Sovera

You can have either. Near zero difference if the slotted damage is compared. CAK does a tiny bit more damage and can slot a -res proc if you intend to break pylons. But while leveling there is no point in using Thunder Kick since it is very bad in terms of damage. For leveling the rotation is something like Storm Kick, Crane Kick, Cobra Strike, Thunder Kick, Storm Kick. If there are gaps then mix in more Thunder Kicks. But around 20-ish the recharge starts kicking in and Thunder Kick can be completely removed from the equation. Without Cobra Strike then Thunder Kick would still be in use until 38. At max level and depending if you never intend to exemplar pick CAK or Cobra Strike. If you do exemplar lower than 33 then Thunder kick is back on the menu.

Yep, good catch. It's been up for years and no one ever noticed. I've replaced it for a real leveling build for Fire/MA.

In practical terms you might find you do not need more than a procced out Ground Zero as your opener. That will hurt mobs plenty, then just mop with Spin and Shockwave. Personally I would just ditch Shockwave because of this. Might as well open with Ground Zero and then focus on a boss and throw Spin when ever it is up to kill the rest at the same time the boss is being wailed on. But if you want to add more procs the usual second target is Radiation Therapy. I would leave Spin as a strong and fast AoE to mop up because procmonstered GZ and RT will take too long to recharge to help more than once per spawn. That double leaves Shockwave as excessive but it's a bit of a sin to pick up Claws and not have Shockwave, so give it a try. My Fire Armor/Claws characters don't have Shockwave because I feel Spin and Burn are all the AoE I need. You might feel the same after throwing GW, RT, then Spin, and see you only have 3-4 mobs still alive, mobs you can now Spin while focusing on the boss(es) who will have the most HP. But Shockwave offers nice mitigation, and you can/could keep Radiation Therapy as a second heal instead because you got more AoE than you can realistically use per spawn. Once you're down to 3-4 mobs it's Spin and single target mopping. Looking at Mids Shockwave does 270 damage while a procced out Radiation Therapy does 418. But shockwave recharges in 4.5 seconds (faster thanks to the Forcefeedback proc having a chance to go off with multiple targets) and RT in 24 seconds (hence my above 'only usable once per spawn'). So by using showckwave twice you've already done more damage than RT while also KDing mobs. Of the three scenarios I lean towards procced out GW, RT, and ditching Shockwave. This is simply because Shockwave is a cone and demands positioning whereas we can jump into the middle of a group and PbAoE three times with GZ, RT and Spin. Then just spin to mop up while focusing on the boss. Mileage may vary but respecs are cheap so give it a try and see which fits you best.

You can swap Gamma Boost for Ground Zero and use the slots for it. You will lose 86% resistance to endurance and recovery debuffs. Or remove Taunt, take the slots from Gamma Boost but keep it to have the debuff protection. Or if you don't use Fly you can replace Evasive Maneuvers for Ground Zero while taking the slots from Gamma Boost. World's your oyster.

Try this. Your resistances are at 83.44%/83.54% with one stack of the ATO in Follow-up. With a second stack you go to 90%. S/L defense is at near 40% and Barrier will put it at 45% if you find yourself in trouble and need to use Barrier (it's only when you're at a point where you need to use Barrier that you really need that last 5% anyway).

Fire Armor can do the new Manti without even using inspirations, but you do need to slot IOs. You should not be having endurance problems if you've slotted Consume. It's a full bar of endurance every minute. Why do you resist buying IOs during leveling anyway? Most can be slotted by level 22/27 and will accompany you to level 50 without needing to be changed. The ATOs at level 10 even. As for blinds the easiest way is just to slot a Rectified Reticule +perception unique in Build-up. Since two of them give 1.88% S/L defense it is something you'll probably want anyway

And it's not going to change anything. People who only wanted to farm will still want to only farm, people who did not want to spare 30 minutes a day to do a Tinpex to slowly gear their characters between farming still won't want to do it even after the Devs come out and say 'this is City of Heroes, not City of AE'.

Any character can do any farm if they are built for general gameplay. All farmers do is build the cheapest and simplest focused character for a specific content. None of my brutes or tanks with Fire Armor falters (or even needs healing) in Market Crash if farming the first mission is desired. They don't care about Arachnos or CoT either. In fact other than -def factions they mow through things. Build a character to handle all types, or just one type, and it can farm pretty much any of the easier factions. Will this be harder? Lol, like copying a build from the forums is hard. Will it be mroe expensive than the cheap farm builds? Yeah, but a farmer should not be hurting for money.

And they might just do that. How can I know? But only when the devs do a pass for AR. So far this particular tweak was for the defense change that they did which they wanted to go easy and see if it was not too much. I can't speak for the devs.

Understandable. But lets not forget these changes are not roleplay based but rather gameplay. Smash and Lethal are already rolled into one and with the exception of Parry powers that buff Smash exclusively, or Slash, any bonus or toggle will buff both be it defense or resistance. So a grenade doing Smash and Slash makes less sense than doing fire and... smash, or slash. Slash if wanting to adhere a bit more to realism. I never 'got' why electricity is energy and smash, or sonic being energy and smash, or reversing it why ice does cold and slash. After all if we get hit by an ice club we get our brains spilling out, we don't freeze, and throwing an ice spear is the same with our body perforated at which point the cold of holding an icicle is inconsequential.

