Sovera

You bring back the 'nightmare' that was leveling my first MA Brute. Imagine going through well, everything, but mostly Synapse. And have to kill... everything... by ST... even the little clocks that spawn after defeating a boss.

I'd like to like Fire Melee on my Fire Armor tank. But A) Combustion does not compare to Spin (like lol), B) What is Fire Breath even doing in existence? Does anyone even use this? It's from a range set and not even the hop tactic makes its use palatable. Why isn't Greater Fire Circle in its place instead of 28? and C) it is in no way or shape an interesting set. No CC, no place to slot a FF proc without dipping into pools, lengthy animations, DoT attacks. Seriously, it seems to be fully accounted around the fact it is 'meant' to be played with Fire Armor in order to get Fiery Embrace boosting it. Which is its problem at the core. Since FE will boost it it cannot have speedy animations and 'good' attacks because FE will propel them. So like Psi Melee gets lower damage because Insight is not free damage but rather an equalizer, Fire Melee suffers from that FE tax.

Yes please. Spent 10 minutes with friend roaming the map looking for the guy. Even spamming a macro with his name didn't help. We ended killing the whole map clean of NPCs (fortunately we had it at -1 to speed it up since it was for the accolade) and we -finally- found the guy hiding in a corner of the map that somehow protected him from being noticed by the macro. Yes. I am sure this is the sort of riveting gameplay that makes the game fun for the naysayers above.

Some small things. - You've killed 10% recharge in Focus in order to grab 1.5% resistances to E/N but you are already overcapped anyway. In the process you've removed a very good FF proc that would accelerate your build. - You could kill a few procs and push your defenses higher (not strictly necessary, but, something you can consider). 40% on melee and S/L can do wonders and Barrier would give the last 5%. - I'm not sure if the power picks really were going to take in that order or not, but if so if you examplar down you lose several good powers that ought to have been taken much earlier. - You're Rad Armor. You sweat endurance. You don't need to chase endurance bonuses. - You've gone for Rebirth. Which is fair, you do you. But you're Rad Armor. You have a good short recharge heal + a heal/shield. On the other hand you did not raise your defense which will be your weak point. If you took Barrier you'd fix your defense hole and also be able to play with your IOs accounting for that perma extra 5% in defense and resistances. - Which speaking of you have too much of. The ATO gives near 7% and it stacks three times. Two is perfectly achievable so that's 14%. Mids only accounts for 7%. So 70% in Psi, for example, becomes 77%, and if you were to use Barrier it would be 82%, and a third ATO stack would be 89%. I've made some small changes here and there and lowered the resists a bit to take in account the ATO procs. See if there's something worth incorporating in your build.

Did some small changes to slotting. Bit more recharge, changing things around to be available sooner if exemplaring down, etc. Things to consider though: - Fire and Cold defense aren't terrible useful or important and you can save slots here and there to pick damage procs. - Agility is not really terribly useful (IMO). As an Elec Armor you're swimming in endurance and shouldn't need the endurance boost, and the defense/recharge boost isn't adding much. I'm musculature all the way (though it's only a 15% damage if already at ED) - In the same vein Ageless with recharge and endurance isn't adding much either. Barrier serves the same purpose and you can add 5% defense and resists permanently for content that matters. - I did not want to mess with the slotting too much but remember you can account for 14% in resistances with two stacks of the ATO (Mids only shows 7%, so another 7% needs to be accounted for) which lets you mess with the slotting. Instead of 90% you can aim for 76%, for example. Or since Mids shows one stack, aiming for 83%. If you decide to change to Barrier you can add another 5%, so aiming for 78%.. Three stacks of the IO can be hit and miss, but two stacks is fine. - Greater Fire Sword looks nice, but it's such a slow animation it's damage is actually meh once we account for 2.5 seconds of being rooted in place. You could grab the regular Fire Sword and make a shorter rotation that will still output more damage long term. Incinerate is your biggo damage skill and deserves the best slotting. - Same as above Energy mastery does not add much to someone who swims in endurance like an Elec Armor. I didn't want to mess with your power picks though. In any case Focused Accuracy makes for a nice mule and can be turned on to face Arachnos and their blinds or Tsoo or whatever (I'd take FA at 35 though). - Your accuracy is already enough to overcap hitting +3 enemies (with the sole exception of Lightning Field at 'only' 91%) so the Kismet was not useful. I replaced it for a LotG.

Diabetus Levios-ah! Or, more likely, they have their inspirations set already. For example, in my case instead of a big bag of random inspirations there are two neat rows of greens for emergency healing, one row of purples to combat defense debuffs, one row of accuracy (I do low level content a lot and Tsoo/Circle of Thorns are painful to whittle while ToHit debuffed to the gills), one emergency blue if sapped, two breakfrees for emergency CC break (DAMN YOU FEARS!) and one emergency orange. I have tried the macros to combine insps into making reds but found that in a group I don't get enough insps to keep up with the expenditure. It's still good practice when soloing though.

