Sovera

We wouldn't all need taunt auras if only there was not that anchor dragging everyone down because 'that's how it's always been'. Across reference with 5% chance to miss. The flee code is horrible and adds nothing other than wanting to have a character with a taunt aura in the team. That's it. How it -should- be is that squishies fear for drawing agro since the enemies would turn on them and not much someone else in the team can do other than the regular healing, buffing, or trying to draw agro by going for damage first. If a character has a taunt aura then the mobs will ignore the rest of the team and wail on them. What we -have- is that any mob, all mobs, from elementals to undead to robots to humans, takes a few hits and decides to go visit their cousin in the africas, and then a minute or two later returns at a lazy pace. Horrible gameplay. Might make sense in WoW like games where quests are about killing one enemy at a time and a spawn might be three enemies, where at 20% HP they start fleeing. But this is CoH where enemies come in packs of ten or twelve. Oh hello, either burst them once at 30% or be prepared to see a gnu herd scattering in the savannah once the 20% threshold is crossed. And that's when they don't start fleeing if most of their buddies were downed. Bonus points if it's a kill all mission. But Sov, someone will point out, is it not realistic that the enemies will run if they are taking damage? And a taunt aura magically makes the enemies -not- flee if they are taking damage... why? It does not fuss me because I only play Fire Armor with Brutes or Tankers, but why is this 'realistic' view not applied when mobs will stand on my napalm patch because... what? I'm not even calling their mom names since I'm not using Taunt. I'm just existing, and they decide it is fine to stay on the napalm patch wailing on the panzer. Get rid of the flee code and not having a taunt aura will not nearly matter as much except for the literal tanking characters who want all the enemies focused on them.

I'm trying a Psi/Fire having only done it with a Tanker. And it's actually behaving quite alright, though to be fair I've not reached end game and robots. Even so all the fire will surely mitigate Psi's problems while all the FF proc-ing will keep the Burns churning out. The progression felt nice too. Did Posi 1 0x6 at level 8 and the low level Fury made mince meat out of things. Then after a trouble-less Posi 2 with Insight noticeably helping with the damage I went into Synapse and Clockwork being weak to psi kept the ball rolling. Psi Blade Sweep is garbagey and tbh once having Burn I stopped using it, but for Synapse and under it's the sole AoE -and- doubles as third ST skill. It hits decently hard but 69% (why -exactly- 69%, devs of old?) makes it hard to hit enemies. Frost it ain't. I can understand narrow but long cones, or short but wide cones, but short and narrow surpasses me. Regardless it's just three TFs and since the build lacks a third ST skill and AoE for such low levels I picked it up. At Yin I had both Greater Psi Sword and Burn and it was soloed in 46 minutes which is a bit slow for a Fire Armor Brute but forgivable due to only using Burn for an AoE. It actually did not go too badly since I could either finesse the Freak Tanks with a timely KU from TK Blow or Burst with Greater Psi Sword and prevented a good number of them from healing before being killed. I could probably better that time since I was trying to force a 'no inspiration' run but due to have all toggles with one slot only it wasn't working too well (two deaths which accounted for part of the extra minutes). I was eager to try Mass Levitate so went straight to Moonfire and soloed it in a respectable hour and six minutes. Mass Levitate is a really good breather since it has such a long animation for enemies. Between being tossed up really high, then landing, then having to do the animation to get up. It's not Scrapper Shockwave but it's close and with Burn ticking under the bodies as they were tossed and the FF proc the damage was pretty good. The -recharge was extremely obnoxious but once complete the build has a decent 80% resistance to it. So far I am using GPS but still unsure whether to keep it or not. A long time ago someone ran tests (but on a Scrapper) where not using GPS ended being the same damage due to Insight's damage boosting. In a perfect world/game we would have a good UI to track Insight and only use it at the last second but this is not the case. I am not -super- impressed by GPS yet, but it's a disservice to compare it while leveling to the final product where it boasts of two purple damage procs that have a hefty 83% chance of going off. To keep Insight rolling for longer I'm not overthinking too much and try to replace GPS with Burn if possible. In AoE this works nicely as Burn, Mass Levitate, Psi Blade, TK Blow, Psi Blade can sort of be looped allowing to keep Insight from being used. After two rotations I use GPS on a boss so it does not go to waste. Overall it's pretty pleasant to play and the damage feels good. Triple procced Burn melts a whole spawn and what survives gets tossed in the air which seems to reliably triggers Insight. Mids says Mass levitate has a 20% chance to trigger Insight and a 40% chance to trigger Insight. I have no idea why it has two such things (any idea, @Bopper?). The 20% might be per enemy which would explain the reliable triggering. Regardless it makes mobs whine to have survived triple procced Burn and be tossed in the air, only to land and be assailed by Insight powered hits before they can even get to their feet. It wasn't unheard of to kill a red boss before it got up. If there is a wish for it I can whip a leveling build.

