Sovera

I had this complaint a long time ago. Between being ordered around like a hench and spending my time hitting up other evil groups I didn't feel like a villain at all.

I just leveled a WM/Bio and it really works really well. A bit endurance heavy with Clobber sucking 15 endurance before slotting, but amazing in all ways. Doing a Posi without damage buffs or procs or slotting, and killing a boss with a Clobber crit is W00000t! But I made the mistake of mentioning all the pros of the Claws/Bio so, of course, I only JUST reached 50 and I stripped the character to roll a Claws/Bio scrapper 😛

The build I recommend ends up being Claws/Bio despite being old school. - It starts very early. By level 18 the attack chain of Follow-Up, Slash and Focus is complete which means it exemps very well. - It has an early AoE in Spin which is enough to tide us over until level 32. Unlike other sets like Super Strength or Stone Melee which are forced to do single target damage to level 32 and then if they exemp down they lose their AoE. - Fast animations. No annoyances in ponderously doing a big wind-up and either whiffing or watching the target die while we are still animating. - Very light in endurance which reduces or nullifies the usual woes before 50 and incarnates. - Very short recharges which is the same as the above and being all IOed and tricked out. It also plays singularly well with the scrapper ATO since that one gives 3.5 seconds of extra crit chance and in 3.5 seconds a whole attack chain can be done. - The baked in CC in Focus and Shockwave (this one with the IO to make knock back into knock down) goes a long way to making us safe. Paragon Protectors can be made to flop until they die. - Good places to place the +recharge proc of Force Feedback in Focus and Shockwave. The Claws part of the build doesn't care about it but Hasten and Ablative/DNA Siphon/Parasitic Aura welcomes it which also indirectly makes the build safer by making those clickies available more often.

As someone chipped in you're not going to get that on a /Bio and neither are you on a resist based set, so forget /Rad and /Elec and etc. You'll be wanting Super Reflexes for that but any content that requires 58% defense will be creaming a SR, IMO. It lacks a self heal so you'll be needing to rely on insps. /Shield can also put up some good numbers, but again, no self heal so you'll be relying on insps or Aid-Self. So I say go back down to accepting 40% across the board then rely on Barrier's 5% to softcap for normal content, and rely on regen and absorb of /Bio and CC for content above that. Once you are at 45% you can eat a small purple and be at 57%. You don't even need to do that for each and every fight (I've done incarnate content on 45% characters and did not notice a difference between it and other content), just for the ones you see might be a bit tough, or you know will spawn an ambush, or involve an AV and you want to feel safe. For extreme solo or hard content as you are saying you do you have three choice primaries: A) Radiation. Pretty decent AoE and a built-in heal that makes the difference in a long fight. As a Scrapper I got 300 HP heals on a 2000 HP pool, and it goes off a LOT. Also the damage is not commonly resisted. I can't stomach the animations any longer so I don't play one but the built-in heal is tremendous. My Rad/Bio soloed a pylon in 1:45 minutes without incarnate clickies or pets and did not even have to heal itself since Radiation Siphon did everything. B) War Mace. Smash resisting enemies are a huge pain. I did Manticore yesterday and my biggest attack went from 300-ish damage to 120 damage on the last boss. But the damage outside of that last boss is tremendous. And, for solo or extreme cases, the built in CC is wtbbbqsauce. Said Manticore TF seldomly had Paragon Protectors activating their T9 since War Mace kept the NPCs knocked to the ground or flung into the air until they died. Floating above a pack of enemies Crowd Control acts like a PbAoE instead of a cone and does tremendous damage plus knocks everything on their ass. It's common to aproach a spawn, use Clobber, Shatter while waiting for the mobs to wake and come rush me, then Build-Up + Crowd Control killing all the minions. That's a lot of incoming damage immediately negated. I can do a chain of Whirlwind Mace (with the KD proc) and Crowd Control near gapless (the gap is good for Clobber to activate the scrapper ATO crit proc) for AoE moments and the enemies just keep on bouncing. I have not tested mine against a Pylon but someone did and also got under 2 minutes with it. C) Dark melee. I would never recommend this usually since it has no AoE and CoH is an AoE game, but since you said you don't care about AoE then Dark Melee has a strong single target damage plus the -ToHit will boost up the 45% defense to the 58% you wanted just by passively attacking. It also has a built-in heal though not as good as Radiation Siphon IMO.

