Sovera

You don't need to farm if you don't want, but you can farm if you do want. You can build a character that works for all content and then do farming if you feel like it or go out and play with others or go solo missions. My signature has some tips for money making. If you do want to farm with a Tanker then I'd go with a Fire/Fire and depending on how it's build you can throw four AoEs every few seconds while still having good single target. If the main goal is to farm you can skimp and cut some corners. I would still advise to check the Farm Fresh thread over the Guides section of the forums since it's all farmers with tips and builds being posted.

No, passive powers check for procs every 10 seconds. Passive powers aren't even affected by recharge since they are passive. You can slot IOs that have recharge but they won't do a thing.

Tankers do substantial damage for actual gameplay. While leveling I hit Build-up, use my two PbAoEs and all minions are dead and lieutenants are at half HP. Can other ATs do this? Yes. Can they even do more? Yes. Do they more damage? Also yes. Does this mean Tankers hit like crap and it's a slow whittling of enemies? No.

Welcome back! You can't, but, there's double XP and a solid economy where no one needs to spend a billion for a single enhancement. Even taking it easy in two weeks you can be fully geared with incarnates and all. Check the guide in my signature for stuff you might find use.

Hey, I read you. I used to play with someone who was like that. They would DC without warning and then show up again either in a few hours or the next day, no excuse, no mention about what happened. After the.. fifth or sixth time when they mentioned about playing together I said no, I mentioned their DCs, they said they were in the military with a bad wifi, and I said sure, so it's not malicious, but you still DC each time we play so in the end I still don't want to play with you, sorry, best wishes, etc. This with Mythic keys in WoW means if one player DCs the key is bricked and the run is void and since the reward is gated by finishing the dungeon then there is no reward for having stuck to it. But this isn't the case in CoH. If need be a single reasonably IO-ed character can solo the rest and if there another six lending support or just helping to kill then a missing team mate has absolutely zero consequences. I've lost count of TFs I've ran that started with 8 people and finished with 5 or less and nothing happened, the difficulty wasn't even lowered, we just continued playing and finished it. That's why I don't grok this thread. Unless the team was full SO geared squishies and the person who disappeared was the Tanker what difference does it make if someone DCs or maliciously decides to leave?

If you pug a lot and don't know what the wind will blow to your team then a Tanker wins out. Build it to be self-sufficient and no need to fish for specific buffers or wish that they were available. If playing with SGs or with people who care to build teams 'right' then a Brute can replace the Tanker as buffs fill up the gaps that Brutes cannot reach alone and a Tanker does. In terms of damage they are toe-to-toe which has made many Brutes very sad. This is mostly due to a complete abuse of procs and tossing as much as four or even six into all attacks and then rely on a mix of incarnates and a Tanker's innate higher defense to not need to spend as much into shoring said defenses with IOs. Brutes do more damage, but then lose that edge by spending more of their slotting budget shoring their defenses, and even then they will have gaps which buffers need to cover. In practice anything that is actually tough (hardmodes, that's it, even Trials aren't consider hard anymore) the team will not be random warm bodies and those buffers will be present to a point Brutes or Scrappers replace Tankers. Tankers have a huge HP pool which cannot be replicated by IOs or buffs as it is hardcapped and that huge HP pool allows to soak hits and heal back up where a Scrapper cannot (at best there is always a 5% chance of being hit and Scrappers only boast of 75% resists. A Brute has 90% resists but still not the HP of a Tanker). Tbh if you're not in hardmodes this worry about playing the very best AT that can save a team is just amusing for the vets reading this thread. Normal non-HM content is easy enough most people just solo it at +4x8 and so much as bringing a second person already doubles the carnage. I stopped teaming because we are at a point where the difficulty is not in surviving or keeping a team alive but finding a target we can actually hit before it has turned into a corpse before we have finished animating the attack.

