[Mids Brute Sets]

Feeling squishy is normal since you're still using SOs/generic IOs. It is time to transition to using inventions and reap bonuses.

 

I was having a talk about slotting Radiation Armor a thread below called 'A question about Rad' which you can probably check for ideas. But first we need to make sure you have the cash to start buying things. Hopefully you should be brimming with Merits from playing (always hoping you did not stick to to radio missions and the Architect).

 

Check my newcomer guide first since it has a lot of useful information. In is how to turn Merits into cash. Don't fret, it's painless. Once having money and sure you're comfortable with the idea of using IOs we can tackle the build.

 

One thing I will point out is that in theory you should have enough attacks in the first three from Savage Melee and have no need for Arcane Bolt. Unless you like it and want to use it of course, but Vicious Slash, Savage Strike, Maiming Slash, repeat, should be available early on once we get your slotting sorted on the cheap.

[PC Gamer Article on Homecoming's Deal with NC]

4 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

It's not hearsay anymore. An NCSoft spokesman spoke with PC Gamer and was quoted in their article. What do you expect? Do you want someone at NCSoft to call you personally?

 

I have no dog in this. As I specified I was devil advocating. Having or not having NCsoft approval makes no difference to me.

[PC Gamer Article on Homecoming's Deal with NC]

Well, the problem, if I may devil advocate this, is that we're still going on hearsay. We hear from the devs it's a go, we hear from PC Magazine it's a go. We still haven't heard from the sole entity that would confirm it, and, at best, rely on 'but if NCsoft wasn't happy they would say something'. Which is not exactly ironclad proof.

[Question About /Rad]

8 minutes ago, WuTang said:

OMG WTH??!! HAHA Just got schooled! #humbled

 

Hey....your mic...yeah...that hit my foot!

 

It's way too many hours messing with Mids. Once you spend a lot of time faffing around with it you'll pick all these tricks too 😄 In the future you'll be the one helping people out.

 

One of my first posted builds on Homecoming was using Rad Melee with Contaminated Strike (the T1) and Kick and I was really happy on how it worked so well. Embarrrrrrrrassing 😄

[Question About /Rad]

1 hour ago, WuTang said:

Working on it... 

 

It would seem though that it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison though. With one swing of DA you are untouchable in melee, that's not the case with my build. So I have to chase at least soft cap there which also inherently gets me close to soft cap with S/L. If I spec into Alpha Agility Core that'll help as will Destiny Barrier. I've got my S/L resists up to 83% but everything else is still lacking.

Is the whole "this is a Resist set" because there's no inherent -def resistance? Before I made adjustments, I had 54% melee def and 48% S/L def, now I'm in the low 40s and my resists have only gone up marginally, a few %. I do like what you did in Radiation Therapy.

How did you setup your incarnates?

 

Scrappers can stack DA three times where Brutes/Tankers only get one stack. It's always 15% at least. As a resist set you should bulk up your resists first. Even with capped Melee/S/L you're still going to get ripped ASAP by debuffers and rely on your resists. And some enemies just straight up ignore melee/S/L.

 

With all that said you can try it. I mean, the other poster above was on to something 😄 You can test and see that your original build (with some small improvements lifted from this thread) is doing just fine. Or find it needs a little something more and come back to this thread to fine tune it a bit more. 

 

 

That said there are some small improvements to be made in things like adding +5 dmg/recharge in Ground Zero so it is up more often, and in those use two Obliterations (one of them the damage proc) for another 2.5% SL. Ground Zero as you had it recharges in 39 seconds and does 514 damage. With an Obliteration and Armaggedon damage/recharge it goes to 29 seconds and 446 damage with a bonus 2.5% S/L. Now it's up to you to see if the trade-off is worth it.

 

Total Focus is grossly underslotted. You want it to give you Energy Focus so your Energy Transfer is fast which means it ought to be up as soon as possible. Even with the Kismet it only has 85% to hit +3 enemies.

 

Splitting Superior Brute's Fury is viable as well. You can place three in ET and three in TF and use the other three slots to round up raw stats or add more damage procs.

 

You also forgot the scaling resists from Reactive Defenses which would be another 3%.

 

 

For incarnates I'd say maybe look at Resilient Radial. Your original build ends with S/L at 84% and Negative at 65% with it.

 

Ageless is not particularly useful for you as well. You don't have enough defenses or baked in defense debuffs for it to help. Barrier would be another 5% defense and 5% resistances minimum and a panic button otherwise.

