Sovera

For you DP experts what ammo choice are you using? For procs to be use the lethal ammo must be used?

S'done already.

I had a triple procced pure range Rad/ sentinel which I used to think did amazing damage until I tested and had a 4 minute pylon kill and no tweaking improved it (6 minutes without using procs). 4 minutes is sort of decent since my my pure ranged tanky Blaster did it in 3 minutes, but it's slooooow. Perhaps if it had cool short animations instead of lengthy ones it would at least be a blender.

Adding to the idea above, a marked target loses the base 5% chance of missing we have baked in (why do we still have this DnD artifact? Either we are accurate enough to hit or not, and as I joked on a TF yesterday if I had 95% chance to fail missing winning the lotto I would like to do it on CoH). It may not be glamorous, it might not be -res, but no missing attacks would be a bump in the damage both in team or alone.

I'm going to add more to Replacement's words. This *is* turning needlessly hostile for what is a bit of harmless banter on the forums, but what Solarverse did I would have appreciated when I ran an underleveled team against Market Crash's last boss. We tried, we got defeated several times, people gave up. Three times, and they gave up... Only later did I learn that the last boss does a -HP debuff and knowing this did I pay attention and sure enough there are no defenses and resistances in the world that can keep us up when we go from 1.7k HP to 600 HP. So if someone had said, after the first wipe, 'Guys, if you are being targetted take a few hits but then run away for someone else to take the aggro so the debuff drops' then I'm sure we could have managed it without the disbanding. And while a lot of people here are acting as if they were born bred and raised suckling on CoH's teat I'm pretty sure that they had to learn it. A widow blinding or the Red Prototype doing a -HP debuff are good things to be made aware of. Personally even now I drop the SG macro base into the chat when running a TF instead of assuming everyone knows of it by now. And I still get the occasional 'oh hey, this is *very* useful!' indicating someone didn't.

That was exactly my reaction as well. And plus not needing so many sets allows to aim for different goals with an EA. That said your 'mistake' was aiming for 45% since the last 5% are a bitch. 40% is the sweetspot allowing for some more freedom in recovery and recharge bonuses. As for /Bio's S/L resistance it hovers around 63-65% with Offensive up, add another 5% if going the Barrier route. I'd personally not aim for incarnate softcap. 45% is fine for most everything and a small purple throws us at near incarnate cap, and those can be easily replenished between missions. Defense debuffs are /bio's big weakness though, no lie. ITF is that achille's heel. But depending on the build it can work, we can't just act like the build is immortal to *everything*. WM in particular can face the ITF thanks to all the CC. Mobs aren't attacking if they are on their back and the hard hitting WM does is killing them in droves while they flop.

/bio has better ish resists, both have softcaps, EA's heal is a trifle too long and the fact it is used for Recovery means it is often 'wasted' and is not present when healing is needed, while /Bio's Ablative Armor triplea as heal, absorb and regen. But for regular play I don't think my perceived squishyness in EA has a bearing and it will do just fine. I just stress test it and it does not keep where /bio in the same setting does.

Easy enough. EA: Much easier to soft cap with EA. Endurance woes much alleviated at 35 with the caveat you're 'wasting' your heal instead of having it when healing is needed.. Squishier than /Bio (imo). Bio: almost forced to pick Ageless which does not mesh well at all with /Bio's difficulty in raising S/L defenses. Scrappers get Shadow Meld which pumps up the defense for 15 seconds but with an abominable 3 second animation and that does not mesh well at all with Momentum. BUT (I never tried this so take it with a grain of salt) not needing to dip into epic pools for AoE it should be doable to rely on DNA Siphon for regular play with Parasitic Aura for an extra oomp in Recovery and defensive values, while also going into the Body Mastery pool for more extra recovery, finally this all allowing to pick Barrier instead of Ageless which allows /Bio to only aim for 40% letting Barrier add the last 5%. That said WM nearly as TW good with much less clunkiness and if you were not enthused by it then TW might not be your cuppa. The endurance requirements are much higher than WM.