How did you get that from what I said? 😄 I *love* my Stone/Fire Melee who is the (near) immortal Tanker in my signature because it balances strong offense with strong AoE and ST. It replaced my Fire/MA as a solid damage dealer with good AoE because it also cruises through the game and the leveling without bothering with inspirations. Where Fire Melee needs some babysitting through the levels up to 30-40 and is a definite defeat-first-before-they-defeat-you. Fire/MA is still strong because of a resist based armor being able to reach softcapped defense. The synergy between Dragon's Tail and Burn makes the AoE pretty good and the extra offense goes well with MA. Realistically Fire/Fire is the most damaging of the trio (no, duh) but not for the obvious reasons. It is because it's one of the few builds that has triple PbAoEs with zero time wasted in repositioning on top of the obvious reasons. This is all based on me being mostly a soloer these days. For someone who wants to play in teams and be absurdly tanky then sure, consider Stone/MA and be self-buffed at incarnate defense caps on top of having roughly 80% resists to most things AND be at HP cap.

They already are penalized though? They didn't get the rewards from finishing the TF.

I can't stand Controllers myself even when I teamed which I don't anymore. Plant has nice things but mainly lives and dies by Seeds. And since Seeds is always available and a whole spawn is neutered by a single click you can just focus on the busy Kin with buffing and debuffing. Plus Seeds will make coming close to FS much safer.

Just for the sake of putting my two cents in. The concept Tankers don't need to do damage because their role is to tank is a rather obsolete idea. Even in WoW where healers and tanks are dedicated roles they are expected to do damage. It is, in fact, expected and accounted for that each person will do at least % damage. There are heavy discussions about which tank does most damage since it influences the picks for raids. It's not that different here, and CoH is laughably easy when compared. Both in mechanics and with most people able to dunk IOs into their build to a point they could almost tank instead of the Tanker, unlike WoW where a squishy is squishy and will die to two swats of a white mob in a dungeon and there is nothing that they can do to improve it. Here we face regular mobs, of which the majority are minions, in a game that allows to cheat the system by being a squishy that is also sturdy. The idea the game is so dangerous and complicated that there is no time left to hit things because tanking is a full time job is definitely not mainstream and we've had lively conversations with Diantane about it. With all of this said there game is, as pointed out, easy enough that a character can do what they want. Be it Tanking without doing damage or buffing without doing damage, or playing a Mastermind without pets. It will not ruin the mission. At most just make it slower to finish,

Yeah, that agro-whole-map-into-a-dumpster died very early in the game. Issue 3? Someone correct me. I joined at issue 6 and played up to issue 14 and the plug was pulled at issue... 23 if I recall correctly. So that tactic has been dead for a long time. There is not a lot that you can do other than do damage. If you go hit the new group that was agroed the new ones will focus on you and the previous group will ignore you now. But, realistically, if the whole team was hitting the first group then there is not a lot of it left after the initial volley of AoEs. We're talking 3-4 half health lieutenants and a boss? If the group has a Scrapper or a Brute the agro will shift to them. This is one of the reasons I insist people, Tankers, buffers, etc, all slot their attacks because even a Tanker can jump into a group, use Build-up, use their AoEs, and have a group half dead. The Tanker role is to soak the alpha. But in today's meta almost anyone can do that. A Scrapper, a Brute, even a Blaster (oh, how the times changed). That's the real role of the Tanker. Perfectly holding agro is not strictly needed. But being the person that takes 16 mobs all shooting at once IS needed. Someone has to go in first. Now a Controller can CC and eliminate the need to soak the alpha, an IO-ed up Scrapper or Brute can do it, so it does not need to be a Tanker. Based on our conversation I think you'd like to play a Plant whatever. Controller if you want further buffing the team, Dominator if you want to do damage instead. All because Plant has an absurdly OP power in Seeds of Confusion that can be made to recharge in 15-20 seconds and that basically CCs a whole group. AND it's available at level 8 😛 Making it available every 15-20 seconds is as ridiculous as it sounds since it's up for every group and in a pinch you can use it on a second group if it's agroed before the first has been finished. Lets not forget Plant has more than Seeds of Confusion if the agroing happens to happen before those 15-20 seconds have passed so they can land something else to keep agro down, count the seconds until Seeds is available again, and then re-CC the new group. A Plant/Kinetics would allow you to buff the team to their gills in raw damage, recharge, endurance recovery, and Plants would keep the team extremely safe with the Seeds. It is, in fact, why I don't like playing with Plant characters since there is nothing to fight back against.

