Sovera

Fire melee is rocking my socks atm. Axe is also fun and has good enough AoE.

Depending on when this was you caught the IG nerf train or not. Poor Radiation Melee will need a pass to be a consideration again. Now I can say that my new Fire/Fire Tanker is enjoying the Fire Melee pass having become an AoE machine, but because I leveled without transfers of IOs or inf I don't have a good metric to compare against other Tankers I've leveled in the past. Because of these ironman rules it took reaching 30-ish to have enough inf to go from 0x4 to 0x8 (surviving tight spots on insps but that's what they are there for). But this is one of the reasons I like Fire Armor. In the case of that combo you mentioned the player is stuck with IG (which used to be great even if random), Atom Smash (which is pretty decent but took reaching 38 to be obtained pre-level pass) and the Contaminated mechanic which is more flavor than power. There is just a lack of means to express the power when there are no outlets. The strength of Tankers are the AoEs, and its weakness the ST damage. If you feel that this approach worked best for you then kudos, but my own preference is leveling with 1x8 at around level 15 onwards (assuming I am transfering IOs to the alt).

Damage auras are terrible for procs thanks to the lenghty (10 seconds) check and due to being AoE the % of going off is small (30% or lower). Damage auras are great place to dump uninteresting sets that precisely have no damage procs.

Increase the size of the spawns. Leveling with 0x8 minimum makes a large difference. Try to do TFs or storylines from Ourobors to reap sweet sweet merits. This is if you strictly solo. It's much faster to join or form a group and with 8 people it will be much faster to achieve anything. The root of the problem seems to be gearing though. Toss us a build showing what you're using and how much cash you have to spend. If you've been street sweeping with double XP I fear your funds might be lacking. Consider reading the guide in my signature for money, then the others with Stone Armor since I think I posted 'cheap'-er leveling builds.

This is my own. It has 40% to melee/ranged/AoE and then uses Barrier for the last 5%. Resistances are not super at only 83% to S/L (88% with Barrier) and 52% to (S/L (57% with Barrier). The convoluted slotting hurts Hasten at a miserable 154 seconds though the FF procs will help with that. The upside is that the numbers are base and thus Incarnates can be used to further improve on things according to whim.

*breaks through a wall* BEST COMBO FOR A... Oh, it was bait. Clever girl... Ahem.. With TW you sort of miss the of fire Armor since Burn will just interrupt your attacks and eat into your Momentum time and TW is a very busy set because of this mechanic. You -can- save Burn for when your Momentum is down but tbh TW has enough AoE on its own. This can lead to a case of ignoring Burn and just using Fiery Embrace/Consume, which is valid I suppose. FA is not as squishy as it used to but I'm not sure I'd recommend it on FE's merits alone. As for the MA variant I've sung its praises enough. I haven't actually done a Brute with this combo because of the lack of early AoE. Even after the patch that allows to pick powers earlier the earliest is still at 22 and the second at 24. Which is a loooooot of time to go around hitting things in pure ST. One day the god devs may give a pass to MA and do the smart thing of not giving the set four single target attacks before level 20 and the set's singular AoE to appear at now 22. Swapping Crippling Axe Kick for Dragon Tail seems entirely logical. But outside of that it is still possible to build an extraordinarily tough Brute with 45% defense to Melee/Ranged/AoE, it just will not have the full resistances of a Tanker by having a hole in E/N (around 60% instead of 90%) but still 90% for S/L. The Tanker version allows to prevent this by having Burn at 18. TW is probably ahead if looking at it from a spreadsheet angle but TW's a pianist's build with the non Momentum initial moves are a drag. It has places for FF to speed up Burn/FE/Consume/Healing Flames but as mentioned above TW is a busy set. MA is weaker on numbers but it has a simple attack chain, still has places for FF procs, and while Dragon Tail hits like a wet noodle it also animates fast and recharges fast leading not to big numbers but spam. Spam is good since large numbers of enemies are FA's weakness if they come with debuffs attached so keeping mobs flopping with the AoE KD is good, and that AoE KD procs FF which in turns speeds up Burn's return with the bonus of also speeding Consume/Healing Flames/Fiery Embrace. So MA is a bit deceptive since its numbers are weaker but it has synergy with CD heavy secondaries. I did not look at the builds yet but once you decide which you'll be wanting to try I can do that.

That's what they say was offered to them. And tbh I can easily see it. We are an aging demographic and most of us have 'adult' jobs where offering 20€ for a billion inf (no idea of actual prices) is much easier than to grind one billion inf. But the truth is that either the rewards would be completely inconsequential (some new flavor of hami-o) and no one would care to farm for it, or it would be a valuable reward and then complaints about not having it handed like 100% of the game would crop up. Not to downplay the current complains, but we've had people in this board complain that one week to level a character to max and fully equip in purples and T4 was too much. They wanted it done in a week-end tops. Again, not to downplay the complaints, but, here we are with 99% of the game free and unlocked and now that there is 1% locked behind effort/time/grind the complaints about having that 1% lock are here too.

