Sovera

Trying to pair Stone Armor with some sets is a pain since Stone wants so many powers, but between the two I'd still ditch EE instead of Mudpots if it came to it.

For a moment I thought I was clicking on a manga.

Easier to just sell the Scrapper ATO and buy the other, but honestly I'd say keep the Scrapper ATO for your next Scrapper. CoH is recycling heaven. My next character will be done iron man challenge with no transfers and though I have decided not to play the AH, as in, buy mats, craft, sell back, I did decide I would roulette EVERY non-generic recipe. Even those that require orange salvage as it's always going to be profit (just less profit). If you're not bound by ironman challenge rules then keep rouletting until you get LotG and sell for 7 million. Even with crafting and rouletting you should still even with 3-4 million profit.

Fire/MA has a bit of a slow start since it wants all those IOs in place unlike the Stone/Fire in my signature that requires only two IOs and is cooking by level 13. Get both ATOs, both 3% defense uniques, and place two damage procs into Burn as soon as you're able to to give yourself a bump and you should be able to go to +1x8. Focus on Healing Flames before Consume. Gambare, TheOSP!

I found Fire Armor to also be immune to Carnies (and Sappers) since Consume has nearly 100% endurance drain protection. It is recovery debuffing it struggles against and Super Stunners in particular.

Quite alright. The important thing is to have fun (I don't mean this as a platitude) and in a full team there will always be buffs to help shore things up. I see you've managed to squeeze in both defense and resistance uniques which will help a bit more. You forgot to change the Zinger procs but it's not terribly important in the end even if you don't. One important tip I forgot was to add a Theft of Essence to Dark Regeneration (not really Siphon Life) which will do some heavy lifting countering its cost, and, it should be said, your endurance should not be too problematic since you have Dark Consumption, but you might want to actually slot it for endurance modification. I would toss in six Synapse Shock in there as the bonuses add a little bit of everything good for the build, but if you're aiming for damage consider adding more damage procs to it. If you do want to proc bomb Dark Regeneration then it's a choice but it's such a heavy power that I'd aim for more endurance reduction foremost. It costs a huge chunk of endurance to use and with most of your attacks heavy on procs and light on endurance you should definitely consider Dark Consumption to be properly slotted. I would personally put five Panacea and one +5 accuracy but that would run counter to glass cannony. But both Dark Consumption and Dark Regeneration are the foundations of the build and they should carry the rest of the build, in my opinion. You might that this is not needed though. In the same vein you could/should quadruple proccing Siphon Life as the bonuses you worked in are not terribly useful and SL should only be needed every 4 seconds so it does not need accuracy. It *will* be endurance heavy though, but the damage goes up to 501 as opposed to 393 as you have now (Soul Drain with just one enemy). Midnight Grasp should stay as is (though exclude the damage IO as it is not needed) since it is your heavy hitter (544). You do have a workable ST rotation without Gloom but though it hits decently hard (390) it only replaces one use of Smite. You can/could easily ditch it, recover the slots, and still have a gapless ST rotation (Midnight grasp recharges in 4.3 seconds. Smite (1.2), Siphon Life (2.1), Smite (1.2) makes 1.2 + 2.1 + 1.2 = 4.5). Now, Gloom is better than Smite as Smite only does 230 damage, but it's just to say you don't NEED a fourth attack and the slots that went into it. That said it does do a decent chunk more than Smite and one Gloom replaces one Smite in the above rotation. But Smite does carry your ATO and you want to spam it for the stacks so, heh, decisions. It's mostly about scrounging the five slots though but Gloom does do almost twice the damage. Regarding incarnates I'd take the Musculature that also gives 33% endurance since you need every bit you can scrounge. The damage difference is absolutely minimal (despite saying 45% damage it's actually more like 15%, and switching to the 33% version makes it about 11% if I recall correctly). Tanker (Dark Armor - Dark Melee) Damage(1).mbd

