Sovera

The T9 is Mass Levitate, not GPS. In a better world we would be able to track buffs and keep an eye on Insight and only use GPS at the very last second to consume the buff. Too much hassle though. tests can be re-done but last time someone got the same numbers by only using GPS at the last second of Insight, and then not using GPS at all. Which makes sense since if we are using one attack every 30-40 seconds then it will not have a large impact.

It's just 150% though. The -regen from the incarnates mentioned above is also apparently negligible to the point anything else will be better. Not all GMs are equal and Kraken is a low level one, you might find even without daggers you would be able to kill it (each dagger is costing one attack after all).

My last one, this brief burst of altitis is over for now. I tried FA/DM in the interim but it did not pass muster. What I did think about was that what Fire Armor really wants is a nice PbAoE that has KD component to speed things up. Enter Martial Arts. I posted a while back how I made a 90% res with 45% defense to Melee/Ranged/AoE with Radiation Armor and it wasn't too difficult to adapt it and achieve the same numbers. Due to certain power changes it wasn't as easy to cap Negative/Energy this time around so it takes an iffy three stacks of the ATO to achieve it on top of 5% from Barrier. It can probably be refined a bit more. The good: - Works as advertised. The Force Feedback proc in Dragon's Tail is active straight from Posi 2 and it helps a fair bit. BU/FE/Burn comes out of recharge more often which in turns speeds the damage. - While not a huge achievement a solo Moonfire +1/x8, no insps, no deaths, leveling build thus no fancy IOs and procced to the gills. - Huge burst with Fiery Embrace and Build-up. For team play maybe stagger their use but I found it better to use both. - Dragon Tail at level 20 gives a nice push to AoE damage in the low level TFs. - End build will have 45% to positionals and 90%-ish to the usual. What it means is will also do better at dodging attacks that carry debuffs in it (anything psi with a Ranged tag will thus be avoidable too). Anything with defense debuffs will strip this layer, yes, but not all factions do the stripping and for those who do this -is- a resist based character after all. The bad: - The dev who made Synapse is a sadist. Trying to do the already slow TF on top of throwing mobs away with each Dragon Tail (in turn costing damage since they get tossed away from Burn's fire patch) was an exercise in frustration and repeated apologies to the team. Fortunately I had an eager Controller whom I asked to use the mass immobilizes when enemies were clustered around me and that's when I dared to used Dragon Tail. I would never use this character exemped down to do a Synapse with a friend. Or I would swap IOs and put an Overwhelming KB>KD in it. - Dragon Tail is mediocre. Half the damage of Spin (not using Follow-up) is cringe. Okay okay, it animates near a second faster, it offers mitigation with the KD, and the FF proc in it is a good build accelerator. - The whole damage of MA feels mediocre though it is hard to tell. Obviously I cannot compare it to Claws(-the- gold standard) since that one coasts from Posi 1 on with Follow-up adding a stacking 30% damage to Spin, to Burn, to Blazing Aura, etc. Since I was starved for slots I did not put in damage procs while leveling either which didn't help. - Only having Build-up at 28 is not lethal, but it does kill the attractive part of BU recharging faster thanks to the FF procs. The lack of burst is noticeable until Yin. From Yin on the build behaves very well. - Crippling Axe kick at 35 means waiting until then for the build's ST heavy hitter, but exemplaring is not a problem with a fully slotted Thunder Kick to keep things going without gaps. The build: So, end result: - FA/Rad is amazing with the passive AoE. We can just mostly ignore AoE and hit the bosses in a pack of enemies and the rest will die on their own. It just needed Irradiated Ground to be at level 20 instead of 28 to be (near) perfect. Devasting Blow feels terrible to use and I would either work Crossblow in (but I can only fit at around level 30-35) or Proton Sweep (with the Tanker buff it's about ish 100º angle which is decent). Slotting and using Contaminated Strike is a solution but I don't think it really adds anything to the build other than a small gap closer after Smash, Siphon, Smash. - FA/MA kind of needs 28 to feel good as well although for different reasons. Mitigation from Dragon's Tail, lots of defense with Storm Kick, the lower damage of this set makes sense with the defense it brings but Fire Armor compensates for it with Burn and Fiery Embrace and Fire Armor loves all those Force Feedback procs. Of the two I will personally level the FA/MA some more to see how it behaves, but I keep that the FA/Claws as the best rounded character with early AoE, early Follow-up, fast animations and good damage even when super exemped thanks to the stacking effect of FU.