I do, I do, but it's what I said. If tankyness is a desired trait then there are Tankers over there. Now I'm thinking I ought to try duplicating a Claws/Fire Brute without bothering to make a full build with all the frills just to see how much faster it downs a pylon compared to its Tanker mirror.

I try not to nitpick decisions others have made for their builds. I loathed how such an easy and simple game as GW2 had people who did that. CoH is on the same level (more even) of easy so go, be fruitful and multiply, it won't be a bit more or less of damage that will be noticed as long as fun is had.

I'm pretty much the same. I do pay attention to look around and jump in if I see someone's HP going down, but to be honest? I already did that on my Scrapper. I can't imagine anyone looking at HP bars going down and not going to help. So to me nothing changed. I even introduce myself as a damage character, not a tank 😄

FIRRRRRREEEEEEEEE!

Ran a little test since it's good not to blindly trust Mids. Simply spamming Focus with or without Musculature was a 15% damage difference.

If you were to say this about a Brute I'd get it. They do more damage than a Tanker on single target, but if that's a worry then someone would roll a Scrapper or a Stalker. They are not particularly hardier than a Scrapper or a Stalker without outside buffs so if being tanky is a desire then Tanker is there too. Stalkers are a bit squishy (less so on paper but the lower max HP -is- noticeable in actual game play), and not everyone wants to be arsed with the crit mechanic (not talking of myself, but I've had a friend who literally dumped their Stalker because ugh about having to maneuver their rotations to use their strongest attack after AS). Their AoE is also factually worse (rare be the Claws on a Stalker compared to any other AT). Tankers near catch up with the outliers of double Rage and Titan Weapons to the point of near catching up to Scrappers (my non double Rage or TW Tanker still takes twice as long to break a pylon as my best Scrapper) but there are expectations from a Tanker. As someone who recently moved to the Tanker side I can say I miss helping to speed through TFs by chasing clickies or bosses, but of course that as a Tanker I am not abandoning the team to fend for themselves. Scrappers don't give an arse. They work great out of the box, have no mechanics to bother about, and their damage is gorgeous. More importantly there are few expectations other than to go and do damage.

That argument appears similar to one I had a few months back. I pointed how Claws does an AoE rotation of FU, Spin, Shockwave, and was told they did not care about 'boring' three button rotations. I accept you can choose to play as you wish to do it, but in most any character the rotation is down to: - Extra hard hitting skill we wish to hit on CD (Assassin's Strike for example) -> fillers until that hard hitting skill has recharged. Any more attacks are not needed, any fewer and there will be thumb twiddling waiting for the skills to finish recharging. Choosing to use more skills other than that is your prerogative, but we can say this of any other game. Even WoW with its reduced button usage (reviled by others, but appreciated by me who played it in the heyday of four skillsbars) also has a number of slows and stuns and etc. But the basic rotation does not involve them. There will be something like seven buttons total for a priority system where CoH works on the old system of rotation.

How is a 45% damage increase useless? Unless you're from the school of thought that a Tanker should be low damage.

Anytime I hear about Cardiac (or worse, Agility), I just go mah hart, mah sole. The loss of Musculature 45% cannot be recouped where Recovery can between near gratis Serums and IOs and bonuses.

I was doing arcs with a friend last night and thinking how Incarnates really mess with everything. Fire Armor is damage on wheels but 'squishy', and it has a psi hole. We were doing an arc against psi users and she was ow ow ow, psi hole, these hurt! I went and I went ow, yeah, they do. Then I clicked Barrier and alright, now they don't.

Switch to your alternate build and nab it.

I understand what you guys are saying (though it's not as bad as it looks once you actually play it instead of reading about it), but compared to CoH it does add a layer of making things interesting. CoH is 1, 2 ,3 ,4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. We could almost macro or autokey it and not pay any more attention to combat.

Check my signature for a guide to help since you're new. Don't fuss too much about what sort of character you're making since leveling is easy and so is gearing. You're going to be making dozens and dozens of alts to try all the things.

Superman (and Flash) are one the biggest victims of X of plot. In one comic they move so fast everything is frozen, and they make plans, argue things, get in position, etc, while in those super speeds. In another comic someone punches him and he can't duck. To me anything that can move and talk and do stuff while everything is frozen is not someone who can be caught unprepared. In one comic supes breaks chains meant to tow stars from one place to another, in another comic (any, all of them) he is unable to punch some enemies down. In one comic he is strong enough to move the earth (with the help of GL providing an harness), in another it takes all the heavy hitters working together to move the moon. Readers tend to be super attached to power levels and writers just want to write an epic story that is entertaining to read.