Yes?

But think of the 0.1 second that they saved!!

One last try with trying to keep one red up at all times..... 49 minutes. Ah CoH, never change. The extra slots now in recovery help but the drain is not stopped. Recovery Serums are needed and I predict that they will always be considering there is Tough, Weave, Minerals and Focused Accuracy (optional) still to come. This will definitely keep on requiring aid and Cardiac might be needed.

Started leveling this. As anyone who knows me I'm too much of a damage hound to settle for max survival. But I wanted to give it a try. So triple slotting my shields might not have been needed straight away. With Storm Kick I was at 50% defense across the board (amplifier running). This time I went with a team but Posi 1, 2 and Synapse could not hurt me as is obvious when running defense so high in the lowbie TFs. Having accepted that and accepted my tray was sitting unused I turned it into this. Not in a farmer sort of way of spamming them because in a team we don't have enough drops, but I had plenty to just always have one red up and it helped. In fact, having no need for inspirations this seems like the normal way of playing with this combo. I then reached Yin and used it as the usual test it has become. First try 55 minutes, but I felt it was unfair with three attacks, one had four slots while the other two had three slots, so I re-did it once they were all slotted up and in the end it was 46 minutes. Clamor still needs one small purple at least since DDR scales with level. Same time as the Ice/Fire Armor Brute, Rad/Stone Brute, and Rad/Rad Brute. But less than the Fire/Rad Melee Tank and Rad/Fire Armor Brute. The usual 5-6 minutes that Burn shaves off but still surprisingly it kept up with Rad Melee and Irradiated Ground. I might yet run it one third and last time with the one-red-up-all-the-time. Recovery Serums had to be run back to back though I have not slotted all the extra recovery yet. I thought it might be better without Irradiated Ground being a hog but not much difference was felt.

You're missing the point because it's subtle since my character has tastefuly set chest sliders. But pay a bit more attention and you'll notice CoH has boob physics now 😆 Just for that one emote though.

P H Y S I C S! @ArchVileTerror

You will get there. I will prepare a tiny throne tou can rest on between running to fetch coffee.

Another variant. I could not stomach leveling (and exemplaring) with only two attacks, so this one replaces CaK for Cobra Strike. Because of Thunder Kick being a forced pick (and too weak to be of actual use) powers needed to be shuffled which makes a mess out of things. In exchange the build is now pretty examplar friendly with all that's needed available from Posi 1 onwards. I've decided that Earth's Embrace is what I could push back. The softcapped-defenses-while-leveling will have to be enough without the HP buffer and munching the occasional green. It's back up in time for Yin which is where things usually pick up. But someone can swap Evasive Maneuvers instead.

But I'd lose the bonus when exemplared... Or.. uhm... Actually, it's a PvP set so the bonus is available at all levels, right?

Small update. I'd rather have the +res proc in Storm Kick to spam it and this also lets me have a damage proc in all attacks. Nothing changes since three-stacks-and-Barrier remain needed for hardcapping resists. Darn annoying being forced to take Thunder Kick which in turn forces to take Crippling Axe Kick. I would rather take Cobra Strike and eat the small damage loss but in exchange have my early rotation instead of waiting until 35.

I forgot to mention that the lack of clickies extends to Earth's Embrace. It doesn't actually heal for any appreciative numbers so it's best to just use on CD to keep the regen going and the massive HP buffer on. The regen alone isn't enough though, at some point heals are going to be needed. But since the armor does everything else so well I suppose inspirations are always going to be a fall back. And in this particular case the constant KDs from Dragon's Tail will also help with a breather. That said and despite the noises made about Tankers being 'overbuffed' I feel their damage is pretty mushy outside of Fire Armor. Brimstone helps some in this case, but since it lacks an interaction (more damage with a Brute, can crit with a Scrapper/Stalker) the damage increase is small.

