Sovera

Pretty much. It still has a CC component but I found it less useful when not on a Scrapper who can chain it and mobs barely have time to get up before being knocked down again. There's a post with Shockwave in though.

Everything works if you're a Brute. You need to be more specific. It would be difficult for any AT not to solo stuff at 0x1 with no bosses, so you must want more. x4? x8? +1x8 with bosses?

Went to the test server to try the Rad/Fire build. First try 2:15. Better than my EM/Fire Brute who got 2:30. Next try I got 3 minutes 😄 Oh CoH, never change... Third try 2:39. ...of course the Rad/Fire cheats outrageously since it has two -res procs in IG which work very well for pylons. So for the sake of testing I exchanged those two procs for damage procs. It's not something I would condone but just to see the difference in numbers, aaaaand... 3:40. More tests could be ran but its enough for now.

Ops, my bad. I'm so used to Fire Armor I duplicated the slotting. No need for extra KB protection, distribute those slots as seen fit.

Tried to respect power choices. Couldn't quite squeeze in the numbers I got from the Rad/Rad I posted a bit below but you can look at the slotting there for ideas. Overall I'd say Rad/Rad might fit him better not just because of the numbers but the rotation is simple and forgiving and Irradiated Ground works passively.

Plenty to change. I tried to respect your power choices but pumped your resists up as well as the energy/negative defenses. +5 every slot has little value btw.

...actually I never ran the numbers on EM's cone. Lemme check. So it's about 237 damage. Good news is that it can be chained with Power Crash, Whirling Hands, Power Crash, Total Focus. Repeat. Might not win awards but it's decent.

The idea to pick the animation times was sound, but that's the problem of spreadsheets and math: it is only as good as the data. And that's a problem that happens a bit too much with attempts at doing pure math with something clunky like MMO mechanics: there are too many under the hood mechanics. This isn't even taking in consideration mob resists which further increases the value of EM compared to Claws. So, first off and most important: you're correct that War Mace is stronger than Claws. It hits hard, it has good places for FF and the AoE is decent (but held back by Whirling Mace and animation times), and Clobber is the Spin of single target attacks. But we can't just look at the stronger attacks though. The whole attack chain is needed. Taking WM for example: Clobber (1.5 second animation, 583 damage), Shatter (2.5 animation, 461 damage), Jawbreaker (2 second animation, 380 damage) = 6 second attack loop for 1423 damage. Claws would be (with two Follow-up stacks which distorts thing since it means it is on its second loop, I won't take it against you if you call foul): Follow-up (1.1 second animation for 175 damage), Focus (1.3 second animation for 344 damage), and Slash (1.6 second animation and 386 damage) = 4 seconds and 905 damage. The difference is large, right? But it only took four seconds. So we can still use Follow-up and Focus a second time for a 6.4 seconds (that 0.4 seconds is cheating since its exceeding the attack loop of War Mace) which adds another 519. 519 + 905 = 1424. Now there is some cheating done. The maths assume Claws already has two Follow-up stacks (ergo fight has started and four seconds have elapsed) and that 0.4 is in favor of Claws. This seems to put Claws on par with WM but WM benefits of those big fat crits because it hits in big chunks where Claws does lots of little hits. Then things get absolutely muddied by the above WM rotation not taking in consideration its own Build-up, and how the longer animations when they fail are a bigger loss than Claws where if a hit fails it just launches the next one where WM is still swinging, and how the Superior Critical Strikes 3.5 second duration proc can fit a whole rotation for Claws (the proc counts as long as the animation started before it ended, even if the proc ends before the animation has finished animating). This is why I don't do maths. I just poke at a pylon, then switch slots, then poke at a pylon again, then jot down the results. My only math involves plus and minus signs. Which brings me back to my first post: Claws is not as good as WM, but it blooms early. Level 18 for Focus which means the ST attack chain is done. Spin is idiotically strong with 384 damage against Whirling Mace for 225 and Shockwave may not hit as hard as Crowd Control (231 damage VS 284 damage) but it animates much faster (1.2 second animation VS 2.3 second animation). That said both are left behind by Energy Melee. Now personally what I call my 'best' damage character is a EM/Fire Brute. Because it is a Brute it is weaker in damage than a Scrapper (thank you crappy ATOs) achieving only a a two minute and a half pylon time. Compared to Scrappers who do things in 1:30 or 1:45 that's slow. But, it is well rounded. Burn shores up the weaker AoE of EM allowing the character to blitz through regular missions both chunking bosses but also melting the surrounding minions. Burn also fits nicely because EM has an awkwardly long recharge for Total Focus (I don't want to use slow Energy Transfer) which I can neatly fit it in. And because it is a Brute it is sturdier than a Scrapper which is important to me but not to everyone.