Defenders keep on chiming (see what I did there?) so loudly the changes will end up being scrapped like the obviously better changes to Rage because it could no longer be stacked.

Agreed. Just like Neverwinter Nights had Improved Invisibility be an important buff because it had a 50% chance of making enemies miss so does Confuse have room to be an important power. But as it is Confused is more like Mind Controlled with mobs 100% hitting each other and 100% ignoring players. Things that would/may make Confuse less cheese might be: - Friendly fire is turned on. Enemies now hit themselves with AoE, or, players get hit by AoEs from NPCs but NPCs also will be affected. - 50% (numbers to be tuned) chance of enemies hitting their allies instead of players (true confusion either because they are blinded by a fog or spores increased their paranoia). I'm just rehashing what Enjoy said but it does seem like a better version for Confuse, though not the current OP one. In particular a single Plant player makes a mockery of the game with Seeds of Confusion in a 15 second cooldown that affects a whole spawn.

The major argument appears to be from AFK farmers. There is nothing I can add to this. Wanting to not play the game but get rewards is a very weird demand. For anything else, well, Market Crash first mission, no super stunners but the end boss, 100% XP, no pre-requisites other than being 50 (but AE still works for that), an ocean of Freakshow, vet levels, rewards, woo. It's not an AFK farm though, but once having logged out and back in to reset the map and having got the veteran levels and incarnate XP the AE awaits.

Nailed it. Testing done (for a blaster) showed a remarkable improvement for the set. Raw damage counts too but it is not being accepted in practical terms. Like the reasoning behind certain things being the mythical 'damage cap' because in a spreadsheet a Kin can fully buff a team. But in practice people are exploding the minions most of the time before the kin has even gone close to the spawn. The extra damage is bound to help more for 95% of the game and still be a damage boost for the team when finding a hard target.

This is very well explained. It is the 'I-have-just-been-ressurected-and-am-toggling-up' scenario. My toggle row slots are always in the same position no matter the AT or combo set: 1st is my anti mez toggle. GO UP FIRST NAO!! Then my secondary (or primary) armor toggles since they are the beefiest. Then Tough, then Weave, then damage auras, then Combat Jumping, then Focused Accuracy. I do not start with CJ or Focused accuracy.

Wow, a week end to be level 50 and fully geared? Okay, I don't think we will be able to agree on that.

Counter it then. I don't know what you're not agreeing with so I can't try to argue it. Is the argument about my estimate of two weeks to be fully geared and from 0 to 50?

That's assumption not backed by anything. You don't know the % of farmers playing the game or their contribution in terms of %. The way you phrased it farmers provide 70% of the market. Everyone online is going to be doing something (except roleplayers, we love to stand around just chatting). At the moment I type this there are 290 players online. If everyone is playing they are all generating recipes out of thin air.

Er... Two weeks from zero to fully geared with purples is what now? I don't speak out of my ass. I started a character with no inf and no IOs and in one day was level 40 with 46 million liquid cash and several uniques bought. No playing with the market and only selling merits from doing the TFs while I leveled. Ridiculous is indeed a good work, but perhaps not for that claim. When you want a fully leveld and geared character in three days then yes. Seriously, use the test server and just click to be level 50 and print IOs if your goal is to be max level and geared but not play the game.

Her brother gave me the news that a car accident happened and everyone in the car lost their lives. She had disappeared for a month now and I was worried sick as the days happened and someone I spoke to nearly every day gave no sign of life. Squeakie was my best friend. I had known her for close to ten years through thick and thin. She was one of the best persons I knew capable of juggling a RL relationship, volunteering at a home for the elderly, having a social group of RL friends, do D&D sessions, donating blood, donating time, be part of the red cross first response effort, battle against the world injustices. I have done my share of ugly crying today and typing this it is happening again. She was my best friend and sole confident with whom memes were shared, jokes, with who I would vent about bad days. My life now has a hole that will never be filled again and I see the days as a succession of no-Squeakie-to-share-my-life-with. I have many acquaintances, but friends? There was that one. I bring this here because though she did not use the forums much she was active in the game and had many friends. Friends that I cannot easily reach and let them of what happened. Perhaps word of mouth will reach them so that there is closure.

That's a holdover from playing Fire Armor. The Blessing is not needed, and melee radial would too.

It seems disingenuous. A 'newbie' does not just wander into a random building, knock their elbow on a console and open a mission, then wander in like the ape in 2001 Space Odyssey. A 'newbie' that somehow discovered the AE or has been lured into it will just log in post patch, ask in /b where the AE building went, be answered, be told where it is now, and then walk there by crossing a zone. The idea that it alleviates start zone lag seems more logical, though it apparently hits the game so much I wonder why the AE(s) don't get their own zone like the previous Luau.

I suppose we can look at it under the prism that once an AT has used their Aim + Gaussian and their nuke most minions will be dead-ish leaving, in fact, 5-6 mobs left in the form of a few lieuts and bosses.

Scrappers are not that far ahead of Brutes. They are if certain combos are taken but it means being locked into those choices. But once the casual player wanders from that path? No, not really. Pylons just skew things so much that even Brutes (and not just certain power set combos) are sneered at. In the meanwhile Trapdoor tests between Scrappers and Brutes are 30 seconds apart.

People throwing fire from their hands and a magical well granting divine powers is fine, but people using a Danger Room to practice their powers and train is a no no? Lets not bring roleplay decisions into gameplay.