Sovera

Heck, I don't have a DM since Live and I want it too.

The best thing to do will be to follow a guide and not overthink it. 'Best' can be pretty subjective because there are different factors. The 'best' farmer is either a Spines/Fire or a Rad/Fire with others quite close behind. The 'best' at farming is not exactly the best at just playing the game though. Then if we go at the 'best' at killing tough stuff we once more find a completely different beast. You did nothing wrong in picking SS/WP as it is a pretty solid pick and it will work just fine. If you want the 'best', for me, it would be a Claws/Bio. They move fast, they activate fast, they don't need extra AoEs from epic pools and they are pretty darn durable and are a good middle ground between top ST and top AoE while also simple to use (the very very very best would a Titan Weapons/Bio, but I would never ever advise you to try running that without more cash and a better understanding of the game). Regarding your endurance woes things will get better once you are better slotted. A single end mod in each attack is ok, but not amazing. You still need to generate end. My advice will be: -One Performance Shifter proc in both Stamina and your WP stamina power, then add a normal endurance modification in each on top of that. If you feel it's still going badly then try to find a second endurance modification into each. - A Panaceia and Miracle proc on Health. - Replace all your ST attacks por something like a full set of Focused Smite. Since the bonuses of Focus Smite aren't very good they are pretty cheap on the AH and you will get much better raw stats out of that than you will from generic slots. Generic slotting might be 66% accuracy, 95% damage, 33% endurance reduction, while a full set of Focused Smite will be 62% accuracy, 89% damage, 43% endurance and 66% recharge. The Crushing Impact IO set has better bonuses so is more expensive, but with a full set you'd get 68% to accuracy, recharge and endurance, and also 95% to damage. Check how many Merits you have. You might have some decent cash on you and not know. Check the guide in my signature.

As someone who played Sentinels extensively and expected to play a ranged Scrapper I'm very much agreeing with you. The quick nuke is nice and it does clear a nice swathe into minions, but my Scrapper does the same with Follow-up + Spin + Shockwave, no need to wait 25 seconds. The AT is stupidly survivable because it can stay at range and pew pew whatever survived. But does it matter? Only in a vacuum. When I see people advocating how impressive their Sentinel is I kinda grimace a bit because I see myself many months back raving about them until I picked a Scrapper for the first time and went from 4 minutes pylon time to 1:45. Now, people love the AT and love being tanky and ranged and we can't argue with that nor do I even want to. Being tanky and doing solid damage is a bit of a Hunter thing in WoW (my main for several expansions so I know what I'm talking about). The 'easy' tax is paid, but depending on content that tax pays for itself. The no-casting-times Hunter spec will do a bit worse damage to pay for the fact it can cast and move, but in difficult content the fact that they can cast and move pays for itself twice over allowing them to top the meters. At least until everyone knows the mechanics and how to move as minimally as possible. But since CoH doesn't really have difficult content except the 2% there is no point in it. There is an 'easy' tax the AT pays for no particular reason. But I still find it acceptable. Do you want to play something that does not need to chase enemies and can do reasonable damage and be ranged? This is it, and I find it acceptable. I may not be interested, but it's good that it is there for those who are. The AT is good at what it does, and if there is an AT I would suggest for a new player it would be a Sentinel.

I'm satisfied actual testing was done, yes. I went to check on Fire and with Fireblast (including toxic tic) I had a 26% damage increase so whatever was going on during the multiple tests all those months back seems to have corrected itself. Now to hear something funny? I grabbed a character I had stripped out of IOs a Water/Bio Sent since it had no DoTs to muddle things, and went to test. It was a 45% damage increase to turn on Offensive Adaptation on both the T1 and T2 blast (didn't test the rest) 😄

You can get your softcap without even Weave if I recall correctly, but not on generic IOs. I think someone asked this over the Scrapper forums and I threw a level 28 build that was softcapped with just the two +3% defense uniques and the rest generic IOs.

*curls up* Just as I was 'welp, I've done all the concepts I'd care to, there really isn't much else to r-...' you guys hit me with this. Hopefully it will not take half the time the Tanker changes did because I've only just rolled a character that would fit perfectly as DM.

His weaknesses tend to be pretty subjective. He has resisted and plain outfought a grand majority of psychics trying to take him on and even the Maxwell Lord event was played as literally years of pushing until having formed a chink. The same for magic. Oh yes, hear him loudly claim how magic is his weakness. Then watch him disregard magic. A normal person hit by lightning doesn't get a 'bit' stunned. But he takes several of those in a row and just gets a bit woozy before winning the fight. Like most things in comics writers don't care about power levels and just telling a story. So in one he'll be weak to magic and in another he'll tank magical lightning. In one story he'll break chains 'used to tow stars from one galaxy to another' and in another be in a fist fight and be unable to down someone.

Depends on the AT. As much as Stalkers are praised for their damage I prefer to stick to my Scrapper(s) for the fact enemies don't run away thanks to the agro aura.

I've noticed the slows, yeah, not to the point they were more than an annoyance (except with the war riders), but definitely not a thing any of my /Bios was ever aware of 😄 The tanker is definitely the superior version because of Burn not making mobs flee. That said I miss Scrapper crits once I'm done slapping AoEs errywhere.