Like everyone else has said already. Those two powers are only mules for my endurance recovery so by order of importance Panaceia proc, Performance Shifter proc, Miracle proc, Numina proc. If the build is heavy in endurance then I slot an early endurance mod proc in stamina as well. At level 50 this is boosted to +5. This is the best bang for the buck in terms of endurance recovery. With infinite slots we could slot more things but the return value is low and it becomes muling. I try to make my muling useful and slotting Health/Stamina is not it.

I'm not sure how to parse your question. On one hand you ask which AT is best for tanking but then lead by saying you want to hold agro on more than 17 mobs. Also, 16 mobs being tops has been a thing since the game was live 20 years ago. You can extend this by an extra 5 with Taunt, which, apparently, ignores the limit (so I hear, I never pick it so I can't chime in). Why would you pick a Tanker then? Early feel-like-a-superhero thanks to their emphasis on defense allowing to crank the difficulty while in the teens, or even in the single digits, W I D E AoEs which are very pleasant, Fire Melee (two PbAoEs which is a rarity in CoH). The Stone/Fire Melee in my signature can go to 0x8 by level 13 which is not a common thing to do. Since no AT can hold agro on more than 17 mobs you have nothing, sorry. At best play a Controller/Dominator and for a few seconds you can CC two groups but don't expect it to be perma since hard CCs have big cooldowns. If your worry is how your team crumbles if two groups are agroed then play a buffer that will keep the team safe. I think even a humble Force Field can stack enough defense that even most flimsy ATs can survive surprise agro. Debuffs can be a play but these have cooldowns, activation times, and they rely on the player to juggle things, but passive buffs will simply be on all the time. Realistically most teams don't care about this extra agro you speak of. A chunk of the population has IO-ed builds who can take at least take a modest amount of beating. But, most likely, there is enough damage going around to pulverize any extra agro. Lastly, the penalty for dying is light and it teaches the one who agroed an extra group to be more careful in the future. That's how we all learned.

The changes to S/L were not global. Only SOME of the attacks in SOME of the factions had the S/L component removed to be pure energy/etc in order not to be deflected by S/L defense. They devs wanted to lower the worth of raising S/L but not make it obsolete in one fell swoop. Regarding the original question it depends. S/L defense is just a layer of mitigation. By itself it won't save you, but, in combination with the other layers it will help. It's true that some factions will do defense debuffs and cut through defenses that have no DDR, but there are also a LOT of factions who do S/L and do no defense debuff. As a rule and if possible try to raise all defenses equally instead of just one but if resist based and having only one defense you can pick then S/L is usually a good pick. With caveats. Bio, for example, has strong S/L resistances but no E/N resistances. It lives and dies by its E/N defenses and since it has no defense debuff resistance those defenses melt like butter. In that case it is smarter to ignore S/L defenses and instead lean on S/L resistances and then pour more into E/N defenses so it will take a few hits of E/N defense debuffing.

I solo a lot, so the damage aspect is important and MA's mediocre AoE was a bummer.

No Fire Armor *cry* Fire/MA is one of my best builds. it's the Turtle in my signature boasting of 45% to melee/ranged/AoE and also 90% to most things. The thing with MA is that we almost are bound to build off Storm Kicks' 10% defense. But Tankers already get good numbers so reaching (at least) 45% is not a big ordeal. In this all the defense oriented builds don't really need Storm Kick except to reach incarnate levels but that's a small amount of the content and the one where buffers will be commonly found. Still worth to build for if wanting to be self-sufficient I guess. I would suggest looking at Bio who has problems due to the lack of DDR and will appreciated a 10% buffer while also mitigating the slotting needed if wishing to raise S/L defenses. One thing to consider is that the AoE of MA is pretty mediocre. On the other hand the AoE of MA DOES allow to slot a FF proc which speeds everything up. So I circle back to Fire Armor. 45% defense to all with creative use of IOs and Barrier, 90% resists, and 'lo, Burn to help the mediocre AoE and Dragon Tail to speed up Burn.

