Sovera

Alright, done and tested. All in Offense adaptation. I only have Evolving Armor slotted with one 38 Res/End IO. - A 7.5% damage resistance debuff to all types of damage (so we are increasing the team's damage, w00t!) Unaffected by the number of enemies in range. - With about ten mobs, give or take some, 34% resistance to S/L went to 44% (so no relation to what HD says). But for Fire/Cold/Energy etc I went from -1% to 6%. With one enemy it was 5% S/L, and 3.25% Energy etc. So, yeah, definitely more than HD says. Listen to Seig, Darkness!

Yes. According to HD if surrounded by 10 mobs we get a total of 4.5% to all resistances. That's total, not per mob. I'm not going to spit on 4.5% but it takes being surrounded by ten mobs to get it. According to the info in-game being in Offensive gives it a damage resistance debuff (so we do more damage to enemies) and not recharge. Since HD doesn't show this since it does not show the Adaptation effects I don't know how much it increases, but according to HD, without the Offensive bonus, it's something like ... well, it's hard to tell. the tooltip says 7.5% extra damage we deal to those around us, but the numbers in Effects say something like 4.2% for L/S and 1.25% for fire, cold, energy, etc.

Just a bit of a troll answer. On a Brute/scrapper almost none can skipped. At most I'd probably say Parasitic Aura since it's a panic button and depending on what content you do you might never find use for it. For regular farming there is almost no need, and I would almost say for regular teaming the same. Extreme soloing might bring it more to fore, but respecs are cheap so pick it and see if you remembered to use it. If ten missions later it never got used then consider swapping for something else. The other would be Evolving Armor. The damage resistance and the +damage taken are such itty bitty numbers I doubt they really are perceptible. IMO that's about it though. But outside of a vacuum both those powers allow to slot more sets which makes incorporating them into the build more tempting despite their situational use.

I tried it on an Elec/Shield stalker. Softcapped defenses. Aid Self was not enough to keep me alive not to mention being an endurance hog *and* the interrupted heals. It works just fine either *after* defeating a pack, or against a single tough enemy where we can use the gaps in the attacks to heal up.

Since leveling a meleer is a new experience I'll make a quick summary of how it has been. The character is meant to tank but do good-ish damage in the process. 1-8: A single DfB. Brutes shine at this level since Fury is omfgbbq damage. Gap in the attack chain is taken by the inherent attack skill (Charm, or Mutagen, or Taser, whatever). A slot is spared for Hardened Carapace for an early slotting of the 3% + 3% defense uniques. No deaths since no AoEs nor AoE taunt punchvoke as Tankers have. 8-15: Posi 1. No real problem again. Can't tank since no tank tools. Damage is still decent but i notice its going down from the 1-8 range. 15-22: Posi 2. At 16 I got Ablative. At 17 I slotted Kinetic Combat and Force Feedback. At 18 I got Irradiated Ground. *Now* we're starting to cook with gas! Finally an AoE, which incidentally serves to cause agro. ..which explains why the deaths start happening. Too much agro and not enough defenses in place yet. Ablative can't keep up, but it does a pretty good job of shoring things up between the regen and the absorb shield. Stance dancing between Defensive and Offensive Adaption is tried, and it seemed like it helped but it might have been a placebo effect. It did grant about 2% more defense while in Defensive and some under the hood help. Too may deaths here, but mostly wipes as it was a nightmare of a Posi 2 (instead of 45-50 minutes it took us 1:40 hours). 22-27: Synapse. I am definitely into tank territory. Between the two 3% uniques, an early slotting of Environmental Modification, Maneuvers, and Weave I am in the early 30% defense and a single small purple nearly caps me. Synapse being predominantly energy I'm puttering along nicely and grabbing agro without much of a hassle. Deaths stop happening. 27-30: Yin. Again, mostly electrical attacks means I'm pretty much impervious. S/L defenses are only in their 20%s though, so even a small purple is not quite enough, but Ablative is there, and now DNA Siphon as well. Clamor took 3/4 of my life in one hit though, so overconfidence VS debuffing enemies rears its head. One death to Clamor. 31-35: Citadel. Nothing much to be said. Even unslotted Atom Smasher is a big boom of a beast. Even with a bar of Fury it's not quite at a Blaster's T9 but it's also able to be used much more often. Endurance problems start creeping up with too many toggles up. Slotting Miracle and one extra endurance in Inexhaustible makes no discernible difference. Depending on what team buffs I have I turn off Tactics and Tough for long fights, or otherwise rely in DNA Siphon-ing corpses after each spawn to replenish my endurance. This works fine in regular play since we are always on the move, just not on long fights against a lone enemy. No deaths. 35-39: LGTF. No problem. Dra'gon took half my HP using his T9 but it all went well. No big hassle and even the psi hole wasn't a problem when the clockwork ambushes started. Genetic Contamination is finally getting me *real* agro, mobs no longer peel away. It is still not properly slotted but when facing bosses I see their HP whittling at a good pace. Unfortunately the LGTF bugged with Hamidon spawning at 50 while we were doing it as level 39 (same bug that Posi 1 and Doc Buzzsaw has). Leveling is now on hold to run red side to open the patron pools.