Dark/Dark has nothing to really push the damage Dark Melee is pretty mild in terms of damage because it's filled with utility goodness and there had to be a tax, and Dark Armor has nothing that helps with damage. Taking a look at your damage variant I can say you've gone pretty light shoring your defenses. Even with the ATO not giving the 6.7% it can be added with napkin maths and your S/L would be at 48% ish. For the most common damage type and as a Tanker it's pretty dire. For the easy content Dark Regen is usually enough but anything slightly harder with debuffs and I don't predict a healthy future. That said it can work as Ston's testing has shown. I can only offer some small tips: +5 two slots of Hasten (open the IO window and before clicking to choose the recharge IO press + five times) to save one slot. You forgot the Shield Wall 5% and the Reactive Defences scaling resist IO for another 8% global resistances. You forgot both 3% Defense uniques. Even if you're not building towards defenses you're still at 13% and it would push to 19% which would help make a few hits miss (but since not building towards defence it's not necessary). Change all Zinger psi damage procs for Touch of Death negative damage procs. Psi is one of the most resisted damage types. Consider ditching Soul Transfer, Summon Widow and Hover to grab Punch, Tough and Weave. Even not slotting or using Weave you can use it to replace Hover as a LotG proc and Tough would help your S/L resistances. Summon Widow may look like a damage loss but the thing is pretty squishy and will die off from the AoEs centered on you (if it was completely ranged it might survive longer. Might being the operative word). I don't have much more advice to give since I haven't delved deep into Dark Armor. I'm more of Fire Armor type, and, lately, Stone Armor.

The upside is that Staff is in such a low place that when the devs get to tweaking it it'll shoot up. I, for one, would love to see it since I always had a huge soft spot for old kung-fu movies and staff users.

If you consider Stalkers you can help fix the ST problem that Staff has both in the form of a strong ST attack which the set lacks as well as having a traditional Build-up power instead of shifting staff forms. Survival is not a problem for Stalkers since pretty much all melee ATs can solo +4x8, Tankers are just the peak survival and can do so at an earlier level. The only true loss from shifting from Tanker to Stalker is that agro loss. Mobs will run away from a Stalker which does not happen with a Tanker. I'm not big on Staff since I couldn't find a decent way to cover the ST aspect. The ranged attack is slow and does not hit particularly hard and the T9 is glacial, so even with Assassin's Strike help there would still be a need to fill up the attack chain. Probably the ranged attack, a T2, and Guarded Spin? I might suggest Stone Armor (but I'm biased) as a strong contender since it is mostly passive, provides recharge, a damage boost, more recovery. Stalkers lose the damage/agro aura for Hide but Brimstone still adds damage. Even for the Tanker I'd still suggest the same. Pity we don't have an elemental staff like the sword composed of flames because a rocky staff would fit in when we cover ourselves in rock/crystal (can be disguised as ice)/lava.

We would first need to define what 'bad' is. Is bad the inability to solo +4x8? Or is bad soloing a Trapdoor in 10 minutes (best times are around 3-4 minutes and my tanks usually did it in 6)? I just found that there were better combos so my Fire/Staff characters rarely got past level 30. The AoE was nothing special and the ST was slow. But Fire Armor can solo +4x8 and with Envenomed Daggers we can solo an AV if it comes down to it. It's true that you will need them for any AV, but, because they exist it also means you can have your cake and eat it too. No need to not play a concept you like because you're worried it would brick a run when/if facing an AV.

You can buy respec recipes off the auction house. You can also do three taskforces where each grants one respec. But buying a recipe is the easiest method. If you're out of money check my signature.

There's no point in saying 'farmers bad'. The players themselves are bad to themselves. I finally coaxed a friend to play the game and they loved it. We went around, they did a few alts, we'd duo stuff. All good fun. Then they discovered farming and the split second that they did they no longer wanted to play with me and would just sit in the farming simulator to get fat XP and money. Then they made a second account to farm for their other characters. Now they no longer play.

