Sovera

Titan weapons for sure. That set does everything and that includes mystifying ST numbers and AoE. War Mace works very well too, and is second only to Titan Weapons. The AoE attack chain works like Claws. Claws is extremely satisfying to play and I'm surprised I didn't see it mentioned. Follow-Up, Spin and Shockwave (performed floating above enemies for maximum effect) is a gapless chain that rains AoE damage over and over until everything is dead. While Elec/Shield is lauded as *the* AoE set I've played it and wasn't impressed, nor do I really understand the panting the forums do about it. It has no early AoE so it exemps badly with only Chain induction to do the job. Thunderstrike is SLOW and while it may do the job as an AoE it also pretty annoying to run that 3.4 animation. And the master of the set, Lightning Rod, has a nuke's long recharge while not even killing minions on its own? The set also suffers from pretty mediocre ST damage. Same with Fire. One lousy AoE and it's a cone all the way to 26. Spines is *the* actual AoE set but the ST is weak and that makes enjoying it harder when we are whittling down a hard target. For some reason no one has mentioned Staff. Pretty amazing AoE truth be told. It suffers from the mediocre ST syndrome though. I made a Stalker of one to fix the ST and I'm pretty darn pleased about it since it exemps super well and rains AoE damage from early on. But Stalker fixes a lot of Staff's problem both by renewing Build-Up and fishing for Hide procs for crits on our skill of choice.

Everything seems to sort of be in place. You still have a large ish hole in Negative/Energy which is more important than Fire/Cold. I would personally lower the numbers to 40% and then use Barrier to fill the last 5% (while the numbers dwindle over time Barrier will always give a minimum of 5%). Remember that you can right click a IO, then place your cursor over it and press + five times to boost it. You can use it on Hasten, Ablative, Parasitic, etc, anywhere you aren't using full sets for the bonus.

I have yet to quit a single TF I've been in. Though I create the team in 97% of them and 'tank' them each time by popping insps and running in first. Sometimes I die in the earliest TFs, but meh.

Would it though? When was the last time we had someone at agro cap? I level new alts a LOT. I reach 50 and barely get my Musculature to T3 and I'm probably making a new character already to test something new. And I do them the 'hard' way which is TFs all the way to 50. I may step into a farm map to reach 35 (since one DFB and one TF of each, no repeats, invariably levels me at level 33) so that I can finish Numina and get access to ITF and LGTF. So when I'm speaking I'm not doing so from a spreadsheet but from hard experience, and my experience is that tanks, of any sort, are currently not adding a thing to the game nor do their agro caps have a bearing in the real game. We are not in WoW. Fights don't last minutes against tough hard hitting elites that kill a non tank in three or four hits. For those who never touched WoW pretty much any normal mob in a dungeon is our equivalent of an EB. This is not counting the bosses who are then AVs. Only a tank survives an encounter against a normal dungeon spawn and most times would die hard without a healer backing them up. THERE we need tanks. There it impossible to play the game without a healer. An off-tank is acceptable if the healer is well geared and the dungeon is run at normal or medium difficulty, but even then they can't faff around without agro tools because any normal mob citizen will three shot non tanks if they wander off. In CoH this isn't the case. My constant leveling is usually always at +1. +2 tops. No one ever willingly goes +3 while leveling and +4 is unheard of. Enemies melt in seconds even in these low level TFs. Boom, a rain of AoEs, bosses survive, lieutenants are at half HP for a few seconds more. There is no danger, no need for a tank and nothing for a tank to agro extra anyway. Then we reach 32 and any AT with a nuke is doing the same but instantly which means the following AoE volley finished everything. Then we reach 50 and the difficulty is finally upped to +4 with fresh 50s carried until they get their T3 to everything becomes +3. At this point it would take cherry picking a fresh 50 team to face failure. The closest might be the ambush of kheldians at the top of the hill in the ITF. That's the party killer since they debuff hard and are all bosses. In fact, this ends being the way to make tanks and TANKING relevant. Eliminate all minions in TFs. All enemies are now bosses. Perhaps reduce the spawn size by 1/4th. Suddenly getting hit hurts and it matters to have someone taking the brunt of it. This would do nothing at 50 when everyone is IOed to the gills but even then I'd welcome this additional difficulty slider added in. I think it would enliven the game by a LOT.

