Sovera

I start a new character and don't transfer money or IOs so it starts from scratch. That said it does slow the game a lot, but the first character after a good while the right moment for 'slow game'. By the 5th alt we don't want slow anything. But returning after a while? Best time. Your mileage may vary.

I'm going to be snarky and say not worth your time. Now I'm going to be helpful and say the nerf was A) 20 years ago, B) at least 20 updates old (by the time the game closed so let it go let it goooooo) and C) the new systems let you be about as strong as before without making a mockery of the game. I know it was fun to play with cheat modes on, but heh. Still in helpful mode: don't slot how you were used to. The reason you were unable to defeat anything when you logged back in 20 years ago was probably because you had no accuracy. Three slots dedicated to damage, 1-2 for accuracy, 1-2 for endurance discount or recharge. Once you get into Inventions Origins (or just IOs) you can get pretty powerful. But, you know, in that game type powerful, as in, you can die, there is risk, you need to actually play the game. But that's how games are, right? Anyone plays their Skyrims and Last of Uses and WoW to ignore mobs and one shot the bosses solo? That's not a game, that's a walking simulator. It's never going to be that peak gaming you described of AFKing and killing an entire zone worth of mobs while invulnerable, untouchable, and watching Netflix. And even then nowadays you can do AFK farming where you literally just start a new map every so often and mobs die to Burn.

No, Storm Kick is not an AoE, it's a ST attack that grants defense to melee, ranged and AoE. It's that '+defense (melee, ranged, AoE' tag that confuzzled Pulverizer. But yes, you don't 'fix' MA's AoE because there is nothing to do about it other than incorporating a secondary that has AoE as well. Now one one hand I would not undersell ST damage. In a team everyone's AoE will clean the minions and lieutenants in seconds anyway, right? So the focus should be on targetting the mobs that we already know will be alive after that (there's a way to show all the mob's HP and bars in my newbie guide right at the end). But on the other hand when solo or even team split apart or whatever it feels nice to drop some AoEs and see the HP go down. As Pulverizer pointed out the MA + Fire Armor Tanker build is the one that has pleased me the most because Burn is a decent AoE on its own and Dragon's Tail has the opportunity to slot in a Force Feedback proc that pretty much ensures it will go off in an AoE situation in turn making the next Burn have a few seconds shaved off. On a Tanker it's a build that's gimmicky AF making it have permanent 45% defense to melee/ranged/AoE as well as 90% resistances to all. But even without all the gimmicks it's still a Tanker and breezes through the levels with the combo of Dragon Tail + Burn. Anyway, it's the Turtle build in my Fire Armor signature. I did make a Brute version but too many sacrifices were needed to do the same gimmick so it might be smarter to just focus on resistances and simply aim for 45% S/L which is really easy thanks to the 7.5% from Storm Kick. If Fire Armor does not please you then you only have Radiation Armor left in terms of boosting your AoE. As Carnifax said you can proc out Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero. One of the downsides of doing this is the recharge being killed to max out the proc changes... which Dragon Tail and Force Feedback helps fix. Serendipity! I don't consider Cross Punch a 'real' AoE alternative partly because we can only realistically take it in the 30-35 range due to the requirements (unless we push out more important powers for later) but it's something to look into since you're probably taking Tough and Weave anyway, so it's all a matter of finding 5-6 slots and one power slot.

Gentle bump for visibility towards the new arrivals.

I went and checked and no, we can't do any missions at level 1 but we do get the ourobouros portal at that level if someone opens the portal for them. I'm not talking about the roleplay aspect of flashing back to the past to do missions. We out level low level arcs and are unable to finish them. This can be worked around via locking XP, but it's a leveling game so not many would want to block their leveling. That said I agree level 15 is not that far to level, but it is just a QoL thing for those who want to level and not outlevel a contacts in the admittedly narrow window from 1 to 15. Still, it's my suggestion to the devs and I'll let them sort it out if it has merit or not. That's a dev's prerogative to do or not. Don't try to inflate your self worth making it seem like you have any influence by barging in with your muddy shoes and say no to a suggestion as if your opinion was the linchpin. This is the suggestion forum from players to the devs, without our suggestions they would not know what players might want in the game. This infantilization of the dev team as if they were hapless naive babies that need the big strong elite players to protect them from bad suggestions is as silly as it is ridiculous.

Well, okay, but since you're a dev you should think not everyone will play the same way as you do and you want to think of other players playstyles, right?

Not everyone wants to lock their XP.