Unless I misread you tested only the toxic tick and not the combined damage because you trusted the damage monitor. If you'd like to then please do what I said instead. My own tests never gave me 25% damage. And this is -with- the toxic damage. If we were to trust the damage monitor we would have had 25% and then with the toxic damage it would climb to about ish 30%. Instead the highest I got was a 18%-21% damage boost and as low as 4% -total- damage boost.

It's grim, it's dirty, I don't like condescending NPCs talking to me like I am trash, I don't like being the bad guy, I don't like doing bad things, I don't like that a villain spends most of their time attacking other villains instead of good guys. It is also an empty zone. All of these apply, but mainly I'm happier playing a super HERO. There is enough crap going in RL without feeling the need to roleplay being the cause of it.

My main would love her flying rug (it was her means of propulsion before coming to CoH) but I cannot abide the detoggling. Some smart bit of coding where there is no detoggling if we already have Fly would be amazing. I'm 100% a flyer though. It's thematic, it's fun, it's also annoying to need to pick Afterburner just to increase speed and it being a toggle instead of an auto, but Hover gives defense and takes a LotG and so does Afterburner so they are not wasted. Fortunately I find I (near) always have room for all three power picks (it's slots I'm chronically lacking) and despite being able to make do with a single power pick for a travel power, or using ninja run + sprint + jetpack for hurdles, I just have no desire. Flying -rocks-, and fie to devs who decide on no flying for 8-9 months after an expansion so the player can 'see all the content'. As if we didn't know it was just to time sink and force players to stay online for longer.

Incarnates are fine as long as people can only pick one (all ought to give a level shift though). But only one incarnate would be balanced. Big nuke, or Barrier's panic button, or Ageless for Recovery, or extra damage from Musculature. The sharing is also not a good thing on the long run. At most 50%, but probably just no.

That would be lovely, but if CO showed me something is that while it looks daft that our katana shows out of nowhere when needed it looks just as daft to be swinging it while it still stands on our back. WoW manages to make the weapons appear and disappear from the back/waist but the system is there from scratch to allow it.

Added a leveling build.

Psi colored flame goes extremely well with FA, yeah. It has a flamey look all by itself

I just leveled a Fire/Fire to try the Tanker changes and while I came out impressed and pleased (Tankers no longer an AT I wouldn't touch) there was something missing... After a bit of looking around and pondering the different sets I settled for Psi Melee and I have to say they really go well together. - Psi Melee has a distinct lack of AoE until level 38, but 'lo, Burn fills that void from level 18 onwards. - Fire Armor lacks more serious mitigation, but 'lo, Psi Melee comes with two fast recharging Knock-Ups plus -recharge (not that I really noticed that one much, but hey, it's there). - Fire Armor is very offense minded and relies on Healing Flames, Consume, and Burn, and 'lo, both TK Blow and Mass Levitate take Force-Feedback procs that accelerate these. - Psi Melee has a problem when it faces psi resistant mobs, but 'lo, Fiery Embrace empowered Burn helps mitigate that. - Nice burst with Concentration + Fiery Embrace Mass Levitate followed by Burn. The build didn't end too bad if I might say so. It uses Barrier to reach 45% S/L defense and that plus the Tanker ATO proc puts it at 90% to S/L/E/N/F. Natively 78% S/L and 70% E/N, but one stack of the Tanker proc + Barrier's 5% and S/L is capped, a second stack and E/N is capped as well, and these stacks come fast since they are in the damage aura and do not require being paid attention to. It leaves a hole in Psi and Toxic (17% native, around ish 52% with all three stacks + Barrier) where the defense layer and offense comes in handy coupled with Healing Flames. I died -badly- to the War Riders in LGTF though, the Terrorize + End Drain is something the build has no protection to and having Breakfrees prepared for those fights is going to be the smart thing to do. But the build is so resilient I throw it at an ITF +4 (before even getting the level shift) and it tanks the kheldian boss packs and any romans unlike any of my /Bio alts who needs to carefully tiptoe around them. Losing the defense layer to the debuffs simply isn't enough to dent the build when it has Healing flames and strong offense to kill things dead before they get too uppity. Hasten ended at a pretty darn decent 129 seconds which the FF procs finish pushing to perma. Now what I also did was heresy, and it was taking Psi Melee and not picking Great Psi Sword. Tests ran on a pylon showed it is not a big DPS increase (but it is great for burst) and I don't like long animations, furthermore I did not wish to play with CoH's antique UI and try to gauge when Insight was almost over to only use GPS at the last second (after all Insight is a damage buff and GPS consumes it), so we wouldn't want to use GPS too soon and lose Insight, but using too late and it does not get the Insight biggo boost. This is too much hassle for me considering I don't have addons such as in WoW to let me keep track of procs with easy icons and large numbers. If someone else wants to try this combo and take GPS I say go for it, but it was not what I wanted. I feel like I overdid it a bit with the toggles. I was touch and go between Assault and Taunt. But I feel like Taunt is a crutch, and with the new Tanker numbers Assault is at a pretty decent 15% damage boost. With Accolades the build only has about 3.33 EPS not counting procs, but it does have Consume, and in my experience in a full team someone is always going to be popping Ageless anyway so unless soloing and fighting a single tough enemy then maybe Consume won't keep up. I made sure to slot it to work against this, but I'm sure for long fights against a single opponent without buffs the endurance will falter. Since I rarely do long solo fights against a single opponent this is not a serious consideration for me. Electrifying Fences is meant to be a mule and not be used. We want mobs close to us. If there is a desire for it I can put up a leveling build. The leveling build I used. Same S/L defense and much much much cheaper so it can be used as an interim build too. It relies on the fact as we level we seldom go against higher than +1 but once at 50 and fighting +3 or higher it will be high whiffage time. I feel like the extra slots in Electrifying Fences might be better used in Stamina (four Performance Shifters) and Health (all three Recovery uniques) for extra endurance until reaching 50 and Accolades and people spamming Ageless mitigating endurance woes. The small loss in S/L defense can be compensated with the occasional purple. Just like with the final build the power picks are made to be exemplar friendly all the way down to Posi 1, which is why Hasten and Concentration are taken so early. On the other hand the levels at which the slots are taken is not gospel. Just slot what you need first. For example only in my 40s did I end up slotting my shields and the heal, and until then I relied on purple insps bought at the base between each mission ( /macro_image "DayJob_Teleport" "TP Hub" "enterbasefrompasscode zone-8888" and look for the nurse). On the other I slotted my attacks right away.