Played both. I'll preface by saying that if you've liked the sets on other ATs then there is nothing controversial that happens if playing them on a Tanker. If the fun factor is important then play them as anything works in the end, mobs will be arrested, XP will be accrued, levels will be got, etc. That said Savage Melee needs a tune up as it's strongest attack actually is not worth using leaving it to use the T1, T2, and T5. These works very well for a snappy attack rotation, beautiful animations, very bestial. But using T1 and T2 in the rotation means the damage will never be great. The fact it uses DoTs also means the upfront damage is lower and relies on that DoT which slows the feel of combat. Against so much as a boss it feels great to start smacking it and see the HP melt as the DoTs stack. But anything lower than and it feels a lot like flailing with no effect. There are some niggles like its Build-up being slower to animate and how it's best not to remove the Blood stacks since they give more benefit which runs counter to the theme, but nothing much to be done until the devs give it a pass. Unfortunately the only pass they gave it so far was 'fixing' Hemorrhage for Stalkers, the only AT that used Hemo, which made it so Stalkers too stopped using Hemo 🙂 Brutes are the best AT, IMO, for this set with Fury boosting the DoTs. Was good fun to play a Savage/Stone and see the stream of small numbers from SM's DoTs, Brimstone DoTs, Mudpot DoTs, and then Degenerative DoTs as well. Psi Melee is another that needs a tune up. Is a set unpopular? Then the common pattern is that it needs a tune up. The damage is not amazing, and while in the beginning players thought it was good damage (partly because Mids was bugged and showed the set doing more damage than it actually did) thanks to Insight the truth is that there is not free lunch. Yes, Insight added damage. No, it was not free damage as the set's damage was balanced with Insight's damage. To perfectly use the set a player will run their rotation ,then when Insight pops up they stop using Greater Psi Sword in order to not use up Insight and have that extra damage up until the very last second when they do use GPS for the big damage boost that consumes Insight. I don't need to tell you how unprepared CoH is for this gameplay. There is no easy way to check the remaining time of Insight and who the heck wants to stop using their big damage skill when most of the time it is needed for a gapless rotation? That Insight ending forces a 15 second lock-out should be enough without GPS forcing that lockout to happen sooner. Other than that it's just the usual niggles. Slow and weak AoE all the way to level 30 is terrible for leveling though Mass Levitate does wonders for added survivability once at 30. Sadly by 30 is when the robots start appearing who are resistant to psi. Tanker is a very good pair for someone who likes Psi as it provides a much needed extra AoE at level 18 with Burn and both Burn and Fiery Embrace help soften up psi resistant mobs while Mass Levitate helps the survival of Fire Armor. Mass Levitate also slots Force Feedback to speed up the build. Brutes used to only have Burn at 28 which was dire but now that it's at 24 it can be palatable to level with a Brute instead.

Complete endgame build maxed out, incarnated, purpled out, etc etc. All the powers are picked at the right place for maximum exemplaring (and some sets I just don't play because they don't exemplar well even though I haven't played 'seriously' in a long time which means I no longer exemplar either). At most the difference will be that Hasten/Build-up will have a third slot and in extreme cases I will use and slot a T1 until my next actual attack at-level-18-or-22 is available as I much prefer having attacks and not wait on cooldowns to cooldown. Then I respec out of the T1 and put the slots it had on that attack. But by now I have all the twink gear ready. The prestige IOs from the START vendor from level 1 to 10, Panaceia and Shield Wall 5% resistance at level 7, put in normal ATOs at level 10 and the prestige IOs go into AoEs (I say in AoEs because i usually slot Obliterations which only open at 27 and that's a way to go). At 22 I slot generic IOs on whatever I need (usually Hasten/Build-up powers). I will replace the purples like Hectacombs or Ragnoroks with Touch of Deaths/Obliterations/Decimation while leveling and swap them out when I do my level 50 respect that scrounges one slot off Hasten/Build-up Only recently have I started to slot SOs while under level 22 and while I wouldn't call it a game changer it seems worth it to have Hasten with a fat chunk of recharge by level 10-14 right when we need it the most. The upgrade option saves time to go find a vendor and replace as they turn red and having the vendor in a base means they are easy to pick instead of running around the city trying to figure out where the correct Origin shop is. They might be a touch too expensive for a new player but for anyone who has played the game even for just a few months it's a pittance. Between five respecs being free and SOs there is little reason to suffer as we did back in I6 when I first joined. Waiting on CDs, endurance running out, waiting on endurance to recover and then missing and having to wait again while using Brawl, slotting armor toggles with TOs and being squishy as a wet paper towel. It might have been a more 'real' experience but I would not strictly classify it as fun. I much prefer the way HC is and the freedom to test and try a dozen ideas.

