Sovera

After much tinkering I was unable to color the swirly glowballs. 'Bright Radiation' makes the saturation super light so coloring them blue is impossible as they stay white. I can make them purple ish, green-ish, but not blue. 'Dark Radiation' is just saturation turned way up and 90% of the colors are simply black. This is a repeat over many of the sets that have a 'Dark' option. Not quite on the subject but players are also mostly cut off from black FX. Most of the time choosing the darkest color will not make a darkest color but an invisible effect. This is good for the minimal effect crowd and I welcome it, but it blocks having a dark aura. Also many of the auras act like smoke which is weird since nothing in the name or the FX seems to imply it is smoke, but things like the Pantheon aura will fill a camera with kludge as we fly and force constant little shifts to have a clue where the heck we are aiming our flight.

It's a good combo to be stupidly sturdy. I've rolled it on my Stalker and it has been fun to see it overcome huge odds.

The link in my signature has that topic and others for newbies to delve into.

Willpower is good, don't get me wrong, especially for a new player that is just starting and will be cruising without touching their difficulty slider and can rely on inspirations, but I don't particularly see Bio as click intensive? One heal in Ablative IF a situation calls for it. DNA Siphon at 28 IF a second heal is needed or to replenish endurance after a fight. That's it. Two clicks is not particularly onerous with DNA Siphon usually used after the fight has ended to get a bunch of Recovery. Played without touching the slider both should be about as intensive with Bio getting the large damage boost (25%, sure, but also the -7.5% resists on top of that) that makes fights end faster. WP is not a bad choice though, just perhaps a bit squishy. Between WP and Rad Armor I'd lean towards Rad Armor. Two clicks as well but its pretty darn durable. Savagery is good, it just sins for using DoTs. CoH is a fast paced game where DoTs don't get the needed time to play it out. When you're fighting a boss the DoTs stack and it melts, but things with low HP the DoTs don't really get the time to shine. Now the thing is that the DoTs are not free damage, the damage is calculated to include them. But it's not a bad set, the animations are beautiful and fluid and it does AoE very well. You will want to ignore using Hemorrhage since it is not very good for Scrappers. Use the Maiming Slash, Savage Strike and Vicious Slash should be your attack chain for single target.

I'm going to say the best starter build that has everything is a Claws/Bio. Fast attack animations with a complete attack chain by level 18 and exceptional AoE by level 32. The second choice I'd offer would be a Katana/Bio with Divine Avalanche adding a large layer of defense on top of Bio's sturdiness. Both have fast animations with cheap-ish endurance costs. Katana has big hitters that Claws lacks, but is not nearly the early starter with part of the attack chain coming at 26 and then 32. The AoE is decently good but not as much as Claws (IMO). There are may other choices but since you asked for an easy start I'd say those two.

You've put it to words better than I did. It's perhaps a bit of a subtle stance that will be disagreed with once the nerfs hit because POWAH is always welcome. I only recently branched out from Bio Armor for the same reason. We're talking easily 8-9 months of playing CoH and Bio was the only secondary I used for more than experimenting. It's just too solid, it lacks the holes of Fire Armor, it gives endurance back, it has solid defense numbers, it has the two heals with one of them a shield. And to top it the 25% damage boost ON TOP of 7.5% -res. Even now with my new baby being Rad Armor I still go through, 'But, if I played Bio I'd have the damage boost too...'. Only things like the ITF slow my Bio characters and things like Katana allow to mostly ignore even that hole

I've moved on, because what do I do if not move on to the next alt, but I'd rank Katana as high as Claws after playing it, which is high praise for me. Claws exemps better thanks to having a full attack chain by 18 (and that AoE, God...) but Katana has the hard hitters that Claws lacks as well as having the same spiffy fast animations, and then on top of it what makes the set pull ahead of Claws is Divine Avalanche. In one fell swoop with no investment a resistance based secondary suddenly has softcapped melee and this is huuuuuge for survival, and so low level we have this softcapped ish melee by Positron 1. Katana and Bio are a very happy marriage. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, Werner 😄

