Sovera

There are no cons I can think of other than Ice Melee not being super strong in terms of damage. But it's not terribad either (just avoid greater ice sword IMO 😄). Frost is a bit annoying in how it is a cone which is never very good for melee, but it is a -wide- cone so you can use Hover (or jump) and turn it an PbAoE by stint of aiming it down. Ice Patch is a great skill for a breather though you'll grown out of it by the 30s as your defenses solidify and soon realize you don't need it.... UNTIL YOU SUDDENLY DO! Being a one slot wonder there is zero reason not to grab it though. 90% of the time you won't need it, and then the last 10% you'll enjoy the breathing space the flopping provides. Your build seems solid but could do with refining. - You're chasing S/L resistance bonuses in Death Shroud despite already being overcapped by 8% with a single ATO stack (each stack is 6.7% and goes up to three stacks, but two stacks are the most reliable). - You don't have Frost slotted. Ow. It's your bread and butter AoE skill, man. - Freezing Touch is your hardest hitting skill bar none, and it can take -two- purple procs. You need to pamper it, not turn it into a mule. You basically open with this and everything else is a filler until it's back up. With the new slotting Mids shows it going from 369 to 494. - I tried not to touch your power choices too much but consider that Frozen Aura recharging in 6.5 seconds and Frost in 3.5 seconds you should be well off in the AoE without needing to dip into MU. You could go for Energy instead. You could also trade SS or SJ (or Taunt, blasphemy!) for Assault. - I just picked Musculature for the Alpha but you do you. You might want Ageless for your Destiny for endurance though I would prefer Barrier myself (finish softcaping S/L defense to 45%, another 5% resists also gives wiggle room, and in the end I just find Barrier a good panic button when things go sour) and just work the endurance woes with the core build (and P2W Recovery Serums if need be, they only cost 10k a charge). The build could do with better tweaks still but I'm off to lunch: - Freezing Touch is not the best place for the ATO proc since if you exemplar down too much that you can't use FT then you won't get use from it. But using a Kinetic Combat would be making FT a disservice. - More energy resists could be found. - There are still too much S/L resists.

Uber necro, but for those who read this, the last boss does a -HP debuff that stacks. So the trick to defeating it is monitoring your HP. Once it gets too low (I usually stop at 800 HP) break line of sight and bounce around until the debuff ends and your HP recovers. It's pretty much -the- reason people cannot pass this boss is not knowing this and continuing to face tank it until they get to something like 200 HP and then they get killed.

I feel like I am abusing your goodwill with this, but, have you found or are willing to find Fire Sword and Fire Sword Circle from the Tankers? It... it screams. Literally. Every three seconds I use the Fire Sword, and it screams, every three seconds. Who thought this was a good idea? And Fire Sword Circle does the same! Also, bless you for the Hasten change. So very welcomed.

It does not really matter. People who want to do it can do it. Using Lores against pylons or P2W buffs. Perfectly fine. The only thing that matters is not 'cheating' in the same way kids will use aimbots in an FPS game for... reasons (I tried asking my brother who extensively plays FPS games what is gained from using cheats that play the game, in a game that has no rewards and is played for the sake of playing. He said it was for the adulation and passing as a good player). As long as we don't have things like someone coming happy to say how they got a two minute run with a build, and someone else comes to brag how they did it in one minute, but does not mention they had amplifiers and clicked Hybrid, then that is fine. Basically just use amplifiers, and hybrids, and lores, but simply jot it down when putting down the times. It's not a competition, we're trying to learn from each other.

For once I have to agree. I may or may not agree with the rest, but this part yeah. P2W is nice though. Doing AE missions with mobs that feared I got through my emergency breakfrees and eventually bought an hour of the Defense Amplifier to get rid of it. But it's too expensive for me to use all the time. *sits on 1.3b raw inf not accounting for what is in the SG bins and slotted on other characters*

The only reason to use the Kismet is if the attacks don't have enough accuracy to hit +3 enemies. A quick glance shows that only Bone Smasher is at 87% to hit an enemy and everything else is over the 95% cap.

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.