I do not usually play melee. Like, EVER. I just dislike being in the thick of it and having to chase mobs when they decide to run, ugh. I dislike it so much that this happened: That said I'm getting into a rut and wanted to try something new. So overall the build feels pretty elegant if I can say so myself. I tested it on Justin against the usual, then soloed a +4/8 ITF up to middle of the cyst mission to see if I could take them (can, np). Damage seemed pretty decent but what do I know? Unfortunately with the change to the pylons I can't test to see the metric we are used to. - ST chain of Contaminated Strike and Kick. This is gapless the moment we get to level 17 and slot Kinetic Combat. CS, Kick, CS, Kick, no pauses. Kick was picked because it has KB and can slot a Force Feedback to accelerate the build. At level 35 Kick can be replaced by Radioactive Smash. More damage than Kick, slightly shorter animation, same Force Feedback proc in it, Contaminated splash effect, but much larger recharge that messes the nice gapless chain that allowed to build Fury quickly. I say 35 because then we can alternate Chain Fences and Lightning Ball to fill in the second and a half ish gap that is introduced. Contaminated, Radiactive, Contaminated, Chain Fences, Contaminated, Radioactive, Contaminated, Lightning Ball, Contaminated, makes the ST chain a lot more EPS expensive to include Chain Fences/Lightning Ball. But, tbh, I'm content with Contaminated Strikes and Kick making a viable attack chain straight from level 17 though it's not going to win Pylon prizes. - 40% defenses to use Barrier for the last 5%. - Chain Fences is only slightly less damage than Lightning Ball (70 damage VS 84) and once empowered by Fury we have a nice AoE blending machine with two damage auras, Atom Smasher, Chain Fences and Lightning Ball. - Small endurance woes for long ST combat. Turning off some toggles helps, as might dismantling DNA Siphon to place a couple more slots in Inexhaustible and Stamina. DNA Siphon works great as a heal, and it even works great as an endurance recovery tool, but solely when applied to the corpses. Which is fine. But does not help when fighting a single tough enemy. DNA Siphon either grants endurance if used on a live NPC or Recovery if used on corpses. In my testing using against live enemies barely pays the use of it. Using on corpses works fine and hardly needs the endurance slotting since the extra Recvoery is spread over 30 seconds. Something to consider if someone wants to chime in. Any visible tweaks or ideas? The ST damage is decent since the attack chain is fast and both damage auras are there to help, but as I mentioned I have no metrics to compare until the pylons are reverted (or times on the new changes are brought in). I would like to include damage procs in the ST attacks but I'm a bit short on slots.

I'm not a coder, and in any case I'm not in front of CoH's code. Obviously it cannot be a simple answer or it would have been done already. I mean, it seems obvious that if removing Brawl is bad, then create a basic attack with Braw's endurance, recharge time, active time, and substitute that for the MM pets. But *because* it is is so obvious there must be something under the hood stopping it from happening.

You guys really need to read the thread before rehashing questions that were already asked, and answered, and asked again, and asked again, and asked again, and now asked again.

There is one over the Guides part of the forum. Farm Builds.

It adds burst in actual gameplay. Throw a blast and instead of doing 100 damage it suddenly does 250 (100 from the blast, then two procs go off usually at 70 damage a piece). In pylon terms changing from 'normal' slotting to triple procs on my Sentinel shaved two minutes. That's a lot of extra damage.

No need for a screenie but I'll accept a data chunk. I suppose alternating Rune of Protection with something else then.

... you do realize he popped his T9 to take that screenshot... right?

A respec costs 200k in the AH, so not exactly a big problem. It might be a bigger problem if they want the old T1 because it does something special or the recharge/animation fits their needs and now they need to find a power to discard so that they can fit the old T1 back in. Also, 30 minutes? My man, hyperbole much? 5 minutes, tops? A one time thing?

