Sovera

*polishes the last Rad Armor/MA build* When I made the original linked in that post I thought I had made something incredible but received only polite interest and a flood of well meant persons doing their own spin upon it. To this day I don't have a particular clue about the servers having been flooded by copies of that build but from the lukewarm reception in the forums I doubt it. Unrelated, what amuses me most about this threads is the sudden arrival of a random saying how we have a problem, we don't know we have a problem, but they will enlighten us, and teach us the way to be without this problem that we did not knew we had but that they came to inform of us of. No travel powers until 14 and being sent to cavalcade across the areas having to dodge purple mobs using only Sprint was a problem. Fitting three powers (two of which semi useless) to have Stamina so that we were allowed to play the game was a problem. Taking one power if we want to or not (unlike Stamina) at whatever level we want to for a 40% recharge benefit is not a problem.

You get good Contaminated out of Irradiated Ground, Devastating, and Fusion. Siphon is so good you might not ever feel a need for Radiation therapy/Shielding. But you're correct that Rad Armor supplies your needs in terms of defense. While Rad/Rad may be more thematic some mix and matching might have worked better with a secondary that could have used the extra Siphon heals (elec armor for example), or a primary without them (Shield for example). I've personally been on a Rad Armor binge and found I never take Meltdown but that's a personal thing since I dislike mini nukes (and nukes) due to their CD. I've also stopped playing Rad Melee since I loathe slow animation. As for a substitute... well.. Maybe Air Superiority from Fly, and I hear good things of Cross Punch.

Good damage and a fat heal? Yeah, sorta. More importantly what would you replace it with? Devastating, Smash, Siphon, Smash is a good rotation.

Not sure it this is the right thread for that. The thing is Burn. It's not the heal or the midling resistances or the lack of any debuff resistances. Burn is why Fire Armor is taken, and Burn makes the enemies flee, which means only an AT with an agro aura manages to leverage burn... which means Brute or Tanker. And this is why you don't see many (or any) Fire Armor builds for Stalker/Scrappers.

The difference is not as large now, and once we enter the 50s range, everyone slotted, incarnated, even in solo mode a Tanker can quickly kill half a spawn and it is not the 3-4 remaining lieuts and a single boss that will be a problem (this applies to Brutes as well). Where the survivability comes in is versus tricky enemies. Bio armor VS ITF will eat a Brute alive trying to solo a spawn where a Tanker will handle it. As you mention there are subtleties. A team helps, a team that helps killing faster helps even more. If we are down to 2-3 enemies after the initial AoE volley what is there to fear? If we are solo even at +4x8 we decimate all the minions be it Brute or Tanker. What sort or enemies? Council are complete pushovers and have become CoH's XP fodder, but no one dares to do that with Carnies or Devouring Earth. The factions 'no one dares to' is where the extra survival would make a difference. While leveling is where we notice the defense differences more. Once at 50, everyone with a nuke, everyone with a party wide Destiny, everyone IOed to the gills, what is there really to fear?

You guys have a lot more patience than I do. I'm currently leveling a Rad/MA Tanker, and yes, it's not fully slotted and I'm fighting +2 and +3, but, ugh, so slow. Hitting for 150-200 with my high attacks is like watching paint dry. I've soloed Synapse as a I leveled (just +0x1) but even then, sloooow. It got better when I lightbulbed into pulling the whole floor and AoEing it down instead of fighting a spawn at a time. I can't imagine the dullness of trying to soloing a +3 or +4 AV. This is a bit like the whole Brute VS Scrapper argument and me who got into the habit of throwing my new alts into the AE and have my alternate account do a couple maps which puts them at 23, allowing met to slot everything before starting with Posi and move on up. I started doing it with my Fire Armor/Psi Tanker because I can do attack chains that are only AoEs (Mass Levitate, Electric Fences, Ball Lightning, Burn, Psi Sweep. repeat). But on a whim I decided to try my Claws/Bio Scrapper and despite not being completely Incarnated (just T4 Musculature) and having to use my heals once in a while (40% defense since I did not get Barrier yet) I found it kills as fast, or faster. When I do Follow-Up, and get the Scrapper ATO crit, and do Shockwave and Spin and both fit in the ATO's proc the crits, omfg, it tears through the spawns. To me soloing stuff ends not being about surviving, but managing to keep my interest as I whittle through enemies.