... we need another FOTM thread but showing the percentage of people who spend at least an hour a week in PvP. Not only are we derailing but we are going to suffer from the Tanker update issues where all this back and forth will kill the availability of the changes while the devs listen to the rambling. Can we all agree THESE changes are good and can go live as is, thanks, then have the 2.5% of the population who PvPs in a MMO ask for balance after the changes are in?

Politely ask the devs to place a P2W recipe that blocks common salvage. But for now spam right click and E will sell the stack you've clicked on which while not being perfect is heaps better than clicking sell, losing focus (why do we lose focus??), clicking on the next stack, click sell a few times, lose focus.

You ought to have slotted the Panaceia proc first as it is the best enduranc recovery one slotter, but the difference will be minimal. keep in mind if your experience is solely doing Posi and Synapse (and Yin next) that your enemies are Clockwork and Freakshow who are tremendous endurance drainers. In any case you will get Energize ay 28 which doubles as heal and endurance reduction. You ought to be fine after this which will give you time to slot your attacks better. Perhaps toss us your current build as it?

I'm so so so so so so x100 glad you're not in charge of things. Because if you want to play without travel powers and not taking attacks you can. It is a choice you can exert. But, like WoW players who hate flying and lobby for flying not to be included in the game because it makes everything too easy, I bet you don't, like they immediately pick flight when it's available and don't go around in ground mounts to exert their beliefs. I started in issue 6 as well and City of Cooldowns was a well deserved named. Endurance running out every two fights added... what? Complexity? Surely not. Boredom and slowness? Yes. Having to reserve five powers pre level 20 to take Stamina and a travel power added.. what? Complexity? Surely not. Boredom, slowness. Oh look, we had two attacks who recharge super slow and a third or fourth one would be great, but no, can't, because otherwise I'm pushing Stamina or my travel power past 14/20. Eventually people figured out (or at least I did) about using the dual build system for a pre level 20 build where we ignored taking the pre-requisites for Stamina and then at 20 change build because we only had a few respecs and had to earn them since they weren't given for free. This love for grind and boredom and slowness is 100% nostalgia with the gloss bad memories get. We can all laugh it up now of being sent to the Hollows pre-level 14 and travel on frigging foot to the other side of the map while dodging purple mobs, but lets not pretend we were having fun at the time. I can laugh about it now, but I'm not going to say it was a good experience at the time. Playing without Stamina was just about impossible and no amount of endurance reduction slotting made it bearable. Who thinks that chipping at mobs with brawl was good fun? Because that's how so many so many fights ended up being when we ran out of blue and pressed the button and watched it go red and we waited, and waited, and waited, and brawl would recharge and we'd stop queuing the attack and use brawl again, while STILL waiting for endurance to return. Good god, yes, it makes for some good shit talking now 15 years later, but was it FUN at the time? It sure wasn't.

Definitely my vote on removing the -level that the pets get.

PvP with its, numbers pulled out of my ass, 5% of the total population shouldn't be this thing balance revolves around. I still remember when PvP was two immortal character slugging it out for minutes before giving up. 'nuff of dat. MMs have a mystique of an high damage AT that is supported by the lack of a DPS meter that accounts for total damage. Sure, they do great against a pylon, but the game is about fast moving from pack to pack. I mean, hell, in any mission where we need to back track because we reached a dead end my MM will toggle on their travel power and back track until finding enemies again.... and then sit there twiddling their thumbs as the rest of the team trickles in and starts killing things, and then the pets arrive using Sprint. Eventually arrive.

*vibrates*

Very little. I don't roleplay with NPCs so I don't nerf my own build to accommodate them. As roleplayers in this setting imagination is the key. We are not bound by the status quo of comics that forces Batman to go fight crime in spandex when his universe is rife with skin thin armors that deflect tank shells and allow the user to fly. Same reason the X-men have that exact same armor in their lore but go to fight with spandex. Same reason a Super-man doesn't have an utility belt with some lead he can melt and throw over kryptonite or cover himself with, you know, the way he has dealt with it in the past but never seems prepared in case it is sprung on him. All of those are comic book devices. Thing who is perpetually trapped in his rocky body while Reed is unable to help him, ooooh, draaaaama, even if every half bit science villain has spare bodies and transfer their consciousness to them when they are defeated. Voila, solution. So if our fire blaster wants to fly my imagination says sure. If we don't want his powers to be the reason why then nab rocket boots from a villain. But back on topic. Roleplaying with NPCs is just not my thing. We could, yes, maybe, if roleplaying in a group, and we are playing a character who is young and low on the power scale, then sure, turn off some toggles, but even so I would be iffy about this, because people also don't tend to roleplay consequences. Yep, my young and weak hero got knocked down and I need to use a wakie. Let me just grumble about how that will leave a bruise or how it stung, then get up and jump back into the fray. Roleplay, for me, is not game mechanics. Game mechanics are game mechanics and roleplay is roleplay. My health bar can be at 100% and I'll roleplay I got hit and need to fall back and ow ow ow.