If you're that out of the loop then consider reading the guide in my signature. Everyone else has said all the things that could be said. Welcome back! Now I will say what is REALLY annoying about DFB! The fact I run it once at double XP and always end at about level 7 and change! The first TF is level 8! Tweak the XP so one DFB is enough to enter the first TF instead of forcing me to go kill some mobs in the AE to ding!

If you read the compilation it should have most of what you need in terms of builds. I'm fairly sure that there is a SS one in there as well. They might be slightly outdated with the recent patches but the framework of IOs to build resistances and such should still be fine.

I'll add a point of view here: having everything diminishes the interest in logging in. I'm loving the current WoW expansion but ran out of things to do. Got gold medals from all races, my gear is acceptable, my guild finishes the heroic raid in one day... and I have nothing to do. I still like the expansion and would log in and play more, but there is nothing to do (here's to the next patch in a week). Even world quests that, in the past, would reset daily, have had their reset increased to three days so there is not even chasing something. In guild Wars 2 we can turn money into gems and with the gems buy items from the store or rare drops from the AH. For example, one of my characters would look really well with a cosmetic effect that changed the normal aspect to a blue holographic aspect. This was either a case of grinding fractals and hope it dropped or fork a chunk of gold for it. That was a nice goal to have and gold was amassed until I could get it. CoH lacks this and has been a complaint in the past. Incarnates easy to get (my latest 50 had two T3 the first day of reaching max level, and I'm only playing sporadically), all items unlocked, capes, etc. Having a goal is not bad. As for people disappearing from the game, please, we all know there is nothing that we can stomach for ever, be it ice-cream at every meal or CoH every day. People will drift off and play other things.

I gotchu, fam https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Powexec_location_(Slash_Command)

The leveling is fast if you stick to teams and use the double XP (if you're really new then browse the guide in my signature) and IOs being transferable means you can try different characters without spending a penny re-buying everything. My usual advice when this question pops up is Fire Armor/Ice Melee since it works well and the squishyness of Fire Armor is mitigated by Ice Melee's Ice Patch. In the meanwhile the lesser Tanker damage is helped by Fire Armor's Burn and Fiery Embrace. With inspirations and teams providing buffs pretty much any thing that you choose will work so it's a matter of choosing what you'd like to try. Just keep in mind it's not a waste. Money earned or IOs bought can be transferred to the next character.

The build seems fine. It is built as a Tanker with attention to defenses and less so to damage. You won't go wrong using it but it is really overkill for 95% of the content and the other 5% will require having buffers in the team anyway. So its looking mighty solid. If your intent is to focus on tanking then you got this 👍 Some small changes would be swapping the slotting of Physical Perfection and Stamina since Stamina gets more out of it. You can also consider Barrier for those Oshi-... moments which adds another 5% to your defense and resistance values. That could let you move some things around such as adding more slots to Build-up, etc. If you're not playing incarnate content then turn Weave off. This is a different take. Focusing on damage and then pump defenses to reach the minimums (add 5% from Barrier. If the content is not hard enough to require barrier then the extra 5% aren't needed anyway). Maybe some slotting ideas will be of use:

I pretty much only play tankers/brutes since they come with agro auras. That said either for them starts (solo) at around 0x4 at their first AoE whichever that is (level 4 for Ice Melee) and by level 10 they go to +0x6. Level 15-ish they move to +1x8 and stay that way. But this comes from having inf and IO transfers. Playing a character who slots IOs the second they can makes a tremendous difference. I am now leveling a second character with no IO and no inf and I could not replicate this. If playing in a team it is fine to run with whatever and be 0x8 from level 1 onwards and then rely on inspirations. But for soloing my non inf transfer character using only generic IOs had a bigger survival problem (well, survival, damage, endurance, everything) so I went at 0x4 for most of the way until mid thirty-ish when I finally bumped things to +0x8. This was when I finally had enough money to start buying IOs and upping my resistances and defenses.

