Sovera

Same, my manifest was on the beta test and not working. Good catch.

Spinning Strike from Street Justice. DM's T9 behaving like it would be fine.

I'm not into mini nukes myself. I don't find them useful other than for solo. Their very power minimizes their use since BOOM, exploding the first spawn quickly means it will not be available for the second spawn, and by the time it recharges we are half way killing the second spawn, so we do not use it or otherwise we will not have it available for the third spawn after that. This is how nukes and mini nukes consistently feel like to me and I don't find it fun. I much prefer smaller damage but available in normal recharge times. Claws with Spin and Shockwave might be a stretch (though I could live with them being a standard so that we could stop being so focused on numbers and instead play sets because we like the theme, or the animations, but not 'welp, no decent aoe, I won't play this power set') but to me ALL SETS should have an early AoE (wide cone like new Shadow Maul (and NO MORE of this crap of narrow cones born out of spreadsheets) or PbAoE like Spin) so players can AoE things down from early instead of having the UGH of being surrounded by enemies but smashing them one at a time. Horrible feeling. But of -course- it proved to be problematic to bake a power like Dark Consumption that has utility on top of damage. Thank THE GODS that we didn't get that out of season first April joke of a 15 second DoT though. What a terrible idea. What a spreadsheet vision of the game that has no bearing with the current iteration of the game. I'm into the suggestion above of giving DM's T9 a splash effect (besides, growing a forest of tentacles is fun). It does not even have to be huge. Five characters tops is fine. No more need to worry about new mechanics like max endurance giving damage or the problems inherent in trying to balance a power that gives endurance also doing damage. It may be a simple solution lacking flashyness but hey, works for me. And as for the people complaining how DM is super well know for its strong ST and giving it AoE would dilute the theme, wat? DM has good ST damage, but just like Fire Melee it's not -amazing- ST. Where are these uber times of pylon destroying from DM (not that pylon breaking is a metric that matters, but it is still a measuring metric)?

*pins white knight badge* Good job, you earned it.