The actual final damage. Unless something has been changed (it's been many months since I did this). Try hitting something once without Offensive Adaptation, write it down, hit it again with Offensive Adaptation on, add the toxic tick since it's part of Offensive, check the percentage of damage increase from one to the other.

It's still a 5% chance. Of course that on AoEs it actually turns Stalkers into blenders (if we disregard farming where people chug reds to be at the damage cap when possible) but on ST 5% sed 5%. This was my experience with the proc as well but I only played Ice and Staff which you did point as being lowballers. Could you actually try to run a five minute run and see how many procs you get on DB?

It's great, innit? Alright, some things. You are overflowing in acc so you don't need either Tactics or the fourth slot in Environmental Protection. You also have a little too much defense. Either aim at 45% or aim at 40%, but everything in between is wasted. If you go to options, configuration, Effects&Base Values and put Base ToHit to 48% you will see your chance of hitting +3. As you will see even without the ToHit of Follow-Up you're already at the 95% cap or completely flying past at 120%+ (and FU easily stacks twice, so this goes even further). I've tried to optimize things a bit while still respecting your power picks. Two damage procs in Follow-Up now, two in Focus, a -res proc in your aura, those are bound to increase damage a bit. Shaved a second in Hasten.

You just reminded me of selling CoH to friends back when I first played it: 'You can team from level 1 on! You're -encouraged- to! You get -more- XP and kill faster!! You don't need to slog through the levels as a healer and sloooowly whittling mobs as you solo. You can play a tank and tank from the get go, not just at max level!' It takes playing the myriad MMOs out there, not just WoW, to know how we are told to solo from level 1 onwards to max level (with breaks for dungeons here and there) and then suddenlygooutthereandgroupupwithothers and good luck for the new player to break their solo habits (hunters thinking they could solo dungeon NPCs with their pets set to take agro).

At that point we might as well be insta level 50 with all incarnates unlocked and ready to be slotted.

HYPE!

I'm a merit farmer myself. Though farming is too strong a word for it. I just make alts, new alts, all the time, and then level them through TFs. Each ends earning about 100ish millions worth in merits. And this accumulates. I rarely stick at 50 for long since that's me loitering around PD doing nothing. I don't need XP and don't need money, so I have no reason to go out and do content. I could go out to do content with friends but they don't do content either (outside farming radio missions and AE farming, neither of which interests me). So I reach level 50, slot up, look proud, sit there for a few days, and make a new alt. Another thing that makes money accumulate is that I don't leave my money scattered on those alts. The expensive IOs, the inf, everything is /respecced and tossed back into the bin for my next alt. I only stopped this when I reached 1b in cold cash and have left some of my favorite characters (Ice/Bio Stalker, Claws/Bio Scrapper, Fire/Fire Tanker) fully slotted to the gills in case I ever feel like playing them again. This still has me with 400 mill floating around. As some pointed there is no real point in earning a LOT of inf. We only need as much inf as we require to slot our characters. When I see people talking of farming for hours to earn inf and i think back to the thread about the guy in the Market sub-section talking how he was trying to make 1b in 24 hours starting with absolutely zero inf it makes me smirk. He lost the attempt btw, he 'only' made 830 mill starting from zero inf. But a few hours after the 24 hour mark the rest of the stuff in the AH sold and he reached his goal.

I see what you mean. The tooltip in game does not show the base value but just like you said rather after being altered by accuracy and to-hit and etc. Following your explanation I went to the character creation and looked at the powers. Consume does indeed have the same 1 accuracy as other powers, with others like Fire Breath having 1.20. Thanks for the help o/ Edit: I thought it was 38% for +3?