Sovera

Doubtful. Depends on the TF of course, but it has been a long time since I saw any AV take more than 30 seconds outside of mechanics reasons (Romulus or whatever since he respawns 4 times, Reich guy with the extra resistances we need to use the temp power to negate, etc). I HAVE seen teams crumble against an AV and just give up (Market Place set too high level, ITF with low level characters and a bad comp and set too high level) but this is the cream of the cream in the rare soup. I have not tested a Rad Armor Sentinel against an AV but I did test a Bio Sentinel with the 25% power turned off (since Rad has no extras and the Sentinel version has no -res either) and predictably it went from 4 minutes to break the pylon to 5 minutes and change. I assume this would be the time for a non-bio. Trapdoor tests @Ston ran with Sentinels put the Rad Armor comfortably ahead of Bio for regular missions though. And I do mean comfortably, not things like 30 seconds ahead. So it's a matter of picking your poison. Me being me playing a Rad or Bio would lead to when I played with Brutes and Tankers and if I am playing a Tanker I miss the extra damage of a Brute and if I am on a Brute I miss the sturdiness of the Tanker.

As Uun pointed out the accuracy debuff is the real reason I take FA, even though the extra acc does allow to move some slots around. Tactics does not serve this purpose since the extra acc it provides just gets debuffed. A bit like Maneuvers. *daydreams about a FA similar that provides resistance to defense debuffs* Ahem... anyway, yeah, Focused Accuracy simply turns off all accuracy debuffs in the game which is a bit OP, but is not AoE as Twozero pointed out which makes the Sentinel's version even more OP.

I'm a big proponent of Focused Accuracy. I have no meleers without it. So of course I took it on the Sentinels in the beginning, but then I realised I don't need it. The same mobs that were a nuisance about this on my meleers were inconsequential on my Sentinel. All I really need is the perception unique slotted somewhere to get past smoke bombs. This is more of something I noticed than a 'play it my way', but it's how I found out. And I -really- have not a single melee character without Focused Accuracy.

Bio for best all rounder. Defenses, shield, heal, endurance AND a damage boost. It's like the other armors aren't even trying! Rad for second-best-but-actually-sorta-best-for-regular-gameplay mostly thanks to the second nuke as an AoE backup. Can't go wrong with dual nukes every spawn. Not as sturdy as Bio (IMO) and going into melee to land the second nuke steals from the safety of being ranged. Storm Summoning for all-rounder offense. Yes, it needs prep time, but it damages, it debuffs, it CCs, and all we do is hit our damage skills. Pity we could not revert the travel time of the drizzle attack because it hurts the damage. I would even take a damage hit to have the attack land either instantly or in half the travel time. I don't even use Epic Pools on my Sentinels since they suck for what they do (again, IMO) so I cast a vote at random for that.

Softcap is only for one thing and that's defense. Usually 45% is 'enough' but some armors can get higher because they are built for defense. As others pointed out there is a mix of defense debuffs (not a problem for super Reflexes who is immune to these), higher level enemies having more accuracy, and incarnate mobs, that make building for more defense profitable. This is very much dependent on what content you usually do. If incarnates much, then building for more might be good (around 59%. I say might because 45% is already pretty close and if taking damage it is simpler to ear a small purple inspiration than refit a whole build, or there might be a team mate who does defense buffs). If sticking to 'normal' content then building for more defense is probably not worth it since it being there or it not being there will not be noticeable. Your next question is resistances. There is no softcap for resistances. As you've pointed out resistances have a hardcap (so do defenses but it is much harder to reach which is not the case of resistances) and building for more than 95% gives nothing. It is a pet peeve of mine to see Tanker builds in the forums happily showing off their 120%+ resistances since they could scrounge slots or change their slotting to have less resistances and still be at 95% then place those slots elsewhere. Since resistances resist resistance debuffs (which is not the case of defense) there is not much point in in building for more than 95% except in some very niche situations (certain groups do an unresistable -resistance patch) but at that point what you need is to kill mobs fast or play smart instead of trying to build for more resistances just because there is that one niche group that does the thing. The playing smart thing is anathema in CoH since the game pushes so much to standing one's ground, gird one's loins, square one's feet, and then slug it out until one or other is killed. So when a situation calls for finesse, a bit of kitting, paying attention to mechanics, it meets unprepared players.

You are correct. I'll change my previous posts.

Yes.

