Sovera

I was kicking around ideas in another thread about a Claws/Elec Tanker. Now, this is absolutely nothing new. Claws/Elec has been a staple of CoH's community so I'm jus re-threading well walked ground, but, since I have not seen these around when I browsed the forums I'll leave them here to see if others can spot further refinements or for new players. As I mentioned in the other thread it is all about maneuvering the Tanker ATO and the 20.4% total its unique gives once stacked three times, plus 5% of Barrier for 25.4% total. HD only shows one stack when we slot it in, so we need to account for another 13.6% plus 5% from Barrier. So, if HD shows 90% we know it's a waste since there will be another 18.6% going over the cap. In practical testing while monitoring resists the proc goes off like a machine gun in a damage aura so Elec plays well with it and the stacks not just happen fast but stay up without micro managing. That's to say it's on purpose that I've not slotted things like Tough or Charged Armor/Conductive Shield since resists are already at 71.6%. 71.6% + 18.6% = 90.2% (not accounting for the scaling resists of Reactive Defenses). I did not try to lower Energy since it is tied with Negative so let it overcap if it must. This is the Claws version. Claws was picked due to being self contained in terms of AoE. Except, not so. The -Scrapper- version is self contained making a gapless Follow-up, Shockwave, Spin AoE rotation. The Tanker version has an extra five seconds tacked on to Spin and two more to Shockwave (for reasons) no longer allowing the satisfying rotation. Now a Slash must be added to it but so be it, the -res will help. Claws is cheap in endurance, the animations are all fast, the recharges decently low, Follow-up plays well with auras and etc. It also stacks twice which makes up for the lower damage of Claws. Wicked energy claw skins too, I love them. Because I wanted two damage procs in each attack I took Tactics to put the Gaussian proc in it. And because I do friendly arena duels I also took Focused Accuracy, which, obviously, can be substituted for whatever is desired. This is the War Mace version. I was leveling the Claws version and thinking, but Sov, WM also is self-contained in terms of AoE, and this came out. While Claws can stack Follow-up twice which also makes the aura tick harder WM just starts hitting harder out of the box without needing to run a rotation twice to stack Follow-up. Using HD numbers with Follow-up stacked twice: - Slash: 228 (takes a -res proc which boosts the damage of the other attacks but this is not taken into consideration since if anyone is using this proc in a team the whole team benefits from it. It is just for something like Pylon runs that this would matter, IMO). Jawbreaker: 207 - Focus: 275. Clobber 342. - Follow-up: 198. Shatter: 291 - Lightning Field with Claws: 24. Lightning Field with Mace: 16. WM is not smooth and fluid. All the animations are suuuuper sloooow (except Clobber waifu) but make up for it with crunch and raw power. Sadly, the old devs really had a bone(r) about making players suffer for... reasons? So the first AoE opens not at 16 but 28. 'Hai gais, have fun leveling to 28 with no AoE. No no, it's fine, no need to thank us'. Which is just disgusting and a turn-off in a game where examplaring removes powers. (Fortunately the Homecoming devs don't have this. Despite what HD will still show Whirlwind mace was recently flipped so it opens at level 20, not 28). But at least due to the longer animations this one really -is- self contained allowing for Whirlwind Mace, Crowd Control and Shatter to be ran back to back. With the Tanker buffs Shatter should be almost an 70% cone, which is decent. Now WM is nipping at Titan Weapon's in terms of raw power but it also comes chockful of soft CC in terms of knock downs and knock ups which plays very well with Force Feedback procs, which is good, because it is also pretty darn endurance heavy and Energize + Power Sink will want to be recharged soon and often. In fact, I really wanted to fit in Physical Perfection but I don't have free powers to remove. Someone less married to flying as I am can just ditch Afterburner and use a different travel power. But I suspect Energize and Power Sink will be enough to keep things going on their own.

A good point, but uber resists is more for max level content so Musculature should be on. I've further refined this build but I'll stop cluttering Werner's achievement thread and move to the Tanker forums. I'm now considering War Mace since what Tankers are still short of is ST damage and War Mace is nipping right on Titan Weapon's heels.

The actual secret is to bounce around -only- picking at the fake nemesis. Everyone being -1 allows the damage to be ignored even with half the map agroed so we don't kill the rest. The fake nemesis spawning as -1 lieuts allows them to be two shot to be constantly on the run instead of doing full rotations.