I'm going to quote myself here as I keep on leveling the character. I'm currently level 35 and the feeling of clunkyness does not abate. The whole set hinges around one power and that's Power Siphon. Take it early, use it often. It's just clunky. The damage is nothing special without Power Siphon but it does not give an immediate big boost and instead it's a ramp up. So we don't feel it if we use it for an AoE, but we do feel it if we use it then get close to a pack and start hitting a boss while the mobs decide on approaching, and *then* use an AoE. The clunkyness reasserts itself with a spawn half dead or just a boss and minion left. Do we go through the glacial two second animation and then not have the power at the next pack between killing the boss and minion + travel time, or chip at the boss and minion without Power Siphon? This is not usually a Scrapper consideration but the T1, 2 and 3 aren't hard hitting powers since they can be had so early, so it all hinges around the synergy with Power Siphon. At least it does not do animation lock so with practice we can use it while almost at the spawn instead of reaching it and *then* using it. Burst is a weaker version of Footstomp. Nearly half a second longer, no RP BS about needing to be near the ground to use it, I'd say about twice the damage of Footstomp (conservative just glancing at Mids and not mathing it up) with half the size. Shorter recharge. But a Footstomp still. Fully IOed up it recharges in 4.6 seconds and it takes a Force Feedback Proc so we can be even faster than those 4.6. The animations are the selling part and sticking to the first three attacks leaves the set fast, lean, and mean. Someone mentioned how Claws FU, Slash, Focus looks a bit spastic and I agree in the sense the animations don't flow, but with Kinetic Melee it's a pleasure to watch those first three attacks chain into each other seamlessly. Objectively Claws is still the better set IMO. Being able to have some distance and spam Focus + Shockwave is always useful on things like the blue circles of death in Tinpex and saves on running otherwise. Being able to spam FU, Spin and Shockwave feels better than just relying on Burst and only occasionally using Repulsing Torrent due to the horrid aperture and animation time, and it also saves on dipping into the epic pools for extra AoE. FU feels better than Power Siphon since it blends into the attack chain instead of cutting us off for 2 seconds.

I believe you may be thinking of Champions Online. There are no oversized materials around and that sort of stuff would have been recycled for other content.

I can't stick to a character for more than a few days before making a new one. I have no interest in being level 50 without a goal. But my Claws/Bio is my favorite to the point I did not even strip her of the IOs as I usually do and just left her perfectly slotted so I can slip back into her when ever I'd like, and I'm just re-earning the earning the inf to slot my next alt(s).

Truth is nothing is really hard and if you didn't even wipe it just reinforces that your worry was unfounded. This is not often the case in Posi 1 where that end fight can be pretty darn tough depending on the team composition. I have had plenty of wipes there and the fact the enemies look all the same in ink black and have the same name just makes it hard for me to even distinguish them. I usually pay zero attention to my team's costumes unless we're idling and waiting for someone. What I usually do is pop four purples and leroy it. That said you did nothing bad and I will applaud having done it. Because, you just put the finger on what happened. Blinds can be very dangerous and also extremely annoying, so that group that played with you may not indeed have patted you on the back but thanks to that tidbit of information they came out informed and the next time, who knows, one of their alts will reach the end of Posi 1 and spread that bit of info if they notice a widow is in the team.