Everything is definitely looking nice and neat. We follow different paths but that's fine too. I still feel a Tanker's damage is still a bit too anemic and thus would never pass on slotting Musculature and damage procs. At most the 33% version so it buffs endurance a bit more. In the same vein I would not pass on my Build-Up power. Taking Ageless would fix any endurance woes you'd have and allow you to drop out of Conserve Power and Physical Perfection and instead pick extra AoE (which may or may not be useful) or Barrier for another 5% defense and 5% resistance (further allowing moving around the slotting). I would personally not worry about DDR. Your defense is a secondary layer and you are primarily a resist based character with a potent heal. If you haven't you could take a look at the Rad Armor/MA build I posted somewhere below these forums. The only thing I did not pick compared to yours is Tactics which is of dubious use at 50. I had to twist a bit more to reach 45% defense since I did not have Cloak of Darkness to help things, but managed to squeeze in a damage proc for most attacks, picked Musculature, traded Tactics for Focus Chi, picked two extra AoEs and still got my 45% and 90% goals (except psi and cold). We don't *need* to follow the trope of Tankers being sturdy low damage dealers. That said these are personal opinions. Your build as is will eat all content, kudos 👍

Remember to pick the unofficial update to HD over the Tools section of the forum as it fixes the +resistances from the alpha.

You have everything in place though you could probably refine the slotting a bit more to save some slots here and there. Dark Regen is so powerful it is almost not mandatory to search for capped resists, but, things you can try to consider in the further refining of the build: - Remember than you can boost IOs (right click as if to choose a new OP, then press + five times). Hasten went from 143 seconds to 138. Same applies to the end mod in Stamina, Conserve Power, Assault, etc. - Dragon Tail can be taken at level 20. Don't level to 35 without it <_< It is also a *marvelous* place to stick a Force Feedback (much like Crane Kick) proc since hasten at 138 seconds is a bit slow. The Gladiator -res can go into Death Shroud and Crippling Axe Kick can take the Achilles -res (despite HD not allowing to slot it). - The Theft Essence proc pretty much negates Dark Regen's endurance which is the real big hog of the build. It almost turns Dark Regen into an endurance recovery tool which is nutty, but try it. - If you manage to, er, manage, your endurance you can move away from Ageless. I bring this up because having another build wide 5% resistance to all changes slotting a lot which brings me to my next point... - ...which is you have too much in the way of resistances. You're 15% overcapped in S/L with just one stack of the Tanker's Might proc. It stacks twice more for another near 15%, so you might be overcapped as much as 30%. Putting the proc in a toggle is not the best choice due to procs-per-minute. It will go a lot better in a single target attack you are bound to spam. My own choice where to put it is Storm kick since we will be spamming it for the +defense. This is part of the build refining I mentioned. If you trim all you can to absorb the slots giving you excess resistances (for example Tough can do with just its single native slot, and the Reactive Defenses in Weave giving 1.5% S/L) you can spread them over your other powers. This also applies to Fire/Cold (but not much to be done there) but not to Energy/Negative and Toxic/Psi. The reason it does not matter for those is that they are tied together and one is severely buffed by Dark Armor but not the other which forces severe overcapping in one so the other can be capped. This is normal and nothing to be done about, and Energy being very prevalent in end-game I'd say to keep on pushing even at the cost of Negative being crazy overcapped. Same reasoning with Psi/Toxic. To be perfectly honest Dark Regen is so powerful you can skip the previous advice. If you do intend to follow it consider that activating any power where you put Tanker's Might will give the build near 7% resistances to all. The safe thing is to consider that two stacks are easy to maintain. That means activating the power it is in (in this case Death Shroud) and aiming to have 83% resistances instead of 90% will have the second stack push the resistances to 90% by itself.

Yes, I've seen this advice so many times and I don't understand it. Perhaps under level 20 I'd use something that has no slots but even then.

Irradiated Ground wants to be 6 slotted with damage procs and the two different -resistance procs. Ignore acc, damage and etc. I can't answer your question without seeing your slotting. Can you screenshot Particle Shielding?

Maybe, but I don't think so. Siphon Life does not do leech, it heals for a fixed amount each time so damage boosts should not have interfered with the heal values of Siphon Life, but tbh i have no clue, for all I know perhaps it did.

A Rad Armor version of this build. It is in all ways a superior version: - Two heals instead of one with Radiation Therapy super fast recharge doubling as an endurance clicky. - Particle Shielding doubling as an absorption shield. - Passive recovery with Gamma Boost to not be gasping for Power Sink to finish recharging. - Much improved recharge with Beta Decay that further adds -5% ToHit. Still keeps: - 45% to Melee/Ranged/AoE (with Barrier's 5%). - 90% to all (with Barrier's 5% and two stacks of the Tanker's ATO) with the exception of Psi that sits at around ish 64% and Cold at 69% once having Barrier's 5% and three stacks of the Tanker ATO that HD is not showing. - Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning for PvE. - Two Force Feedback procs to further accelerate the build. - 105% recharge/slow debuff resistance. Current numbers with one stack of the ATO.