It's the arc used to farm fake nemesis for the badge (-1x8 and they pop as lieuts being two-shottable allowing everything else to be ignored and just zoom around picking them out). Nemesis are such an enormous pain to deal with though. There is nothing that makes them doable other than killing slow and oft times simply waiting out Vengeance. I don't think I'd even want to take the tank I posted above through what you've mentioned. Even having accuracy coming out of the gadzoo and the +acc from stacked Vengeance being a non thing for a 90%-to-all resists. Also, hey, thanks for the 1 mill 😄 I tried to say thanks but I think I got some weird mail error. I had no idea I had teamed with an internet celebrity!

And this is the 'holy crap look at me (near) immune to every debuff in the game!' (the Status in the Totals is a thing of beauty 😄 Toggle FA for the full effect). Hasten down to 140 seconds though, which indirectly impacts on Energize as our lazy recharging heal. But the absorb proc is worked in, which, indirectly, will help, I guess?

Well, it still needs some tweaking, but it's maneuvering the Tanker ATO and the 20.4% total its unique gives once stacked three times, plus 5% of Barrier for 25.4% total. HD only shows one stack when we slot it in, so we need to account for another 13.6% plus 5% from Barrier. So, if HD shows 90% we know it's a waste since there will be another 18.6% going over the cap. In practical testing while monitoring resists the proc goes off like a machine gun in a damage aura so Elec plays well with it and the stacks not just happen fast but stay up without micro managing. That's to say it's on purpose that I've not slotted things like Tough or Charged Armor since S/L resists are already at 74.5%. 74.5% + 18.6% and it's already over the cap. I did not try to lower Energy since it is tied with Negative so let it overcap if it must. My goal was to have two damage procs per attack (Slash's -res counts for me) which meant some twisting and turning, such as taking Tactics to slot the Gaussian BU. I'm eschewing Physical Perfection since I have both Energize and Power Sink. I take Foccused Accuracy because of friendly arena duels but it obviously can be replaced by whatever. Claws was taken because A) one of the best sets we got. B) an effing AoE in the low levels?! Say it isn't so!! (MA would have worked better than Claws, but eff taking a character to level 35 single targeting everything). C) Claws is self-contained. No need to go pick Mu Mastery for filler AoEs. I ended up sacrificing some Melee defense and Recharge debuff for another 20% more recharge and more damage. I don't feel that I need the 20% Recharge and the extra damage procs will probably not be noticed, but I also feel that I don't *really* need Melee capped and the Recharge debuff at 100% instead of 70%. One thing I would like would be adding the second Tanker ATO that gives the +absorb shield but I don't want to lose the -res in the aura and I'm eeeh about losing the Performance Shifter. Once I level the character I'll see if the build can do without the Shifter proc and take the absorb shield instead but for now it's how I've slotted it. I feel that I could always lose the 10% recharge from the four slotted Tanker ATO in the damage aura since Hasten already is at a comfortable 127 seconds and the build has two Force Feedback procs that will perma it.

Do it on red side. It's apparently not just soloable but fast. There's a guide on it in the Guides section. I applaud your commitment. I just can't commit myself. I only just made a Martial arts/Bio Brute and rather enjoyed it. I was thinking of sticking to it and get all incarnates, and even got the accolades already, but I caught myself having spent the morning tinkering with an Elec Tanker and giggling at the row of immunities to all debuffs (except defense) and being at 90% to all resistances (except toxic. Yes, even psi is at 90%. On top to S/L and melee at 45% softcap).

The animations are gorgeous. The damage just 'feels' subpar though spreadsheets disagree. The problem lays in the DoTs and how we use both T1 and T2 in the attack chain. Obviously something with those is not meant to hit hard. There is no satisfying crunch when hitting enemies and CoH is not a DPS game. We don't hit enemies for a minute where DoT based classes a la WoW Warlock would shine. We hit them for 4-5 seconds and thus in 4-5 seconds we want dividends. Claws, for example, is also a set who is light in crunch, but not needing to account for DoTs makes all its damage upfront.