The guy does have a point though. If we dropped Tankers from the game and just gave their AoE punchvoke to Brutes no one would even notice except die hard Tanker fans and new players who come from holy trinity games who'd gravitate to them by reflex (only to later learn they are gimped Brutes). The difference from Scrapper, Stalker, and Brute is already paper thin, (and even now it's not about making the AT different from the other three but just upping numbers so it is *more* similar to them) but at least the Brute can say it takes the role of tank by dint of 90% resists once all buffed to the gills. Of course this being a community there would be a tremendous outcry if such a thing were to be done. The only way to make Tankers more valid is giving them Tankers only sets. Want to play a holy shotgun set? It's only available to Tankers. Want to play a Throw Cars set where every move is picking up a car and throwing it at the enemy? Gotta roll a Tanker.

Yes, even at level 33 and not nearly slotted up the attack chain works fine already and actually I can leverage Eye of the Storm with Hide. I threw the character at a Comic Con to get the last two levels so I could do Numina and it performed *admirably*. Only +1x8 and having to munch on two purples once in a while. So basically start in hide, Eye of the Storm, Guarded Spin, Mercurial Blow, AS (saved for last to apply the last combo point and fish for a Hide proc), Eye of the Storm. From then on just continue doing the same and any Build-Up procs I saved for before AS to apply extra BOOM. Since AS animates ultra fast we are still within the 5 seconds of Gaussian to use EotS empowered by three combo points + Hide + Build-up + Gaussian proc + Force Feedback proc. Verrry nice. Remember to float above the enemies to get more juice out of Guarded Spin. It means I have Sky Spliter and Serpent's Reach taken and slotted in my build but not used since I use this chain for AoE and ST. AoE because AoE, ST because Guarded Spin has -res proc, Mercurial Blow has the other -res proc, three combo EotS does -res as well, and AS is the linchpin wallowing in all that -res every five seconds.

That said I'm running a Staff/Bio Stalker and woof woof, me likes. Even not having an agro aura is less a problem than usual. I even tossed it into a farm map at level 33 (to reach 35 and be able to do Numina) and it came out just *fine* unlike my poor Fortunata whose SR based defense and only having Aid-Self couldn't handle it (not that normal gameplay involves this sort of stress testing so it's just a personal metric).

I had an MM with me today and it reminded me how the poor things can't keep up nowadays. Pets moving at Sprint level simply stay behind and arrive when the fight is about done.

I'm leveling a Staff/Bio. Surprisingly interesting. I had been wanting to try a Staff/ but always put off by the supposed low ST damage and of course that Stalker was the answer to that. I wanted to try an Elec since supposed masters of AoE but eeeeeh, even after cooking a build I looked at it and wasn't impressed. Only AoE at low levels would be Chain induction, Thunderstrike has an abysmal animation time and Lightning Rod didn't impress me on me Elec/Shield stalker with the damage/recharge ratio. Staff has been lovely. Start in hide, open with the PbAoE, hit a hard target with AS, follow with Guarded Spin. AoE galore! FF proc in the PbAoE ensures swiftness. AS and the PbAoE recharge about in the same time and thus make it worth it to wait the small gap and AS something first to fish for a hide proc. I used Guarded Spin and the T1 for my ST rotation since both can take the -res. It's all about empowering AS and churning out AS as much as possible. I still have a gap even later on so I'm going with Serpent's Reach but the animation is too long to use for regular play so it's reserved for AVs. Mostly because I don't want to AS, T1, Guarded, T1, but as I level I might end up doing that and ditch Serpent's Reach. Dumb 2 second animation is contrary to my religious beliefs. In the same vein I took Sky Splitter but have no intentions of using it. Dumb *three* second animation. It would need to do triple the damage for me to consider it. Or to reverse the combo effects. I don't need extra res on ME, but the target taking -res is acceptable so I might see if AS, Mercurial Blow (-res proc), Guarded Spin (-res proc), Eye of the Storm (PbAoE with 3 point combo doing -res), makes for a decent attack chain.

Pretty much. But it's effing amazing to be damn invulnerable as soon as level 25-28. The problem is also that it instills a false sense of strength. We are fighting +0 as we go and the hits that come in are weak because of being +0, Then we fight an AV or even EB, or the difficulty is cranked for some reason such as joining a +4 while not still 50 and suddenly those love taps are hammer blows.

It really is. You just pay for it in squish and lack of self healing, though both can be worked with.