The devs say they want us to go in neutral and test things and just give our feels about it. I'm not saying they are doing this out of malice, perhaps not even out of ignorance. But we've had people who actually do testing as a living chime in that this is NOT how things are done. Say what you're tweaking, the testing team goes in and tries to break it and see how it behaves and then reports back. It may be a nitpick but even now we continue having the changes couched in roleplay terms (this does less damage now) instead of numbers (this used to do 20% and now does 7.5%) until one of the testers goes into the server, copies or tests the numbers, and then they return and bring the numbers for everyone to see. Otherwise every single tester has to go in, see or test the numbers to know what the changes are. Why? The devs know the numbers. Why aren't they posted? Heck, it's their server and if they want to continue doing it like that it's up to them. But if the devs are unpaid volunteers so are the players going in to test things for them but asking these things is met with radio silence. A bit of respect going both ways is nice too. I don't remember the game who did this (probably GW2) but patch notes would have dev notes accompanying most of the changes. 'We change this because we considered it did too much damage and was eclipsing the other choices. But we boosted the other choices to be more appealing too' 'Our data showed X talent was almost never picked and we wanted to make it more interesting so we reworked it from scratch and now it does X that when Z happens it will have Y effect'. Also, saying that if the devs only answered questions they would have no time for anything else is strange. We know that a single person does not all and some will be doing VFX, some will do scripting, some will be in the power team. And one can be dedicated to communication with the players.

I've tested the -res procs extensively at some point and what I could see was that they had no impact on the times in clearing a mission. It took as long with them as with them replaced by damage procs. For single target the story is different and they can knock a large chunk of time required to defeat something... if that something lasts for 2-3 minutes to defeat, and if that something is +0 or +1. The higher the level the less effect it has and the shorter the time it takes to defeat the less the improvement is. At the time I used pylons as they were the standard and it turns out if was the pylon who was/is responsible for the prevalence of -res procs as any build that could fit in two different -res procs had about a 25% damage boost improvement. What about a non +0 enemy like the pylon is? Then the same -res procs turned into a roughly 5% damage boost. So if the -res procs make no difference in mission clearing times, are big improvements against +0/+1 enemies, AND are better than damage procs against sturdy enemies then sticking to -res procs should be the way. The only downside is that if someone else in the team has the same -res procs slotted then they don't stack, but, to be fair, if in a team it doesn't matter. Things are dying in seconds, AVs lasts 30 seconds, etc. So though I rail/railed against -res procs they are a (small) improvement over damage procs in ST. Just not the huge (25%) boost that people think that they are because all their testing is done against +0 pylons.

No. Otherwise they would not have compensated for the damage loss (one might argue why fix it then. I have no answers to this). Burn did a double proc chance from firing procs once and then the pseudo pet it spawning having a chance to proc the procs again, ergo double proc chance. In practice I found there was no reason to load up on procs as it ate on the recharge which made less Burns-per-minute which ended lowering the damage per minute.

I can't say which patch it was but it was a good while back. Mostly it was about Burn not double procing (yep, we're back on procs even if I only had two in there). But the devs made an effort to push the Burn numbers back up so it would not be a complete nerf and overall I'd say they succeeded as the damage loss from the double proc chance was compensated. But it lost some of its soul IMO. Damage being dealt over 10 seconds is not the same and Burn became a wash for ST which was a pity as it helped sets with low ST damage (a bit like certain otherwise weak sets being better with Stalkers thanks to the ST shoring). I do say it 'lost its soul' and not 'it's objectively worse'. It's still a damage boost for ST with Fiery Embrace and it's still an extra AoE with Burn for sets without good AoE, and the tune up did made it a bit sturdier.