 

Paralytic is mostly useless. I suggest the tried and true-d Degenerative or the -res one.

 

 

Between the Obliteration, the Reactive Defenses unique, and Resilient Radial your S/L is now capped and Energy is at 81% while Negative is at 68%.

 

Now if we do a few other tweaks like removing the two Reactive Armor from Meltdown (where they aren't doing much) and move them to Fallout Shelter your Energy goes to 82% and negative to 69%, but your toxic gets a bump from 67% to 71% as well. But since S/L is overcapped if you do take Barrier these can be replaced for Titanium Coating and further improve Energy to 83% and Negative to just shy of 71%. With Barrier you have Energy already just about hardcapped as well. Negative is the hole in Rad Armor and always hard to completely fix it, but, still, getting there.

 

Your Build-up is also unslotted for example, and three Adjusted Targetting would give 3% to E/N (finishing to hardcap energy and even slightly overcapping since with Barrier it would be at 88%) while also making it recharge faster. Removing the slots from Boxing would lover your S/L defense to 44.4% and Melee to 52%. Now your BU is up every 29 seconds instead of 39 seconds and your Energy is at 86% and Negative at 73%.

 

Since S/L is overcapped by 3% and Energy is overcapped by 1.8% you can remove the Touch of Death altogether and have S/L at 84.3% and Energy at 85% where Barrier will cap them both, but it did kill S/L down to 42%. On the other hand you got 6 slots to now play with. You can put them in Total Focus with 5 Hectacombs and a damage proc (Total Focus loves procs) and place the four Kinetics in Energy Punch.

 

What of Meltdown? As a Brute the +damage is watered down and your resistances are now looking almost capped without it so it could be a source of three more slots to mess around with. What about only 33% defense so a small purple caps and it frees a lot of slotting? And if you're going to use Barrier and it adds 5% defense how about aiming for 40% defense instead of 45%?

 

 

It needs to be you deciding what you want to do and balance things out.

 

Brute (Energy Melee - Radiation Armor)-6.mbd

 

[Question About /Rad]

15 hours ago, WuTang said:

Thanks for the long-winded life lesson.... Some people on the internet....haha dude grow up.

 

OK My slow Res is now 86% without Ageless, thanks for that advice. 

 

Brutes have a hard time putting up enough resistances to reach the caps. You're thinking of Tankers who can do that, without Tough, and still have enough slotting freedom to mess with defense. On a Scrapper (which has the same resistance values of a Brute) I squeaked by reaching 70% and then trusting Barrier for the last 5%, but Brute's reach 90% so even duplicating the slotting it would still be missing 15%.

 

As Rad you should be building towards resistances foremost and then faff around with defenses. I bring up the Scrapper again since it was my experiment with Rad Armor and it had 33% melee/Slash/Lethal so a small purple would push the rest to softcap when things went bad. ...then I went Katana and ignored defense since I was softcapped to melee and Lethal just with Divine Avalanche.

 

In regards to your build:

 

- You can proc Radiation Therapy in the spirit of Ground Zero to have another AoE. Add the Theft of Essence proc, add a heal slot, and it will heal you a bit (for each enemy in range), give endurance for each enemy in range as well (with extra backing from the Theft of Essence) and also hurt the enemies.

- Energy Transfer is a fantastic power to have four procs because it doesn't need recharge or endurance reduction, so I usually slot one acc/dmg Hami and one +5 damage Hectacomb, then the rest all procs.

- Switching from Unbreakable to Titanium coating will give more resistances overall.

- You can save a slot from Hasten by +5ing the other two recharges. Click as if to choose an IO and in that window press + five times before clicking on the IO to be placed.

- You can further add some resistance by frankenslotting both Power Crash and Whirling Hands. Something like three Scirroco, two Obliterations and the 6th to fix up whatever you're lacking or add another damage proc.

 

 

Since the values are the same you can check my current experiments with Radiation Armor over the Scrapper forums under the 'Different Axe builds, but which to choose?' that should at least give some slotting ideas. I have Fire Melee, Axe, Claws and Katana builds in there so something ought to fit.

 

As mentioned above you will not reach caps with a Brute though.

[What would be the fastest Solo'er ??]

13 hours ago, smnolimits42 said:

as for enhancements, i just can't afford DO, SO or IOs.  For now, i'm treating this new alt as a newbie, and will slowly work on influence as i lvl up past 50.  I hope that helps, or even makes sense ??

 

You can make 3 million in the first half hour life of a character, so it just means you need to be aware of how to do it. It's not even painful. Please check the newbie guide in my signature.