You can still shuffle things around and keep Parasitic up up half the time on three slots while keeping Ablative well slotted. But it doesn't matter if you +5 the slots you put on Ablative as long as the raw stats are there. As for Genetic Contamination it does more than just damage, but again, -res proc and the Scrapper ATO that passively increases critical chance. That ATO split in half is 5% S/L x 2 so from those you'd go from 25% S/L to 35%, and from there adding a Superion Blistering Cold and poof, 40% S/L. Barrier takes care of the last 5% and no need to do Shadow Meld's 3.2 second animation every 15 seconds.

That does appear to be a squishy build until reaching Shadow Meld, I can see why you'd be hitting panic buttons. Just some quick tips: Panaceia proc will do more than Numina's. Don't forget to +5 your recharges in Hasten (open the IO window, then press + five times). Ablative is your first (and usually only needed) line of defense so I'd switch the slotting between it and Parasitic Aura, then do the same +5 trick. Genetic Contamination could do with some slotting and it takes well the utility procs like the -res and scrapper ATOs. I posted a Claws/Bio recently down below which could have some pointers for slotting.

Mind posting your scrapper version build?

Whaaaat!

Nein, your build was fine. I just felt it had too many attacks. Otherwise it's plenty fine. You're just aiming more at Dom side where I'm unapologetic about treating it as a scrapperblasterino 😄 I'm on the same boat regarding exemping, but on that side all is well. All the ST and AoE attacks are there for even as low as Posi 1 which is why I have Hasten exactly at 20 instead of pushing it further back.

Update. Reached 50, slotted what I had and working on the rest. Much better handle on endurance and etc without even incarnates in the mix. Done a few ITFs without problems even at +5. Overall it's exactly what's being sold: a Claws/SR Scrapper Dominator Blaster. It easily gets defense up like SR, and just like SR it's squishy, but unlike a Scrapper it can start the fight by killing most of the minions and having lieutenants at half HP which can then be taken down by the smoooooth ST chain and both circular AoEs, one which soft CCs with KU and both with -recharge. Overall I much prefer this to a Claws/SR since it's *very* satisfying to Follow-Up, Aim, Psychic Wail and murder most of a spawn. It's just very nice to have burst and sustain. Aid Self solves the self-heal problem though the skill has a tremendous near 5 second animation. Fortunately as a flier it is exceedingly easy to float a bit off from the mobs and heal up at our leisure before swooping down. Trying to heal at ground level while being hit would just kill the HP gained before the animation had finished. This isn't a build that handles well be thrown into a farm map to be at agro cap for minutes on end, it just isn't, don't even go there. But it is VERY good at doing NORMAL gameplay since the nuke kills most of the mobs in a spawn leaving much fewer targets hitting us. Aura of Confusion is a mule, but it's nice to have. Team is speeding, we just used Psychic Wail on one spawn and everything is mopped up, ran to the next spawn, no one is nuking for some reason? Boom, Aura of Confusion. By the time we have ran to the next spawn after that, used Wail, then reached the next again spawn after that with all the FF procs helping things and Aura of Confusion is back up. While it's still a mule it's a worthy mule. I'm at a loss on my last two powers though. I considered Leadership for the +acc. But under level 50 we seldomly run content at more than +1 tops, and usually it's +0. At level 50 everyone is well slotted up and accuracy isn't, usually, a problem. The two or three places where accuracy help would be against CoT (eff those -acc ghosts and shielding bosses), the witches/Tsoo (eff those hurricanes), and probably the Banished Pantheon. But these aren't common to face. I'm tempted to just grab both Assault toggles, but I understand their damage increase is actually pretty minimal and in a build with only Stamina for Recovery grabbing more toggles is iffy. The other choice would be to grab better powers for ST. Both Swipe and Strike are better than TK Blast and Dominate, but TK Blast and Dominate both CC which is pretty useful (DOWN, SURGEON! DOWN, SAPPER!). Mind Link is always an option, but the abysmal 4 second animation leaves me cold and, again, once at 50 deaths are so rare that we may pat ourselves on the back for helping the team, but insert arewereallythormeme.jpg.

Claws/Bio Scrapper is the best thing since sliced bread. War mace is nearly as good as Titan Weapons but much easier to maintain and level with. Very safe with all the KD/KUs. Scrapper would be my choice. You won't win prizes with a Sonic/Bio Sentinel but it is *FUN*. By level 12 you're spamming cones like a madlad and sucking HP like a vampire. It just pales at 50 once everyone has nukes and Judgements and there is not much point in spamming cones on 3-4 scattered mobs.