I'm really not a proc person except in some circumstances (most Sentinel nukes, Energy Transfer, Ground Zero, etc) and I have a arm long list of complaints on how they have contributed to the perception Tankers have 'colossal DPS' by loading four to six per attack. It's a valid approach though, it's just not mine as I like my bonuses. As for how it would do on a Scrapper: you'd lose one PbAoE making you have a single AoE unless going for an epic pool that has one. You'd lose the agro aura from Mudpots and have to deal with runners. And finally you'd need to retool things to get to 45% defense. Forget about the 15% as it would be way more than that (at least about 30% in E/N). Fire Melee on Tankers get Combustion which pairs well with Fire Sword Circle. No other (melee) AT gets a second PbAoE other than Savage Melee. And then things get silly if going Fire/Fire for THREE PbAoEs. But, sadly, Fire Armor lost its soul in the last tuning patch. It's objectively a bit better, but... If anything I'm Stone Armor based now, 'nuff said.

I didn't test on a pylon, but it's Fire Melee on a Tanker so two PbAoEs and no slow animations on the heavy hitters.

Been a decent chunk of time now. Most of Granite's goodies were spread over several other toggles making Granite not needed and hardly used. I never even pick it. You got the Stone/Fire in my signature but picture this: 45% without Weave as it's just a mule, but 50% with it on, then 55% with Barrier, and 70% to all resistances, 76% with a second ATO proc, 81% with Barrier. With Amplifiers and both defense uniques and a couple of SOs we're at 40% by level 13.

Dang. Yes, it has problems. Anyone who can do better or can help the project do better please do so. Until then enjoy your free use of an unpaid program.

Anything Stone Armor. Stone/Fire has been my favorite.

For what's worth here's my Fire/EM. Currently Mids has the ATO proc borked so we can't see it, but with one stack of it the resistances are at 77%-ish. A second stack puts them at 85% and then Barrier puts them at 90%. IMO if the content is not hard enough to require Barrier then it does not require 90% resistances either. It also has 40% S/L defenses for a little something extra and Barrier also pushes that to 45%. The ST rotation is TF, Bone Smasher, ET, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher. Repeat. If Burn is up you can replace EP with it. Burn is a bit too slow to recharge to otherwise incorporate into the ST rotation as it will not be up for every rotation. ET does not need recharge since I only use it after TF (it COULD be used when ever it is up, but eff 2.9 animations). It also does not need endurance reduction since it costs nothing. So it only needs damage and accuracy which allows to proc the gadzooks out of it. I don't bother adding Power Crash as I feel Burn and Whirling Hands is enough. Strictly speaking the ATO is not in the best place in TF and should be in Bone Smasher with their slotting swapped since BS is used more often which gives it a chance to stack up. While TF is only used every 6 seconds. Tanker (Fire EM).mbd

Woo! Welcome back to the fold We missed you! Check the guide in my signature for varied tips and since you're still level 3 it's worth picking up the Amplifiers (guide explains this) if you have some spare change at hand (or even start the character again since only level 3 and that's about 3 minutes to reach that level again). I have a Claws/Rad, but it's not strictly speaking for leveling. Since you're going to be super poor right at the start (do read the guide in the signature to fix that as you can make about 3 million in the first 30 minutes of making your character which pays for all the basic SO/IOs you will ever need) ignore the expensive stuff at first and follow the rule of thumb of 'one accuracy, three damage, one endurance reduction, and then depending on how you feel one more endurance reduction or a recharge' for attacks. Three resistance for your armor, and if you feel the one endurance reduction afterwards. You need Mids to open the file (also in the guide), and if you find you're not too comfortable yet figuring how to translate the end-game build into a leveling build let me know and I'll turn it into a basic leveling one until you get your sailor legs. Scrapper (Claws Rad).mbd