The only thing you can do is go over the softcap by a good chunk and then kill fast. The soft remains 45%, but if the first hit takes a 7% off then you're going to be hit more and lose more and more defense. But if you are at 45% and eat an insp and shoot to 57%, and then get hit and lose 7% then you are still at 50% and still softcapped. This is how I combat it. A defense buffer and then kill fast. Again, if every hit takes a chunk of 7%, then quickly killing all minions and lieutenants ensures less 7% strikes landing. As Hopeling mentioned moving out of range is a definite strategy. Once we lost enough defense to be down to the middle 20s there is no point in staying there since we'll be insta gibbed by a spawn still large enough (the 60% S/L resists, she does notheeng!). Hovering out of range is a DPS loss (lookit us talking like WoW raiders!) but staying in melee and be killed serves zero purpose. If I am in a team I just zoom out and then zoom back in right away to test if the mobs got distracted and started hitting someone else.

I had that thing as well. Logging off completely fixed it.

I return to add one more: The relic that is 5% chance of failing to hit. It's terrible. I hate it. Point me to all the tests and math but when I'm at 95% and miss three times in a row I question the odds of it happening. The 5% chance plays miserably with all the combo building sets too.

I tell you. Back in the age of plenty when MMOs came out and I blithely jumped from one to the other and was super picky (it's fun? it's good? But it has no RP community? UNTHINKABLE!) I had left CoH since I had nothing really to do. This was when they had just begun murmuring about Incarnates so I believe I joined at I6 and left at I14. At one point I came back to CoH, paid a month, logged in, and went eeeew, the old models, god, no fingers! And didn't even play. I logged that half hour and didn't return for the rest of my paid month. Now CoH returns and I have been ADDICTED. Like, holy crap, I've not been addicted to a game this hard at least since GW2. Talk about waking at 6 AM on a week-end (I tend to always wake at around then, but then I roll around and continue sleeping) and consider getting up to go play. And sometimes I actually did so! It's been eight or nine months and only now am I losing steam. And I say this but I just re-rolled the same character four times with different combos and gave myself iron man rules to not transfer cash or play the market. Even then the losing steam is mostly the fact the RP server is US based and as an EU I'm missing out on the majority of the community. While I agree with everything you've said this here is very important. I remember trying to coax friends to come play with this line, 'You can play a tank from level 1! A healer from level 1! You can TANK STRAIGHT AWAY! HEAL STRAIGHT AWAY! You don't need to slog solo all the way to max level on a DPS spec despite having rolled a tank because you wanted to tank! You get -more- XP if you team up You're encouraged to team up from level 1 on!" You have to understand my other game at the time was WoW, before double builds, before uber XP from dungeons and cross realm LFG allowing (having allowed, it's been nerfed since) to level solely via dungeons and in groups. At the time leveling together was -slow-. The killing speed increased but the XP was cut by a good amount and in many cases quests were not even made to be duoed with all sorts of problems involved. So this was completely novel to me. Imagine this! Playing together since level 1! Tanking from level 1! Even now this is my call to friends. Unfortunately zero have taken the bait. At most they play 2-3 minutes, promise to return, and I never see them again.

To me it's increasing the waist. If it's not maxed it doesn't look right to me. I have a friend with whom we play a game of 'spot the thirsty guy' by pointing characters with min slider waist and max slider breasts.

People usually take random powers like stealth just to mule a LotG, so taking Hover (which I want anyway for the mobility in combat and the +defense) to slot one, then Afterburner to slot another I also get a free speed boost \o/ Seriously though, check the Guides section, Booper made a guide on Travel powers which was a game changer for me. I now move nearly as fast as Super Speed, and faster if they need to jump or travel around something. Annoying things for me is the well known click-on-things-and-they-don't-work-so-click-twice-but-now-I-get-sent-to-some-random-place-since-this-time-it-opened-the-menu-as-it-should. Other than that, I guess not much. Oh, perhaps being annoyed at people being annoyed by other people's power choices or the level at which they take them? Edit: wait, I lie. I'm pretty annoyed at Ruin Mages throwing bubbles up when we are low level and don't get to have accuracy slotted in. Annoyed enough I always run two DFBs nowadays. One for the Recovery buff and the second for the Accuracy.

Mentioning how powers don't have cooldowns reminded how my builds there were always just one ST attack and one AoE. At one time I just played with their equivalent of our KO Blow. And lets face it, it hits like a truck, it does KU, it has no cooldown, why wouldn't we do a build that is nothing more than slamming it? ...which wasn't as fun as all that. 1111111111111111111 until thing is dead. 222222222222222 until everything has been AoEd down. Possibly 333333333333 to recover HP if having worked in a leech power that did damage while it also healed. I tried coming back to it, and I would really really like the more complete models (ACTUAL FINGERS!) but the community and game weren't interesting, and the nickel and diming, the thumbing of noses for F2P players to collect 8k of currency if they wasted two hours doing dailies while things cost 100k was just nah.