Best I had it was with a 4 second downtime. But since it's Souldrain it only makes sense to use it on a full group. Soul Drain is actually one of the reasons I end up not liking Dark Melee. The recharge is slightly too high making it available once every two groups which is not ideal. Unless we want to use on an half dead group and then 'waste' half its potential. And don't get me started on it being barely useful on a single target BUT the ever present chance of it simply missing. Ugh.

I read you, Snarky. I was checking this thread and seeing you have to excuse yourself because you take it and I don't think it's needed. We just want you informed and then you do what you wish with the info. It's not like the build, or the game, will crumble because you take that one extra power. Derailing a bit. I confess I'm not the best at thematics since as a roleplayer it was faster and easier to come up with a reason why something happened than contort myself into odd shapes to fit a theme. One of my first RP min maxed builds was in the original Neverwinter Nights where my cleric was a follower of X deity (don't ask me to remember because it's been literally decades) who was a monk, and I had all my RP about being ascetic, researched the god's lore so I could spout it, would engage in monk training, etc. But in practice all I wanted was the monk's extra attacks per turn combined with the cleric spells that gave ANOTHER attack per turn while also fixing the accuracy penalty from the extra attacks from the monk. And that's pretty much how I roll. Then there was someone complaining at the time how they were ineffective in combat but then talking about their RP build and how they were half yuan ti (half snake person, don't ask me how that works) and even had taken the feats to have +2 to poison rolls. And I was... my brother in christ, that's useless, no wonder you feel weak if the rest of the build is like that. The mobs don't care about your feat choices, the players can't even see your feat choices. CoH is not that different to me. One of my first characters was a Rad/Ninja Sentinel and my friend made fun of me for being a ninja with radioactive blasts. But I just coloured everything bright white and said 'it's magic, not radiation'. I don't much care about the labels on a can. Later on one of my iterations of the Fire/Martial Arts Tanker was a phoenix straight out of a cultivation manwha to explain the fire and the martial arts.

As someone who solos Yin's TF and has no other option than to eat the Super Stunner's ressurection they are a good study on a character's ability to survive such constant -recovery spam. Many Recovery Serums have been spammed in that TF...

You shouldn't be thinking of activations per minute but activations-when-needed. You need it when you need it, not when you're running to a mob, or finishing a minion. It's run in, BU, Gaussian, drop all AoEs and all that burst does a tremendous amount of damage which indirectly helps defense since the most defeated things in the initial seconds the less are left to hit back.

It only works for Sentinels. I've made a bug report in Mid's Discord so now we wait. But if you want to have a somewhat idea just load a Sentinel with Stone Armor and toggle it on and off to get an approximate idea. It apparently boils to around 20 DPS and is based on the animation time of a power, according to Bopper.

Offensive takes all resistances down in 7%. S/L are the easiest to get up thanks to Tough. This is a Fire/Bio with 40% to S/L/E/N and 85% to S/L with Offensive on for Barrier to finish capping. Change Musculature to Resilient and a couple of slots from the prestige dashes can be saved to try to change the slotting from GFS to incorporate the purple proc. I put too much emphasis on building S/L defenses which could have changed the slotting into other directions. Brute (Fire Bio).mbd But on the topic of this conversation I would go for Stone. To me it has beat both Fire Armor and Bio with all the bells and whistles even if it doesn't reach the dummy thiccness on Brutes as it does on Tankers (50% defenses, 76% resistances down the board, 81% with Barrier).

I'm not sure what you mean by 'a team', but to clarify further the debuff is something the mob applies to itself and it does not stack whether you have it in two attacks or you and someone else has it. Once the mob has the debuff (Gladiator, Achilles, etc) it will not stack on itself. But multiple sources of the proc (more attacks with it or other people in the team having it slotted as well) can help with the uptime.

Copy them, make a new post since you do keep them updated, ask for it to be pinned?

Zect said it. In the end neither is terribly important. There are not a lot of psi enemies and 12% resistance against psi will do nothing against the others. On the other hand 50% regen is nothing as well.