[What would be the fastest Solo'er ??]

1 hour ago, smnolimits42 said:

I'm looking for an alt that can solo.  It won't have any enhancements slotted.  I'm a little broke at the moment. I realize that you can solo with any AT, but i'm looking for the fastest.  Or perhaps the easiest to solo.   Any thoughts ??

 

The (near) immortal Tanker in my signature slows down for AVs, but starts at 0x6 or 0x8 by level 13 and then cruises. I didn't bother switching Scorch for Incinerate which would increase the AV whittling speed.

[Real world, game tech...]

18 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

This is why normal citizens don't have Medi-porters.  You'd get people trying to off themselves as fast travel shortcut and would put ambulances out of business.

 

That's so common in so many games from WoW to New World. Do quest, let mobs kill you, respawn back in town and deliver quest.

[Different Axe builds, but which to choose?]

8 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

RT doesn't really need EndRdx, maybe swap out that Doctored Wounds piece for a Nictus Heal/Recharge piece and take the +hp bonus for the two pieces of the set.

 

Interesting choice on going with FA/PP on the Epic pool. Another direction I rarely go. After fiddling with Blaze for a bit I decided that the next rebuild is going back to Shadow Meld. Just too good to have that massive defense button on top of all that resistance.

 

Consider Meltdown. The so-called-crash is irrelevant, and the +41.25% damage buff is the real gem in that power. Running that, Hybrid (Assault Core, T4), decent +dam from sets, and a lucky roll on BU+Gaussian's puts the toon within a red candy of capping their own +damage bonus.

 

There's a relatively new Flight set with a Fly Protection Unique. It is good enough for most instances, but serious-business Web Nades can eventually cut through it. Worth considering for anyone who's joined the Church of Hover Melee.

 

Going to assume the preponderance of Perf Shifters and lack of Power Transfers is due to needing to maintain FA.

 

Overall, probably a more robust build than my own. I sort of fall into a pattern with builds and rarely come up with new slotting ideas, lol.

 

 

The end reduction is a compromise. Simply damage/recharge (or heal/recharge) cuts a slice of damage from RT by lowering the proc chance of activation. With the IO being a triple instead of a double the proc chance is only slightly hit (87%) while still having a little bit of recharge thrown in. Partly because there is a lack of a 6th damage proc, but I feel that an Overwhelming Force proc would fit the bill and maybe help more.

 

 

I'm pretty much the same in regards of being locked into patterns. FA is always there because I loathe being tohit debuffed, Performance Shifters proc galore because FA WAS expensive as heck and it hasn't really settled in my mind it no longer is (not that Rad Armor cares). But I also don't feel like the Power Transfers really do much, though ultimately they will do more than the Perf procs.

 

Alternating Meltdown with Hybrid would have one minute downtime of always running around with a damage boost of some sort, something to consider since it only asks for one slot.

 

But right now there's a new league in PoE and I'm pew pewing there and slowburning here.

[what powers to choose?]

@Snarky we need you, and not in a snarky manner!

[A glitch in outfit customization?]

6 hours ago, Ultimo said:

So, I just got my Mu Mastery set, and went to customize the powers.  I found, to my consternation, that it was costing me more than 50k influence to alter all my War Mace powers, too.  ALL of them... even though they can't BE customized.  That might be a trivial cost to some, but it's a lot to me... especially repeated for EVERY costume.

 

I can't imagine this is how it's supposed to be.  Do I report this as a bug?

 

Sell some merits, bro. No level 50 should be this strapped for cash! Check the newbie guide in my signature.

[Ran a Tank after a long break…]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

This week I have run Dr Q on my two Blasters that needed the badge.  Both relatively recent additions to the stable.  I looked around and most of the other 50s I had already had it.  But… there was this prime tank from 2019 that did not.  
 

Now, I do not run many Tanks. I built this as the ultimate.  It is Invulnerability, with a slightly tweaked Hyperstrike build (prob degrading it, but it became mine).  I paired it with Dark Melee.  I believe this to be hand down the toughest heavy melee pairing in the game. Dark has a heal, and an end recovery power.  A hard hitting ST chain with to hit debuffs for the kiddos.  

 

So I dusted this off.  To my dismay there were three if us Tanks.  I never inspected them.  Not sure what level or powersets they were.  Either by level, powerset, or player neither were particularly useful.  We stormed through.  I took one break at the start of a kill all for about three minutes and the team looked like it was about to implode. One big room of crey at the start of a mission. Two tanks in there.  Sad panda. I rolled in and we rolled on. I can only think the other two tanks were not incarnated.  
 

