Sovera

Make it so.

I've been wondering about my slotting and examplaring and the worth of +5 IOs. Once we exemplar down the stats of a IO are clamped down to 42% to begin with and only then suffer the gradual lowering of stats. I did a quick and dirty test using Stutter's TF since it exemps down to 40. - With a ACC/DMG IO and a normal damage IO I had 68%, Exemplaring did not change this. - With a +5 ACC/DMG IO and a normal damage IO I had 75% damage. When exemplaring I got 74%. - With a +5 ADD/DMG IO and a purple damage IO I got 84%. When examplared down I got 74%. - With a +5 ACC/DMG IO and a +5 purple damage IO I got 94%. When examplared down I got 83% So +5 stuff seems useful still. But. With Musculature T4 there is no point in +5 the purple damage IO since we'll be into red ED territory

A Tinpex (actually two TFs despite being grouped as one) yield 80 merits and takes about 40 minutes or less to run both. A double Hami grants 120 merits if the merit reward is picked twice and takes about half an hour total. Abyss Hami is the same and does not share the cooldown on rewards with Hive's Hami. So that's 320 merits which even at 80k per converts makes for about 76 million for a bit less than two hours. And those two hours don't need to be frantically done back to back without a pause. And that's on one character. Run on multiples if need be. Boring running the same content everyday? Geez louise, this is advice for someone who wants to spend hours running farms.

This reminds me of conversations had on WoW where the casual player wants purple gear. Why? To do their dailies? Why does a casual player *need* purples? Purples are usually terrible and only obtained to min max recharge. There are other sets and much cheaper that deliver half the recharge and still good enough. Do a Tinpex every day and you'll earn 20 mill worth in merits plus incarnate salvage. Do an Hami and it increases to about 50 mill. Do the Abyss Hami and it goes up to 70-80 mill. With those alone (and you can do them on multiple characters) you'll be fully geared in two weeks.

Of course, mein freund, but the build in question has damage (near) maxed so it takes the best of both worlds. I've posted it here.

This is a continuation from here. I've decided to move away from Energy Armor to Bio Armor. While Bio is not as strong on a Stalker as on other ATs it is still a nice secondary with two heals, easy endurance management tools, an accuracy boost, a 25% damage boost, and a decent-ish T9. To my surprise I managed to create a Bio framework that manages to reach 40%-ish defense without touching the primary and still have a second Aoe, Afterburner, Parasitic Aura, and d ecent (but not great) Hasten times at 142 seconds. This open possibilities to enhance builds from different primaries with multiple damage procs or seek more recharge. So basically this is the same as the previous thread. KM has quick attacks but lacks heavy hitters. Taking KM on a Stalker helps with this. KM's light attacks can then be further enhanced with multiple damage procs (at least three, and Smashing Blow has four), and /Bio further pushes this with yet another 25% damage boost. Stalker also has a standard Build-Up allowing for burst attacks unlike Power Siphon that the other ATs get. The crowning piece of the set is definitely Burst who will auto-crit from Stealth. Be it solo or following the Tanker bidding our time and popping BU with Gaussian + Burst on top of the ball of enemies that they created is a great way to kill most minions. The best follow-up, I found, is not to use AS immediately after but to do a standard rotation waiting from Burst to recharge, and only then use AS. This is because there is a very good chance the first use of AS once we have traveled from one pack to the other will trigger Hide which would be better used by Burst if still in an AoE situation. I have been a lazy hog and not yet taken the build to a pylon to test its metrics, but for regular play it has been pleasing mixing fast attacks and multiple damage procs to be a nuisance 'killstealing' from team mates while they swing at corpses. Bio lacks resistances so it is squishy, but two heals, one of them a shield, plus a properly slotted T9, plus carrying a few oranges, is enough on a Stalker who sheds agro like water from a duck's back. This is not a leveling build, but if there is interest I can whip one up:

In the time it takes to be used (3 seconds) we can use the first three attacks (3.8 seconds combined) and do the same damage (or more since procs on each attack x3 instead of procs just on CS) with less of a downtime if the lovely 5% chooses to happen after 3 seconds of animation time. Using the three attacks also works much better for the stacking mechanic of Power Siphon, but also for Stalker (the one AT I'd recommend playing KM on) since the AS stacks play well with the fast attacks. I've made a KM/Bio Stalker that I'm going to post where I managed to reach 45% defenses but have triple (and quadruple) damage procs on each attacks which counter the low individual damage of using the early KM attacks. Having AS also helps with that in the same way. Plus on a Stalker Burst auto-crits from Hide and it's gooooood to start a fight with an explosion of carnage when it comes empowered with BU +Gaussian.

I predict hot salty tears and gnashing of teeth at such a simple solution because it would be too easy and we don't deserve easy.

I've noticed this at least twice, but only happens in slow AS.