First I will acknowledge that reaching level 15 is not a big hurdle so this suggestion does not have a huge weight to it. With how we outlevel contacts and can be shut off from finishing arcs it would be nice to have this option straight away. It is not a big deal regardless so it is a suggestion only.

As a rule the aim is building for both with Bio Armor. Bio has strong Smash and Lethal resistances but weak to Energy and Negative. But it has strong defenses to Energy and Negative while having no defenses against Smash and Lethal. So you want to boost your resistance and work your E/N defenses up. At that point and with a Tanker it's just easy to crank all resistances as much as possible (while trying not to go past 90% with the ATO stacks) and bump S/L defenses to at least 40%. Now you have a tanker that has both defenses to S/L as well as E/N, with strong resistances to S/L and mediocre to E/N. Neither those defenses get protection though, and can be quickly whittled down. It's not a huge problem with S/L due to the resistances but with E/N if it happens (the murderbots in the end game do this) then it's a glaring hole in the armor set which has to rely on the absorb shield. But in order for those defense debuffs to work they first need to hit and that means a healthy buffer makes that take longer since defense makes the debuffs miss. If we are at medium defenses (25-30%) the whittling starts right away and each subsequent hit is easier since there are less defenses. A vicious and cascading cycle. But if having a softcapped defense (45%) and knowing that the faction that will be fought does the defense debuffing then sometimes it is no worse to simply eat a small purple inspiration before fighting. By the time it ends or the mobs have overcome the buffer and whittled defenses down most will be dead which means less mobs hitting, less mobs debuffing, etc. It's how my Fire Armor Tankers deal with stuff.

The enforced roleplay of not being usable while not on the ground made it so I never touched it. Heroes gotta fly

Even in this thread we have people acting like we are in a 100 meter dash race and we gotta be first. Which brings me back to the earlier example I gave of GW2 and how a casual game (at the time, ever since they introduced fractals and raids and etc) was hellbent in shaving every second off a run since they were 'meant' to do X runs an hour. But CoH is not a 100 meter dash. There isn't even a DPS meter to be ashamed of. Any and all 'downsides' of a Sentinel are in people's heads. It doesn't do as much damage as a Blaster? So what? Few things do more damage than a Blaster. It's not as sturdy as a Tanker? So what? Few things are sturdier than a Tanker. Does that mean we delete all other ATs other than Blaster or Tanker? 'But a Sentinel does not bring much to the team other than damage'. Bruh, it's not the kind of game where team compositions matter outside of hardmode TFs, people solo TFs, people do TFs with 8 of one type of AT. A lot of stuff is in people's heads or in spreadsheets. Lets have a team with a Sentinel. Lets do a TF. Now lets keep the exact same team composition and take a Blaster. Will the TF be finished earlier or more easily because the Blaster is there?

It's Punisher's style of armor. (No, not plot armor). Bleeding, broken, fighting against many or a strong opponent and going through it on grit alone where someone else would have fainted from pain or blood loss. Even the midling psi resistance fits since it's canon (in the comics) that a 'strong willpower' can resist telepaths. Seriously though (hah!), gravity armor! And since we can't have Wind control then... WIND ARMOR! We have ice armor, fire armor, stone armor, we lack only wind for Captain Planet! And an Empath, of course.

I remember back in the day before IOs and people roleplaying their iron man concept. In roleplay and roleplay forum posts, sheesh, so strong, then I played with them and the occasional faceplants we were meant to ignore 😄

Sentinel. I have a soft spot for Tankers though. Basically anything durable and that has CC immunity. A Sentinel is more 'durable' than a tank by hovering in the air but a Tanker will go x8 more quickly. They will both kill at about the same speed.

Check my signature for tips. Don't fuss about meta, this is very much a game to play around having fun with alts. Solo or teaming from level 1 onwards is a thing so don't hold back or chip at enemies.

Sentinel suffer from one problem only: the community. The AT is fine by itself. But, just like in GW2 back when dungeons were a thing, in both cases the community of a super casual game would get really acerbic about X seconds lost if Y class was brought. To be completely fair the only complaints about Sentinels I see come from the forums. I have a decent time spent in game playing the game and never once in all that time did I see someone refused because they were a Sentinel, kicked out because they were a Sentinel, or snarked because they were playing a Sentinel. From HM TFs? I mean, sure, is more than 1% of the population running those though?

I seem to recall it did not work (but it's been a long time). But IG was a pseudo pet at the time. It got fixed a while back. Thanks for taking the time for that screenie o/

Fire is just the strongest. All others work, but strongest? Fire. Check my signature for tips if it's been that long.