I've mentioned how I swapped Taunt for Assault. I'd love Taunt if it actually worked and mobs would get mad at me like in other games. But here I use it and the mob goes to attack NPCs or keeps on attacking other team members. If it only works on regular enemies then there is not point to it IMO, except in niche cases a la tanking Hami. Regular enemies are not particularly dangerous in a level 50 world where Barriers are tossed around willy nilly. In fact, my first experience with the 801 AE missions was almost disappointing since we were several with Barrier and we spammed it. We went around with 70-100% defense all the time as anyone can imagine not even squishies are squishies with those sort of numbers floating around.

My Bio Scrappers are touch and go on the last boss of the ITF. The auto-hit takes a chunk of HP from my measly 30% E/N resists. I'll use Ablative, the next auto-hit shaves it off. I'll use DNA Siphon to heal, the next auto-hit takes a chunk off. Then it's a game of sparingly using greens until those two clickies get off CD. Usually there is always someone with a heal who can offset this, be it Time or Rad or a Kin, but it can be touch and go if they get downed or are distracted by the ambushes. Or I just go with my tank and 90% resists and AFK taking both the boss and the auto-hit fluffy and not even notice. I'm starting to think I ought to change Barrier for the version of it with DDR. The plan I usually make is to use Barrier on CD so that the last 5% top my defense 100% of the time. In actual game practice I run around with 40% defense and never bother using it except when I see team mates losing HP or I know an ambush is coming. What I usually use it is to combat my defense being debuffed by adding a ton of it as a buffer. If that's the case I could just use the DDR version since that is its purpose anyway.

I have also found that a friend I had bullied into trying the build had skimmed past the jump pack interaction with Hover and the reason why I took Fly so late. So to make it clearer: Hover Hover + one of jump packs Fly + Afterburner Fly + Afterburner + one of the jump packs Information obtained from Booper's guide.

I've ran some tests on Degenerative VS a pylon and I'll post them so others can make use of them: - Reactive 75% chance of DoT: Pretty much same times as Degenerative VS a pylon or slightly better during the testing. In theory the Degenerative ought to have been better but don't ask me the math why Reactive caught up so handily. Maybe the fast Claw attacks plus damage aura plus Burn and its pseudo pet plus ticks from Burn synergized well with the chance to inflict a DoT? I will be using this for non pylon play since the DoT and the -res would be more useful on lower HP mobs. My reasoning is that I spend 1% of my time hitting AVs and pylons and while the -res is mostly negated on AVs due to debuff resistance since it's a popular Interface choice someone will be using it anyway. When that happens us using it won't matter since it does not stack between multiple players. At that point the 75% chance for a DoT will do more. I.E. Three players have Degenerative. All three hit the AV. The stacks immediately reach maximum and now the only thing we extract from the Interface is the 25% Minor toxic DoT. Now lets say three players have Reactive. Same scenario in that the stacks build to maximum straight away and stay there. But now we have 75% chance of a Moderate DoT. ... all in all I do so long for a nice clean DPS meter like WoW has since I could check how much % of the total damage the DoT actually does. It's important to notice that on AVs there will be more bang for the buck with Degenerative. The -HP mechanic has no resists anywhere. Anyone hit with it will get a -% of their maximum HP shaved off, which in turn means less regeneration ticks since regeneration is based on maximum HP. On the other hand -resists IS resisted by AV AS WELL as having a portion negated the higher up in level difference we are. Since an AV will be +3 on top of the resist debuff it makes the -res aspect of the Interface near useless. - Pre-emptive 75% chance of DoT: simply to test the DoT. Tested against normal mobs and none were in the slightest bothered by the -endurance and -recovery 😄 A good 30 seconds past Degenerative by the time I stopped since the pylon was still up. - Degenerative 75% chance for DoT: Near exact same times as Degenerative 25% chance for DoT. The extra Dot damage seems to have washed out the lesser upkeep of the -HP debuff. While I was at this I tested the Hybrid toggles. - Assault Core Embodiment VS Assault Radial Embodiment: +damage chance on each attack VS double hit chance. While it is long forum knowledge that the +damage is better for solo/non-kin-in-the-party and double hit is better when-a-kin-in-the-party in this particular case and for single target damage it was a wash. Same pylon defeat numbers either way. What small difference there was can be chalked to RNG. But when doing AoE each enemy hit has a chance to apply the stacks of +damage and it wins out because of that.