I had the same experience with the Decimation proc when I tested in a Sentinel. I still have the Gaussian proc because it works so well on BU powers but I had an inkling it wouldn't achieve as much on FU's super fast recharge which this seems to validate. I'm currently leveling a Kinetic Melee but hmmmm, I don't know. It can be interesting and animations are really pretty but why does the cone have the same aperture as if we were playing a ranged character on top of the 2.5 animation time? This makes Repulsing Torrent a much weaker Shockwave and removes the ability that Claws has to not dip outside the primary in order to have a full AoE chain. I've dipped into Mu for Ball Lightning for the planned build but there will be gaps unlike with Claws with FU, Shockwave, Spin spam with no gaps. It does make for some sweet early leveling as we bounce around doing much more damage than others do by dint of having two AoEs that can be spammed with a Force Feedback on each. And we really notice this. Energy Torrent comes at level 8 and we can get an Overwhelming Force proc at level 10 to fit it much sooner than Sudden Acceleration at 17. Doing a TF, approach a group, Repulsing Torrent at a distance, go in close, Burst. If any of the Force Feedback procced then Repulsing Torrent is back up. Move away, Repulsing Torrent. Go back in, T3, T2, Burst has recharged, use it, move away, Torrent. So in terms of busy, yeah, we're not just plunging into the middle of the group and spamming attacks. The running back and forth is pretty active and with both Torrent and Burst having a KD component we're helping with soft CC. But in terms of game play and numbers the two together do not even kill white minions so we are bouncing around and not achieving really a lot. Mind, at these levels (28 atm) Claws is only relying on Spin so KM is still doing more. But once 32+ rolls in all this kangaroo business is a waste of time compared to Claws planting their feet and doing their AoE rotation with minimal adjusting. The set does feel clunky though. The damage from the BU power is very noticeable but A) no such thing as a free lunch and the set is balanced around it. And B) again, clunkyness, two second cast time instead of 1.3 every 36 seconds (once everything is slotted up) eats up on time doing damage unlike Claws whose power-up comes from passively doing the attack chain. On the upside the damage is less resisted than slash and we aaaaaalmost can do a T2 and T3 attack chain. Being able to remove the T1 would be almost a good thing but even all slotted up there's a 0.7 second gap and with the T1 being a one second cast it makes sense to use it, especially since the T1 has a Force Feedback. But there is no pleasure had in using T1s in the end game. T2, T3, T2, T1 rotation minimizes it for regular gameplay bit lowers the time hitting with the T3.

How do you 'feel' KM, Myshkin? I really really like the animations and sticking to the first three attacks makes the set bearable. The AoEs are lesser versions of what Claws has though. but obtained much earlier. Did you happen to throw it at a pylon just for a metric? I say this because using the low level attacks for a rotation superficially seems a bit iffy.

Welp, I've said my point. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind just putting the facts out there. More power for those who seek making those 10 inf sales.

Bad idea? Wat? I buy whatever I need for 5k to not bargain with prices. When we measure profits in the millions who is worried about 250 or 5k inf? I get what you're saying and when I returned to CoH in Homecoming I set five salvage racks and filled them up like, in days. But I also had this big plan to be all economical and efficient and have a character that would have the inventor badges to make crafting generic IOs cheaper, and that's the one who would supply all other characters and etc etc. I actually did this for three or four alts. Then I realized I was wasting my time (more precious than fictional currency) because buying generic IOs was pocket change. One Death from Below puts a new alt to level 8. At level 8 Posi 1 opens. After doing a single Posi 1 I am high enough to do a Posi 2. Once I both are done I am usually at level 22 and the merits earned have made me around 3-4 millions to which fully equipping myself in generic IOs will cost about 2 mill. So each new alts gears itself without need of fancy convoluted worries about salvage, crafting, crafting badges, save up pocket change by doing all of this and etc. I will always craft my purple recipes since that usually brings 3-5 million profit, but even that is usually just ugh, pocket change, but I do it anyway since they drop rarely enough that it is not a repetitive burden. Once level 50 money comes in by the bucket. 50 million a day is nothing out of the ordinary just by doing a Tinpex and the double Hami raids, and that's about an hour of content (smidge hyperbole as actually getting enough people together for Hami can take half an hour in itself, but the content itself is about an hour, and usually more like 40 minutes of actually running those three things). This does not include drops and the raw inf from doing the content. At this point we just realize that, yeah, 250 inf? 5 inf? 🙂 Unlike white recipes (that tend to always sell for about 100k) and orange salvage (that sells for 500k), and the yellow/orange recipes (usually worth 1-5k and extremely useless, but at least has the lotto aspect that MAYBE one of them is a 1-10 mill jackpot), white salvage has no jackpot and no worth. There will never be something worth lots or even a chance of, so it just uselessly piles on. So actually a salvage blocking recipe like the P2W vendor has for white recipes might actually INCREASE prices, which is good for you. Once what is available runs out scarcity will make the prices hitch up a bit (just a bit though, common salvage is common) for those who care to sell it.