Best way to check for ToHit is going into Hero Designer, options, Configuration, Exemp&Math and change ToHit to 38. This is what hitting a +3 will be like which is what you will be at once you have your first level shift and fighting +4.

Guys, the trick is not to generate 20+ pages of back and forth controversy. We sing praises for the changes and then ask nicely if they can't be made separate from the tank changes so we can have the MM stuff earlier.

My memories of playing a Bot/Dark from live were spoiled when I returned to Homecoming and went eeeeeh, I no longer have the patience to resummon all the time, then upgrade and etc (and this with AoE upgrades). This change would certain spark my interest in the AT again. Want!

*vibrates harder* Are we there yet!?!

I agree with @Auroxis in that -regen isn't some sort of magic bullet. Other than an EB or AB nothing will notice -regen. We can say that about -res, but a solo tank, at least, will increase their damage in a small way against a boss. What makes -regen strong is the fact AVs have such stupidly large HP pools that a % regen tick is a large heal, but other than an AV nothing has that huge pool. Someone testing this against a pylon might say there is an upgrade, but again, large HP pools. Does it matter, yeah, I guess, sort of? In a DPS test against a pylon at least, since those have rules like not using lore pets. In normal gameplay the moment we get to the last boss of a TF two or three or four pets are dropped and everything is nuked in 30 seconds. So, please, lets keep it more generalist instead of focused on the mythical 'hard target'. Yeah, we have weekly TFs where we exemp down and lose the lore pets. Does anyone run this lower content at +4? Only +0 I would wager. Increase in AoE size or target per AoE is good and generalist. Lets keep in this line. Also, as Auroxis pointed I'm not 100% sure people really understand -regen. I see a lot of mention about woo, Beam is an AV killer, they have -regen!! And it's, what', 75%? 100%? In practical terms it takes a five minute fight to notice a difference. And if we boost -regen to actually noticeable levels then we are talking in the 200%-300% 'passively' applied which steps on a debuffer's toes. BUT! I feel that all this talk of balance is just plain WEIRD. This is CoH we are talking. We thrive on semi genocide each time we enter a mission. Heck, ITF and the 'slay 300 traitors' just shows it. Who cares if a Tank and a Brute are pretty interchangeable? So is a Scrapper and a Brute, so is a Scrapper and a Stalker. Stalkers don't even abuse their stealth anymore and just scrap side by side with the other meleers, and nowadays anyone has perfect stealth with a single IO and a power pick (since 90% of players take Hasten Super-speed is available to 90% of players). We slay 'tough' targets in 30 seconds. What is this super finicky, super complicated, super balanced attempt at making things equal? It reminds me of GW2 doing stuff like lowering a CD by 0.5 seconds which at the time made me laugh. It's out of place. CoH is not this super elitist game with DPS meters and a ton of theorycrafting and DPS checks. Anyone can reach max level in a week and then completely slot up to the max in another week. It's not like saying 'omg, my rogue is nerfed, but it's the character I was raiding with so I can't abandon it or I will lose my progress and my guild will kill me for having taken the drops to gear up, and it's the one I was grinding reputation on to unlock flying too, aaaaaaah!'. So what if Tanks end slightly better than Brutes at AoE damage? In two weeks the brute players will have a new Tank leveled and slotted. I have all the love and respect for Captain Powerhouse, but this is a serious case of overthinking.

This is one of the few cases where I would say to play a Sentinel instead of a Blaster. Sentinels get a reworked T3 that hits like a truck (driven by a Sentinel though). Sentinels also get their mechanic COMPLETELY abused by Sonic's cones. How abused? This abused: And before anyone asks no, this is not normal behavior, this only works on a Sonic. It also starts really early. By level 18 there are three cones that can be chained one after the other and a single use of these will fill the Sentinel's bar allowing to start with that vampiric gameplay. I made a post about it and I still declare it to be the most fun and durable experience I had with the cones having baked in -res for the team and also baked in CC.