It was spectacular how good this was.  Once I got comfortable behind the wheel it was untouchable.  No matter how big the room, what combo of mobs, if I agroed a room full of a hundred looking for a glowie half the time i could get the glowie without eating even a sm purple. Damn things defense is that good.  
 

Truly a joy to run and a fun break from blasting.  We finished in about 1 hour 50 minutes. It was laughably easy.  The only issue i see in running it regularly is a lot of people play Tanks and Brutes.  Unfortunately most if them are like the other two tanks on that Q in my opinion. Not ready for prime time.  
 

 

 

Try the Stone/Fire in my signature, Snarky-kins. If nothing else as a side project. Gimme unbiased opinions too!

[I hope people realize that Ambient Occlusion is bad]

20 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

Wow...90% of these responses are pure garbage. The way you all ganged up on the OP and trolled the ever living shit out of him is completely telling of your personality. Reading this one thread is a great reminder of why I stopped posting except on rare occasion. A bunch of weaklings trying to be tough...what a joke. It is purely disgusting; great example of the positive community you claim to be. Quite frankly I find 90% of the "people" that post this forum to be complete and utter trash. All one needs for proof of this is to read this thread. I can only imagine the retaliation one would apply if half of these things were said to his/her face...lucky for these posters here, they have anonymity of the interwebs, which is exactly why they behave this way. You all make me sick. Have any of you considered that maybe the OP has something going on like maybe autism? You simply don't know, yet here you are, acting like a bunch of internet tough guy bullies...you really make me sick.

 

Oh, and so that the lower I.Q. can get a better understanding of what a "Wall of Text" actually is? It's not the OP's post. This individual actually uses proper punctuation and uses paragraphs. Only 4 paragraphs and you numb skulls react like this? The thought of having to read something longer than it takes to watch a tiktok video...the agony... Here, let me show you...

 

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wall of text

 

What's really messed up, is that I have seen over half of you write that same "wall of text" yet none of you call out each other over it, do you? Nothing to see here except a bunch of internet tough guys who couldn't whoop their way out of a wet paper bag.

 

I'm sure this post will be deleted, God forbid somebody put you precious little snowflakes in your place. Bunch of panzies.

 

You're taking out of context. I don't expect to change your mind by saying this.

 

The OP has an historial (the repeated 'check their post history' in this and other threads) which is what prompted the responses. You see this in zero other threads because the community is not bad as a whole.

 

To you this is the community ganging up on someone innocent. To us this the the Nth time the OP has posted something inane. And even then no one has been straight out rude or mean as your own post was trying to be.

[I hope people realize that Ambient Occlusion is bad]

4 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

It's like RAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINNNN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

These wounds they will not heeeeeal!

[Patch Notes for March 5th, 2024]

3 hours ago, GM Tock said:

 

Trike: Options, Keybinds, change the profile to "Classic" and Save.  That should put the camera controls the way you're used to. 

(Similar topic, come with a picture relevant to this.)

Existing characters should not be affected; camera controls are saved with the character on the server unless you change them from the last session.  You'd need to set this on new characters going forward.  See if that fixes it.

 

No no, you heard the man. Bo need for troubleshooting or screenshots. Revert the change for 3-4 thousand people, plz.

[Patch Notes for March 5th, 2024]

30 minutes ago, Trike said:

You don’t need a screenshot. There’s only one option, clicking “Enabled” or “Disabled”. Neither has any effect, which means it’s broken.

 

Just revert it back to the way it was, which was perfectly fine and 100% intuitive — not to mention functional.

 

Oh, no need for screenshot. Okay then.

[Explain Dual Blades combos]

3 hours ago, Story Archer said:

 

I'd be interested in a follow-up to this as well...

 

You can use the forum search. There is plenty of literature about it but only two ways to go at it.

[Patch Notes for March 5th, 2024]

7 hours ago, Trike said:

The camera is broken for new characters.

 

When I try to move the camera to the front of any new character, it immediately snaps back to the rear view. Doesn’t matter which setting I use, Enabled/Disabled, it always does this.

 

However, in battle, the camera orients to every position EXCEPT the rear one, which often results in not seeing who I’m fighting but always ends up pointing the wrong way.

 

This has made the game borderline unplayable for me, and rendered my ability to take both static and action screenshots impossible.

 

Please revert the camera to the old style.

 

Please, the devs don't need to revert or 'fix' anything when what you speak of is present already in the options. Show us the screenshot of your camera options, please.

