Sovera

I got this one. 40% S/L with Barrier for the last 5%. Energy and S/L resistances at 70% with Barrier for the last 5%. Negative will be at 65% with Barrier. Hasten at 128 seconds with one target in range leaving Beta Decay+FF procs to fill the gap. It still needs some work since I think it has too much endurance recovery considering Radiation Therapy, and I'd also like to quadruple proc Slash since it has no need for recharge or endurance reduction.

Not gonna say no, but missed opportunity by not going Plant because Seeds of Confusion is defs some opiate of the masses there 😜

It's free, it's not going anywhere (fingers crossed). Can you stomach eating ice-cream at every meal for years? I think not. So why playing the same game for years in a row? Like ice-cream you come back when you feel like it. I've taken three or four breaks and after my latest alt leveleing spree (27 alts in less than a month) I'm not feeling CoH-ish anymore. Waiting on Lost Ark this 8th then I'll disappear for a while.

Pretty much. While what Hjarki said is correct CoH is a much simpler game. Don't tell me we run ten times the Trapdoor mission and don't get an average time for a certain set's performance.

I do not want to sound confrontative but with your refusal to spend 15 minutes total giving us numbers your original post on Savage is about your gut feelings.

Minute and a half is something I dream about when my non procced, non Moonbeam, build had me giving up at 2:30 and the pylon still at a third of its HP.

So, you have no metrics about it behaving well other than your 'feeling'? If you'd check the Trapdoor thread there are many people posting and not all are proc monster builds.

Another Savage/Stone test. Savage Leap has a reputation of being 'super good' when procced out so I did just that adding two more to make it quadruple procced. It 'felt' a bit faster with minions dying in the initial Flurry + Leap, but, ultimately there was not much difference with a 5:50 time as opposed to 5:47 with just two procs. Testing is the best instead of feels. So I thought, people keep talking about placing the -res proc there. So I did another room removing the Scirroco for the Fury of the Gladiator -res and got 6 minutes. There is RNG in this so I'm not saying having the -res proc in there made the build weaker since 10 seconds is well within variance. The build still feels good though, and exemplars well since the ST rotation is so forgiving (just go with Vicious Slash, Savage Strike, Maiming Slash, Savage Strike, instead of Vicious, Maiming, Savage), but Savage's DoT's have little room in CoH. Mobs are too squishy to wait for slow DoTs to happen, and random DoTs at that. I've stopped relying on them after time and time again landing a couple hits and walking away just to see the mob survived on a sliver of HP. The animations are pretty but too floaty as we flail but mobs don't react and their HP bar has that delay until the DoTs starts piling up.

Tell me how that goes with Cabal's Hurricane 😜

Being debuffed by CoT, Banished Pantheon, Tsoo, Cabal, etc, is not something the +perception unique saves us from though, though it does help with the blinds, yeah.

We can save a lot of time for the devs if they'd just instate a 'invisible' dye we can use to hide armors. I've already requested it on the suggestion forum a while back. Funny thing? It's already in the game. Pick Radiation Siphon, check the dyes. The darkest makes the effects near invisible instead of the usual greyish black.

From testing I guess. Try a pylon or Trapdoor test in the Scrapper forums and let us know what times you got.

Not quite so, but yes. Sacrifices are made for more damage. There is nothing new to this. If the sacrifices can be lived with then it's all a gain, or you might need to spam Recovery Serums or Amplifiers or inspirations. For example I always pick Focused Accuracy because I loathe being debuffed, but how often do I run content where I am accuracy debuffed? I could take Gloom, but I don't, thus my damage is hurt for the sake of lazy security.

What you want is to grab Mids and rebuild your character there so that we can look at it. - Most of the time Focused Accuracy is not needed to reach 95% but this depends on how expensive your build is/what difficulty you're running content. I personally run it all the time but it can be used just for content where Blinds or accuracy debuffing are happening. - Max damage is a loaded question. By context you probably mean in a single target scenario. For this you have the Pylon thread in this forum even though it's not the best test since it leads to 'cheating' with -res which AVs mostly ignore and the pylon itself ignoring the damage types. Overall I'm going to say Energy Melee. - AVs need to be whittled. Even a character with 3-4 minutes breaking a pylon can take 7-8 minutes to kill a level 50 +3 AV.

Pretty darn impressive. That's some Scrapper times there.

With all this talk of BD I felt I had to give it another honest try. It wasn't very scientific since once I got to the 2:30 mark and the pylon was still with a third of its HP I just quit. May need to be heavily procced.

DB/Stone. Safe to say it's not a set that shines on Brute. Four (??) minutes to down a pylon despite having -res procs. Savage Melee without -res did it in 3:20. I was going to Trapdoor it but it was such a poor showing my interest in doing so melted.

Elec Melee is just.... not very good on any account. If you look at Mids all the ST attacks are just so low. It's even worse than Ice Melee. Normally I might say go Energy Melee but its AoE is not all that great if you don't make room for Power Crash, and you really really want to kill those mobs since even minions will debuff you like mad. To be honest I haven't tried to solo the ITF on a Brute, just a Tanker, so I'm not sure what would really fit. I know people talk well of Shield being able to AFK in the middle of romans which has its appeal. I have been testing Stone Armor but haven't yet decided on what primary would work better, but possibly Rad Melee for the heal and AoE, though Savage Melee keeps up with the AoE and feels much better on the ST front with no long animations.