This is more a theme concept for something that I am leveling. The basic idea is to be a buff bot (which is why anyone rolls /kin, amirite?) and so the main idea is to act like a MM and buff and debuff while the other seven are our minions doing the damage. Considering how good Speedboost and Fulcrum is this is a decent proposition. That said there would be no point in making something without trying to squeeze every drop of juice out of it, so: - Softcapped S/L/E. - Perma Hasten/Haunt with two Siphon Speed. - Five procs in the Hold having HD rate it as 332 damage combined. This is not counting Containement which will add a bit more, and also the reason I did not add a 6th proc (which HD shows as a damage increase over the damage IO). - The single target Immobilize was taken to have an attack chain since the alternative would be thumb twiddling until level 35 for an epic attack. Even with procs the Immobilize is nothing special with HD clocking at 123 damage. So this is a weak point that can be replaced but I like to press buttons. The build can be pretty busy as usual for a /kin. Power Siphon, Siphon Speed, Transfusion. These three are up often and can be included in the attack chain, plus the pauses to Speedboost our herd of cats who rarely have the dignity to be all in place so a sole application covers them all. While it's not going to be a Pylon winner Haunt + Umbral + procced up two button rotation is still going to whittle stuff down if we get separated which is important since no one wants to hit like a cotton ball. What the build is is completely lacking in AoE damage but I'm not intending to solo and in my experience once we are in a team and FSing the living bejesus out of everyone nothing stays alive long enough. ST to mop up the stragglers is where its at. - The build is very light on Controls (even Possess is just a mule I've no intentions to use). I know it is heresy, but in my experience they don't add much and when I Scrap/Brute/Tanker the immobilizes annoy the heck out of me. I started by spamming Fearsome Stare as I leveled but remembering this I made the experiment -not- to, and as semi predicted nothing changed. HP did not dip, missions happened as normal. Now, a caveat: in the low levels spamming Fearsome Stare had its value (which stopped at around Manticore level) and it -still- has value, but as an emergency button. Second pack accidentally agroed, or a Scrapper who went off to solo and is being slowly overwhelmed. Then, yes, dash in throw a Fearsome Stare or Heart of Darkness for a breather, heal them back up. Otherwise we are not helping any once the team starts having enough defense to survive (and lets keep in mind our heal is pretty powerful at 750 HP every three seconds) there is no value in making the enemies cower or stumble instead of having them cluster around the agro generators. - I did not rush to take Heart of Darkness since as mentioned I'm going light on controls. I needed Tactics to push my accuracy up as leveling so I took that first. In any case the intent is to use it combined with FS. Go in, FS, immediately Heart of Darkness to hakuna the mob's tatas. I could have increased its damage by a fair bit (HD shows it as 166 damage at the moment, but maximized it was up to 288) but I feel it to be a drop of water in the ocean. The extra 3% in Energy and the Energy Font(s) continuing to stack their pulsing stun aura to the stun of Heart of Darkness was more desirable Someone might say, but Sov, you built a Corruptor. You're light on controls and went for procced blasts. And I would say yes, I thought about this as well and how for gameplay reasons I could have done it so, but as I mentioned at the start it's a theme. I wanted to go around with the puppy and the Shades and after trying a Dominator I realized I preferred the idea of mass boosting the party instead of doing pew pews. I did not pick Incarnates yet since I did not do any research on them. With FS and us being light on damage (with a good chunk coming from procs which will ignore Musculature) Musculature does not seem useful, but it will boost the pet's damage and a chunk of our personal damage does come from them. In the same vein Agility will mess with the procs proccing. And since light on controls the controlling buffing Alpha seems eh. Intuition seems the most well rounded with damage, range, ToHit and hold duration buffed. Everyone takes Degenerative and that makes it less useful since max stacks are achieved quickly. Taking something more niche (but still useful) is bound to be a better improvement, but with bugs and low numbers I'm not sure what would serve. We already do -ToHit so Diamagnetic might be nice to stack, but that's spreadsheet talk when things die so fast and at 50 everyone is softcapped. The -regen seems minimal at 10% per stack (if I'm reading it correctly). The -res incarnate stacks to 10% (if I'm reading it correctly again) which is eh. I'll take a look at @Sir Myshkin's proc monster thread later and see what he picked for his Dark/Dark proc monster.

Actually that one is sparse on the details. I ought to have re-checked before linking. This is the one you want and the one I consult since it has all the details: So what you do is follow this, set a a teleport inside. If you have set the ceiling as 'open sky' you can fly outside in editor mode. Place the other point outside.

I have a hearty LOL to add to the buffs that were going to put DM on the map being simply cancelled. Like, puff, gone, bai, 'yes, we know the set needed an AoE boost, and we tantalized something tasty that had those who didn't have DM characters want to roll one, and those who had one cheering, but nah'. At least we didn't have that out of season first of april joke of a 15 second DoT as if we were in WoW and fighting enemies with 5 or 6x our HP instead of things that melt if we look at them wrong.

Does it matter though? If the mobs are being killed within the 5 (?) seconds it takes for the DoT to run its course aren't they dead anyway? Be it from DC or from whatever other nuke landed on them. That said I don't like DoTs either. We don't do the game against few but tough enemies a la WoW dungeon trash. So after leveling characters who had DoT effects it was super common to just apply the DoT, and then continue the rotation on the same mob making the animation and endurance used on the DoT skill a waste. Otherwise it is 'lets play a game and try to guess that the mob will die and not instead survive with a splinter of HP making me have to go chase it down'. DoTs in this game need to be ultra short. We are talking 2.5 seconds and it's probably too much already.

This is a scrapper, but almostsame thing, just copy the slotting. Take off Focussed Accuracy for something else. Maybe Parasitic Aura and just give it a four slot Unbreakable guard to get back the S/L defense lost from FA.