I made this first as a Brute, reached 50, realized the main reason I had made it as a Brute was the AoE from the patron pools and Claws alone had enough to do an AoE chain all by itself and thus there was no reason to do second best. Copying from what I wrote in another thread, the pros of the build: - It starts very early. By level 18 the attack chain of Follow-Up, Slash and Focus is complete which means it exemps very well. Hasten was taken on purpose at level 20 so it helps for the lower level TFs (Posi 1, Posi 2 and Synapse which by dint of being so low level they do not activate the LotG 7.5%) since without recharge we get big gaps. If having zero intentions to exemp down then shift the power picks accordingly. - 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. By level 34 Follow-Up (accuracy, damage boost, chance of crit + chance of Build-Up) + Spin + Shockwave makes a gapless chain when AoE is desired. Hover over the enemies or put your back against a wall to best use Shockwave. - 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 (as long as we press the button while the buff is up it does not matter if the buff disappears before the animation has finished). - 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. Approaching a pack of enemies from the side instead of plunging into the literal middle of it is a very safe way to play since the knockdown-and-then-get-back-up animation is nearly the time it takes for Shockwave to recharge. This way it's common to keep a pack on their back until dead. - Good places to have 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. - Complete AoE and single target chain means no NEED to dip into the epic pools which makes the build more flexible. Just take whatever you'd like. - DNA Siphon is a swiss knife. Surrounded by enemies and need a heal? Use it on the live enemies. Finished killing a spawn and Endurance is midways down? Use it on the corpses for Recovery. Pay attention that it gives HP and Endurance on live enemies and Regeneration and Recovery on corpses. HP and Endurance are the green and blue bar. Regeneration and Recovery are what makes the green and blue bar refill faster. Now the cons: - Slash resistance mobs are a pain. Scrapper crits help a lot here though. - 'Small' damage numbers compared to the big hitters like War Mace, Titan Weapons, etc. DPS wise Claws can keep up though, but CoH is a game of burst. - Smaller damage means more hits are needed to kill something. Scrapper crits help once more with less overkill. - Against many enemies DNA Siphon doubles as a heal instead of the Recovery tool it's usually used for. Against a single tough enemy DNA Siphon stops being useful. It neither heals nor returns endurance enough to merit its use which means against a single tough enemy we only have Ablative Shield as a defensive skill. Fortunately it is also a very good defensive skill, and we will be defense softcapped, and insps are there for emergencies. Questionable choices: - My first draft of the build had Zapp and Ball Lightning. I had no intention of using either and they were just mules. The second draft was just lazy: if I was not going to use the skills and just take them as mules then why bother do the red side patron arc AGAIN? So I took Caltrops and Shuriken. Exact same slotting as the above but minus having to go lick Black Scorpion's boots. As it turns I believe this is the 'better' choice. Caltrops does a fear effect which is preeeeetty good at giving us a breather. Cimemorians make your defense go into the negatives? Throw Caltrops before attacking, pick them one by one with your ST chain and Shockwave's long range cone replacing Slash while they slooowly flee. Doing some hard DA content? Caltrops, same. ITF boss pack at a Cyst? Same. But I did a Katie TF, got dropped into Hurricane hell with +5 mobs on top of it and was whiffing at a marvelous 10% hit chance. So I tweaked the build, and respecced into Focused Accuracy and Physical Perfection. Focused Accuracy is pretty heavy in endurance costs but Physical Perfection makes up for it. Though my initial plan was to only use FA when needed I've tried playing with it and my endurance stayed up. Now both are questionable choices: why bother Caltroping when we're Scrappers and can nom on an insp before going in? How often do we meet acc debuffing enemies that FA is necessary (the build was tweaked to passively have close or overcapped 95% accuracy against +3 enemies which is where our first incarnate level shift leaves us. Low level content is rarely ran at anything other than +0 or +1 so acc does not matter as much)? The answer is 'do what you feel you need' and to me it was getting that extra accuracy + the ToHit debuff resistance FA has since I sometimes horse around in the EA and have found myself against Banished Pantheon or CoT. While I usually just used to grit my teeth through it I now have an alternative to that. A third better choice might be picking Parasitic Aura for those ohcrap moments and Assault for a bit more oomph. The world is your oyster. If there is a demand for it I can cook a leveling build.