I'll toss in my own. As usual with my builds they try to rely on all the gimmicks in the book: - 78.2% resistances with one stack of the tanker ATO since a second one and the 5% from Barrier will cap things (or close enough, 78.2% + 6.7% = 84.9% + 5% from Barrier = 89.9%). Any thing that does not require Barrier does not require 90% resistances either. - 40% Slash/Lethal defenses for Barrier's 5% to finish capping. - 134 second Hasten which is okay-ish. Having Cremate with its new FF proc would be better, but... - Decent 80% resistance to -recharge. - That solitary Heal IO in Consume adds 150ish HP to the build, or another 3 point something HP per second. It's a flex slot. Still possible but I did not like how the build ended with 87.9% for the resistances so swapped it out for neatness. This is fully to blame on the tortuous slotting to avoid toggling Tough on. - Tough is just a mule and not toggled on. Addendum: - This is a level 50 respec build, not a leveling build. While all the powers are in the order I would take them the slotting and IOs used will differ. I can cook a leveling build for those who need it. - Using Scorch is bad for the damage. Using T1s and T2 ought to be avoided if uber min max ST damage is the goal. But, leveling/exemplaring lower than 23 would make the build have one single attack until Incinerate came online and though Prestige attacks can take the slack (since at those low levels we fight +0 or +1 tops) it gives me the icks. So I took Scorch and leveled with it allowing for a Scorch - Fire Sword - Scorch - Burn/Prestige/Origin attack, and later it becomes Greater Fire Sword - Scorch - Fire Sword - Scorch, repeat. Anyone not caring about this just replace Scorch for Incinerate. - The uptime on AoEs is great but not gapless. There will be a near two second gap in Combustion - Fire Sword Circle - Burn. This is not a terrible thing since it can be a moment to slip in Fire Sword to proc the ATO. - Greater Fire Sword is a better place to have the ATO since it hits much much harder than the regular Fire Sword (188 VS 390 with the same animation time) but that means no ATO proc until level 25. This may or may not be a deal breaker and it may or may not matter overall but for those who spend longer at max level consider mix and matching the slotting of Scorch and Fire Sword so that GFS has the slotting of Fire Sword with the ATO (preferably with the purple damage proc in GFS instead of Fire Sword). - Burn is no longer a great ST attack but it is still ok in a pinch. Once everything is fluid there is no need to use it for ST but while leveling and whenever there are at least two enemies in range then swap a Scorch for it when it is up.

Try Fire/Fire. I'm sporadically leveling one now that I've milked WoW's newest expansion and it can achieve a rotation of only AoEs. Which feels really satisfying when in an AoE situation since who wants to hit ST attacks when surrounded by mobs?

TFs will always spawn AVs. If you are super geared it will be fine, but if packing generic IOs then take some Envenomed Daggers from the P2W vendor or you might find you can't outpace the AV's regen.

Dass me.

I believe something like 'when one proc procs all procs go into an internal CD of X seconds'. X seconds can be 1.5 seconds and all it means is one proc per power. Seems okay by me and kills proc bombing as along as passive procs like Performance Shifter and Panaceia are given exemptions.

In the mountains.

FF procs can't trigger indefinitely. Others have tested (not myself) and reported the FF procs will extend the duration but at some point stop before an enforced pause happens. Regardless PPM would say keeping FF procs happening back to back to eternity is not going to be a thing. Of course the IO slotting is not mirrored. This does not even make sense. It's different secondaries, one is resist, one is defense. The reason some people like SR so much is so little that they have to invest to reach their goals leaving the rest of their slotting to do as they please. Stone is less offense based than Fire but has easier means to reach defense goals so they slot more offensively. Not taking hover/Fly/Evasive? Sure? Not sure what you want me to say here. Not to use my favorite travel power to... do better at a test? Same with Focused Accuracy. I (try) not to stick to the threadmill of Council/ITF which puts me against exotic enemies who like to debuff ToHiy. FA makes me immune to those. When I post builds I make mention of this and that if it is not something people do that they ought to change for Gloom. Stone does no need more recharge. It has no clickies other than Earth's Embrace which is casually perma, unlike Fire with Consume and Healing Flames. So what is the point of adding more recharge once the ST rotation is gapless? You're missing the point here. I'm not aiming for best times (which is the majority of your advice about) not am I competing against others to see who wins. I was pitting a build against another build. Fire still came out decently ahead once I realized the criminal mistake I made.

... Why yes, I could be lying about it. Indeed, that's an option too. 👍

Not from the forums. It is discord talk from/between the devs.

Seen from the prism of 'bosses are what survive longer in a group' then Vulnerability its ass in a new spawn (does not trigger agro), Aim, nuke, unleash all AoEs. Boss which usually is what survives longer took 15% more damage, and its available at every spawn.

That's your problem right there. By level 30 you have access to 90% of the IOs your level 50 build will be using with the exception of purples. Accept the advice given and start splurging on the recovery uniques and slotting the cheaper stuff. The term you're looking for is attuned and that's what 90% of your IOs will be even in your level 50 maxed out build. Bare minimum check the P2W vendor and buy the Recovery Serums which are cheap as heck and coupled with Hasten will fix a lot of your endurance problems. If you happen to not know how to sell merits check the guide in my signature. Do post your current build and someone will help so that you can have more fun. As you've pointed out playing with bare bones makes for a very miserable experience robbing the fun of logging on. I'm rootin' for ya.