[Calculating DPS for different pylon levels compared to character level]

4 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Does that mean damage resistance debuffs are subject to purple patch effects? So, for example, would the -20% resistance debuff from an achilles heel be subject to purple patch effects and thereby reduced in its efficacy against higher level mobs than the character applying the debuff?

Looking back, my wording was probably imprecise. 

 

Yes, I've long made noises about the unfortunate reliance on the -res procs and how it creates a gigantic divide between the sets that can slot them and the sets that cannot (in my experience (but someone correct me) but two -res procs goes from a 25% damage difference at +0 to 5% at +3).

 

So yeah, there are a few under the hood mechanics for a simple equation. But not having -res is probably a start.

[Fire melee question]

What AoE would you be having without Fire Sword Circle? Fire Breath is utter trash. if you're okay only having Shield Charge and Fire Breath then go for it.

[Troller that doesn’t need high-end enhancements]

5 hours ago, KMadeleine said:

I see quite a few Level 50 builds but they are way out of my budget.  My husband and I just got a friend who has never played COH to make a scrapper.  I know I used to like controllers but it’s been a long while.  Assuming this character will generally be in (at least) a trio, so no need to solo, what would you recommend on a budget?

 

I have an Ill/Rad but she’s on another server and already 50.  I made her strong for soloing, this could be the opposite.  Thanks for any ideas / thoughts /recommendations!

 

High end builds ask for a lot of money, but money's easy to accumulate once you're 50 or try to follow story lines to their end using contacts (or doing taskforces) as you level. It's not uncommon to reach 50 with a 100+ millions in my name by having done Taskforces only.

 

Most people who post builds will cobble a leveling build that is cheaper if you just ask. Controllers are not my thing for me to offer though.

 

I know it is not the advice you requested but Controllers are a bit passed by time. If you do enjoy them then do continue playing, but the pace of the game is very fast these days, I have a current Scrapper that explodes a pack of mobs under 10 seconds and leaves little to crowd control for example, and the bigger the team (even just three) the quicker this goes.

 

Do play Controllers if you enjoy them, but consider branching out to things like Defenders or Corruptors if you enjoy the help you can create by buffing and debuffing.

 

I'll repeat a third for good measure to continue playing Controllers if you enjoy how they play, there is no real wrong answer since we have a thousand slots and levelling is quick thanks to double XP, and thanks to the sidekick system a level 10 can play with a level 30.

[To players who haven't the money for Enhancements: use your Merit Reward points]

2 minutes ago, KMadeleine said:

I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but I honestly don’t see a signature on your post.  I checked your profile and didn’t see one there, either.  What am I missing?

 

You're not being obnoxious in the slightest. What you must be doing is reading the forums over the phone. It is a common complaint that signatures do not show on phones:

 

 

Here is the thing:

 

[To players who haven't the money for Enhancements: use your Merit Reward points]

16 minutes ago, temnix said:

Well, there are other ways to raise money, as the others here have said. And if you want to go to auctions, that's a possibility. *I* wouldn't want to go near them for the reason that any in-game economics are such a horrible boring waste of time that no person mindful of the real world will want to touch them. My advice is not for min-maxers or nerds of any sort. It is for people who want to play the game without being dragged down by the unavailability of the things necessary to play it with enjoyment. You get those points, you spend them on SO, you never think twice about money. And you will still little by little accumulate enough to buy little toys like a flying disc or an extra Prestige power, down the line. Everything else that matters is either in your Archetype or in your power of imagination.

 

What are the available items in the game? Icons. Completely abstract abilities that don't usually even have a sound associated with them. Converters, whatever. You want to waste your life learning this great science? Read a book instead. However, I want to add a caveat to my post. SO are not available for Merit Reward points early on. I don't know when they become available, but not at level 10. Archetype Enhancements are there, but not SO. Perhaps they need to be unlocked somehow, but I don't think I have done anything special to make them available to me at (under) level 30.

 

 

Don't double down, please, it looks worse when your first comment was an honest mistake but now it looks like mulish stubbornness. One Merit is worth around 200k. One early SO is worth around 5-10k, and it's as complicated as using one of the ATMs in the game and then typing /ah and tossing the Converters into the auction house.

[To players who haven't the money for Enhancements: use your Merit Reward points]

The intent seems good though and I commend the effort of wishing to help fellow players, but all that could be said about it has been by now. Don't be discouraged though, you now know a little bit more about the game and your future advice will only improve from it.

 

Check my newbie guide in my signature for money making tips and other.