Sovera

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.

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.