Changes to the secondaries allow to skip Thunder Kick so this is the updated build: But sadly I couldn't do it -_- There is no 90% to all resistances with overcapped defenses here, only the stench of abject failure. Ugh, but it was so close... Well, it's still there but it's going to depend on Barrier's 5% and fishing for the third ATO proc which is not a reliable thing to achieve. 70% to E/N with one stack, 76.7% with two, 83.4% with three stacks, 88.4% with Barrier, 89.4% with Reactive Defenses unique once at 90% HP. Only Toxic will be capped with two stacks of the ATO and Barrier, but everything else except Psi will require the three stacks. On the upside other than Fire and Cold everything is (over)softcapped even to incarnate content (add 5% to the defense numbers from Barrier). Hasten is at a pretty decent 129 seconds and I almost did not slot the FF procs because, welp, other than Hasten there are no clickies. But sure, why not? There's nearly 2 EPS per second but it does not account account for two Performance Shifters and the Panaceia which is.. roughly... ish.. another one EPS. I'd still keep Recovery Serums on hand, just in case. Popping Granite avoids all those gimmicks though but it's really a case of pondering whether it is worth it. It only increases DDR by 9% if Mids can be trusted. Frankly this looks better than Rad Armor considering it comes with DDR, it's avoiding most attacks by dodging them instead of taking them and their ill debuffs, and has a passive damage boost.

As Peregrine said. I found out by accident, and it also works in a full team if we're the first exiting the mission so I'm always careful to wait until I see people left the mission before saving one loading screen by going straight to the portal base.

Decided to try my beloved Ice/Fire Armor to see how it behaved in the Yin test (be in the low thirties and still running amplifiers to make the test equal, so I couldn't use the one I already had). The truth is... it didn't behave particularly awesomely. 46 minutes which shows the weakness of Frost in only hitting part of the enemies instead of that nice PbAoE where we just sit there and hit all mobs. The survival was not exceptional either despite Ice Patch. Ice Patch is, in my opinion, a bit like having an extra defensive toggle. We definitely notice we're taking more damage without it, but it also doesn't save from death if overwhelmed. Breaking line of sight and throwing an Ice Patch does do wonders to help survival, but it's something like an extra 20-30% in the survival scale.

There are two things that can help: A) Don't need to be super focused on attack sets because cosmetics matter more. Simply choosing the cloudy lightningy body aura can already do half the concept. B) A common thing in volcanic eruptions is the 'dirty lightning storms' like Erratic just mentioned. This is where the static electricity from the volcanic dust creates lightning (googlable and also a spiffy sight). I had a volcano-deity-avatar character whose use of Judgement Ionic was perfectly in character. Combining both you can do Stone Armor (with lava skin) and Elec Melee. Or Fire Armor (with just one of the toggles using the Dark palette so you get a smoky sooty FX). Or Elec/Elec. Or Elec/War Mace because-you-know-who.

Atlas is jam packed with Hellions. Or do you mean because it was named? I have fun spawning Babbage on top of Positron when I solo Synapse. All it takes is teleporting out of mission instead of exiting it and it appears where I appear, which is on Positron when I go get the immobilizer. It's actually soloable then because Positron and Valkyrie hit hard.

As someone who was just shown an interesting tidBit of these new emOtes I must say: thank yOu dev who lovingly crafted that small detail. If you'll oBlige with an account I'll tranSfer some inf as a tip.

Funny enough I hate Freaks because of their heals and ressurections. But I do wonder why people farm the AE when the first mission of the Market Crash is a farm map thinly disguised as a TF. Full XP, but I suppose not full inf?

Instead of trying to lift Fire/Cold defense you should work on Smash/Lethal which is the single most common type of damage. You'll never get your E/N resistances very high though, but it's not bad trying to get it as high as you can. Something like this then (change powers and travel choices to what you'd like). Despite Offensive Adaptation being toggled on it's on the razor's edge of having 90% to S/L with two stacks of the ATO and Barrier's 5% (71.39% + two stacks equal 13.4% + 5% from Barrier equal 89.79%), and since having Barrier E/N defense was also balanced at 40% like S/L defense so everything gets softcapped when Barrier is used. If the content is not hard enough to require barrier then those last 5% are not needed either. Recharge debuff protection is nearly capped too. But it's going to rely on DNA Siphon for endurance which should not be a proble msince you get it pretty early, but for long single target fights you might find your endurance does not keep up so keep a few Recovery Serums at hand on the off hand chance you fight something for a minute or two instead of several somethings you can DNA Siphon off.

I wouldn't go Claws on a brute tbh. The set is great but loses its edge on a Brute and turns mushy between Follow-up and Fury not mixing well, and the extra recharge on Spin and Shockwave. It's just min maxing though. Claws/Energy Armor has my vote.

Something like this then. Doesn't mean it's better than the other build though, it's just what I'd use:

Something like this. I didn't order the levels at which slots should be taken.

Ice/Fire Armor is still my favorite. Blooms early and mocks pretty much most challenges via a simple line of sight break and Ice Patch, then it burns things down because dead things don't hurt back. See all those tricks they were pulling? Kiting, carefully choosing which mobs to kill first and leaving others until the end? Ice/Fire just laffed and burned stuff.