TW is the one set I've not yet touched. Not because I am honorbond not to play OP sets but because I can't muster the interest for a character that will only be good at 50 and will never be able to exemplar decently. A friend who tried TW and was singing its praises suffered from the same condition many of us did when we first played games and got introduced to the magic of cheat codes. Once we are invulnerable and having infinite bullets and can walk through walls the game life is lessened, not extended. With all the sets being bow and arrows TW ends being an AK-47 that is the best at ST, the best at AoE, the best at burst and the best at sustain. Seriously, this is not healthy. But, attempts at nerfing will have an OCEAN of tears in these forums. No AK-47 user will want to be downgraded to a bow and arrow.

I explained my reasoning in the post you quoted that from (not being snarky). In the same post I mentioned how Avalanche is less damage than GC. It's just a personal choice, I am not advocating others to do it. I just feel Divine Avalanche is a strength of the set and not using it would be a waste. On top of using it allows leeway in my slotting with the defense boost. My real damage comes from GD and SD anyway. Divine Avalanche/Gambler's Cut is just a filler waiting for those two to come back.

Hasten up.

The question might be how you are at the inf cap on all your 50s (how ever many that may be) and *still* be AFK farming *and* marketing, *and* complaining about the bug fix in regards of examplaring. Is this a Cookie Clicker numbers-go-up thing? As someone who has all the characters they care decked to the max and has not done farming, and has barely stayed at level 50 for more than a few days, I don't fathom what the money is even for.

My signature's link.

You can't, since the recharge only happens once the animation is finished. Even if it takes one second to animate and you have it down to one second to recharge you will always have one second between uses. Negative recharge is never going to happen.

Personally I'd go with War mace. It nips at TW's heels, has no awkward mechanics, and has no nerfs incoming.

Pretty much every resist based armor can reach 90% to most thanks to the ATO and Barrier. It's so easy it does not bear mentioning. Where real build-fu comes is doing 90% to all plus softcapping S/L or melee on top of getting decent recharge. Dark Armor with a lot of recharge debuff resistance is near unkillable because of Dark Regen. Something that heals 60% HP every 10 seconds on top of 90% resists is going to be near impossible to put down. It can still happen though, which is why I feel that Dark Armor/Ice Melee is one of the most OP combos. Ice Patch buys a *lot* of time and negates a lot of damage. But Rad Armor achieves near the same with Radiation Therapy being Dark Regen's little cousin, plus the absorb shield, plus the regen Rad Armor brings, plus the +recharge aura (the more targets the more recharge it gives), plus TWO endurance recovery tools (Dark Armor has a fat zero). IMO Rad Armor has moved to meta levels and even has a couple mini nukes in the set though I personally never used them. Bio Armor is a difference beast. It does not nearly have the resists of a resist based armor and at most only S/L can reach 90% (the rest reaches a 45-50%. More for toxic, less for psi). It's sole selling point is that it is an offensive set like Fire Armor. It comes with a -5% to -7.5% (if I'm reading HD correctly, I know it's 7.5% on a Scrapper) res to damage on top of a damage aura on top of 25% extra damage from Offensive Adaptation. The downside is that it does nothing well so a lot of IO (and subsequently slots) are eaten trying to reach decent numbers, which in turn makes things really tight to make a decent build that tries to place a finger on all pies. It has good elemental defenses, but almost no elemental resists, and it has good physical resists, but zero physical defenses. And to top it is has no defense debuff protection so the first whiff of a roman, Banished Pantheon or even Crey and the defense side of things gets mowed down.... which is bad for the elemental side of things. It's why many a happy OP Bio Scrapper or Brute does the ITF for the first time and hugs the ground very very fast. As I said many many months ago Bio is almost a noob trap. The 25% damage is good bait but choosing a different armor will allow more freedom in slotting which includes throwing multiple damage procs in there. Scrappers don't really mind this since they are not meant to tank things and they have Shadow Meld. They can cap themselves as they run to a spawn and spend 15 seconds with a ton of defense to their name. 15 seconds later much of the spawn is dead.