Well, thank you forums for not letting me know people were replying to my posts 😛 Archery is cheapo in endurance. It's a matter of trying and seeing how you feel the endurance drain to be a problem or not. 3 seconds to cast Bonfire is glacial. We could make good use of it even so but the mass Hold arrow achieves the same end result of holding everything still while we pewpew, *without* losing defense or 3 second long animations. Personal taste though, and we could argue for your case that 45 seconds of mobs flopping helplessly beats the need for defense 😄 Intuition.

I tried making that build on Justin since I'm not used to making melee. Turns out I had some ass-umptions going. Parasitic Aura is not a toggle for example 😅 Yep, I'm a noob. Hero Designer just treats Bio as it having all adaptations running at the same time. So, to achieve the numbers it requires: be in Efficient, use DNA on ten corpses, run to the next pack, use Parasitic on ten living bodies. My best ended up being 124 HP per second when I tried this. It went to 159 HPS with Ablative, Efficient Adaptation, and Parasitic Aura. Doing that with Offensive Adaption gave 100 HPS and 9 EPS. But since Parasitic Aura isn't always available, and we will most likely be in Offensive all the time and, say, we are not bothering with stance dancing, then in Offensive, using DNA Siphon on a *dead* pack while we have Ablative running it, we reach 75 HPS. remember the caveat of being used on corpses. So, yeah, don't expect to run around all the time with 100 HP per second but for regular play you can use it on a dead pack and bounce to the next pack and have 15-20 seconds of regenerating while mad. This is with me running with base 21 HPS, 40 HPS with Ablative running. Ultimately I did not find all of this necessary or having an impact in the gameplay. Things I learned (as a br00t newbie): - DNA Siphon grants Regen and Recovery if it eats *corpses*, not if it hits live bodies. Hitting live bodies it heals and grants endurance, hitting corpses it grants regen and recovery. It also grants more HP&Endurance if using defensive, and more Regen&Recovery from eating corpses while in Efficient. Stance dancing before DNA Siphon has its worth, but in the end not really mattering. - I don't like to rely on defensive T9s so I dismantled Parasitic aura and added the slots to DNA Siphon and Inexhaustible . - Started a +4x8 ITF to test the build and it handled the romans just fine after a few false starts. Barrier giving a ton of defense serves as an absorb shield to the romans and kheldian's debuffing defense. - I was simply unable to cope with the ambush after saving the oracle. I had to restart the TF and then skip killing the first spawn at the ramp that triggers the ambush when we reach the oracle. - On the other hand destroying the cysts went fine. Using Barrier before each pack of kheldians ensured I was not debuffed to death. - Despite poopooing about defensive T9s I found it worthy to keep Parasitic Aura even with just a single +5 recharge slotted for the kheldians pack where Barrier had not yet recharged - A few endurance problems in long fights with only one enemy. - No point in using Barrier for the last 5% with regular non debuffing mobs since they couldn't get past the regen. Ablative Armor, Barrier, Parasitic Aura, and DNA Siphon ended up being used only when needed or as panic buttons and not used on CD.

I tried making that build on Justin since I'm not used to making melee. Turns out I had some ass-umptions going. Parasitic Aura is not a toggle for example 😅 Yep, I'm a noob. Hero Designer just treats Bio as it having all adaptations running at the same time. So, to achieve the numbers it requires: be in Efficient, use DNA on ten corpses, run to the next pack, use Parasitic on ten living bodies. My best ended up being 124 HP per second when I tried this. It went to 159 HPS with Ablative, Efficient Adaptation, and Parasitic Aura. Doing that with Offensive Adaption gave 100 HPS and 9 EPS. But since Parasitic Aura isn't always available, and we will most likely be in Offensive all the time and, say, we are not bothering with stance dancing, then in Offensive, using DNA Siphon on a *dead* pack while we have Ablative running it, we reach 75 HPS. Remember the caveat of being used on corpses. So, yeah, don't expect to run around all the time with 100 HP per second but for regular play you can use it on a dead pack and bounce to the next pack and have 15-20 seconds of regenerating while mad. This is with me running with base 21 HPS, 40 HPS with Ablative running. Ultimately I did not find any of this having an impact in the gameplay. Regenerating or using DNA to heal up to max is the same if our bar is full, and when we would like to regenerate is when mobs are alive and kicking us and that's when they are, well, alive, so DNA Siphon does not trigger regen.