I was going to post an old one I had but it's messed up and I need to rebuild it. It's a bit out of the meta since aims at have 45% defense to melee/ranged/AoE while still having 90% resists to most thing. Downside is killing slooooooooooow. MA's AoE is weak though you can help it a bit by proc bombing your heal at the cost of making the heal worse, and eventually Ground Zero. I don't do those things but I can post the build once rebuilt if you're still after something.

Are you sure Brimstone works with IG? I seem to recall it did not because it was a pseudopet doing the damage... But wait, that was changed, right? Still, could you confirm in game, please? I'd like to update my knowledge base.

Not to put a damper on trying new things, but Rad Melee was linchpinned by Irradiated Ground. Irradiated Ground was 'fixed' which now means the whole set needs a pass or it's woefully under tuned. That aside I had a great time with Stone Armor/Radiation Melee back when IG was 'bugged'. Fire Armor was also a good pairing since it has a solid Endurance recovery. I would not touch sets without endurance recovery because as others pointed out it's pretty endurance heavy.

Not sure what you're on about. The 'class' is Tanker who are extremely durable. If you mean the set then it's a resist set and once at 90% resists (easy on a Tanker) 90% of the damage is blocked. In a game where IOs can make a Scrapper durable enough to tank 80% of the game a Tanker falls apart? Early levels are the usual: either solo and then slot attacks first and survive via inspirations, or teaming and then slot tank powers first. Either way Burn is a nice AoE addition for those low levels and Amplifiers are there for everyone. With full IO transfers and amplifiers my Fire Armor Tankers start soloing at 0x6 for Posi 1 and 2 and then never move from +1x8 from Synapse onwards. Without full IO transfers they stay at around x4 until their 30s until I earn enough money for the more expensive sets. On the other hand Defense sets have a much easier game since they get a fat 6% at level 10 on top of whatever their shields give and they get more from Hover/Combat Jumping and an early Maneuvers. Once at 30-ish% (not that hard) the are effectively invulnerable since they only require the occasional small purple. I have some Shield and Stone Armor characters who are at 40-ish defense at level 24 which means they don't even need small purples. But solo they feel horrible without the extra damage and AoE. For teams any thing works. Solo though I found I took so long to whittle down mobs that I would be whittled down in turn.

👋 Fire is still fun but lost some of its oomph in the chase for balance. It's still what I'd recommend to get more AoE out of the box (Burn at 18 for a Tanker) which makes a character feel good when we can keep on dumping AoEs into a group of enemies. Bio will be more single target damage but roughly as squishy all things considered (less so I'd say thanks to some regeneration shenanigans that Fire can't mirror) while Invulnerable can just tank the world but you'll feel like a Tanker in terms of damage. But if you're not soloing then your personal damage does not matter (as much) since the team is there for it and the Tanker is there to stay alive. If you DO intend to solo most or even half of the time then definitely consider Fire or Bio because eventually it becomes tiresome to sandpapper mobs and a well built 'squishy' Tanker can still take on 90% of the game's content (I have soloed the Cimemora taskforce with a Fire Armor tanker on max difficulty with enemies buffed and only died at the end where I got stunned and one shot). Fire/Fire for AoE extravaganza (Combustion at level 4, Burn at 18, Fire Sword Circle at 24), or Fire Armor/Ice Melee to still have enough AoE (super wide cone at level 4 but unlike Combustion it needs moderate aiming), Burn at 18, Frozen Aura at 30) and have Ice Patch as a defensive move that does not need slots at level 20. Fire/Fire will do better single target damage as well. It's what I meant about Fire Armor helping a character feel good. Woo, Combustion/Frost at level 4! ....and now nothing else until level 24/30. Regarding your actual question the same applies roughly. Simply in terms of gameplay without thinking of theme Fire will give you easy AoE (and you can try to grab Fire Breath to sub in for the loss of Burn, but it's a narrow cone unlike Frost) and good single-target damage further helped by Bio who is good at increasing ST. Or Ice to help with the somewhat squishyness of Bio. Keep in mind that as a Tanker squishyness is both relative and quick to disappear once levels are accrued and power slots are filled, but also keep in mind that for a first character it's fine to start with something easy(er) and then just make a new alt later. Leveling is quick, money is easy to make, and stuff you bought for one character can be passed to the next. Check my signatures about that as well as the money making tips.

Imagine playing a free game for free and complaining its not churning out free content fast enough. Reminds me of the webcomic authors talking about readers who send mails complaining they don't do new comics fast enough, often with those snide 'dropped' comments. I would say some people need to grow up, but we are playing a super-hero game almost 20 years out of date, so I would need to be more specific 😛

As Glacier said. But here you go. It's not a masterpiece but it might help?