You're thinking of something else. WoW works on a 1.5 global cooldown system which means whatever we do (with some very minor exceptions that have been further removed 'recently') there will be a 1.5 second delay afterwards where we cannot use another skill. No animation lock whatsoever though so we can move whenever. But, caster classes have (on top of the 1.5 GCD) also casting times where if we move the casting is interrupted and the spell won't go off. These casts tend to be on the 1 second to 1.5 to 2 seconds depending on what class and spell. Some (minor) exceptions to this were big cooldowns with 1 or 2 or 3 minutes cooldown that lasted for 10-15 seconds. Because of the 1.5 GCD eating into the 10-15 seconds they used to be off-GCD (not activating the 1.5 delay), but more 'recently' (AKA last year year, which is recent compared to WoW's age) the devs decided we had it too good and added them back to the GCD. Considering these big cooldowns tend to be stacked together it means wasted time. Suddenly the 10-15 seconds of buff time have 3 seconds eaten just waiting so we can attack. Universally reviled decision but papa dev knows best. Combat has been turned a lot into a game of procs. For example mages have a biiiig damage spell that takes 3 seconds to cast. That is way too long to hold still and casting two spells in the meanwhile will be better damage. But, by casting their basic filler spell they get some 20% (random numbers, don't quote me) chance of turning that big damage 3 second spell an instant cast. Being a 'good' player is a lot about being able to recognize when these procs go off and use them the moment that they do. Or keep them in case the fight requires movement (since mages cannot move and cast at the same time other than one spell that has a cooldown) so that when do have to move they can use that proc they had been saving. For example. I play Hunters a lot since I loathe the you-can't-move-and-shoot system and Hunters can avoid it with the right spec. Combat for me would be. Start by casting a DoT. This DoT stacks three times, and we have three charges, but it expires faster than the DoT skill recharges. But we get a free charge with a proc when we autoattack. So the way to play is to cast the DoT, immediately use another skill that makes the pet dash to the enemy and do damage. Start using other skills. Keep an eye on the DoT. It expires in 10 seconds, so at around 9 seconds use the second charge. Now the DoT skill does a lot of damage when it's at three stacks since it increases the attack speed of the pet, so you really want it at three stacks, and super important, you don't want to be caught with your pants down and let the three stacks drop off. This means being very accurate at firing the skill at 9 seconds. Not sooner, because you might get a draught of procs and the stacks will drop, but not after 9 seconds since it expires at 10 seconds. Another skill recharges in 15 seconds. It's important to fire it the second it goes off recharge. Any seconds elapsing while not using it means less uses of the skill. BUT! Don't use it if the GCD will prevent you from using the DoT at 9 seconds! The big damage attack recharges in 6 seconds. Again, religiously hit as soon as recharged, but, again, juggle not losing three DoT stacks. Wasting one second here, one second there, means at the end of the fight we fired the big skill as much as 5 or 10 less than the person who used it the moment it went off cooldown. To make things more interesting yet another skill will also have a chance to instantly recharge, and each time used will shave 1 second off the big attack skill, so in order to use -more- of the big attack you want to use the instant recharge procs of the other attack to shave 1 second off, which means not letting the procs accumulate. If we did not use the proc and we get another proc they do not stack, it's wasted, so it needs to be fired off immediately! BUT DON'T LET THE THREE STACKS DROP! 😄 AoE adds another layer. The basic AoE skill of the Beastmaster is almost useless. It does about auto-shot damage. BUT. At level 50 it gets an upgrade where when used the pet will start doing cleave damage and that is where the AoE comes from. The cleaving lasts four seconds. So we don't want to spam the Hunter's AoE skill (since it does crap damage and it's a waste to even press the button on less than 7 targets) but we don't want the pet to stop AoEing. So every four seconds the Hunter uses it -once- to activate the pet's cleaving. While, of course, keeping all the above happening in terms of DoT stacks, using procs to not let them go to waste, etc. It sounds super confusing and complicated but we can configure addons to put all the information on the screen. A reason I disliked trying to use Psi Melee mechanic of Insight is the lack of this. There is a tiny icon ticking, no numbers, we need to memorize when it started, how many seconds passed. And for very little reward (ignoring the Insight mechanic turns out to be the same damage as using it). I rather like WoW combat. No 20 buttons to keep track of and being 'good' is being capable of moving out of telegraphed attacks, but still able to keep track of things like different procs, use them, don't waste them, keep track of DoTs, don't let them drop, use personal defenses and self heals to survive, etc. In a raid the normal way of it going is people starting to die. They messed up, they were looking at their cooldowns (or at the chat, or at Nerflix) and did not see the boss mechanic spawn under them. So to me it was a point of pride to survive until the end at the point where the raid leader goes 'okay, too many people died, we won't be able to clear. Throw yourself at the boss and die so we can start over' and I'm still up and alive, and most likely in the top three in the damage out of 20 persons (around 12-13 being damage dealers). This is, of course, all min maxed raid stuff. Normal play needs nearly nothing of this as it happens so fast there is no need to worry about stacks and keeping them up.