Man, I don't do PvP, but, between people abusing the base macro to not die in PvP and the animation canceling I think my previous words stand.

It's as Hyperstrike says. I recently played with a Stone Tanker. Good guy, solid build, he placed a metric ton of movement speed bonuses and could dash around in granite form. But in the end my 'squishy' fire armor Tanker runs around like mad, doesn't die, and Hover + one of the jump packs is crazy fast in combat mobility.

I've heard from a friend that things like a re-haul of Fire Melee and Energy Melee for Tankers has been tested and been scrapped while we aren't even aware. I understand it after the last brouhaha, but I miss seeing the changes and the evolution of things instead of the solid wall of silence we got since before Covid that made people (me included) simply assume the project had died.

Man, the extremes of cheating to win and feel good are always amusing for an impartial outsider.

Tried a FA/Rad variant now. The good: - Gorgeous passive AoE. I was poopoo-ing at Irradiated Ground and how it wasn't -real- AoE, but to my surprise once I obtained it I would Build-up, Burn, and then work at killing a boss and the pack of enemies surrounding it would be dead under the rain of little orange numbers from Burn's aftermath, the damage aura and both Irradiated Ground patches. It was working so well I just soloed Yin, Moonfire and Citadel at +0x8. Seriously, if there is one thing I am envious is this amazing cleave. I was tempted to not even bother with Atom Smasher. - Fat heal. Even while leveling it was a significant heal back. It is common knowledge the heal is unreliable, and it's true but it's also not. Rad Melee's Build-up power (Fusion) forces Contaminated and I found it simple to Fusion, Burn, Radioactive Smash (force contaminated), Siphon (heal), Radioactive Smash (force contaminated), Siphon (heal). The bad (surprisingly not much and mostly subjective): - Ugly and slow animations overall (Radiation Siphon looks so... bad... ). 1.7, 2.3, 2.9 animation times gives me the hives. Devastating Blow in particular has no impact (IMO) that warrants 2.9 second animation and I expected Fiery Embrace to boost it more than it did. - With Irradiated at 28 anything under Yin's TF will only have Burn for AoE. I think that basically what's needed to be enjoyable is to get Cross-Punch early. It gives a third attack, gives a bit of AoE, allows to skip Devastating Blow and maybe Atom Smasher (Atom Smasher is good to burst down things though). The build:

With some frankenslotting and a Overwhelming + a FF I found I could knock 10 seconds off Hasten with Shockwave alone.

I've been trying variants of my fave and Fire/Rad has its flaws, no doubt about it which leaves Fire/Claws still ahead, but it's been behaving really nicely once I finally got access to Irradiated Ground. Rad Melee is hard to get into for me though. Slow ass -extremely- silly animations and I die a little bit inside each time I hit Devastating Blow, run to the kitchen, make a sammich and then run back in time to see it whiff. I can't make myself give it up though, because even though it is not ET it still has a pretty heavy base damage which goes trés bien ensemble with Fiery Embrace. But the cleave is unreal. BU + Burn clears whole spawns once backed with both damage auras. I'm literally ignoring the whole spawn and hitting a boss and everything may just die at the same time. It's coming to a point I'm thinking there may not be a point in picking Atom Smasher.

Check the Guides section of the forums. There is a Farm Fresh thread with all the builds and etc where the farmers congregate and share their builds and times.

Not sure why you are trying to make a secret out of your build. Everything else is spot on. An easy trick to remember is that in practical terms Judgement serves the same purpose as Barrier. You can coast through a pack of enemies by using Barrier, and the next pack use Judgement and kill most of them thus lowering their danger. As for the rest, yeah, Traps. Kinetic isn't adding much to yourself in defensive terms, Trick Arrow isn't all that great, and Storm will be the most damage but enemies will run away like idiots. Things that can be worked out IF YOU WEREN'T KEEPING YOUR BUILD A SECRET! Anyways, good luck, and yeah, kill the healing nictus first.

Even though I am on a Tanker bender I use a Scrapper to PL my new characters to level 20 before I get started with TFs. And I have to saw my Claws/Bio is still my baby. Look at that chewing through packs of enemies and them constantly on their butt with huge chunks of HP torn off. And so fluid. FU, Shockwave, Spin, repeat, repeat, repeat. Tanker Claws is nice, it's nice, buuuuut, it's not the same thanks to the extra seconds in the cooldowns.

