Sovera

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.

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.