Let me have a looksee... - You have a bit too much resistance since anything over 75% is wasted. I tried to reach close to 70% so that Barrier will provide the last 5%. I also aimed at giving you 40% defense to S/L (and close to it for Melee defense as well) so that Barrier's 5% will finish softcapping the defenses as well as hardcapping resistances. - Crane Kick will throw your enemies all over the place without the KB>KD IO. But it's a great place for a Force Feedback proc. - No FF proc in Dragon Tail is a bit of a waste. - You should have zero problems with endurance with Radiation Therapy, which means no need for Cardiac or Body Mastery, so it's best to grab an extra AoE. - You have too many attacks. A rotation of Crippling Axe Kick, Storm Kick, Crane Kick, Storm Kick is enough. Once you have someone in the team throwing Ageless, or Speed Boost, or Accelerated Metabolism, you won't even need the second Storm kick before CAK has recharge. You don't need Cobra Strike *and* Eagle's Claw on top of those. I suggest keeping Crane Kick for the Force Feedback proc and Crippling Axe Kick just hits harder than Cobra Strike while animating about the same. Eagle's Claw is too slow for me, but if you like it then choose which attack to replace it with. - Remember that Particle Shielding gives twice as much Recovery as an unslotted Stamina so you can use it on CD, and Radiation Therapy is a great heal *and* endurance recovery for AoE situations while also recharging super fast. You ought to never run dry with both. - Since you should have no endurance woes and had two power picks but no slots for them I took Assault for a tiny bit more oomph, but really only to get access to Vengeance to mule another LotG. This leaves Hasten at 133 seconds with the FF procs helping with the rest to narrow the gap. - Remember you can boost IOs to increase their yield. You can see that in Hasten, for example, or in Focus Chi. Right click on an IO, press + five times, then choose the IO. The build:

You should show us your build, but you are bound to keep on having these until level 50 since /nin had its endurance recovery clickie removed for Stalkers.

Tinpex once a day for 80 merits. Double Hami (they are always ran as doubles) for 120. If you manage to join the double Hami in the Abyss that's another 120. So from those alone 320. 320x4 days = 1280. Cake. Double Hami takes about 40 minutes. Tinpex is also 40 minutes. No reason no farm like a madperson for 8 hours straight.

I dunno man, I tried a SR tank, and while I will concede that the build was not refined to the max they easily died in a Comic Con map. This is not the way the game usually works with target saturated to the max and being hit for several minutes, but as a metric for unkillable, yeah, failed. SR has no heal so I had to rely on Aid Self and even on a 6 second CD I was desperately waiting for it to come back using it pretty much on CD every 6 seconds. After barely scrapping by the skin of my teeth for a couple of minutes I eventually died. To put it in perspective my /Bio Scrappers will wade into the same map and have to hit their heal once in a while. Then SR has no endurance recovery nor resistance to recovery being debuffed, so they will be detoggled easily. I worry just thinking sending them into the 801 AE missions, but hey, I could be wrong. For normal gameplay of jumping into a pack of enemies, AoE, most minions dead and only 2-4 lieuts and a boss left, sure, it will work fine. But any other Tanker does that, or Scrapper or even Stalker.

The Blaster has three things going for them. - Bu + Aim is biggo burst. Solo things do not hurt if they are dead. - All AoEs are *wide* and thicc. No such nonsense as 8y AoEs. - Range is a *powerful* defense that HD has no numbers for. Floating out of range is easily the equivalent of a native 30%. Fire is the best but picking something like Archery allows to be 100% range. Considering their ST damage is also pretty good the real question is why a Scrapper? We don't have DPS meters to tally the end of a TF but the wide AoEs are such a difference between trying to hit something with 8y and blowing things up with 15y that it is night and day. Then we have Clarion that permanently fixes CC, IOs for defense. That said I'm still a melee person in CoH, which is WEIRD since I ONLY play ranged characters in other games! ONLY! But in CoH I love wadding into the thick of things and be surrounded by enemies.

One thing I have not seen brought up is how nerfing stuff does not jive with the concept of CoH being trinity free. While at its base level trinity means tanker, damage, healer, what it boils down to is nothing cannot be achieve if these three are not present. Once enough nerfing happens we stop being carefree grab-eight-warm-bodies-no-matter-AT-or-level-and-LETS-DO-DIS to 'need tank, need bubbler, two controllers to alternate holds and two blasters to alternate nukes (fire please). Also need two scrappers (TW please)'. A third tank? A third controller? A niche defender? Yeeeah, not seeing it. Like others this is why I advocate difficulty slider options (WITH PROPER REWARDS). Most people don't want to mess with it and want to play Path of Exile MMO style (room fulls of enemies zapped with one hit) then they can. And those who want to engage in Mythic+ (dungeons gets harder and harder the higher it goes) gameplay, well, they can as well. Nerfing is just going to drag everyone in whether they are willing or not, and CoH is not a WoW. It's quite literally a Path of Exile with large numbers of soft targets we decimate with a few hits, this is what the game has as an appeal.