Other than what Knottewe said the biggest thing he did not mention is the heal. The absorb shield is nice, but it's not a heal, and I, at least, noticed its lack in gameplay since Aid-Self could not keep up. That said it's personal choice

You're assuming to be man-YEARS! Lets not forget once upon a time we were given a hard NO about coloring powers because colors were hard coded into the spaghetti code. So there was nothing that could be done, sorry guys. One or two issues later we could color our powers.

I've just finished making a build for one. It's meant for brute, but with the incoming changes I'm considering tanker. But because it's brute it favors quick animations (Contaminated Fists, Radioactive Smash, Gloom) instead of big attacks, though it's a mater of simply changing power picks and placing the same slotting on them. It only has two AoEs in Atom Smasher and Dark Obliteration, but plays with the br00t's strength in pumping the two damage toggles. On the br00t it has native 40% defenses and then relying on Barrier for the last 5%. With both DNA Siphon and parasitic aura it has 4.68 recovery (not accounting for Panaceia&Performance procs) with just one target, as well as 569% regen with Ablative Shield. The numbers turn completely idiotic the moment we ignore that single target scenario and go into normal play of jumping into a spawn. Then hitting 10 mobs with the generous 20y radius of DNA Siphon turns into a 30 second buff that pushes regen to 800% and recovery to 7 per second. And it can be made perma. But wait, since we have Parasitic Aura this shoots up to 1700% regen (or 152 HP per second) and 9 .20 EPS even though this does not last as mobs start dying. Good luck killing the guy through the softcap. The build feels a bit basic still. No fancy footwork or lots of procs slotted. It might be smarter to replace one of the damage procs, maybe in Radioactive Smash, for an Achiles Heel -res. I just don't play melers to really be more aware of the nuances. Edit: Since I was considering making it a tank build I made the tanker version. Almost the same deal. Endurance with one enemy in range is lowered to 4 EPS not counting procs. If this isn't good enough take the Kismet and throw it somewhere for the Miracle unique, or a +5 end mod on Stamina. But for regular play hitting a spawn with the 20y (larger radius even depending on what changes come through for tankers) DNA Siphon makes for 800% regen and 7 EPS. With Parasitic Aura and the same ten mobs in range it goes up to 1693% regen and 8.63 EPS (more, if the 20 endurance bonus in the new tank changes come through, but moot once we reach these numbers). Said increase in radius will affect Proton Sweep which makes it a lot more interesting for tankers and thus it was picked.

If you go to a tram station it lists areas by level.

I'm working on a /Bio brute, but it works on a tank too, that when surrounded by ten mobs has something like 1700% regen and 500% recovery. Combined with softcapped defenses and I'm not sure if regular play can even kill it.

Your answer lays in the Pylon thread over the scrapper forums. Despite being in the scrapper forums all ATs have been posting their times there. Since you're not adding enough constraints, like sustain and burst DPS, length of the fight (a 15 second fight will not favor TW, and if we both start from range and need to approach and fight a Blaster will have shot a mob three times by the time a meleer has bounced to melee range) then that thread has your answers. Several scrappers, brutes and stalkers have posted their times so just have a gander. Street Justice stalker and Titan Weapon scrapper are up there, and we're talking *up* there with one minute times and no gimmicks like -regen.

Though the idea did not have traction I still reiterate that things that would make tankers more valued should be something tanking related. A 30y wide PbAoE that does negative knockback (so, knock-in?) reeling every mob in range that was previously plinking from range would be deeply appreciated by any team when it means all mobs in a pack are balled around the tank and being AoEd down by the team.

/Bio's largesse with offering a '30%' buff, which turned out to be much much less than that with actual testing, is completely overshadowed by the strenuously tight power and sloting which was the original reason I had stopped playing with the powerset. To be honest Fire does not feel like all that but it might still work if paired with Ninjutsu which is my go to defensive sentinel set. The enemies already flee like decapitated chickens the moment their HP reaches 25% ish and Rain of Fire just making them start doing so earlier does not help. With a less tight build we can work in the Elec epic pool, get Chain Fences to force the mobs to stay close (who need agro auras anyway?), have Lightning field to aid in the AoEing down, and finally have more slots to increase recovery. So Fire/Ninjutsu might make better use of the bug fix if one wants to explore Fire's beautifully fast animations. Sadly, Sentinel /Bio does not live to the expectations after seeing the preposterous numbers and what it can do with other ATs.

You have too much energy, Obitus my dude.