My first trash talk in the forums! I demand a badge. Saying Claws has the lowest damage output is a bold strategy, lets see how it pans out.

Your defense is at 29% instead of 40%. That also explains it. Probably lacking some IOs still. Nvm, I see you didn't have Weave and Combat Jumping toggled. What of the resistances? With S/L at 90% and E/N at 65% (with Barrier) the gains of Meltdown/RoP aren't exactly shining. Might as well keep medium oranges and with one of them E/N goes to 80% instead of taking and slotting and rotating two powers for 25% to E/N. If I was to do that I'd rebuild everything so that I'd be at 90% taking in account those two which would loosen up the resistance goals and perhaps allow to pump E/N more too.

After finding my Fire Armor/Rad tank was slow I slotted the Rad/Fire Armor Brute with a slightly altered build. And then went to solo stuff to test it. It really melts things despite having had to sacrifice Atom Smasher due to lack of slots and finding Burn + Irradiated Ground is enough AoE. I then decided to run the Yin test just to see the difference with the -res procs in IG. Now, granted, it's not a perfect test since A) Amplifiers ran out, and B) the character is in the upper 40s instead of lower 30s so there are a lot more slots. But with that said I'm surprised at a 40 minute run. Same as the Tanker I felt as 'slow' (but lets keep in mind it had Amplifiers and Fiery Embrace at Yin's level) and only four minutes faster than the Rad/Rad Brute and six minutes faster than the Stone Armor/Rad. How it -feels-? It feels like the Brute melts everything at a much faster clip be it ST or in AoE. One BU and a Burn kills a whole spawn compared to the Tanker who feels a lot more anemic.

You should not be incarnated at your level which makes a difference. Even just having Barrier and that permanent 5% to defense will make a big difference. Farms need defense since the enemies never stop and the resistances keep most of it out, but since it never stops coming... That's why you see farmers always with 45% defense on top of 90% resistances. It may not be much of a difference but 40% and 85% adds up. Out of curiosity can you screenshot your defense and resistance from the Power attribute window? Without Defensive Maneuvers toggled on.

I don't see the same numbers. Did you click on Suppression? Options, Configuration, Effects&Math, then on the Suppression bit check the ActivateAttackClick and HitByFoe. I'll have to be honest that you got the resistance goals at least, but the slotting is butchered. Three slots in Burn, unslotted (for their purpose) heal and endurance, and others makes clicking on them barely worth it. I tried to fix it a bit but unfortunately there are not enough slots to go around to reach all goals. I'd suggest doing it on a Tanker who has more freedom in slots. A Brute pays for the extra damage by being a lot tighter in slotting and that means the epic Fire pool has only one free slot for it. Which is drab. But you get a framework and now you can decide what you'd like to sacrifice. You can kill the defense slotting to get the slots for the epic pool for example. Don't touch Tactics IMO as it is providing a much needed boost to accuracy (if you go to Optiosn, Configuration, Exemping&Base Values you can change the ToHit to 48 which simulates hitting +3 enemies which is where the T3 of Alpha leaves the enemies at). Even so the first two attacks 'only' have 89% chance to hit (can use the last free slot for a Kismet's unique but it's not really necessary).

Probably Claws/Bio. But honestly? Pure damage? Energy Melee. I'm talking as seen from a rounded experience where between leveling and exemplaring and max level Claws is a nice classic that has its full attack chain by level 18 instead of 32. It also has a self contained blending machine of an AoE chain and all animations are blistering fast. on top of having FF procs in the important places that speeds up all cooldowns. EM is great and nothing currently hits harder than it, but you level to 26 without a heavy hitter and the build is only complete at 32. Then you need to work out a rotation that tries to let you pull ET only after TF which is... not easy. Most of the time you'll have to rely on slow ET which is fine since it hits like a truck, but between TF taking 2.8 seconds and slow ET taking 2.9 plus the risk of whiffs it can feel like molasses. Pretty-much-old-TW-damage-levels though? EM.

You just buy them off the auction house. They are expensive-ish but not more than the rest of the build. And they will exemplar down like everything. Level 50 HOs are fine too, 53 is just min maxing and probably cheaper to combine level 50 HOs yourself than to buy 53. As for why they give the best bang for the buck. Because of Follow-up you can get away with just one and then slot the +5 damage. Slash can become really heavy with the procs since its endurance cost is low enough that it doesn't need it reduced, and it recharges fast enough it does not need recharge either. But you can either slot 5 Hectacomb and a touch of Death proc (or the -res proc), or slot the 5 Blistering Cold and the Hectacomb damage proc, That last option lets you remove all slots from Strike and be able to spread them around the build as you see fit. You're not going to break anything by changing the slotting around some so go wild.

Done o/

Re-uploaded the thing, let me know if it works.