Has someone figured out how to make stacks work with IOs? Tankers have the +res that stacks three times, Brutes have the regen and end discount that stacks five times. I've messed with the editor and found the enhancments and changed them from non stacking to stacking, but this had no effect I could perceive.

MA/Bio. Easier slotting thanks to Storm Kick allows shenanigans usually forbidden to /Bio's tight slotting. Also, it hits hard as a train.

The MA/Bio brute is being better than I expected. The 7.5% defense in Storm Kick is huge for a /Bio but to my surprise I'm one shotting even level minions with Crane and Crippling Kick. Reaching 26 for Dragon Tail was a huge pain. God, never again doing Posi and killing every little gear.. one... by... one... The AoE is pretty satisfying too. Fast animation (fastest PbAoE even that I've seen for melee characters), KB. Incidentally both the 100% KB in Crane and Dragon Tail make for some much welcome Force Feedback proc triggering. Overall not the fastest animations but not the slowest either, 1.8 , 1, 1.8 is very acceptable. This seems like a keeper.

I'm going to try MA/Bio next. /Bio has a hard time pushing S/L up, and 'lo, Ma gives a stupendous 7.5% to -all- defenses. This completely changes the slotting. While Katana, Broadsword, TW and Staff also have defense raising moves they are limited to two types only (smash and melee, for example) and are usually not part of the rotation, where Storm Kick very much is.

This is so true. You'd think there would be widespread attempts at stiffling things, but while I'm not saying everyone has some niche they are not advertising on a whole I've seen that marketeers just want everyone to share some of the cake.

I have difficulty in sitting down and using the base editor after having played with Rift's and Wildstar partly because of this. Oh you placed a wall down? And you're placing an item on the wall? And you want to click on the item? Be prepared to have the item ignore the fact your cursor is over it to instead grab the wall behind it. Over and over and over. The thing where we -always- grab an item by the middle of it is also incredibly aggravating when trying to carefully place down large objects. Want to slightly move a thing a centimeter to the side? Well, now you clicked on it the whole shebang moved to africa so that its middle can be over where the cursor it. Now to try to guess where it was and slightly move that centimeter. Good luck!

The idea of going Fire Armor is for Burn. Burn on Scrappers makes mobs run away. Your friend might find more enjoyment out of playing this combo as a Brute. Claws also has a gapless AoE rotation out of claws alone and does not need Burn, so it's a bit of a waste.

I was leveling one of those but eventually got bored in the late thirties. DM starts strong and fun but paradoxically gets stronger and less fun as I leveled. The buzzsaw aspect diminishes as Soul Drain and it's 4.3 animation is introduced, and then Midnight's Grasp's 2.3 was kind of the death knell for me. Now I'm doing 4.3, 2.3, 1, 2.1, 1, animations and it stopped being fun. But, paradoxically, mein gott, the damage! Talk about tearing chunks out of enemies between Fury up, Soul Drain, and then two damage procs in each attack. I could see a boss' HP simply jumping down. ...but it wasn't fun anymore. It just went from being fast greased lightning to Super Strength levels of ponderousness. Trying to wrangle a decent number of enemies for Soul Drain but the team rolling the enemies over also wasn't rewarding. The Fire Armor Brute was also pretty squishy though Burn patched the AoE hole nicely. Too many plates to juggle and no OP Tanker proc to prop things up meant I had something like 65% resistances. I'm sure it would have worked out fine in the end with softcapped melee and S/L and about 70% resistances to S/L and such, but it would not have handled debuffs at all.

I'd like to test a few builds and this is throwing the numbers. Maybe I need match to calculate how much time would have been shaved were Degenerative up and running as it should.

I read an old spreadsheet saying how SM does not mechanically work well with crits. Is this a thing? Aren't DoTs calculated and attributed to the upfront damage of a crit? Does anyone have some numbers? Edit: went for a quick spin over the test server and it is so. T2 did 73 damage plus a few ticks of 13 damage. Crit did 73 damage x2, and then did the regular 13 damage ticks.