I'm fairly certain we could level side by side me and my empty slots and you with SOs, and we would not notice a lot of difference outside of spreadsheets, if any, by the time we hit 22. The stat clamping is a thing, and SOs stats are static which do not even level with us unlike set IOs, Plus SOs remain expensive for what they do, and they go bad every three levels. All of this for a couple of hours which is how long it takes to solo to 22 or half that if in a team. SOs are a relic who are not relevant. Might as well craft level 10 generic IOs because those at least won't go bad in three six levels. But it does not bug me that SOs exist or that people use SOs,

I would really like to slot my level 50 recipes at level 1. I won't have the slots, of course, but once slotted in its slotted in and I don't need to think about it. The low level IOs are made for a game where we level extremely slowly and then there's a point in scrounging for every point. But in modern CoH between double XP and all the facilities we do not spend long enough in the low levels to warrant the trouble of slotting them. If I'm leveling the normal way with access to my piggy bank and my enhancement tables then I level with empty slots barring the F2P freebies until level 10, then slot event IOs and ATOs. I will usually slot nothing else until 22 which is usually about the time I finish soloing Posi 1 and 2. I will buy some generic IOs to fill my empty slots and then I loiter until 27y-ish which is when I can slot the last of my high level IOs until I reach 50 and respec to put in purples and scrounge a few slots from Hasten/BU. If I'm doing my by-now-usual way way of leveling without piggy bank or my enhancement tables then little changes. I will have no money for ATOs or event IOs so I level with only the P2W freebies until 22 and by then I have enough merits from soloing both Posis to fill all my slots with level 25 IOs. After that as I slowly make money I replace them with ATOs and set IOs that I will be using in my final build and keep slotting generics in my new slots. At no point does it come across I should go looking for a Pounding Slugfest instead of just throwing a generic IO into a slot. By all means don't remove the low level IOs, but they are a waste of time IMO. I would rather see all recipes craftable at level 1 (even if their bonuses at not accessible until later) instead of leveling with empty slots or craft nonsensical lowbie IOs. I can't be the only one that only throws generics in until the we reach the timegated levels.

Yes, this bug is still ongoing despite the attempted fix.

*whispers* Fire Armor4life.

With the changes there is no need for granite anymore.

Both have a second PbAoE to help with a Sentinel's ailing Aoe, but Burn has a tiny radius and half its damage is DoT, so with no agro aura the mobs run away and half the damage is wasted on air. In a team it's ok as we can just follow a tank and drop the napalm by their feet. But at that point Rad does the same and is more durable while the PbAoE is also huge and coincides with the nuke's CD which means there is always double nuke time during Aim/Gaussian's window. That said Burn has a couple nice things going for it: - Recharging faster means using it more often. That's always nice. - Burn's scatter effect makes things safer for a ranged solo character (though we usually can just Hover out of melee range anyway) as all that fear has mobs ignoring us to leg it. Frankly it is not really that much when compared to Rad where the nuke makes for much more effective AoE and it remains sturdier. Sturdier-ish anyway, I felt fragile on my Elec/Rad as Sentinels are truly not built to rely on resistances. Bio remains a more solid option in terms of defense and much better still for ST than either Rad or Fire, but lagging behind both for AoE. So it's a matter of picking what matters most for you. In terms of regular gameplay the distance between Rad and Bio is probably shorter even in ST since we go into a group of enemies and double nuke which means even bosses will have eaten plenty of damage. But in terms of hitting an AV/pylon we don't use the nuke since it has such a slow cast time and Bio pulls ahead again. But we face AVs about 5% of the time anyway. I've been meaning to try a Storm/Rad since Storm would easily help Rad's survivability between -tohit, KBs, and etc, and Rad would help Storm's not all that great AoE (if we skip the cone) but the trick to surviving is more often just kill things fast (which is not Storm's strong suit to put it nicely) so a Fire/Rad might be the most optimal Sentinel for general gameplay once we stop thinking about pylon times.

I've said my piece on this. I just wanted to add you keep repeating Burn was hugely nerfed and it only was for ST damage, which I'm accepting. No AoE should be a good ST attack. For AoE the damage ended up being roughly the same since Powerhouse tweaked the numbers to make up for the damage loss of all procs going off a second time. This was something I worried about and gave feedback on and tested as Powerhouse tweaked things and churned patches. Burn being a good ST attack was nice for some sets that lack good ST attacks or have awkward recharge times, but I accept AoEs should be for AoE and ST attacks for ST. Even so it's still good enough to use even when just two enemies are present. But i digress. Buffs for Fire Armor!