Claws is the best thing after sliced bread. Savage Melee is also pretty good and, perhaps, better in the AoE since the last skill is a PbAoE instead of a cone. The Frenzy is just bass akwards since we lose the stacks of the damage and recharge when we use a spender making players contort themselves as to not spend a full stack and incur the cool down penalty.

I didn't finish getting incarnates and accolades so it might still have an endurance leak. It had at 50 but I hadn't boosted the IOs in Stamina/Inexhaustible nor picked the alpha with damage + end modification nor the +end accolades. So it might fix itself? ST chain is Clobber (the omfgIjustkilledabossinPosi1withacrit), Shatter, Jawbreaker. AoE chain is Clobber (for the crit chance proc), Crowd Control, Whirlwind Mace (this one is not greeeeat, buuuuuut, it meshes well with the short recharge and it's a PBAoE. Epic pool AoEs will have too long recharges (in the ten second range) to not allow them to be incorporated in the AoE chain, so why bother?). In either case don't forget to spam Build-Up since it enjoys your +recharge procs. Parasitic Aura was a mule, albeit being a T9 up half the time made it both an endurance recovery tool, a defensive tool, as well as a mule, yes. If you don't care for Flying (although floating atop the mobs makes Crowd Control hit like a PBAoE) then you have two free powers if you remove Parasitic Aura and Afterburner, so you can pick Conserve Power and Physical Perfection in the epic Body pool. That would fix all and any endurance problems though I lean towards them being fixed once boosted and accoladed. Barrier gives the last 5% defense.

🙂

There are definite perks in taking all three in Flight though. Hover is extremely good maneuverability in combat and turns wide arc attacks like Crowd Control or Shockwave into PbAoEs if floating on top of enemies. It also takes a LotG 7.5%. Flight is the most iconic of travel powers and super handy with the tridimensional aspect of it. Afterburner of course turns Flight into a decent travel power (sad that we need a second power to turn Flight decent, and that it's not an auto. I don't care about the extra defense since it adds nothing to me, but I care about the speed). It also takes yet another LotG 7.5. For most powersets who don't have easy access to defense powers where they can stick LotGs this makes Flight useful for all the reasons mentioned where Hurdle.. what? Makes us bounce a bit more? I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I just rarely am out of power picks that I feel I need to ditch something. What I usually am is out of slots which sometimes has me picking useless stuff (on top of the three power picks in Flight) like Super-speed for the stealth effect (and then rarely bother using it).

Done the same already a few months back. I was mostly boohooed out of the thread as it being not necessary.

The only problem lays if looking at Dull Pain as a heal, but on such a huge timer it can't be relied upon. The slight buff to regen from bumping the HP up is negligible and while the extra HP itself is a nice padding it still needs to be refilled.

In my head anyone who plays the game without travel powers, including the P2W ones, are just being pedantic. There is nothing roleplay-ish about doing PvE missions with non RPers and making people wait. I'll accept it in a full RP team for the lack of travel powers if it's a theme, but even Batman does not swing his bat-line over the city. He has cars and planes to get where he needs to be. Not to mention there is a lot we can't RP like a grappling hook to climb a building, where we can RP it and then pop the jet pack and go where we wanted to be. It's fine as literary excuse to show how the heroes need to put up with it but it pales in a game. Again, if only playing with a RP team, then sure, ok. But asking Joe the random stranger to wait because golly, oi do muh arrpees and I dun take travels powers! is just wtf.

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.