And Bio Armor.

With Radiation Therapy you should not have endurance problems. It recharges so blimmin' fast. What you probably lack is a Theft of Essence proc in it to increase your endurance gain.

I'd go with Ice Melee. Ice Patch with is radius increased with the tanker buffs would make anything not KB resistant simply flop around until it died. No need to faff around with anything and KB tends to work on everything, even AVs, and when it fails, well, taunt is a form of CC?

What I extract from this thread is that most of the people present here have some fantastically thin skins.

Damn, you're right, it was at 93% for +3 and then I messed with slotting and lost accuracy and didn't notice. I'll work on it. Edit: Fixed. 93% is good enough for +3 and I don't fight +4 under level 50.

I've already played a Kinetic Melee Stalker and Scrapper in the past but paired with Bio. The problem with KM is that it has low damage hits. Yes, I know, I can't ugh at long animations (implied: who do biggo damage) and then ugh at short animations who are light on damage. But using the T1, T2 and T3 means it's low individual hits. Bio being slot hungry to reach defense caps did not allow for frankenslotting, but this time I've decided to try a KM with minimum of three damage procs per attack (Smashing Blow has four, AS has only one since, lets face, it hits hard enough on its own and needs a lot of endurance and recharge since it is the linchpin of ST damage). This while still having enough accuracy and maxed damage, no recharge to maximize proc chance, some endurance reduction. This is all aimed at countering the low damage of the early attacks. According to HD this shows as a small progressive improvement the higher the tier: - T1 goes from 133 to 166. 22.3% chance for each proc. - T2 from 186 to 229. 35.4% chance for each proc. - T3 from 262 to 371. 47.8% for the two regular procs, 61.5% for the purple proc. Plenty decent I must say. But it's not all big improvements since the base damage is what gets multiplied by crits, not the proc damage. But since the base damage is maxed anyway it was not a matter of choosing one or the other but rather to have both. I am not a fan of Energy Aura despite the praises it gets. It feels squishy, the heal is slow thanks to the endurance recovery tax. But using Energy Aura allowed to softcap without touching the primary, nets free recharge (I'm still peeved that Rad Armor simply had the recharge ditched unlike EA and Elec Armor) and the two endurance recovery tools will help though three out of four attacks have endurance discount over 40% (the T1 has zero endurance discount, but it's purposeful since it's also the cheapest costing only 4.17 and I wanted a fourth proc as a FF despite the low odds). Burst only has 22% endurance discount though. On the subject of Burst it's already well documented how it auto-crits from hide and it's a pleasure to revisit the set and engage in Hide fishing, BU, Burst and see things explode. Depending on how clumped enemies are even if there is a boss I usually start with Burst from Hide. This works particularly well when having someone to take point and enemies flocking to that someone. I remember this weans off around Citadel where even BU + Gaussian + auto-crit no longer kills minions. Still, the fact it has the exact same recharge as AS allows to pair the two during AoE moments and keep on focusing the harder targets while religiously throwing Burst after each AS. Especially with its FF proc. Zapp is a mule, but hey, nab those "#$&/ runners on the back Hasten went from perma to down to 127 seconds the more I frankenslotted things. It can be made to go higher if people don't care about raising slow debuff resistance (currently at 95%) or adding more procs to things like Burst. It relies on FF procs to chase the perma status. The build has not been completely refined so there is still room for playing around with it. If there is a desire for it I can whip a leveling build.