Dude, I read ya. But we are still dumping 300-400 converters ten at a time to the AH. If that hasn't been changed since Live what are the odds of getting that technical trickery you speak of? This is why I LOVE games with addons. We do not depend on a dev's whim and time. There is a need? A player steps in. No minimap in ESO? Addon. Crafting 20-30 items one a time having to click 20-30 times after each crafting bar has finished loading? Addons. Tons of useless vendor trash cluttering the inventory and players expected to inspect their inventory each time they are selling? Addons. The stuff you are mentioning? Addons. Selling 300-400 converters 10 at a time? Addons.

Ice Armor has -damage in Chilling Embrace. Make a Stalker/Scrapper and you'll have Icy Bastion maxing your resistances for 30 seconds on top of that with a one minute ish downtime. I don't really think -damage achieves much though, but KM/Ice.

I don't stick to a character even when liking them. I'm nuts like that. - Tanker: Rad/MA. No point in ever building another tank, it has everything I need to feel good about playing tanks. Could do with more ST damage since hitting for 200 damage isn't hot. - Blaster: Archery/TA. Fast recharging nuke so I don't feel good only every two packs as with every other Blaster I've played. Could do with more ST damage as well. Dat Lethal damage. - Scrapper: Claws/Bio. Best thing since sliced bread. An AoE machine and great ST damage with fast animations. Pretty damn tough outside of ITFs. - Stalker: Procced out KM has been fun. Currently EA but not enjoying it. Been tinkering with Ice Armor and will probably try it next.

One annoying thing the few times I did use the asteroid map, is that they start lovely and patrolling, but then end clustered around the edges of the map and immobile for some reason.

As happened before I disagree with Redlynne on the subject of attacks-that-heal. We can do some pretty spiffy frankenslotting that maxes damage and boosts healing while even adding one damage proc to the mix so the attack keeps on being an attack but one that keeps our HP topped off.

Blaster builds are a bit like art. There isn't a correct answer. Some people will want to load up on CC, some will then load that CC with damage procs. Some will aim for total defense coverage and some will trust the fact that they are floating in the air and away from danger to either skip on defense or just aim at S/L or ranged. I, for example, decided to skip on all CC. I just don't find it useful. I am Blaster, I blast. That is it. What CC picks I have are mules and not even sitting on my skill bar. Then I decided to go all out on defense since I loathe being squishy. Glass cannon is just not me. So I have 45% defense to S/L/E/N and Ranged which is probably overkill, but it works for me. I would not have minded more recharge but Hasten at 128 is alright and I have a FF proc in Explosive Arrow to help it. The rotation for ST is just Aimed Shot, Blazing Arrow and Aimed Shot. Snap Shot is just a mule. Depending on how fast a team is I will either use both Aim and BU + Rain of Arrows or alternate BU and Aim so I have boosted Rain of Arrows for each spawn. Having RoA for every pack is *the* reason I picked Archery. Perhaps you can get some ideas from this so feel free to pick it apart:

Works best on a Staker IMO. Of course with IOs most of your worries do not happen. The knockback of Torrent is turned into a KD. Numbers wise it turns out the T9 is not meant to be used, which means the stacking damage of Power Siphon works very well with the three first fast attacks which is what is used. Burst is indeed slow, but it's a mini Footstomp and having a FF proc in it is *great* for early game. Power Siphon has a downtime of 15 seconds. BU has a downtime of 15 seconds. So sorta averages out. Overall I prefer the Stalker since AS helps the weak damage of the first three attacks, but I have a Stalker version heavily procced that is satisfying to play. They also avoid the ramp up of Power Siphon by having regular BU.

Artillary has completely replaced all targetted AoE purples in all my builds. I lose half the recharge and accuracy but still get half the value, plus resistances to both important elements. Nemesis are the reverse of this. Being the ones who trigger Vengeance I try to kill them last, and if solo I try to whittle their HP down before starting to kill them. I suppose it is part of that thing about us using a bit of care while playing instead of exploding in AoEs. I could get behind an elite mode rewarding twice the XP and merits. Bragging rights, sure, but also more interesting than just wadding through soft bodies. I've mentioned the killer AE missions called 801. There is not much repeatable content due to being just three missions, but even so I see them regularly advertised and their difficulty bragged about.

This is something we have on Everlasting. There is a set of VERY infamous AE missions called the 801 which are bragged as tank killers. I played them together with a group and I can see how they would be if the team goes in even slightly imbalanced. We had chained Barrier, Mind-Link *and* shielders and even so people died here and there, including me once when I was not taking it seriously. Some extra duty debuffing going on as well as heavy duty sapping that almost got me a couple of times despite having a strong debuff resistance. Even so we pulled it off without wipes on a +4x8 even just going as a 5 man group which shows even ultra hard content did not stop us. How can easy mode CoH even compare to those hellish missions?

I'm just glad your annoyance at the code did not drive you completely away. This is shaping up to be a fun tool. At some point in the future we will just add lil checkboxes and click simulate. 'So.. I'd like.. um... 45% defense, and perma hasten. And... hmm.. At least 30% to all res. ROBOT WOMAN, MAKE IT SO!'