You're facing debuffers when you're hit like that. What you need is to monitor your defenses (if you don't know how it's explained somewhere in the guide in my signature) and be ready to peel off if they drop to red until your defenses have come back. If you have Hover it's as simple as to simply fly up a bit to be out of reach. Ten seconds is usually enough for the defenses to return to normal and you can start over. Against enemies who debuff (like for example the romans, but not only) pre-emptive use of purples saves trouble. A simple medium purple before the fight should be enough (you can buy more between missions by typing /ah). Other than defense debuffs you should be able to take on the world with those resists and the fast heals.

That's the slippery slope with ill intent that comics are known for. Oh, alternate universe where there is an utopia? Obviously it had to be built on the backs of genocide and a behind-the-scenes mass slavery. Oh killing the Joker? Well obviously it turns the hero into a monster who then proceeds to kill everyone who breaks the law, including jaywalking. Lets not do this. Paraphrasing Luminara I love you (but not in that way either, pants stay on) but the onus is on you to say why removing the 5% miss chance in PvE would break the game. I don't care about PvP so the 5% can say, and I don't care about mobs hitting me and always having a 5% chance to hit. We already have a ToHit chart that shows how much is needed to reach 100% (in this case 95%) chance of hitting a critter. If a person wants to build to reach 100% against +4 they can. Or they decide they don't care and they don't. Like we already have.

You're being obtuse on purpose, Bill. Devs come up with these maths, then tweak them according to need. Empirically other games managed this, so we can manage it here as well. Even as much as saying PvP remains untouched for the 2% of the population who play it. If it's the scenario that a level 1 guzzles yellow inspirations and hits a level 50, so what? Okay, they hit it, and they did 1 damage. Woop? Even hitting +5 already reduces our strongest attacks to double digits.

Something must be odd on your end. Do you have checked the Suppression in the configuration? Hitbyenemy and ActivateAttackClick?

I may be getting older, but I get downright pissed at seeing spam like 'Hot single wants to meet you for sex'. I mean, really pissed. Not in a puritan level, but on the most basic of functions of using such idiotic calls in the year two thousand and twenty one. What mental age am I supposed to be having to see such a thing and click on it? What IQ do the spam makers assume that I have?

I'm a long time advocate of getting rid of the 5% miss chance. We can build to 100% and avoid it, or we decide it's not important and don't do it. Many expansions back WoW had this and the Hit stat was the first thing any guide advised to cap in order to never miss. That is all I ask. 5% misses are not fun, they add nothing to the game, it does not make the game harder or more interesting. I'm not even asking for mobs to have this applied to them so that 50% defense would mean we never get hit. I'm fine with always having a 5% chance the mobs will hit. -I- don't want to have the 5% infuriatingly there from level 1 to level 50 incarnate where I drop a meteor on a level 1 hellion and it misses. It can get so bad as to have a 30 second difference on a pylon test which is ridunkulous.

I don't see those 6-7% you speak of: The tweaks you've done look fine, though you will lose Panaceia's passive endurance recovery. It is the best single slot option, better than a Miracle or a Performance Shifter proc, or even a +5 IO. Now it will only activate when you activate Earth's Embrace. Build's a bit end heavy on one hand, but on the other you do have Dark Consumption so you can afford it.

After a stint of playing Rad Melee I went from 'I'll never touch this again, the animations suck too much' to having made five alts in a row. It always worked well but it was endurance heavy, Devastating Blow has the same animation length as for other ATs but hits much more softly which made it hard to stomach, so I went through a phase of trying to make Rad Melee work without Devastating Blow... and it didn't work so well. It really needs that or otherwise the ST damage is always mediocre. So I cleaned up the build, removed Tough to be one less toggle, changed Maneuvers for Combat Jumping for the same purpose, usual numbers that use all the IOs and tricks and gimmicks to reach the soft and hardcaps instead of just headbutting them to 90%. I had no spare powers thanks to Tankers being forced to take the T1 so I had to choose between Atom Smasher and Devastating. Since AoE is taken care by Burn and Irradiated Ground, and ST is what the builds lacks, I took Devastating. But anyone who prefers can just swap it for Atom Smasher. I usually do not take -res procs but they fit really well in Irradiated Ground and it's a passive damage increase that Tankers appreciate. I've taken to run Yin while still leveling as a damage/survival test and while not perfect for the purpose the build did beat previous records with a nice 39 minutes, no inspirations defensive or offensive used until Clamor who then had to use a purple to survive her -def debuffs + ambush. Brute or Tanker version are pretty similar though I do have a (large) soft spot for having Burn available since Posi 1. While IG is great it is random damage when we depend on it as the sole AoE. This is only until Yin though. Ultimately the Brute will do more damage (nearly 200 more just in Devastating Blow, but also nearly that with Burn), but they are a bit squishier with those 500 HP less and a 30% ish hole in E/N resists.