*waves* Somewhat veteran on fire armor. Consume is up every one minute give or take ten seconds. Now the endurance regain has been buffed to never miss I honestly have no beef with it. Being immune to sapping is a bit niche but invaluable. Obviously Consume alone is not enough to keep a blue bar healthy and most my characters used to run on fumes juuuuust before the recharge on Consume had elapsed but I went around that by tweaking my builds to replace the hefty cost of Maneuvers for the slim and svelte Combat Jumping, and, on Tankers, making all my builds not need to have Tough toggled on to still reach 90% to S/L. With these changes and picking the accolades the blue bar is healthy. But it's all moot. There is no need to do these changes or even pick the accolades when we can buy Recovery Serums for a true pittance. The times where our blue bar is on fumes and we A) don't have someone in the team throwing recovery buffs, B) don't have someone in the team throwing Ageless, C) the team is actually hitting an AV where we wail on something for a full minute non stop, are rare but if and when they come up then we can pop a Recovery Serum. I won't speak for DC though.

Really? I would understand if you said Plant. But Mind? Really?

First mission of the Market Crash TF. It is borderline a farm map with a paint of officialness.

That's where the whole 'tied to speadsheet' thing comes in. At the time there was talk of adding something to Fire Breath to make it better, like having a super long DoT, but NPCs also got it, and though the angle was requested (I mean, just make Fire Breath akin to Frost, right?) the dreaded spreadsheets came in and it was decided the set was already at capacity to add more power into it.

As Vanden said, and then remember to save your keybinds so all other new characters you may make automatically have that.

It has both which is even worse since the game has gravity and inertia. So the KB is done with the character being pushed away at the same which further increases the distance travelled. It's horrible. And yes, the fire melee changes were not the best work of the HC team, bless. It was a slapdash boost to damage with a nonsensical reasoning. There's something we can say such as the fire melting armor and thus lowering defense? But it's out of place. Increasing damage numbers would have served best but the dev team is tied to their spreadsheets and the set was probably already at maximum budget for pure damage and thus proc damage was a way to increase the damage as a sideways upgrade. It worked, Fire Melee needed it, so we can't argue with the results and only with the lack of elegance of how it was done.

One day the devs will bite the bullet and delete the fear code(s) but that day is not today.

Fire/Claws is the dragon build in my signature. You can get some slotting ideas from there if you'd like. I can't condone picking Spring Attack though some room could be made for Phoenix Rise. I'm from the camp that tankers are tough enough naturally (especially with the godlike +res ATO) and thus don't need extra special attention so offense on, brothah! (Consider the Turtle build too as it is surprisingly offensive)

Accursed Mids! Fix'ed.

I have the same exporting problem. In fact I've taken to just drop the build's file into the forums because people can't even click on the export link that Mids generates. I recently came from testing an Elec/Rad after being tempted by Tson's results with their Fire/Rad and I wasn't super impressed though dual nuke was nice. Ground Zero is slow and does damage slowly, but, I paid attention to it and by Moonfire and fully slotted it did kill a +2 minion on its own which is rather promising despite the subjective view of it being slow and killing slowly. So ultimately there is probably a good reason to swap from Bio to Rad. Now in turns of slotting defenses I had a devil of a time. It is much easier to achieve S/L on a melee character since they are chockful of those bonuses, and while I've built Corruptors/Controllers/Defenders with 45% ranged defense I confess that my results were not impressing me. So I ended up stacking defense as a sidequest and then worked resistances up since that's Rad's thing anyway. Even solo this worked decently though I do feel squishier than defense based builds. I too have a Storm/Rad as my next project and feel this squishyness will be mitigated by the mitigation that Storm brings. Extra Aoe from the second nuke will help Storm's anemic AoE and Storm will help Rad's perceived weaker mitigation. The downside will be spending something like 11 seconds doing prep time before starting to damage a group which will be untenable for full teams (though we can always look at ourselves as Controler lite who does better damage and is less aggravating than Controllers). For what it is worth here's the Elec/Rad in case you can lift some slotting ideas, though the philosophy is quite apart from your goals. I haven't worked on my Storm/Rad yet but once I do I'll come back so we can compare pointers. Sentinel (Elec Rad).mbd

15 seconds difference without and with Interface is really telling on how little impact that thing has. I found all three results so close together that misses might well just explain the discrepancy, but, more importantly, it was not the clear cut result that I had with my own test. I'll remove my suggestion and temper my future advice with this new piece of data.