I really think the last thing we need is -more- damage increasing incarnates. We already have everything we need. More recharge and endurance options, more damage, more defense. I'm going to derail a bit because this is an example of things that are useful without increasing the power creep at max level. If there is one really big thing that would completely change the face of CoH (but I don't think it is Incarnate business) would be something much more interesting and that is exemplaring. That would completely change the game: Not losing powers when we examplar down. Other games manage it, there is no reason it cannot be managed here (other than the usual regarding the cost of man hours to code such a thing). Suddenly it is no more 'well, I would level Super-Strength/Psi Melee, but god, the moment I exemplar down for anything 27 and under I lose all my AoE' Or 'Well, my attack chain is crap without Gloom serving as a filler at 35, but if I examplar down I lose it and now have gaps'. All of this makes examplaring crap and a chore. Of course it would need to be nerfed in usefulness but this can be done with testing.

Yes. Both do.

*bites tongue* *flees*

Alright, the /Bio side is somewhat solid with defense to 40% and Barrier providing the last 5%. For content lower than level 45 it does not really matter since things are usually ran at +0. You get extra AoEs to help and I tried to maximize endurance recovery but it might still be a bit short if you solo since Stone Melee is hungry. In groups it hardly matters since Ageless is so common someone is going to pop it and you'll get its benefit. Just try to put the same slotting in the stone powers to keep the 40% defense. And then perhaps google a bit what are the good powers of Stone Melee you want.

I am not familiar with Stone Melee but I do have a few /Bio builds you could try to use as a template (try to reach 40% defense, use Barrier for the last 5%). Simply pick what stone powers you want and replace the slotting.

As others mentioned. Panaceia and Miracle uniques work best on powers that are autos. They will have the same effect anywhere then. But no one really slots Health for anything, while /Regen powers usually are slotted with sets. Putting the uniques there steals room that could be used for those sets.

Just because you want it to be a 'real power' does not make it so. But you have other options. You could go Street Justice and skip the kicks though that will lose you Shadow Maul. That will let you be a boxer without having a dark aura surrounding your fists. The last attack hits pretty hard and is a punch, sort of. You can get Punch and Cross Punch from the Fighting Pool, but these only sort of qualify as 'real powers' since they are weak. You'll get there, especially in a team, but not too fast. I suggest you stick with Dark Melee though, since you can make an attack chain of the three first attacks (Shadow maul, as mentioned, is going to get a big upgrade and the recharge is fast enough to work it into a rotation) without having to include weak things like Flurry or Sands of Mu. This will work out much better both for the numbers as well as your theme. I'm going to say even now you should pick Shadow Punch instead of ignoring it. For your theme it will work better and give you better numbers (you do care about those since Flurry and Sands of Mu were bothering you). If you can stand having Siphon Life in the chain (not really a punch, but you're already running with a dark aura overlayed over your fists so I'm going to say embrace it. Magic/cursed boxing gloves?) you can do Shadow Maul, Smite, Shadow Punch, Siphon Life, and then start over. If you really want to include Flurry you can do Shadow Maul, Flurry, Smite once you get enough recharge and never have to include Sands of Mu or Siphon Life.

Because D comes before E in the alphabet.

Man, people keep going about DM/Shield and I'm just DM/Bio with three endurance recovery tools (Inexhaustible, Dark Consumption, DNA Siphon) and four heals (heal proc in Dark Consumption, Siphon Life, Ablative Shield, DNA Siphon), ON TOP of the absorb, regen, ON TOP of the -ToHit. Can we say unkillable hardcore soloer? Man, I totally don't want to continue leveling my second Claws/Bio I was doing Ironman challenge (no AH marketing, no inf transfers, no IO transfers, no farm maps, just earn Merits and inf playing the game) just for kicks since I WANT this combo. Arrrrrgh. And now to wait N weeks before it comes out. Ugh.

The +3% defense uniques, @Obus, the Steadfast and Gladiator. Edit: Went to look at it and no, it was just 33% ish defense by level 24-25 which is still decent with a purple insps. Though it was meant for another thread and a different topic.

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) 😄