Pretty much zero once you get to 26 and obtain Power sink.

Siphon Life from the Tankers is showing wrong numbers. I did not test the Scrapper or Stalker versions. In game at level 50 on a clean build an unenhanced Siphon Life heals for 187 HP or 10% HP. HD shows Siphon Life healing for 377, or 17%, with a clean build. In game with three generic heal IOs Siphon Life heals for 373 HP. HD shows Siphon Life with three generic level 50 heals as healing for 652HP, or 34%.

Probably because you're not at max level? Let me go check. Edit: I went to take a look and you're right. At level 50 on a clean build an unenhanced Siphon Life heals for 187 HP or 10% HP. HD shows Siphon Life healing for 377, or 17%, with a clean build. With three generic heal IOs it heals for 20% on the basic level 50 HP of 1877. With a full build and accolades the HP goes to 2662 which makes the static HP value of Siphon Life go down to a 14% heal. Even though the numbers are no longer as impressive (in particular since I had 76% heal stats instead of 99%, which makes the heal 328HP, or 12% of 2662HP) I still advocate frankenslotting from the basic 7% heal SL has (once all IOed and accoladed out). Thanks for the heads-up, Seig, and I'll go make a note over HD's thread.

I'll be honest that if I am on a Scrapper and leveling I don't need a tank to baby sit me. I'll gladly take one, but I don't need it. But I'm all meta-ed out leveling with ATOs and throwing set IOs in as soon as they become available, nearly every melee attack will have a Kinetic Melee set, and of course the two +3% unique IOS will be slotted, and then to top it I abuse the base macro and replenish my inspirations between missions. So of *course* I don't particularly *need* a tank when I'll just eat one insp and run into a group with my agro aura nabbing enemies for the team's comfort. But this is not the common experience for the average player and 90% of the time we gleefuly accept a tank that will bundle up the enemies and stop them from go wandering off across the map to return later and shoot us on the back. You describe why I am not personally interested in Brutes. When people sing the praises of Brutes for being 'nearly as resilient as a Tanker' they forget to add the little asterisk and footnote 'If they have support'. IF they have support, sure. Someone throwing shields on them, yeah. But if there isn't support then Brutes are slightly less damaging Scrappers with the same defense. Take the exact same slotting of a Scrapper and put it on a Brute and both will have the exact same numbers. Take the same slotting from a Brute and place it on a Tanker and the Tanker gets substantial defense and resistances increases (and lets not even go into the ATOs that buff damage on Scrappers and give 20%-ish more resistances to Tankers while they get... 10% regen and endurance discount? Fury bonus? k.). That means a properly build Tanker will always be ready to go even if there is no thermal/sonic/ice shields on them while a Brute will go at it with their Scrapper defenses. Where Brutes shine is for niche content such as farming. Then they can devote their build to reaching 90% to fire resist and softcap fire defense. But a tanker can even reach 45% to melee/ranged/AoE on top of 90% resists, on top of nearly as much damage. Not as good, sure, but they are there to actually tanking and take hits (though never should a Tanker go in a and brag how they don't care about damage and their role is just to tank for the team. They can do both, and they should do both).

Yes. It goes from healing 328 HP to 577 HP. That means it goes 14.7% to 21.8% (I forgot to add accolades). AKA one Life Siphon nearly heals for 1/4th of my green bar every 5 seconds (3 seconds recharge + 2 seconds animation time). Wrong, read the post below. 17%, not 5%. Unlike Redlynne I prefer to frankenslot for damage. I lose the set bonuses, but get and that's with one damage proc in the power. I'd like to lower the recharge further and do Siphon Life, Smite, Shadow Punch instead of Siphon Life, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch, but even with SL at 95% recharge I'd still get around a 0.5 gap, which is fine, I guess, once someone in the party throws Speed Boost, or the new mini SB in Elec Affinity, or AM, or whatever. It's difficult to fit everything AND a damage proc with just six slots though, so I prefer throwing an extra Shadow Punch since DM's fun for me is being a punchy puncher buzzsaw. In fact, with the Rad Armor primary being so good for survival it would be very satisfying to throw out Siphon Life and just go ham on Gloom, Shadow Punch, Smite, Shadow Punch, all fast like 1.3, 1.0, 1.2, 1.0. For exemping purposes Siphon life would need to be kept, I guess.

Rolled a winning combo that pulverizes in solo mode and is fawned and fed peeled grapes by teams if joining one?

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