Tested with no incarnate clickies used. - Fire Armor/Rad Tanker: 6:57 (no Atom Smasher). - Rad Melee/Stone Brute: 6:13. - Rad/ Fire Armor Brute: 5:55 (no Atom Smasher). - Savage/Stone Brute: 5:47. - Energy Melee/Fire Brute, my main: 4:57. (A) Both the Rad Melee with Fire Armor pairings were hurt by not having Atom Smasher which makes their performance less indicative of their power, but I had to pick between Atom Smasher and Devastating. Someone else running it with both Devastating and Atom Smasher will get better numbers. (B) The Rad Melee/Stone ignored mobs while its HP and endurance remained steady where the Fire Armors had to use their heal and endurance clickies. Near similar times only because of having Atom Smasher. (C) Savage/Stone is deceptively good despite what pylon times say (3:20) with the fast animations eliminating much of corpse blasting and Trapdoor melting fast anyway. Even the robots in the test melted at a good clip with the quadruple DoT-age (Savage's bleeds, Brimstone procs, Mud Pots, and Degenerative).

I had this talk with a friend insisting they've extensively played Elec Melee and that it is good AoE. 'Don't give me gut feelings,' I said, 'There is a test going on, try it, tell me how you did and we can compare'. This is how I walked into Trapdoor with my Fire Armor/Martial Arts expecting to dazzle until I had the numbers.

Nothing on a Tanker will make you close to damage on other ATs. Even a Brute is comfortably ahead. My best Brute Is an EM/Fire and does a 2:30 pylon without -res involved, my Fire/EM Tanker does it in 3:20 minutes without -res involved. I can lower the time to 2:30 by adding -res procs and Gloom, but I can also do that on the Brute and lower its time further. My Fire/Ice Melee Tanker does a pylon in 4:20, the Brute does it in 3:20. After a binge of Brute playing I see them safely ahead. A Tanker's damage is always mushy and even with Fire Armor propping it. After doing tests soloing TFs the fabled extra AoE size and more targets does little more than shorten the gap a bit but then gain is lost once hitting harder enemies which will slow the map clearing. While people talk about how Tankers were grossly overbuffed in terms of damage I just don't see it, It's certainly a lot better than it was, and it did a good job at narrowing the gap and making Tankers relevant for other than being HP walls, but Tankers are still last in all sorts of damage. On the other hand Brutes survive 'enough' (and more than enough if taking Stone Armor) for all content but the ASF, but even then it doesn't matter a lot since even the hardiest of Tankers die if they don't follow the mechanics. So yeah, play a Tanker to be the last to die, but don't expect records even when paired with Fire Armor. Take the Brute and be squishier but kill much faster until your build is in place with all the IOs and powers are taken, and then your survival will be 'enough'. Enough as in, you'll survive 95% of the content. There is nothing gained in surviving more if not tackling the last 5%. Stone Armor on a Brute in particular is... strong. Softcapped defenses, a weakness to E/N by only having 40-50% resistances, softcapped to psi, more HP than my regular Tanks (they have about 2.4-2.5, but the Stone Armor Brute has about 3k), Brimstone adds enough of a damage boost that my Energy Melee/Stone has the same pylon times than my EM/Fire while, of course, having weaker AoE. You can, of course, also run a Stone Armor tanker and I do have a silly Stone/Martial Arts build that boasts of 60% defenses and also 76% minimum to all with two stacks of the ATO, but I gave up because I was whittling mobs... so... slowly... even with Brimstone. Considering the Brute does not reach its resistance cap alone and that it only gets to about 60% to S/L and 40-50% to E/N using a Scrapper is valid to enjoy the above numbers, but Stone Armor has no agro grabbing for Scrappers. Which is fine if always teaming up since there ought to always be one Brute or Tanker in the team, but otherwise consider Stalker depending on the primary.

By far. Any single one of those is worth more than 0.16, and it's the loss of three.

I've pretty much reached the end of things to test outside of maybe trying Katana (I'd love to try Claws as well, but...). The 'best', in my opinion, remains the first option: Rad Melee. Good AoE with IG really pushing the envelope as low as Posi 1, with mediocre ST that can be faked as higher by cheating with -res procs in IG. Of this both the Contaminated Strike and the Devastating Blow are valid builds. Devastating helps with the mediocre ST but Contaminated is much more fluid and its rotation allows to heal at some nutty speeds, but not even the -res procs disguise the damage loss despite the math done somewhere in this thread. Which just goes to show why I always prefer to test instead of mathing it out.

It gives 5% base with one enemy in range, then 3.5% per enemy. Those are different variables but in game with one enemy in range both appear and it ends being 8.5%. Big spawns are where it shines but big spawns don't tend to stay big for long once AoEs start flying, even when solo.

The standard 8.5% recharge?