using it on alive enemies gives endurance.

They are less damage than a Scrapper for sure. Using a pylon for a metric a 'normal' min-max scrapper takes it down in 1:30-2 minutes depending. My best is 2:45. The new Energy Melee might replace it for me, though not having Build-up until 28 is a bummer. Now, we need to just think if 3 minutes is really bad or what. I've seen Scrappers do pylon challenges and taking 5-7 minutes for example. I mentioned recently in another post how CoH is composed by easy and harder content. A Scrapper can survive easy content (basically any faction that does not debuff or hit the weakness in their secondary) but folds against hard content (most Scrappers in an ITF for example). Absolutely yes that a full team with buffs and debuffs does fix this but it does assume there will be the correct buffs and debuffs present (forcefield buffs on a Super Reflex character will do precious little). I am just in love with the character because it will rock from Positron 1 to incarnate content where the heavy hitters (TW, double Rage) deal really badly with exemplaring. And as I said the damage is there. There is lots of burst involved when we kill 4-5 minions just by dropping a procced out Burn. As for your last question Brutes do about 10% more damage, but Tankers got a 50% buff to the size of their AoEs which means they hit more enemies more easily, while also being far sturdier than Brutes (who receive no bonuses to their defenses (exact same slotting in Scrapper, Brute and Tanker has Scrapper and Brute with same numbers while the tank gets higher numbers) with much better ATOs (crappy +fury and even crappier 10% regen/recovery opposed to 20% to all res and an absorb shield that Tankers get).

Claws for great ST and great AoE. Can't go wrong with Claws/Bio. Shockwave does a lot to help with survival. If I can tempt you to the side of Tankers then Fire/Claws is something I've waxed poetic about.

Why common only? It's it a ironman challenge thing or lack of funds? Your blue bar woes will disappear simply slotting a Theft of Essence in DNA Siphon.

We have peaked. There is Werner, then there is the rest of us. That's fine though, he's a worthy leader. You have my Fire Armor!

It pretty much is. But the sad thing is that even with FE the damage still isn't amazing. But it would be difficult to balance Fire Melee because of Fiery Embrace's Damocles' Sword. Make it good enough without Fire Armor that it rivals the current best sets? It explodes when paired with Fire Armor. Make it as good as the other sets with Fiery Embrace? Straight out of luck if you ever pair it with anything but Fire Armor. People often make the mistake of considering certain mechanics as 'free damage', but it's never free. Psi Melee Insight is not free damage, bleeds in Savage Melee aren't free. The sets are calculated with these effects in mind. It's just bad for Fire Melee that the calculations involve a whole power set which will never work well without a rework of Fiery Embrace for the reasons above.

I've done Fire/EM in the past but it seems worthy of re-doing since Fire is still going to help with the lower AoE and Burn can take the place of the slow ET (if I'm not mistaken). Burn is only up every two rotations and slow ET falls every two rotations as well. I'm not testing until the tweaking is over though (also because Shadowlands is about to hit and I've moved back to WoW).

Path of Exile has a skill any class can use whose sole purpose is teleporting all pets to the character. It used to have a large CD but it was later buffed to something like 20 seconds I believe.

Great QoL touch!

Omfg, mind, blown!

SOON (TM)!

Hmm... Spines is old and slow. I'm not going to say not to do one if you want to, but someone picking this combo sounds like you're after tons of AoE more than a theme, am I right?

You're most welcome, and in the end your original build would have worked just fine for pretty much everything so you were in the good path. Don't undersell yourself. It is almost pedantic to make changes to it since you could play the game just as you were. Even if the changes were improvements it is probably something you would/will really notice as it is mostly under the hood changes. But managing to fit Fusion (with a Gaussian on top of it) will help you clear a pack of mobs in the first seconds of combat, and that Theft of Essence proc in Radiation Therapy changes the approach to endurance (such as making Cardiac pretty much unnecessary).

My apologies then, I missed it.

I'm not sure how much of a newbie you actually are, so take this in the spirit of helping, but the guide in my signature helps with money making. At level 8 you can earn around 3 million by doing a Taskforce that takes 25-40 minutes to do. It is a bit less involved than Luminara's example of making money, but I prefer it since it involves running around playing the game instead of playing the AH (ultimately playing the AH is much better in terms of cash, but it's not what I log into City of Heroes to do). The other link in my signature has a post on page 3 which documents my starting with zero inf on a brand new character and after one day of playing the game (not playing the AH) I had something like 27 million with multiple IOs costing in the 10 mill range. This can be repeated by anyone who cares since it only involved me leveling. I have not seen it mentioned here but on top of Beginner's Luck lowbies benefit greatly from another mechanic: Amplifiers from the P2W vendor. They cost a pittance at level 1 (24k for eight hours of all three Amplifiers) which turns lowbies into mini-Wolverines. Finally I will add that people should try to be flexible. If they cannot find enough people red side to run a DFB in the low levels just for the reward, then hop to blue side, get it done, then hop back to red side and continue playing.

I do find myself repeating the same thing under different flavors 😄