I was looking at Gulbassaur's build and mentioned I felt he had too many attacks, saw I could have three circular AoEs (eff cones!), then started tinkering with it and ended up with something. I didn't want to clutter his thread so I made this one. Alright, so I'm leveling this. Currently level 32. VERY SQUISHY. No resists, tiny HP pool and no defenses while doing melee? Nutty. Even munching on two purples wasn't enough. I had to reshuffle things and push Aid Self for later and this has helped but expect squishyness while leveling. There are just too many useful powers to take early. Spin + Psinado is a good early thing to have, we can feel Psinado's FF proc helping with lowbie recharge. This only opens at 24 though. I question the brains who thought the AT ought to have a full respec at 24 instead of branching out at 24. Having Psinado at level 12 would have been nice. Unlike Claws we can't make an AoE rotation of Follow-Up, Spin, and Psinado, but Follow-Up, Spin, Psinado, Follow-Up, Spin can be done before a gap happens. Combine with Psychic's Wail and I think our AoE needs are satisfied. I couldn't fit a single target rotation with just Follow-Up, Dominate, and Lunge. The bane of extra fast animations. So I had to take *something* and since I *had* to take a level 1 power I took TK Blast since it animates ultra fast and takes a FF proc. Since I had to take a level 1 power it's not like a wasted power, it just cost a few slots but for once I had enough slots for everything I cared for. Having an extra power in the ST attack chain helps early on. There is no particular reason to slot the superior ATO in it (we don't *need* the extra melee defense) but all the bonuses are acceptable and no other set had 4 bonus that I deemed more useful (even the extra defense isn't bad since it's something to delay DDR). The blaster part of the build is definitely the Aim + Nuke recharging every 42 seconds (less with FF procs). Endurance is a big problem so far though I don't have Stamina fully slotted (I could have looked for the AoE bonuses somewhere else, but we have no other source of Recovery than Stamina so it was two birds with one stone) I don't really trust Aid-Self to keep me up as it hasn't in the past, but the build has enough toys it might work better (all the slows and -recharge built in the ST and AoE chain, the soft CC of KD, etc). The ST chain *looks* like it should do good damage even though TK Blast hurts it. I'll have to see if TK blast can be done without. Perhaps with Ageless it can be. Lunge showing as 617 damage (!), Dominate procced out at 398, Follow-Up at 265 and then a paltry 160 for TK Blast. If there is interest I can whip up a leveling build.

*vibrating^2*

Works very well. I have a guide about it further down.

To be honest I feel like you just have waaaaay too many attacks. Either going melee or ranged would be enough but both just steals a lot of power picks and slots which is noticeable. These ATs are blessed in how they can cherry pick things. More AoE or more ST according to need.

I played a Scrapper KM almost to 50 but felt disappointed and let it be. The same reason I felt that way applies to Stalkers but is corrected a little bit, and that's that the rotation is fast if we only use the early attacks, sure, but the attacks are all low damage *because* they are early ones. Stalker helps in the ST damage (as it always does) by substituting the T1 for AS (obviously a large large upgrade). Just three ST attacks leads to some annoyance in how we can't do a gapless AS, T3, T2, AS, since AS will not have recharged by then. We must do AS, T2, T3, T2, AS, which makes AS' hidden proc go 'wasted' on a T2. If we are doing max level content only then Moonbeam/Zapp can sort of takeover (Moonbeam better, but Zapp gives access to another AoE) as AS, Moonbeam, T3, T2, but Moonbeam's large recharge makes it awkward to use for every rotation. Otherwise yes, KM is not just really pretty but fast and fluid. It only has one AoE but it's decent in how it comes early and allows to fit in a Force Feedback and the recharge is sort of perfect to try always use AS before it to fish for auto crit.

I do that all the time. I don't own a Tanker, but all my characters play like one in the sense they jump into a group first and unload AoEs and aim to kill the hardest target in there. But once the team catches up I never stay there moping up. You call it bad playing, I call it normal playing. Even on a +4x8 a full group annihilates spawns. A full team all competing to kill is an orgy of attacks trying to nail a mob before it dies and there are a lot of animations flying to hit a corpse. I'm not trying to change your mind with this but if there are two or three anemic lieutenants and a half HP boss left and there are 5-6 team members dealing with them I don't see the need to stay, nor do I believe those few scattered mobs to be an actual threat to the team. I would rather be bouncing to the next group, unload AoEs, and when the team arrives the mobs are nice and clustered around me to be ravaged by their AoEs.

Controllers want to feel useful and that means spamming their skills. The solution isn't to gripe but to gently insist on team chat to *not* spam mass immobilizes until the enemies are close. Some might not care, some will, but without communication no changes will happen for sure.