Mad numbers for a supposed AoE focused AT. No Assault incarnate clicked or anything?

Energy Aura is a bit squishy but works perfectly fine. You just don't notice what it is doing in the low to mid levels without building for it. A build that takes Maneuvers, has both 3% defense uniques and has their toggles slotted (I'm not the only one only sparing slots for the toggles by level 30+) can achieve enough defense that a single purple insp will make fights easy. I'm talking jump-into-a-full-8-man-team-spawn-and-survive easy. For example: I don't know what you took for a primary so just change accordingly. I used exactly only enough slots that a level 25 character would have. By level 24-25 you can eat a small purple insp and be near immune to enemies. You can easily buy inspirations by going into a base who has a nurse. I use /macro Portals "enterbasefrompasscode ZONE-8888" (this will create a button in your bar, you can use this to teleport to a base that has portals to all zones in the game + a trainer and vendor, etc). After each mission I don't click on Exit but rather the macro button and go replenish my purples so I'm always topped. The expensive stuff are the Miracle and the Gladiator but you can put them off until you have earned the money. Making money isn't hard. Do Task Forces. Afterwards go to Atlas Park, go into the Atlas Hall (the building behind the trainer), locate the ATM against the wall and exchange the merits you got as a reward for the TF for Enhancement Converters. Type /AH, open your salvage tab and throw them in there and sell for what price they are currently going (around 90k each, and each merit is worth three Converters). Then locate Enhancements in the AH, go look for Attuned and buy what you need. if you have any questions my account name is in my signature and I can be poked in game.

I've already made my suggestion for a build. As for now don't try to level with these builds. Pick everything, try to slot what you can where you can, and at most respec into one of them at 32.

My bad then, thanks for the compliment and I'll correct that part. In the end I find myself using Lightning Fences so little that the gain in AoE is actually minimal since both get access to Ball Lightning. I suppose it is there for some extra oomph in solo play.

SR and tank is not a happy marriage IMO. Those 5% chances pile up very fast and as a tank you're going to be an agro magnet unlike a scrapper who will have a lot less attention on them. Market Crash is one of the few TFs where we can get to agro cap pretty easily because of huge spawns very close together (it's almost designed as a farm map tbh). Which then need to be healed, but SR has no heal. I posted a SR tank build somewhere and mentioned how when I threw it into a farm map to stress test it I was using Aid-Self as part of my rotation, and often times eagerly waiting for it to recharge. Aid-Self had a six seconds CD. The only two strengths of SR is being softcapped super early (I believe by level 24 on a tank) and its immunity to defense debuffs. I don't find either good enough to warrant playing one. For example. I level plenty of /Bio because I find it super survival and also offense oriented. I am no where near the defense softcap while leveling but I eat one or two purples on tough fights (in TFs) and I'm fine. I replenish my purple stock after a mission (easy enough with a base macro if we use it when a mission is over instead of clicking on exit, loading screen, then base macro, loading screen). And while my /Bios are eaten alive if I jump into the middle of an ITF roman pack thanks to the defense debuffs it works fine if I don't jump into the *middle* of the pack and instead approach them from the side and start unleashing AoEs to kill off all the minions. With those dead my absorb shield takes care of the rest. But lets say you like your SR shield and are happy with it or don't want to level a new character? Well, that's fine. Just carry oranges with you. When you see things are going badly (or you know you're approaching an ambush, or you see a second spawn that was agroed) just pop a couple. It is an unpopular opinion but I would work Aid-Self into the build to not rely on greens. Greens run out and then what?

I just do TFs. But you really want to farm merits? Keep an eye on your LFG and join the double Hami raids that happen daily. That's 120 mertis there for 20 minutes. Join a daily Tinpex for 80 merits for 40 minutes. Do a MSR for about 60 merits for 30 minutes (though it may *take* 30 minutes to get the group together). A Yin TF is 20 merits for 30 minutes too. Few things will beat pure farming. An hour can and should net you 100 million (with XP turned off, check the Farming builds in Guides for the mechanics of XP turned off), and if you can't stomach an hour of farming then do half hour here and there.

*vibrates in place* Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?