Since I'm leveling one I'll relate my experiences (it's why I prefer leveling than farming one to 50 and then play the character). Positron and Synapse were a terrible slog. LotGs are not active at that level and even with Hasten and Amplifiers it's a definite no to leveling without Barb Swipe. Respec out of it by Yin if desired. The AoE isn't amazing with just Spine Burst who has a terrible toll for the huge radius it has. Without BU it does not kill gears (the little bots that spring out of defeated clockwork bosses). With BU it took about 60% of a minion's HP. By Yin the rotation was in place. AS, Impale, Lunge, has gaps as expected from low level play, but acceptable ones and I could feel the basic rotation settling in. Using just two hits before AS never builds up Focus to the max though. I picked Ripper. Absolutely loathed in with that stupid ballerina long ass animation. A FF proc in it sure helped with recharge woes though. By Moonfire I had the three AoEs but still loathing Ripper. Throw Spines is fine, doesn't do a lot of damage but the animation isn't super slow and the long range helps. While I go 'ugh, Spines feels weak' as I level I'm still doing Tanker levels of herding running around and hiding behind something to mow things down and I realize my big ugh is Ripper that is killing my buzz so I've decided to throw it away and pick Ball Lightning instead. At this point its like, well, if I am to stick with using Throw Spines, Spine Burst and Ball Lightning then why not just roll a Claws Scrapper? I'm still on the fence but the answer is radius. Spine Burst has a huge 15y radius compared to Spin's 8, Throw Spines has 30y range (just like shockwave. We save a slot on a KB>KD but lose the FF proc), and Ball Lightning also has 15y. So we can carpet bomb a spawn for a supposed sparse AoE AT and then clean what is still up. The ST damage feels acceptable with one damage proc helping things along but Impale's long ass animation doesn't feel rewarding, and like most long animations it feels terrible to do a huge wind-up and see it miss. I'm almost tempted to remove it as well but Impale is iconic. The DoT damage is tiny and nowhere near Savage Melee so it adds up when wailing on something but it will rarely kill anything if expecting the last sliver of health to be whittled off. I'll say that I was leveling an Ice Melee Stalker prior to this and it feels like night and day. We can frankenslot Frost for range since level 10 and a BU empowered Frost is a thing of beauty easily mowing down spawns at low level. I didn't get this satisfying feeling from Spine Burst. It even gets Frozen Aura at 32 which is less satisfying than Frost (for some reason, they do about the same damage and have the same animation time, but Frost just feels a lot more powerful where I sometimes hesitate to use Frozen Aura) but completes the AoE kit.

You have things surprisingly well in hand. I think you hit everything. Possibly you have too much defense depending on what you want to do, those slots could be put somewhere else I say possibly because for the regular game 45% is enough but for incarnate business 59% is where its at. Depending if you decide to solo incarnate stuff or not aiming for 59% is a consideration. I cannot answer this for you so you will have to decide. Because of this you have some extreme slotting that may or may not make sense depending on how heavily you wish to delve into end game. Regarding your questions about attunements and such I have a link in my signature that may shed light. If you still have doubts just ask.

That makes sense. The reasoning seems solid, I'mma try it. On one hand now that I am leveling one of these I feel that there ought to be more bang for my buck. Long animations should hit like a truck, and I don't feel that. Things like Impale just don't seem to hit hard with perhaps too much tax paid for the fact it is range and immobilizes having been taken from the damage part. Spine burst is the same. Amazing 15y radius, sure, but it's the sole AoE until 26 and it doesn't even kill a Gear.

Necroing this, but how did you 'feel' spines after actual playing one instead of wailing on a pylon? I've never touched a Spines before because of the long animations and mediocre ST but I'm interested since Stalker version of it seems to get the best of both worlds. It seems like when all IOed out I can get away with an ST chain of AS (4.5 recharge), Impale (2.7 animation), and Lunge (1.9) = 4.6 animation while for AoE the extremely long animation of Spine Burst allows to run Spine Burst, Ripper and Throw Spines back to back