It's why you go to some places like /enterbasefrompasscode RPCITY-1188 and suddenly it's like, holy crap, a real city. Ice cream parlors, pizza places we can enter, bowling alleys, gyms, all places we can enter.

I was looking at KM. I had good times with a Stalker KM, but it's true that AS mitigates KM's shortcomings. FA isn't a good pairing since I need to use the primary for bonuses and KM plays much better with all attacks having three or four damage procs.

Toggles, not me. The math has shown to be bad (chance of every 10 seconds).

I've had a resurgence of altitis and was trying to find something better than my FA/Claws... But it's not happening. As far as I am concerned FA/Claws is simply the gold standard. Tried FA/Fire. Slow animations, bad Combustion, mediocre ST. Tried FA/Psi. Good mitigation, bad damage, only having a cone until 38 is a no. Tried FA/Rad. Good Mids numbers, but, no AoE until 38. Ok, Irradiated ground at 28, but it's more of an aura than actual AoE (really should be at 20). Slooooooow aaaanimaaaaations. It's the combo I feel I should make an effort to like what with easy access to -res and fat 650 HP heals, but what are those Atom Smasher numbers? 100 damage less than Spin, and 3.1 animation to boot? That disorient tax is too high. Most of these exemp simply terribly (only one AoE and at 38, or important ST skills at 35 and 38 so what to use if lower than that?) and as someone who exemps a lot I'm not into looking at level 50 performance only. Looked at a bunch of others but I keep hurtling against no AoE until 28 or just being plain worse than Claws (3.4 sec animation Tremor 🙂 )

Is there even a point in testing without incarnates? Even 'just' Reactive/Degen can shave almost a minute off the time, not even including Musculature and such. I was pondering my next test to be Street Justice. On another any other combo of power sets it has an annoying 2 second gap while waiting for Crushing Uppercut to recharge, but 'lo, Burn fills that. Sadly it has bad downsides for me. Two ST skills one at 35 and another at 38 rob it from good examplaring, and being forced to take the T1 robs of the much better alternative of using the T2 that could fit a FF proc. And Spinning Strikes is at 28, ugh. A more interesting test might be Dual Blades which is nearly a carbon copy of Claws. We get a Follow-up clone with Feint, a nice PbAoE at 16 that recharges pretty damn fast, a good place for FF with Vengeful Slice at 28 (just like Focus), a -res with Ablating Strike (same as with Slash). But according to Mids all the numbers are better on the Claws. Twice the damage in Spin(!), faster animations (1.3 Focus VS 2.6 Vengeful Slice -and- Focus doing 50 damage more).

Another small test with a Fire/Psi variant. The good: - Very easy to achieve ST rotation with TK blow, Psi Blade and Psi Sweep. Burn when up. - Extremely good places to have FF procs that speed things enough to make chains of Burn, Mass Levitate and Psi Sweep with TK Blow sprinkled here and there. - Very good mitigation with Mass Levitate. Pretty easy to lock a pack of enemies until it dies. - Psi Sweep is ok with the tanker patch (about 100-ish degree angle cone). The bad: - Animation are slow-ish and stiff. Not too bad, but not too great. - Being forced to take Mental Strike messes exemplaring with me being forced to take Psi Blade at 28 instead of level 2. Not horrible horrible since lower level content doesn't need min max. - Very old school ST Tanker damage with a pylon at nearly half HP at the 3 minute mark, This seemed strange since Psi Melee had good Scrapper times with the same rotation (ignoring Greater Psi Sword) but a second test had the same result. The build I used:

I decided to try a Fire/Fire variant since Fiery Embrace + Fire Melee seems like a match in heaven. Edit: at the time of writing this I still believed that Fiery Embrace did a 100% boost to fire damage which is not true. The good: - Burst. Fiery Embrace + anything is chunky damage. I found I could Build-up for one pack, then FE for the next, then BU again for the next. Only the fourth pack would have these two both still recharging. This is pretty good to burst things down. And FE + BU can just liquefy things when high burst is needed. - Fire is not lethal. I could see I was putting the hurt on things like robots. - Pretty long AoE chains. In very high AoE situations I found I could Combustion, Fire Sword Circle, Burn, Combustion, gap filled with Fire Sword (for the ATO proc) and then pretty much resume. The bad: - Combustion sucks very hard. It should either have a very wide radius and then it does good damage but has a terribly long animation, or it has a wide radius but does low damage and has a fast animation. But low damage AND extremely slow animation is just horrible. It can't even kill the little gears that pop from a Clockwork boss and still costs 3.1 seconds to cast. - Who thought it was a good idea to make Fire Sword and Fire Sword Circle do a scream FX? Every time, every 3-4 seconds, using Fire Sword makes for a screaming sound. That's really terrible. - Incinerate is the best attack the set gets... with a long near 5 second DoT. While it does not sound like a lot it means we are going to be wasting Incinerate by hitting the enemy one or two times more while the ticks happen. - Combustion being so bad means there is hardly a point in using it. I found myself using it once when reaching a pack of enemies and then relying on Fire Sword Circle and Burn to AoE them once minions dead. This means if exemplaring down too much we are with only Burn to really do AoE damage once FSC is out of reach. - Fire Sword Circle comes too late at 28. This is a common complaint with many Tanker sets that could -really- do with the Axe and MA rework where they got their AoEs down to level 20. Fire Breath is even worse than Combustion and only good for thematic reasons. - Incinerate at 35 means leveling with Scorch and Fire Sword only for single target. Too much exemplaring brings this back. - At least two deaths from chaining long animations. 3.1s Combustion and 2.9s FSC is a good way to die if not on top of things. Fire Melee is not in a good place. Not just for the lack of CC to help mitigate in the set, but also no place to slot the more common -res procs and no place to slot a Force Feedback proc. One would expect for something with these many downsides that it would then explode in terms of damage, but... no. It has a very high Fiery Embrace tax. It means if the set is made to be good enough on its own then it will be highly buffed once FE is used, which means it won't. I did a quick and unscientific single pylon test and even with Fiery Embrace propping it it was 3:50 without clickies. Now that said: - Pylon times are not useful metrics though. Claws are lethal and suffer from enemies resisting them much more than it happens with Fire and this is not something a pylon shows since it resists all damage equally. Were it a lethal resist based test then Fire would have made a better showing of itself. - The burst of BU with Gaussian + FSC + Burn for one pack of enemies and then FE + Combustion + FSC + Burn for the next is something useful for the short fights that predominate in CoH. This is the build I was using:

I have a new quote (I'll add it when I finish the Fire/Fire guide): - Random person in my team, "Who is using a baby seal to hit the bad guys?'

I'm on Everlasting. As a rule I see these being used. And just like me people tire of having to answer what level it is so they tend to append the minimum level to it. There was a time I even added the usual time to finish it.

Just the desire to argue over the internet. It's a common thing to have this part of the forums with several knights in shining armor ready to defend the helpless suffering game from the big mean players who want to bully it. With, say, NPCs saying something when we get close, or asking for a P2W option to refuse salvage. In both cases some players will rear up with their staves and shout thou salt not pass!! And in both cases a variation of the mechanic already exists. If we are hunting a boss that needs to be arrested it will speak when we get close to it. AVs in missions, named bosses, etc, we get close and they spout a text blurb. In the case of refusing salvage the P2W already has that option but for recipes instead of salvage. In both cases players come to the rescue saying how this would dilute the experience. I'll tell you what experience would be diluted. It was me doing Moonfire with a team and suddenly getting -hit- by how before Ouro portals and base macros we were expected to be in Striga. Fly to the boat. Loading screen into Talos. Fly to the tram. Loading screen into Skyway. Fly to the NPC. FedEx a message to it. Fly back to the tram. Loading screen into Talos. Fly to the ship. Loading screen into Striga. Fly to mission. Don't get me started on Citadel's IP/Talos Ping-pong or Numina's lets-go-chase-grey-mobs-for-ten-missions-all-over-the-world.

The new SM is amazeballs though. At least IMO. Good enough to be the only AoE of the character even. I do wish this happened to all cones since as a rule they are so crap no meleer touches them when possible.

There are so few fire/claws tankers out there I was on my other account and someone says to me: 'You've Sovera over the forums, right?' 'Yeah. How did you guess?' 'You are playing a Fire/Claws and your guide was cheering about them' 😄